Pastworld (15 page)

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Chapter 27

Catchpole and the lady with the cat walked eastwards through the city, making their way towards the big hospital near Aldersgate and the morgue. Figures were being taken out on stretchers from ambulances drawn up in lines. Sgt Catchpole approached a porter, who stood at the rear entrance wiping his bloodied hands on a leather apron. The woman with the cat turned away to face the busy road.

‘Bit of a ruck this morning,’ the porter said. ‘Railway accident in a tunnel.’ The porter showed his brown teeth in a grin. ‘Four dead, others with limbs gone or going, and some say it was all started deliberate like. A cowardly act of terror, they said. They’re trying to blame the Fantom. Just a story, I expect, told to excite
them
,’ and he nodded across at a line of waiting Gawkers. ‘Still, it’s what they pay for after all and if they’re lucky they might even see an amputation or two.’

Catchpole produced a white five-pound note from his waistcoat pocket. ‘I’m interested in another kind of victim altogether,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about a murder victim, a man brought in here beaten, dead, and cut open, a
real
victim of the Fantom. Would have been brought in an hour ago.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the porter, his eyes firmly on the note. ‘They brought him in all right, proper Fantom victim.’

‘That’ll be the one.’

‘Would you be wishing to see the deceased?’ the Porter added in a slight mockery of an undertaker’s solemn tone and voice. ‘The lady friend want a personal little peep, does she?’

‘Something like that,’ Catchpole said. He flicked out the note with a practised snap.

The porter reached out with two bloodied fingers and slipped it straight under his apron.

‘In that case, you’d better come with me,’ he said, and led the way into the hospital.

Once inside they made their way down a dim corridor with a shiny marble floor, which was already streaked with blood. They crossed the entrance lobby where the victims of the railway accident were laid out on stretchers. At the foot of the stairs they passed a line of Gawkers waiting to be let into the surgery wards to watch the operations. The Gawkers were being held back by a line of uniformed policemen. A doctor in a white coat pushed between them. He called out to the porter, ‘Follow me at once.’

‘I have to go,’ said the porter. ‘Basement corridor’s what you want, the end room, just follow your nose.’

They followed the low lights along the basement corridor. There were tall double doors at the end, each door bearing a porcelain plaque with the word
MORGUE
impressed upon it in heavy black lettering. Catchpole turned to the woman with the cat. ‘Will you be all right? This will not be a nice experience.’

‘We’ll manage, won’t we, Kitty?’

Catchpole pushed the doors open. Once inside it took their eyes a moment to adjust to the raised brightness of the gaslit white-tiled interior after the flickering, dim amber lights of the corridor. There was a series of white enamel tables draped with sheets, and a line of enamel buckets and a weighing scale. He saw clearly the shapes of bodies shadowed under the sheets.

Another porter in a dirty leather apron sat slumped in a chair near one of the draped tables. He was reading a newspaper and turned as they came in. He stumbled to his feet, brushing his hands down the floor-length apron.

‘Secure area,’ he said.

‘Really?’ said Catchpole. He sauntered over to the nearest table.

‘You’d better leave,’ said the porter, nodding his head towards the cat lady. ‘Both of you. No animals allowed.’

‘Nice clean room,’ Catchpole, running his finger along the crisp edge of the sheeted table, ruffling the crisp sheet, and pulling at it. ‘I have a problem to solve you see,’ said Catchpole, lifting the sheet and peering underneath and then quickly holding out his warrant card. ‘We are looking for someone, a missing person.’

‘Well, I doubt they’re under there. They’re coming for this one later. I’d make yourself scarce,’ said the porter.

‘They?’ said Catchpole.

‘The Corporation, high-ups,’ said the porter. ‘All sorts of alarm bells set off.’

‘Really,’ said Catchpole.

‘Can’t say why,’ said the porter. ‘Lips sealed. Nothing I know anything about. Only it was when we took his clothes off and we found . . .’

‘Found,’ said Catchpole, looking up from the table. ‘Found what?’

‘I’ve said too much,’ said the porter.

‘Look,’ said Catchpole, ‘I’ll make this very simple. You read your paper, let me just show this lady here. She needs to make an identification. And then we’ll be out of your hair.’ He waved the warrant again and then tucked it back into his waistcoat pocket.

‘Just a minute then, and that’s it.’

Catchpole pulled the sheet fully away from the man’s upper body, bunching it at his waist. The blind man lay there as pale as a merman. He would almost have looked asleep were it not for the deep wounds spreading down from his shoulders, the neat entry cut over his heart, the slashed throat and his crudely stitched abdomen.

‘Very nasty,’ he said, and he tucked the cloth back up above the gaping throat. ‘Please look now,’ he said quietly to the lady. She approached the enamel table. She hesitated with her eyes closed, stroking the head of her spotted cat. Then she opened her eyes and looked down at the peaceful head.

‘That’s Jack, isn’t it, Kitty?’ she said. ‘That’s poor blind Jack. He was a clever man, you know, and he was kind and he was harmless. He was always out with his daughter for walks. He’d been in this place –’ she looked at the bright white windowless room – ‘not
here
of course, you know what I mean, Pastworld, as long as I have, ever since it opened.’

