done a sodding rotten job of it. The building looked like something out of a Cold War thriller – a concrete bunker with tiny windows along its length. A Transit van sat outside the loading bay, down the far end, two men in grey overalls manhandling a plain gunmetal coffin onto a gurney.
It wasn’t the only vehicle there – a handful of manky pool cars had been abandoned as close to the mortuary’s front doors as possible. Because clearly police officers weren’t waterproof.
Callum parked on the periphery of the clump. ‘There you go: five minutes. They’ll still be going on about switching off your mobile phone and getting a drink and a snack from the lobby.’
‘You’re an idiot.’ She climbed out into the rain and slammed the door behind her.
‘So people keep telling me.’ He locked the car and followed her inside.
They’d decorated since last time, the smell of fresh paint fighting against several plug-in air fresheners and the dirty-bowel-like stench of decay. All the posters were new too – motivational landscapes and quotes about peace and forgiveness. As if that was going to do any good to the poor sods who had to come all the way out here to identify their dead child’s body. The wee stainless-steel reception desk hadn’t changed, and nor had the big dusty rubber plant in the corner. Its thick waxy leaves like slabs of green liver, aerial roots searching the walls for sustenance.
A little old man lounged behind the desk, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he wrestled with the Castle News and Post crossword. The effort must have been quite something, because his wrinkles were even more tortured than normal, his hair a mixture of silver and cigarette-tar yellow.
Callum went over and had a look. Poked the newspaper. ‘Three across, “Decapitated”.’
The old man glanced up, showing off a pair of dark, glittering eyes. ‘It doesn’t fit.’
‘It does if you spell “Robespierre” properly, Dougal. Three Es, two Rs and an I.’
‘Oh.’ He made the correction, then put the paper to one side. Grinned at Franklin with a big grey wall of perfectly straight false teeth. ‘Well, well, well, when DS McAdams called to say you were coming over he didn’t tell me you were such a beauty.’
She bared her teeth back at him, but it wasn’t a smile. ‘Where’s the post mortem?’
‘Ah, straight to business.’ Dougal winked. ‘I like that in a woman.’
‘Do you also like a punch in the throat?’
‘I wouldn’t say no to a little light spanking. But maybe I should just show you through to the cutting room?’
‘Maybe you should.’
Dougal stepped out from behind the reception desk and led the way through a pair of double doors and into a long corridor with doors opening off either side. ‘We’ve got a full house this morning. Yesterday must’ve been buy-one-get-one-free on dead bodies.’ The door at the end opened on an aisle between two sets of refrigeration units – big rectangles of stainless steel, each one covered in a grid of metal hatches. Four high, eight wide. Each hatch was about the same size as an oven door, only they didn’t contain Christmas dinner.
Well, hopefully not anyway.
One of the hatches lay wide open so the two guys from the loading bay could wrestle a body bag out of the gunmetal-grey coffin and onto a sliding drawer. The contents all bendy and awkward.
Dougal waved as they passed. ‘Let’s not drop the guests, guys.’
A nod. ‘Dougie.’
‘Bodies, bodies, and more bodies.’ He glanced back over his shoulder at Callum. ‘It’s the same every time you lot go digging about in the tip. Think you’d have more sense.’
At the end of the block, Franklin stopped. Stood there on the damp grey floor with her mouth hanging open. Staring. ‘Holy mother of hell …’
From here, the full size of the room became apparent. A mini warehouse, with row after row after row of refrigerated units in it.
She gave a low whistle. ‘How many bodies have you got here?’
‘One hundred and twelve.’ Dougal stuck out his chest, sounding every inch the proud father. ‘But we’ve got space for three hundred and sixty, including the freezers. A seven-three-seven falls out of the sky at Oldcastle airport? We can take every single passenger, a full bendy bus, plus two football teams as well.’
And what a fun weekend that would be.
Callum followed the pair of them into the visitor’s changing room, with its rows of lockers, racks of blue wellington boots, boxes of gloves and other assorted paraphernalia. Slipped off his shoes and stuck them in a locker. Helped himself to a pair of size-nine wellies. ‘Who’s doing the mummies?’
‘The mummy?’ Dougal scrunched up his wrinkles, then peered at a clipboard hanging on a hook by the door marked ‘DISSECTING ROOM ~ SAFETY EQUIPMENT MUST BE WORN BEYOND THIS POINT’.
‘Mummies. Two of them.’ Callum pulled a plastic apron from the roll by the door and unfurled it. Slipped it over his head and tied the ties. ‘Came in yesterday?’
‘Right. Right. Well … OK, you’ve got Lucy Compton.’
‘Never heard of her.’ He helped himself to a pair of safety goggles.
‘New APT. This is her first week. Young lass, you’ll like her.’
Callum stared at him. ‘Can we at least pretend we’re taking this seriously, Dougal? I want a pathologist, not some wee Anatomical Pathology Technician just out of nappies.’
Franklin yanked an apron from the roll. ‘What, she’s not good enough just because she’s a woman?’
‘I don’t care if she’s a man, a woman, or a transgendered squirrel – she’s not a pathologist!’ He watched Franklin make a cat’s breakfast out of tying on her apron. ‘You’ve ripped the plastic.’
Dougal shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. All I know is we’ve got two pathologists on duty and four bodies to PM today. Four to do tomorrow, and four more the day after that. Assuming no one else dies in the meantime. You want to moan at someone? Talk to Teabag and Hairy Harry.’
‘Oh don’t you worry, I will.’
Franklin tore off another apron and tried again. Finally got herself sorted out with goggles, wellies, a surgical mask, and gloves. Crossed her arms and shuffled on the tiled floor. ‘Well?’ Looking about as comfortable as a Seventies TV star in a police interview room.
Callum snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘Have you been to a post mortem before?’
Her nostrils flared. ‘Why, because I’m a weak and feeble—’
‘Fine, sod you then.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Come on, Dougal, let’s not keep Detective Constable Franklin waiting. She’s keen to see her dead body being hacked apart.’
Dougal opened the dissecting room door and stood back to let them past.
A dozen cutting tables sat in a row down the middle, the air redolent with eau de mortuary. CCTV cameras hung from the ceiling above each one, their black bulbous eyes ready to capture the most intimate and thorough violation anyone would ever experience.
One table was surrounded by half a dozen people doing their best not to look like plainclothes police officers and failing miserably. They’d donned the same safety gear as Callum and Franklin, a couple of them laughing, two looking serious and boot-faced, two taking notes as a tall thin man in purple scrubs arranged a collection of trainers and shoes on the stainless-steel surface. Someone in green scrubs followed him, taking photos – the flash turning everything monochrome for a moment, before the colour seeped back in.
Down at the far end of the room, a dark