The Broken Ones (16 page)

Hyde smiled humorlessly. “Legislation, from the good old days when we only had two dozen suicides a year. Until some bright spark in Parliament puts forward a change, we have to postmortem them all. I invite you to write to your local member. So, Detective, what can I do you for?”

He handed her another slip of paper with a file number on it and produced his digital camera. This time he’d replaced the battery. “I need some better pics of a cadaver.”

“Scenes of Crime?”

“Didn’t get there.”

Hyde rolled her eyes and gestured for Oscar to follow her to the computer at one side of the room.

“How’s Sabine?” she asked as she typed in the details from his note.

“Still divorced.”

Hyde grimaced. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“I do that. It’s more embarrassing when I do.”

Hyde peered at the screen. “This cadaver’s Tetlow’s. Patrick Tetlow, he’s good. Gone home sick today, but … oh.”

She stared at the screen.

“Oh?” Oscar asked. “Oh, what?”

Hyde frowned and checked the number against the slip of paper. The corners of her mouth turned downward.

“That body’s been released,” she said.

“Released?” Oscar leaned to look over her shoulder. “When?”

“Today.”

“Released to whom?”

Hyde tapped the screen. “Released for destruction. It’s gone to the crematorium.”

Oscar watched the speedometer’s needle climb. There was little traffic on the freeway heading south out of the city. It took him less than fifteen minutes to reach the crematorium.

Business must be good. The gardens were tended, the columbaria clean, the Art Deco–style chapel locked but undamaged. The woman who met him at the front office rocked from hip to hip as she walked with arthritic slowness down plush maroon carpets past walls the color of buttermilk. She’d tried the intercom out to the cremator but got no response. “It’s hard for Richard to hear the intercom over the burner,” she explained. “He turned it on a few minutes ago. We only have the one body this morning.”

Oscar mentally willed her to walk faster.

“If they’ve made a mistake, we’re not responsible,” the woman warned. “We get a lot of work from the government because we follow the paperwork. We do all the morgues while they’re still waiting on parts for their N20; we do bodies from two hospitals. We even do the university’s biotrash. One time we even had to destroy a truck full of monkeys that had died of some disease. We all had to wear these suits—”

“Can we hurry?” Oscar said.

“All I’m saying is, we just follow the paperwork.”

She hauled back on a swing door and allowed Oscar into a roofed
alleyway between buildings. Carpet gave way to tiles, and the scent of roses to the pungent burn of bleach. She reached another pair of swing doors and pushed them open with a stiff arm. Warm air struck Oscar’s face.

“Richaaaard?” the woman bellowed.

Oscar broke into a jog. To his left was a series of stainless-steel rollers on tracks that led from an open pair of shuttered windows, inside which he could glimpse the chapel curtains. Ahead to his right was a tall stainless-steel box, eight feet high and thirteen long. The cremator’s internal roar sounded like a trapped bushfire. The woman behind Oscar called again, and from around the oven’s corner poked a balding head. The mortician’s glasses reflected the colored lights of glowing buttons, and his pale eyes bounced from the woman to Oscar. He gave a wave.

He called, “Let me send this one in and I’ll be with you.”

Suddenly, there was a loud solenoidal click, the pneumatic hiss of a door opening, and the surflike roar of flames grew louder.

Oscar ran around to the front of the oven and was hit by a wave of intense heat punched out by pressurized, burning gas. Attached to the oven by two couplings below the door was a large, slab-sided gurney topped with rubberized steel rollers. On these rested a cardboard casket. The mortician’s finger moved to the green button that would launch the casket into the fierce orange glow.

Oscar slammed one hand hard over the mortician’s and threw his other arm over the casket. “No!”

The bald man looked down at Oscar over his glasses and pressed a red button. The hatch closed with a solid thunk, cutting off the intense heat.

He gently unplucked himself from Oscar’s grip.

“That,” the mortician said, “is very unsafe behavior.”

Oscar concentrated on not letting the trolley get away from him. The wind had strengthened, threatening to yank his hat from his head. It hissed in the gum trees and blew a strange, mournful note between the low brick walls studded with brass plaques. His sedan sat in the
wind like an old, whipped dog. In his pocket was the Form Six, signed by Dr. Patrick Tetlow, MBBS FRCPA. In the casket was the girl torn by the auger.

The mortician plucked at Oscar’s sleeve. “You’re not licensed to carry human remains.”

“If I catch myself, I can issue a fine.” Oscar popped his car trunk and folded down the backseat. “Give me a hand?”

The mortician helped lift the casket into the car and cleared his throat. “Maybe I should phone the mortuary?”

“You do that,” Oscar replied.

“I don’t like you taking our paperwork,” the woman protested, hobbling to keep up. “We don’t get paid unless we present the Form Six.”

Oscar closed the trunk lid, locking the murdered girl’s body into his car. “Why should you get paid,” he said. “You didn’t burn her.”

He got behind the wheel.

