Nick Oldham - Fighting for the Dead

‘The viewing room. They locked it from the outside so we couldn’t get out.’

Henry twisted carefully around, but his elbows gave way and he thumped arse-down on the floor with a groan. Exhaling carefully, he moved his head and tried to make sense of where he was and who was with him. Baines knelt by him, there was the uniformed PC, the mortuary technician and two more mortuary employees, a man and a woman. Henry’s eyes descended on the constable for an answer.

‘They ripped my PR off,’ he blurted, but held up his mobile phone. ‘I called it in… backup’s on the way.’

‘Good lad. Anybody else hurt?’ Henry’s eyes were beginning to work a little better now and he checked the terrified faces of the mortuary staff. He saw a woman tending to the mortuary technician sitting on one of the chairs, dabbing something on his eyes.

‘They sprayed something into the tech’s eyes,’ Baines said ‘CS spray, I’d guess. His eyes are streaming, but he looks like he’ll be OK.’

They had been herded (or in Henry’s case, dragged) into and locked in the viewing room. This was the room to which relatives of deceased persons were brought to either view a body in a casket in the room itself, or to look through a large curtained window on the other side of which was an anteroom where trolleys could be pushed, the curtains drawn back and they could see through the glass. It all depended on the circumstances and the state of the body.

Henry rattled the door handle.

Correct, it was locked from the other side by twisting an inset bolt which could be released from this side if they’d had a big, flat-bladed screwdriver. Like being locked in a toilet cubicle.

Baines had risen to his feet with Henry, now reaching his full, spindly height of over six feet. He was still watching Henry with concern, who was working his jaw, assessing the damage done.

The cuts inside his mouth and cheeks where his teeth had connected with the flesh were still bleeding. He touched them gingerly with his tongue.

‘What the hell do they want?’ Henry uttered.

Baines shrugged. ‘Stealing from dead bodies?’ he suggested.

‘Or stealing from a particular one,’ Henry said and crossly rattled the door handle again.

The constable’s mobile phone rang and he answered it. ‘Yeah… in the viewing room… they locked us in here… right…’ He ended the call and looked at Henry. ‘Backup’s here — but the bad guys have gone.’

‘You need to go to A amp;E,’ Baines said firmly. He was following Henry around with his arms open, ready to catch him if he suddenly fell.

‘I know,’ Henry agreed, the tip of his tongue still touching the inner mouth cuts and also finding a loose tooth. He felt the side of his face with his fingers, carefully pressing the new swelling under his eye. He’d broken his cheekbone once before and it had taken a long time to heal, and still gave him gyp. He hoped it wasn’t bust again, but his face was very tender and sore, reminiscent of the pain from the previous fracture.

He and Baines were standing next to the gurney on which the drowned woman lay… or at least the woman who’d been pulled out of the river lay. Only a post-mortem could establish for certain how she had died. And because of the events of the last fifteen minutes, Henry now wanted to be one hundred per cent positive she had drowned.

Suddenly his head went muzzy.

He fought it and leaned both hands on the edge of the trolley, hoping to disguise what was happening to him. He might well have needed to go to A amp;E, as Baines suggested, but he didn’t want to go.

His mind started working again.

The armed men had assaulted Henry probably as a show of their capabilities so no one was in any doubt that they meant business. He hoped it wasn’t anything personal, just something to encourage everyone else to follow their orders.

Briefly unconscious as he hit the floor, he hadn’t been privy to what happened next. According to Baines and the constable, the men had yelled and screamed and herded everyone at gunpoint into the viewing room. They had made the constable and the mortuary technician drag Henry — one leg each — in with them, then ripped the PC’s personal radio off. They’d sprayed the technician when he’d stood up to them.

Henry’s blood was smeared across the tiled floor, then along the short carpeted corridor to the door of the viewing room, like a leopard had dragged a gazelle across the jungle.

Then they were all locked in, including the staff who’d been working in the examination room.

Ripping the constable’s PR off him had only really been a gesture, Henry thought. The intruders must have realized that at least one person amongst their captives would have a mobile phone. The only thing achieved by grabbing the police radio was that it cut off a direct line of communication to the police control room. Using a mobile phone, even on a treble-nine, would be far slower than a PC screaming for assistance down a PR.

So the men had bought themselves some time. Not much, but presumably enough to achieve their goal.

Which was what? Henry asked himself.

His eyes — one gradually closing to a hazy squint as his cheek swelled — moved to the bags containing Jennifer Sunderland’s property that he and the PC had been recording.

They’d been ripped open and the contents tipped onto the floor, and scattered as the men searched through them.

So this was the answer: they wanted something that she possessed, or thought she possessed. And whatever this something was, they were prepared to be utterly ruthless in finding it. Ruthless enough to smash a gun into someone’s face. And maybe kill if necessary.

The captives had been released from the viewing room by the first officer on the scene. Now more cops had arrived and were being a bit aimless, like they were playing bumpsy-daisy. They needed some direction, as there wasn’t much for them to do here, so Henry took charge and told them all to get back on the streets. The offenders had gone before the first officer had arrived, therefore Henry wanted cops out on the streets pulling any vehicles with two or three men on board. It was more miss than hit, he knew, but he wanted to get things moving and keep the scene of the crime as pristine as possible for the CSIs.

When all the uniforms had dispersed, that left him, Baines and the PC who’d been helping out with the property, as well as the mortuary staff, who had all retreated to a refreshment room, drinking tea, traumatized by the events, unable to do any work in the foreseeable future. They all had to be interviewed and statements taken. Henry also guessed they’d all need counselling, too. Par for the course. He didn’t even consider that luxury for himself.

If it hadn’t hurt his head to do so, he would have shaken it in despair.

Baines and the PC, however, seemed pretty unaffected by it all, fortunately.

‘Right,’ Henry said, ‘let’s see if anything’s missing.’

Other than having been scattered everywhere, the clothing and possessions were as Henry and the PC had recorded. It seemed the only thing taken was the constable’s PR.

‘I suppose it’s possible I might’ve missed something in a pocket,’ the PC admitted.

‘Or sewn into a seam,’ Henry added — but he knew he and the PC had run their fingers carefully over each item of clothing and unless they’d missed something tiny, maybe the size of a SIM card or smaller, they’d missed nothing. They had searched the property diligently, and Henry assured the PC of this.

They hadn’t even taken the very expensive-looking jewellery.

Which was a mistake, Henry thought, because that turned the incident into something more sinister.

If they had taken the jewels, then it was more than likely the police would have looked on it as just a robbery. Leaving the good stuff gave it a whole new twist, which unsettled Henry.