Scorched Heart (The Firebrand Series Book 4), Helen Harper [free ereaders .txt] 📗

of plastic goggles and some disposable gloves, ‘you think that the bugbear entered and exited the body from the spine?’

I nodded, not taking my eyes off Lazarus for a second. ‘In between its shoulder blades.’

‘Like angel wings,’ Laura murmured to herself.

Except Lazarus had been far from angelic.

‘Normally,’ she told us, ‘we’d start from the chest and examine the body that way. Given what you’ve said, however, I think it’s more appropriate if we flip him over and begin at his spine.’

She waved at her young assistant and together they carefully turned the body. ‘It’s probably best if you leave now,’ she said kindly to him. The assistant didn’t need telling twice; he all but sprinted out of the room.

Laura used a pair of scissors to cut through Lazarus’s shirt and reveal the skin underneath. I leaned forward, holding my breath and tightening my grip on the crossbow. No bugbear. Not yet.

Without his clothes, it was surprising how thin Lazarus was. The skin on his back was mottled with several angry looking red patches. Laura frowned, then she stepped back, lifted one of his hands and turned it over to look at his fingernails.

‘What is it?’

‘He has a rash and his nails are dark.’ She held up his hand so I could see, then moved to his head and gently parted his thin white hair. A clump came away in her hand. She held it up. ‘I’d need to do further tests to be sure, but it appears that Lazarus has been undergoing chemotherapy. His body is showing a lot of the side effects that you might expect from aggressive treatment.’

‘He had cancer?’ Lukas asked.

‘It looks that way. Did he have any ID on him?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. No wallet. No credit cards. Nothing that might tell us who he really is.’

‘It might be worth checking his picture against local oncology wards,’ Laura advised. She cut off his trousers and underwear and disposed of them in a plastic evidence bag, then continued checking for external abnormalities or indications.

I watched her every move, expecting the bugbear to magically leap from Lazarus’s back and lunge for her at any moment, but it was still refusing to show itself. Eventually, when Laura was satisfied and had made several notations on her chart, she made the first incision.

Nothing. I waited, pretending not to notice the slick layer of sweat on my palms.

After what seemed like an age she said, ‘There’s no indication at all of anything out of the ordinary here.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lukas and I remained at the Maidstone Hospital until the wee hours of the morning, when Laura concluded the post-mortem. ‘I’m not sure whether to apologise or be grateful for finding no sign of a parasitical supernatural creature,’ she told us.

Neither was I. I hugged her all the same and thanked her for her efforts.

Lukas shook her hand but his expression remained grim. ‘We should escort the body back,’ he said. ‘We don’t know enough about the bugbear. Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The best thing would be to cremate him as soon as we can.’

I could only agree. I wasn’t prepared to take any chances. I called Boateng and updated him on what we hadn’t discovered. It didn’t take long.

He remained silent as I spoke, listening carefully. ‘We’ve been busy here,’ he said. ‘We’ve searched the campsite where Lazarus was staying. He didn’t have many belongings but there was a bag containing several different IDs. We’ve checked them out and they’re all fake. We still have no way of knowing who he really is or what he’s done over the years.’

Fuck.

Unfortunately, Boateng wasn’t finished. ‘We also found something that confirms your pathologist’s cancer theory. There was a discarded hospital wristband in a bin close to Lazarus’s tent. It’s from a small hospital in London.’

‘What name is it under?’

‘Derek Bentley.’

‘Does that name ring any bells?’ I asked.

Boateng sighed; he sounded as tired as I felt. ‘In 1953, a man called Derek Bentley was convicted of the murder of a police officer and executed. It was his accomplice who committed the murder, not Bentley himself.’

Lazarus had stayed true to form. I was in no doubt that he’d deliberately chosen the name of a man wrongly convicted for the murder of a police officer to add to his taunts. The bastard was still causing problems from beyond the grave.

‘What’s the bet,’ I said softly, ‘that Lazarus or Derek Bentley or Gwynne Evans or whatever we call him, was dying. Maybe all this shit in Barchapel was him tying up all the loose ends before he died.’ In other words me. I was his loose end.

‘It’s entirely possible,’ Boateng agreed. ‘I’ve contacted the hospital to see if they have any more information about him. He must have chatted to some of the hospital staff – nurses, doctors, even hospital porters or cleaners. There’s no telling what he might have said.’

I pinched the bridge of my nose. It was a reasonable line of enquiry but that wasn’t what concerned me at this moment. ‘Has there been any sign of the bugbear? Footprints? Attacks?’

‘Nothing. We’ll go door to door across Barchapel and the surrounding countryside this morning. But if that creature escaped into the woods, it could be anywhere by now.’

I rubbed the back of my neck and told him about the cremation plan.

‘I think that’s wise,’ he said. ‘There’s a crematorium between Appledore and Barchapel. I’ll call and tell them you’re on the way. If I can’t make it myself, I’ll send somebody else as a witness. We need to cross the Ts and dot the Is. As soon as it’s done, you and your Lord ought to go and get some rest.’

Despite my fatigue I wasn’t sure I would ever sleep again, but I murmured agreement anyway. ‘Call me if you find anything new,’ I said. ‘And you should get some sleep yourself.’

‘All in good time, detective.’ He sighed darkly. ‘All in good time.’

The journey back to