What Lot's Wife Saw (15 page)

I drew my pistol at once and forbade them to move, shouting that such a thought should never have crossed their minds! Anyone touching the Green Box would have to get by me.

“Shall I tell you how I see the situation?” Lady Regina offered. “The only one to object to opening the Green Box so that we can find the orders of the Seventy-Five and carry them out is the one who’s carrying the key right now.”

I was struck speechless by this unfair accusation. Montenegro sided with the Lady, stating that the only way to learn the intentions of the Seventy-Five was to read their instructions.

“Only the one who killed the Governor and stole the key could disagree as he has other plans in mind and we’re interfering with them,” Bateau said scornfully.

I was overwhelmed by the injustice of it all, but couldn’t find a way to defend myself. They bombarded me with questions, they demanded to know why my gun was armed with bullets when the guard was only allowed to have live ammunition in the watchtower or in the desert. Was I intending to hunt Suez Mamelukes in the Palace?

I muttered that, due to the fog, I’d had the pistol on me since yesterday. And wasn’t it actually a good thing that I had, since the Governor was dead and I had to protect his corpse?

“Well then, his death doesn’t seem to have come as much of a surprise to you, as you appear to have come armed,” Bateau countered, and he snatched the pistol from my hand. “I’m not letting you kill us as you did him.”

The Lady grabbed the pistol out of Bateau’s hand. She emptied the bullets from the chamber, opened the shutter and hurled them outside.

“Let’s not have an accident, there’s enough tension in this room,” she said nastily. “I don’t know who killed my husband and I frankly don’t care. If, however, there is a chance that I can find out what the Consortium has in store for me and that information is in that damned Box, then no one’s stopping me from breaking it open.”

Suddenly, they all seemed to agree. Bateau volunteered to go down to the kitchen to fetch some sharp knives, Montenegro suggested stainless steel ones, and Fabrizio pulled a series of flexible surgical implements with sharp tips from his bag and assured them that these would do wonders with the locks. Powerless, I begged them to rethink what they were about to attempt. We could perhaps defend everything else that we’d done, because there are no regulations covering the death of a Governor, but not the opening of the Green Box. On that the regulations were explicit – it was forbidden that any colonist touch it. We would cross a line that had no turning back.

“And to whom exactly do you expect to be submitting your deposition?” asked the Lady sarcastically.

“The New Governor, of course!”

“Ah, the New Governor, the one expected in a month and a half at the earliest?”

“The Box will be sent to Paris tonight, as normal, so what are you worried about?” growled Secretary Siccouane.

I couldn’t understand what they were getting at, so Montenegro explained gently, “We mean, Drake, that we aren’t so stupid as to leave traces. Nobody will ever know we’ve violated the Box. We’ll leave it just as we found it and deliver it untouched to the Captain.”

“Untouched means untouched! Can’t you realise that the Seventy-Five would know immediately that their box has been broken into? What if it has hidden springs or levers, if it’s booby-trapped, if it records fingerprints or faces that peer into it? Do you honestly believe that the Seventy-Five would ever leave the Box defenceless against safe-crackers?”

“Are you talking about the same people who’ve left their Colony unprotected against the consequences of a dead Governor?” demanded Lady Regina. “I’m beginning to have grave doubts about the genius of the Seventy-Five. Not even a child would make such an elementary mistake, to make the fate of the Colony dependent on Bera’s good health, as if they only employed immortal Governors. I’m utterly amazed no one has thought of it in all these years.”

Fabrizio raised his hand for silence. He suggested that there was an important matter that we must consider before moving on. How were we going to approach Captain Cortez? Were we going to reveal the Governor’s death to him?

“Naturally,” answered Montenegro, “how else will the Seventy-Five learn of it?”

“You mean we’re going to show him this body, which has been soaking in ice since morning, with us sitting around, admiring it?”

Bateau admitted that it would be a gross mistake. It’s a clear violation of regulations to allow a body to remain uncremated for so many hours. For this alone he would forfeit his position as Judge.

Even worse, however, was the fact that the key was missing from the Governor’s neck. This implicated us enormously. What was Cortez to think when we informed him after such a delay? When we presented him with a corpse without its key while, all this time, we’d been shut in the Palace with the Green Box at our disposal and no servants?

