A Thousand and One English Nights (Book Three of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Six: Find the Lady

After being reassured that Dr Petrescu wasn't in any immediate danger, Danvers had scuttled out of the mortuary with relief. Last night, Jack had enjoyed the looks of terror that appeared on people's faces whenever they saw him, but tonight it struck him as faintly ridiculous, especially as he crept down the staircase which led to the morgue, sinking steadily into the cold air at the bottom of the building.

They wouldn't have been so scared if they could see what it cost him to go into that room. How he gripped the door-frame and inched his toes over the threshold bit by bit, as if the very air was resisting him.

And he didn't even know what he was so afraid of. It was not as though he wasn't painfully, excruciatingly aware that she was dead. Would seeing her body in a morgue make it somehow final? But it was final already, surely. It couldn't have hurt like this if he had left any room for hope.

She came back to you in your dreams, he thought. It was her.

But he was less sure of that with every passing day. And, even if it had been real, she would never come back again. He had driven her away in a way she could never forgive.

Oh god. Okay. This isn't helping.

He spotted the door at the far end of the room. Lined up in front of it – like the cards in a game of Find the Lady – were three trestle-tables, each of which supported a dead body covered in a white sheet. There was another, longer table to the side, stocked with knives and implements, and these, too, were covered with a white sheet, as though to preserve their dignity. He could see the well-worn handle of a knife poking out from under its covering. It made him think of Robin, which at least lit a candle of anger in his achingly-cold chest.

He turned back to the three tables. He wondered if he'd get a prize for picking out Ellini first time. But he realized, as he got closer, that it would be a simple process of elimination. One of the shapes under its sheet was too big to possibly be human. That would be the gargoyle. They must have folded its wings under its chest, because no leathery, charcoal-grey skin was poking out from under its covering. And the body on the table to the far left was too short, its contours ending abruptly in what could only have been a severed neck.

He felt like Goldilocks trying out each of the beds in the Three Bears' cottage. One was too big and one too small, but the one in the middle was just right. It was human-sized and human-shaped. He could even make out the contours of breasts under the sheet.

He felt a shiver of something, from his throat right down to his stomach. He understood the fear now. It was the fear of seeing something that had meant so much to him suddenly meaning nothing. He and Ellini's body had been very close. He knew every inch of it–he had ached for it–but he had also seen, in all its motions and expressions, the woman he loved.

It had been her, and now, suddenly, it wouldn't be.

The door was right behind. He could thread his way between the tables without looking. He certainly didn't have to pull back the sheet. He had suffered enough tonight, hadn't he?

But no – that was a stupid question. It would never be enough. Besides, he wanted to suffer. Maybe he even wanted to see her one last time.

He drew level with the middle table and extended a hand over it. Would her eyes be open? Would she be staring up at him reproachfully? Would there be autopsy scars?

He reached out shakily and pulled back the sheet, trying to forestall the moment by keeping his eyes shut. And then he tried to forestall the moment again by staring straight ahead of him and not looking down.

But when he eventually lowered his eyes to the table, he realized it wasn't Ellini at all. It was Violet.

God, he'd forgotten about Violet! A shudder of relief passed through him, but it was not alone. There were grains of horror mixed in; wild, paranoid surmises – that Ellini might be in the next room, strung up, naked and dead-eyed, barring his way as soon as he opened the door.