At Forensic Services, he searched two laboratories, the storeroom, the tearoom, and both toilets. He found Dianne Hyde pacing on the flat roof. The stiff wind carried the raw taint of smoke. Hyde let her lab coat flap about her like mad wings while she tried to light a cigarette with an uncooperative lighter. She seemed unsurprised to see Oscar.

He found a match and cupped the flame around the tip of her cigarette. “Avoiding me?”

She didn’t meet his eye. “Avoiding trouble. One gets to my age by drinking lots of water and avoiding trouble.” She coughed as she inhaled.

“When did you start smoking?”

“After I looked for your dead girl’s blood samples. Here we take three samples: one for testing, one for backup or further tests, and one gets locked in our evidence fridge for ten years.” She inhaled and coughed. “There are no samples. So I rang Tetlow’s house. Didn’t care if I woke him from his sickbed. His number has been disconnected. He lives three minutes that way, so I drove over. He’s gone.”

Oscar felt something tighten inside him. “Gone?”

“Gone. House empty. Gone.” She stubbed out her cigarette and
immediately lit another, watching Oscar. “Do you think he won the lottery?”

Oscar shook his head. The remote chance that this was all just an administrative error had evaporated.

“What’s going on, Oscar? Who is this girl? On second thought, don’t tell me. I’m a grandmother. I’m up here because I don’t want to know. I forgot you could be persistent when it took your fancy.”

Oscar heard a growling croak behind him and turned. Two crows were perched on the building’s cold chimney crown. Their feathers were the blue-black of wet coal; their eyes were yellow and unblinking. One of them opened its wings and swooped to land on the graveled rooftop just three feet from Oscar and cawed hungrily. He took a swing at it with one shoe. The crow croaked unhappily and flew back up to its cousin. Thoughts collided in Oscar’s head like marbles. Someone had persuaded Tetlow, a good pathologist according to Hyde, to authorize an unknown cadaver’s destruction before an investigation had even begun, and then pack himself up and disappear. And Oscar knew someone whose threats were an effective means of persuasion, because he followed through. But if it got out that Oscar had retrieved the cadaver, wouldn’t Haig offer those same threats to Dianne Hyde?

“You saved the body?” Hyde asked. The white cigarette vibrated in her fingers.

“It’s in my car.”

“Lovely. Warming up nicely.”

He squeezed Hyde’s arm, turned, and went to the stairwell doorway. “Just play dumb. If I see anyone downstairs, I’ll tell them I couldn’t find you.”

At the door, he glanced back. Hyde was watching him.

“Take it back, Oscar,” she called. “Take it back and burn it. There’s enough dying going on. One more doesn’t matter.”

When he entered the stairwell and closed the door behind him, he heard the breathy rush of the crows taking wing above him. The sound sent an ice-bright shiver up his spine.

Chapter
10

T
he horse knew it was about to be killed. Its wide eyes showed whites, and its nostrils flared; its frantic whinnying hurt Oscar’s ears. Three men were trying to hold the beast secure—one held a rope around its snout, one a rope around its neck, and the third ran around with something in his hand. The horse—a strong brown mare—tried to rear so she could kick at the men, but her forelegs were hobbled, so she simply pushed up, jerking wildly; when she landed, her steel shoes sparked on the concrete. Oscar didn’t want to see this, but he needed to speak to the man beside him at a galvanized-steel rail overlooking what had once been a loading bay. This new killing room smelled of ammonia, horse sweat, and blood.

“A racehorse that kept coming last.” Gregos Kannis grinned. “I bet it would run like blazes now.”

“People buy horse meat?” Oscar asked.

“People buy
dog
meat,” Kannis replied. “A smart man sells the horse as beef and the dog as lamb. But me, I’m not so smart.” The mare whinnied again and Kannis yelled to his men, “Get it down, for Christ’s fucking sake, I can’t hear a thing here!”

“We’re trying, Mister Kannis, we’re—”

The horse struck the man’s thigh a glancing blow, and he yelled in pain.

Kannis shook his head. “Idiots. I’ve told them adrenaline makes the meat bitter.” Another hoot of pain from the floor made Kannis grimace. “Excuse me, Oscar.”

Oscar watched Kannis jump the rail and stride into the melee. Kannis took the pistol from the man without a rope. The mare pulled
harder, and her hooves scraped against concrete wet with her own reeking urine.

“Mister Kannis, watch out!”

The mare twisted her head, pulling one man off balance, and rose on her rear legs. Kannis stepped nimbly under the rope, pointed the pistol at the animal’s head, and pulled the trigger. The gun’s report was not much louder than a large book dropped on the floor. The mare’s momentum carried her up so she held gracefully in midair for a moment, then collapsed on the concrete. Oscar heard a horrible snap as the dead creature’s skull hit the hard floor.

Kannis handed back the gun. Two of the men immediately began looping a chain around the mare’s rear legs, and one went to fetch a hose. Oscar fought to keep his face from betraying how sickened he was by the terrified animal’s slaughter.

“I apologize.” Kannis stepped back under the rail, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Now, Oscar, are you here on business or on business? I must warn you, if it’s your business, my permits are in order.”

“I’m not even here,” Oscar replied.

Kannis grinned. “My kind of business.”