"You got the file okay. Anything?"
Dan set down his glass. "A question first. You kept something back on the phone yesterday. You said the Rattigan woman was bitten to death."
"That's what happened," Harry said. He looked tanned, less florid than Dan remembered; in his casual clothes he could have been another tourist visiting the local wineries.
"Her teeth were taken as well, weren't they?"
Harry barely hesitated. "How'd you know?"
Dan lifted a manila folder from the seat beside him. "The results of Net searches. Know what a toother is, Harry?"
"Tell me."
"It was a vocation, to call it that, associated with body-snatching back in the eighteenth, nineteenth centuries. Back when resurrectionists—lovely name—dug up bodies to sell to medical academies for their anatomy classes. There were people who did the same to get the teeth. Sold them to dentists to make false teeth."
"Dug up corpses?"
"Sometimes. Or did deals with resurrection men already in the trade. Mostly they'd roam battlefields and take teeth from dead soldiers."
"You're kidding."
"Not when you think about it. It was much better than getting teeth from the gibbet or the grave. Ivory and whalebone were either too expensive or decayed. No enamel coating. Teeth made from porcelain sounded wrong or were too brittle. Corpse teeth were better, soldiers' teeth usually best of all, injuries permitting. Sets of authentic Waterloo Teeth fetch quite a bit these days."
"What, dentures made from soldiers who died at Waterloo?"
Dan nodded. "Fifty thousand in a single day. Mostly young men. Supply caught up with demand with battles like that. But that's the thing. There weren't many battles on that scale. Demand outstripped supply."
"You already knew this stuff?"
"Some of it. You know what I'm like. And that's quite a file you sent. I stayed up late."
Harry had his notebook on the table in front of him. He opened it and began making notes. "Go on."
"Back then there just weren't enough corpses of executed criminals or unknown homeless to satisfy the demand. Not enough from the right age or gender, even when you had poorer people selling their own teeth. Some resurrectionists began killing people."
"And these toothers did too."
"There's little conclusive evidence that I'm aware of. But that's the point, Harry. You do a job like this, you try to make sure there isn't."
"But body-snatchers can't be doing this."
"It presents that way is all I'm saying—a similar MO. If the cemetery desecrations and the Rattigan death are related, as the fragments suggest, we need to allow a context for it."
Harry wrote something and looked up. "So this joker could be proceeding like a modern-day toother."
Dan shrugged. "Just putting it forward, Harry. He took the Rattigan woman's teeth. Used others to kill her. So, a psychopath possibly. A sociopath definitely, probably highly organized. A latter-day resurrectionist? Not in the sense we know it. But we only have the teeth being taken and the single recent murder. I assume there are no similar cases in the CID database?"
Harry shook his head. "The usual run of biting during domestics and sexual assault. Random mostly. Nothing like this."
"Then he may be escalating; either a loner doing his own thing or someone acquainted with the old resurrectionist methodology."
Harry started writing again. "Do you have more on that?"
"Going back a hundred, two hundred years, he'd see a likely subject, get them alone and have an accomplice grab them while he slapped a pitch-plaster over their mouth and nose—"
Harry looked up. "A what?"
"A sticky mass of plaster mixed with pitch. Mostly used during sexual assault, but what some resurrectionists used too. Silenced your victim and incapacitated them. Suffocated them if that was the intention. All over in minutes."
Harry was suitably horrified. "They just held them till they expired?"
"Or did a traditional 'burking'—covered the mouth and nose with their hand till the victim asphyxiated."
"This actually happened?"
"It did. The biting takes it in a completely different direction, of course. Was the Rattigan woman drugged or bound?"
"Not that we can tell."
"That tends to suggest an accomplice. Someone to help restrain her. Do Sheehan's people have anything?"
"Just the fetish, ritual angle, Dan. A loner after trophies. It's early days. But you're taking it further, saying there could be an accomplice, someone getting the teeth for someone else—who then makes dentures and uses them to kill."
Dan glanced around to make sure that they weren't being overheard. They still had the bar virtually to themselves. "Just another possibility, Harry. Much less likely. And no conventional client. There's no economic reason for it now. It presents like that is what I'm saying."
"Okay, so either a loner or a gopher for someone who originally wanted the teeth for fetishistic reasons but is escalating. He now kills people and does the extractions himself. Focusing on females?"
"Seems that way. But until we know more I'm still tempted to say a loner with a special mission."
Harry drained his glass and set it down on the table. "So why do a new grave? Why show his hand like this? Was he interrupted before he could finish? Did he want people to know?"
"He's fixated. He may have seen the Reid woman alive and wanted that particular set of teeth. Like in the Poe story."
Harry frowned. "What Poe story?"
"'Berenice.' A brother obsessed with his sister's teeth extracts them while she's in a cataleptic coma."
"Where do you get this stuff, Dan?"
"They're called books, Harry. But this guy is doing it for himself. And I definitely believe it's a he. He could be using the more traditional techniques."
"Drugs would be easier."
"They would. But he wants them fully conscious. So we're back to the ritual aspect you mentioned."
"That emblematic thing," Harry said.
"The what?"
