Читать книгу Deadly Burial - Jon Richter - Страница 11

Monday

Sigurdsson blinked himself awake. A sickly morning sun leered in through a gap in the window blinds, shrouded in dark clouds and a spiteful rain that had thickened but still seemed to be only a portent of the storm to come. He had become used to this routine: waking up naturally after a fitful sleep, around ten minutes before the alarm clock on his phone was due to go off. Sure enough, when he scrabbled on the bedside table for the device, it confirmed that the time was 06:48 (his obsessive brain didn’t allow him to round it to ‘quarter to’ or ‘ten to’ – facts were important).

He switched off the alarm and forced himself up and out of bed, wiping sleep from his eyes as he began to assemble the day’s plan in his mind. He wanted to meet the pathologist to go through the conclusions he’d drawn from the post-mortem examination of Schultz’s body. They needed to interview Zheng, who had been missing from the previous night’s congregation. And they ought to talk to the ‘April’ that Penman had mentioned last night – Schultz’s girlfriend, presumably?

He glanced around the threadbare room that would be his home until the case was solved. His travel bag still rested in the middle of the floor, an affront to the order and precision that his brain demanded. Unpacking it efficiently, he ironed a fresh shirt for the day ahead before changing into his running gear. At 07:24 he was ready to go out for a jog before Mason picked him up, and before the weather worsened any further. He locked the door behind him and walked down the corridor, across the worn burgundy carpet and past the peeling wallpaper to the lift once again, and pushed the call button.

The doors creaked open above a sheer drop into blackness.

Jesus, that was dangerous. He would need to report it. He found the stairs and hurried down to find a portly middle-aged man on reception, writing in an old-fashioned ledger of some kind. Perhaps this was the husband of the cadaverous woman who had welcomed him the previous evening? He looked up as Sigurdsson approached.

‘Your lift is out of order,’ Sigurdsson told him. ‘I’ve just nearly fallen down the open shaft. You need to get it fixed urgently.’

‘Oh dear… certainly sir. I will get that seen to as soon as possible. We’ve had a lot of problems with the lift lately. The whole place is just… falling apart.’ His accompanying gesture might have referred to the entire island. His eyes were sad and watery, as if lamenting Salvation’s plight.

Sigurdsson was happy to leave the mournful place and step outside, despite the chill wind that immediately tore at his exposed legs and arms as he undertook his stretching routine on the pavement. He began to trot along the promenade, noticing immediately the lack of any signs of life, even at this relatively late hour of the morning. No one seemed to be going to work, or out like him for some early exercise. Many of the shops still seemed to be closed, some of them boarded up. There didn’t even seem to be any seagulls wheeling overhead. Just the rabbits, gathered in despondent clusters, their heads close together like conspirators.

He saw a group of them beneath a bench and ran towards them to take a closer look, but they scurried immediately towards the shadows of the nearby alleyways. They were thin, anaemic-looking creatures. He thought about their lives, lived in quivering terror. He thought about his own fears, his own fixations. He thought about myxomatosis, swollen eyes clogged with tumours. Disease, pestilence. Inevitable death.

His brother, Marcus. A car thundering forwards like an unstoppable juggernaut, smashing through flesh and bone.

A rabbit caught in the headlights.

He shook his head and concentrated on his footfalls, on his breathing. A regular motion, pounding against the grubby pavement, pounding in his chest. He was heading west, the sun an ailing blob of bilious light behind him as his feet splashed through puddles and amongst the old newspapers and other detritus that blew along the walkway. There was still no sign of another soul. It was as though the entire island was closed down, abandoned, like a diseased village that had been placed under quarantine. As though the island itself was a cancerous, dying thing. The mist that hung around it seemed more and more like a toxic pall, driving the island’s inhabitants indoors, each lungful slowly poisoning him.

Maybe this was why Mason was so angry; she was like the sheriff of a ghost town.

