“Funny, don’t you think?” Sam frowned. “To me, his accent sounds nothing like Arabic or any of the similar dialects of practicing Muslim people. I might be completely off, but Amir sounds quite continental to me.”
Jan Harris did not take well to Sam’s deviation from what she had already labelled in her one-track mind. For a split second, she contemplated Sam’s approach, but she could not be proven wrong at any cost. “You know the new generation, Sam,” she grabbed at straws. “They adapt. They evolve with the media and the times to assimilate before causing trouble. Of course this young man will not want to sound like a harsh, desert-dwelling Muslim with camel breath and rotten teeth, wearing robes.”
Sam scoffed at the stereotypical description, but held in his need to chuckle. “Naturally,” she said as she continued her disgraceful assumption, “he will have been educated in western schools and taught to speak European English so he could deceive people into thinking his organization is broad-minded and contemporary.”
“Alright,” Sam agreed, if only to not rock the boat yet by correcting her on every point. “So did Amir tell you where to meet him?”
“No,” she sneered like a teenager. “I am to get you to deliver the woman. By the way, her name is Toshana, he says. Smoke?” According to Sam Cleave, Jan Harris had only done one thing right in her entire life, and that was the very thing she had just done – offer him a much desired fag.
“Ta,” he said, taking the weak brand he only smoked for the sake of mock bonding and the urge to start sucking on the police van’s exhaust. His lungs hated him for the crappy tasting tobacco, but he was not about to bail on a free smoke. “Toshana, you say. Toshana who?”
“Don’t know,” Jan Harris groaned as she exhaled. They watched the crowds clearing and fewer people leering at them for smoking on hospital grounds. “That was all he said.” She mimicked the man called Amir with a deep voice and a rocking head, for effect. “Tell Sam Cleave we want Toshana, and if he refuses to tell you, air the video clip of the car bolting through the men in the street and Sam’s face as he gets in to flee.” She took a long drag of her bad cigarette and looked up at the sky before pinning Sam with her eyes, as if she were saying, “Now, tell me where she is.”
Jan Harris’s cell phone rang, the vibration drilling through Sam’s head under the juvenile jingle she had for a ring tone. ‘Saved by the bell’, as they say, Sam thought in immense relief. In truth, he had no idea how to tell Jan that he had been playing her for information. Then again, being such a stout professional as she surely deemed herself, she should have known that the vocation of her choice had more back stabbings than a Shakespearian tragedy.
He finished the cigarette and extinguished the butt in the sand next to him, not even trying to eavesdrop on her conversation. Something about the call had to be supremely engaging, because of the manner in which Jan Harris reacted. She looked at Sam, but did not see him, her mouth agape, her eyes gleaming with excitement – the true look of a vulture upon discovery of carrion. Sam knew that look. It was the face of calamity, the likes of which dripped with the cursed honey that leeches would suckle like babes.
“New story?” he asked, as she hung up the phone and gestured to her cameraman to get in the car. Jan Harris looked suspicious of his interest, but again, she could not resist knowing more than he, and rubbing it in. It was a childish trait that persisted in her personality, but Sam used it every time to manipulate the superficial woman and her know-it-all ignorance. “I was just informed by my people,” she bragged, “that there was an incident down at the Nirvana Morgue in Barking. Apparently corpses were stolen and a woman on duty there was kidnapped in the early hours of this morning.”
Sam was relieved that Jan Harris was distracted from her initial threat to him, but his own interest was sparked. He could, however, never let her know that he was intrigued or else she would make sure that he did not get in on the details. “Looks like this whole area is just brimming with crime lately,” Sam sighed, looking at the mangled filter of the cigarette between his fingers.
“Don’t think I am leaving here without Toshana’s whereabouts,” she reminded him sternly.
“You know, the longer you stand here bitching at me, the more likely it is that some other reporter is stealing your scoop over there,” Sam replied smoothly, trying not to laugh at the good fortune circumstance and coincidence exhibited for him. Jan Harris was in too much of a hurry to bother with analyzing the psychological basis of Sam’s banter.
