The Iron Swamp (20 page)

"What do we do now, Boss?" Becky said.

"I thought we might see the coroner." It should have been done weeks ago, before the bodies were taken away, but when they fired me it lost its importance.

I pushed the button in the elevator for the only sub-basement floor, and we went down to the only place I hated more. Kenrey's body was bad enough, but when I was surrounded by dead people I started to get claustrophobic.

The elevator opened into a small waiting room. Despite the complete absence of natural light, the foyer was full of pot plants. The front desk even had a creeping plant growing up it. Only by touching them would an observer realize they were made of plastic.

"I'm here about Kenrey."

The guy typed it in. "You got an appointment?"

"Wasn't aware I needed one."

He did some more typing, and my tablet flashed to show it was being accessed. "Dr. Signey is on his way out. Have a seat."

Becky ran her finger along the stamen of a plastic ezepelis flower. "What's with all the plants?"

"You prefer they decorated the place with people's innards?"

She shrugged. "Dunno."

I didn't ask how she could not know and took a seat. It was impossible to argue with those dark eyes.

Signey poked his head through the barriers before walking through. "Wasn't sure if you'd still be here."

I stood up. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Didn't check the time of the message; thought you might have been here a while."

"What have you got on Kenrey and the dead guard?"

Signey waved a set of long fingers for us to follow him. He was a tall, slender man who could have looked attractive if his skin wasn't thin enough to see the vessels in his cheeks. He was recently shaved, but with such ineptitude that even in the low light patches of stubble were noticeably longer than others.

"You want to see Kenrey I assume? The guard, Mr. Peliany, was released to his family and cremated, but Kenrey is still on ice.

I raised an eyebrow. "It's against the law to keep the body for so long."

Signey chuckled to himself. "The dead don't care about the law."

"He has no family?"

"None that want him. It's your job to know if he has any," Signey said. "Perhaps they don't want to interfere with the investigation and risk Clazran's displeasure. I tried to instill the same fear in Peliany's family once it was clear you were going to reopen the case, but by the end they were threatening to lock me in my own trays."

"Thanks."

He pushed open a door into the room I was dreading. Twenty or thirty tables like metal trays with legs stood in rows with naked corpses lying on top. "It wasn't strictly for you," he said timidly. "I didn't want President Clazran thinking I let the body go too easily." He shut the door behind us so gently that the bodies might have been sleeping. There were seven of them in all, and three of them showed signs of badens: carmine where the skin had rotted and darkening to black where the blood had congealed. Another medical examiner was poised with a knife above the corpse of an old man as we entered, his eyes meeting mine only for a moment before they retreated back to his work.

"You will tell the President I did my best won't you?" Signey said.

I glanced at Becky, unsure if it was a serious question. "Next time we dine together," I said. He could interpret that as he may.

Signey nodded. He walked through the center of the trays to the body storage at the back, but my feet fastened to the floor as if I was standing in the life swallowers of the Gargantua. Every nerve in my body told me to leave. I remembered Mrs. Hollis, the dead woman who filled my nightmares since my mother walked me unsuspecting into her living room as a child.

I wasn't a child now. This was my job, and I had to see Kenrey's body. I pretended to be checking my tablet as I made my way round the outside, not looking at the bodies. At the last click, I managed to avoid walking into a plastic fila tree.

"I've spent a long time looking at this body," Signey said, flicking the switch with a long finger.

"I bet he has," whispered Becky.

I couldn't help but smile. There was no denying with his pale complexion and bent spine that Signey had been hunched over bodies for too long.

The door hissed as the pressure equalized with the room. Signey rolled out the tray with Kenrey's body on it, perfectly preserved since his murder. The tray caved in the middle under his bulk, and Signey released the leg at the end, which extended to the ground, only necessary for the heavier bodies. In a moment, Kenrey stank as if the dormant fungi were making up for lost time. My throat clenched, and I coughed to expel the fouled air. If it weren't for Becky at my back, I might have walked out and come back after a glass of water, but I was not ready to show her such weakness.

