“They didn’t fight Mister President, they waited until others had weakened China and then they sneaked in the back door. The Filipinos didn’t stop fighting, not even after they had been occupied.”
“It’s politics.”
“It’s disloyal, it is cowardly, it is dishonourable and as such it is unbefitting of the office…sir!”
The President looked at Henry, feeling his temper rise.
“I believe we had a similar discussion once, and as you couldn’t even grasp the realities back when you were sober, I see no point in continuing this any further.”
Mike and another agent had been stood a discrete distance from their principle, but they had taken two steps closer as the voices were raised.
“I wish you well with your retirement General.”
The President turned on his heel, and snapped an order at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs without deigning to look at him.
“Be sure that you make it happen, and soon!”
Theodore departed, boarding Marine One without another word or glance.
As the sound of the helicopters rotors faded Henry was still looking toward the horizon. He put a hand inside his uniform jacket and withdrew a slim hip flask, but his fingers had snagged another object along with it, a faded beer mat. Henry could not read the faint writing in the darkness but on replacing it inside his jacket he tossed the hipflask into the sea.
The legal system in the former colony remains essentially British, and as such the young constable who had first boarded the Krasivaya Dama off South Negril Point presented himself at the mortuary in order to provide continuity of evidence, in other words, he was to confirm that the body upon the slab and the body he had accompanied from the yacht’s main cabin to the mortuary two days before were one and the same. Constable McKenzie’s Inspector had added a requirement of his own to that of the young officer’s duties to the coroner. It was a matter of pride, his Inspector had explained.
Constable McKenzie was not from Kingston or any of the more ‘lively’ areas of the island; he had been raised in a small inland village and had seen a grand total of two dead bodies in his twenty years. The first had been his next door neighbour’s granny when McKenzie had been five. She had been laid out in her best Sunday dress and the blocks of ice placed around the bed had slowed what his father had termed ‘the ripening’. The Granny hadn’t looked dead, she had just looked asleep. The most memorable part of the whole occasion had been young McKenzie having his hands slapped for trying to lift the pennies off the old ladies eyes, to see if she was in fact awake.
The second body had been the chestnut haired young woman on the boat. She had also been on a bed, and she hadn’t looked dead either, at least not at first. He had felt embarrassed at intruding on a scene of obviously quite recent intimacy. She had been lying naked upon the rumpled sheets; face down on the red satin covers and with those glorious locks spread out like a chestnut veil and the tattoo of dogs paw marks on her right cheek. Blood splatter on the mirrored headboard was the first clue that she was not in fact sleeping. The colour of the sheets had hidden the large amount of blood actually present.
His sergeant drove him to the mortuary and pulled the car up outside the front entrance.
“Are you ready boy, got your notebook and a pen?”
McKenzie held up the notebook, it was opened to the page where he had recorded the delivery of the body the previous Saturday morning and he fumbled in a pocket before producing a biro, much chewed upon at one end.
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Does it work?”
The young officer ran the nib back and forth on one corner of an inside cover of his notebook, making rapid zig zag motions before looking at his sergeant apologetically.
The thirty-year veteran rolled his eyes upwards before handing over his own.
“I want it back or you will be walking the beat all next month.”
McKenzie exited the car, carefully closing the door behind him.
“And remember what the Inspector said?”
McKenzie bent to look back into the car.
“Yes Sergeant, I shouldn’t faint or throw up.”
The sergeant studied him for a moment before putting the car into first gear.
“Away with you now before you’re late boy,” his ‘skipper’ growled. “I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.”
The car started to move off and McKenzie braced himself to enter the building.
“And if you’ve puked up over yourself you’ll be walking behind the car!”
He raised a hand to acknowledge he understood as the car drove away.
He entered the mortuary, stepping out of the heat of a fine Caribbean morning into the air-conditioned reception area. He wasn’t sure if the cool breeze that wafted over him was for the benefit of the living, or just a higher tech method of ensuring the residents did not ripen.
After signing himself in the young constable was shown along a corridor and upon opening the double doors at the end he had his first experience of an entirely different atmosphere.
It is a strange smell, a unique mix of sterilising fluid, formaldehyde, antiseptic, uncooked meat, gastric juices and last meals at every single possible stage of digestion.
A pair of mortuary technicians noticed the young officer enter and his naturally dark complexion became edged with grey as he sampled the smell for the first time. They looked at each other and winked. A probationary constable, quite obviously, so there would be some sport this fine morning.
Constable McKenzie swallowed the bile that had risen, and surveyed the white tiled room. There were only two other people in the room; living that is, and both wore disposable plastic aprons over their white coats, and those aprons were already blood splattered.
“Are you the forensic examiners?” He did not actually know what the proper title would be, but it sounded right.
“No officer, we just prepare them for the pathologist, and he will be here at any time now so why don’t you find the body you are here for and he can start with that one.”
Neither of the men made a move to assist him and McKenzie took in the white tiled room with a dozen stainless steel ‘slabs’ that had supine shapes resting upon them. A sheet covered each shape with just bare feet protruding from under one end. He saw that tags were tied to toes, just like in the movies, but he had no desire to lift any of the sheets.
“Er, she would be the white woman with the very long and curly, reddish hair, brought in last Friday.”
One of the mortuary workers approached the nearest sheet adorned corpse.
“Well that’s a problem then.” He gestured to the young officer to come closer and the folded back the top of the sheet.
Constable McKenzie stared wide at the thing on the slab.
“You see we shave them in order to cut off the top of the skulls with a circular saw.” A flap of skin remained at the back of the head allowing the top of the skull to hang open like a lid. The brain had been removed and was sat in a steel dish beside the head in readiness for a proper examination.
“It’s to save time, we prepare the bodies and the pathologist just goes from one to the other, digs around a bit, prods here and there, writes his notes and moves onto the next one.” The mortuary technician gripped the skin that had slipped down from the forehead when the cut had been made, making the face unrecognisable. Taking a firm grip he pulled the skin upwards, drawing back the folds from where they had sunk towards the chin.
“Is this her?…ah no, it’s a man, well let’s try another…”
Constable McKenzie had become very pale indeed but the appearance of the pathologist spared him further unnecessary torment by the technicians.