‘Not this time. It’s hard to get at but they can see it.’
‘See what?’
‘They think it’s an arm.’
Hospital basements are a world unto themselves. They’re its beating heart, home to the unseen boilers and pumps that keep the building alive. Even though St Jude’s had been a corpse of a building for years, this netherworld remained intact. Like the fossilized organs of some long-dead beast, the mechanisms that had kept it warm and breathing still remained.
It was the first time I’d been down there, and the difference could be felt immediately. The smell of damp and mould became stronger as we descended the stairs. If I’d thought the upper floors were bad, this was even worse. Upstairs had been the hospital’s public face, where over the years cosmetic attempts had been made to disguise the building’s antiquated roots. Down here, away from the gaze of any patients, there was no need for such efforts. It was in its basement that St Jude’s showed its true age.
There were no long, sweeping corridors. Instead, the stairs ended at the junction of a warren of narrow brick passageways where ducting and pipework clung to walls like angular intestines. Cold and damp as the upper floors were, at least they had some ventilation. Surrounded by earth on all sides, unheated and shuttered for years, the basement had become an aquatic environment. Water dripped from the ceiling and pooled on the floors, beading and trickling like clammy tears down the walls.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ Whelan said.
We followed the spaced-out floodlights that ran off down one of the passageways, splashing through the puddles that reflected their glow. Every now and then we’d have to duck under some low pipe or duct. Once upon a time this place would have fairly hummed with boilers, pumps and fans, the background rhythm of the hospital’s pulse. Now it was silent except for us.
After a few minutes we came to a service-lift shaft, where folding metal doors were pulled back to reveal a refuse-strewn interior. A little further along was the rectangular opening of a passageway, dank and unlit. It had been cordoned off with a diagonal cross of yellow tape, from which hung a sign warning Danger! No Entry!
‘Is that where you found the asbestos?’ I asked. Ward had told me it was in a service tunnel that linked the hospital to the morgue.
‘Don’t worry, it’s at the far end. Some of the ceiling came down when the morgue was demolished. The passageway’s all blocked off with rubble so you can’t get through to the morgue any more. Not that one, anyway.’
I didn’t know what he meant, but then he went to a set of double doors near the passageway entrance. A sign was fixed above them that looked as old as the hospital itself. It bore a single word, so faded it could only just be made out.
Morgue.
‘There were two morgues?’ I said, looking back at the cordoned-off opening.
He nodded. ‘This is the original. The passageway leads to a bigger one they built in the 1960s. It can’t have been worth stripping out the old fittings all the way down here, so they just left it. Out of sight, out of mind.’
That could have been St Jude’s motto. Whelan pushed open the doors, revealing a scene from a history book. Lit by police floodlights, the ancient morgue resembled a filthy museum exhibit, unchanged in a half-century or more. Three porcelain post-mortem tables stood side by side in the middle, coated with dust and grime. Hanging above each of them were oversized light fittings, conical metal shades from which bristled ancient, twisted wiring. Rusted taps spouted over dry, cracked sinks, while at one end the heavy doors of a body-storage cabinet hung open like a giant refrigerator to reveal empty shelves.
The entire morgue was a relic from the past. The hospital had simply closed the doors and forgotten all about it, leaving a time capsule of mortality to silently gather dust. Turning away from the husks of dead spiders that lay curled on the crazed ceramic tables, I went to see what the search team had found.
They were in a small office at the far end, ghostly in their white suits. Inside was a metal desk, behind which lay a broken chair. Everyone was gathered around a huge rusted filing cabinet that was canted at an angle against the wall. I recognized one of them as Jackson, the police search adviser.
‘It’s on the floor behind the cabinet,’ he said. ‘The thing weighs a ton and it’s been fixed to the wall. We wanted you to see it before we tried moving it.’
‘Let’s have a look.’ Whelan knelt down and shone his torch into the narrow gap between the wall and cabinet, peering to see behind it. ‘It’s an arm, right enough. Dr Hunter, do you want to take a shufti?’
He straightened, stepping away so I could take his place. I’d been looking around the rest of the room, listening for something that should have been there. Chalking up its absence, I went and crouched down by the filing cabinet.
It was difficult to see into the narrow gap. Pipework ran behind the cabinet, and at first I couldn’t make out what else was there. Then my torch picked out something pale. Covered in dirt, the hand was lying palm down with the fingers half curved, a slender wrist and forearm extending beneath the cabinet.
‘No sign of blood or any discolouration,’ I said, pressing my face against the wall in an attempt to see more. ‘Doesn’t look like much decomposition either.’
‘Can’t have been there very long, then,’ one of the search team said.
‘Well, it’s got to have been at least a week,’ Whelan commented. ‘Nobody could have got in after we showed up. It’s pretty cold down here, though. Could that have preserved it?’
‘Not to that extent.’ I put my face to the gap and sniffed. My mask got in the way, but there was no discernible odour.
‘Might be embalmed,’ another search-team officer offered. ‘Maybe it was a specimen or something that got left behind.’
‘How the hell do you leave an arm behind?’ Whelan asked irritably. ‘And that’d mean it had been here for years.’
‘I think it has,’ I said. I’d wondered about embalming as well, but I couldn’t smell any trace of embalming fluid or formaldehyde either.
Getting to my feet, I crossed to the other side of the cabinet, trying for a better view. From there, concealed behind the cabinet like another pipe, I could just make out that the arm ended below the elbow. A neat, straight cut, without any ragged edges or torn skin.
‘Have any of you noticed any flies?’ I asked.
No one had. A freshly severed arm would have attracted them in droves, even down here. Unlike the room upstairs, there was no false wall to keep them out, yet the old morgue was blessedly free of the droning insects.
Sliding my hand down the gap between the cabinet and wall, I gently touched the top of the arm.
‘Should we get Dr Parekh out to take a look?’ Whelan said uneasily.
‘There’s no need.’ Reaching further in, I took hold of the arm by the wrist and gave it a hard tug.
‘Whoa!’ Whelan yelled.
But the arm had already slid free from behind the cabinet in a shower of rust. I examined the blunt end where the forearm ended below the elbow, then rapped it against the filing cabinet. It made a solid clunk.
‘It’s plaster,’ I said, holding it up so they could see for themselves. ‘I don’t even think it’s a medical prop. Looks more like an old shop mannequin.’
Whelan took the dummy arm from me, turning it as though not entirely convinced even now.
‘Bad case of rigor mortis, sir,’ one of the search team commented.
Whelan gave him a baleful look and slapped the arm against the man’s chest. ‘Funny. Next time you call us all the way down here for nothing I’ll jam it up your backside.’
He set off back through the old morgue without waiting for me.