As if to emphasise this point, the houses to his right gave way to a long chain-link fence, broken and fallen down in places. Beyond it was a patch of weed-choked ground covered in rubbish and discarded beer cans, and then beyond that, the sad spectre of an amusement park. The Ferris wheel that he had seen from the boat loomed above the derelict scene like a sombre monument.

He stopped running, approaching the fence, squinting through the rain and fog.

There were rabbits everywhere. The ground was pocked with holes like cavities in rotten teeth, and hundreds of the creatures squatted near these entrances, ears and noses twitching as they sniffed at piles of garbage or chewed at forlorn clumps of grass. He wondered how many more of them were beneath the ground, the ones not hungry enough to be driven out into the rain. Maybe the big, strong ones sent their emaciated cousins out to forage for them. Maybe there was a gigantic, monstrous King Bunny lurking somewhere deep within the bowels of the island.

Sigurdsson laughed at the nonsense of his racing thoughts, but the noise seemed alien in this dismal corner, and it died on his lips. This place was getting to him, somehow.

He decided to head back to the hotel.

The reception area was deserted as he passed through and ascended the stairs. After showering (turning it as hot as he could make it, trying not to think about flesh being boiled from rabbit bones), he changed into one of his nondescript work outfits and headed back downstairs. The old man on reception still wasn’t there. A beeping horn sounded outside and he found Mason in an idling squad car, wipers waving maniacally as if trying to scare the rain away. Mitchell wasn’t with her this time, so Sigurdsson slid into the front passenger seat, feeling a strange relief at finally seeing another human being.

‘Morning,’ he said. She grunted a response, peering through the rain that had worsened into a deluge, hammering against the windscreen.

‘So where are we heading?’ he persevered.

‘The station, of course.’

‘I thought we might go to the morgue first, so I can talk to the pathologist.’

She started to reply but was interrupted by the hiss of the radio.

‘Chief?’ crackled a voice through the static.

‘Yep, I’m here,’ she replied. ‘Go on Mitchell.’

‘You were right, Adams turned up. But the ferry isn’t running; nothing is getting off the island because the storm is about to hit. He was furious about missing his flight.’ Sigurdsson realised it was the first time he had heard Mitchell’s voice.

Mason smiled. ‘Good. He seems too keen to get away if you ask me.’

‘Shall I bring him in?’

‘No, there’s no point yet – we know where he’s staying. I’ll see you back at the station; I’m on my way in now.’

Silence descended once again. He was angry that she hadn’t consulted him before having Adams followed, but he knew she would expect that. Eventually he spoke evenly.

‘Look, I don’t know what political game Wells is playing, but I’m not here to score points or try to outdo you. I just want to help solve the case. So we should work as a team.’

She gave no indication that she had heard him, but evidently she was just considering her response carefully. When it finally came, Sigurdsson was shocked by its vehemence.

‘The only one playing games here is you. I know Wells thinks I’m useless, and wants me out. Sexist fucking pig. So if you’re here to babysit me then at least be fucking honest about it.’

‘Look, I don’t know what he’s said to you, but you’ve got this all wrong. I’m n–’

‘Just save it! If you want to go to the morgue that’s fine by me, but I’ve got my day job to do. So we’re going to the station to get you your own car, and then you can do whatever you bloody want.’

She hadn’t looked at him once during her outburst, but Sigurdsson could see the whiteness of her knuckles as her fingers gripped the steering wheel.

‘Mason, I am not your enemy here. I don’t know why Wells doesn’t rate you, and to be honest I don’t care. But I’m not exactly flavour of the month with him either, so if anyone is being punished here it isn’t you.’

She stared straight ahead, piercing the lashing torrents in front of them with her glare.

‘Oh yeah? The way he phrased it you’re some sort of golden boy.’

‘See, that’s what he does!’ Sigurdsson clenched his teeth in fury at his scheming superior officer. ‘He’s trying to play us off against each other. I don’t know, maybe he thinks it’s bloody motivational or something. Trust me, I’m far from a golden boy in his eyes.’

She seemed to relax a little in the face of his evident ire.

‘So what did you do to get into his bad books then? As far as I know all I did was take time off to have a baby.’

