Webley’s imagination runs riot. ‘Oh, God. What the hell’s in there? Can you look, please?’
Her eyes flicker towards Cody as he reaches in and gingerly removes the card.
‘Jesus!’
‘What?’ she asks. ‘What is it?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I mean I can’t identify it. I’m not a doctor.’
And now her imagination is really doing somersaults. ‘But it’s a part of him, right? Something from Parker’s body?’
‘I… I guess so.’
‘Please tell me it’s not his… you know…’
‘I wouldn’t think so. Not unless he’s extremely under-endowed.’
Webley realises this isn’t working. She’ll have to cut out the middleman.
‘All right. All right. Show me.’
‘Are you sure?’
She’s not sure.
‘Yes! Just show it to me!’
Cody slowly moves the box towards her. She risks a quick peek inside. Sees what looks like a slim fleshy tube several centimetres long.
‘Shit, what the fuck is that?’
‘I have no idea.’
Grimacing, she waves the box away. ‘Jesus Christ! What’s he trying to do, post himself to me a piece at a time?’
Cody puts the lid back on the box. ‘All right, look, let me make some calls. The first thing we need to do is get this… thing checked out.’
Webley hates the fact that she’s got a piece of Parker she can’t even identify. Hates the fact that she’s already the unwitting recipient of his ring finger and all of his hair. Hates this whole fucking insane business. Why can’t she just get up and go to work and do her job and come home and relax, like normal people do?
The emotion and the tiredness overwhelm her then, and she begins to cry. Cody comes over and wraps his arms around her.
‘I don’t know what’s got into him, Cody. I loved him, I really did. And now… it’s like I don’t even know him. Like I never knew him.’
33
I Love the Dead
– Alice Cooper
Rory Stroud is gorging on a breakfast muffin when the two detectives arrive at the mortuary at the Royal Hospital. They find him in an ante room next to the post-mortem area with its rows of disinfected steel tables and its cabinets of chilled corpses.
Stroud likes his food. Likes his women too, by all accounts. And his job. He enjoys the latter so much that his personalised car number registration contains the letters DOA, as in ‘Dead On Arrival’. Nothing ever seems to dampen Stroud’s spirits. Whenever Cody meets him, he is surprised by how much the man is bursting with the life so absent from the bodies he examines each day.
‘Ah, the dynamic duo,’ Stroud says, yolk dribbling down his chin. Cody still hasn’t eaten, and his stomach is rumbling, but the thought of tucking into one of those greasy monstrosities in an environment so suffused with death and formaldehyde is nauseating him.
‘I want you to know,’ Stroud continues, ‘that I am very rarely at my post this early in the day. I’m doing this as a favour to you, because I like you and because you have succeeded in piquing my interest this morning. So it had better live up to my expectations. Your strangler friend hasn’t struck again, has he?’
‘No, Rory,’ Cody says. ‘This is a personal visit.’
‘Personal? Now that is interesting. I don’t get many of those.’ He gestures towards a brown paper bag in front of him. ‘I have another muffin here, if you’d like to share it.’
‘Er, no thanks. Megan would like to show you something.’
‘Is it a nasty rash in an embarrassing place? I have to warn you that I’m a little rusty when it comes to handling patients who are capable of reacting, so forgive me if I’m a little heavy-handed.’
‘No, Rory,’ says Webley. ‘It’s not a rash.’ She delves into her bag and brings out the two small cardboard boxes.
‘For me? I didn’t know you cared. How lovely.’
‘They’re from my ex-fiancé.’
‘Your ex is sending me gifts?’
‘No. He sent them to me. Only I don’t exactly appreciate the sentiment.’