Come on, Harris. Be a good greedy bitch and take the bait, Sam thought. Take me with you.
Harris weighed up the importance of a new scoop with Toshana’s location and found that neither could be sacrificed for the other. She knew that Sam was right – she had no time to lose.
“You’re coming with me, mister,” she snapped, hands on her hips in a desperate claim to authority.
Yes! Sam cried in his mind, elated.
“Because I’m not letting you disappear again until I got what I need from you,” she continued in self-righteous assertion. “In return,” she hesitated somewhat, “you can accompany me on the new story.”
Playing along splendidly, Sam feigned reluctance before pretending to give in to her demands. “Alright,” he said, “but we can’t stay for long. I still have to take you to Toshana.”
“We’ll stay as long as is needed, Cleave,” she commanded. “God, I thought you knew how this worked.”
Behind her, Sam grinned as they hurried to Harris’ SUV opposite the road. Christ, Harris, you are easier than a drunken, jilted fresher.
19
The Voice from the Ether
Arriving at the Upney Lane facility, Sam couldn’t wait to get out of the car. It seemed that even sharing a vehicle with the insufferable Jan Harris was too much, what with her love for British boy bands and open-mouthed chewing while she navigated the streets at the pace of a glacier. Even her camera man, Steve, sat staring out the window for so much of the trip that Sam swore the man’s neck had to be readjusted when they turned into Upney Lane.
“Get the camera ready, Steve,” Harris whined through the lapping sound of teeth releasing wet Wrigley’s every time her jaw moved. “I want to film from the moment we get out of the car, just in case something is already happening outside. You got that?”
Steve just nodded, his eyes fixed in vexation as his left hand waited on the door handle. Sam was in the same ready position as the car came to a halt, climbing up on the sidewalk just outside the entrance of the rickety parking area. Harris watched Sam in the rear view mirror to make sure he did not abscond before she obtained her information. As they exited the car, Sam followed the jiggling ass of the overweight cameraman. His wide bottom was threatening to shed his trousers with every step as he tried to catch up to Harris, but Sam had to abandon all humor for now.
He was actually keen to see what had happened at Nirvana Public Morgue. Corpse-napping had a macabre, albeit intriguing edge on crime that London did not encounter every day, something Sam would normally associate with his own escapades when running with Purdue and Nina.
Nina, his heart reverberated suddenly. He’d successfully avoided thinking about her all day and now, when he was trying to focus on something out of the ordinary, she popped up in his mind. After this, he would have to give her a call, even if it was from a police station. He was certain that he would soon be arrested, thanks to Harris. There was no way she would not utilize a choice opportunity to sink him if he did not give up Toshana.
“This way!” he heard Harris shout at poor, out of breath Steve. They tried to get through the first line of journalists that had already formed on the front steps, where a similar scene was playing out to the one they had just come from. Sam sauntered behind them with no intention of fighting for a place in front. He knew better. Hands in pockets, he strolled to the fringe of the commotion and observed what he could.
Although he lamented the fact that he had no equipment, not even a cell phone,
with him, Sam reckoned it had served him better not to bring anything with him this time. At least, with the recent surprise party the assassin couple had thrown at him and Jan Harris’ unexpected arrival, he had nothing valuable on him. That would all have been lost by now.
“Can I help you, sir?” a police officer asked. He had noticed the lone man walking around without aim with a bloody bandage on his hand. Such observations would normally be construed as suspicious by policemen.
“No thank you, officer,” Sam replied.
“Off with you then,” the officer suggested. Sam knew he could not prove that he was more than a vagrant. After all, he looked like shit – bloodied, with his clothing in dirty disarray and his hair unkempt from the rumble he was in at the hospital. His eye caught the red suit of Jan Harris among the churning crowd. Associating himself with one of these journalists present would not win him any favor with the police anyway, so he accepted the shunning and slowly walked back to the car.