Montenegro proposed that we announce the death after the Box was no longer in the Colony so that the two issues would not be connected.

“We’ll burn the body at once, because the longer we delay, the greater risks we run. Then we’ll open the Green Box, seal it again and then deliver it to the Captain. The ship will depart at midnight, as always. Tomorrow or the day after, Desert will announce that she’s found the Governor dead, Dr Fabrizio will certify his death from natural causes and the Judge will order the immediate cremation, as he must. Then I’ll escort the empty coffin to the Metropolis Cathedral to be cremated in the incinerator. The important thing is that the death of the Governor and the presence of the Green Box in the Colony do not coincide. The absence of that cursed key would convict us all!”

Everyone agreed to his plan, even me, and the argument stopped, perhaps because there seemed to be no alternative way out of ourunbelievable impasse, which declared us guilty when we were innocent, and under suspicion when our consciences were clear. In any case, we hoped to find Bera’s last report in the Box, which might shed light on the reasons for his death.

JUDGE BATEAU

… We lifted Bera’s naked body from the bed. We sponged it down thoroughly and dragged it to the door. We’d decided against putting the ceremonial uniform back on since it was in shocking condition. Looking for the key, we had ripped the pockets and the lining off, but it had been in vain.

It was obviously out of the question to use the incinerator of the Metropolis since that would have caused quite a commotion amongst the colonists. So, having had Lady Regina’s assurances that it was large enough, we decided to use the oven in the Palace kitchens.

Just as Montenegro was about to quietly unlock the door so that the corpse could be removed from the room, we heard knocks from the other side and froze in terror. Thankfully it was just my daughter holding the tray of coffees Captain Drake had ordered earlier. Montenegro had opened the door just a crack so that all Bianca could have seen was his eye. We were clustered behind him, anxious that Bianca wouldn’t see the state we were in. The Priest ordered her to place the tray on the floor and leave. Bianca didn’t budge. She informed him that the foreman of the loading gang had just arrived at the main entrance seeking Bera’s signature on some documents to release the salt for loading.

Lady Regina then looked round the door and told her, most emphatically, to allow no one, that’s
no one
to enter the Palace, for whatever reason and in whatever way. Whoever approached the entrance was to be told that the Governor wasn’t receiving any visitors. I stuck my head out as soon as the Lady had withdrawn hers and explained as gently as I could that that night we six trusted aides of the deceased Governor had been forced to exceed our jurisdictions and to act in the way we hoped the Seventy-Five would have expected of us, to save the Colony from anarchic chaos. Still looking frightened, Bianca nodded that she understood. She was then sent off to get rid of the foreman, lock the doors, shut the shutters and to keep an eye on the entranceway. Bianca left swiftly.

We got hold of the body once more and dragged it to the top of the staircase. Then with Siccouane and Fabrizio lifting the legs and Drake and I at each shoulder we began to descend. Thankfully, Montenegro still had the Bible with him since he’d performed an impromptu service for another death at the mines the previous night. Not to waste time, he immediately began the funeral service, holding his Bible in one hand and cradling Bera’s head with the other to stop it from banging on the steps. Holding two fish-oil lamps aloft, the Lady walked in front, doing her best to illuminate our path. The light, however, was so weak that we nearly lost our footing on several occasions. It was nearly as much as we could do to stagger to the kitchens.

Lady Regina emptied the oven of the trays and pans and after having filled the tank to the brim with fish oil to work up a fierce fire, she turned it on. To our great dismay, however, we could tell from the opening behind the oven door that it wouldn’t live up to the Lady’s expectations. There was no way Bera’s entire body could fit in there.

We tried to fold him in the middle, pushing his back so that his chest would be crushed against his knees, but the onset of rigor mortis, not to mention the bulge of his stomach, caused his body to spring straight again. We thought of enlarging the opening of the oven by removing the door and increasing the width by bending the surrounding metal inwards. We went at it with hammers, axes and crowbars until the sweat poured off of us. Montenegro interrupted his liturgy several times to complain about the noise, which, he said, could probably be heard all the way to the salt flats.

