by R. N. Morris
Quinn asked the mortuary attendant to turn the body. There were more of these secondary, more superficial wounds visible on his back. Still raw patches of exposed sinew where the skin had been scraped away. The hair at the crown was slick with blood. The wounds of the dead do not heal.
With that thought in mind, Quinn leant down to peer closely at an area of the man’s skin that was still in place. It was cross-hatched with a series of scabbed weals that appeared to have been caused by something serrated being drawn, or whipped, across his naked flesh. It was like trying to decipher the original text of a palimpsest.
‘What did the medical examiner have to say about these scars, do you recall?’
The attendant’s gaze followed the direction of Quinn’s pointing finger.
‘They are evidently old wounds,’ he observed condescendingly. ‘Therefore of no relevance to the inquiry.’
‘But they may help us in identifying the deceased.’
‘You’ll have to take that up with the coroner.’
Quinn continued his close reading of the man’s wounds, scanning down his body until he spotted something that pulled him up short.
‘What of these marks here?’ Quinn pointed to two dark circles, one on each of the man’s thighs. They were the size and colour of copper pennies.
‘Ah, yes. We noticed those.’
‘And?’
‘They looked to Dr Richard like burns. Electrical burns, he rather thought. Dr Richard once conducted the post-mortem examination of a girl who was struck by lightning. These marks, he told me, resembled the burn he found on the top of the child’s head, where the electricity entered her.’
‘How interesting. Did Dr Richard have any theories as to how these marks came to be on the back of this gentleman’s thighs?’
The mortuary attendant stifled a grin. ‘He did not think the bear was responsible for them.’
‘And so, no doubt, he did not consider them relevant to the inquiry?’
‘Oh, he mentioned them in his report. He thought they were rather interesting.’
‘I am glad he found something to interest him.’
‘Have you seen enough?’ The attendant’s tone suggested that he had certainly seen enough of Quinn.
But Quinn’s gaze lingered over the lacerated body, like a lover who could not tear his eyes away from his loved one.
Quinn took a motor taxi to the Hackney Mortuary, with the box of the man’s belongings on the seat beside him. He scanned the coroner’s file en route. It contained a number of statements from witnesses, all alike in their essential details. Everyone was intent on watching Aguta the polar bear as he sat eating fish and inspecting his toes. At first no one noticed the strange behaviour of the man in the brown suit, or the man not in the brown suit, as he was soon to become.
It was a married lady who first raised the alarm. She discreetly nudged her husband to draw his attention to the unfolding scandal. He was initially amused rather than concerned by the man’s undressing. It was only when his wife pointed out the presence of children and unmarried young women in the crowd that he realized the seriousness of the situation.
But by then it was too late. The man was already naked. The crowd could only look on as an even greater horror unfolded.
Some of the men claimed to have called out to deter him. But they attested that he was deaf to their cries and protests, as if in a world of his own. Some said it all happened too quickly for them to intervene. Others said that it was as if time had slowed down, like in a dream. They found that they were rooted to the spot by the unexpectedness of the spectacle. It seemed they could not quite believe it was really happening. Perhaps it was some stunt organized by the zoo?
Quinn suspected there was something else going on. The desire to see a unique event through to the end. Of course, no one would own up to that, however human the impulse might be. In retrospect, one always feels bad for failing to prevent an atrocity.
None of the witnesses were able to give a useful description of the man. They disagreed on the colour of his hair, his height, the regularity or otherwise of his features … No doubt his nudity, and the subsequent attack, distracted them from remarking such trivial details.
Dr Richard expounded at length on the nature of each separate area of attack, describing the depth, extent and angle of every wound in some detail, and giving his considered opinion as to whether it was caused by the teeth or the claws of the animal. It was the accumulation of so many wounds that killed him, although the fracture to the skull sustained when his head struck the concrete may have proved critical. But a naked man in a fight with a bear is always going to die, one way or another.
The old scars that Quinn had noticed on the man’s back were dismissed, along with the copper-coloured marks, as ‘historic and no doubt self-inflicted given the deceased’s evident propensity to self-destruction.’
No doubt!
Dr Richard noted in passing that the deceased’s tonsils had been recently removed, possibly at the same time as the teeth from his lower jaw had been extracted. It was impossible to tell whether the teeth from the upper jaw were also in place or not, as that part of the face was missing entirely.
Quinn returned the file to the box as the taxi turned into the churchyard of St John-at-Hackney. In his time as a detective, he had visited a fair number of public mortuaries. The one at Hackney, which served the north London police area, was one of his favourites. The setting was peaceful, set back as it was from the main road and surrounded by trees and grass. The area had the feel of a village green.
Made from tawny London bricks, the mortuary building itself looked like it might be someone’s house, the kind of place anyone might want to settle down in. It presented a welcoming, cheery face, double-fronted with twin gables and large windows. One side of the ground floor was taken up by a wide red gate, through which the hearses passed into the yard.