Signey pointed at the deep gash in Kenrey's neck, the crisp skin curling away from the exposed flesh like gone off chicken. "He died when the killer cut his throat with a blunted blade. Before that he was knocked over and received heavy bruising at his coccyx, which is to be expected from a man of his size."

He lifted Kenrey's head and thumbed at a dark line above a reddish-brown stain at the base. "The head wound is consistent with him hitting the floor with some force. He may have been killed there, or gotten up again. It's hard to say as he was moved so much post-mortem, but seeing as there is no wounding consistent with a second fall, I would say it was more likely he was killed on his back."

"No indication of what made him fall over," I asked, "if it wasn't the head wound or slashed throat?"

"There are no defensive wounds anywhere on the body." Signey picked up one of Kenrey's hairy arms and waved it at me in a grotesque puppet show. "He might have been knocked unconscious by the fall, but I can't explain why he fell over."

The fight was quick then, if there was one. Consistent with the attacker being strong.

Signey picked up the other arm making Kenrey look as if he was reaching for something. "The marks on both wrists and his back suggest he was dragged along the floor by his arms." He dropped both arms with a crash. "The most interesting thing is the pooling of blood around the stomach which I think was caused by a blunt object pushing against him after he died. Initially, I thought perhaps someone was standing on him, but the blood was most concentrated around the trauma, suggesting he was being pushed upward."

"Why would someone do that?" I said.

Signey rubbed his chin in way that made it impossible to believe he didn't know the unevenness of his facial hair. "That's not my job, but that's what happened."

"And the force was prolonged?"

"Several clicks at least."

"So it couldn't have been debris from the explosion?"

Signey considered this for a moment then shook his head.

If someone spent several clicks pressing up against Kenrey's deceased body, it meant finally that it was impossible for the killer to have entered after the explosion. Kathryn was lying and was more than likely an accomplice.

The greatest inconsistency was currently the idea of a person small and thin enough to fit through the window being strong enough to overpower Kenrey and an armed guard, seemingly without so much as a scratch. If Kathryn was not just a silent onlooker but actually took part in the murder, then that could help explain the killer's success.

"Could Kenrey have been drugged?" I asked.

Signey looked at his feet. "You could be on drugs right now, Mr. Nidess. If I'm not allowed to perform a drugs test, I don't know."

"Do it," I said.

"I'm not allowed–"

"Don't make it official, just test for a bunch of things that might keep Kenrey still while he was killed. They need to be fast acting."

Signey's eyes were trying to escape his skull. "That would be breaking the law, and you wouldn't be able to use the evidence anyway." He picked up the table leg and pushed Kenrey back into the tank. "I think you should go now."

"The President wants me to solve this case. That is his top priority, and I would hate to have to tell him that you were blocking my inquiry."

Signey walked to the door and pulled it open, expecting us to walk through it. "It's his own orders blocking your case, not me."

I sighed, tired of having to explain this to people. "Yes, but I wouldn't tell him that."

"But I've worked so hard for you," he said, searching the corridor for help.

"Not for me," I reminded him. "Do this for me, Signey, and good things will happen for you when I solve the case. No one will ever know about the test; you have my word."

He shut the door. "I don't want any trouble..."

"And you won't have any," I said, steeling myself to walk through the middle of the dead people. "You should know that I am fairly sure what drug was used on him before he was killed, so I'll be very surprised if that report doesn't say what I think it should."

A fresh panic gripped every muscle cell in his face. "You didn't say anything about that."

"I just did. When will you have the results?"

"Tomorrow, but several compounds are likely to have degraded by now."

I tilted my head at him. "In that vacuum sealed tank? I don't think so, but it would be easy enough for me to check."

In the elevator, Becky punched me on the arm. "Good stuff, Boss. You're not at all like what I thought."

I rubbed my arm, quelling a cry of pain. "What do you mean?"

She paused. "No offense, but before you see it, it's quite hard to imagine you intimidating anyone."

