Eventually, I gave up and went into the small office next door. I sank into the desk chair and lay my head in my hands, covering my ears.
I could still hear the brute noises coming from next door, the animal moans of Moker as he abused the body that had been left in his charge.
But shocked and repulsed though I was by the depravity, nothing could have prepared me for the horror that was to follow later that night.
28
It was a long wretched night and more than once I had to force myself to remain in the presence of this monster. I kept to the little office, desperately trying to close my mind to the activity next door. Other cabinets had been opened, but I refused to think of what might be happening to other cadavers. Perhaps having finished with the girl, Moker was merely carrying out his normal duties; I could only hope. Twice he came into view through the doorway, pushing a floor mop, a metal bucket by his feet, and I supposed that not only was it his job to clean the corpses, but also the mortuary itself. Once he came into the office and I had to back away into a tight corner to avoid his touch—I shuddered at the idea of sharing any of his sick thoughts—and I remained there as he shuffled through paperwork on the desk. I got the feeling that he was just snooping rather than working, because he added nothing to the various forms he browsed through, nor did he instigate new paperwork himself. He looked into the desk drawers and I had the impression he was still prying and not actually searching for something. And strangely, all the while he wore the surgical mask over the gaping hole in his face, as if visitors might drop in any moment and he did not want anyone to see the disfigurement. I had no idea how long he’d worked in this hospital mortuary, but I thought it pretty certain that other staff in the hospital knew of his deformity. In some strange way, perhaps he was hiding it from himself: I had noticed there were no mirrors in his grubby flat, but there were bound to be in other places he visited; in fact, there was a small one in this very room, stuck on a wall at about head level, obviously for morticians to groom themselves before they went about their business. Moker, deliberately it seemed to me, had refrained from glancing into the mirror all the while he was in the office.
It was a relief when he went outside again and carried on with whatever duties he was paid to do—cleaning and sweeping mostly, I’d have said, and not just tending bodies. I stayed where I was, sitting in the chair and closing my eyes, ready to jump up should he return. Occasionally I checked the time on the round clock fixed to the wall above the desk and only when the hands approached 10 p.m. and I heard Moker pouring water away into one of the mortuary’s stainless-steel sinks, and then the clatter of the bucket and mop as they were stored away, inside a cupboard, did I guess his shift was nearly up and he was getting ready to leave.
I went back into the long white-tiled morgue and trailed him to the locker room. He shed the green overalls and put the surgical mask into his raincoat pocket. Then he wound the long woollen scarf around his neck and face, and donned the coat and wide-brimmed hat. He was ready to leave and some inner instinct told me he was not immediately returning home.
I was right: he didn’t go back to his basement flat. Instead he drove to a twenty-four-hour underground car park in Bayswater.
We’d been sitting there quite some time, Moker slumped in the driver’s seat, me in the back, an impalpable passenger. I hated being so close to him—I was sure that if I had the sense of smell, his stench would have been unbearable—but there was no other option. I sensed he was up to no good (finely attuned instinct again?)—why else would he sit in the darkness of the car park’s lowest level, studying every person (and there weren’t that many at that time of night) who returned to collect their vehicle.
This basement area was almost as poorly lit as his flat (I was getting used to dark, dispiriting places by now: the séance parlour, Moker’s dingy home, Mother’s front room, and now this gloomy place, the car park itself), with no CCTV cameras, the parked cars few on this level. Footsteps, when they came, sounded lonely in this deep underground space. The old Hillman was parked between two smart cars, a Mondeo and a BMW, which only accentuated the battered wreck that it was. I thought Moker’s raspy breathing might carry beyond the confines of his vehicle, so quiet was this level he’d chosen, but it could be because of my own overwrought imagination. I heard a door shut and an engine start up, then the muffled sound of wheels travelling over concrete. The noise faded away. More footsteps, these belonging to more than one person.
Two people came into view, walking down the curving ramp in our direction, and Moker sank lower into his seat. It was a man and a woman, and they were arm in arm, gazing into each other’s eyes, seemingly oblivious to all else. They reached the BMW, failing to notice the dark hunched figure in the old car next to it, and the man fumbled in his pocket for his car key. Before he inserted it into the lock, the couple paused to engage in a passionate kiss, the man running his free hand down the length of the woman’s back. They clung together for a little while and I heard Moker’s breathing become heavier, more ragged.
The driver climbed into the BMW and the woman walked round to the passenger side; her lover stretched across and pushed the door open for her. As she passed my window I saw that she was attractive, probably mid-thirties, smart in long skirt and navy jacket. The man, I’d noticed, wore a slightly crumpled business suit and had carried a briefcase, which he’d dropped onto the BMW’s back seat. The pair looked like work colleagues who had just put in a stint of overtime. Once settled in the car, they practically hurled themselves at each other, mouths pressed tight, arms never still. Their kiss was passionate, their embrace ardent; they fumbled at each other and I began to feel embarrassed. Moker kept low in his seat, but constantly peeped over at the couple, obviously aroused, but wary of being spotted. Just when it seemed that the man and woman were about to lose all inhibition, an EXIT door about fifty yards or so away opened and three men stepped through. They were loud, laughing at each other’s remarks, one of them playfully punching another on the upper arm. The couple in the BMW froze for a moment, then sat up, the man fiddling with the key in the ignition as if getting ready to start up. When the three men lingered by two cars not far away, one of them looking across and spying the couple, the driver of the BMW did start the engine and switched on the headlights, muttering something inaudible as he did so. He drove off, probably to find some other secluded place for their after-work activities.
As the BMW sped by, the three men split up, two of them getting into a blue Peugeot estate, the remaining one walking to a parked Celica and climbing in. Moker straightened up as the Celica drove off, then bent forward to pick up something from under his seat, the small bundle he had stowed away earlier. As he held it in his lap and unwrapped the cloth, I heard the familiar clicking sounds and I leaned forward for a better view. Although the lighting in the underground car park was inadequate, I was able to see what he held up to the windscreen to scrutinize.
It was one of those wickedly sharpened coated-steel knitting needles.
I sank back in the seat, suddenly very afraid. Why was Moker loitering in this badly lit and isolated place? Why was he holding that modified wicked-looking domestic tool? It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Oh God! I wanted to get out. I didn’t want to be a witness to murder! Not when there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I—