NINE
Hell of a place for a make-shift morgue, Rachel thought grimly as she took in the boatshed. The overhead florescent lights flickered for a moment as if for dramatic effect when Williams turned them on and she could hear the distant sound of the generator which was in the next room splutter in protest under the strain of the extra power surge before it finally settled back into a more even rhythm again.
The building was dominated by the huge bulk of the canvas covered lifeboat which took up a good three quarters of the space. A long work bench ran along the opposite wall and Rachel’s gaze followed it down to a pathetic looking blood stained bundle at the far end. Not the most dignified of resting places for a life so brutally cut short if Suzy and Williams were to be believed. Well she would soon find out for herself.
She didn’t notice Williams appear at her side until he spoke. “Not ideal, is it?” He said softly.
“No,” she said, the word caught in her throat and she cleared it before continuing. “But like you said, don’t suppose he cares.”
With this she gripped the handle to her medical bag a little tighter and strode over to the body. She placed the bag on the bench next to it and took out a pair of surgical gloves. She offered them to Williams who approached. He held up a hand which was already covered with his own police issue glove, then took the small digital camera out of his coat pocket and place it next to Patten’s bag.
Rachel snapped on the gloves with a practiced efficiency and studied the shroud a good half of which was now stained with dark blood the remaining material had a sickly yellow hue to it thanks to the unflattering light from the florescent strip overhead.
She pulled at the edge of the sheet, which for a moment was caught under the dead weight of the body. It finally came away as she tugged harder and she let it fall away over the bench to reveal the dead man inside.
He was naked and at first glance looked to be in his late forties, his blood matted hair was grey in parts and receding back to thin wisps on the top of his head. His face was badly battered and bruised but still his face was set in a peculiar half smile as though he had just gotten the joke before death had claimed him.
“Ian, you said you thought at first he was struck by lightning?”
“Yeah,” Williams was fiddling with the camera at her side mumbling under his breath until he finally got it to switch on.
“But if he wasn’t, what happened to his clothes?” She could see smudges of soot on his shoulders and neck and patches of red that could have been the beginnings of burns but they were nowhere near the third degree you would expect from a lightning strike.
“I think he may have been hit after he got attacked,” he said and began taking pictures of the body. “When I found him he still had a few bits of clothing on him, but they were burnt to shit, flaked right off when I moved him.”
It didn’t add up, but she had to admit she hadn’t the first clue of what someone who had been hit by lighting would actually look like. Besides, people survived being hit all the time. Didn’t they?
Williams made a face and put the camera down. “We need to turn him over. The wounds are on his back. I need to get a clear shot of them for the Inspector.”
“Okay, ready when you are,” Rachel said and placed her hands under the body’s right shoulder. Williams eased his hands under the man’s lower back and upper thigh.
“On three,” Williams said. “One, two... Three.
They rolled him on his side. “Jesus,” Rachel hissed through her teeth, the man’s back was a mass of deep wounds covered in drying dark blood. They pushed the body onto its front then Williams tugged at the sheet under it so the body laid relatively flat against the bench.
“That’s some nasty shit,” Williams blurted out.
“I’ll say,” Rachel agreed. It took a moment but as she began to examine the gory slashes she started to see some sort of order to the wounds. She wasn’t sure at first but the closer she looked the more it seemed these weren’t just random cuts. This wasn’t just some frenzied attack as she had first thought.
“Tell me you see that?” Williams asked and took a couple of shots. He looked at the screen on the camera as if hoping the digital picture would offer up something more tangible.
“Yeah, I see it, whatever it is.” She looked back to the other end of the boatshed where she remembered she had noticed a large sink by the door when she first came in and sure enough there it was. “Hang on,” she said and ran over to the sink. There was a bucket just under it which she scooped up and filled until it was all but over flowing, then lugged it back over to Williams and the body.
She placed the bucket on the bench and then scooped up some water in her cupped hands and began to rinse the blood from the man’s back. With each handful the wounds became more and more clear. Yes there was definitely a rhyme to this mutilation but she couldn’t quite make out what it was just yet.
As she cleaned the blood from the body, Williams took more pictures. He studied the small screen after each one.
Two symmetrical patterns divided by the man’s spine began to emerge, Rachel wiped off as much of the blood as she could so she could get a better sense of what had been carved there but much to her frustration it eluded her.
Being so intent on the puzzle before her Rachel wasn’t aware Williams had stopped taking pictures until he uttered. “Fuck me,” she turned to him, his face was ashen he shook his head in disbelief, eyes glued to the camera’s screen.
“Ian?”
He had been taking the pictures flat on in landscape and had been looking at them in the same way. But it wasn’t until he happened to turn the camera and looked at the screen in portrait that he got the full desired effect the perpetrator was after. He held the camera up for Rachel to see.
The killer had carved a set of angel’s wings into the flesh of the man’s back. One wing each side of the backbone.
“Jesus H,” Rachel gasped. She hauled herself up on the bench so that she could look down on the body and see the rendering in all its gory detail.
It was like looking at some insanely intricate inkless tattoo. The outline of the two wings had been expertly carved with a thicker blade but it was the obsessive detail of the feathers that really beggared belief. Each individual feather, possibly a dozen or more to each wing had been painstakingly wrought using the thinnest of instruments, perhaps a surgical scalpel or something finer still.
It must have taken hours to create this grim work of art and surely under the most controlled of conditions. But on a living canvas such as this had been?
“You sure he was alive when you found him?” Rachel had to ask.
“Yes,” was all Williams could say unable to take his eyes off the gruesome creation.
Rachel felt a wave of nausea wash over her so she awkwardly climbed down off the bench. If the poor soul had been alive when this had been done to him? Her head swam at the thought. He must have been drugged, that was the only explanation. She shuddered and prayed he had been unconscious when it had happened because the alternative was almost too much to bear.