The Unquiet Dead (18 page)

Mr Romano laughed.

‘Well, someone did.’

Mr Romano stopped laughing.

‘Doyle never left Marshall Street Baths. He’s been buried in a boiler room for fourteen years.’

Mr Romano stopped breathing.

‘The man you’ve been searching for died the same day your son did, and the only person who knew he’d had anything to do with it was you. Everyone else blamed the lifeguard.’

Jessie felt the buzz of the job race through her as she drove her bike through Central London. The traffic was thin; she and the other petrol heads around her were the new kings of the road. She parked the bike outside St Mary’s Hospital and went in. The morgue was three floors below ground; she took the lift down and eventually emerged into the cool quiet corridor. As she pushed through the swing door, she saw Dominic Rivers bent over a corpse. He looked up and smiled.

‘Finally. Where have you been?’

‘Sorry, temporarily lost my phone and I haven’t been to the office to check my e-mails. What have you got?’

‘You’ve obviously been busy. So, let’s see – science versus slog. You first.’

Jessie wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to show off. When she had last seen Dominic all they’d had was a stiff, no ID, no cause of death, no nothing.

‘Well, he went by the name Ian Doyle. He was a vagrant, living in Soho, selling drugs to kids. On February 23rd, he sold some speed to a sixteen-year-old called Jonny Romano at Marshall Street Baths. The boy subsequently drowned after having some sort of epileptic reaction to the drug. I believe he was taken to the boiler room, or was found hiding in the boiler room by someone who sought quick retribution. He was chained up and dropped into a narrow, deep pit, which at the time was full of rainwater. He drowned, yes, but not in the pool.
When he was dead, whoever killed him moved him from the flooded pit to the dry pit, which could be sealed with a lid. And there he has remained, slowly drying out, ever since. Am I right?’

‘You’re right in that he didn’t drown in the pool. I found no traces of chlorine in his lungs. What I found was not as innocuous as London rainwater.’

‘Human faeces?’

Dominic grimaced. ‘That couldn’t be a random guess.’

‘No. High rainfall causes the sewage system below the boiler room to back up, filling two of the four pits with sewage.’

‘And that explains the scratches …’

Jessie nodded. ‘Rats.’

‘They didn’t just get him on the arms; the scratches go all the way up his body.’ Dominic pulled the covering sheet off the corpse. ‘The material of the trousers protected him at first, when the water level was low and the rats were not particularly active.’

‘So the pit wasn’t full of water when he went in?’

‘No. As the water level began to rise, the rats reacted more aggressively. Which is why the scratches get more intense as you get nearer to the head.’

‘Hang on – you think he was alive when the room was flooding?’

‘Yes. The wounds bled significantly.’

Jessie knew how it worked. Dead people didn’t
bleed. ‘I can double check with the Met Office. If it rained before February 23rd, then the room would already be under water. If it started raining afterwards, then it flooded after he was chained up.’

‘The injuries to his wrists are consistent with the room flooding after he was chained up. He was twisting and turning right up to his last breath.’

‘Wouldn’t he twist and turn anyway?’

‘Not that frenetically. He’d have to have been a very frightened man to cause such a high level of injury to himself.’

The scene materialised against the backdrop of her closed eyelids. ‘He’s trying to fight off the rats,’ she said quietly. ‘The water level is rising, it’s pitch black and no one can hear him screaming because the baths are closed. When the water is up to his neck, the rats swarm him. He’s their last island.’ Jessie opened her eyes and looked at Dominic. ‘He drowns slowly, overrun by vermin, in other people’s waste.’

The doctor nodded. ‘His fingers weren’t cut off by anything manmade.’

Jessie put her hands together and raised them above her head. ‘The water stopped rising, and all that was left sticking above the surface was his fingers.’

‘Rats are carrion-eaters. Beggars can’t be choosers.’

Jessie lowered her arms slowly and tried to rid her mind of the image.

Dominic pulled the sheet back over the dead
man’s chewed body. ‘You got caught down there, didn’t you?’

She pulled up her sleeves. Blood had seeped through the cotton bandages in a few places. ‘I got stuck in the boiler room during a rainstorm. Suddenly the lights went out and water was pouring in. They were everywhere. Hundreds of them. I couldn’t get them off me.’

‘You poor thing,’ said Dominic, instinctively walking up to Jessie and putting his arm around her. ‘Are you all right?’

Jessie shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said honestly.

He turned her bandaged arms over. ‘What did you do?’

‘Well, I meant to go to casualty, but there were so many people and I wasn’t really top priority. I waited for hours and when the scratches started hurting I decided that only one form of medication would suffice.’

Dominic had been slowly unravelling the bandage. ‘Tell me you stayed long enough to get a tetanus injection.’

Slowly she shook her head, then grimaced as he pulled the sticky cloth away from the now oozing scratches.

‘And the medication?’

‘Whisky.’

‘Detective, whisky is not an antiseptic.’

‘This I now know.’

‘Okay, I’m going to give you a tetanus injection
right now. Wait here; don’t touch anything, and don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in a moment.’

‘I should be going –’

He cut her off. ‘Have you ever heard of the Black Death?’

‘Don’t be daft, that doesn’t exist any more.’

He looked at her very seriously. ‘You want to take that chance? The rat population is out of control in this city. You know what they say: you’re never more than ten feet away from a Starbucks or six feet away from a rat – and who knows what strains of disease either are carrying. Now wait here.’

Jessie unwound the bandage on the other arm while she waited. She was glad he hadn’t seen her first attempt at a field dressing. Three o’clock in the morning, after a lot of neat whisky, she and the one person she’d promised herself she wouldn’t call, had tried to dress her wounds. Sluicing TCP on to her arms had not done the trick. She could see from the yellowing flesh that they were already infected. Of course she hadn’t felt a thing at the time. It was only in the morning, when she realised what she’d done, that it began to hurt.