"Two—three years back. That conversation we had at Rollo's. You said that people try to be more. Have emblematic lives."
Dan never ceased to be amazed by what Harry remembered from their conversations. "Emblematic? I said that?"
"Four beers. You said that. Make themselves meaningful to themselves, you said. Do symbolic things."
"Okay, well this is his thing, Harry. We can't be sure if he's following aspects of the old toother/resurrectionist MO but Sheehan's right. Given the special dentures he's made for himself, doing this has some powerful fetishistic or symbolic meaning for him. And he may have done this a lot: gone somewhere, seen a lovely set of teeth on someone, arranged to get them alone, then suffocated or bitten them and taken their teeth."
"That's horrible. You actually think he may have already done that and hidden the bodies?"
"Because of the desecrations, the older teeth being used, that's how I'm seeing it, and it may get worse." Dan thought of Peter Rait's voices. They're coming over time.
"How could it—ah! He may start removing the teeth while the victims are alive. And conscious?"
Dan deliberately left a silence, waiting for Harry to say it.
It took a five-count. "You think it's already got to that! But the coroner's report for the Rattigan woman showed the extractions were post-mortem."
"Harry, I think that may have been her one bit of good fortune. She died just as he was starting."
Harry shook his head. "Then we can definitely expect more."
"I'd say so. And it depends."
"On what, Dan? On what?"
"On whether it's local. Someone developing his ritual. Or if it's something international that's been relocated here."
"International?"
"Ask Sheehan to check with Interpol or whoever you guys work with now. Find case similarities. Forced dental extractions. Post- and ante-mortem."
"Can you come down to Sydney?"
> "Phone me Monday and I'll let you know. I need to speak with someone first. You could stay around. Visit some wineries, come over for dinner tonight. Annie would love to see you."
They both knew it wouldn't go that way. Not this time. Not yet. "Sorry, Dan. I need to get going with this. Take a rain-check?"
"Roger that," Dan said.
At 2 pm that afternoon, Dan met with Peter Rait and Phillip Crow at a picnic table sheltered by the largest Moreton Bay Fig in the hospital grounds. Peter, thin, black-haired, pale-skinned, on any ordinary day looked a decade younger than his forty-two years, but his recent nightmares had given him an intense, peaked quality that Dan found unsettling. He sat with a manila folder in front of him.
To his left on the same bench was Phil, four years older, fair-headed, stocky, with the sort of weathered but pleasant face that Carla liked to call "old-school Australian." He looked up and smiled as Dan arrived. "Just like old times, Doctor Dan."
"It is, Phil," Dan said as he sat across from them. He had to work not to smile. Peter and Phil were his "psychosleuths," their talent pretty well dormant these last three years. Officially, both men had been rehabilitated back into society; both had elected to stay, their choice, taking accommodation and rations in return for doing odd jobs. And called it Blackwater Psychiatric Hospital, of course.
Given Peter's present state, Dan couldn't enjoy the reunion as much as he would have liked. He went straight to the heart of it.
"Peter, tell me about the voices."
Peter took two typed pages from the folder in front of him. "Here are the transcripts," he said, sounding every bit as tired as he looked.
Dan was surprised by the odd choice of words. "Transcripts? How did you manage that?"
"They keep playing over. Two different conversations now. Two different victims."
"But how—?"
"I just can, Doctor Dan, okay? It's pretty distressing. You can't know how awful it is."
Dan saw that Peter wasn't just tired; he was exhausted. "You can't stop it?"
"Giving you these might do it. Getting them out."
"Nothing else?"
"Not yet. Please, just read them."
Dan looked at the first page.
TRANSCRIPT 1
[miscellaneous sounds]
[male voice / mature, controlled]
"As they say, there is the good news and the bad news."
[terrified female voice, quite young]
"What do you mean?"
"You have a choice here. The good news is that you'll wake up. All your teeth will be gone, but we'll have a relatively easy time with the extractions and you will wake up. You'll be alive. The alternative—you make my job difficult and you won't wake up. That's the deal."
"Why are you doing this?"
"What's it to be?"
"Why?"
"It's necessary. What's it to be?"
"There has to be a reason!"
"I'll count to three."
"Just tell me why! Please!"
"One."
"For God's sake! Why are you doing this? Why?"
"Two. Choose or I will."
"You can't expect me—"
"Three. Too late."
"No! No! I want to wake up! Please! I want to wake up!"
"All right. Just this once."
"One question."
"Go ahead."
"You could drug me and do it. Do whatever you want. Why do I even have to choose?"
"Now that's the thing. And, really, you already know why. I need you conscious for it. I may drug you at the end. Oh, dear, look. You're pissing yourself."
[sobbing]
"Why? Why? Why?"
"You're not listening. It's my thing. I need to see your eyes while I'm doing it."
"Another question."
"There always is. What is it?"
"What will you do with—with them? Afterwards?"
"Make a nice set of dentures. Maybe I could sell them back to you. That would be a rather nice irony, wouldn't it? Irony is quite our thing."
"What about me? Afterwards?"
"You'll wake up. Hate us forever. Go on with the rest of your life."
