Pember chuckled and pulled up his own hood. “If you say so.”
“Phew, let’s get this show on the road!” Duncan said, stretching towards the ceiling and making the seams of his suit pop. He handed Pember the camera and picked up a large sack of sample tubes.
The morgue was, for all intents and purposes, a conveyor belt of death. A parade of corpses tightly lined up in a large, brightly lit medical bay. The white linoleum walls made the LED lights shine even brighter, and Blake squinted as he followed at the back of the group.
He’d come to realise a long time ago that there was no dignity in death, no sweetly singing choir as one ascended the ivory steps to heaven’s gates. Only piss, shit and the scalpel. A dozen pathologists worked on a dozen more corpses, ripping and slicing the flesh with practiced precision. Most bodies were old, but some were young. Some were in wolf form, others not. Regardless, all of them were treated like slabs of meat on a butcher’s block.
Blake’s gaze slid to Pember. The omega kept his head down and eyes towards the door at the far end of the bay. He had the sudden urge to lurch forward and tuck the omega under his arm, but resisted, only tightening his grip around the clipboard.
“Right!” Chichi said, ripping off the yellow tape on the sealed room. “X-ray first, then we’ll get started.”
David huffed and puffed as he wrestled the wayward gurney through the double doors, straight through the examination room and into another room at the back.
Blake set his clipboard down on a stainless-steel table and walked after them. He was about to cross the threshold to the dimly lit X-ray room when he felt a soft, warm pressure around his wrist.
Pember stared up at him, his bright eyes filled with concern. “Is it okay for you to go in there?” he said, eyebrows pulling together. “I mean… because of your… you know.” He glanced around the room and tapped his own sternum. Blake cocked a brow as Pember leant up on his tiptoes. “Your pacemaker,” he whispered.
Blake huffed out a laugh and rested a hand on Pember’s shoulder. It felt warm and a little bony under his palm, and his fingers almost drifted to the nape of his neck.
Almost.
“It’s not a pacemaker,” he said, holding the omega’s gaze until the white double doors swung shut.
“Everybody ready?” Chichi said, gaze flicking around the room.
Blake nodded, handing her a continuity form, which she signed and handed back. The overhead lights hummed and David unfurled the body bag.
Zayne Steward looked small on the surgical table, his large alpha frame all but diminished in death. His broad chest was made concave by the brutal slashes cutting away the flesh over and over again. His skin was stained with blood, the open wounds on his arms and stomach reduced to a milky mess of flesh. All the vitality had drained out of him into the shag-pile rug in the middle of his living room, leaving only a sallow sack of meat behind.
Blake’s eyes dropped when David began cutting away the clothes, as though averting his gaze might somehow comfort the dead man. Blake was unbelievably glad that he’d sent the other detectives out on enquiries that day. Witnessing a post-mortem felt oddly sacred, like sharing the person’s most intimate final moments.
It could have been anyone on that table. It could have been him, based on the alpha’s height and build.
David laid the clothes out next to the body, and although they’d taken extensive forensic swabs at the scene, Pember and Duncan worked quickly and meticulously to take even more.
When they were done, Pember folded the clothes and placed them in an evidence bag. He slid them in carefully, as though he was frightened of damaging them further. He walked quietly towards Blake, head bent low as he handed him the bag.
“Hey,” Blake whispered, drawing Pember’s gaze. “Alright?”
Pember gave a small smile, and whispered back, “Yeah. You?”
Blake nodded and turned his attention back to the table.
David hummed softly as he powered up the industrial-strength shower, and Blake couldn’t help but notice how he glanced at Pember every now and again. Without a word, he washed away the dried blood and bodily waste, and after a few moments the victim’s true face came into view.
Zayne Steward, a member of the settled Roma clan that inhabited the south side of High Enfield. He was a handsome chap, with the soft but rugged features his family was known for. He had very little by way of a police record, and if intel reports were to be believed, it was his two beta brothers who were the problem children within the family.
Once he had been washed, David pulled him into several different positions so Pember could take photographs. It was no easy feat, given that he’d spent the night in an industrial strength freezer. He could hear Pember quietly apologising every time he took a photograph of his face or genital area. Blake huffed, softly shaking his head as he made a note of everything.
“Right then, my love,” Chichi said, pulling on a set of blue examination gloves. She looked down at the body with a sympathetic smile. “Quite the rough night, hey?”
Zayne, of course, said nothing back.
Blake breathed a sigh of relief as Chichi began her examination, because he could formally hand the body over to the coroner’s office, meaning that any dispute the family had could be directed to them instead of the police.
Chichi cleared her throat as she began speaking into a Dictaphone. “Body appears to have suffered catastrophic trauma to the chest, with significant lacerations to the throat and sternum, end sentence. Significant wounds to the forearms, minimal damage to the hands and fingers, end sentence. New line.”
She moved around the body, running her hands across his limbs, head dipping in for a closer look every now and again.
