James McGee - The Reckoning

“Welcome back.”

When Hawkwood re-entered the dead room, there was no shouted order to close the door and this time, when Quill turned to greet him, there was no humour in the surgeon’s expression, either. Instead, Quill’s face looked as if it had been carved from stone. The cellar appeared darker than it had before; colder, too, perhaps because of Quill’s less than welcoming disposition. The smell, though, was as bad as ever.

Taking his cue from the room’s chilly atmosphere, Hawkwood did not speak as he took the note from his pocket and held it up. Quill crooked a finger and, with a rising sense of dread, Hawkwood followed him across to the examination table.

The body was there, covered by the sheet. Wordlessly, Quill drew the material aside.

The corpse now lay on its back in the prone position, hands by its sides. This time the eyes were fully closed but it was not to her eyes that Hawkwood’s attention was drawn. It was to the dead woman’s abdomen and the trauma that had been inflicted upon it.

“They’re not stab wounds,” Hawkwood said cautiously. “They don’t look deep enough.”

“No,” Quill said. “I was mistaken. She was not stabbed.”

“Scratched, then.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I’m not with you.”

Quill reached for a candle. “Take this.”

Hawkwood took the light and held it above the body. Caught in a sudden draught, the candle flame fluttered and then steadied. He stared down at the wounds, which still looked nothing more than a series of random score marks angled across the surface of the skin. While they were not deep, they were not that shallow, either. They were the sort of cuts which, suffered singly, might have been caused by catching the skin on a rusty nail; quick to bleed but, by the same token, quick to close and form a scab. Lowering the flame, Hawkwood allowed his eyes to follow the progression of the wounds across the width of the body. Only then was he able to take in what Quill had seen.

The first letter that had been carved into the flesh was a sharp-angled . It had been made by two distinct strokes of a blade, as if the perpetrator had been trying to form a triangle and given up. The second letter had been made using the same principle, with the addition of a horizontal incision linking the two cuts to form an . The next was an , followed by a single vertical slash to represent an . There were three more letters, all rendered using a minimal number of strokes.

“C-A-R-I-T-A-S,” Quill said, “in case you were wondering.”

“I can spell, damn it!” Hawkwood stared at the cuts. “What I don’t know is what the hell it’s doing there. Is it even a word?”

Quill said calmly, “I believe it’s Latin.”

“Latin?”

“It means charity.”

Hawkwood turned.

Quill gave what could have been interpreted as an apologetic shrug. “Latin studies; one of the consequences of a classical education, though a necessity when considering a career in medicine.”

Hawkwood returned his attention to the body.

“This is not something I’ve come across before,” Quill said. “You?”

Hawkwood found his voice. “Not like this.”

“Like this? ” Quill countered sharply.

“When I was in Spain, the guerriller os used to mutilate the bodies of dead French soldiers as a warning to others.”

“They wrote messages in the flesh ?”

“No, usually they’d cut something off. Noses, fingers, cocks. It scared the Frogs shitless.”

“I can imagine,” Quill said, adding pointedly, “Not quite the same though.”

“No,” Hawkwood agreed. “Not quite.”

Quill let out a sigh. “But bad enough.”

“Yes.”

Quill held Hawkwood’s gaze. His expression was even darker than it had been before.

“Did you find anything else?” Hawkwood asked, wondering what other horrors might be lurking.

“No,” Quill said. “Mercifully. She was not violated – not as we understand the term, at any rate, though my examination did reveal that she was no stranger to coition.”

There followed a moment’s pause then Quill chewed his lip and said pointedly, “Fore and aft.”

Offering a contrite shrug for having used the phrase, the surgeon made a face. “Your suspicions regarding her likely profession would, therefore, appear to have merit.”

“Then cover her up, for Christ’s sake.” Hawkwood stepped away from the table, allowing Quill to draw the sheet over the body. He turned back. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“No apology required,” Quill said.

“I want him,” Hawkwood said. “I want the bastard who did this.”

“ Him? ” Quill said.

“Him. Them.”

God help us if it’s a “her”. What kind of woman would do this to another?

“Ah, but it’s not just the ‘who’ though, is it?” Quill said. “It’s the rest of it. And I’m afraid I can’t help you with that conundrum. My responsibility extends only as far as determining the cause of death, not the persons or reasoning behind it. My domain is the ‘how’. The ‘who’ and the ‘why’ are your department.”

Thanks to Magistrate bloody Turton, and a sexton with a conscience, Hawkwood thought bitterly .

“That’s not to say I’m not intrigued, of course,” Quill added, “as a medical man. But it ain’t my field. You want an answer as to why someone should carve anything into some poor woman’s belly, you don’t need a surgeon; you need a mind doctor.” The surgeon cocked his head. “Know any mind doctors?”

Hawkwood stared at Quill. Quill stared back at him. “What?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hawkwood said. “I believe I do.”

It had been winter when Hawkwood had last visited the building and there had been a heavy frost on the ground. It was winter once again, or at least the tail end of it, and while the weather was not as harsh, it was immediately apparent that the intervening months had not been kind, for the place appeared even more decrepit and run down than it had before.

Segments of the surrounding wall looked as if they were about to collapse, while the trees, which, during the summer, would have formed a natural screen, appeared to be suffering from some form of incurable blight, with many of their lower branches having been lopped off by the neighbouring residents for use as domestic kindling. Moorfields, the area of open ground which fronted the building, had all the characteristics of a freshly ploughed pasture. Subsidence, having bedevilled the site for decades, had taken a more drastic toll of late and the ponds which had formed in the resulting depressions had almost doubled in size. Most of the iron railings that had once ringed the common land had disappeared.

The twin statues were still there, guarding the entry gates: both male – one wearing shackles, head drawn back; the other reclining as if having just awoken from a troubled sleep. Their naked torsos, stained black over the years, were splattered with ash and pigeon droppings. Steeling himself, Hawkwood ducked beneath them, crossed the courtyard and headed for the main door. Tugging on the bell pull, he waited. The eye-hatch slid aside and a pale, unshaven face appeared in the opening.

“Officer Hawkwood, Bow Street Public Office; here to see Apothecary Locke.”

“You expected?” a gravelly voice wheezed.

Hawkwood had anticipated the question and raised his tipstaff so that the brass crown was displayed. “I don’t need an appointment.”