Blood Royal (9 page)

He stuck two sticks of gum in his mouth as soon as he entered the building and pulled the peppermint taste into his lungs and nose. He hated the morgue,
really
hated it. Not with a poet’s grasp of death, but with a personal grudge.

It was an old building, sitting there forever, built of strong Devonshire brick and made to last a millennium. Like the Abbey it was bone-chillingly cold, but it was a different type of cold than the Abbey, a cold that made Archer shiver whenever he entered the building. The place was not haunted by the ghosts of greatness past, but by horrors—a daily regimen of murder and accident victims being wheeled down the dank corridors from one of the world’s largest metropolises.

The outer building was respectable, a dark gray stone tarnished by the ages and the dampness carried from the Thames. But the ivy on the walls was dark, ugly with burnt edges, as if the living plants were being poisoned by the horrors the building had seen.

Inside the hallways were nicotine-shaded white walls and dark granite floors scarred from the rollers of the gurneys that wheeled the institute’s guests to the autopsy rooms.

Archer hated the place because it had scared the crap out of him. Three years ago his brother, only a couple years older than him, had been brought in, dead from a heart attack. When he came to identify the body, it was laid out on an examining table, mouth gaped open, features locked in frozen pain. Death had not come easily or peacefully—the Archers were a stubborn breed and his brother had locked his jaws on living.

As he stood looking over his brother, affected by his death but not succumbing to the morose—the Archers were a stoic lot and didn’t cry over spilled milk—Archer had glanced up at the ceiling mirror above the examining table. He saw the reflection of his brother, dead on the table, and saw himself at the same time, his own broad features so similar to his brother’s … he realized with a shock what he would look like when it was his turn on the gurney.

He had told no one about having looked death in the eye. And it didn’t keep him from entering the facility. He just chewed gum to temper his taste and smell and kept his hands in his pocket as much as possible, reacting to a fear that he might touch or breathe in something that would kill him.

*   *   *

D
R
. H
ANE WAS EXAMINING THE
body in Room 12C. Archer leaned up against the wall and popped his gum as he watched the pathologist bending over the grisly finds at Westminster Abbey. He had always wondered about autopsy pathologists, again not with the soul of a poet but just out of the morbid curiosity his family was noted for. It was true that most doctors dealt with death, dying was a part of living, but morgue pathologists dealt
only
with death, like morticians. He wondered how they felt cutting up dead bodies, how a pathologist could chop up a dead body, slicing it open with an electric saw, and then sit down to a steak dinner, cooked blood-rare.…

Archer shivered. Was that what the pathologist who sliced him up was going to do—cut him open, run his hands through his intestines, then go home and have liver and onions for dinner?

Hane pulled off his gloves, dumped them in a hazardous materials container, and stepped out into the anteroom.

“They’re dead,” he told Archer. The doctor had a sardonic grin.

The remark threw him. “Of course they’re dead. A man and a woman, two stiffs.”

“Them and the others.”

“Others? What do you mean, others?”

“I’m talking about what you found.”

“Have you been sniffing that stuff you use to kill germs in here? We had a man’s body and a woman’s head brought in from Westminster Abbey. Two decedents, not an army.”

“You had
body parts
brought in from the Abbey.”

“Body parts? What are you talking about?”

“Ears were placed backwards on the head, they’re from someone else’s body.”

“What?”

The pathologist grinned. “I don’t have the lab results back yet, but it’s obvious, from skin tone and the cut left from taking ears off one body and sewing them back on another, the ears and head don’t match.”

“They’re from two victims? We have three stiffs, counting the woman’s head?”

“It gets worse. I’m sure the lab will tell us that the man’s head doesn’t match the body.”

“Doesn’t match the—?”

Dr. Hane grinned with delight. “Someone created a Frankenstein monster, taking body parts and sewing them crudely together.”

“A serial killer.”

“Probably. I’m sure the male body is from three different persons and you have a woman’s head.”

“Cause of deaths?”

