Sleepwalker (6 page)

“Jane speaks very highly of you. She says I will learn a great deal working with you. I certainly hope so.”

“You sound as though you don't believe it.”

“I am a natural skeptic.” She smiled. She had very white teeth, and as she mocked him, Davis found himself not knowing what, exactly, to say.

“I suppose you know all about the site,” she continued. “All the things that people say about it.”

“I have no idea what people say.”

She laughed. “Then you will be very surprised. And you will not believe it. I think I should have you speak with my friend Mr. Foote. With an
e
at the end. He is a great scholar of this city. You will find him very interesting.” She laughed again. “You have such a serious expression, Mr. Lowry. I think I will enjoy working with you very much.”

That night they began to work on the Skeldergate Man.

Davis wore a shaggy wool sweater under his lab coat, and Irene wore a jacket under hers.

Davis was curious to see if her cheerfulness would continue in the face of this ancient death. The black sheet was whisked to one side, and the body bag was unzipped. The ebony sleeper was exposed, glistening, under the fluorescent light.

“He is a handsome fellow,” said Irene.

“I want to do more C-fourteen dating. The reports of twelve hundred years give or take a few hundred are enough to satisfy the police.”

“But they don't satisfy you.”

“I want to send some bone to some people I know at the British Museum. I know people at Oxford, and they tend to destroy less tissue in the process, but Dr. Higg practically owns the British Museum. They'll give us the fastest results.”

“And there you stand, Mr. Lowry, with your scalpel in your hand, not wanting to cut our friend.”

It was true. Davis was stalling. He held the blade in his hand, and could not so much as touch it to the skin.

“I believe that five or six grams from the shin, and five or six from a hand, will be sufficient, Mr. Lowry. I will do it. The bone is so decalcified it is much like dried-out sponge. Here—this is enough femur. See how dry and porous it is. A Ziploc bag. Thank you.”

“You do this well.”

“You should not be surprised. I am cutting into the hand. I am sorry to do this, old friend. You are so handsome. But here—see how your metacarpals are like rotten wood. You have been dead a long time.”

“There's a bag of some of the peat material found around the body,” said Davis. “They'll want to test that, too.”

“This is a cold room.”

“Between four and six Celsius.”

“He will keep well here. But I think we should apply water to him. He begins to dry out. We have distilled water here. That will do nicely.”

“I took some tissue scrapes off his feet this morning. It's the only work I've had time to do so far. This is only my first entire day here in York.” Why did he find himself wanting to apologize for not doing more? “I found two fungal organisms—penicillium and candida.”

“I thought candida would be called a yeast organism, but I may be wrong.”

“I can't recall.”

She laughed. “And I can't either. And I can't recall if those organisms are a source of decay, or not. We don't want our poor fellow to have athlete's foot, do we?”

“They used to tan bog men,” said Davis, “like leather, as a way of preserving them. That's the process nature began, anyway. They would tan them in a bark solution, rub them with oil—lanolin, or cod liver—and inject the saggy parts with collodion.”

“I hope you don't suggest we do that to our friend. I know exactly what we should do with our ancient friend. We won't keep him like an old boot.”

“I wasn't suggesting—”

“We will have him freeze-dried, like coffee. Like food for mountain climbers. We will soak him in something kind to him—polyethylene glycol and water, at fifteen percent—and then when he is dried out we can keep him at a normal temperature, and not in a giant refrigerator like this.”

There was something mocking about her manner, insouciant, impenetrably happy. He was still slightly annoyed by her, but he was won over by her, too.

“But we are wasting time,” she said. “Use your tape recorder. We must continue. I am ready.” She set forth what Davis recognized as an endoscope, a metal tube for looking inside body cavities. She straightened a stainless steel tray on a side table. “Now, when you extract the gut, we will have somewhere to put it.”

“We don't have to do everything in one night.”

“We will want to know what was his last meal. Hurry, Mr. Lowry. For a famous man, you are very slow.”

“I don't like to be rushed.”

