The Man Who Killed (27 page)

Outside the birds watched me from bare trees. People got in my way, stepped on my heels, grimaced in my direction. A beggar with a goiter and crutches eyed me suspiciously as I walked past. A streetcar's trolley pole jumped off the overhead wire and lost its electrical connection. The operator got out to replace the pole and, hauling at the dead cable, spat at me in blame.

It'd been raining for some time, perhaps days. The wind was from the northwest with the first bite of real winter in it and found a way through my clothes to my skin where it nipped at the husbanded warmth therein. I shivered violently and thought how fitting that I was headed for the hospital. At this odd hour in the afternoon classes would be completed if the schedule hadn't changed. I might be in luck, and made a blasphemous prayer to that effect.

If I knew my man he'd be just where he always was. “Smiler” Smilovich. A pushy striving bastard, all side, his the first hand raised for every question, volunteering for every study. Vice-president of the Medical Students' Union. I trusted he'd pulled extra duty at the hospital liaison office, where I hoped to find him. He'd either be there or ostentatiously walking the wards with a stethoscope and thermometer. Smiler was the source of Jack's cocaine, it seemed. That being the case it was no stretch to determine Smiler could also supply my chosen nostrum. He had access to the dispensary and if the man wouldn't accept my money I was prepared to use other measures.

It was only last spring that I'd surrendered those keys myself. I remembered the faces of my reviewing board as I handed them over, with Dr. Meakins grave as Moses. Laughing at them when they threatened to expel me and turn my carcass over to the Sûreté du Québec. I'd made my play, alluding in no uncertain terms to the tale I might spin should I be prosecuted. A pretty piece of blackmail, and one that produced a stalemate, my freedom, and a franked transcript. Now I returned to the scene.

I hurried under bare black elms through the campus's gloomy Scotch ambience, indifferent grey limestone buildings flanking the quadrangle. On a small field to my left three Redmen ran football patterns in the mud. Lights were on at the Redpath Library and through the windows I saw students hunched over books. Laughing varsity-sweatered types passed by and two serious-looking Jews were deep in conversation about Trotsky. From Macdonald a clatter of engineering students in royal purple gave throat: “We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the engineers...”

During orientation week medical students had their own ritual of hazing, a program that culminated in formaldehyde-and-seltzer cocktails down the throat whilst blindfolded in the morgue. The morning after my apprenticeship I'd woken on a gurney with a splitting head and both legs in drying plaster casts.
Grandescunt aucta labore.
By work all things increase and grow, my alma mater's creed, my century's religion.

At University I crossed Pine to the Vic. Smiler'd been in the dressing room backstage at the Princess before Jack and I'd spoken with the Handcuff King. What had he and Price been up to? I skirted around to the private entrance and thence into a back hallway. Inside it was noxious with camphor, carbolic soap, and disinfectant. Underlying all was the sweetness of disease. The eastern wing was still and silent and I trod the scrubbed tiles with feigned confidence. A young nurse pushed a man in a wheelchair. The wet wool of my clothes gave off the odour of dog.

The next corridor was deserted. Turn right, turn right again, and right you are. A light burned behind the pebbled glass of a door that read “Resident Warden.” An interesting position to occupy, as I had, and unique to McGill and the Royal Victoria, as far as I knew. One's duties were varied—assisting in the wards, a little human husbandry, liaison work with the faculty, and so forth. In reality the job had one specific, obscured function. My knowledge of what went on would be the lever to pry morphine from a cabinet.

Gingerly I turned a well-oiled knob and opened the door to a familiar figure behind a desk. Smiler wore a white laboratory coat and was furiously raking his hands through tonsured hair. He didn't notice me and my first impression was of the room's unusual disarray. Smiler was a prim, tidy bastard. He muttered to himself in an agitated fashion. As my presence made itself manifest Smiler's wide eyes turned my way.

“Mick,” he whispered.

He was pale and frightened. Of me? Perhaps. So he should be.

“How, how'd you know? Who told you? Who
else
knows?”

“Knows what? Look at yourself in the mirror, man. You're a wreck.”

“Oh God, what'm I going, what're
we
going to do?” he moaned.

“Calm down, for one.”

Something was very wrong. At his best Smiler was no lion of courage, for all his bluff. He loosened his necktie and rubbed his face. Whatever had happened here presented me with the ideal opportunity. If Smiler was compromised my duty was to exploit the situation. Here was one apple he couldn't polish away.

“It's all over. My God, I'm ruined.”

He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“It's not as bad as all that,” I said. “We'll work it out. Tell me what happened.”

“Don't you know? Why're you here? Who sent you?”

“Listen, man. I know what goes on. Tell me. I can help.”

“Help,” Smiler said, in a faraway voice.

“Yes, help.”

I moved into his field of vision.

“What is it? Cops? What'd they find out?”

“No, no, no. No police, not yet, but they'll be here. They'll know. I knew it was bound to happen sometime but why'd it have to happen to me? Why me?”

Slowly and soothingly I spoke: “Smiler, tell me what it is and I'll see what I can do. It's me, Mick. Did I grass when I was kicked out? No. I know what goes on here but I never breathed a word. What happened? Did someone do something?”

The last query I barked sharply and Smiler started. His stammer jumped with fear. “It's, it's bad.”

“How bad?”

“Nothing can save me.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“I wasn't even, I wasn't even supposed to be here today. I've got a pharmacology paper due. Jacques couldn't come in. I'm co-, co-, covering for him. He was supposed to be here for the, for the, for the...”

“Delivery?” I asked.

“Yes,” whispered Smiler.