“Don’t know yet, none of the parts have mortal wounds, except the cut made separating the parts from the bodies. Unless something comes back with toxicology, we may use a Ouija board to determine cause of death. And there are more surprises.”

“Tell me.”

“The body, the part from the head down, has an abdominal cut that looks the same as an autopsy cut. The internal organs are missing. And the cuts made to separate the parts from the bodies—all made with surgical precision. I’d say that your killer used a surgeon’s saw to cut off the head, the ears, so forth.”

“Mother of God—we’re dealing with a Jack the Ripper copycat. That bloody bastard used to do surgical cuts like that.”

“It looks professional, that’s for sure, as good a cut as I could make myself. So why did the killer do such an obviously crude job of sewing the parts together? And where are the missing parts? Are they going to show up in St. Paul’s or Parliament? There’s a message there, somewhere, that’s what my gut is telling me.”

“Time of death?”

“Deaths,” Hane corrected. “Remember, we’re dealing with at least four people. We’ve sent samples to the lab, they’ll tell us something, but the parts were frozen, so it’ll be tough to get it down pat. We may not get it down to hours or even days unless we have information to fill in the blanks with. Identification would help. We’ve sent the prints to the crime lab.” Hane’s face screwed up. “How does one get a body into Westminster without being seen?”

“Not as hard as it might seem,” Archer said. “Back in the fifties some Scottish radicals stole the coronation throne with the Stone of Scone from the Abbey, all three hundred and some-odd pounds of it. I’m less puzzled by how the body got there than I am
why
the body got there.”

Archer left Hane. On his way out, he met Detective Lois Kramer in the corridor and filled her in on what the pathologist had told him.

“Four bodies, maybe more. Cut up, pieced together, even dissected just like the Ripper used to do it.”

“We have to find this nut,” Kramer said.

“We’ll get him. Dutton can’t disappear off the face of the earth.”

“C’mon, you don’t really think—”

“I don’t think, I know. That son-of-a-bitch is on a murder rampage and I’m going to take him down before he kills again.”

Tony Dutton opened the door, slipped quietly into the dark apartment, and fumbled for the light switch. And then there was light.

“Freakkkkk!”

“Shut up, you ugly birdbrain.”

The African Gray glared at him from its cage across the room. The feathers on its head were ruffled.

“Freakkkkk!”

“Featherbrained bastard. Keep your voice down or I’m going to pluck out that black heart of yours.”

He headed for the kitchenette and grabbed a beer. He leaned back against the sink counter and exchanged glares with the bird. It wasn’t his beer, his flat, or his bird. He was certain his own apartment would be where Archer of the Yard looked for him first.

The beer was okay, but he wouldn’t have given a chipped quid for the flat or the bird. Both belonged to Meg, a photographer who had gone off to Rwanda to cover a war crimes tribunal. Meg’s next-door neighbor was given a key to feed the bird and Dutton got the key when the neighbor took her vacation on the Costa del Sol. Knowing the animosity between Dutton and Dr. Livingstone, the African Gray, Meg had made Dutton solemnly promise that he would not roast the bastard bird over an open fire when it became his turn to feed the creature.

The problems between him and the bird started when the creature got bird fever a couple of years ago. The treatment was to take a hypodermic needle, a needle big enough to excite the passions of a drug addict, and jam it into the bird’s chest. Meg got queasy jamming the big needle in, especially when it made a little popping noise each time the needle was plunged through the bird’s taut paper-thin skin. Dutton had the dirty task of pushing in the needle while Meg held Livingstone. The bird had never forgiven him for it—or forgotten.

The apartment was industrial modern, a loft in a converted factory, the kind of place that artsy-fartsy types drool over while reading designer magazines. Dutton was unable to get into fashion statements that included exposed ducts, pipes, and electrical conduit. His own tastes ran toward the more conventional, rooms that had ceilings he could jump up and touch, flat square walls—four to a room—toilets hidden in rooms behind doors, furniture with four legs on the floor, that sort of thing. As far as he was concerned, Meg’s apartment was designed in hell. Just one room, a small square space with a large wide steel-meshed stairway against the back wall. At the top of the industrial stairway was a small landing where Meg had one of those Japanese beds that resembled a throw rug and was as comfortable as a bed of nails. The rest of the living space was what was left over by the big stairway—off to the left a compact sink, fridge, hot plate, and microwave, to the right the toilet and a claw foot tub separated from the rest of the room only by hospital curtains on rollers.