I laughed, though I was slightly insulted. Intimidation was a necessary evil in an occupation where people were so resistant to cooperation. I took no pleasure from what I did to Hobb, Signey, or the girls. Perhaps a little bit from the girls. I was in a friendless place where the weak fed the monsters on the hill. Whether it was in my nature or not, either I fought back, or I would be the conduit for every lash of resentment from above and below until I retired.

"So how do you know Kenrey was poisoned?" she asked.

"I don't, but I can't have Signey pretending to do the tests and telling me lies. I need him to think that I know how the report should look."

Becky grinned and looked as if she was about to hit me again, but I winced so hard she must have thought better of it. "So what are we doing now?"

I checked my messages and Lesgech had sent me the lists of staff. "Me and you are going to go through these names and see if we can't locate a few primary suspects."

I didn't want to take Becky back to my desk, not right away. If she turned out to be the killer, it would be good to keep our relationship looking informal, so I took her to the jaffee room.

I wasn't sure how I would go about it if I concluded she was the killer. I would have to tell her before I pressed charges, but I couldn't do it alone because she could probably overpower me. It would be safer to arrest her and then apologize, but I wasn't sure I could do that. On the tailside, if she was the killer then she most likely accepted the job intent on manipulating me, in which case our relationship was a fraud. My only real reservation was that I liked her, which I knew I could dismiss if the time came.

I felt a tingling as our fingers touched when I passed her a jaffee before we settled down to read the list of suspects. "You tell me if you disagree with anything in that document," I said.

Becky tapped away at her own tablet. "I have my staff timetable to compare it with. It's only for the staff, not the guards, but I'll send it to you."

Lesgech's timetable agreed entirely with Becky's. "You were in that day," I said, "so were any of these people sick, or did anyone come in on their day off?"

She went down the list before she answered. "I don't think so. The previous day a few people were off, but on the day of the murder I think we were all accounted for. I don't know if anyone came in who wasn't supposed to, but not in the kitchens. It would probably have come up though, when everyone started handing out blame."

I nodded. The way they had turned on Hobb suggested that coming in without good reason on the day Kenrey was murdered would arouse suspicion from someone. That left twenty members of staff and thirty guards. The ones in the guard station could be crossed off, as could a few of the staff and guards that were constantly on camera in other areas. Sadly, there were no cameras in the kitchen, so I could not cross Becky off. That left 15 staff and six guards. Of those, I could cross off a further seven staff and five guards as being unable to fit through Kenrey's window. I was pretty sure Nadine didn't do it, though I couldn't rule out that I had not witnessed the acting performance of a new, and particularly wet, Shiara Andrews. That left eight staff and one guard as possible suspects including Nadine and Becky.

Most of the suspects were female and presumably employed for their youth and good looks. None of them looked strong enough to lift Kenrey without the help of anti-grav. The thin muscular looking guard named Gurns was now my primary suspect, but with the knowledge that Kathryn might have helped I could dismiss none of them. There was DNA evidence in the room for two of them, Nadine and Ellody Cone. From her picture, Ellody made Nadine look fierce, but pictures could be deceiving.

My tablet bleeped and a little red light flashed. The message opened automatically.
Urgent come to reception
. "Wait here," I told Becky, and made my way down.

Chapter 13

Before the elevator doors opened I could hear raised voices. They saw me as I stepped out and both men came at me like razor beaks on an injured rodent. Their dark coats and wet hair made them look like thugs, each of them towering over me, forcing me to look up at them.

They shouted over each other, their meaning completely unintelligible beyond that they were the parents of Nadine and the other one.

I guessed that they wanted me to let their daughters go, or one of many unspecified or inaudible horrors would befall me.

A crowd of police were standing either side of the elevator, none of who felt any need to intervene. Some were smiling, others looked angry, but all were motionless. One of the giants poked me hard in the shoulder, and no one took a step to my aid even with a doorway full of journalists pointing their special little cameras at me, making enough flashes to light up a small town. To them I was a plague carrier, not a policeman.