CHAPTER TWENTY
Taking a life leaves a stain upon the soul that will infect every mortal shell that soul may ever inhabit.
—Dorothy Hodgkin,The Consequence of Sin
Cassiusand I followed Detective Bryant into the autopsy room at the London City Morgue. Four stainless steel tables stood like kitchen islands all in a row. Each held a body. To the right were refrigeration lockers with small whiteboards numbered one through five.
Behind those doors were stacked drawers for corpses.
Next to an inner-office door on the right, a short man with a mountainous mustache hung up a wall phone and turned toward us, introducing himself as Dr. Giles Cage.
“This is Mr. Jack Solomon,” Bryant said, pointing at me. “’e’s ’ere to identify the body of the suspected shooter.”
“I understand,” said Cage, combing his ’stache with his fingers. “These are troubling times, aren’t they?”
Bryant fished a notebook out of his overcoat. “Body ’asn’t been touched, right? Just laid out the way it was found?”
“Per your instruction,” said Cage.
Something was off. “No remote viewing?” I asked. “Camera feed?” “Per’aps you’ll let us ask the questions,” said Bryant.
Cage bustled past two cadaver tables to the third, where a body lay beneath a white sheet. I flashed on the last time I’d done this. My oldest brother had insisted I go to identify my brother Dan. “Learn the price,” he’d said. Half of Dan’s face had been shot off. I’d hoped never to do this again, but I guess this was different.
I looked down to catch my breath, which was a mistake. Despite water hoses attached to the tables, blood stained the sickly green tile, some of it in pools where the runoff wasn’t finding the drain.
“Before we ’ave a look at the body, I’ve got a few questions,” said Bryant. “Unless you’d like a solicitor to ’elp you make your replies?”
“Nothing to hide,” I lied.
“Good. We’ll start with the suspect, then after that I’ve got somefing special to show you.” He consulted his notebook. “Where were you between midnight and six a.m. the night before last?” He turned his cool gaze on Cage. “Thatisthe general time of death you arrived at, right?”
“I-it is,” stammered Cage. “But may I suggest this isn’t the proper place for these questions?—”
“I’ll make it quick,” said Bryant, refixing me with his stare. “Go on, then, Mr. Solomon.”
Bryant was trying to use the presence of dead bodies to unsettle me.
If he only knew.
“I was working at the Iron Horse. After closing, Henry and I walked home together, like we do every night. That’d be around two a.m.”
“Henry Wilkinson, your employer. Yes, that’s what your friends at the Iron ’orse said, too.” Bryant tapped his lip. “Mr. Solomon, let me come at this anover way. When was the last time you saw Mr. Wilkinson?”
“We were jumped outside Henry’s place,” I said. “Guy carrying an S&W 500 started firing at us.”
“Keen eye for guns,” he said. Then he looked me up and down. “But you look none the worse for wear, I see. How’d ya manage that?”
“We were separated. I ran.” I hated telling that lie, but I didn’t see any way around it.
Bryant scanned his notebook again. “What about Mr. Wilkinson?
Did you see what ’appened to ’im?”
The truth was, I didn’t really know anymore. I hoped he’d been only superficially wounded or died and come back. “I didn’t, no.”
“With those keen mincers, you missed that, did you?” Bryant chuckled to himself.
“Mincers?”