“You are standing like a statue. I cannot tell who is the bog man, the one standing up, or the one lying down. You are both too slow.”

Davis found the
ON
switch on the Panasonic. He cleared his throat. “We have a remarkably preserved male of as yet imperfectly determined age. In general appearance he is well built. His shoulders are fully muscled.” He bent closer to the head. “The pinna of the left ear shows some loss of inner cartilage. Otherwise, there is no sign of decay or, for that matter, damage, except for a wound to the throat.”

“Continue, Mr. Lowry.”

“The hair of his head is reddish-to-ginger in color. Probably a postmortem change in pigmentation. Much of the body has lost calcium to the extent that the limbs are spongy-to-hollow in feel. Pending the results of a computerized axial tomography workup there is no way to determine the presence of a foreign body as possible cause of death. A xeroradiograph will help determine skull fractures, if any, and other such details impossible to observe from the outside.”

He switched off the tape recorder.

“You are doing a magnificent job. Shall I insert the endoscope?”

He hesitated.

“I will make only a small hole. We want to look around the body cavity, Mr. Lowry.”

“There is something very strange about all of this. Forgive me, Irene. I have to stop for a moment.”

“It is too powerful, the presence of this ancient murder.”

She said this calmly, even happily, but she looked into Davis's eyes, and seemed to understand him.

“Forgive me. I have trouble maintaining my professional detachment lately.”

“You need not apologize. I am pleased to see that you understand our friend. He wants our respect. He will not mind if we study him. If we are respectful of the dead, they will not harm us.”

Davis laughed, but she did not laugh in return.

The Skeldergate Man seemed to barely sleep. He seemed to twitch and toss, uneasily, in a dream.

As if he had made a sound.

Davis glanced up, to see if Irene had heard it.

She smiled back at him expectantly. “We can continue,” she said.

The hand of the Man moved. It was only unfolding, Davis saw, from an awkward position.

It continued to move.

Davis held his breath until it stopped.

6

Davis and Jane reached the pub before anyone else. They each arrived at the same time by purest coincidence. They sat in the corner, beside the fireplace. Davis bought them both a pint of Stone's, and Jane told him about the accident in Trench Five.

“Oliver looked dead. We all were certain that he was, really, and then he came back to life. Peter was the one responsible, actually. He always seems to know what to do in an emergency.”

“Have there been an unusual number of accidents at the site?”

“There's no question about that at all. I've never seen so many accidents, most of them, I hasten to add, entirely unexciting.”

“Is there—I want to put this correctly. Is there talk about the site?”

“Talk?”

“I don't even know how to ask this. Is there a certain amount of superstition regarding the site?”

“I'm the last person to know about such things. There may be, among the wage earners, the laboring men, and such. I certainly haven't heard anything.”

“Tell me what you know about Irene.”

Jane tilted her head and studied him for a moment. “I just spoke to Irene.”

“Yes?” Davis prompted.

“I had already told her everything I knew about you. Which is not, I must say, very much. But she asked me for more information, and I really didn't know quite what to tell her. She said you were a very interesting man.”

Davis was surprised how happy this bit of news made him. He felt—and this bewildered him—as though he were blushing.

“Because you are, I have to agree, an interesting man.”

“I'm beginning to feel embarrassed.”

“I would have thought you accustomed to all sorts of flattery.”

But this was more than flattery. Jane was, in her somewhat suave, even formal way, making a play for Davis. It was unmistakable. The sideways looks, the accidental, not accidental touching of his wrist with her hand.

Peter knew as soon as he saw the two of them what was happening. Davis had the stupid look on his face, pleasured and self-conscious. And Jane had as close to a come-hither look as she could have managed anywhere outside an actual bedroom.

But before he could absorb any of this, the rest of the crew arrived, even Langton.

