Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

You admit to a few nerves, but that’s a good thing. You can’t let yourself be complacent. When the opportunity presents itself, you’ll have to be ready to take it. You can’t afford to waste chances like this. You know that better than anyone.

Life’s too short.

IN THE END, all the precautions for Tom’s safety had proved futile. Doctors and medical staff at the ICU had been warned of the need for extra vigilance, if not its reason, and a TBI agent had been stationed in the corridor outside his room. No one could have reached Tom without their knowing, and even if someone had, Mary had been at his side throughout.

None of which had prevented him going into cardiac arrest just after four o’clock that morning.

The medics had tried to resuscitate him, but his heart had resolutely refused to restart. Stubborn to the end. The thought circled aimlessly round my mind, refusing to settle.

I felt numb, still unable to take in what had happened. After I’d spoken to Paul I’d called Mary and mouthed the usual, useless words. Then I’d sat on my bed, at a loss as to what to do. I tried telling myself that at least Tom had died peacefully with his wife beside him, that he’d been spared whatever final ordeal had been inflicted on Irving. But it was scant consolation. York might not have physically killed him, but Tom was still a victim. Ill or not, he’d had a right to live the rest of his life in peace, however long it might have been.

He’d had that taken from him.

An image of York’s face came to me, beaming with false servility as he’d enthusiastically pumped Tom’s hand that morning at Steeple Hill. Dr Lieberman, it’s an honour, sir… I’ve heard a lot about your work. And your facility, of course. A credit to Tennessee. He must have been laughing at us even then. Knowing what he had planned, hiding his greater guilt behind the petty misdemeanours evident at the cemetery.

I can’t remember hating anyone as much as I hated York just then.

Moping in my hotel room wasn’t going to bring Tom back, or help catch the man who’d killed him. I showered and dressed, then went to the morgue. It was still early when I arrived. My footfalls echoed as I walked down the empty corridor. The morgue’s cold, tiled surfaces seemed even lonelier than usual. I would have welcomed the sight of a familiar face, but Paul had told me he had more meetings to get through first, and I doubted that Summer would be in any fit state to help out when she heard the news.

Kyle was there, at least. He was pushing a trolley along the corridor as I came out of the changing room, and greeted me with his usual enthusiasm.

‘Hi, Dr Hunter. I’ve got to help with an autopsy this morning, but if you want any help after that, you just let me know.’

‘Thanks, I will’.

He still loitered. ‘Uh, will Summer be coming in later?’

‘I don’t know, Kyle.’

‘Oh. OK.’ He nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘How’s Dr Lieberman?’

I’d guessed it was too soon for the news to have spread, but I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask. I didn’t want to be the one to have to break it.

‘He died last night.’

Kyle’s face fell. ‘He’s dead? I’m sorry, I didn’t know…’

‘There’s no reason why you should.’

I could see him searching for something to say. ‘He was a nice man.’

‘Yes, he was,’ I agreed. There were worse epitaphs.

I tried to keep my mind blank as I went to the autopsy suite, wanting to focus on what I had to do. But it was impossible in an environment that I associated so much with Tom. When I passed the suite where he had been working, I paused, then went in.

It looked no different from the day before. Terry Loomis’s skeleton still lay on the aluminium table, now almost fully reassembled. It was like any other autopsy suite, with no lingering trace of Tom’s presence. I started to go back out, but then I saw the CD player still on the shelf next to the neat pile of jazz albums. That was when it really hit me.

Tom was dead.

I stood there for a while as the unalterable fact of it soaked in. Then, letting the weighted door swing shut, I went out and walked down the corridor to the autopsy suite where the bones of a petty thief were waiting.

The reassembly and examination of Noah Harper’s skeleton should have been finished by now. The delay was no one’s fault, but the task had been given to me and I felt responsible for how long it was taking. Now I was determined to complete it, if it meant staying all night.

Besides, I welcomed the distraction.

The cranium and larger bones of the arms and legs had been laid out on the table in an approximation of their anatomical position, but the rest had only been roughly sorted. I intended to reassemble the spinal column next, which was perhaps the most complex part of the process. The spine is essentially an articulated sheath that protects the cord of nerves at its centre. It’s a perfect example of nature’s ingenuity, a marvel of biological engineering.

But I was in no mood to appreciate it right then. Starting with the cervical vertebrae, I began carefully fitting the irregular knuckles of bone back together.

I didn’t get far.

The cervical vertebrae that form the neck are smaller than the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae of the back. There are seven in all, numbered from the skull, each neatly dovetailing into those above and below. I fitted the first five together easily enough, but when I searched for the sixth I couldn’t find it.

Come on, Hunter, concentrate. Exasperated, I went through the remaining vertebrae again. But the only cervical vertebra I could find was the wrong size and shape. It was clearly the seventh, not the sixth.

One was missing.

Which was impossible. Although it was badly decomposed, Noah Harper’s body had been fully intact when we’d exhumed it. If one of his cervical vertebra had been absent we’d certainly have noticed.

So where was it?

With an odd sense of certainty, I went over to where the microscope stood on the workbench. I felt no surprise when I saw the small white object on the stage beneath the lens. If anything I should have realized before. I’d wondered what Tom had been doing in here when he’d had his heart attack.

Now I knew.

The image was blurred when I looked through the eyepiece. I adjusted the focus until the vertebra swam into view. It was as delicately fluted and spurred as coral, its porous surface appearing pitted under the magnification.

The hairline cracks looked as deep as a chasm.

Straightening, I took the piece of bone from under the microscope. The fractures were almost invisible to normal eyesight. There were two of them, one on each of the laminae, the slender bone bridges that link the main body of the vertebra to its more delicate neural arch.

Feeling strangely clear-headed, I set it down and went back down the corridor to the autopsy suite where Tom had been working. Going straight to Terry Loomis’s skeleton, I picked up the sixth cervical vertebra from the examination table and held it up to the light. The fractures were even less obvious than on the laminae I’d just seen. But they were there all the same.

So that was it. I felt no satisfaction, only a sudden welling of sadness. This was Tom’s discovery, not mine. I took out my phone and called Paul.

‘I know how they were killed.’

‘So it’s definitely strangulation.’

Paul looked dispassionately down at the vertebra he was holding. We were in Tom’s autopsy suite. I’d already shown him the fractures in Noah Harper’s sixth cervical vertebra before bringing him in here to examine the matching cracks in Terry Loomis’s.