I wasn’t sure what Tom had in mind, but that seemed as good an idea as any. We began filling large stainless steel vats with detergent solution and set them heating on gas burners. Although the powerful extractor hood over the burners sucked most of the steam and fumes from the room, the combination of bleach and boiling soft tissue gave off a smell disconcertingly reminiscent of both a laundry and a bad restaurant.
‘So you’re British?’ Summer asked as we worked.
‘That’s right.’
‘How come you’re over here?’
‘Just a research trip.’
‘Don’t you have research facilities in the UK?’
‘We do, but not like yours.’
‘Yeah, the facility’s pretty cool.’ The big eyes regarded me through the glasses. ‘What’s it like being a forensic anthropologist over there?’
‘Cold and wet, usually.’
She laughed. ‘Apart from that. Is it any different?’
I didn’t really want to talk about it, but she was only being friendly. ‘Well, the basics are the same, but there are a few differences. We don’t have as many law enforcement agencies as you do over here.’ To an outsider, the number of autonomous sheriff and police departments, let alone state and federal agencies, that operated in the US was bewildering. ‘But the main difference is the climate. Unless it’s a freakish summer, we tend not to get bodies drying out like you do here. The decomposition’s more likely to be a wet one, with more moulds and slime.’
She pulled a face. ‘Gross. Ever thought of moving?’
Despite myself I gave a laugh. ‘Work in the sun belt, you mean? No, I can’t say that I have.’ I’d talked about myself as much as I wanted to, though. ‘So how about you? What are your plans?’
Summer launched into an animated description of her life so far, her ambitions for the future and how she was working in a bar in Knoxville to raise enough money to buy a car. I said little, content to let her carry on her monologue. It didn’t slow her work and the torrent of words was relaxing, so that when Tom returned I was surprised to see that nearly two hours had passed.
‘You’ve made progress, I see,’ he said approvingly, coming to the table.
‘It’s been pretty straightforward.’ I didn’t ask how he was in front of Summer, but I could see he was feeling better. He waited until she’d returned to the pans bubbling on the gas burners, then beckoned me to one side.
‘Sorry I took so long, I’ve been speaking to Dan Gardner. There’s been an interesting development. There aren’t any fingerprints on file for Terry Loomis, the guy whose wallet was at the cabin, so they still need us to confirm if this is him.’ He gestured towards the remains on the table. ‘But they got a result on the print from the film canister. Belongs to a Willis Dexter, thirty-six-year-old mechanic from Sevierville.’
Sevierville was a small town not far from Gatlinburg, perhaps twenty miles from where the body had been found in the mountain cabin. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘You’d think so,’ he agreed. ‘They found several other of Dexter’s fingerprints at the cabin, as well. One of them on a week-old credit card receipt found in Loomis’s wallet.’
All of which suggested that Terry Loomis was the victim and Willis Dexter his killer. But there was something odd about Tom’s manner that told me it wasn’t that simple. ‘So is he in custody?’
Tom took off his glasses and wiped them on a tissue, a quizzical smile playing round his mouth. ‘Well, that’s the thing. It appears Willis Dexter was killed in a car crash six months ago.’
‘That can’t be right,’ I said. Either the fingerprints couldn’t be his or the wrong name must have been put on the death certificate.
‘Doesn’t seem so, does it?’ Tom put his glasses back on. ‘That’s why we’re exhuming his grave first thing tomorrow.’
You’re nine when you see your first dead body. You’re dressed in your Sunday clothes and ushered into a room where wooden chairs have been set out facing a shiny casket that stands at the front. It’s balanced on trestles covered with worn black velvet. A piece of blood-red braiding has come loose on one corner. You’re distracted by how it’s curled up into an almost perfect figure eight, so that you’re almost up to the casket before you think to look inside.
Your grandfather’s lying in it. He looks… different. His face seems waxy, somehow, and his cheeks have a sunken look, like they do when he forgets to put in his teeth. His eyes are shut, but there’s even something not quite right about them, too.
You stop dead, feeling a familiar pressure in your chest. A hand presses into your back, propelling you forward.
‘Go on now, take a look.’
You recognize the voice of your aunt. But you didn’t need any urging to go nearer. You sniff, earning a swift cuff on the head.
‘Handkerchief!’ your aunt hisses. For once, though, you weren’t clearing your nose of its almost permanent drip. Only trying to discern what other odours might be masked beneath the perfume and scented candles.
‘Why’re his eyes shut?’ you ask.
‘Because he’s with the Lord,’ your aunt says. ‘Don’t he look peaceful? Just like he’s asleep.’
But he doesn’t look asleep to you. What’s in the casket looks like it’s never been alive. You stare at it, trying to see exactly what’s different, until you’re steered firmly away.
Over the next few years the memory of your grandfather’s corpse never fails to bring with it the same sense of puzzlement, the same tightness in your chest. It’s one of your seminal memories. But it isn’t until you’re seventeen that you encounter the event which changes your life.
You’re sitting on a bench, reading during your lunch break. The book is a translation of St Thomas Aquinas‘ Summa Theologiae you stole from the library. It’s heavy going and naive, of course, but there’s some interesting stuff in it. ‘The existence of something and its essence are separate.’ You like that, almost as much as you liked Kierkegaard’s assertion that ‘death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent.’ All the theologians or philosophers you’ve read contradict each other, and none of them have any real answers. But they’re closer to the mark than the sophomore posturings of Camus and Sartre, who hide their ignorance behind a mask of fiction. You’ve outgrown them already, just as you’re already on your way to outgrowing Aquinas and the rest. In fact you’re beginning to think you won’t find the answer in any book. But what else is there?
There’ve been whisperings at home lately about where the money’s coming from to send you to college. It doesn’t bother you. It’ll come from somewhere. You’ve known for years that you’re special, that you’re destined for greatness.
It’s meant to be.
You chew and swallow the packed sandwiches mechanically as you read, without enjoyment or taste. Food is fuel, that’s all. The most recent operation cured the nasal drip that blighted your childhood, but at a cost. By now your sense of smell is all but burnt out, reducing everything but the spiciest of foods to the blandness of cotton wool.
Finishing the tasteless sandwich, you put the book away. You’ve just gotten up from the bench when a screech of brakes is followed by a meaty thud. You look up to see a woman in the air. She seems to hang for a moment before crashing down in a sprawl of limbs, almost at your feet. She lies twisted on her back, face tilted to the sky. For a second her eyes meet yours, wide and startled. There’s no pain or fear in them, only surprise. Surprise and something else.
Knowledge.
Then the eyes dull and you know instinctively that whatever force had animated the woman has gone. What lies at your feet now is a sack of meat and broken bone, nothing more.