Thank fuck for the painkillers, she thought as a cold waft of air permeated from the room they headed into. Never thought being high as a kite would be good for the psyche as well.
“There they are,” Glen announced.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” Nina whispered in ugly apprehension.
Before them, a mountain of white cotton fabric piled up over three tables. Behind them, Barry closed the door to contain the refrigeration temperature. The cold Nina felt reached way beyond her skin as she realized that, under the sheets, the mangled bodies of eight men awaited her.
“Just show her one, Glen,” Barry suggested. “There’s no reason for her to see them all. It’s just the symbol.”
Desperate to change their minds about showing her the dead man, Nina asked, “Are you sure you couldn’t find this symbol anywhere on the internet? There are hundreds of sites that can help you find out what it is.”
“We checked, Dr. Gould,” Glen chipped in with authority. “Don’t you think we would rather keep our hard-earned money and research this ourselves, instead of turning to an expert such as yourself?”
Barry winced at his colleague’s harsh statement, but Nina understood what he meant. She took a deep breath and nodded, gesturing her reluctant readiness.
On approach, Nina secretly prayed that her medical inebriation would not fail her before that sheet was lifted. Her heart pounded as Glen pulled aside the cover, saying “Don’t worry, he is fully clothed,” as if that would make it better. Nina shrieked inadvertently when she saw the protruding ribs of the broken man peek through the tears in his shirt. Glen had the good sense to keep his caved face covered for her benefit. Barry quickly distracted the horrified Nina by pointing out the man’s tattoo, located on his left hip. “Look, Dr. Gould! That is what it looks like.”
Nina squinted. Glen leaned in and whispered, as if he were afraid of rousing the subject from his eternal sleep. “It is Templar, right? Right?”
“Wait, just give me a second,” Nina snapped a bit, intolerant of his urging as she tried to make sense of the bizarre marriage between ancient Jerusalem and contemporary London. Glen backed off immediately, and took his place next to Barry. The two exchanged glances in silence as Nina scrutinized the sigil.
“The red cross is certainly reminiscent of the original Templar sigils,” Nina remarked, scowling as she tried to unravel the wording with a magnifying glass. “But the slogan is not quite right.” She turned to the two physicians. “Do they all have the same working or is this just bad research mimicked by a tattoo artist who needed weed money?”
“I am a bit of a theology buff, Dr. Gould,” Glen assured her boastfully. “I discovered that the wording around these Maltese crosses lacked the full ‘Sigillum Militum Xpisti’ and that is why we were not sure if it is related to the order.”
“Aye,” she concurred, leaning on the table edge to take some of her weight off the sore ankle. “The so-called soldiers here seem to have lost their Christ in the inscription.”
Glen, ecstatic that the stunning woman affirmed his suspicion and confirmed that he was correct about the slogan, nudged his colleague a little too hard in his zeal. Barry almost came off his feet. Annoyed at Glen’s gloating, he barked, “Yes, yes, we all see how well you know the bloody Templar stuff already!”
Ignoring their boyish contesting, Nina asked, “And you say they all have exactly the same symbol, lacking the Christ-name?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Glen confirmed. “They are all precisely the same, but on different parts of their bodies.”
“By the way, these are not Maltese crosses, Dr. Victor,” she informed Glen firmly. “The correct term for this particular design is cross pattée.”
Barry decided not to scoff at his colleague’s singular error. The three of them stood silently in the cold, reeking chamber for a few seconds, contemplating. Barry and Glen waited anxiously for a theory from Nina, but what she finally said was not what they were expecting.
“Did you note on your reports the location of each man’s marking?” she asked.
“Is that important? We just want to know if this diversion is significant. That’s all,” Glen explained. Nina grasped his upper arm firmly and employed her deadly, dark-eyed stare on him. “Dr. Victor, humor me, and I will not charge extra for the added examination I wish to do.”
“Well, in that case,” he agreed hastily, “would you like to see the reports or the bodies?”
“I would prefer paper to hide, I think,” she replied, less squeamish this time. “You say these men had no next of kin you could contact?”
“All wrong numbers,” Barry reported. “Not one single man here had family.”
Nina’s dark eyes combed the cement and tile on the floor, as always, when she tried to solve a puzzle that hid facts in plain sight. Finally she looked up at them, her face lit up with notion. “Maybe they were the family.”
“How do you mean?” Glen frowned.
“Maybe the men here are all part of a family, leaving nobody to collect them,” she shrugged. “What about their names? What one-name declarations did you get from Home Office?”
“Just odd names, according to their fingerprints,” Glen shrugged.
“Odd?” she asked. “Like?”
“I’m no expert in other languages, but these men, according to the available records, are all named after elements,” he reported matter-of-factly. Not only his nonchalant manner, but also the information he gave, provoked Nina’s immediate attention.
“Excuse me? What? They’re named after elements? What, like earth, water, fire, and air?” she asked, feeling beyond intrigued.
Glen seemed completely unsurprised by his statements, and calmly answered Nina as if she had just asked him to pass the salt. “No, periodic table elements.”
Barry looked as confounded as Nina, and the two of them huddled together closely as they stepped closer to Glen with an immense air of fascination. “Oh, of course, how silly of me,” she said. “Naturally.”
Finally Glen noticed how amazed his companions were at what he forgot was not public information or common practice. With a sudden chuckle, he snapped out of his seriousness and decided to explain. “I’m sorry. Just been so inundated with these records’ information since these lads came in for processing that I forgot not everyone would just accept it. God knows I had sleepless nights over it when I first got the details.”
“You wrote down the names as well, I take it?” Nina asked.
“I did. Come, let me get the folders for you,” Glen said, and started walking to get the door, while Barry assisted Nina as she treaded lightly on the sore ankle.
“You still haven’t concluded that these tattoos are in fact Templar in nature, madam,” Barry reminded Nina as they hobbled back to the more civilized part of the morgue.
“Dr. Victor is quite correct, Dr. Hooper,” she replied. “I cannot find anything that could rebuke the influence of the Knights Templar doctrine, but until I can unravel the names of each along with the position of the marking on each body…. only that connotation could hopefully clarify exactly why the name of Christ is missing from the inscription. Only then can I try to research the proper lines for the actual identity of the order these men belong to.”
“Free of charge, you said,” Glen mentioned from behind Nina and Barry, just to make sure he would not have to pay her for all the extra research.
“Aye, Dr. Victor. Free of charge,” she exclaimed with amusement. Nina whispered playfully in Barry’s ear, “He is lucky I’m loaded and curious at the same time.”