Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [51]
It was Charlotte, too, who had walked across the car park with Mike to the ominous, antiseptic environment of the police mortuary and identified her brother’s body. Mike had seen many victims of violent death in his military career, but Charlotte’s presence had made this experience one of his worst. The morticians had done their best to hide the gruesome nature of Chris Maybury’s injuries, but the way they had pulled the white sheet almost primly up to his nose so as to hide the fact that his bottom jaw had been all but ripped from his skull, made it worse, somehow, than seeing the full extent of what had been done to him.
When Mike looked at Charlotte to see how she was coping with it all, he saw that her face was almost as white as her brother’s. Crossing her arms tightly beneath her breasts as if for protection, she edged right up to the viewing window and gazed with vacant eyes into what they could see of Chris’s dead face.
A man wearing a surgeon’s gown and cap, his mask resting on his chest like a small bib, was standing in the white-tiled room beside the trolley. He watched Charlotte’s impassive face through the glass for a little while, then stepped forward and bent towards a microphone.
‘Miss Maybury,’ he said gently, ‘can you confirm that this is the body of your brother, Christopher John Maybury?’
Charlotte gave no sign of having heard the police surgeon.
Mike reached out and touched her bare arm.
‘Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Is it Chris?’
Apart from her lips, no part of her body moved. ‘It doesn’t look like him,’ she said bleakly.
‘So it’s not Chris -’ began Mike.
Her head snapped round and the expression on her face was awful to see. Part anger, part confusion, part horror, but all of it for the moment mostly repressed, crushed down by numbing shock. ‘No,’ she said, her voice rough and exhausted as if she was close to breaking, ‘it is him. It just...
doesn’t... look like him.’
Her face crumpled and she bowed her head. She looked to be weeping tearlessly and soundlessly. Mike reached out again and this time put his hand on her back. Feeling her bra strap beneath her pink top he withdrew it immediately, flushing with embarrassment.
Annoyed at himself, he glanced at the police surgeon, nodded and raised his eyebrows, silently asking the question: Is that all you need? Can we go now? The police surgeon nodded back and Mike said, ‘Come on, Charlotte, let’s get out of here.’
Charlotte blinked up at him, then looked blearily at her dead brother through the glass once again. ‘What will they do with him?’ she asked plaintively.
‘Nothing,’ said Mike, caught off guard by the question.
‘Will they look after him?’
‘Of course they will. Come on.’
Charlotte had to sign a couple of forms and then they were outside, blinking in the sunshine. As Mike drove her and her mother back to the boarding house, he had to fight down a constant urge to apologise for all the people they could see enjoying themselves. There were kids eating ice-creams; couples walking hand in hand on the promenade; shrieks of delight accompanying the blare of music from the fun-fair; groups of rowdy young men sitting outside pubs, drinking beer.
By the time they pulled up in front of Ambrosia Villa, Mike felt as if he was sweating not from the heat but the silence.
He cut the engine and looked at Charlotte, who had either fallen asleep or merely closed her eyes to blot everything out for a while. Glancing into his rear-view mirror, he saw Imogen sitting stiffly in her seat, staring into the distance.
‘Mrs Maybury?’ Mike