Chapter 20
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
Cassius and 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. “That is the 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 it was just as Emaline had promised, all the same markings, plus a ship’s wheel, which I assumed was the vestige’s personal mark. “Why all the questions if you have him and the gun?”
Bryant smiled. “Always nice to ’ave an eyewitness ID the attacker. And I didn’t want to taint your description of the lout by letting you have a peek before I took your statement.”
I was starting to work on how we’d get the body out of here when Bryant raised a finger.
“There’s one other thing I’d like to show you, Mr. Solomon, if you could spare another moment of your time.”
“Of course,” I said.
Detective Bryant turned and pulled back the sheet from the body on the table behind him. It was Henry.
My heart started pounding. It had been two days. I couldn’t imagine anyone surviving the Meadows for that long. Willingly or not, he must have been swept into the mountain of fire.
My first night in London, I’d realized I had nowhere to go.
More than that, I was worried I’d fail my dream and have to go back home.
Henry let me crash on his couch. He’d put on the vinyl of Who’s Next and sat rocking in a rocker, talking to me all night.
We chatted about music and small stuff. We bonded a lot over “Behind Blue Eyes,” feeling like we understood its meaning. By morning, I was okay.
Now the friend who’d been more a father to me than my old man was gone.
My legs started to give. Cassius threw his right arm around me, bearing me up.
“Oh, dear,” I heard Cage say. Bryant stood watching impassively.
You don’t ever get used to it. Seeing someone you love lying there and knowing they can’t hear you, knowing that they would never hear you again. And so you say nothing, just suffer in silence.
Henry really was gone.
The old pressure exploded behind my eyes; every heartbeat pounded inside my head like a kick drum.
My wrists ached. But no elastic sting, no heavy rhythms, would relieve it this time.
I wanted to wail. Drown it all out. I could only choke back the pain and clutch Cassius’s arm so I wouldn’t collapse.
What seemed minutes later I managed to ask, “How?”
Cage cleared his throat. “Mr. Wilkinson had a single gunshot wound in his chest.” He paused. “But the official cause of death is hypoxia.”
“’e drowned,” said Bryant, clarifying. “This tosser stuffed your friend in an iron safe, locked it, and sank it to the bottom of the Thames.”
I touched Henry’s arm. It wasn’t stiff, just . . . still.
“The chill of the river delays rigor mortis,” explained Cage.
A sob pulsed in my throat. I swallowed it down as best I could.
Cage pulled the sheet back up over Henry’s face with a finality I hadn’t been ready for.
“We found the killer’s DNA on the safe ’andle and on Mr. Wilkinson’s body, as well,” Bryant said. “Still and all, we can’t seem to find a cause of death for the killer, can we, Dr. Cage?”
“Not as yet,” Cage confirmed.
“Mr. Solomon,” said Bryant, “from what I’ve been able to piece together, you and Mr. Wilkinson were mates. That fair to say?”
I nodded.
“So, if ’e were involved in anything unsavory, anything that might make a fellow want to ’urt ’im, it would stand to reason that you might know something about it, wouldn’t it?”
I thought about punching Bryant in the face. He knew nothing about Henry, and just the suggestion that my friend was involved in something made me angry as hell. “Henry was honest.”
Bryant paced back and forth on the other side of the table. “And yet, ’is body was sittin’ there at the bottom of the Thames, inside a safe, mind you. ’Ardly seems a crime of passion, does it? No sir, someone went at this long and careful-like.”
I was breathing so loud it sounded to me like it was coming from a PA. “What do you want?”
Bryant scratched the side of his head with his pencil. “Most days, such a straight line between a victim and ’is killer would put a smile on me face. And while I should like to ’ave seen ’im dragged into court by his thumbs, I s’pose, this is, after all, justice of a sort, isn’t it, Mr. Solomon?”
“If he killed Henry,” I said, “God forgive me, but I’m glad he’s dead.” “A perfectly reasonable response from a chap who so fortunately escaped ’is mate’s fate.” Bryant rounded the table and got so close I could see the flecks in his irises. “It’s too neat, Mr. Solomon.”
He was looking for a tell: a shimmying leg, a sweaty lip. But growing up around Rollin’ 100s soldiers, you learn to get quiet and still when the police ask their questions. The way I did it was booting up some Thin Lizzy in my mind, and listening to the music inside.
“I ’ave a good many more victims who’ve turned up in the very same way as your friend Mr. Wilkinson,” said Bryant. “And in most cases, the murderer is still at large. Bit of a coincidence, innit?”
Thin Lizzy played on.
“Yet, today,” he continued, “we ’ave a victim and killer with an embarrassment of evidence tying them together. Case closed, as we say.”
“Well, at least—” began Cage.
“The real perpetrators,” Bryant went on, ignoring the coroner, “are always gettin’ away with it, Mr. Solomon . . . but not forever. I ’ope you can appreciate wot I’m saying.”
It almost sounded like he wasn’t completely veiled like most humans. But I said nothing, as Lizzy’s “Waiting for an Alibi” hit the chorus in my head. “Let me put it another way.” Bryant tapped my chest with his pencil.
“I think you know more than you’re sayin’, Mr. Solomon.
And that ain’t good for your friend, his murderer, or you.
Because these things aren’t typically a one-man job, if you know what I mean—one man gettin’ another into a vault and sinking ’im into the Thames.
So, maybe I don’t find out the ’ole story without your ’elp .
. . and you and me find ourselves on opposite sides of the fence down the line, when more shenanigans get done.
The Yard’s got long arms, Mr. Solomon, so my advice is you come clean now, so’s you don’t ’ave to test our reach later. ”
I let the song in my head fade. “Thank you for your service.”
Cage cleared his throat. “If you’re about finished, Detective, I’ve got some paperwork I need Mr. Solomon to sign so he can take possession of certain personal items belonging to the deceased.”
Bryant scoffed deep in his throat.
The wall phone next to the inner-office door rang. Cage bustled over and picked it up. “Yes. Oh, of course. We’ll be right there.” He hung up. “Come, Detective, you and I need to pop up to reception, which reminds me I’ve some papers for you to sign, as well.”
Bryant scoffed again.
“Official business,” Cage told us, “I’ll be right back. Please wait, though, because I’ve some things for you.” He escorted Bryant out of the room. The detective gave me a sidelong look on his way out and shut the door hard like a warning.
The coroner’s lab fell silent. We’d been standing there in that silence less than a minute before a soft knock came at the door, and Muster Brach, Henry’s old friend, stepped into the autopsy bay.