Remains of the Dead Read online

  Chas held my gaze. ‘Well at least that’s one paedophile who will never shit right again. Maybe we should leave them to get on with it.’

  ‘You haven’t seen what they’ve done to Eddie,’ I said. ‘It’s not decent.’

  ‘He deserves to be the star of the show. Eddie Kronenberg should take the curtain call for all of this.’

  ‘He looks horrible.’ I shuddered. ‘Have you ever seen an embalmed body?’

  Chas reached over the keyboard and pressed print. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing all these years, Louise – selling fruit and veg? I need a copy of this, for reference.’

  ‘Can you take the baby, too,’ I said. ‘It should really go back in the store.’

  He stared at me for a moment then picked up the jar with the foetus and wrapped it in the print-out of the press release. A hooded robe in dark red velvet hung sloppily from an easel. ‘Put that on,’ he told me. ‘It will be freezing on the bike.’ I glanced across at him gratefully. We had broken the ice.

  ***

  Chapter Nine

  The wind blew fitfully as we crossed back over the bridge. The Harley was the only vehicle to be seen on the embankment. Chas stowed the jar deep inside the bike’s locker and pulled out a waterproof cape which he wrapped around me twice as I sat on the pillion. ‘Put the hood up on that other thing and keep your head down,’ he warned. ‘You’re not out of the woods yet.’

  By the time we got to his door I was frozen stiff. Just like Eddie must have felt in the grip of the angel of death, I considered. Only my hands, tucked under the cape and the robe and clutching onto Chas’s waist, had any sensation at all. Chas tilted the bike into park position and helped me up the steps. The opaque whiteness of his hallway made me shiver all the more. Through the open blinds of the living room, the leafless trees of Primrose Hill bent double in the wind. Chas yanked the cord to close the slats and fetched a bottle of something which looked like urine.

  ‘Take off those wet things,’ he said. ‘I’ll rub you down.’

  I peeled off the cape and the robe, my teeth chattering. Chas pulled up my T shirt and massaged some of the yellow liquid into my lower back. A strong smell of sage filled the room. ‘Warmer?’ he asked, but I couldn’t answer. He carried on with the rubbing for a couple of minutes, then went into the bedroom to fetch a duvet. I curled up tight inside it and asked him for a brandy.

  ‘I tell you something you’re not going to get,’ he said. ‘I should never have given you that black the other day. I’ve been reading up on research linking dope and depressives. If you’re not predisposed to depression, fine. It’s better for you than alcohol. But in America when they monitored a group of GI smokers who inhaled, they found that those with low grade blues just went down the pan when they quit the army. No motivation. An inability to sustain relationships, or jobs. They just got sad and smoked shit. Does that sound familiar to you?’

  ‘I’m far more motivated now than I ever was,’ I countered. ‘I like my job. I look forward to working with you. You’re not going to sack me, are you?’

  ‘You tell me. You’ve admitted to stealing hospital property.’

  ‘That wasn’t hospital property, it came from out of a body. You didn’t need the heart, Chas. OK, you had to take it out to log the cause of death, but I knew you weren’t going to run any tests on it, not with your workload. It was an oversight.’

  Chas handed me a double Napoleon. ‘You miss the point,’ he said gloomily. ‘I need to know I can trust you. Let’s face it, this is not a job for a depressive. If I’d known how this would get to you, I’d never have employed you in the first place.’

  ‘And just how did you employ me?’ I said. ‘Through the Probation Service. How did Yorkie get the work? Through prisoner resettlement. That’s standard practice, isn’t it? And it suits you all down to the ground because nobody else wants to do the job for what you pay us. Given the choice between £4.80 an hour cooking hamburgers and £5.30 an hour sewing corpse’s bums, what would you choose?’

  ‘Life being what it is, I’d have kept my head down.’

  ‘Sat on the fence and shut your eyes, you mean? It wasn’t me or Yorkie who took those organs out. That was doctors.’

