by Giles Milton
He ran his finger up the coastline, looking at the names of the inlets and harbours. Bredefjord, Soranerbraeen, Skaerfjorden. And Miss Boyd’s Land. Miss Louisa Boyd. He remembered, years back, reading about the expedition she had led up the north coast of Greenland in search of Amundsen.
He traced a line around a blue inlet of water until his finger had left the sea far behind and was travelling over the smooth expanse of ice-cap, heading south-east across the whiteness. Here, the map was a complete blank. There weren’t even any names. His finger reached X, marked in red on the map. It was close to an inlet, three hundred miles from nowhere. Ferris Clark. A lonely place to die.
‘Everythin’ alright?’ Destinee was speaking.
‘Just what I needed.’
‘Just shout if you want somethin’ more.’
He finished the pizza and then drank off the Coke. He glanced at the time on his mobile. A quick power nap and then he’d head back to ZAKRON.
SIX
Carla, the receptionist, looked up from her computer screen as he entered the building.
‘Doctor Raven, hello again.’
She started flicking through a pile of envelopes on the desk in front of her.
‘Here, this one’s for you,’ she said as he walked towards her. ‘Just printed it off.’
‘For me?’
‘Real sorry you’re leaving us so soon. Thought you’d be here a week or so.’
Jack took the envelope. He immediately saw it was a plane ticket from Las Vegas to London. Departure 27 July, at 14.25. He glanced at his watch. That was in three days.
Carla noticed his frown. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘Who booked this?’
‘I did. Tom - Doctor Lawyer – asked me to. Said I should get the first available flight. It’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes. Just perfect. Did you cancel the old one?’
‘Ah, no,’ she said. ‘D’you want me to?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do it later.’
‘Take a seat. Tammy said she’d be down in a minute. She’s going to give you a quick tour.’
Tammy appeared right on cue, an apologetic expression written across her face. The top two buttons of her lab coat had come undone, revealing a slender neck. She led him to one side. ‘Look I’m real sorry about everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t even know what to say. I’m entirely to blame. All my idea. And I had no idea Tom would be so – ’
‘No problem,’ said Jack with a smile. ‘Really. Don’t worry. I’m not even annoyed. And he’s going to reimburse me for it all.’
‘On top of everything else you must be wiped,’ she said, still in her own train of thought. ‘I get terrible jetlag, especially flying west.’
Jack pulled a box of Modafinil from his pocket. ‘These help. And dead bodies always sharpen the mind.’
She led him down to the far end of the corridor where a door slid open automatically. It led into in a different laboratory from the one housing Ferris Clark. It was cold, only a few degrees above freezing, and lit with rows of halogen spots. The walls were lined with glass cabinets, all steel and glass, containing specialist medical equipment.
‘Least I can do is give you a tour,’ she said. ‘Explain what we do. You haven’t even seen what we’re about.’
‘I was hoping you’d show me round. I want to know how it works. Who chooses to come here?’
Tammy waved her hand around the lab, pointing to various items of equipment. Three Superheart defibrillators, two ventilators with dedicated anaesthetic machines, a set of pulse oximeters and a cupboard filled with nasogastric pipes. There was a sequential compression device and a biospectral index monitor. One of the cupboards was filled with aspiration tubes and suction pumps. The place was like a state-of-the-art intensive care unit.
Jack walked across to the bank of computers that lined the side wall. They were using the G6OXS system. Not many labs in England could afford that.
‘And this, here, is ALP,’ said Tammy, laying her hands on another computer the size of a small cupboard. It had a surface of brushed steel and two interactive panels, one at the front and one on the side.
‘ALP?’ he said.
‘Latest acquisition. Only took delivery three weeks ago. It links all the equipment here - dialysis, defibs, sat monitors. Coordinates them all.’
She tapped a code into one of the panels then turned back to face him.
‘Say something.’
‘What d’you mean, say something? What shall I say?’
A light on the computer blinked and then an automated voice responded. Voice not recognized. Request permission to start VRR.
