“It’s alright, doctor,” she groaned. “Doctor Hooper, right?”
“Yes, madam,” he smiled finally, as they helped Nina past an old reception desk and its registers, a cold empty wall with warning signs, hazard rules, and a few pointless old posters rallying against smoking and drugs. “Oh, that is the old reception area,” Dr. Barry Hooper explained. “The new wing is far more agreeable and professional. We only use that entrance for, well,” he smiled sheepishly and lolled his head, “you know, the customers.”
Nina had to smile. “Aye, I understand, Dr. Hooper. I must be the only live one that ever came through it — and I do not intend to stay for the prize accommodations, I’ll have you know.” The staff on duty were relieved that the visiting expert had a sense of humor, dark and unapologetic as their own. With a chuckle, they ushered Nina into Dr. Barry and Dr. Victor’s office, setting her down in Dr. Barry’s posh leather chair.
“Put some ice on that, Liam,” he ordered one of the dieners, pointing at Nina’s ankle after he helped her remove her boot.
“That sounds vaguely disturbing,” Nina remarked, “you know, considering where we are and all.”
Barry snickered, shaking his head. “I just hope this injury is not so bad that we’ll have to cart you off to King George or Barking Hospital,” he said, wincing at the slightly swollen joint of the visitor. He caught Nina’s eyes combing the steel tables in the main room curiously. He lowered the volume of his voice considerably before clarifying, “Oh, the men I asked you to have a look at are not in there, Dr. Gould. Since the markings on them are all identical, I suppose you only need to see one of them.”
“Oh God, yes,” she agreed instantly.
“We are keeping them,” he looked around first, checking if there was anyone within earshot, “somewhere else.”
Nine nodded in acknowledgement and answered in a similarly secretive tone, “And that is because you reckon there is something… special… about them?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he affirmed sincerely. “You see, in the Muslim tradition, these deceased men would have been collected by their families so fast it would make your head spin. They choose to deal with burial rites and such personally, you see?”
“Aye,” she answered.
“But they have been here for the better part of a work week and still — nothing,” he informed Nina, looking properly suspicious of it. “Why? Their fingerprints yielded nothing, apart from one-name entries in what appears to be a confidential file at Home Office. The fact that nobody claimed them tells us we are dealing with something illegal, you know, in a national security kind of way?”
“Sounds like it,” Nina agreed. “Show me the symbol you referred to when we last spoke, Doctor. I just hope I can identify it.”
She placed her laptop on his desk, and put her bag on the other chair. Her foot pulsed with pain and frigidity, but Nina wanted to sate her curiosity and if it came to something insignificant, she would be only too happy to go home as soon as possible.
“Will you be able to step on that foot?” he asked.
“Here, Dr. Gould,” the female assistant said as she passed Nina two painkillers and whipped out a compress like it was a party favor. “I trust you have a high pain threshold?”
Nina rolled her eyes and sighed as she popped the pills. “Aye, I do, but not quite as high as the folks that shack up here in your establishment, so please love, be gentle.”
Amongst a cackle of joint amusement and laughter from the staff, the girl applied the ice pack to Nina’s ankle with care. The historian cringed and pursed her lips tightly, as she did with her eyes. She tried not to cry out, stifling the screech inside her throat and prohibiting its exit from her lips. Her hands clutched at the chair.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Gould,” the girl apologized contritely. “Only a few more seconds. Dr. Hooper, I think it is sprained, but at least it’s not broken.”
A few minutes later the painkillers had kicked in and Nina admitted that she was feeling doped enough to get on an embalming table for a striptease. Dr. Hooper and his shift staff enjoyed her company and her banter, so it was no surprise that the whole affair of the historian’s accident-prone visit soon developed into a bit of a social gathering.
When Dr. Victor arrived, he was quickly introduced and updated on the earlier happenings. With a piece of cheese bagel still lodged in the side of his mouth, he shook Nina’s hand before storing the small morsel in his cheek to speak. “Lovely to meet you, Dr. Gould. You came highly recommended.”
“Oh, that is good to hear,” she answered modestly, refraining from mentioning that, to be nominated by some lady in an archival office was hardly worthy of ego. “I think the medication Anya over there gave me will keep the pain at bay long enough to see the marking on the man you are… keeping.”
“Yes, yes, please,” Dr. Glen Victor invited, holding out his hand for Nina to support most of her weight. “Come, Barry!” he cried to his colleague, and he cast a stern eye on the day shift interns. “You lot, hold the fort until we get back, alright?”
14
Getting to know the Dead
Barry and Glen acted like chivalrous fools, over-zealous in appeasing the pretty, petite historian with the raspy voice. They were clearly competing for her attention, each trying to sound more in charge than the other, which Nina found utterly amusing. However, amongst all the endearing male jousting, all she could think of was the dead body she was going to see.
The environment didn’t help her feel better either. From the grand, upgraded parts of the morgue she had spent the last two hours at, the way to where the eight cadavers were kept was quite the opposite. To the rear of the new part of the structure, the two physicians escorted her into the smaller corridors of what appeared to be the older section of the first building, founded decades before.
“Cold,” she remarked. Both men jumped to remove their coats, but Nina halted them. “I meant, the ambiance, not so much the temperature, gentlemen. It’s awfully creepy back here. It even smells different.”
“That would be the odor of embalming fluid,” Glen explained proudly, sounding like he was even bragging a bit. Of course, his partner got some information in for Nina as well.
“Formaldehyde, methanol, and some cleaning agents like ammonia too,” he added. “The place might be old and decrepit this side, but we still need to keep the floors hygienic and the dead things dead, you know.”
Both Nina and Glen glared at the bewildered Dr. Barry Hooper. Their faces were contorted in astonished reprehension at the man’s macabre uttering. Nina looked positively unsettled, while Glen’s countenance conveyed a befuddled frown that only just held back a bout of laughter at Barry’s clumsy ejaculation.
“What?” Barry asked innocently.
“Nothing,” Nina answered, still shocked. “Just the thought of keeping dead things dead while we’re on our way into the murky darkness of a cold cement building to look at a corpse… it is a tad much for a novice such as myself, doctor.”
Suddenly it dawned on Barry that he may have chosen his words wrongly. He gasped, “Oh my God! I’m sorry! I didn’t realize how eerie that sounded, my dear.”
“Idiot,” Glen muttered, shaking his head.
They continued on through the adjoining hallway to the compact maze of old storage rooms and fridge units that occupied most of the rooms. Nina’s eyes scanned the arched corridor with the weak lighting and the bubbly, oil-based, green paint that prettified the rot of the grey walls underneath it. Her nostrils suffered the stench of sharp chemicals that apparently had no effect on the senses of the two men accompanying her.