EPISODE TWENTY
1584 Words
TWENTY
I found the cold office attached to the post-mortem theatre. I pushed open one half of the double door leading straight into the theatre. A strong smell of carbolic assailed my nostrils. Beneath the white light, on the operating table, lay Turner's white torso, with a hunched-up Walton dressed in surgical green, busy at one end.
He turned, holding an unrecognizable lump of blood-soaked tissue in his gloved glands.
"Ah, here you are. Glad you could make it."
I nodded at the cadaver, Turner's empty eye sockets seeming in some way to be a gesture of horror, and I could not bear to look at the opened body.
"How's it going?"
Walton made a face.
"This fellow was not just killed, not even butchered. Whoever did this, mutilated him."
I grimaced.
"You mean the eyes being pushed out?"
The old doctor inserted the lump of bloody tissue which I now recognized as liver, into a jar.
"I do not. Get yourself kitted up. I could do with some help."
Mystified, I made my way to the changing room.
A bleary-eyed Roome, accompanied by the ever-faithful Allum, arrived half-an-hour later; they could hear the showers running. Roome sagged into a chair next to me and yawned, long, and hard.
"God, I'm f****d. I doubt if even Doctor Walton could hold my attention for long tonight."
"Oh, I think he will," I said.
When Walton appeared five minutes later, Roome's eyelids had given up the struggle, and Allum's face reflected his exhaustion.
"Good evening, Doctor. I'm afraid Inspector Roome is near the end of his tether."
Roome opened an eye.
"Not quite yet Allum. Well then, Doctor, what did the post-mortem give you?"
The doctor pulled up a chair, and sat facing the policemen, while I sat still shocked at, what we had discovered. Unable to speak.
Walton scratched his chin.
"Corporal Turner."
The Doctor jerked his head in the direction of the theatre.
"Had been cut about. The other victim didn't end up like that."
Roome seemed alert.
"Cut about? Do you mean he used a knife? I didn't see any evidence of that when we brought him in."
Walton shook his head.
"No, I only discovered it when we turned him on his side."
"On his side? I don't understand."
Walton shook his head again.
"Neither did I to begin with, but then we realized pieced of him had been removed."
Allum could not help a sickened grunt of disgust as Roome drew in his breath through clenched teeth.
"Jesus! Is there no end to this? What's missing?"
The old doctor took out his large handkerchief and blew his nose before replying.
"Portions of the femoris and gluteus Maximus were sliced off."
Roome appeared baffled.
"Come again."
"The femoris muscle is on the upper leg -- the back of the thigh; the gluteus Maximus is what you sit upon. Do you understand the implications, Inspector?"
Roome frowned.
"Ritual mutilation?"
The doctor sniffed.
"True, of course. But no, I had something more unpalatable in mind."
"Like what?"
"Cannibalism."
*
Roome searched Walton's face for any hint of the dry humour the latter was famous for. There was not a flicker of it.
"Dear God, why do you think that?"
I stood up and took the floor.
"Ask yourself. Why shear off some of the best lean meat areas? The only possible reason that makes any sort of sense, repulsive as it is. Besides, we had a hint of it before with all those bite marks. Whatever it is has acquired a knife, and he is hungry."
Roome closed his eyes and massaged his eyelids with his fingers before opening them again.
"Are you certain? Couldn't it just be accidental?"
Walton shook his head.
"No, it was quite deliberate."
Allum shifted his weight forward in his chair.
"Would you say the person showed medical knowledge?"
"Difficult to tell. Mark you, it was done; cut along the planes of the muscle."
Roome's face was a picture of distaste.
"So, our killer possesses a knife and is feeding on his kind."
I shook my head.
"I don't think so."
Surprised, he looked up at the contradiction, and then he understood.
"Of course, I was forgetting. You don't think of this as human, do you?"
I did not answer, but Allum did.
"You can't blame him, sir. I don't know either now."
But Walton was shaking his head.
"The spermatozoa histologically speaking, points to a human origin, can be no doubt in my mind about that."