‘VRR?’
‘Voice Recognition Registration. Soon as he hears a new voice he starts processing it into his memory. Shouldn’t do it now. Tom’ll throw a fit. In fact -’
She paused.
‘You won’t tell Tom I’ve shown you this?’
Jack laughed. ‘What’s the problem? State secrets?’
Tammy stood in front of the computer, one hand resting on its shiny surface. ‘Co-developed with Plaxon in California. Sacramento.’
‘The pharmaceutical guys? You work with them?’
‘Yep. There’s a whole research wing there. And they’ve been working closely with this place. That’s Tom’s department. He got them on board and also got them helping with finance. The Plaxon guys are dead serious and mind-blowingly rich.’
Jack nodded slowly. The equipment in front of him outclassed anything he’d ever seen in England.
‘So how does it work?’ he asked. ‘With the bodies, I mean?’
‘We call them clients.’
‘Fine, clients. Whatever. How does it work?’
She paused for a moment before answering. And then she began speaking like an official guide. ‘Cryonics has always been more about hope than reality. Hope that technology will develop, solutions found. That’s why people choose it. And it’s also why they choose ZAKRON.
‘Cancer patients, leukaemia, terminal illnesses, they’re the ones we usually get. They’re desperate, often young. They don’t want to die.
‘We took a girl just last month. Twenty-six. Terminal cancer. Real sad it was. She didn’t want to let go. Died praying that one day we’d bring her back from the deep freeze.’
‘They die here? In this lab?’ Jack’s voice betrayed his surprise.
‘Yeah. We aim to have them die here, if possible. There’s a team on stand-by when they’re close to the end. Even the coroner’s here. We have to get death certified immediately, see. Sounds crazy, but that’s how it is. There’s a huge legal side to all of this.
‘Once it’s all been signed we can start injecting them with the cryo-protectant.’
‘That’s this?’ said Jack, pointing to one of the refrigerated cabinets.
Tammy nodded. ‘Yep. It’s what stops the cells, tissue, the internal organs being damaged by the liquid nitrogen. And that’s – ’
She paused for a moment.
‘And that’s what’s so strange about Ferris Clark. He was never injected. Never preserved. Never given anything. Yet his internal organs are just perfect, like you saw from the scans.’
She led him into the lab next door, a larger space that housed four containers made of greenish, low emissivity glass.
‘Once they’re legally dead, injected, we cool them down to one-hundred-and-thirty below.’
She walked over to a gleaming aluminium tube, eight feet in length and marked with the code A-3491. Her body was reflected in the metal, only elongated into a slim band.
‘Soon as they’re frozen, bang, they go in one of these. It’s sealed and the whole unit gets immersed in liquid nitrogen. Minus one-hundred-and-ninety-six. Their new home. Once they’re here they’re safe forever. As long as ZAKRON exists, they will too.’
Jack listened carefully to what she was saying. In effect they were putting death on hold, preserving corpses in the final second of life when their heart had just beat
its last. If they hadn’t elected for the cyro-protectant, the hours that followed would see them tipped into rigor mortis. But they’d been cryonically frozen before that could happen.
Tammy looked sharply at her watch. ‘Almost three. Better get back to reception. Remember what I said? You haven’t seen any of this. And by the way, Tom told me he’s only giving you fifteen minutes with Ferris Clark.’
‘Thought it was thirty. Why only fifteen?’
‘He’s changed his mind. Something he’s in a habit of doing. You’re lucky he didn’t cancel it completely.’
*
Tammy led him back to the entrance area. ‘Back in a moment,’ she said, heading off to the washroom. ‘Tom, Hunter, they’re just getting the body ready. They’ll be out in a moment.’
Jack took a seat by the water machine and watched the slow stream of bubbles rising to the surface. He’d performed more autopsies than he cared to remember yet each time it was different. The only constant was that sense of stepping into the unknown, a benign intruder in the final moments of a person’s life.