But Sam’s scruffy hair offered assistance in his reconnaissance, obscuring his prying eyes from the policeman who watched him leave. Gradually the sun was rising behind the murky clouds over Barking, illuminating the dreary world around the railway lines with a monotone misery. Two headlights, dimmed, raced into the entrance and took an immediate right into the staff parking area, away from the public parking in front of the building’s main façade.
Nobody saw it, because their backs were turned in their frenzy to sweet-talk the police into a statement. But Sam did, and he used the last bit of the night’s shadow to sneak into the second entrance just short of the main gate. At a close distance, two red break lights blinked under the glare of a pale, white streetlight on the other side of the wall fence that was crowned with rusty barbed wire.
On approach, Sam noticed that the car was a humble sedan, some green, pre-2012 model. When the red lights were doused, he heard the driver’s door open. Sam did his best not to startle the driver by addressing them from a ways away.
“Good morning!” he exclaimed confidently. “Thought you would never show up.”
With his charade, he included a light chuckle to make things cordial with the stranger. In truth, he had no idea who it was or what their purpose would be, but bluffing his way into things was Sam’s forte.
“You are?” the man in the trench coat asked Sam. He looked in a hurry and came straight toward Sam before he even received an answer, so the journalist decided to go with it.
“Sam Cleave,” Sam introduced himself. “I take it you are the medical examiner in charge? Those reporters are making things very difficult for us to investigate the case. Bloody vultures. They have no respect for the victims in these regards.”
“Tell me about it!” the man agreed, shaking his head as he shook Sam’s healthy hand. “Dr. Barry Hooper, head medical examiner. I am absolutely shattered to hear that Dr. Gould was kidnapped!” He wheezed as he rushed forward to get to the office, looking ashen.
“Excuse me, what did you say?” Sam choked, hoping he did not hear what he thought he did. “Who?”
Dr. Hooper did not lose cadence in his lunging steps as he repeated, “Dr. Gould. She was researching in our offices last night. The animals who stole the bodies took her with them, and I think I’m going to throw up. She was our guest, you know, from Edinburgh.”
“Dr. Nina Gould, the historian?” Sam asked with a crack in his voice, trying not to lose it.
“Yes, that’s the one, Mr. Cleave,” Dr. Hooper affirmed as they approached the police sergeant who had sent Sam away before. Realizing suddenly that Sam knew Nina, he stopped in his tracks and frowned at Sam. “My God, you know her?”
He needed no answer from Sam. Barry could see the tall, dark-eyed man’s face lose all life and color, his lips slightly agape in shock. Pursing his lips in conviction, Barry Hooper slapped Sam’s upper arm reassuringly and sympathized. “Come, son, let’s go see what happened so we can sort this out, hey?” He turned to the police officer and flashed his identification. “Dr. Barry Hooper,” he announced. Pointing at Sam, he said, “And this is my colleague, Mr. Cleave. Who is in charge here?”
With a look of warning, the policeman scowled at Sam while calling his superior.
“Sir, this is Dr. Hooper, head M.E., and his colleague, Mr. Cleave. They need to get inside if the preliminaries and sweeps are done, sir,” he reported to the gentle-faced captain.
The captain nodded and held out his arm to direct Sam and Barry into the smaller door of the administration archive building. As he entered the building, Sam glanced back to see Jan Harris staring at him, fuming. He had beaten her again. For fear of her releasing the footage she had on him, Sam motioned that she should wait for him before he disappeared through the door.
Inside, the place smelled of old papers and dust. Barry accompanied the captain to the morgue itself and the offices Nina had been taken from. After a day and night of continuous violence and pain, Sam was beginning to feel the fatigue grip his body. However, it was the surreal discovery of Nina’s abduction in a most coincidental chain of events that forced him ahead.
From previous close calls, he knew very well that time was a luxury when it concerned abductions, and there was no time for him to recuperate until he knew who had taken Nina. He had to know everything and he could only get it from this Barry character, he figured.