Hanging from a chain in the open area beneath the stairway landing was a couch. Behind the couch, suspended from a metal bar under the stairway, were her hanging clothes. Going up the stairway were her “dressers”—wicker baskets on almost every step, a basket for underwear, for sweaters, tops, socks, and the rest.

Nothing in the loft was normal or to Dutton’s taste, least of all the artwork. Meg had a fetish in her private photography—male nudes. They were everywhere and exposed
everything
from every possible angle. The blowup shots were on the walls and ceiling. Everywhere you turned in the place you came face-to-face with male anatomy. Maybe he was prejudiced, but he was of the opinion that men looked better with their clothes on.

Ignoring Dr. Livingstone’s squawking, he took his beer across the room and collapsed on the couch, keeping it from swinging by putting down his feet. Meg’s glass coffee table top was held up by a stone figure of a nude man with his male member pointed straight up. Dutton laid magazines on top of the glass so he didn’t have to stare at the guy’s plumbing.

He was over four decades old and had managed not to be on the run from the police most of that time—present situation excluded, although he did do some jail time, a month in the local clink back in the heady days when he was a top journalist and going to jail was a matter of principle.

Besides the fact that there were no grand principles in the Abbey killing, at least none that jumped out and grabbed him, he was fresh out of ideas and had no intention of going to jail for Howler, who was not only a drug addict and street scum, but had probably set him up.

It was entirely possible—hell,
probable
—that Howler freaked out on bad dope, killed someone, and dressed him up like a Madame Tussaud’s wax figure—actually, there were two “someones” who were killed, counting the head in the lap.

But he couldn’t shake the notion that Howler might actually be on to something. As a former idealistic star reporter and current hack writing tabloid trash, Dutton had developed a talent for spotting a story. Like a water witch who dowses for wells with a couple of sticks, he had an instinct for dowsing for stories. It was an itch in his right ear. He scratched the itch now, thinking about Howler and the bloody surprise at the Abbey. The Abbey horrors were insane, but he wasn’t ready just yet to throw Howler to Archer.

Not just a bigger story than the princess shooting the heir to the throne, but a colossal scoop on the subject, was what Howler had baited him with. “She didn’t kill the prince because she was jealous … it’s all in the letter,” had been Howler’s statement on the phone that lured Dutton to the Abbey on a dark and stormy night.

What letter? The bastard wouldn’t tell him, but it was the mention of a letter more than anything else that had hooked him. There had been rumors about a princess vs. prince letter floating around the news business for months, a letter the princess had sent to a friend that was supposed to have revealed some dark, deep secret about the Royals. There were different rumors as to what the letter contained and the one Dutton liked the best was that the princess had become convinced that the prince and his hangers-on had decided she was a nuisance who needed to be put away—in a grave if she wouldn’t voluntarily commit herself to a mental institution.

The notion of a royal murder plot atop a royal murder made a tabloid reporter’s heart beat faster than a pimp visiting a girl’s school.

“What if it was self-defense?” he asked Dr. Livingstone.

“Freakkkk!”

“What if the princess had killed the prince not because of jealousy, but because she believed that he and his cronies were going to do her in?”

The bird had no answer for that one, but he twisted his neck and cocked an eye up at Dutton.

“You can smell it, too, can’t you, featherbrain? It stinks worse than Hamlet’s Denmark.”

Dutton opened another beer and gave the matter as much serious thought as a tabloid reporter was capable. The story wouldn’t be as big as the Princess of Wales blowing the Prince of Wales away, but it would rank as the second greatest story in a millennium. And better than the actual killing, which was caught on videotape and witnessed by millions, it would be an exclusive that he would make Cohn and
Burn
pay the proverbial arm and leg for.