The Lover's Children

Chapter 70 – Solstice – Part 3

KLEMPNER

“I’m here to see Borje. He’s expecting me. Larry Waterman.”

The receptionist purses lips. “Doctor Anderssen said to expect you, Mr Waterman. And to send you

straight through to his office.” She angles an arm along the corridor. “To the end, then second on the

right.”

My stomach rumbles as I follow her directions. I took Borje’s advice, but my breakfast wore off some

time ago.

I’ve had many years of brushing shoulders with death, one way or another, but this is the first time I’ve

been in a mortuary. My shoes, clipping on ceramic tiling, echo down the short passageway. It’s oddly

unsettling.

Don’t be so fucking stupid…

The office is easy enough to find. I tap on the door but there’s no answer, so I try the handle and as it

turns, enter.

No more than a small office, it’s unoccupied other than the squawk box spouting the receptionist’s tinny

voice. “Doctor Anderssen? Your visitor is here. I’ve sent him on as you instructed… Doctor

Anderssen?”

I call out… “Anyone around?” No one replies.

Raising my voice, “Hello?”

Crickets…

To my left, a door stands closed.

Viewing Area

Another door stands ajar at the end.

Mortuary

From beyond the door, comes a faint buzz. Trying the handle, it turns and I step through to be met by a

mechanical whine…

A drill?

It’s a plain room: white walls and ceiling. White floor tiles too. The lighting too is very bright, almost too

much so for comfort.

One wall is lined by a block of stainless-steel cabinets. Another by a series of matching steel tables.

Double swing doors face me from the far end.

The drainer of a stainless-steel wash basin is stacked with handwash, antiseptics and a box of latex

gloves. A notice board crowns it. Safety Instructions… Wash your Hands… Close by, a hose lies coiled

by a bin… Biohazard… The smell of bleach and formaldehyde overlie a sweetly foul odour.

The raw lighting highlights stainless steel tables set out with metal trays of pliers, scalpels, toothed

forceps, scissors and shears.

A be-gloved figure in green medic’s scrubs, mask and what looks like a plastic shower cap stoops over

one of the tables: laid out with…

… as I approach…

… the source of the putrid odour: a corpse, grey-blue, male.

A sheet drapes over the feet, but the remainder is naked. The cadaver has already seen some work, its

chest laid open, the cavity dark. The liver lies on a weighing scale, a clipboard of notes and a ballpoint

alongside. A series of small bottles contains what I assume to be tissue samples.

At the end of the table, a wheeled trolley, slung with wires and feeds, carries a camera and a computer

screen, currently displaying some output from the camera: a shot of what could be a knife wound. But

judging by the surrounding bruises, the owner of the knife didn’t stop at a simple stabbing.

The stooped figure is the source of the whining sound, working on the skull of the cadaver with a

circular bone cutter, the tool revving up to a screech as he applies pressure. Fascination wars with

revulsion and I find myself moving close enough to see where the crown of the skull is being separated

from the remainder like the top of some overgrown boiled egg. There’s less mess than I would expect,

but nonetheless, dark fluids drip to the glazed floor tiles and away down a small drain.

My footsteps are drowned out by the sound of the saw. Certainly, intent on his work, the figure shows

no sign of realising I am there. After half a minute or so, he switches off the saw, sets it to one side,

then adjusting his position, reaches in toward the skull…

Taking out the brain…?

… I clear my throat. Quite loudly. “Doctor Anderssen?”

He looks up, but only with his eyes, then jerking upright, yanks the sheet back from the feet to cover

the body. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

“Your receptionist sent me through.”

“The hell she did…” his voice is muffled by the mask. “…To my office, yes. Not…”

I keep my voice calm. “I knocked. No one answered. I entered. I called out. No one replied. I came

through. I’ve been here for at least two minutes.”

“Oh.” Borje blows air. Glances at the body. “Sorry.” Then, returning the glance to me, assessing, he lifts

his chin. “I take it you’ve seen corpses before?”

“One or two. I’ll not keel over on the mortuary floor if that’s what you’re asking.” I nod down to the

draped cadaver. “What happened to him?”

Borje straightens up, slipping into professional mode, speaking as though delivering a report. “Attacked

by an intruder as he was changing a flat tyre in his garage. Stabbed and beaten. His attacker got a

pocketful of change and was driving the car as the police caught up with him, joyriding, two days later.

He was three times over the alcohol limit.” He blows air. “This poor bastard hadn’t even been missed by

then. The police came looking and found him on the garage floor when the neighbour let them in with a

spare key.”

“May I?” I glance for permission, then as Borje nods, flick back the sheet. The corpse looks no better

on second viewing. “What was the cause of death?”