So that was it. Several things could rattle a resident student: one was to inadvertently provide the cause of death. Opportunities for error were rife: in my second year a poor fellow had somehow managed to inject a large quantity of air into a hoyden's vein and prompted a fatal embolism. Mistakes often happened. and for all its rigours the discipline of medicine was as prey as any others to pure bad luck. Second to that was being caught out with a stolen dead body. Worst was finding dead a person you knew. “Show me,” I said.

“No, Mick, I can't,” protested Smiler weakly.

“Why not? I know what this's about. Let's have a look.”

“I can't. My God, the police. The police. They'll tell my parents, they'll put me in gaol.”

“No one's going to gaol.”

I put iron in my voice. The need for morphine made me strong and guileful. Here was a different kind of luck and my advantage must be pressed. Do what Jack would. Turn this to your advantage. Get what you want. All that was required of me was to apply correct pressure to his flaw, his cowardice. Before me he snivelled and wiped his nose.

“They came in early this morning with her,” he said.

“Her?” Fear tingled through me. “Who is she?”

“I was here to pick up some notes. I to-, I to-, I took delivery but I didn't have time to check. I had class, biochemistry. I told Jacques about it but he couldn't make it this afternoon so I came in to cover for him. I should've known, should've known something was wrong right away.”

Involuntarily electricity ran up my spine and I felt my
arrectores pilorum
muscles tauten, forcing my hair to stand on end. Smiler's tone was genuine and there was a quality about what he said.

“Show me,” I commanded.

Smiler rose and moved automatically. The word that came to mind was: robot. He went around a dividing wall to the closet in the corner and touched the hidden latch. The secret door slid open to a staircase. My knowledge of where that staircase led had been the trump I'd played to the reviewing board. It was a time-honoured practice. Subjects were always needed, by hook or by crook. Every medical faculty in Christendom and beyond had a similar facility. Here the resident warden's true role was as chamberlain to the world below. I followed Smiler underground.

Twenty-one paces down. My initiation had been with a resident named Jones. He'd played it up as an experience out of Poe and had been onto something there. At the far wall of the subterranean chamber was a heavy door bolted shut that led through to a concealed alley with space for horse and cart to turn around. There was the smell of meat and chemicals, dampness and earth, with unclean instruments on a table by the sink. The weird scene was lit by a lambent green radiance, phosphorus in the stones. Smiler spoke in the dark.

“I should've known something was wrong. We weren't expecting a, a delivery, and they didn't ask the usual amount. They wanted less.”

Smiler turned to me guiltily. I understood. He'd been planning to pocket the difference. Typical Hebrew. He'd changed his mind, however. It was becoming difficult to stand this anticipatory tension.

“I only just unwrapped it, her. Ten minutes before you arrived. I, I thought you knew somehow.”

I couldn't take this at all.

“Who, Goddammit?”

“Mick, I, I can't.”

“Turn on the light.”

Smiler went to the switch and flicked on the current, then shrank away. My eyes adjusted and at first I didn't understand what I was seeing. The shape gained discernible form and I felt a terror. Every fear had been realized, here, before me now.

No.

No.

No.

Laura was on a slab in the middle of the room, her eyes closed.

“GET OUT.”

“Mick?”

“Get out!”

“What're you going to do?”

“Go and strip a bed. Bring back sheets.”

“Sheets?”

“A shroud, man.”

Smiler stood up, his laboratory coat dirtied by the abattoir walls. My eyes had been blinded, seemingly. He came to me.

“Bring half an ounce of morphine powder from the dispensary,” I said.

“What? What for?”

I grabbed Smiler's necktie.

“I'm going to get you out of this scrape so don't ask stupid questions. Understand?”

“I'll do it. I'll do it.”

“Sheets, clean ones. Find a bag, a large one, for hockey equipment or a duffel for the laundry. Clean ones, get it? Don't talk to anyone. And make sure they're clean. It'll be dark soon and we have to move. When did the body snatchers bring her in?”

“Around six this morning.”

“And she's been here all alone since then?”

“Yes. The office's been locked.”

“Keep it locked. Get going.”

The last order jolted Smiler to life, now Dr. Frankenstein's assistant. I couldn't do what the German had, the new Prometheus. I couldn't bring her back. My sight restored with tears, hot and stinging with salt. I blinked them away and heard the door close above.

I turned to Laura. She was resting on the oilskin tarp the resurrection men had brought her in. I wondered how many bodies had been rolled up in it before today. They probably hosed it down and hung the damn thing to dry on a clothesline in a backyard. Common understanding had the profession passing down the generations of a local French-Canadian family since the Patriot rebellion of 1838. Grandfather, father, and son, a caste of untouchables. With shovels and picks they sold the fruits of their labours to the
tête carrée
doctors and students at McGill, an arrangement out of Hogarth or engraved by Doré, a waking nightmare.

I could see livid bruises corresponding to fingers and thumbs around her throat. Her face was very slightly blue and the smallest tip of a tongue protruded. She'd been strangled. I touched her skin. Cold. Her hyoid bone was broken. There was dirt in the folds of her clothes, in her ears, her hair. She'd been in the earth. Someone had wiped her face. She wore a dark brown velvet riding coat, silk chemise, woolen skirt, and leather boots. Nothing indicated that she'd been violated. Her hands were gloved and a strand of pearls was looped around her neck. That was incredible. The grave robbers usually stripped valuables from bodies, a privilege of the profession. I'd seen corpses with jaws that'd been broken open so teeth with gold fillings could be yanked from the bone by pliers. Fingers with rings would be snipped by strong shears. I touched the pearls and didn't need to rub them against the enamel of my teeth to know the pale orbs were real, not paste. The only element missing was a reticule or purse.