Original Sin by James P. D

Author:James, P. D. [James, P. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9780307822529
Goodreads: 13642461
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1994-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

33

The local-authority mortuary had recently been modernized but the exterior remained unaltered. It was a single-storey building of grey London brick approached from a short cul-de-sac, the forecourt bounded by an eight-foot wall. Neither noticeboard nor street number proclaimed its function; those who had business there knew how to find it. It presented to the curious an impression of some dull and not particularly flourishing enterprise where goods were delivered in plain vans and unpacked with discretion. To the right of the door was a garage, large enough to accommodate two undertaker’s vans, from which double doors led to a small reception area with a waiting-room to the left. Here Dalgliesh, arriving a minute before 6:30, found Kate and Daniel already waiting. An attempt had been made to make the waiting-room welcoming with a low round table, four comfortable chairs and a large TV set which Dalgliesh had never found turned off. Perhaps its purpose was less entertainment than therapy; the lab technicians in their unpredictable spells of leisure needed to exchange, however momentarily, the silent corruption of death for the bright ephemeral images of the living world.

He saw that Kate had exchanged her usual tweed jacket and trousers for denim jeans and jacket, and that her thick plait of blonde hair had been tucked inside a peaked jockey cap. He knew why. He too was informally dressed. The half-sweet, half-citrus smell of the disinfectant became almost unnoticeable after the first half-hour but lingered for days in the clothes, permeating his wardrobe with the smell of death. He had early learned to wear nothing that couldn’t be thrown into the washing machine, while he obsessively showered, lifting his face under the power-jet as if the sting of the water could physically wash away more than the smell and the sights of the last two hours. He was due to meet the Commissioner at the Minister’s room in the House of Commons at eight o’clock. Somehow he must find time to get back to his Queenhithe flat to shower before then.

He remembered vividly—how could he not?—the first post-mortem he had attended as a young detective constable. The murder victim had been a twenty-two-year-old prostitute and there had, he recalled, been difficulty over the formal identification of the body since the police had been unable to trace either relatives or close friends. The white undernourished body stretched out on the tray, with the weals of the lash purple as stigmata, had seemed in its pale frigidity the ultimate mute witness to male inhumanity. Looking round at the crowded PM room, the phalanx of officialdom, he had reflected that Theresa Burns was receiving in death a great deal more attention from the agents of the state than she had received in life. The pathologist then had been Doc McGregor, one of the old school of egregious individualists, a rigid Presbyterian who had insisted on conducting all his post-mortems in the spiritual, if not the physical, odour of sanctity. Dalgliesh remembered his rebuke to a technician who had responded with a brief laugh to a colleague’s muttered witticism.

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