‘Finally, I find out something about you! So who’s the unlucky father?’

A pained expression tweaked the corners of her mouth. ‘He’s… not around any more. Me and Holly moved here to get away from him. Let’s just leave it at that.’

‘Okay, of course,’ Sigurdsson replied, regretting his joke. ‘Holly is a pretty name,’ he added eventually.

‘Thank you.’

Silence descended once again, broken only by the metallic battering of the rain on the roof and the rhythmic thunk of the wipers.

‘I reported a colleague for punching a young boy,’ Sigurdsson said eventually. The memory was still vivid in his mind. ‘The lad was in for drink driving, and he was mouthing off like an idiot. I was only in the station so late because we were investigating a murder. I wandered out when I heard the commotion and saw a sergeant punch the boy in the stomach. The lad was trying to go down but the sergeant held his head upright and got right in his face, threatened him, before he realised I was watching. I think at first he thought I was going to join in.’

The susurrus of the raindrops and the thudding beat of the wipers continued as if they would never stop.

‘What did Wells do about it?’ Mason asked eventually.

‘My colleague was suspended for two weeks. But since then my career has… stagnated somewhat. And the other lads in the station don’t trust me any more.’

Silence once again. He looked down at his hands, saw the lines etched across them. Thought about age and decay.

Another burst of static interrupted his reverie, this time as Mason initiated a transmission.

‘This is Mason,’ she spoke into the receiver. ‘Change of plan: we’ll be in the station a little later. First we’re going to pay Dr Leithauser a visit.’

*

The mortuary was housed within the island’s only hospital, the Salvation Island Infirmary. Mason hadn’t spoken again after their sort-of-truce, and Sigurdsson didn’t want to push it any further, so they remained silent as she led him through to the reception area of the small, antiquated building. They showed their ID to the young man behind the desk, who made a quick call before telling them to head straight down. They walked along a few corridors painted the colour of weak tea before a sign guided them down a flight of stairs to their destination. Mortuary: an innocuous word for such terrible finality. Sigurdsson felt his heart shake as he descended.

The pathologist met them at the entrance, wearing scrubs and a mask pulled down to reveal an ageing, kindly face.

‘Hello, Inspector; good to see you again. Is this a new colleague? Forgive me for not shaking your hands.’ He held up his gloved extremities and then offered them a box containing similar coverings, as well as their own face masks. Mason had radioed ahead to let him know they were coming, and that they were going to take a look at the body. Sigurdsson introduced himself and Leithauser did likewise – his first name was Hamish.

‘Good to see they’ve sent reinforcements,’ the doctor commented. ‘There’s clearly something amiss here, in my opinion.’

They entered a tiled room where three gurneys were arranged in a neat line. The harsh lighting glinted off their polished surfaces, except for the one covered by a plastic sheet.

‘I gather he’s something of a celebrity?’ the doctor asked as he removed the covering without ceremony. The body beneath had of course been in cold storage, so decomposition had barely progressed. Long, dark hair framed features identical to those that Sigurdsson had seen in pictures on the internet – except that they were a little older, and contorted into an agonised grimace. Blotches of silver face paint still clung to the flesh of his face, as well as two black chevron shapes, one beneath each eye, with what appeared to be a stylised teardrop snaking its way from the bottom of one of them. VV, for Vic Valiant. The teeth, visible between rabidly snarling lips, were clamped solidly together, and Schultz’s eyes were widened into frenzied discs.

Sigurdsson stared down at the corpse, momentarily transfixed, only registering the pathologist’s question when Mason answered it.

‘Yes doc, he used to be a big deal in the wrestling business. You’re a fan, aren’t you Sigurdsson?’

He wondered if her jibe was a kind of apology for her earlier treatment of him, and managed a smile.

‘Yep, I’ve still got posters of them all on my wall at home. And I know it’s tragically common for them to die of heart attacks when they get to his age. Steroids, or the lifestyle, or whatever. What makes you think this isn’t just the same thing?’

The wrestler’s face, a frozen mask of torment, seemed to scream denial at this version of events.