There are always some places at which a man is known, at least by face, if not by name. For Quinn, it was mortuaries. The clerk here greeted him with a nod of recognition. There was no need to produce the warrant card this time, which was just as well given that both his hands were occupied carrying the box.
‘You had a body come in here. The suicide off the Hornsey Lane Bridge.’
‘The naked fellow?’ As if there was someone else who had jumped off fully clothed. Perhaps there was.
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you want to see him?’
‘First I’d like to take a look at his effects. Were his clothes found?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to see them. And any items that were found in the pockets. And the medical examiner’s report, if the post-mortem examination has taken place.’
‘It has. It appears to be a straightforward case of suicide. The coroner has not conducted his inquest yet, but I am sure that will be the verdict.’
The clerk’s expression clouded with the unspoken question: So why the interest?
Quinn did not feel the need to explain himself. This man was not one of his officers.
A similar box containing an identical corduroy suit, together with a grey calico shirt and familiar items of underwear, was produced from a back room. The sense of urgency that possessed Quinn now was enough to overcome any squeamishness. He sorted through the garments while the clerk went for the file.
The touch of that material ought to have been repulsive, painful even. But somehow he was able to dislocate himself – his present self – from the part of him that would have crumpled and wept to handle the clothes in the box.
He gave it up as soon as the clerk returned. ‘There was nothing of any real interest found in his pockets. Nothing that enabled an identification to be made.’ It was a discouraging observation.
Quinn frowned dubiously. ‘There wasn’t found, by any chance, a sort of cigarette card?’
‘It’s all in the file.’
&
nbsp; There wasn’t much to sift through. Quinn paused over the photographs of the body. In particular, he was interested in a close-up of the back of the man’s thighs. Two small dark discs, one on each leg, were clearly visible. Referring to the medical examiner’s report, no theory was proposed as to the cause of the marks. Their presence was merely noted, as was the presence of scabbed striations across the back. Quinn read that the deceased’s tonsils had been recently removed, together with all his teeth.
However, he found no cigarette card. Quinn could not suppress his disappointment. ‘The card I mentioned, could it have fallen out? Or been removed?’
The clerk took obvious umbrage at Quinn’s suggestions. ‘I assure you that is not possible. If there is no such card in the file, no such card was found.’
There was no pacifist leaflet or music hall playbill either. In fact, apart from a small amount of loose change which had been sealed in a brown envelope, the only items the second deceased man had had in his possession were a till receipt from a Lyons teashop, and a dog-eared postcard bearing a Salvation Army tract: Whosoever believeth in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah will be saved.
Underneath, someone – presumably the dead man – had scrawled in pencil: AND WHAT IF YOU CANNOT BELIEVE? The words were deeply scored into the card, in a stilted, irregular hand, and were underlined three times. The postcard had been folded into quarters and was almost falling apart at its creases. There was nothing written on the reverse.
The jarring clamour of the mortuary telephone’s bells disturbed Quinn’s thoughts before he had the chance to form them. The clerk listened to a wasp-like buzzing in the earpiece before holding it out towards Quinn. ‘A Sergeant Macadam for you.’
Macadam’s voice came to him from the other side of the universe, infinitely small, fragile and trembling. ‘Sir …’
There was a long, crackling pause. Quinn thought he had lost him. Then it came: ‘There’s been another one.’
Quinn’s voice sounded calmer than he felt. ‘I see. Where?’
‘Bankside. The power station there. A man, naked, of course. His clothes were found nearby.’
‘A brown suit?’
‘A brown suit,’ said Macadam over the question.
‘Corduroy?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he die?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. This one’s not dead. They’ve taken him to Guy’s Hospital.’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘We’ll meet you there, sir. Inchball and I.’
Quinn did not demur.
NINE
Darkness is all around him.
He feels himself moving through the darkness. His body, tightly bound. He cannot say how he is moving. His arms, bound to his sides. His legs, trussed together. He is bound by the darkness. It is an immense weight pushing in on him from above and below. From every side at the same time.
He has the sense of his body being suddenly too small for him. As if it has contracted to the size of a taut, bursting pea.
He knows that the darkness contains something terrible and malign. Something intent on destroying him.
The darkness is filled with teeth. Sharp, vicious teeth biting at every part of him, tearing him apart.
The darkness is filled with pain.
He is drifting through it on an inky black river of pain. He has been tightly swaddled and laid in a canoe and cast adrift. From time to time, the conviction grips him that the canoe is on fire, but that can’t be. He can see no flames. Only blackness. But it feels as though he is on fire. Then the answer comes to him: these are black flames that consume him. He can hear their crackling as he drifts.
A far-off light flickers in the darkness. In the instant of illumination he sees what the darkness contains and it is worse than he imagined.
It is filled not with teeth, but with millions of fat black buzzing bees. It is the bees he can hear, not flames.
The flicker of light dies. But his panic stays with him.
All he can do is stay as still and silent as possible so that he doesn’t attract the attention of the swarming bees.