"But I'll wake up? I will wake up?"
"Make it easy for us now and, yes. You have my word."
"You're saying 'us' and 'our'."
"Oh dear. So I am."
"What's that over there?"
"I think that's enough questions."
"What is that?"
[sundry sounds]
[victim screaming]
[audio ends]
Dan looked up. "Peter—"
"The next one, Doctor Dan. Read the next one, please. Same male voice. Different female victim."
Dan turned to it at once.
TRANSCRIPT 2
[miscellaneous sounds]
"You're crazy!"
"I hope not, for your sake. Major dental work needs a degree of control."
"But why? Why me?"
"The usual reason. Chance. Purest hazard. You were on hand."
"Then pick someone else!"
"From someone else's viewpoint I did. But enough talk. We have a lot to do."
"Listen. Listen to me. My name is Pamela Deering. I'm a mother. I have two little girls. Emma and Grace. Aged 7 and 5. My husband's name—"
[muffled sounds]
"Ssh now, Pamela. No more bonding. We have a lot to do."
"What? What do we have to do?"
"Let's just say that your girls and hubby will have to call you Gummy instead of Mummy." [pause] "That's our little joke, Pamela."
[sobbing]
"Please. Please don't do this."
"We have to, Mu—er—Gummy. It's our thing. It won't take long."
"You're saying 'we,' 'us.' You're not alone. There's someone else."
"Tsk. How rude of me. You want to meet my associate. Over here. Try to turn your head a little more."
[sundry sounds]
"But that's not—"
[victim screaming]
[audio ends]
Dan lowered the pages. "There are two of them. He's not a loner."
"Seems that way," Peter said.
"Do you get accents at all?"
"Educated male. Educated enough. Enunciates carefully so it's hard to know. The first woman sounds English. The Deering woman sounds Australian."
"But not recent. Over time, you said."
Peter nodded. "Sixties, seventies." He gestured to include Phil, as if he were equally part of this, both of them hearing the voices. "You have to protect us, Doctor Dan."
"I always do. That comes first."
"How will you?"
"Our old method. You aren't mentioned. Any locations you give, I'll have Harry say a phonecall came in, anonymous. Someone overheard a disturbance, cries, screaming. Wouldn't give their name."
"They'll buy it?"
"Why not? It happens more and more these days. Remember, we all need to stay out of this."
Phil leant forward. "What happens now?"
"We have a name," Dan said. "Pamela Deering. Harry can check that out. Meanwhile, Peter—"
"I'll keep dreaming."
"You don't have to. We can give you a sedative."
"No," Peter said. "I'm doing it for them."
Dan saw the haunted look in the tired dark eyes. "We need this, Peter."
"I know."
Thirty-two cases were listed in the international database, Harry told Dan on the phone that Monday morning, different countries, different cities, different decades, though it was the sort of statistic that convinced them both that many others existed.
"They say two thousand people a year in New Guinea are killed by coconuts falling on their heads," Harry said. "How do you get a statistic like that? It can only ever be the ones you hear about. It's like that here. These are just the ones that came to the attention of different national authorities and have anything approximating a similar MO."
"What about the time-frame, Har
ry?"
"Dan, we've got cases going back to the thirties and forties, even earlier. Prague. Krakow. Trieste. Bangkok, for heaven's sake! They can't be the same person. It can't be a generational thing. It doesn't work like that."
"I'd normally agree," Dan said. "But you say the MOs are similar for these thirty-two?"
"Victims bitten to death, post- or ante-mortem; the various odontologists' findings give both. Their own teeth removed before, during or after; again there's a range. Older fragments in the wounds in some instances, say, nineteen, twenty per cent."
"Harry—"
"You're not going to say a secret society. An international brotherhood of toothers."
Dan gave a grim smile. "No, but look how it presents. It's as if a very old, well-travelled sociopath has been able to find agents across a lifetime and still has at least one accomplice now, doing his dirty work. The Reid disinterment was done manually, not using a back-hoe. That took a lot of effort."
"You believe this? Sheehan may not buy it."
"At this point I'm just trying to understand it, Harry. Rookwood and Darlinghurst suggest he may be local, at least for now."
"Can you come down to Sydney?"
"On Thursday. I'll be bringing Peter Rait."
Harry knew enough about Peter's gifts not to question it. "He has something?"
"For your eyes only."
"What, Dan?"
"Check if you have a missing person, a possible victim named Pamela Deering." He spelled out the name. "It could be from the sixties or seventies."
"How on earth did—?"
"Harry, you know how this has to be done. Yes or no?"
"Yes. Yes. Pamela Deering. Bring Peter with you. You got somewhere to stay?"
"I've arranged for unofficial digs at the old Gladesville Hospital on Victoria Road. There's a coffee shop on the grounds called Cornucopia. Meet us there around midday Thursday, okay?"
"Cornucopia. Got it."
"And bring a map of Rookwood Cemetery, will you? The adjacent streets."
"You think he lives in the area?"
"Peter needs it."
"Done."
At a convenience store roadstop in Branxton on their drive down that Thursday morning, Peter presented Dan with a third transcript.
Eclipse One Page 11