Catchpole covered the face once more.

‘There’s more,’ said the porter. ‘When they cut him open in here, what do you think?’

‘Let me guess,’ said Catchpole. ‘No heart.’

‘Got it in one, and you know what that means?’

The woman with the cat crossed herself. Her cat jumped down and mewed at the bloodied enamel bucket of waste under the table. She pulled the lead tight, tugged the cat nearer to her button boots and moved away from the table again.

Catchpole lifted the sheet and looked at the corpse a last time. The blind man’s arms were tight by his side, his hands resting palm up to either side of his waist. Catchpole lifted one of the hands. It was heavy and ice-cold to the touch. He noticed, there on the inner skin of the forearm, the tattoo. It was a series of numbers and blue black vertical lines; an old-fashioned bar code.

‘Oh, I see you’ve spotted it,’ said the porter with impatience rising in his voice. He glanced at the double doors. ‘Well, I didn’t tell you. They can’t blame me. You’d think he was just a pathetic old wino, wouldn’t you, by the look of him? But no. Very few were ever allowed that mark. Security clearance, see, for the real secret high-ups from a few years back. Wouldn’t need it now. Someone from Buckland head office is due here any minute to look for himself. I think you’d better clear off now.’ He pulled the rest of the coarse sheet over the blind man’s head, smoothing it at the sides. ‘I’ll be for the high jump if they catch you in here with her, snooping around.’

Catchpole took the cat lady’s arm and together they slipped quietly back into the gloomy corridor.

When they reached the bottom of the staircase, there were voices from the corridor above. Catchpole kept his head down. As they climbed up the stairs a small delegation came down them. It consisted of two junior cadets flanking a black-suited Buckland Corp. officer.

Catchpole took his companion into a busy public bar.

‘I should think you might need a stiff drink after that.’

‘A brandy and water, dear, if I could.’

They sat together, tucked in a corner. The cat was motionless on her lap.

‘So you are a resident yourself then, not a Gawker?’

‘Yes, I came in on the single mother work scheme, but that was no good in the end. I lost my poor baby, to diphtheria. I went unofficial after that, worked with street entertainers. You from the outside then? What’s it like back there now? It’s been so long, hasn’t it, Kitty?’

‘Well, you know, the Outside is the Outside. I doubt it’s changed much since you were there, to be honest. Except perhaps there are even more regulations now. More control, more interference. More of that sense of ‘sameness’. The feeling of everyone doing the right thing at the right time. Of doing the same thing at the same time. Liberal enough, but a stifling, narrow conformity. Life without any risks at all. Colourless, if you understand what I mean. No wonder this place is so popular.’

She looked round the crowded noisy bar and nodded. ‘It’s poor Eve I feel sorry for now.’

‘Eve?’

‘Jack’s daughter, Eve. She ran off one morning just like that –’ she snapped her gloved fingers – ‘and never came back. Cruel that was, and she seemed such a nice girl too. Jack was finished by it. I don’t think the girl realised quite how he took her running off like that. He was desperate to find that silly girl. I thought that I spotted her once, but she denied it was her. Then I saw her again, a bit later, dancing up on the high rope, and very good she was too. That time I just knew it was her. I had a nice little talk to her and she wrote a note for me to give to Jack, to reassure him. I couldn’t simply pop the note through his door, I wanted to give it to him personal instead. I thought I could reassure him better in person, say that I had actually seen her, spoken to her. He was in that much of a state. I left a message in the shop below his flat, gave him a time and place to meet me. He’ll never get her note now, poor Jack.’

‘Was there any connection between him and the Fantom that you know of?’

She shook her head. ‘He did say to me once that someone was out to get him, finish him, and that if he ever disappeared I was to check those awful murder tours. He said that’s where they’d dump his body. Looks like he was right. Don’t know anything about the Fantom and Jack though. I always thought the Fantom was a bogey-man just put there to scare us, and keep us in our place. Can’t imagine poor old Jack having anything to do with something like the Fantom.’ She fumbled in her bag and pulled out an envelope. ‘When he didn’t return home, I remembered what he said. “They’ll hide my body on a murder tour.” There I’ve said enough now. Your best bet is to find Eve and talk to her yourself.’

‘Could I see the note?’

She hesitated and looked down at the folded envelope in her gloved hand.

‘I suppose it can do no harm now that poor Jack’s dead.’ She shook her head. She handed Catchpole the envelope, and as he went to take it from her he felt her resistance to let it go.

‘You can trust me,’ he said kindly, and she released the letter.

‘Where can I find you if I need to again?’ Catchpole asked. ‘It’s important that I find this girl, this Eve. I think she is in danger too after what’s happened.’

She didn’t answer. She just stared up at him with her dark eyes. Catchpole took one of his official visitor’s cards with his lodging address details and pressed it on her.

‘If you see her, ask her to find me here, and if you need to speak to me or to contact me in any way then this is where you will find me.’

‘All right,’ she said in a distracted voice. She took the card, finished her brandy and water, and stood up. ‘I’ll be off home now. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but at least I know what’s happened to him now.’