“She appears to have been discovered in here,” the captain said, “before they took her. The CCTV cameras were blacked out before the perpetrators entered the premises.”
They stepped up to the threshold of Dr. Glen Victor’s office, beholding the bedlam of the intrusion. Severed twine, used for toe tags, lay strewn over the chair. At the top of the chair, the headrest was stained dark with blood spatter, a sight that overwhelmed Sam to a point of sickness. Fighting the urge to vomit from the sheer pandemonium of his imagination at seeing his beloved Nina’s blood, Sam almost doubled over. Still, he forced himself to recover; he had no choice.
Barry could see the devastation in the young man, and he knew that he had to help him at all costs.
“Dr. Hooper, are there any security cameras for the front parking area?” Sam asked, swallowing hard.
“There is one,” he replied, but the captain interrupted. “They entered through the ceiling, coming from, we think, the railroad tracks.”
“So no footage of them,” Sam stated, ruling out identification by CCTV. “No prints?”
“We have collected prints, Mr. Cleave, but we doubt they were that reckless. I bet the prints we run will belong to staff…and Dr. Gould,” the captain told Sam. “We think Dr. Gould was tied to the chair,” he continued informing them, innocent of the knowledge that the victim was a close friend of the tall young man, “but the amount of blood and the fact that there is no body has me confident that she was not killed…at least not here.”
Barry could see Sam’s mind reeling at the insensitive commentary of the police investigator. He stepped in quickly and asked, “Could you please show me where the bodies were taken out through, captain?”
“Yes, certainly. Follow me through here,” the investigator agreed. As he took the lead, Dr. Barry Hooper glanced back at Sam as if to give him some time alone in the office to gather his own evidence, uninterrupted by lurid speculation about his friend. Sam gave the old Samaritan a nod of gratitude, and when they were out of sight, he sank down on the small bench by the coffee maker, trying not to weep.
“My God, Nina,” he murmured, “where did you go?”
He avoided looking at the blood on the medical examiner’s chair, yet it called him, subliminally beckoning him to suffer. The office was a mess of papers, spilled water, and coffee granules that made the dirty carpet sticky. Even the coffee pot was shattered in the corner and potted plants on top of the file cabinet were overturned on the floor below. Feeling hopeless and contrite for not running after her when she’d left his flat, Sam gasped for breath.
In the adjacent morgue, staff discussed the death of one
of the assistants and the night security guard in hushed tones. They stood away from where the last forensic evidence had been collected by the local crime scene unit, who incidentally were based two laboratories down the corridor in the new lab wing of the Nirvana Morgue.
Their echoing voices in the hollow, tiled room almost drowned out the noise outside at the front door. Sam’s mind was racing with Nina’s words, those she’d spoken in concern; those he’d rebuked in intolerance. Inadvertently he succumbed to the urge and reached out to touch the remnants of her blood.
It was then that he saw the medical examiner’s PBX on the desk, undisturbed. A long shot, Sam thought to press redial from the extension. After all, he had to cover all the bases. His finger activated the melodic tone of the redial function and, with sweaty fingertips, he waited for it to ring.
“St. Columbanus Church,” a man answered.
Sam gulped as his body began to quiver under the yolk of tribulation. “Father Harper?”
“Aye?”
Sam fainted.
20
The Mephistopheles Phenomenon
Purdue woke up feeling well rested, although he did not remember coming to bed. His head felt heavy, but he blamed it on too much champagne consumed after the contract with Countess Baldwin had been concluded.
“Headache?” he heard the delectable woman say, and Purdue immediately remembered her skin and her scent. He opened his eyes. “You’re frowning and groaning,” she smiled. She was sitting at the window, sipping her tea. The morning brightness blurred the borders of her silhouette, illuminating her beauty with a halo and blinding him to the rest of her. “Hangover?”
“Actually,” he smiled back at her, “I have no headache. Just feels like I have a rock weighing on my head.”
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