The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

led the way through a door off the waiting room and down a dark corridor. Their snow trousers rustled as they walked. They had left their other garments hung on a series of hooks inside the foyer of the building.

Lena opened the door at the end and they were greeted by an overweight man in his fifties sporting a beard and tousled hair. He wore thick rimmed glasses, and it was difficult to see where the hair ended, and the beard began. Like PT Barnham’s Dog Boy. Or maybe Chewbacca from Star Wars. King found himself staring, and he was a man not easily shocked.

The man spoke quietly for a moment with the police officer, then looked at King, cocking his head to see up and under his jam jar lenses. “You are wasting your time,” he said. “The cause of death was a wolf.”

“And you are?”

“What?”

“Your name?”

The man looked surprised. “Doctor Engelmann.”

King nodded. “I’m Alex King.”

The doctor shrugged like he didn’t care, which King suspected he didn’t.

“So, Doctor Engelmann, the cause of death would have been from blood loss, organ failure or even asphyxiation.” said King. “Death resulting from a wolf attack, maybe. But not the primary cause.”

“There is no point in being pedantic, Mister King.”

“There are factors that should not be overlooked.”

“It was a wolf.”

“Just one wolf?”

“Wolves are powerful creatures. Savage.”

King looked at Lena, who was nodding in agreement. No doubt remembering the dog from her childhood.

King stared at the man, his hirsute features difficult to ignore. “So, what makes you rule out death due to hypothermia and the body being scavenged by a wolf?”

 “Blood loss.”

“Maybe he nicked an artery?”

“It was a wolf.”

“And not a pack?”

“What difference does that make?”

King shrugged. “I just want to know if you’re good enough to identify if Mister Fitzpatrick was killed by one wolf or ten. Because I imagine a single wolf would eat some of him, a few wolves would eat most of him, and a pack of wolves would strip him down to the bone.” Engelmann looked at King, was about to say something, but seemed to change his mind. King smiled. “Let me see the body, please.”

Engelmann tutted, turned and opened the door behind him. The room was clad in white plastic sheeting with all the joins sealed with trim strips. The floor was vinyl with a mineral element which glinted in the light. It had been laid, fitted and glued a full foot up the wall to allow for deep cleaning and sluicing. In the centre of the room was a stainless-steel table with a gutter running around it and a tap on a metal hose resting in a holder at one end with a shallow sink and ridged draining board built into the table. Engelmann led the way past the table and to a bank of metal doors. There were only four doors. It wasn’t a busy part of the world.

The doctor opened one of the hatches and pulled out a trolley. He looked at King with a cynical expression and a wry smile. He had intended to shock him. It might have worked, had King not eaten his breakfast over worse sights in the past.

Lena looked away, took a breath and forced herself to look back at the corpse. Or what was left of it.

“Well, forensics are out of the window,” King said. “Transference is already happening from the three of us.”

“You’re worried about contamination?” Engelmann scoffed. “Look at it!”

“What do you want us to see?” Lena asked, apparently as exasperated in King as the doctor.

King walked over to a counter and pulled a pair of blue rubber surgical gloves from a cardboard dispensing box. He pulled them on as he walked back and eased the tatters of shirt from the sticky flesh. He could see the wolf, or wolves had been busy. The face was gone. As were the ears. Soft tissue was easily pulled and gnawed at, King supposed. The torso was opened-up and the flaps of skin was in tatters.

“Internal organs?” King asked without looking up.

“Gone,” Engelmann paused. “As have most of the intestines.”

King moved around, bent down and peered into the cavity. He reached inside and gently pulled out some intestines. He let them roll around in the palm of his hand. He looked up at Lena. She had turned pale. She was perspiring, beads of sweat mottling her brow. He looked back at the intestines, then up at the doctor.

“You still think it’s a wolf?” he asked.

“Of course!”

“Interesting.”

King could see that the man’s salopettes had been more difficult for the wolves to get through. There were bite marks and tears, the fibres peeling away more easily in one direction than another. Something to do with the weave. He pulled at the material, could see that the man’s genitals were gone. His legs though, were largely intact. King ran his hands over the body’s legs, stopped when he noticed something. He bent down, using the light above him to catch the sight of the material better. He eased his fingers around a patch of blood, a smear.

“You don’t believe this was a wolf?” Engelmann asked incredulously.

“I believe he was eaten,” King replied. “But he wasn’t killed by a wolf.”

“Then what?” Lena asked.

“He was killed by a knife.”

“A knife?” Engelmann scoffed, then broke into laughter. “Tell me, why do you think that?”

King pulled on the remains of the intestines. The sound was wet, but it was the smell which was most unpleasant. Lena gagged and turned away. She swallowed hard and turned back, her pallor gone, replaced with a blush which radiated heat. King ignored her. He thought most people would have vomited, so she had nothing to prove to him. Engelmann smirked, but his expression became incredulous as King pointed