  Chas shook his head. ‘I only remove what I judge it necessary to remove. Don’t put me in the same boat as Alistair Rudyard and Sara Fell.’

  ‘I don’t.’ I touched his arm. ‘I didn’t mean you. I meant the medical profession.’

  ‘I am part of that profession. There are rotten apples in every barrel.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean you have to stick together.’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking quickly at me. ‘No, it shouldn’t mean that, you’re right.’

  ‘Why am I here, Chas?’ I asked. I was thawing out and it hurt. Hot tears started burning my face, which I didn’t want him to see.

  He pulled me out from under the duvet. ‘Forget about it for now,’ he said. ‘Forget, OK? Move on.’

  ‘A thing like that takes some forgetting.’

  ‘Like what? Like the death of some fascist? I’ve got a ten year old girl on my list tomorrow. She had leukaemia. You know what that means, don’t you? A kid living under a death sentence for most of her short life. It’s the sheer godawful injustice of that which should be exercising you, Louise, because that’s what I can’t handle. Why do you think I get so many speeding tickets on the bike? Because I’m trying to get away from dissecting kids. Kids like that little girl who never stood a chance. That fascist Kronenberg lived the life of Riley. He fucks you up, he fucks the country up, but he goes out like a bolt of lightning. If I went out like that, I’d be dying happy. Get a grip, Louise. I’m going to bed.’

  I thought about what he said, about the mess I was making of things because of Eddie. And I did try to get a grip of myself. I wanted to follow Chas into his bedroom, but I didn’t dare. Eventually, the sage and brandy fumes sent me into a doze. Then Eddie sat bolt upright on the cushions next to me and let out a corpse’s scream. It was dark, and the white shape of the duvet, which I must have kicked on the floor, caused me to yell out too. Chas switched on the light in the hall and came back in to me. He had loosened his hair from the knot which usually secures it at the nape of his neck and was stripped down to his boxer shorts. I could see what made those Tsarist ladies lie down for Rasputin.

  ‘Did you bring that jar inside?’ I asked wildly. I couldn’t bring myself to say the word foetus.

  ‘No, it’s still in the bike.’ He sat down on the edge of the sofa, squashing my just-warm feet. He had a Hope & Anchor tattoo on his left arm beneath those vigorous black hairs. ‘Shall I sleep here?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to take my bed?’

  ‘It just won’t go away,’ I said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you believe in life after death?’

  ‘I believe in cause and effect.’

  ‘Like karma, you mean?’

  ‘That’s a cultural thing, like all religions. I’m not of that culture.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m tired, Louise. If it’s reassurance you want, I can put a pillow down the middle to mark territory. Maybe you should try hypnosis?’

  I followed him back into his bedroom. Making a split decision, I took off my skirt and tights. He angled the pillow, as he said he would, and turned away from me while I lay fully awake now, thinking of Eddie’s good lung. Eddie had lost his right lung after National Service in the RAF, but he still got through forty Rothmans a day on the other one. And then my thoughts swung back from the clapped out parts of Eddie’s anatomy to the healthy presence of Chas beside me, pretending to sleep the sleep of the just. I knew he wasn’t really asleep. I wondered what would happen if I just reached out my hand. But I thought better of it. How could this thing with Chas ever get off the ground if I couldn’t lay Eddie to rest? August was right. Eddie was a crooked stiff. But it wasn’t Eddie I was grieving for, although Eddie had made me grieve. I pressed my eyes shut and tried to picture myself in a boat, as the probation officer taught me. I was skul
ling out across a lake, the oars facing back to the shore where Eddie stood watching me, holding a jar. As I rowed, he grew fainter, but the jar grew larger and larger, until it obscured him entirely and took on a life of its own, a homunculus, a thing with congenital defects. It stared at me with its sightless, amphibian eyes until the alarm went off at seven thirty.

  Chas sat up. I knew he was looking at me, but I pretended to sleep on. He heaved himself out of bed and ten minutes later he brought me a mug of tea.

  ‘Are you going in today?’ I asked.

