The Broken Ones (19 page)

He fed Sissy, washed, and slipped naked into bed, curled against the cold. He lay still for a long time, listening to every shift and sigh the house made. Finally, he slept.

He was walking down either a corridor or a tunnel, dark and miserably cold. The walls were stone or brick, and his steps echoed and re-echoed. He was lost. Ahead, something glowed with a strange
light that was neither natural nor comforting—a greenish, rotten luminescence. He wanted to turn back, but behind was pitch darkness. He pressed on toward the glow. It came from a wall that closed off the passageway. It seemed to be made of long, narrow bricks. No; as he got closer, he saw that wasn’t right. It was not a wall at all but a high, wide tapestry—a hundred feet across, and so high its top was lost in inky darkness. This curtain was woven with the bones and skulls of ten thousand people. Femurs and rib bones were the weft, and humeri and ulnae the warp. Skulls were ivory sequins. This awful drapery was the source of the sick, eldritch light—and behind it was a yawning darkness more terrible than the narrow, blind confusion he’d left behind. He knew he had to go. Then the curtain rippled. The bilious light shimmered, and he heard an unmusical tinkle, the discord of a thousand untuned pianos as bone ticked against bone. Something was on the other side. Something huge. It was coming.

He turned to flee, but his legs and arms were leaden and refused to shift. He fell to the ground, but the best he could manage was a desperate crawl, fingers and toes scrabbling for purchase on the slick rock floor. The bones clattered, a sound louder than the breaking of boulders. The air shifted as something massive moved behind him, coming closer, coming fast. He screamed in terror. Whatever had woken behind the curtain of bone shrieked in hungry delight.

Chapter
11

W
inter sunlight was a bright shout, spearing down between lush green leaves and bouncing countless diamonds off frosted car windscreens.

Oscar’s hands felt light on the wheel. Despite the dog’s head, and despite his dreams, he had awakened feeling refreshed, and as he drove he hummed. He hadn’t saved a life, but he’d saved a body from destruction. He was on the job, and it felt good.

He remembered a morning, more than twenty years ago. He’d risen quietly and padded on bare feet down the hall to the kitchen. The night before, he’d heard his father return late. Someone had raped and killed a young boy in the bayside suburbs; Sandro had been one of the detectives on the task force. Oscar had guessed they’d found another curled and voided little body. The silence that came home with Alessandro Mariani was as solid and dreadful as a corpse, so frigidly still that Oscar had heard the two words his parents had spoken from all the way across the house. “Another?” his mother had asked. “Yes,” Sandro had replied. Vedetta Mariani knew her husband well enough not to ask any more. Sandro claimed he didn’t bring his work home, but he did: not in words but in arctic silences where he’d stop mid-sentence to stare for long minutes at something deep in his own mind, and in his sudden bursts of white-hot anger at a drawer that wouldn’t close properly or a pen that had run out of ink. Oscar would look to his mother, who would smile softly, shake her head, and remind him that Papa would be fine in a minute or two. But that night, two decades ago, the dread quiet had been so profound, and his father’s sleepless pacing through the hall so untouchable, that Oscar thought the house would be frozen by sadness forever. The next morning when he’d crept to the kitchen, Oscar was
shocked to find his mother at the stove frying
salsicce
and his father, dressed for work, behind her with his arms around her waist, both of them smiling as they slowly swayed to Jerry Vale turned low on the radio. After Sandro had left for work, Oscar asked his mother how his father could have forgotten last night’s horrors so easily. “He hasn’t forgotten,” she’d replied. “But he’s smart enough to know that today is not yesterday.”

Oscar arrived at his destination. He parked his car and went into a white pavilion.

In the cold marble hallway hung dozens of framed black-and-white photographs. As Oscar passed, one caught his eye: the old image was of a monkey in a silk jersey and a matching cap on the back of a grinning greyhound; dog and monkey both looked oddly serene, as if the moment captured couldn’t be more natural. From ahead came a metallic crack that made Oscar flinch, followed by a swelling chorus of men’s voices and the harsh, rising tones of a race announcer. Oscar stepped again into brittle winter sunlight.

