"Do you know what Corium means?" Blake asked, checking his phone as they headed back towards the bike.
Jamie shook her head. "I just thought it was an unusual name."
"It's the Latin for dermis, one of the skin layers and also a term used for the thickened leathery part of an insect wing."
Jamie sighed, shaking her head. "Only in London," she said.
***
An hour later, Jamie walked into a post office delivery center further east in Plaistow and dropped the package off with a bored clerk on the front desk. He typed the information into his computer and gave Jamie a delivery receipt. As she turned to walk out of the office, he picked up the phone but Jamie couldn't hear his words. She walked back outside to find Blake standing by a lamppost opposite with two takeaway coffees.
"Tell me that you have some kind of useful tracking mechanism," he said. "You've stuck a sticker on the package and we can track it with our phones, right?"
"Of course, my private investigator budget stretches to all kinds of Bond-style gadgets," Jamie said with a grin. "But since we're here, we might as well stake the place out. I think the clerk made a phone call about the package, so we might not be waiting too long." She took a sip of the coffee and looked at her watch. "I'm worried about it being another night before we find O. Corium's workshop looked exactly like the type of place some sick bastard would send her perfect skin to be turned into a book. Did you see anything else in the vision that might help us?"
"Only the abattoir setting," Blake said, pulling out his phone. He opened a map of the area. "Meat processing is mainly done outside the city these days, but an older map might help us with where the abattoirs once stood." He was silent for a moment and then showed Jamie the phone. "Look how close we are to the East London Crematorium," he said. "If you had to dispose of body parts, this would be a good place to do it."
"We could split up," Jamie said. "You can stay here and watch for anyone collecting the package and I'll go to the crematorium and see what I can find."
Blake raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? You want to go alone to the crematorium?"
Jamie shrugged. "The dead don't bother me. It's the living I worry about."
The buzz of a motorbike grew louder as it came up the hill and then pulled to a stop outside the post office. It was a courier bike with the logo of a well-known firm on the side. The leather-clad figure dismounted and then entered the delivery office.
"This must be it," Jamie said. She pulled on her helmet and sat astride the bike. "You coming?"
Blake grinned. "You really know how to give a boy a good time."
He pulled her spare helmet over his head, sitting behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. The delivery man emerged with the brown paper package under his arm. He put it in one of the side panniers and headed off down the road. Jamie pulled out behind him, keeping him in sight as they drove further east.
The shops changed into housing estates, evidence of homelessness and job seekers in the rundown yards and people hanging out on the corners. Jamie stayed well back, but with the volume of traffic even this far out, it was unlikely the courier would be suspicious. He was only doing his job.
It wasn't long before the courier turned into an industrial estate with only one road in and out. Jamie pulled over at the edge of the road and watched as the bike turned out of sight around a corner towards what looked like a derelict warehouse. The courier opened a roller door, put the package inside, pulled the door back down, and then drove back out of the park. He glanced at Jamie and Blake as he turned from the estate, but with the nonchalance of live-and-let-live London, where anything goes.
As the courier roared away up the street, Jamie drove down to the warehouse, turning off the bike's engine outside the roller-door. Blake dismounted and pulled his helmet off and Jamie followed suit, pulling a flashlight from her pannier.
They stood for a moment, listening for any sound. All they could hear was the noise of the city. There was nothing from inside the building.
Blake reached down and pulled up the roller door to reveal an empty loading bay. The package sat inside the entrance.
"Leave it," Jamie whispered as Blake reached for it. Her years of working for the police had honed a sense of when something wasn't quite right and this place made her skin crawl.
There was a door at the back of the loading bay. Jamie pointed at it and Blake nodded. Together, they walked quietly towards it.
Chapter 15
The door was double padlocked, but that didn't deter Blake.
"Misspent youth," he explained as he picked up a short metal pipe, swinging it a little to heft its weight. Wielding it like a hammer, it only took a few sharp blows to smash off the padlocks. The sound of the metal clashing resounded in the loading bay, and it would definitely warn anyone inside of their presence.
The door opened silently at Jamie's push, evidence that it had been oiled recently which seemed out of place in a derelict building. It was dark inside, but she could sense a wide space in front of them and the sharp lines of machinery loomed from the shadows. A metallic smell pervaded the air. As Blake stepped in behind Jamie, he grasped the door frame, his knuckles white with tension.
"This has to be the place," he whispered. "I recognize the smell of old blood."
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jamie realized the machinery was for meat processing and packaging. Chains and hooks, winches used for heavy carcasses, blades for cutting, crushing weights. She shivered a little, imagining the place spattered in the blood of dead animals. She turned on the flashlight quickly and the beam reflected off shiny surfaces within. The equipment was spotless and left pristine, although a thin layer of dust had settled over it, evidence of time passing since the last animal was processed here.
"This isn't the slaughter room," Blake whispered. "We need to go deeper into the factory."
If she had still been in the police, it would have been well past the time to call for backup, but Jamie knew they wouldn't come for an empty, disused abattoir with a bad feeling about it. Her rational side understood the craziness of following a hunch based on Blake's psychic vision, but he had been right before and they had no other leads on finding O.
She shone the torch around the large processing area, finally locating a door behind one of the machines.
"That way," she said, walking with light feet across the warehouse, her senses alert for any sound. It was so quiet here, too quiet. Blake's hand found hers and squeezed gently as they crossed the space.
"We'll find her," he said, but his voice was shaky.
What had he seen in the vision that had affected him so much? Jamie wondered. And would they face it again in reality behind this door?
There were signs next to the door indicating a cold zone and the safety equipment necessary to enter the slaughterhouse rooms. Jamie pushed the handle down and the door swung open.
She shone the beam inside with her arm outstretched, panning it around the long room. The floor and walls were tiled and meat hooks hung down on chains from the ceiling. A long metal table stood in the middle with grooves down the sides and a drain underneath. Jamie couldn't help but imagine the table running with blood, crimson circling the drain as life ebbed away.