Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga

by Wendeberg, A.

  Whenever he found the time.

  The usual case-solving-circus seemed to be that coroner, Division H, and the bunch of plainclothes detectives the magistrates called their own, were supposed to race each other. Whoever was the first to apprehend a suspect — whichever suspect — won.

  When Sévère was a young man, he’d clung to the naïve view that police work was truly about finding a culprit and keeping London safe (or comparatively safe), and not about gaining influence and power over the inner workings of the city.

  ‘Can you say anything about the cause of death?’ he asked the doctor.

  ‘Well…’ was the reply. ‘There might be signs of violence.’ Dr Baxter picked up a few vertebrae, arranged the individual pieces on his palm, and pointed at what appeared to be scratch marks.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It is impossible to tell if these injuries were inflicted ante-, peri-, or postmortem. The skeletons are all clean. There’s no soft tissue to work with. Not one bit of flesh or skin left. I’m guessing the infants died five to ten years ago.’

  Sévère took a step forward, leant his cane against the table and gingerly turned over the fragile bones. ‘How likely is it that someone collected nine stillbirths and buried them in flowerpots?’

  ‘The world is the strangest of places. However…’ The doctor held up a pencil, bent over the vertebrae in Sévère’s hand and pointed at a tiny discolouration. ‘Here we might have an indication for internal bleeding. Before the heart stopped beating, that is. Or it might be dirt. It’s impossible to tell. But this does smell of violence, doesn’t it? If I’m not entirely mistaken, these are all illegitimate children farmed out by their mothers soon after birth.’ The doctor shrugged. ‘An everyday occurrence. Ask the Thames Police Office. They are sick of infants floating in the river or lying on the banks.

  Sévère felt an itch at the back of his head. Baby farmers wrapped their dead charges in paper or rags, or sometimes they placed them into cardboard boxes. They threw these packages into dust yards, back alleys, the Thames. Baby farmers cared little about how they rid themselves of their charges as long as the “getting-rid-of” couldn’t be connected to them.

  His gaze touched on each small, planted grave, and each laid-out skeleton. There was accuracy, care. Baxter’s interpretation was simple and straightforward. But it did not fit.

  ‘I need a second opinion,’ Sévère said. ‘Mr Easy, would you be so kind as to send a message to the house surgeon of Guy’s Hospital?’

  ❧

  At four thirty in the afternoon, Dr Johnston of Guy’s Hospital alighted from the cab in front of the mortuary. Per the note he’d received at noon he was to wait for Coroner Sévère before he began his examination. This irritated him a little. Coroners were solicitors, their specialty was the law. Hence, they should keep their noses out of postmortems. But then, Dr Johnson respected every man who strove to increase his knowledge. Rumour had it that the newly-appointed coroner showed an unusual interest in all medical matters related to deaths caused by violence and neglect. If the police were only half as curious as that man…

  Dr Johnston was torn from his thoughts by the noise of shuffling feet. That, too, irritated him. The mortician had been fidgeting a lot these past minutes, his eyes firmly stuck to the infants’ laid-out remains.

  ‘Are you quite all right, Mr Easy?’ Dr Johnston asked without looking up.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I’m all right. Might have caught a cold, though. Or something.’

  ‘Hum,’ said Johnston. He tapped his fingers on the table, extracted his watch from his waistcoat pocket and grumbled, ‘I can’t wait forever.’

  He rolled up his sleeves and began to methodically examine the flowerpots.

  ❧

  Rubbing his left elbow, Alexander Easy watched Johnston work. Easy’s arm had been aching for days. For how long precisely? he wondered, but couldn’t recall when it had begun. Perhaps I should see my physician. Yes, I just might. After Christmas, perhaps? Better yet, after New Year’s Eve. Less clients to attend to, once the annual wave of holiday suicides was over.

  His attention meandered back to the remains of nine tiny human beings. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from them. And slowly, creepily, he felt something inside him begin to unfurl. There was a heaviness in his stomach and a clenching of his ribcage he couldn’t quite explain. Neither could he explain why these nine corpses disturbed him so. He was a mortician. He laid his hands on dead bodies every day.

  ❧

  ‘My apologies, I’m late.’ Sévère stepped through the antechamber and into the viewing room. ‘Dr Johnston, thank you for coming. I know you are a busy man.’

  ‘Hum,’ said Johnston, sorting through potting soil with nimble fingers. He didn’t spare the coroner a glance or even a nod.

  Sévère positioned himself at the mortician’s side, and both men watched Dr Johnston examine every crumb, every square inch of clay pot surface, every fibre of root, every twig, and every bone.

  When, finally, Johnston pressed his hands onto the table and huffed, Easy and Sévère leant forward.