When the Priest had finished, we once more put our backs into trying to fold the body through the widened opening, but to no avail. We thought of trying the other way round. It would probably fit feet first but that would have meant that we’d have had to burn it in stages. We would’ve had to wait till he was consumed up to his knees, then pushed him in further to burn up to the top of his thighs, then to his middle and so on. The Lady made it quite clear that she was not up to the torment of such a ghastly procedure. She couldn’t watch for hours while they pushed her husband into the fire inch by inch as if he were a pencil being jammed into a sharpener. A way must be found to incinerate him in one go. The only way that could be done was to cut him into pieces.

We brought saws from the storerooms and tried to sever the arms, the legs and the head. Blood oozed out, nearly black in colour. Siccouane started to weep, the Lady’s teeth chattered and I retched in the corner. Montenegro, still trying to saw through the neck, suddenly threw his saw aside, shouting, “I can’t do this! I won’t, I can’t stand it!”

There we stood, looking disgustedly at each other’s blood-smeared bodies, hands trembling and our breaths rasping in our throats with each pant. Incredibly, Bera’s icy smile remained eerily in place. At least it gave us an added impetus to find the strength to finish the foul work we’d begun – to save the salt, save the Colony and satisfy the Seventy-Five.

I brought down four bottles of whisky and two of brandy off the shelf and passed them around. We drank greedily and felt our resolve return. Even Siccouane, who never drinks alcohol, nearly drained his bottle. We wiped the sweat from our brow, the tears from our cheeks, gritted our teeth and lifted our saws.

We managed to saw the body into seven pieces. The trunk was by far the most difficult, since it’d had to be cut length-wise as the shoulders were too wide for the opening. We tossed the pieces in and jammed the door back on as best we could. The fire intensified and the whole place filled with the stench of burning flesh.

Exhausted, we collapsed on the floor, eyes shut, listening to the spitting and crackle of the fire. Siccouane suddenly leapt to his feet, horrified. “The key! The Green Box key that the Governor swallowed! It’s in his stomach! We’re burning it!”

He made a lunge for the oven and it was all we could do to hold him back from the flames. We pinned his arms and legs to the ground as he’d started to thrash about and shout like a madman. Fabrizio tried to explain to him that as we’d sawed his trunk in half we must surely have gone through the stomach. If there’d been a key then it would have fallen out somewhere. All of us fell on our knees, searching through the wet and bloody remnants on the floor, but found no key. Siccouane was hitting his head on the floor and shouting that we hadn’t sliced the stomach open and he should know, as he’d been the one to saw the trunk. How could he have been so stupid not to have made sure to cut the stomach and retrieve the key? Why couldn’t he do anything right, he wondered out loud, why did everything go wrong, how could he be so unlucky?

Lady Regina knelt in front of the oven and poked around the flames with iron tongs to see if there was a metallic object in there. The fire was so fierce that her stirring caused a spark to leap from the oven and start smoldering in her hair. Thankfully Montenegro grabbed her and dunked her head in the bowl where they wash vegetables and doused it. She emerged, singed, half-drowned and with mounting hysteria.

We were using the remnants of our clothes to try and wipe some of the gruesome filth off our bodies when Fabrizio begged for calm, pointing out that it was already eight o’clock and we had to have the Green Box rifled, resealed and delivered properly to the ship’s captain by midnight. Lady Regina had recovered enough to hiss between clenched teeth that the rest of us had better get on with it as she couldn’t stand the sight of us any longer. She marshalled her strength and led the way to the Governor’s office.

Secretary Siccouane unlocked the door. The Lady lit all the wall lamps and Drake brought some extra transportable ones from the ground-floor reception rooms to get the best illumination. The Green Box nestled in its special stand, slotted into the indentations.

Fabrizio asked Siccouane if the indentations would cause trouble or whether the Box could be withdrawn without consequences. Siccouane did not appear at all sure. He did say, however, that he had run his finger along them on several occasions with the Box missing and nothing had happened, so he hazarded that they were just guides and nothing more. The truth was that from the moment the Green Box was placed in the room only the Governor himself would ever enter it, so we couldn’t know his movements.