  ‘Naturally.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve got the kid’s post mortem this morning.’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh I don’t think so.’

  ‘August never meant to involve me, Chas. That thing yesterday with Eddie was just about him making fun of me. He could have asked me to steal the organs for him but he knows I wouldn’t have done it. I would have gone straight to you and grassed him up. You know how I feel about the store, Chas. What August has done to those organs is even worse than what Rudyard did. But the Trust won’t know that. They’ll think I was working with Yorkie too if you give me the sack.’

  ‘As far as they’re concerned, you’re still on authorised sick leave,’ Chas said. ‘As for Kronenberg’s heart, you admitted taking that to me yourself.’

  ‘I told you, I’ll give it back. We can pick it up now, on the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Louise. You’d better stay where you are.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’

  Instead of answering, he started ferreting around in his closets. Then he held up a T-shirt for my inspection. I am the pink sheep of the family it boasted, beneath a colour screen print of a winged lamb.

  ‘My sister brought this back from Boston,’ he said.

  An unlikely conclusion presented itself to me. ‘You’re not gay, are you?’

  ‘No. She just wanted to see if I’d have the balls to wear it.’ He pulled the T-shirt over his head. It was far too small for him, contouring his pectorals. A tuft of black chest hair crowned the winged lamb.

  ‘I’ve got to go another round with Maggie and the Fells this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Like you can re-write the Hippocratic oath according to your patient’s financial arrangements, but don’t upset the other rotten apples in the cart. Calling them apples is an insult to fruit.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them about the press release?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he smiled. ‘I think I’ll let that emerge. This Stockyard might be doing us all a favour in going public about the store.’ He twisted his hair into the rubber band which served to tie his ponytail. ‘The Trust will have some trouble explaining Rudyard and the rest of those butchers to the families concerned, not to mention the missing bits. They’ll be looking to make someone accountable. Maggie Nicolli and Co don’t get where they are without passing the buck.’ He looked at me. ‘Maybe I should take some sick leave, too. I’m certainly owed it.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Because I’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘I’m still your boss, if that’s what you mean. Enjoy your respite.’

  He left abruptly for work, leaving me hopping and skipping about the room from the news I was not to be fired. I rinsed the breakfast things, then Eddie’s heart, still lodged behind the washing machine at home, came up to spike my mood. Mabel always did her whites mid-week. I would have to rescue the jar before she or someone else found it. But my first port of call would be the hospital. Chas would know I was all right if I turned up for work as though nothing had happened. He believed I didn’t have the necessary detachment for that morning’s PM on that little girl. But I would prove to him that I had. I would show him I was a sticker with a cast-iron stomach. It was like getting back on a horse after being thrown: a case of do or die.

  It took me some time to find my shoes, which Chas had left in a plastic bag next to the kitchen waste bin, but by ten to nine I was on my way. Then I sat for forty five long minutes as the Tube train waited in a tunnel, which was time enough for my anxiety to raise its sheepish head again and spook me about the post mortem. The first time I assisted at the cutting up of a child – a little girl she was, too – Chas had taken me into his office and given me a pep talk about how to handle it. What we were looking at, he said, that fragile shell-like head from which I had to shave some fine blonde hair so he could peel back the scalp and drill holes in the skull, was no more than a shell which we needed to pick to pieces so we could itemise each flawed process that had brought about its death. It was Chas’s professional duty to set down the cause for the coroner. He said the trick was to disengage your head from your heart, engaging only that sternly logical part of the brain which fixes on systems and processes. But I liked the fact that Chas could never quite manage to do this. I liked to think of him speeding away on his Harley to allay the pain in his heart about what he’d just been doing. I liked Chas because he had a heart.

