— the eyes were drawn closed but there was no doubt the portrait had a look of Mhouse about it — a clear look of Mhouse. He read the text beneath it with a cold, creeping sense of foreboding that brought out goose-bumps on his body. “Young woman — early twenties — unidentified — accidental death most likely…” Adam felt light-headed. Then he read about the tattoos on the body and saw, printed bold in capital letters: MHOUSE LY-ON.
He went outside to the staff car park to inhale some fresh air, the newspaper still in his hand, his head a shouting racket of plots and possibilities. No, not Mhouse, surely — he said to himself
— not Mhouse. He re-read the article. The body was found in the Thames by Greenwich…Some decomposition, obviously in the water for many days. Unidentified woman. Anyone with information…There was a number to call.
He paced around for a while, bad feelings accumulating, a scenario building in his head that involved a big ugly man with a weak, cleft chin. How, though? He had left The Shaft within minutes of seeing him there — minutes — there could have been no trail…But Mhouse was dead, that much was certain. But what about Ly-on? He realised he owed it to Ly-on to make the identification — nobody in The Shaft would do it — perhaps that would allow his mother to rest in peace, after a fashion.
He went to the payphone in the lobby and picked up the phone. He put it down. He had to think this through — serious risk might be involved. So he outlined all the reasons why he shouldn’t call and identify Mhouse’s body and he had to acknowledge they were firmly sensible and anyone in his situation would have been well advised to heed them. But he realised that he wasn’t going to act in a thoughtful, logical way. He thought of Mhouse, dead, cold, lying in some kind of steel drawer with a brown label tied around her big toe and a number written on it and his very being seemed to contract and shudder. He knew he couldn’t leave her like that. So what if there were risks — everything in his life was risky, and once you accepted that risk element then another kind of strategic, worldly, impromptu thinking came into play that had nothing to do with reason but everything to do with the person you were and the life you were living. Nobody knew who he was, Adam told himself. Adam Kindred wouldn’t be making this identification, no, it would be Primo Belem, a casual acquaintance of the nameless victim. He could confidently give his name and address — he’d done it a dozen times now — even to the police. There was no mention of foul play in the paper so perhaps a simple identification was all that was required. Mhouse would have her name back and Ly-on would understand, one day, what had become of his mother. More importantly, Adam knew he would feel he had done his duty by Mhouse. His wild, crazy Samaritan would have been repaid. There was no other way. He picked up the phone again.
“Marine Support Unit,” a voice said.
“Hello…” What did one say? “I’ve just seen the paper. The body of the young woman found in the river at Greenwich. I think I know who she is.”
He took a pen from his pocket and noted down the details of what he should do and where he should go. He said he would be there when his shift ended in the evening and hung up.
Mhouse was dead. He had to face that fact — there was no escaping it and no escaping the equally appalling fact that, one way or another, he had inadvertently brought death to her. Whoever was leading this desperate hunt to find him had killed Mhouse in pursuit of information. Guilt overwhelmed him, gathered in his throat like bile. It was bile. He managed to make it outside to the car park before he vomited.
41
THE SETTING SUN HAD turned the river orange — basting the brown waters of the Thames orange, like a Fauvist painting. Rita paused to log this miraculous effect and marvel for a second before she moved on and the vision was erased as she walked from the Annexe to the MSU headquarters building. Emerging from the narrow passageway that led to the main entrance was a tall young guy, looking around him as if lost, with a slip of paper in his hand. He wore a pin-stripe suit, an open-necked shirt, his head was shaved to a dark stubble and he had a dark neat beard.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
He turned. “I’ve come to identify a body,” he said. “I’m not sure where I should go.”
Their eyes met — it was an event that happened dozens of times a day: why should one be more intriguing, Rita thought, why do you register that particular interlocking of two gazes as more significant? All Rita knew was that this meeting of eyes was somehow different, as far as she was concerned, from the dozens of previous ones that had happened that day. Something had been triggered, some neural spasm registering alertness, a change in feeling, a concentration of interest. It must be deep, deep instinct, she thought, something beyond our rational control — the beast in us seeking a suitable mate.
“We’ve got a temporary morgue here now,” she said. “It’s back this way. I’ll show you.” They turned and she led him back towards the Annexe and Portakabin 4.
“Was this the one in the paper?” she said as they went.
“Yes.”
“I’m very sorry. Family member?”
“No. Just a…Just somebody I knew.” He couldn’t keep the catch out of his voice, she noticed, and she glanced back, seeing how nervous he was, how hard all this was for him.
They paused outside Portakabin 4, its refrigerating unit humming audibly from its rear.
She introduced him to the medical attendant and explained that he had to fill in a form.
“Name?” the attendant said.
“Belem.” Then the man gave his address and contact details. Then he was handed a white plastic coat and plastic overshoes.
“Tell you what,” Rita said, feeling sorry for him as she watched him put them on, his face set as if realising for the first time where he was about to go and what he was about to do. “I’ll get you a cup of tea, have it waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” he said and stood up as the attendant swung open the door to the mortuary.
It wouldn’t be easy for him in there, she knew. They had decided to establish a temporary holding mortuary here because every year at Wapping the MSU removed fifty to sixty corpses from London’s river, an average of one a week. Bodies decomposed fast once out of the river and if there had been no identification within a week they were moved to one of the larger city mortuaries where they were kept until the inquest. Some congruence of the tides and the river’s swerving course meant that more than half of all the bodies were found in or around Greenwich, by the big southern loop that the river took around the Isle of Dogs. Often the dead had been in the water for a long time and were bloated and disintegrating, or else they had been disfigured by brutal contact with passing boats and barges, or were eyeless, eyes pecked out by gulls — not to mention any violence that might have been visited on them before they were dumped in the water.
The one body she and Joey had found had been that of a careless drunk. He had walked out at low tide on a sandbar at midnight by Southwark Bridge to urinate and found himself sinking in soft mud, trapped at mid-thigh. He remained stuck there remorselessly as the tide rose, covering him, no one hearing his desperate shouts or seeing his waving arms. He was still there the next morning at low tide when the waters receded, face down. But this one, the one that had been in the papers — DB 23 (the twenty-third body this year) — was different, she knew. She had been knocked about by river traffic — she had a fractured skull and a broken neck, half a leg was missing, raked by a propeller. She thought of the man — Belem — standing by the sheeted body waiting for the face to be revealed. It would not be nice.