  ‘Well,’ Johnston said. ‘Complicated.’ He brushed the soil off his palms. ‘Let me begin with the facts: We have, as you’ve written in your message to me, nine small bodies in seven flowerpots that have been found on the only balcony of all of Whitechapel Road. One skeleton has recently been disturbed, allegedly by the housekeeper of the household with the balcony in question. The skull of that same skeleton went missing owing to the carelessness of a constable of Division H. This means we have eight bodies that have not been disturbed for one growth season. What might have happened to them before spring of this year is mostly based on conjecture.’

  Sévère cleared his throat. ‘You believe they have been relocated?’

  ‘Most definitely. You see, here.’ Dr Johnston grabbed a sapling and ran his fingers along its roots. ‘The saplings were grafted three, perhaps four years ago. Judging from the development of the roots, they were replanted in spring this year. You may wish to have an expert confirm this. You can see that some of the roots have retained the shape of a smaller pot, while the newly-formed roots are stretching out through the entire space of the new, larger pot. A few of the roots are touching the neonates. Er…the newborns. Hence my conclusion that the saplings were repotted in spring this year. You will notice that the original pots must have been too small to contain any of these bodies. Whoever repotted the trees, moved the bodies from somewhere to here.’ He waved at the pots.

  ‘Now, I can’t tell you much about the original burial ground of the neonates, but I can tell you where they have not been buried.’

  ‘Go on,’ Sévère said.

  ‘Let me breathe, lad, and I will pour out all that I am able to glean from the little you’ve given me.’ Johnston tut-tutted, one eyebrow raised at Sévère.

  He took his time to indicate the surface of each skull and each eye socket while explaining, ‘Only a few of the fresh root filaments have grown into the cavities or cracks, which tells me something about how much time the bodies have spent in these particular pots. However…’ Johnston exhaled, sending a cloud of condensation into the cold air. ‘Next time, do me a favour and summon me before Baxter-the-Axter gets his hands on the evidence.’

  ‘I will. And I greatly appreciate your offer.’

  ‘But I must warn you, Sévère. Should you ever call me in for a trifle, I will establish a routine of first attending to all of my patients before I attend to your enquiries. Which might take me several days.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Very well then.’ Johnston turned back to the table. ‘All the neonates are skeletonised…meaning all bones are pretty clean. Only here and there are small bits of ligament. Especially on these two.’ He indicated a pair of skeletons on the far left of the table.

  ‘You will notice that each skeleton appears a little darker than its left-hand neighbour. The bodies on the left are the freshest, the ones on the right ha
ve been buried the longest: not only does the dark brown colour of the bones indicate that they have spent an extended period of time underground, the bones also show a higher degree of degradation.’ He pointed to hands and feet that lacked fingers and toes.

  ‘In my opinion, the soil dissolved the small bones of the hands and feet. Look, here.’ Johnston picked up part of a pelvis and brushed his index finger over its brownish surface. ‘It’s rough. Slightly acidic soil is found in most of England and Scotland. Bones, especially those of neonates, will dissolve — slowly, but surely. However, you’d find the pelvises disarticulated either way, as the ossification centres haven’t fused yet. Er…the parts of the… Never mind. It simply means you’d find three separate bones for each innominate and five separate elements for the sacrum. If there is ligament remaining, it may hold the five separate centres that form the sacrum together — as you can see in two of the nine neonates, but the pelvises would still be found as three separate bones for each innominate.’

  Sévère scribbled furiously in his notepad. ‘Don’t you think rats might have carried away the small limbs?’

  ‘Rodents will take what they can gnaw off, but there are very few scratch and bite marks on these bones. And here comes my first gift to you, Sévère: these neonates were not buried in London. They spent considerable time in a less populated area before they were taken on a journey together with the apple trees. The ones on the right, the darkest ones, must have been buried for a period of about ten years. Perhaps more. If they’d spent ten years in London soil, there would be nothing left for me to examine. The rat population is rather high in the city.’

  Sévère huffed. ‘My list of suspects has just increased dramatically: most of England and Scotland, excluding large cities.’

  The doctor tut-tutted. ‘Sévère, you must learn to be patient. Let the old surgeon give you one bit of information at a time, else your brain might explode. Now, here comes my second gift to you: Someone has taken great care to protect the bodies. Someone might have loved these children.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Sévère found himself surprisingly undisturbed by the fact that Guy’s house surgeon had thrown aside etiquette and taken to calling him “lad” and “Sévère.” He wasn’t sure if this was an indication of disrespect, but decided to ponder the question later.

  ‘Mr Easy, are you quite all right?’ Johnston asked.

  Sévère turned to the mortician who’d been quite invisible to him these past minutes. The man looked pasty.

  Mr Easy blinked. ‘Uh. Yes. Thank you. I’m just…a little tired. It has been a long day.’