“Blunt trauma to the cranium... Tyre iron.”

I jerk a thumb at the monitor. “And the stab wound?”

“Carpet knife. They found it by the body.” He blows out his cheeks. “People can be stupid. Viciously

stupid.”

I tug the cover back into place. “I’ll not disagree with you there. I imagine in your profession it qualifies

as an occupational hazard. This can’t be a line of work where you see the better side of the human

race.”

Peeling off the gloves, he shrugs, then tugs off the mask. “I suppose. It does no favours for my social

life, that’s for certain.”

“I’m sure you don’t sleep in the basement. Or avoid daylight and mirrors.”

Borje stares at me, then my graveyard humour seems to catch hold. He bursts out laughing, slaps me

on the arm. “Perhaps you and I got off to a bad start, Larry. We’ll call it quits, shall we.”

“I’d prefer that. We’re both on the same side here.”

His laughter fades. “You’ve come to discuss the Surgeon’s latest victim?”

“Perhaps to discuss. First, I’d like to see the body. View his handiwork.”

He hesitates, then, “Fine.” Moving across to the cabinet block, he opens the door to one section, then

pauses. “Just a warning. It’s not a pretty sight. What you just saw on the other table doesn’t compare.”

“Duly noted.”

He draws out a sliding tray occupied by another sheeted cadaver. Slipping back the sheet, he reveals

the ruins of what was once a woman's body.

I’ve seen death before, in many forms. I’ve been responsible for enough of it. Then too, Stanton

showed me the photos, the mutilation inflicted by the Surgeon. I knew what to expect. But it’s still not

an easy sight.

In life, I imagine she was beautiful. Perhaps twenty years old, with long, glossy hair, the intense black

of the Asian and Oriental types. It would have dropped straight as an arrow to hang by her waist.

But now that hair trails from her bloated face. The skin is bluish, speckled deep purple-red with

ruptured blood vessels. The eyelids are almost completely dark, a purple heading for black. Grooves at

wrist and ankle, deeply bruised, mark where restraints have bitten in. Her hands and feet too, are

bloated and dark.

And what’s been done to her…

Mutilation isn’t a strong enough word. She’s been, essentially, disembowelled. Slash wounds cover her

thighs and stomach, what’s left of it. Her left leg is missing flesh from the calf, although the damage, to

my eye, looks more like mauling than something committed with a blade. The left hand is missing two

fingers, with only bloody stumps remaining. Her thighs are bruised and bloody.

I suck some saliva into my mouth. “Do we have a name for her?”

“Susumu Takaki. Eighteen years old. Local girl.”

“Who ID’d her?”

He checks a note. “Name of Ayesha Laghari. Her… working partner…”

“This Ayesha had reported her missing? To the police?”

“Not to my knowledge. But you’d have to ask the investigating officers.”

I keep my voice level. “Was she still alive when this was done to her?”

Borje delivers a monotone reply. “Most of what you see is post-mortem: the slashing of the breasts,

abdomen, thighs and genital area, the removal of the internal organs. But both external and internal

damage to genital and anal areas indicate violent sexual assault while she was alive.”

“Rape? She was a hooker, wasn’t she? Or do I have that wrong?”

“You have it right. Nonetheless, I doubt she thought this was on the menu.”

“Stanton said COD was suffocation?”

“Yes… Just a moment...” From an adjacent locker, Borje produces a plastic zip-bag. Unzipping, he

tweezers out the contents: crumpled paper, soaked, almost mushed.

I’d not know what I was looking at if Stanton hadn’t already told me. “Money? He blocked her airway

with bank notes?”

“That’s right. They were jammed down far enough and tight enough that he must have used something

to do it with. Then he taped over her mouth so she couldn’t cough it up. This is one as it was removed

from her throat. And here’s the second…” He produces another bag… “…which we opened up and

smoothed out.”

The second bag contains a twenty, creased and wrinkled, but flattish. Dark stains streak contours along

the creases.

“Just the two notes? Both twenties?”

“Just the two.”

“Couldn’t she have coughed them up? The gag reflex would usually…”

“As you can see, she was bound ankle and wrist. And her mouth was taped over. If you look here, you

can see…” He extends a finger, drawing a rectangle in the air around her mouth… “… faint marks left

by the tape before it was removed. Also, the skin and flesh in that area are slightly swollen compared to

the rest of the face.”

“Why the swelling?”

“Think about having a band-aid over a cut for a day or so. You peel it off and…”

“… and it’s white and swollen underneath.”

“Yes.” He regards the remains of Susumu Takaki. “Even if she succeeded in coughing up the

banknotes, or in swallowing them, he could have repeated the process until he succeeded.”