Sanctus

Chapter 64

Liv, Arkadian and Reis stood motionless.

Then Arkadian broke the spell. He glanced up into the corner of the room. ‘Out!’ he said, shepherding them into the relative warmth of the hallway before heading back towards the stairs. ‘Don’t let anyone go in there,’ he called back at Reis. ‘Check your office to see if anything’s missing — and don’t touch anything.’

Reis and Liv exchanged glances. A flicker of recognition showed in his eyes, then a look of uneasiness as he realized who she must be. Liv looked back up the corridor before it turned into pity. She saw Arkadian disappear through the doors leading to the stairwell and started after him, partly to find out what was going on and partly so she wouldn’t have to hear the pathologist telling her how sorry he was for her loss.

Arkadian took the stairs two at a time and burst back through the doors leading to reception. It was already full of people making their way back into the building. He pushed his way towards the security office.

‘Call central dispatch,’ he said to the forbidding-looking matriarch behind the desk. ‘Tell them there’s been a break-in at the morgue. Tell them to send a forensics team and stand by for a description of the suspects.’

The woman glared at him sternly over a pair of half-moon glasses, her face a picture of indignation.

‘Now!’ he bellowed, snapping everyone to attention. ‘And no one’s to go down to the sub-basement.’

The nerve centre of the morgue’s security operation was just about big enough to house a chair, a desk and several towers of computer memory recording the feeds from eighteen CCTVs. A couple of flat-screen monitors sat on the desktop, each split into three grids with an image from a different camera in every square. A uniformed man in his fifties looked up as Arkadian entered, the glow of the twin screens glinting on the Reactolite lenses of glasses still dark from the outside daylight.

Arkadian flashed his badge. ‘Can you punch up the feed covering the cold-storage chamber in the lower basement?’

Light flooded into the darkened room as the door beside him opened again. Arkadian turned and saw Liv squeeze in behind him. She stared resolutely at the monitors to avoid making eye contact. He thought about asking her to leave, but decided he’d prefer to keep her close.

He dug out his phone and scrolled through the caller log until he found the call Reis had made when the fire alarm had gone off. Nine-fourteen. One of the screens was now filled with the feed from the camera he’d spotted in the corner of the cold store. ‘Can you wind it back to o-nine-fourteen, and play it from there?’

The guard pulled down the menu and tapped in the time. The picture jumped and a man appeared in the middle of the previously empty room, manoeuvring an empty trolley towards one of the lockers.

‘Who’s that?’ Arkadian asked.

The security guard peered at the screen. The man stopped and looked around, registering the shrill sound of the alarm.

‘Don’t know his name, but he works here,’ the security guard said. ‘I think he’s one of the lab techs.’

The recording continued in three-second jerks until the man vanished, moving like a badly animated marionette.

‘Look at the sheet.’ Liv pointed at the screen. ‘Neatly folded on top of the trolley. When we got there it was all bunched up.’

‘Can you speed it up a little?’ Arkadian asked.

The guard hit a key a couple of times and the numbers jumped forward in five second units, then ten. When the clock flipped to o-nine-seventeen another figure stepped into the frame.

‘Hold it,’ Arkadian said.

The guard resumed its three-second default.

The newcomer was tall, black hair, black clothes. They couldn’t see his face. He kept his back to the camera the whole time. He moved past the trolley and stopped in front of the drawer Arkadian had opened. He reached for the handle with a gloved hand and pulled. Liv felt her heart pound against her ribcage. She saw the outline of a body-bag.

The man unzipped it. Despite the poor quality of the image, Liv recognized the bearded face immediately and felt tears pricking her eyes. A moment later the interloper shifted his position and obscured Samuel’s face with his body. He seemed to be searching for something in his jacket pocket. He struggled against the material for a few moments then removed the glove from his right hand and recommenced his search, quickly finding whatever it was he was looking for. He leaned across the open drawer with whatever he had retrieved from the pocket, then whipped his head round towards the door, clearly disturbed by something. He had kept his face tilted down, wary of the camera, but Liv still saw enough to recognize him.

‘Gabriel. .’ she breathed. ‘He picked me up at the airport last night.’

Arkadian grabbed the desk phone, his eyes never leaving the screen as the man zipped up the body-bag, slid the drawer back into place, climbed on to the trolley and pulled up the plastic sheet.

‘This is Inspector Davud Arkadian. We’ve just had a break-in at the morgue; I want all units on the lookout for a suspect. A white male. Slender build. Maybe six-one, six-two. Black clothes — ’

Two new figures dressed as paramedics appeared, pushing a trolley between them. The taller one glanced up at the camera but it was impossible to see his face. Both wore surgical masks, caps, lab coats and Nitrile gloves. Arkadian watched them move straight to Sam’s locker. They checked inside the body-bag, hoisted it on to the trolley, closed the drawer and wheeled the earthly remains of Samuel Newton out of frame. The whole operation had taken less than fifteen seconds.

Gabriel rose like something out of a horror film and followed them, leaving the plastic sheet how they had discovered it.

Arkadian covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Is there a camera in the delivery bay?’

The cold-storage chamber was replaced by a raised concrete platform with an ambulance on one side and a set of overlapping plastic doors on the other. Liv thought it looked like the entrance to a meat-processing factory.

After a few seconds the doors buckled and a trolley crashed through them. The two paramedics practically threw it into the back of the ambulance.

Arkadian removed his hand from the mouthpiece. ‘We have a new priority. I want an urgent BOLO for an ambulance outbound from the city morgue, heading towards Hallelujah Crescent. Licence plate unknown. Suspects are two Caucasian males, medium-heavy build, one maybe six-three, the other around five-ten, both dressed as paramedics. Be advised the suspects are wanted for break-in and unlawful seizure and are fleeing the crime scene. A photo of the secondary suspect will be circulated immediately.’

He slammed down the phone. ‘Can you lift images of the suspects from the footage and email it to central dispatch?’ It wasn’t a request.

Arkadian didn’t wait for the guard’s reply. He needed to talk to Reis.