  ‘Indeed it has. Is. Anyway.’ Johnston turned his attention back to Sévère. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if these were all siblings. They were buried soon after their death and exhumed a few years later to be carefully buried again. Not a single one of the larger bones has gone missing. Except, of course, for the skull the good constable lost. The two pairs buried together might be twins: they show almost identical signs of ageing. But this is a tad too wild of a guess for my taste. These infants were cherished; I’m absolutely certain of it. There is, however, the unfortunate evidence of their violent deaths.’

  He picked up a row of vertebrae from one of the freshest skeletons and pointed to three fine lines carved into the bone. ‘These are cuts. Their appearance indicates that the cutting was done around the time of death. Adjacent to these cuts, the discolouration differs from the darkening of the entire skeleton, the latter resulting from the soil it was buried in. By the way, I’ve found three different types of soil — you might want to consult an expert on these. But this discolouration, here, where the cuts are, is different. It’s blood.’

  ‘But…’ Sévère pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to summon his limited medical knowledge. ‘A surgeon once told me that when a body lies on its back, that’s where the blood pools. Couldn’t the same thing have happened with these children? That they were born dead, the cuts were inflicted after birth for whatever reason, and that they were placed on their backs allowing blood to stain the bones of the neck?’

  ‘How long does a birth typically take?’ Johnston asked with a patient smile, the same he applied to his students.

  ‘Several hours?’

  ‘How quickly does blood congeal?’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Precisely. If what you have theorised were true, then all of these must have died in the birth canal only minutes before their throats were cut. Now, who cuts the throat of stillborns? Really, Sévère!’

  ‘Who in his right mind would do this to nine children?’ Mr Easy whispered, his voice a hoarse croak.

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  — Extras —

  The year 2015 in numbers (as of September, 2015):

  - Smallest Arctic’s winter ice cap maximum on record.

  - Warmest January (globally, land and ocean surface) on record.

  - Warmest February (globally, land and ocean surface) on record

  - Warmest March (globally, land and ocean surface) on record.

  - Warmest April (globally, ocean surface) on record.

  - Warmest May (globally, land and ocean surface) on record.

  - Warmest June (globally, land and ocean surface) on record.

  - Warmest July (globally, land and ocean surface) on record, and warmest of all 1627 months measured since January 1880.

  - Warmest August (globally, land and ocean surface) on record.

  Source: NOAA, Global Analysis

  …glaciers and ice caps in Arctic Canada, Alaska, northern Scandinavia and Svalbard, Iceland, and the Greenland Ice Sheet itself, continue to lose mass.”

  State of the Climate in 2014

  It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions.

  IPCC Report, Summary for Policy Makers

  A large fraction of species faces increased extinction risk due to climate change during and beyond the 21st century…

  IPCC Report, Summary for Policy Makers

  Polar bears cannot adapt to terrestrial foods (…), and will most likely not be able to adapt to climate change and reduced sea ice extent

  IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptations, and Vulnerability

  Direct impacts of climate changes on the health of Arctic residents include extreme weather events, rapidly changing weather conditions, and increasingly unsafe hunting conditions (physical/mental injuries, death, disease), temperature-related stress (limits of human survival in thermal environment, cold injuries, cold-related diseases), and UV-B radiation (immunosuppression, skin cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cataracts).

  IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Polar Regions

  Indirect effects of climate change on the health of Arctic residents include a complex set of impacts such as changes in animal and plant populations (species responses, infectious diseases), changes in the physical environment (ice and snow, permafrost), diet (food yields, availability of country food), built environment (sanitation infrastructure, water supply system, waste systems, building structures), drinking water access, contaminants (local, long-range transported), and coastal issues (harmful algal blooms, erosion).

  Warming temperatures are enabling increased overwintering survival and distribution of new insects that sting and bite as well as many bird, animal, and insect species that can serve as disease vectors and, in turn, causing an increase in human exposure to new and emerging infectious diseases.

  IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Polar Regions

  Indigenou
s populations in the Arctic—the original Native inhabitants of the region—are considered especially vulnerable to climate change because of their close relationship with the environment and its natural resources for physical, social, and cultural well-being. (…) In habitats across the Arctic, climate changes are affecting these livelihoods through decreased sea ice thickness and extent, less predictable weather, severe storms, sea level rise, changing seasonal melt/freeze-up of rivers and lakes, changes in snow type and timing, increasing shrub growth, permafrost thaw, and storm-related erosion, which, in turn, are causing such severe loss of land in some regions that a number of Alaskan coastal villages are having to relocate entire communities.

  IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Polar Regions

  Traditional knowledge is the historical knowledge of Indigenous peoples accumulated over many generations and it is increasingly emerging as an important knowledge base for more comprehensively addressing the impacts of environmental and other changes as well as development of appropriate adaptation strategies for Indigenous communities. (…) Increasingly, traditional knowledge is being combined with Western scientific knowledge to develop more sustainable adaptation strategies for all communities in the changing climate.

  IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Polar Regions