  But as the forty five minutes turned into an hour and a half, and other passengers tried to yank the window down and seek out information in the darkened tunnel, I just sat back in my seat and thanked my stars for the delay. I knew I couldn’t disengage myself that morning from proceedings at the mortuary: the Y-shaped cut from neck to waist; the organs removed and weighed, then sectioned so that Chas could scan for cancer cells under his microscope; and finally, the labelling of the jars, which was usually left to me. My mind was following the jars into the store when the train started moving again. Then it jolted to another halt. A collective groan rose from the other passengers. ‘It must be a body on the line,’ a woman commented, glancing round for appreciation; but no one looked at her. A young man said: ‘Fuck this. Fuck the job now.’ A suit started loosening his tie.

  When the train finally pulled into Tottenham Court Road Station, we were told to disembark. It then took me a further half hour to get out, such were the crowds of passengers from other trapped trains, who were spilling all over the place, despite the best efforts of the Transport Police to herd them towards the exit. ‘It was a body on the line,’ the woman hissed, pushed up close behind me. ‘That or a bomb.’ I just ignored her. Finally, we reached the escalator which, as seemed normal for that station, was out of commission. On Oxford Street, police had cordoned off a section of the pavement. ‘It’s a bomb,’ the woman said. ‘They should do away with all those litter bins with all these ayatollahs on the go.’

  Without trying to get so much as a peep at what the police were cordoning off, I crossed the road and waited fifty minutes for a bus going east. There was not a taxi in sight, and traffic up North Oxford Street had been diverted. When I finally got to the hospital, the mortuary door was locked, as was the door to Chas’s office. A security guard came hurrying down the corridor, alerted, no doubt, by the closed circuit camera. ‘Where’s your pass?’ he asked. He looked about sixteen.

  ‘I work for Dr Androssoff. The Chief pathologist,’ I added, assuming Chas’s title would impress him.

  ‘You mean that poof with the ponytail?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘He’s out to lunch.’

  In my head, a well-known voice barked. Out to lunch – that means he’s pissed. But Chas was never pissed. Pissed off, I thought, yes.

  ‘You don’t know where he’s gone by any chance?’ I asked the guard.

  ‘Miss Nicolli came for him. She usually goes to that wine bar, Zygo Junction. Bring your pass next time,’ the guard warned. ‘New security policy. There’s been some very funny people sniffing around.’

  ‘Such as?’ I asked, but his face closed over. ‘Thanks anyway,’ I said. ‘I’d best go and find the doctor. I’m his afternoon shift.’

  ***

  Chapter Ten

  Zygo Junction was a café-bar near the hospital which Chas and I eschewed precisely because some of the consultants went there; and also because the place had a migraine-inducing decor of custard yellow and blue
. As well as the medics, it catered for a group of rich artists who were buying up disused warehouses in the area and converting them into studios. But in spite of all its cheery efforts to attract the in-crowd, the place was already running to seed, as though infected by the taint of the old infirmary chimney and all that had passed up its nose.

  Chas sat at the bar before a half-drunk bottle of Spanish beer and an empty wine glass. Beside him, an old derelict – though better dressed than some of the artists who came in here – was asking the barmaid to explain the menu. ‘I just want egg and bacon,’ he repeated, and she explained, with sorely tried patience, that this would only be served in a baguette and cost four seventy five. ‘But what’s a baguette?’ the derelict asked. He was winding her up.

  ‘It’s a fucking French bread roll,’ Chas said. The derelict grinned up at him and finally placed the order.

  I slid on to the stool on the other side of Chas. ‘Two-timing me, are you?’ I asked, looking around for Maggie Nicolli.

  ‘I thought I told you to stay at home,’ Chas said. He did not look pleased to see me.

  Maggie came out of the women’s lavatory. She did not look pleased to see me either, although it had never occurred to me that she could be interested in Chas for other than professional reasons. He never wore a suit, which would debar him from the better eateries round here, and he earned approximately half her salary. Maggie was another Mafalda. But then, I thought, her body clock was well and truly ticking. Chas was only thirty seven and still had both his lungs. I put my hand over his and stared at her defiantly. Chas didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘I think we know where we stand on the issue,’ she said to him, as though continuing with a conversation that had not been interrupted by her need to pee or make up her face. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d brief your staff.’ She glanced at me.

  ‘What about?’ I asked.