Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

For good or bad, you’re committed now. There’s no going back.

True, you’ve prepared for it. You wouldn’t have started this without an exit strategy. When the time comes you’ll be able to slide back into the shadows, just like before. But you’ve got to see it through to the end first. And while the rewards might be great, so is the risk.

You can’t afford any mistakes.

You do your best to believe that what happens tonight doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things, that your real work will continue regardless. But it rings false. The truth is there’s more at stake now. Although you hate to admit it, all the failures have taken their toll. You need this, you need the affirmation that you haven’t wasted all these years.

Your entire life.

You finish polishing the camera lens and pour yourself a glass of milk. You ought to have something to soak up the acid in your stomach, but it’s too knotted to eat. The milk’s been opened for a day or two now, and the scum on top says it’s probably turned. But that’s one of the benefits of not being able to smell or taste anything. You drink it straight off, staring out of the window at the trees silhouetted against the sky. When you set the empty glass back on the kitchen table, the smeared interior gives it a ghostly translucency in the gathering dark.

You like that idea: a ghost glass.

But the pleasure soon fades. This is the part you hate most, the waiting. Still, it won’t be much longer now. You look across the room at where the uniform hangs on the back of the door, barely visible in the deepening shadows. It wouldn’t stand close inspection, but most people don’t look too closely. They see only a uniform in those first few seconds.

And that’s all you need.

You pour yourself another glass of milk, then stare out of the dirty window as the last of the light vanishes from the sky.

THE DENTIST LAYexactly as he had the last time I’d seen him. He was still sprawled on his back, lying with the immobility only the dead can achieve. But he’d changed in other ways. The flesh had dried in the sun, skin and hair slipping from him like an unwanted coat. After a few more days stubborn tendons would be all that remained of the soft tissue, and before much longer there would be nothing left but enduring bone.

I’d woken with a nagging headache, regretting the last glass of wine I’d had the previous night. Remembering what had happened before that hadn’t made me feel any better. As I’d showered I’d wondered what I should do until I heard from Tom. But there was really no decision.

I’d had enough of being a tourist.

The car park had been nearly empty when I’d arrived at the facility. It was still in shadow, and I shivered in the early morning chill as I pulled on a pair of overalls. I took out my phone, weighing up whether or not to leave it on. Normally I turned it off before I went through the gates—there seemed something disrespectful about disturbing the quiet inside with phone conversations—but I didn’t want to miss Tom’s call. I was tempted to leave it on vibrate, except that then I’d spend all morning waiting for its telltale buzz. Besides, realistically I knew Tom wouldn’t ring Gardner until later anyway.

Making up my mind, I switched off the phone and thrust it away.

Hoisting my bag on to my shoulder, I headed for the gates. Early as it was, I wasn’t the first there. Inside, a young man and woman in surgical scrubs, graduate students by the look of them, were chatting as they made their way back down through the trees. They gave me a friendly ‘Hi’ as they passed, then disappeared about their business.

Once they’d gone, silence descended on the wooded enclosure. Apart from the birdsong, I might have been the only living thing there. It was cool inside, the sun not yet high enough to break through the trees. Dew darkened the bottoms of my overalls as I went up the wooded hillside to where the dentist’s body lay. The protective mesh cage meant that, among other things, I could observe how his body decomposed when no insects or scavengers were able to reach it. It wasn’t exactly original research but I’d never carried it out before myself. And charting something firsthand was always better than relying on the work of others.

It had been a few days since I’d been here, though, so I’d some catching up to do. Stepping through a small door in the cage, I took a tape measure, calipers, camera and notepad from my bag and squatted down to work. I made heavy going of it; the headache was still a nagging throb behind my eyes, and the thought of the phone in my bag was a constant drag on my attention. When I found myself taking the same measurement twice I shook myself angrily. Come on, Hunter, focus. This is what you came here for.

Closing my mind to distractions, I buckled down to the task. Headache and phone were temporarily forgotten as I was drawn into the microcosm of decay. Viewed dispassionately, our physical dissolution is no different from any other natural cycle. And, like any other natural process, it has to be studied before it can be fully understood.

Eventually, sensations of discomfort began to make themselves known. My neck was stiff, and when I paused to flex it I realized I was hot and cramped. The sun was high enough now to reach through the trees, and I could feel myself starting to sweat in the overalls. Checking the time, I saw with surprise it was almost midday.

I stepped out of the cage and closed the door behind me, then stretched, wincing as my shoulder popped. Pulling off my gloves, I started to take a bottle of water from my bag, but stopped when I caught sight of my hands. The skin was pale and wrinkled after being in the tight rubber gloves. There was nothing unusual about that, yet for some reason the sight prompted something to bump against my subconscious.

It was the same sense of almost-recognition as I’d had the day before at Steeple Hill, and just as elusive. Knowing better than to force it, I took a drink of water. As I put the bottle away I wondered if Tom had spoken to Gardner yet. The temptation to switch on my phone to check for messages lured me for a moment, but I firmly put it aside. Don’t get distracted. Finish what you’re doing here first.

It was easier said than done. I knew there was a good chance that Tom would have called by now, and the awareness nagged at my concentration. Refusing to give in to it, I took almost perverse care over the last few measurements, checking and noting them down in a log book before I packed away. Locking the mesh cage behind me, I headed for the gates. When I reached my car I stripped out of my overalls and gloves and put everything in the boot before I allowed myself to turn on the phone.

It beeped straight away to let me know I had a message. I felt my stomach knot with anticipation. It had been left not long after I’d arrived at the facility, and I felt a stab of frustration when I realized I’d missed Tom’s call by minutes.

But the message wasn’t from him. It was from Paul, to tell me that Tom had had a heart attack.

We don’t realize how reliant we are on context. We define people by how we normally see them, but take them out of that, place them in a different setting and situation, and our mind baulks. What was once familiar becomes something strange and unsettling.

I wouldn’t have recognized Tom.

An oxygen tube snaked up his nose, and a drip fed into his arm, held in place by strips of tape. Wires ran from him to a monitor, where wavering electronic lines silently traced the progress of his heart. In the loose hospital gown, his upper arms were pale and scrawny, with the wasted muscles of an old man.