In his lectures, he always began with the words written above the door of every autopsy theatre. Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succerere vitae. This is the place where death delights in helping the living. They gave dignity to the corpse on the slab, even if it was five or six weeks dead.
He remembered when he’d first tried to explain it to Karin, but she hadn’t got it at all. ‘Seriously Jack, it’s just morbid,’ she’d said. ‘You’re obsessed with everything morbid.’
Hunter was the first one to appear in the entrance area, speaking loudly into his phone. He was too preoccupied to acknowledge Jack. Next to arrive was Doctor Luke Gonzales, dressed in an immaculately ironed lab-coat.
‘Afternoon, Doctor Raven.’ His voice had no intonation. He sounded like the computer in the lab.
Tammy stepped back into the entrance area and took a seat next to Jack.
‘All prepared?’ she said in a low voice. ‘I really hope you find something. It’ll go some way to making up for me dragging you here. I feel really – ’
Tom Lawyer was the last to arrive. He’d left his lab-coat undone, exposing a chest that had been waxed. He avoided eye contact with everyone except Hunter and spoke briskly and sparsely. He wanted to get the whole thing wrapped up as fast as possible.
‘So -’
He swept them out of the waiting area in great strides, forcing them all to play catch-up behind him. ‘You know the procedure. We’ll go straight through to decontamination. We’ll be seen by Jackie.’
He turned to face Jack.
‘Jackie’s the lab nurse.’
Jack nodded.
‘I hardly need remind everyone that he’s been moved from one sterile environment to another. No bacteria, no viruses. This examination is purely for Doctor Raven’s benefit and – ’ he turned to address Jack – ‘hope you don’t mind if we keep it short. We’ve got a busy day, but at least you’ll have seen him before you leave.’
He paused for a second.
‘Did Carla get you the plane tickets?’
‘Yes, she gave them to me just now.’
‘She tried to get you on an earlier plane but that was the first one with seats.’
*
The smell was the first thing to hit you. The dense, wet, sweet smell of putrefaction. Or phenol, swilled over surfaces and floors. Or hypochlorite, acrid, ammoniac, that went smack to the eyes. But here, with Ferris Clark, there was nothing. Only a block of freezing air that cut him as he entered the lab. The room was close to zero. The thermometer showed the air temperature to be hovering at a fraction above four degrees. He could feel the sting in his nostrils.
The body had been taken out of the vitrification box and now lay there on a specialist gurney chilled to well below freezing. He was outstretched, naked, a frozen block of a uniform colour that was not quite human flesh. His hair seemed blonder and thicker than when Jack had seen him in the glass container.
Hair can keep growing after death. Elizabeth Siddal came up at every lecture. Coffin full of hair when Rossetti dug her up. But Ferris Clark’s hair had not grown at all. In places it had frozen into a tangle, like ice-cold wire wool, but at the sides it was unmistakably the cut of a 1940’s soldier. Regulation. Trimmed just days before he died.
Six wires were attached to his chest with blue silicon suction pads. They linked him to one of the computer systems. The other three were wired to a vitrification machine. The computer panel was constantly flashing with readings and information.
Jack took a couple of paces back from the body and did what he always did, pausing to take an overview. This was usually the point when the stench really hit, lurching your breakfast to your throat. But not this time.
His eyes made a complete tour of the body: chest, hips, groin, legs, arms. The knees. Fingers and toes. Then he turned back to the head. It was important to study the form. The muscle structure, the bones. And also the skin. The skin held many clues, if only you knew what you were looking for. Lacerations. Bruises. Had pressure been applied to the throat? Had he been involved in a fight?’
Tom entered the laboratory a few seconds after Jack.
‘We’ll do two five minute shifts. And five minutes to warm up in between.’
The others entered the lab soon after, Hunter first, then Tammy and Doctor Gonzales.
The most disturbing aspect of Ferris Clark was his left eye. Jack had noticed it before. But now, close up, he could see that the retina was glassy from the cold but very far from dead.
No lesions, no creases in the skin. The ice had smoothed away the body hair, like he’d been put through a full Brazilian. No perfusions, abrasions or grazes. In fact no surface blemish of any kind.