Langton was notoriously stingy. He ordered the pints of bitter, and had Skip bring them over to the round tables. Everyone was buzzing with the story of Oliver, who had just been released from York District Hospital. Oliver beamed, delighted to be the dead man who woke up. As Skip told it, the accident had been the funniest event in years. “The place chews people up and spits them out, doesn't it, Oliver?”

“It chewed us up, all right.”

So that's the way it's going to be, thought Peter.

“Here's to all of you hard workers for all the work you have been doing, and, I'm sure, will continue to do.” Langton raised his pint.

The dozen or so laborers and scientists lifted their glasses, and drank. The bitter tasted like dirty dishwater to Peter.

“You're all right, aren't you, Peter?” asked Mandy.

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“Of course he's fine,” said Skip. “Enjoying the great hospitality of Mr. Langton. We're all together, and Mr. Langton wants us to drink our fill tonight, I can tell that.”

Langton beamed nervously. “I thought a pint after work—”

“A pint or two or three after work, said Mr. Langton to himself, and here we all are, thirsty as the Gobi, every last one of us.” Skip gave Peter and Mandy a wink. “So drink up, all, and here's our gratitude to the bounty of Mr. Langton.”

“Whatever is the matter now, Peter?” asked Mandy softly.

“Nothing,” snapped Peter. “Everything is fine.”

First Margaret. Now Jane.

Langton was smiling very unhappily. Skip had drained his pint, and held up his empty glass like a trophy. Davis and Jane drained theirs. Then there were empty glasses all around. Skip continued his toast, praising Mr. Langton, the most generous employer, the drinking man's friend. Alf joined in, raising an empty glass with an arm that was blue with tattoos.

Langton dug out his wallet and climbed to his feet with the expression of a man being punished.

Peter drank. The feeling would not go away, that rock in his stomach. It was a leaden lump, and it would not dissolve. Margaret and now Jane. And to think he had considered for a few days that he and Davis could work together. What a fool he had been.

It was much later. Nearly all the Skeldergate team had gone. Alf stopped by Peter's table and congratulated all of them, including himself, on getting Langton to buy a drink or two for once. “I think he hated doing it, too,” said Alf. He left, waving a snake-decorated arm as he departed into the night.

Peter slouched in a corner. He had switched from bitter, but the Bell's whiskey had taken no effect, except to make the coins he used to pay for the drink seem heavy, and coated with grease.

Only Skip and Oliver remained of his team, although the pub was crowded, and hazy with smoke. Skip was waggling a finger in the face of a man with huge triceps and biceps. Peter had seen this man unloading carts of swedes and turnips at the market. The swede carrier did not agree with the fine points of what Skip was saying. Oliver glanced from one surly face to another.

Davis deserved to be taught some sort of lesson, thought Peter heavily. Some sort of very definite lesson. Peter had worked his way up, out of Leeds, beginning as a boy in the cellar at Marks & Spencer, stacking boxes and working so hard his back hurt. He had always been thin. But he mustn't remember those terrible times. Those very bad times. Those were finished forever.

He had grown into an accent that he even, at times, could be proud of. He wasn't one of these California scientists who get their faces in the magazines. His father had been a newsagent and a hard worker, quick and polite to every stranger, and his mother had lived in America for a time, typing for an insurance company. Good people, nothing to be ashamed of, ambitious, but not the background most scientists have. Davis didn't have a crooked tooth in his mouth. They were all straight and even possibly capped.

You don't have to worry anymore, the doctor had said. The future is yours. The past is far away.

There was a sound of unmistakably foul language coming from Skip's direction.

Just as it happened, Oliver caught Peter's eye from across the room. Peter struggled past the table before him, and reached Skip just as he pushed the crate lifter, and the crate lifter pushed back.

Skip bellowed. Peter and Oliver together manhandled Skip out of the pub, into the cold night.

“I've left my coat!” cried Skip. “You can't expect me to wander around without my coat in this freezing weather, can you?”

Oliver darted back into the pub for Skip's coat. As Peter opened his mouth to utter soothing small talk, Skip swore and threw a wide, arcing left hook at a figure lurching from the pub.