“How’s that?” Riley handed it across. I looked through the plastic at the central stone. It was a beautiful deep clear red cut into a pointed oval and surrounded by smaller diamonds.
“I’m not an expert, but I’d guess that’s a marquise-cut ruby,” I said. “So if his memory was working right for that bit, we know this woman had just been into Rojas’s store. If they paid by credit card there’ll be an electronic trail with an ID at the end of it. Maybe we can trace her that way.”
Joe Marcus had been looking through the box of items taken from the male victim found nearby. The bagged jacket and shirt, I noticed, were covered in darkly dried blood that gave them a similar tone to the ruby.
“No wallet for him, either,” he said. He held another bag up for me to see. “Would you classify this as a fancy watch?”
I recognised the matte-black face and rubber strap. “I’ll say. That’s a Hublot, and they don’t come cheap — ten grand at least.”
Marcus frowned, unimpressed, and dropped the watch back into the box. “I’ll take your word on that,” he said. “Looks like we have a pair of tourists with more money than sense. Maybe somebody got wind of that and wanted what they had.”
“So why take their IDs and leave the valuables behind?”
Riley laughed. “Because they weren’t expecting to run into bloody Wonder Woman,” he said. “You really reckon you bust the guy’s ribs?”
“I heard them go.” I kept my eyes on Marcus’s face, wondering if he was going to mention the woman’s wallet first, or whether I was going to have to bring it up. The latter, it seemed. “This wasn’t the first attempt at taking the woman’s ID, was it?” I murmured. “The police commander — Peck — he tried it, too. If it wasn’t for it… falling out of his pocket when Lemon jumped up at him, it would have been in the hands of the police by now.”
Marcus regarded me with a bland expression, refusing to rise to the bait.
“I’ll contact him tomorrow and see if he remembers who she is. Meanwhile, Alex,” he called across to where Dr Bertrand was jotting down notes for the morning’s lists, “you better move these people up the priority lists. The woman especially.”
“She was first on my list for tomorrow morning in any case,” she agreed.
Marcus nodded, began to turn away when I stopped him with a question that should not have thrown him, given the circumstances.
“Does this kind of thing often — robberies from the dead?”
I saw the quick glance the three of them exchanged. It was Marcus who shook his head. “From our own morgue? Unheard of. And the curfews organised by the local police cut down on looting. Most people who break curfew are looking for missing family or pets.”
“So there haven’t been any recent cases?” I persisted.
“No.” Another exchange of brief looks, more uneasy this time. “What are you getting at, Charlie?” Marcus asked, his tone a little harsh.
“Just trying to work out if there’s a precedent,” I said mildly, recognising that now was the time to back off a little. “If it’s unusual then that makes it more significant, don’t you think?”
He rolled his shoulders but they remained stiff. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll discuss that with Commander Peck tomorrow.” He stepped back, gestured for all of us to head for the door. “Now let’s get some rest, people. One way or another, we’re gonna need it.”
It was only as he pulled the door to the mortuary shut behind us and twisted the key in the lock that I voiced my final point.
“One thing you worth bearing in mind for tomorrow,” I said. He paused, raised an eyebrow. “When you ask Commander Peck about this mystery woman, you might want to check if any of his ribs are broken…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I spent the following morning combing another shopping district with Hope and Lemon. We discovered and marked the location of a further four bodies. There were no more live finds.
The general feeling among the dig teams was that we’d now moved on to the recovery stage of the operation. They were matter-of-fact but subdued about it. Didn’t stop them running whenever they thought there might be a possibility, though. A triumph of hope over experience.
I was expecting to put in another long day so it was a surprise when I heard rotors sweep low overhead and recognised the R&R Bell circling as Riley picked his landing spot.
He put the helo down in the middle of a car park, one side of which had disappeared into a crater, and came jogging across. In the short time I’d known the laidback Aussie, I’d never seen him look in such a hurry.
“Hey Riley,” Hope called. “Where’s the fire?”
“G’day, ladies,” he called back with a grin. “How’s it going?”
“Depends on your point of view, I think,” I said. I nodded to the line of body bags. “If you’re heading back to base we’ve four passengers for you.”
“Better make that seven,” Riley said. “Joe Marcus wants you back at the morgue right away. And Hope — and her ladyship of course.”
“What for?”
He shrugged. “I’m just the oily rag, sweetheart, not the engine driver.”
Hope appeared by my shoulder with Lemon at her side. “So, what’s the rush?” she asked. “Lem’s on a roll.”
He shrugged. “All I know is, the boss said it was urgent. And when he speaks I don’t argue.”
The on-site dig team — mostly from New Zealand where they’d gained their experience during the 2011 Christchurch quake — helped us load the body bags into the Bell. Hope and I climbed aboard without speaking and Lemon jumped in, turned around twice and plonked herself down at Hope’s feet. She seemed unfazed by her proximity to so much dead meat.
It didn’t take long to get back to the army base. Nowhere takes long when you can take a crow-flies route and don’t ever meet traffic. But all the way there I tried to work out the reason for this abrupt summons.
Do they know why I’m really here? And if so, how did they find out? Or did they guess?
Perhaps my question about the frequency of thefts from the dead had struck too close to home. But with no sign of obvious forced entry to the morgue or the ante room, it was looking decidedly like either a pro at work or an inside job.
I half expected to find Joe Marcus waiting on the landing pad with my kitbag at his feet and an instruction not to bother getting out because I was on my way straight back to the airport.
But the only people waiting for us when we set down were the army stretcher teams — Riley must have radioed ahead. Between us we quickly offloaded our cargo.
It was Hope who looked about her, puzzled, and said, “Are you going to go find Joe? I want to know what’s worth dragging us off site in the middle of the day. He wants his bumps feeling for that.”
I agreed, even if I wasn’t going to volunteer to be the one to do it. I asked one of the stretcher bearers if they’d seen Joe Marcus and was told he was in the morgue with Dr Bertrand.
Hope pulled a face and said she’d take Lemon to the mess hall and see what they could scrounge between them.
“You’ll come and find me when you’re done with Joe?” she asked.
I assured her I would.
I found Marcus in the mortuary as predicted, together with Dr Bertrand and, to my surprise, the police commander, Peck. The two men were standing back from one of the post-mortem exam tables, watching Dr Bertrand peeling open the chest of a lean male cadaver. His face was a mess, crushed and misshapen, the features offset as if wearing a horror mask that had badly slipped.
It was damage I recognised.