An even more frightening thought occurs to him. He is drifting not on a river, but on a stream of bees.
His father’s voice comes to him. ‘It will soon be over.’
At first he finds the words consoling. But then he remembers that the man was not his father after all. So how can he believe anything he says?
Another voice speaks. A man’s voice again, but one he does not recognize. ‘Soon we will be together.’
This time he chooses to believe in the consolation he is offered. He knows, somehow, that this is his true father speaking to him.
TEN
Quinn ran out on to Lower Clapton Road. The faces of the living that he now confronted were sullen and bewildered. They shied away from him as the dead never did. A running man, a man out of breath, a man exerting himself in the commission of some urgent act, was no doubt an object of suspicion in these parts, if not fear. Either he was a villain running from a crime or a policeman in hot pursuit. Both were equally to be shunned.
The traffic was thin. A horse-drawn collier’s cart on its rounds headed away from him into Mare Street. A delivery van passed it moving in the opposite direction. Its engine strained noisily against unseen forces intent on holding it back. There was something plucky about its determined progress, which seemed against all the odds somehow. Quinn was hypnotized by its approach. It was only when it had passed him that he thought perhaps he should have flagged it down and requisitioned it. The next vehicle he saw, he would.
But now the road was empty. He regretted not keeping the taxi waiting on its meter. But even though it was not his money that he would be spending, he baulked at the extravagance of it.
The Georgian facades of the houses around Clapton Square enticed him with their air of village England. If only one could live in a house like that, on good terms with one’s neighbours, terms of understanding and tact, where nothing was said because nothing needed to be said. Quinn felt a pang of nostalgia for a life he had never lived. A life of pipes and slippers and well-set fires. Where the hardest puzzle he had to solve was The Times crossword. And the greatest drama was someone’s leaving the lid off the butter dish. He might indulge his fancy by imagining himself a wife! How about that! A wife for Quinn! He couldn’t picture her face. Conveniently for his poor imagination she was in the next room, busy with … whatever it was that wives did. Her perfume wafted to him, chorused by her contented trilling. She had a good singing voice, it seems – that was an unexpected delight. And although he couldn’t see her, he knew she was pretty without being threateningly so, and comfortably proportioned.
Most of all, she put up with him.
There might even be a couple of children, one boy, one girl, though the girl was rather tomboyish, which he approved of enormously. They were both pestering him to put down his pipe and paper, to exchange his slippers for shoes, and take them out into the square to sail their model yacht on the pond. But Quinn could see that in reality there was no pond in Clapton Square. So wherever this fantasy life was located, it was not here.
The steady rumble of a motor drew his gaze, again in the Mare Street direction. A long black vehicle was speeding towards him. It was larger than a car, but not as big as a van. Quinn ran out into the road and stood facing it with his arms raised above his head. He crossed and uncrossed his arms slowly several times. For a long time, it seemed the driver hadn’t seen him, because he showed no sign of slowing down. Then, eventually, he gave several angry honks on the horn. At the last moment, when he was less than twenty yards from Quinn, he slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt, spinning the vehicle forty degrees.
The driver leapt out, his face ashen.
‘Are you mad?’
Quinn produced his warrant card. ‘I am Detective Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. I need you to drive me to Guy’s Hospital. If you refuse to do so, I am em
powered to arrest you for obstructing the course of justice.’
The driver held up two black-gloved hands in a placatory manner. ‘All right, all right. There’s no need for that. It’s just I’ve got to get her back to the shop for a bit of a polish. I’ve got another funeral at twelve.’
It was only now that Quinn took in that the vehicle was a motorized hearse. He also appreciated the driver’s formal mourning attire, though his black swallow-tail jacket was oddly set off by a tweed flat cap. Another man sat in the passenger seat with two black top hats dressed with black crepe ribbon on his lap.
‘It won’t take long. Guy’s isn’t far from here and the traffic is light.’
Quinn went round to the passenger side. The other undertaker glowered back at him resentfully.
‘He’ll have to get out.’
In the event, the other man lay down in the back of the hearse, in the space reserved for the coffin. It was left to Quinn to sit with the toppers on his lap.
The driver seemed to relish the licence to speed that Quinn’s presence legitimized. He no doubt chafed at the necessity to drive at a funereal pace for at least half of every journey. The man in the back slid from side to side as they took the corners. He grumbled ‘Have a care!’ every time he collided with the interior, and ‘Have a blinkin’ care’ whenever he was made to bump over one of the brackets designed for holding the coffin in place.
Quinn touched the mahogany detailing on the dashboard. ‘I haven’t seen many of these. Motor hearses.’
‘We still have the horse-drawn variety. Naturally, some of our clients prefer those.’
Quinn wondered how a dead man could prefer anything.
‘But this is the future,’ added the driver.
‘The future?’
‘Of the industry.’
Quinn had never thought of undertaking as an industry before.
The hearse bumped violently over a deep pothole and landed with an axle-bending thud.
