Sergeant Dickerson crept along behind him, noiseless as a cat—he didn’t appear to like the place any more than Ian did. Leading the way through the stone corridor, lantern held high in front of him, was the attendant on duty, a short, bushy-haired Welshman by the name of Jack Cerridwen. Ian had crossed paths with him before, and though Cerridwen was an ill-tempered little man, a fifth of single malt did much to soften the rough edges of his personality. Ian had plied him with a bottle of Cardhu, which cost half a week’s wages. He hoped it would be worth the investment.
Ian felt as if the walls were closing in as he followed the Welshman down the dank corridor. He forced himself to take deep breaths to stave off the dread simmering in his stomach. He did not care for anything that reminded him of the basement he had been trapped in all those years ago. The passage of time had done little to dim the terror of confinement. Cold sweat prickled on his forehead, his hands and feet tingled, and his heart thumped like a kettledrum in his chest. The slow drip of water continued relentlessly. Drip, drop, drip, drop. Taking a deep breath of musty air, he willed himself to put one foot in front of the other.
Cerridwen opened an imposing iron door that appeared to have been hewn in the Dark Ages. It clanged shut behind them with a hollow shudder reverberating through the cavernous building. He led them through to a large room with a tiled floor and stark brick walls, thick with decades of paint. Ian couldn’t help thinking about what those layers of paint had covered up, what misery these walls had seen. Gaslight flickered from sconces hanging from the muddy-colored brick walls; a single bank of long, narrow windows let in what little light managed to struggle through the wet winter haze. Ian relaxed a little, more at ease in the spacious room with its high ceiling and tall windows.
A row of stone platforms on steel supports bolted to the floor lined the room’s far wall. Each was just long and wide enough to support the body of a man. On the third platform lay a body covered by a dingy, stained sheet.
Cerridwen whipped off the sheet covering the body with a flourish, as if he were a magician unveiling a trick. “Here ye go. Poor bugger’s just waitin’ for someone to come claim him.”
Ian stared at him. “No family, no fiancée—nobody?”
Cerridwen shook his head, the smell of stale alcohol wafting from his grizzled whiskers. “Nope. Could be someone came around on the night shift, but I don’t think so.”
Ian gazed down at the young man on the slab. He was still fully clothed, and his head lay at an odd angle—it was evident his neck and possibly several vertebrae had been broken in the fall. But in spite of considerable bruising, contusions, and other injuries, in life he appeared to have been fit and well-groomed, even rather handsome. Thick blond hair framed an oval face with regular, clean features. His clothes, though also damaged, were moderately expensive and of good quality. Ian thought it highly unlikely such a person would have no friends or family to mourn his passing.
“I see you have not yet removed his clothing. What was in his pockets?”
Cerridwen shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “Naught much—a soiled handkerchief, a set of keys, and—oh, yes, a single playing card. The three of clubs it were, sir.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Hang on a minute—think I’ve still got it,” he said, fishing around in his lab coat pockets. “Ah, here it is!”
Ian took the card and studied it. The design was unusual—it featured dancing skeletons, each wearing a jaunty red fez. Each of the three clubs was incorporated into the body of a skeleton, forming part of the torso.
“That’s an odd-lookin’ card, sir,” Sergeant Dickerson remarked, peering over his shoulder.
“Indeed it is,” Ian replied, sliding the card carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket. “You found no wallet or personal effects such as rings or watches?” he asked Cerridwen.
“I’m afraid not—p’haps it were already taken by those who found the body.”
“No doubt,” Ian remarked drily. Edinburgh morgue attendants were notorious for relieving the dead of unattended property, but they were difficult to prosecute, being adept at hiding evidence. The city’s numerous pawnshop owners and “resetters” were always eager to fence stolen goods before they could be traced.
Cerridwen shuffled his feet again and coughed, no doubt impatient to get to the bottle waiting for him in his tiny office. “Will you be needin’ me further, gentlemen?”
“Thank you, Mr. Cerridwen; I think we’ll be fine on our own,” Ian replied.
“Right, then, I’ll leave you to it. Just give me a whistle when you’re ready to leave.” He turned and strode briskly from the room, his footsteps fading rapidly down the stone corridor.
Sergeant Dickerson scratched his chin. “Shouldn’t he remain here while we examine th’ body, sir?”
Ian looked after the rapidly retreating Cerridwen. “It won’t be the first time a morgue attendant has skipped his duty for the lure of a bottle, Sergeant.”
Dickerson snickered, the sound oddly out of place in the solemn surroundings. He quickly choked back his inappropriate response and looked down at the dead man before them.
A human corpse is a curious and somber sight. First, the observer feels an instinctive physical aversion to death and dead things. That is followed by a kind of sickened curiosity, wonderment—and finally, sadness. If the body is in good condition, there is sometimes the odd expectation that the person is not dead after all, but will, at any moment, sit up and open his eyes.
Ian was no stranger to dead bodies, yet every time he was in the presence of death, he went through all of these stages. Young Wycherly’s body had already begun to bloat as the gases in his digestive system expanded. His skin had the mottled gray pallor of death, as the blood seeped from his tissues to collect on the underside of the body, in the process known as lividity. And yet in spite of that, his face in repose suggested some of the man’s gentle, unassuming personality. Perhaps Ian was prejudiced in this opinion by what Wycherly’s landlady had told him, but he thought it was a damn pity that such a boy should die so suddenly and violently. A stanza from one of his early poems popped into Ian’s head.
We meet again at death’s dark door
you have quit this world
with its untidy yearnings and disappointments
all joy and sorrow drained from your pale face
Dickerson shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “Right, then, sir, what’s next?”
“What do you make of young Wycherly, Sergeant?”
Dickerson wiped sweat from his forehead—in spite of the cold, damp room, his face was flushed. “He’s—dead, sir.”
“Well done, aye—but apart from that.”
“I don’t quite take your meaning.”
“The dead can’t speak for themselves, so we must speak for them.”
“Right y’are, sir.”
“So . . . ?”
“Uh, what exactly d’you mean, sir?”
“Every crime is a narrative, a story told backward. We know the ending, and it is our job to discover the beginning and middle.”
“How d’we do that?”
“Look at him, Sergeant—describe what you see.”
Dickerson peered down at Wycherly’s body and swallowed hard. “Well, he’s quite young, I s’pose.”
“What else? What do you notice about his person—his grooming, his manner of dress?”
“His nails are well tended.”