A low turquoise rail ran along the inside of the oval track, and a surging mass of dogs chased a mechanical lure. The announcer’s words over the loudspeakers were also a swirling race: “Up the inside comes Jet Stream followed by Ragged Ace and Hardly Shaken and into the far turn as No Argument
thunnnders
up from behind.…”

Oscar found Teddy Gillin among the dozens of men leaning hopefully on the trackside fence. The race finished. Men tore up tickets and left the fence.

Gillin’s silver hair was combed, his tie was neatly knotted, and his suit, though twenty years old, had been pressed with care. Oscar could see that Gillin’s blue eyes were bloodshot but bright with intelligence. They rolled when they saw Oscar.

“No.”

“I haven’t even asked for anything,” Oscar said.

Gillin clasped his hands behind his back as he walked back toward the pavilion. Somewhere, someone cheered, and punters shot sour glances in that direction. “Your being here is question enough, and I say, thank you but no.”

Gillin’s voice had rounded diction that sounded more British than Australian. Oscar loved the man. Dr. Theodore Gillin had been Oscar’s general practitioner as long as he could remember. Sandro and
Vedetta Mariani had taken young Oscar to Gillin for tetanus shots, a split scalp, concussion, two broken arms, tonsillitis, mumps, and a frank (and, frankly, embarrassing) talk about nocturnal emissions. As an adult Oscar took himself to Gillin for flu shots, ingrown toenails, ear infections, and a referral for sperm-motility testing back when he and Sabine had been planning to start a family. The scales had tipped when Gillin’s love of drink outweighed his cautious care for his patients and he administered a quadruple dose of diamorphine to a girl who was fortunate to live. The girl’s family sued, and Gillin was struck off the medical register. He lost his wife and his house. Oscar often wondered about that drink that had tipped Gillin over the edge. Had he poured the shot knowing that this could be the one that would kill his career?

“How’s your father?” Gillin asked.

“You know. Only happy when he’s in a right shit of a mood.” Gillin glared from under heavy white brows, and Oscar sighed. “He’s fine. Apart from the arthritis.”

“He still on Warfarin?”

Oscar nodded, although it was only an educated guess. Sandro Mariani liked discussing his health almost as much as he had enjoyed talking about his work.

“Make sure he keeps up his blood tests.”

“They cost a fortune.”

“Then find a fortune. It’s your father’s health, for Christ’s sake. Money comes and goes; parents don’t.”

“That’s not my experience.”

They made it to the pavilion bar. Oscar ordered two Tullamore Dews, one neat, and tried not to flinch when the bartender gave the price. Oscar handed Gillin his drink.

“May misfortune follow you the rest of your life—” Gillin began.

“—and never catch up,” Oscar finished.

He winced as he sipped, but the whiskey bit kindly on the way down and spread warmth through his belly. Gillin downed it as easily as tepid tea.

“You hate gambling as much as your old man does.” Gillin waved to the bartender for another, then looked sidelong at Oscar. “Here for the fashion tips?”

“I need a smart doctor.”

Gillin chuckled humorlessly. “Then you’re two moves behind.” His
eyes narrowed. “You haven’t got the clap, because idiots like you don’t screw around. It’s not heart disease, because of all the red wine you Mediterraneans drink.”

“I’m not Italian.”

Gillin waved that away. “So, what is it? You hooked on something? Go cold turkey, grow some balls.”

“I need a postmortem.”

Gillin’s eyebrows rose a little. “Get a pathologist.”

“I had a pathologist. Two pathologists. One has disappeared and the other is actively uninterested.”

Gillin looked at Oscar for a long moment. Then he sighed and swirled his whiskey glass, inspecting the amber liquid. “I remember soon after your father brought you home. What were you, six?”

“Five.”

Gillin nodded. “Small blond kid. Angry little bastard. You’d got it into your head you didn’t like your new house or your new family, and you went to run away. Climbed out the second-story window, over a garage or some such?”

