Philip Kerr - Hand of God

I nodded. ‘What’s the strike about, anyway?’

‘Money,’ she said. ‘There isn’t any. At least not for Greek public services.’

‘So I gather.’

‘There seems to be plenty for footballers, however. Even here in Athens.’

I drank my coffee silently; it’s never a good idea to try to justify the salaries in football to anyone, least of all those in the medical profession. And it was a good job that before I could try, my iPhone chimed: Maurice had emailed me a link to an article in the Independent that said Viktor Sokolnikov was planning to fire me at the end of the season. I wasn’t worried by this; no one ever reads the Independent .

‘If it was just picking a team I’d hardly be here now, would I?’

Eva Pyromaglou nodded down at the grimly smiling face on the cover of her book. ‘I certainly couldn’t see him turning policeman to solve a crime.’

She looked at her watch. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s time we were moving.’ She picked up her phone and quickly texted Spiros, to let him know we were on our way.

Laiko General Hospital was as dark as a church inside and almost as quiet. The hospital had a policy of switching off most of the lights at night, to save money on electricity.

‘That’s also in our favour,’ she said, leading the way through dim corridors. ‘But you should be careful where you’re walking. You wouldn’t want to have an accident in a Greek public hospital.’

I smiled; I was starting to like Eva.

Spiros was waiting for us around the next corner. He wasn’t alone. Under a sheet on a trolley in front of him was the body of a woman and you didn’t have to be a detective to work that out; her breasts stood up like a couple of sandcastles on a beach.

‘This way,’ he said and, pushing the trolley ahead, he led us along another dim corridor and through the open doors of a large and brightly lit elevator. Inside, he turned a key quickly, to operate the car, and then stepped outside, leaving Eva and me alone with the dead body. She pressed one of the buttons, the doors slid shut and the lift started to move. Almost immediately she turned the key again and the elevator stopped between floors, with a jerk.

As she threw back the sheet covering the dead girl’s body it was now plain to me that she was planning to examine the body right there, in the lift.

‘Pity,’ she said. ‘She was very beautiful.’

‘You’re going to look at her in here?’ I asked.

‘Yes. In here we can be sure not to be disturbed. Spiros will text me when it’s safe to bring the car back down.’

‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?’

‘In the elevator? No, you’re the first; and I hope the last. I can’t afford for this strike to go on much longer. It might even get violent, too. Towards the end strikes in Greece always become bloody-minded. You certainly wouldn’t want to get caught in the middle of that.’

‘Now you tell me.’

In a bag between the body’s feet was everything Eva would need: scalpels, swabs, scissors, evidence bags, suture needles, antiseptic hand gel and latex gloves. She put the bag on the floor and then proceeded to examine the girl’s body, meticulously, as if searching her flesh for the smallest blemish. For a while I let her work in silence, admiring the care and respect with which she treated the cadaver.

‘I’m looking for bruises,’ she murmured. ‘Needle marks, abrasions, cuts, scratches, anything.’ After several more minutes she shook her head. ‘But there’s not a mark on her.’

‘To my eye she looks like she was pregnant,’ I said, helpfully.

‘No, that’s not pregnant.’ Eva grunted. ‘You say she drowned? In Marina Zea?’

‘That’s what the cops told me.’

‘Then we’d better make quite sure. Ordinarily I would just cut her open and see what’s in her lungs but we can’t do that. This is not a post-mortem, after all. However, a little superficial cutting will be permissible. Help me turn her onto her stomach, with her head hanging over the edge of the trolley.’

We rolled her over and Eva fetched a cardboard tray from her carrier bag that she positioned under the dead girl’s lower jaw.

‘Now what?’

‘I want you to lean across her body, with all your weight. But I suppose I ought to warn you first that with all the gas that’s built up inside her, it’s possible she might misbehave. But I’m looking for any seawater that might be left inside her lungs.’

‘Oh, of course.’

When Eva was ready I leaned across the dead girl’s back and, at first, nothing happened.

‘Harder, man. You can’t hurt her now. Do it like you’re a sports physio. Take your feet off the ground. Come on. Really let her have it.’

I did as I was told and a few seconds later, a loud and very smelly fart emanated from the cadaver’s nether regions.

‘Whatever happened to silent witness?’ I said, turning my face in the opposite direction.

Finally, a trickle of liquid slid out of the cadaver’s mouth and into the cardboard tray. Eva transferred this to a bottle which she placed in her carrier bag.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now let’s turn her onto her back again.’

We wrestled her over and then I stood back from the trolley, panting a little. It was getting very warm and malodorous in the elevator car. I was already glad I was wearing an old T-shirt.

‘What’s next?’

‘We take a closer look at those tits, of course. Just look at them.’

‘I did. I am. It’s hard not to look at them when they’re like that. I imagine they looked rather better when she was walking around. Maybe a little more natural.’

‘That’s your opinion.’ Eva laid out her instruments at the foot of the trolley, as neatly as she was able.

‘But they do stand to attention, don’t they? Much more than yesterday, I think.’

‘When silicon becomes cold it hardens a bit. Sometimes it gets smaller.’

‘I know the feeling.’

Eva picked up a scalpel and then took hold of the dead girl’s breast and moved it from side to side, as if judging where to cut.

‘At least this one’s still got her nipples,’ she murmured. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I heard about that. Hannibal Leventis, wasn’t it? The Athenian bus driver who murdered those other girls?’

‘You’re well informed.’

‘Not by the police, I’m not.’

‘Believe me, this is a very different box of cakes.’

‘You sound like you have some knowledge of those cases.’

‘I do. It was me who sectioned them.’

‘There was talk of Leventis having an accomplice, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes, there was. And he did, I think. But the police decided Leventis acted alone. Because that’s what Leventis said. And it suited them to believe him.’

‘I see.’

‘All right, now pay attention. This is what you’ve paid for. You see this almost invisible scar here, under the breast? That’s where the breast implant went in; and it’s where we’re going to take it out again.’

‘We are? Why?’

‘Has that phone of yours got a voice memo app?’

‘Her tits are big but I don’t think it was them that made her sink to the bottom of the marina. It was a large weight tied to her feet.’ I fumbled the phone from my pocket, and tapped the app.

‘With any luck this little girl’s tits will tell us her full name and address. So you’d better start recording.’

I winced a little as Eva sliced the flesh deep along the scar under the breast and then pulled out her implant.

‘Doesn’t this count as invasive?’ I asked.

‘It may sound like splitting hairs to you but no, it doesn’t, because we’re going in and out through an existing scar. Everything will look like it was before. More or less.’