In his round bone prison he watched the curious come and go, and knotted up his will.
The pathologist did his work on Ronnie's corpse with all the respect of an efficient fish-gutter, carelessly digging the bullet out of his cranium, and nosing around in the stews of smashed bone and cartilage that had formerly been his knees and elbows. Ronnie didn't like the man. He'd leered at Bernadette in a highly unprofessional way; and now, when he was playing the professional, his callousness was positively shameful. Oh for a voice; for a fist, for a body to use for a time. Then he'd show this meat-merchant how bodies should be treated. The will was not enough though: it needed a focus, and a means of escape.
The pathologist finished his report and his rough sewing, flung his juice-shiny gloves and his stained instruments on to the trolley beside the swabs and the alcohol, and left the body to the assistants.
Ronnie heard the swing-doors close behind him as the man departed. Water was running somewhere, splashing into the sink; the sound irritated him.
Standing beside the table on which he lay, the two technicians discussed their shoes. Of all things, shoes. The banality of it, thought Ronnie, the life-decaying banality of it.
'You know them new heels, Lenny? The ones I got to put on my brown suedes? Useless. No bleeding good at all.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'And the price I paid for them. Look at that; just look at that. Worn through in a month.'
Paper-thin.'
'They are, Lenny, they're paper-thin. I'm going to take them back.'
'I would.'
'lam.'
'I would.'
This mindless conversation, after those hours of torture, of sudden death, of the post-mortem that he'd so recently endured, was almost beyond endurance. Ronnie's spirit began to buzz round and round in his brain like an angry bee trapped in an upturned jam-jar, determined to get out and start stinging -
Round and round; like the conversation.
'Paper-bloody-thin.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'Bloody foreign. These soles. Made in fucking Korea.'
'Korea?'
'That's why they're paper-thin.'
It was unforgivable: the trudging stupidity of these people. That they should live and act and be: while he buzzed on and on, boiling with frustration. Was that fair?
'Neat-shot, eh Lenny?'
'What?'
'The stiff. Old what's his name the Sex-King. Bang in the middle of the forehead. See that? Pop goes the weasel.'
Lenny's companion, it seemed, was still preoccupied with his paper-thin sole. He didn't reply. Lenny inquisitively inched back the shroud from Ronnie's forehead. The lines of sawn and scalped flesh were inelegantly sewn, but the bullet hole itself was neat.
'Look at it.'
The other glanced round at the dead face. The head-wound had been cleaned after the probing pincers had worked at it. The edges were white and puckered.
'I thought they usually went for the heart,' said the sole-searcher.
'This wasn't any street-fight. It was an execution; formal like,' said Lenny, poking his little finger into the wound. 'It's a perfect shot. Bang in the middle of the forehead. Like he had three eyes.' •Yeah ...'
The shroud was tossed back over Ronnie's face. The bee buzzed on; round and round. 'You hear about third eyes, don't you?'
'Do you?'
'Stella read me something about it being the centre of the body.'
That's your navel. How can your forehead be the centre of your body?'
'Well...'
That's your navel.'
'No, it's more your spiritual centre.'
The other didn't deign to respond.
'Just about where this bullet-hole is,' said Lenny, still lost in admiration for Ronnie's killer.
The bee listened. The bullet-hole was just one of many holes in his Life. Holes where his wife and children should have been. Holes winking up at him like sightless eyes from the pages of the magazines, pink and brown and hair-lipped. Holes to the right of him, holes to the left -
Could it be, at last, that he had found here a hole that he could profit by? Why not leave by the wound?
His spirit braced itself, and made for his brow, creeping through his cortex with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Ahead, he could sense the exit door like the light at the end of a long tunnel. Beyond the hole, the warp and weft of his shroud glittered like a promised land. His sense of direction was good; the light grew as he crept, the voices became louder. Without fanfare Ronnie's spirit spat itself into the -outside world: a tiny seepage of soul. The motes of fluid that carried his will and his consciousness were soaked up by his shroud like tears by tissues.
His flesh and blood body was utterly deserted now; an icy bulk fit for nothing but the flames.
Ronnie Glass existed in a new world: a white linen world like no state he had lived or dreamed before.
Ronnie Glass was his shroud.
Had Ronnie's pathologist not been forgetful he wouldn't have come back into the mortuary at that moment, trying to locate the diary he'd written the Widow Glass' number in; and, had he not come in, he would have lived. As it was -
'Haven't you started on this one yet?' he snapped at the technicians.
They murmured some apology or other. He was always testy at this time of night; they were used to his tantrums.
'Get on with it,' he said, stripping the shroud off the body and flinging it to the floor in irritation, 'before the fucker walks out of here in disgust. Don't want to get our little hotel a bad reputation, do we?' 'Yes, sir. I mean, no sir.'
'Well don't stand there: parcel it up. There's a widow wants him dispatched as soon as possible. I've seen all I need to see of him.'
Ronnie lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, slowly spreading his influence through this new-found land. It felt good to have a body, even if it was sterile and rectangular. Bringing a power of will to bear he hadn't known he possessed, Ronnie took full control of the shroud.
At first it refused life. It had always been passive: that was its condition. It wasn't use to occupation by spirits. But Ronnie wasn't to be beaten now. His will was an imperative. Against all rules of natural behaviour it stretched and knotted the sullen linen into a semblance of life.
The shroud rose.
The pathologist had located his little black book, and was in the act of pocketing it when this white curtain spread itself in his path, stretching like a man who has just woken from a deep sleep.
Ronnie tried to speak; but the only voice he could find was a whisper of the cloth on the air, too light, too insubstantial to be heard over the complaints of frightened men. And frightened they were. Despite the pathologist's call for assistance, none was forthcoming. Lenny and his companion were sliding away towards the swing-doors, gaping mouths babbling entreaties to any local god who would listen.
The pathologist backed off against the post-mortem table, quite out of gods.
'Get out of my sight,' he said.
Ronnie embraced him, tightly.
'Help,' said the pathologist, almost to himself. But help was gone. It was running down the corridors, still babbling, keeping its back to the miracle that was taking place in the mortuary. The pathologist was alone, wrapped up in this starched embrace, murmuring, at the last, some apologies he had found beneath his pride.
'I'm sorry, whoever you are. Whatever you are. I'm sorry.'
But there was an anger in Ronnie that would not have any truck with late converts; no pardons or reprieves were available. This fish-eyed bastard, this son of the scalpel had cut and examined his old body as though it was a side of beef. It made Ronnie livid to think of this creep's oh-so-cool appraisal of life, death and Bernadette. The bastard would die, here, amongst his remains, and let that be an end to his callous profession.