Roome tightened his mouth and uttered a non-committal grunt.
"What about the films? Anything?"
"Joanne's still working on them. They are blank; over-exposed because of the radiation, we think. But there were a couple of indistinct lines on them. I thought we might get something more out of it she made them up into a form of a cine-strip, and we protected them on to a screen. She is having trouble, but she is a first-rate technician. Promised to bring it over as soon as possible."
Walton nodded.
"If it is possible, Joanne will do it. Great faith in that girl; the island's lucky she is living here."
I started to open his mouth to tell them but closed it. Joanne, will them soon enough?
Roome began to pace the room, stopping by the small clinical wall blackboard.
"Can we just list that we know about this thing?"
He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board:
KILLS IN A FRENZY
He checked the doctor, before speaking.
"Is it correct to say that there is no clear method? The victims died of multiple injuries, blood loss, shock, that sort of thing?"
Walton nodded.
Roome broke the chalk as he started to write on the board. He brushed some dust from his coat sleeve and continued:
SEXUAL ASSAULT -- THE WOMAN.
Without turning around, he tapped the last entry with the chalk and said, "Which brings me to point number three." The chalk squeaked as he wrote:
SPERM HUMAN, RADIATION DAMAGE.
Roome placed the chalk in its ledge, dusted his hands together and faced me.
"And that seems to be that. Whatever else we find it must be human, and male."
I stood up.
"I'm not arguing with that. It is fine as far as it goes. But the mystery just does not end there, does it?"
I stepped forward and took up the discarded chalk as Roome stood back.
"What about these points?" I added a fourth to the list.
CANNIBALISM.
"That's a fearsome thing to cope with for a start."
MASK.
"There's something very funny about that, and I'm sure not worn just to frighten people, not out here in the wild country. In a suburban rape case or a kidnapping, yes, but out here?"
SURVIVAL.
I faced Walton this time.
"Don't you think it odd to say the least how it manages to survive in sub-zero temperatures, with ease?"
Walton pulled his pipe from out of his mouth.
"We don't know that he hasn't got excellent shelter somewhere. Maybe he's being looked after."
My face expressed my scepticism.
"I noticed the presence of some sort of breathing apparatus. The pipe I saw was the like the stuff used for gasmasks. I think he is wearing some sort of protective suit. And that would tie in with the radio-activity and the pieces of rocket tail fin seen by the RAF."
Walton stopped the re-lighting of his pipe.
"What's this about a rocket?"
I told him about the RAF Typhoon's flying over the wreckage. It was Walton's turn to have a sceptical expression.
"You're not suggesting are you, that this man survived any form of extra-terrestrial descent into the cold North Sea, and that the incident went unnoticed by our radar?"
"If it is from outer-space, who knows what technology it might use to enter our atmosphere unnoticed."
Walton cut in dismissively.
"This is all unlikely. With the RAF and the LUFTWAFFE filling our skies, there is not any chance of anything coming down without somebody knowing about it. A life from another planet is a hell of a long shot. The chance of such a happening is very remote, and for it to be human-like in such cellular detail is almost impossible I would think."
I frowned knowing when to accept defeat.
"I suppose not. But again, we can't be sure, one hundred per cent sure, can we?"
It was Walton's turn to tilt his head to one side in begrudging assent.
I followed it up.
"If you do not like the idea, what other explanation can you offer? That somewhere on this bloody island has been doing a Frankenstein and got away with it?"
Roome was adamant.
"The area on the north of Onehouse is barren country and inhabited only a few cottages. There is no way anybody could be doing anything like that without us knowing."
In strong contrast to the others' voices, Allum was gruff.
"What about where the German's dropped their bombs? Might they disturb something from the past?"
Roome was gentle in his tone.
"You mean, the bombing released The Thing from Outer Space? No, sergeant, that's more unlikely even than his outer space theory."
Roome gestured in my direction.
"Though the biological similarity could be better explained."
I replaced the chalk in its ledge.
"All right. So, what we got? Because there is something out there, and it's scaring the f**k out of me."
A baffled silence followed.
- Writer
