Children of the Street - страница 8

, never mind today.”

“Well, I’m glad I could save you the agony. I’ll have the staff put it on for eight this morning.”

“I’ll be there.”

Dawson went to Hosiah’s room, where Christine was getting him up.

“I have to go.” He kissed them both. “See you tonight.”

“Bye, Daddy.”

“Careful, Dark.” Christine said that every day. She meant it.

“I will be.”

The phlegmatic Sergeant Baidoo, a man of few words and Dawson’s favorite CID driver, steered the made-in-India Tata police jeep over the rough, unpaved road that led to the Police Hospital Mortuary (PHM). It was a depressing gray stucco building browned off with decades of dust. It needed to be either remodeled and expanded or razed and rebuilt. Dawson liked the second alternative.

Baidoo parked under the flowering flame tree that lent a welcome patch of color to all that dreariness. Reception was to Dawson’s left as he went in. Straight ahead against the far wall were two old coffins piled one on top of the other. They had been there for years, part of the furniture now. He turned left to reception, where there was a sign on the wall that read JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOUR SINS. On seeing Dawson, the young lance corporal at the desk behind the counter sprang to his feet.

“Morning, massa,” he said, using the alternative word to “sir.” Maybe it was a legacy of the British colonial police service, when black officers referred to the white officers as their “masters,” but now massa was comfortably used by the junior ranks to address their superiors.

“Morning, Brempong,” Dawson said. “How are you?”

“Fine, massa.”

“Is Dr. Biney in?”

“Yes, massa. He’s inside.”

“Thank you.”

“Yessah.”

Dawson went through the double-door entry labeled STRICTLY OUT OF BOUNDS. With no forewarning, the autopsy room was directly behind that, which had caught Dawson off guard the first time he had come to PHM. There were only two autopsy tables for a backlog of corpses possibly a hundred times that. Four mortuary attendants were in constant motion, like traffic at a busy intersection. Dr. Biney was at the right-hand table. He was masked, but when he looked up and saw Dawson, his eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile.

“Inspector Dawson! Welcome.”

“Thank you, Dr. Biney, it’s good to see you.”

“I’m just finishing up with this case, and we’ll do yours next. Would you like to suit up while we get your case ready?”

Dawson branched left to the changing room, where he gladly put on the most important item, his mask. The gown went on second. He took a breath before returning to the autopsy room proper. The odor in the room was subtler and less assaulting than that of, say, Korle Lagoon, but it was oddly more penetrating, as if it got under one’s skin.

Between Dr. Biney and his attendants, it was a frenetic but coordinated dance. On finishing their case on the left-hand table, two attendants dumped the organs back into the body and transferred it to a gurney. As they wheeled it out, a new case was being wheeled in. Simultaneously, on the second table, one attendant was readying the next case for Dr. Biney with a vertical incision from neck to pelvis. No matter how many times Dawson had been here, he had never grown completely accustomed to the matter-of-factness with which the team worked, and he still flinched inwardly at the harsh bang of bodies on the gurney metal. Relax, he kept telling himself. They don’t feel anything.

As they waited for his case, Dawson chatted with Dr. Biney-not empty pleasantries: the two men were always genuinely glad to see each other.

“Here we go,” Biney said, as Dawson’s case was wheeled in. “Ready?”

The body had been washed in the adjoining room, so it looked a trifle better than it had the day before, but the amount of decay was just as severe and the smell was no less sickening. The top layer of skin was blistering and sloughing off, revealing a curiously white layer underneath. The abdomen was extremely distended, rounded like a cathedral dome.

“The putrefaction hasn’t stopped completely,” Biney said, catching Dawson’s look. “Biology will do what it wants, refrigeration be damned.”