He studied the epidermis of the chest and limbs. Also beautifully smooth. No birthmarks. No moles. Unusual but not uncommon. Slightly enlarged thyroid cartilage, but nothing untoward. His right ear was glued to his head with a small sliver of ice.
He looked at the groin and scrotum. It had tightened in on itself and the testicles had withdrawn inside the body, a natural reaction caused by the shock of the cold. Penis curled and half hidden but clearly uncircumcised.
He examined the feet and hands, ankles and wrists. There was abrasion around the ankles, perhaps surface bruising, but the severe cold had acted like an eraser, wiping away any damage to the epidermis. Light bruises to the upper chest, but neither significant nor serious. The sort of bruising you might get from a fall from skis.
‘Need to measure him.’
Doctor Gonzales held the sterile measuring-line fast against Ferris Clark’s head while Jack took the reading at the feet. Six foot, one inch. Chest: 38 inches. Upper leg: 17 inches. Lower leg: 19 inches.
Hunter was bored. He took the smaller ruler and placed it alongside Ferris Clark’s penis. The organ was snared with ice and half-tucked into his groin, like a letter stuck in an envelope. ‘Seven inches.’ He laughed and looked at Tammy. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘We’re in a lab, Hunter.’
Jack wasn’t listening. He moved round to the head, examining it closely. A small patch of right eyebrow was missing, a few eyelashes lost to the ice. A light stubble, like fine sand stuck to the face. He was beautifully intact, like an Albrecht Dürer, the Christ with golden hair.
An experienced eye can read the moment of death. The Simlett murder had been one of the worst. Her jaw had been stuck rigid at the point of death, leaving a twisted grimace on her face. He’d never seen that before. But the only expression on Ferris Clark was a blank. No pain. No suffering. No trace of the acute hypothermia he must have experienced. He gave the appearance of having been in control of every last part of himself until the very last second. Tammy was right about one thing. It was as if he’d been tipped into a vat of liquid nitrogen.
He asked her for some lube, ignoring Hunter’s low snigger. He rubbed it onto his surgical gloves to stop them from sticking to Ferris Clark’s skin. Then he cupped
his hands together and placed them carefully under the back of the skull, feeling for the parietal bone. The cold stabbed through his gloves. He gave himself fifteen seconds to feel his way around the skull.
Frontal bone. Occipital bone. And then the side. Zygomatic arch, frontonasal structure. Beautiful.
Tom glanced at the clock. ‘Five’s already up. Let’s go. Five minute break. Then back in.’
‘One minute.’ Jack looked up from the corpse. ‘I’ll join you -’
He moved to the side of Ferris Clark’s body as the others chattered their way out of the lab. He could hear Hunter’s distant joking as they warmed themselves up in the adjoining room.
He wanted a clearer look at the ribcage, examine the muscle structure. There were clues to be found in muscle structure. As he bent downwards to take a closer look he was suddenly brought up short. Ferris Clark’s left arm was glued to his body with ice and the skin was powdered with frost, but there was a strange skin blemish close to the armpit, almost concealed. So faint he almost missed it.
He rubbed at the flesh and an icy dust fell from the corpse like a shower of dandruff. It settled on the gurney and stuck to its frozen surface. He rubbed again, only harder, in an attempt to expose the pallid skin beneath. Then he wedged his fingers between Ferris Clark’s arm and his side. For a second they were glued to the cold flesh. And then he leaned in to enable him to examine it more closely.
It looked like a small birthmark, bluish, oval-shaped, the size of a thumb-print. The pressure of the ice had nipped the muscle into the armpit and rendered it almost invisible. He tried to measure it, but it was hard to get an accurate reading. Approximately four-and-a-half centimeters from the left nipple.
There are two types of birthmark, pigmented and vascular. Pigmented, because there’s too much pigment. That’s what causes dermal melanocytosis and moles. Vascular, because there’s too much blood. That’s what causes port-wine stains. All benign and rarely hereditary.