‘I’m never drinking again,’ she promised quietly to herself. What had she been thinking? After so many months of resisting the temptation to call. She’d even managed to turn him down to his face. Jessie stared forlornly at her arms. She could have blamed it on the shock or the booze, but the truth was, secretly, tucked away in the recesses of her
mind, she knew, she still liked P. J. Dean. The rats, the fear and the whisky were merely the excuse she’d been waiting for. Weak and delirious, she’d run to him; weak and delirious she’d stayed; weak and delirious, she’d crept away at dawn.

The door opened again and Dominic walked in holding a packaged syringe and a glass vial of clear liquid.

‘Bet you’re feeling stupid now,’ he said, looking at her arms.

‘You have no idea,’ said Jessie.

‘Right. Bend over,’ he ordered, peeling back the plastic. ‘Got to put the anus in tetanus.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard me.’ He stuck the needle through the top of the vial and pulled back the plunger. ‘Bend over, Detective, or go wait in line at A & E. Either way, someone is going to stick a needle in your arse.’

‘Are you qualified to do this?’

He winked at her.

‘Oh my God,’ she grimaced.

‘Consider it punishment for behaving so foolishly.’

Jessie undid the buttons on her leather trousers and peeled them down. The humiliation was made worse by the fact that she was wearing a rather unattractive thong that had been through too many wrong washes to boast any identifiable colour.

‘Okay,’ said Dominic, ‘bend over, hold on to your knees and try to relax. This is going to –’

‘FUCK!’

‘– hurt.’

Tears sprang to her eyes as he massaged the serum into her bottom. ‘Sorry, but you’ll thank me for this tomorrow when you can sit down rather than can’t.’

Jessie exhaled loudly. ‘You’re all sadists.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Pants up, you’re done. Come here,’ he added, beckoning her across the room. ‘I’ll dress them for you. And if you’re very good, I’ll re-dress them in a couple of days.’

‘Thanks, Dominic. I owe you.’

‘Well, don’t get too gushy. I might be about to put a spanner in the works.’ He squeezed out some antiseptic cream on to his finger and began rubbing it gently into the cuts. ‘When you get home, take the bandages off, have a long soak in a salty bath, then put more of this cream on. Is there anyone who can put fresh bandages on?’

‘My brother. Actually he’s a doctor.’

‘And he didn’t force you to go to the hospital?’

‘I haven’t shown them to him.’

He was shaking his head, but there was no anger in his eyes.

‘He was out,’ she claimed. Which was mostly true. ‘So what’s this spanner, Doctor?’

Dominic finished wrapping up the bandages then moved back a few paces from her.

‘I want you to come here and feel my thigh.’

Jessie laughed nervously.

‘All for science.’ He beckoned her over. ‘Right.’
She squeezed his right thigh. ‘Now left.’ She squeezed again. ‘Feel the difference?’

‘Your left is rock solid.’

Dominic nodded. ‘Very good.’

‘And the point is?’

‘Tell me, in any of the descriptions of this dealer, Ian Doyle, was there mention of a limp?’

‘A limp?’ she echoed.

‘I missed it at first because the drying out of the flesh has caused the fascia and muscle tissue to shrink. Also, to begin with the baggy trousers made the legs look bulkier, so it was harder to notice.’

‘Notice what?’

‘Just like me, he had a left leg that was stronger than his right. It bore the brunt of his weight. In fact, his right leg was almost entirely wasted. My guess is polio as a child. Knowing what we do about his lifestyle and eating habits, it’s pretty safe to assume he was born into a poor family. Back then, vaccination wasn’t nationwide; he’d have eaten a poor diet, had a low immune system as a result and contracted polio.’

‘How severe would this limp have been?’

‘Much worse than mine. You couldn’t miss it.’

But everyone had. None of the police paperwork she’d seen listing the descriptions and sightings of Doyle, none of the countless articles that had been written, had mentioned a limp.

‘Any chance he could have disguised it?’

Dominic shook his head. ‘Only by staying still.’

‘There was a nationwide search for this man,
rewards were offered, he was known in the area …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘There was a search for someone, but not this guy.’

‘Are you absolutely –’

‘Certain? Yes. But you can get Sally Grimes down here if you don’t believe me.’

‘No, I trust you. It’s just disappointing.’

‘Who first described this Ian Doyle?’

‘According to Mr Romano, a friend of his son’s.’

‘Can you find him?’

‘We can find anyone.’

‘Well,’ said Dominic, ‘that’s your answer. But if Ian Doyle didn’t have a limp, then this is not Ian Doyle.’

Jessie threw the file across her desk. ‘Damn it!’ She swore loudly enough for Burrows, now ensconced in Mark’s old office across the hall, to look up. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly.

‘For what?’

‘Swearing.’

He looked away, disappointed.

‘Now what?’ asked Jessie.

He didn’t reply. Normally in synch with one another, she and Burrows were missing the target in every conversation.

‘I was trying to be polite,’ she protested.

‘No you weren’t, you were walking on eggshells around me. You’ve been doing it ever since I told you about my faith. And to be honest, boss, it’s getting very wearing.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Then stop trying to curb your language in front of me. I’m not going to start saying Hail Marys.’

‘So I can say “Fuck it”?’

‘You can say fuck, shit, wank, cunt, if you want. Just don’t ask me to.’

Jessie smiled for the first time since she had begun her search for a missing limp. ‘So cock-suckingmotherfuckersonofabitch doesn’t bother you?’

‘You’re like that petulant child in
Malcolm in the Middle
.’

‘I don’t watch TV, but I have a feeling I’ve just been insulted.’