Oscar remembered the corrugated-iron roof of the carport outside his bedroom window. In October, the jacaranda near it was thick with panicles of purple flowers. When the breeze blew, a surreal lavender snowfall would cover the roof, which in sunlight buzzed lazily with bees. He remembered vividly running away with great success at fifteen, and the frigid distance that had developed between him and Sandro afterward, but he didn’t recall this earlier incident.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you’d waited until late—at any rate, it was late when Sandro brought you to me—and you’d climbed out of your window onto the roof so you could jump to the tree, like some chimpanzee. Only you were more like some retarded chimpanzee who couldn’t climb and couldn’t jump. You missed by a mile and landed on your head on the grass. Half a foot to the left, Sandro said, you’d have hit concrete and split your skull like a melon. He brought you to my home surgery. You’d opened your scalp and were bleeding like it was going out of fashion. And Sandro was crying.”

Oscar shook his head. He couldn’t imagine Sandro Mariani’s stern, soldierly face wet with tears.

“He said, ‘Look after his head, Teddy. He’s a smart boy. Look after
his head.’ ” Gillin looked at Oscar. “Given that you are ignoring very strong hints from two stiff-shifters—who, unlike you, actually completed their degrees—I have to wonder if your father wasted a trip that night.”

Oscar sipped. “Or whether you failed to look after my precious head.”

The race caller announced the scratching of two entries from the next race. Gillin sat upright, staring out across the track.

“I’m Joe Blow, Oscar. Worse, I’m
fallen
. Any findings I made, any statements, would be
non gradus anus rodentum
. They’d be ridiculed, or worse.”

“I’d keep your name off the paperwork.”

Gillin shook his head. “Do you know how long it’s been since I looked inside a dead person? 1970. I remember, because it was the year Hendrix died and I was wondering what they’d find inside him. Robert Johnson was my guess.”

“I don’t want an internal autopsy—I’m hoping we can get that later. I just want your thoughts.”

For the first time, Gillin was lost for words. The men drank in silence. Around them, punters checked their watches, finished drinks, and began the shuffle back to the racetrack.

“You’re right,” Oscar said, finally, and put down his glass. “There probably isn’t much to find, anyway.”

He stood. The men shook hands.

“Who was it?” Gillin asked.

“We don’t know. A young girl.”

“Addict? Hooker?”

“I don’t think so,” Oscar replied. “Someone mutilated her and threw her into the sewer works, hoping she’d be pulped.”

“Good Lord,” Gillin muttered.

Oscar leaned forward. “Teddy, you nearly killed a girl. It was a mistake. But now here’s a chance to help bring one back from the dead.”

Gillin looked up at Oscar evenly. “Are you sure you’re not doing this for exactly the same reason?”

Oscar stared.

The last of the spectators hurried past to the track. Oscar watched Gillin feel the pull of the tide. The old man drained his drink and
stood. But he hesitated, troubled. “You bloody Marianis. Coming to me with your troubles.”

He put his hands behind his back and began to walk away.

“Doctor?” Oscar called. “Please?”

Gillin walked another few steps, then stopped.

“Bloody Marianis.”

At Kannis’s butchery, a man Oscar recognized from his previous visit watched them for a moment, gave a comradely nod, and disappeared into the shopfront.

“Unorthodox,” Gillin said.

Oscar unlocked the side gate and the cold-room padlock. As his fingers closed on the door handle, he realized that his heart was stamping, and the flesh on his arm had grown tight, as if expecting to be grabbed. But when the fluorescent blinked awake, the girl’s body bag was lying small and still on the makeshift bench.

They dressed in items Oscar had purchased en route: plastic aprons, face masks, latex gloves. Gillin stared at the white bag.

“No X-ray,” he said. “No internal exam. No blood tests. I hope you have low expectations.”

Oscar produced a notepad. “There’s always something.”

They unzipped the cadaver bag, and again an exhalation of sweet early decay filled the cold air. Seeing the faceless skull, the gouges as deep as shark bites, the torn and twisted limbs, Gillin let out a hiss.