She was overdue to visit Sydney City Morgue for this case, though the case itself seemed to have been keeping her from whatever it held within its walls. She sincerely hoped the missing boy, Adin Brown, would not be waiting on a slab as an unidentified guest, a tragic end to a calamitous day, sealing her latest case with a sad resolution on top of the growing violence it seemed to spawn. No, she hoped she wouldn’t find him here, for his family’s sake, but she couldn’t keep away no matter how battered she felt. In missing persons cases, such visits had become routine for her, and now, with the words of the meat-faced thug, she had another reason to be there, a reason she could not possibly have anticipated on Friday afternoon when Nettie Brown had first walked through the door of her office with a seemingly simple case of a runaway teenage son. The eventsthat had unfolded since had made Billie restless in her bones and anxious for answers. Sleep seemed far away.
Billie paused, deep in thought, absentmindedly rubbing the bruise on her rib cage through the fabric of her dark clothing.
What did Con have to tell me that was worth killing him over?
Why is Moretti tailing me? And why the thugs outside the auction house?
Is he the one who spiked my drink? Did he kill Con? Why? For whom?
The many puzzle pieces had not come together yet, not by a long shot, but a couple of things were certain—foul play, and a strong desire to keep her away from the case.
Billie leaned against a sandstone arch. The facilities inside the city’s morgue were basic, with a receiving room, the main morgue, a postmortem room, and a small laboratory. It was considered a less than hygienic space—notoriously so. During the gravediggers’ strike of Christmas 1944, the place had been overflowing with “stinking dead bodies,” according to witnesses. Billie believed it. Two years on, the city morgue still lacked refrigeration and anything approaching adequate space, though she understood there were plans for an upgrade. Though still cramped, things here were, at least, an improvement on the prewar setup at the morgue that rather unfortunately had allowed the guests aboard visiting cruise ships coming in and out of Sydney Harbor to see into the building and the bodies stacked there. Not good for tourism, to be sure.
In anticipation of this late visit, Billie had changed out of her ripped ensemble of the afternoon—yet more mending to be done—and donned dark blue cotton pants, an ivory silk blouse, a navy driving coat, and old over-ankle leather-soled boots that could beeasily cleaned. She usually preferred the quieter crepe or fabric soles, so the sharp sound of her feet on the stones in the dark had come as a surprise.
Another thought pulled at her, one she couldn’t let go of. Was there corrupt police interference in this affair? If so, why?
As death took a rest for no one, the death house operated day and night, but apart from the necessary police identifications made by relatives of the deceased, it didn’t welcome living civilian visitors. Billie, however, was an exception. She knocked at the door and was let in, her arrival met with the unabashedly delighted smile of the young man who had been stationed at the desk. Billie had known whom to expect. She’d cultivated a warm welcome in this cold place. Despite the silent company, it could be a lonely sort of place, she imagined, most of all at night.
“Good evening, Mr. Benny,” Billie said.
“Oh, call me Donald, Ms. Walker. It’s such a pleasure to see you.” He did indeed look pleased.
“Or perhaps I should say good morning?” She looked at her delicate watch.
He nodded. “Yes, it’s quite late.”
Donald Benny was a slim, bent fellow with a complexion nearly as waxen as that of the clients he guarded. He was about Sam’s age, twenty-four, but there the similarity ended. Bookish in appearance, he wore round spectacles for his vision, a white collared shirt, and a dark tie visible above a collarless white lab coat. On this occasion it had no noticeable bloodstains or unidentifiable marks on it, which Billie took as a good sign. As usual, Benny appeared entranced by Billie’s presence. She smiled warmly at him, having no intention of letting her hold on him go until she was ready to leave.
“I brought you a book,” Billie said and reached into her satchel to reveal a paperback detective novel. “A Georgette Heyer.” Heyer was better known for her historical romance novels set in the regency and Georgian eras, but she’d written some fine detective books.
Benny’s cheeks had colored, she noticed. With his anemic complexion, his every private emotion sat on the surface. His eyes went to the book, then wandered to her hand and its long, elegant fingers, and wandered farther up to her neck, which was exposed on one side with her dark hair cascading down the other. “Death in the Stocks,” he said, reading the title of the book aloud once he was able to bring his eyes back to it.
“You haven’t read it, have you?” she inquired.
“Oh, no, I haven’t. How do you always seem to know which ones I haven’t read?”
She simply smiled again. “I was wondering if I might have a little look in at your guests tonight? Is there anyone unidentified at the moment?”
His face became serious, a show of professionalism against the almost giddy welcome. “Two unidentified,” he said, avoiding the wordstiffs,though Billie could see it was on the tip of his tongue.
“May I...?” she ventured, looking at the open door to the morgue’s main room.
Benny tore his attention from her to look around at the quiet office, as he always did, then nodded, as he always did. Billie didn’t know what he expected to find when he silently questioned the room each time, but as the dead did not protest, he led her quietly through the door into the main morgue. She followed close behind him, hands in her coat pockets.
“Have you a handkerchief?” he asked.
She nodded and pulled one from her pocket. In a quick motion she soaked the cloth with tea-tree oil from a small vial she kept for this purpose. Though Billie knew what to expect, the room still had a most unpleasant smell—the same smell that had greeted her upon waking. Something like rotten leaves, or animal meat, but not exactly the same as either. The tea-tree oil reduced the pungency but could not stop that distinctive smell from taking hold somewhere deep within her. She hoped that when it came her time, she’d be bathed in French perfume and buried fast, before too many people had taken a gander or a whiff. Billie did not fear death, but she did have some unsettling feelings about how her body might be handled once she could no longer protect it. Death could be terribly undignified, she knew. It was something to come to terms with, she supposed.
“You haven’t had an Adin Brown through here? A boy of about seventeen? Five foot nine, curly hair, no identifying marks?” she inquired, sweeping her eyes across the room and bringing the handkerchief to her face.
It’s too late.The words kept cycling in her mind.Too late.
Billie’s eyes stung a little from the sharp waft of tea-tree oil. There were about a dozen deceased guests, of a variety of ages, sexes, and shapes—slim, plump, male, female, old as the hills and as young as Adin. Death did not appear picky tonight.
Benny stopped by the first of the corpses and thought for a moment, bringing a thin finger to his lips. “No. I’m sure no one of that name has been through recently, and neither of the unidentified men has been of that age.”
That was a small relief. Benny’s memory was good, and Adin would have been a quite recent arrival. There wasn’t much risk he’d been here. That didn’t mean, of course, he was still alive.
