Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

Nothing matters any more.

You’re still wearing the uniform, but now it’s sweat-stained and creased. Another waste of time. Another failure. And yet you’d come so close. That’s what makes it so hard to stomach. You’d watched from the shadows, heart hammering as you’d made the call. You’d worried your nerves might give you away, but of course they hadn’t. The trick is to shock them, to tip them off balance so they don’t think clearly. And it had gone just as you’d planned. It had been almost pathetically easy.

But as the minutes ticked by he still didn’t appear. And then the ambulance had arrived. You could only watch helplessly as the paramedics ran into the building and returned with the unmoving figure strapped to the trolley. Then they’d bundled it inside and driven him away.

Out of your reach.

It isn’t fair. Just when you were on the point of triumph, of parading your superiority, it’s been snatched away. All that planning, all that effort, and for what?

For Lieberman to cheat you.

‘Fuck!’

The pan clatters against the wall as you fling it across the kitchen, leaving a trail of water and swinging flypapers. You stand with your fists balled, panting, desperate to feed the anger because behind it is only fear. Fear of failure, fear of what to do next. Fear of the future. Because, let’s face it, what do you have to show for all the years of sacrifice? Worthless photographs. Images that show only how close you came, that have captured nothing but one near miss after another.

Tears sting your eyes at the injustice. Tonight should have gone some way towards countering the despair that’s built up as one disappointment after another has emerged from the developing tray. Taking Lieberman would have made up for some of that. Would have shown that you’re still better than the false prophets who claim to know it all. You deserve that much, at least, but now even that has been snatched away. Leaving you with what? Nothing.

Only the fear.

You close your eyes as you’re blasted by an image from childhood. Even now you can still feel the shock of it. The chill from the big, echoing room soaking into you as you step through the doorway. And then the stink. You can still recall it, even though your sense of smell is long since defunct, an olfactory memory like the phantom tingling of an amputated limb. You stop, stunned by what you see. Rows of pale, lifeless bodies, drained of blood and life. You can feel the pressure of the old man’s hand as he grips your neck, indifferent to your tears.

‘You want to see somethin’ dead, take a good look! Nothin’ special about it, is there? Comes to us all, whether we want it or not. You as well. Take a good long look, ‘cause this is what it all comes down to. We’re all just dead meat in the end.’

The memory of that visit gave you nightmares for years. You’d catch sight of your hand, see the bones and tendons covered by a thin layer of skin, and you’d break out in a clammy sweat. You’d look at the people around you and see those rows of pale bodies again. Sometimes you’d see your reflection in the bathroom mirror and imagine yourself as one of them.

Dead meat.

You’d grown up haunted by that knowledge. Then, when you were seventeen, you’d stared into a dying woman’s eyes as the life—the light—went out of them.

And you’d realized that you were more than meat after all.

It had been a revelation, but over the years it had become harder to sustain your belief. You’d set out to prove it, but each disappointment had only undermined it more. And after all the work and planning, after all the risks, tonight’s failure was almost too much to take.

Wiping your eyes, you go to the kitchen table where the Leica is partially disassembled. You’d started to clean it, but even that pleasure has turned to ashes. You slump down on to the chair and consider the pieces. Lethargically, you pick up the lens and turn it in your hand.

The idea comes from nowhere.

A sense of excitement starts to grow as it takes shape. How could you have overlooked something so obvious? It was there, staring you in the face all along! You should never have let yourself forget that you have a higher purpose. You’d lost sight of what was really important, let yourself become distracted. Lieberman was a dead end, but a necessary one.

Because if not for that you mightn’t have realized what a rare opportunity you’ve been given.

You feel strong and powerful again as you contemplate what has to be done. This is it, you can feel it. Everything you’ve worked for, all the disappointment you’ve endured, it was all for a reason. Fate had dropped a dying woman at your feet, and now fate’s intervened again.

Whistling tunelessly to yourself, you start to strip off the uniform. You’ve been wearing it all night. There’s no time to take it to the laundry, but you can sponge it down and press it.

You’re going to need it looking its best.

THE OVERWEIGHT RECEPTIONISTwas on duty at the morgue when I arrived. ‘You heard ’bout Dr Lieberman?’ he asked. The singsong voice was cruelly mismatched to his huge frame. He looked disappointed when I said I had, tutting and shaking his head so that his chins quivered like jelly. ‘It’s a real shame. Hope he’s OK.’ I just nodded as I swiped my card and went inside.

I didn’t bother to change into scrubs. I didn’t know if I’d be staying or not.

Paul was in the autopsy suite where Tom had been working. He was poring over the contents of an open folder on the workbench, but glanced up when I entered.

‘How was he?’

‘About the same.’

He gestured at the papers in the folder. The bright fluorescent lighting showed up the dark shadows under his eyes, making his tiredness more evident. ‘I was going through Tom’s notes. I know some of the background, but it’d help if you could bring me up to speed.’

Paul listened silently as I told him how the body discovered at the cemetery seemed almost certain to be Willis Dexter’s, and how the remains exhumed from Dexter’s grave seemed likely to belong to a petty thief called Noah Harper. I described the pink teeth we’d found on both Harper’s remains and those of Terry Loomis, the victim in the mountain cabin, and how they appeared to contradict the blood loss and wounds on the latter’s body. When I told him that the hyoid bones of both victims were intact, and so far there were no signs of knife cuts to the bones themselves, he gave a tired grin.

‘It’s either or. Cause of death could be strangulation or stabbing, but not both. We’ll just have to hope we find definitive evidence for one or the other.’ He looked down at the folder for a moment, then seemed to rouse himself. ‘So, are you OK to carry on?’

It had been what I’d been hoping to hear earlier, but circumstances robbed the moment of any satisfaction. ‘Yes, but I don’t want to cause any more friction. Wouldn’t it be better if someone else took over?’

Paul closed the folder. ‘I’m not asking you to be polite. With Tom in hospital the faculty’s going to be pretty stretched. I’ll do what I can here, but the next few days are going to be hectic. Frankly, we could use the help, and it seems stupid not to use you when you’ve been involved from the start.’

‘What about Gardner?’

‘It’s not his decision. This is a morgue, not a crime scene. If he wants our help I’ve made it clear that he can either trust our judgement or find someone else. And he isn’t about to do that, not now he’s lost Tom so soon after Irving was snatched on his watch.’

I felt a touch of guilt at the reminder. What with Tom’s heart attack, I’d almost forgotten about the profiler.