I ordered another glass of wine. The sun sank behind the trees, but it was still warm even as dusk began to settle. The electric lights that lit the terrace drew the first of the evening’s moths. They bumped and whirred against the glass, black silhouettes against the white globes. I tried to recall visiting this stretch of river when I’d first come to Knoxville all those years ago. I supposed I must have at some point, but I’d no recollection of it. I’d rented a cramped basement apartment in a different—and cheaper—part of town, on the fringes of the increasingly gentrified old quarter. When I’d gone out I’d tended to go to the bars round there rather than the more expensive ones on the riverfront.
Thinking about that shook loose other memories. Out of nowhere the face of a girl I’d seen for a while came back to me. Beth, a nurse at the hospital. I hadn’t thought of her in years. I smiled, wondering where she was now, what she was doing. If she ever thought about the British forensic student she’d once known.
I’d returned to England not long after that. And a few weeks later I’d met my wife, Kara. The thought of her and our daughter brought with it the usual vertiginous dip, but I was used enough to it by now not to be sucked in.
I picked up my mobile from the table and opened my list of contacts. Jenny’s name and number seemed to jump out at me even before I’d highlighted them on the illuminated display. I scrolled through the options until I came to Delete, and held my thumb poised over the button. Then, without pressing it, I snapped the phone shut and put it away.
I finished the last of my wine and pulled my thoughts from the track they’d been following. An image of Jacobsen sitting in the car earlier replaced them, bare arms toned and tanned in the short-sleeved white top. It occurred to me that I didn’t know anything about her. Not how old she was, where she was from or where she lived.
But I’d noticed there was no wedding ring on her left hand.
Oh, give it a rest. Still, I couldn’t help but smile as I ordered another glass of wine.
It’s darkening outside. Your favourite time. The point of transition between two extremes: day and night. Heaven and hell. The earth’s rotation caught on the cusp, neither one thing nor the other, yet full of the potential of both.
If only everything were so simple.
You brush the camera lens carefully, then gently wipe it with a square of buttery soft chamois until the finely ground glass is mirror bright. Tilting the lens to catch the light, you examine it for any last speck of dust that might mar its perfect surface. There’s nothing, but you polish it again anyway, just to be sure.
The camera is your most prized possession. The old Leica has seen some heavy use in the years since you bought it, and never once let you down. Its black and white images are always crystal clear, so sharp and fine- grained you could fall into them.
It isn’t the camera’s fault you haven’t found what you’re looking for.
You try to tell yourself that tonight will be just like all the other times, but you know it isn’t. You’ve always operated under cover of obscurity before, been able to act with impunity because no one knew you existed. Now that’s all changed. And even though it was your own decision, your own choice to emerge into the limelight, it alters everything.
For good or bad, you’re committed now. There’s no going back.
True, you’ve prepared for it. You wouldn’t have started this without an exit strategy. When the time comes you’ll be able to slide back into the shadows, just like before. But you’ve got to see it through to the end first. And while the rewards might be great, so is the risk.
You can’t afford any mistakes.
You do your best to believe that what happens tonight doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things, that your real work will continue regardless. But it rings false. The truth is there’s more at stake now. Although you hate to admit it, all the failures have taken their toll. You need this, you need the affirmation that you haven’t wasted all these years.
Your entire life.
You finish polishing the camera lens and pour yourself a glass of milk. You ought to have something to soak up the acid in your stomach, but it’s too knotted to eat. The milk’s been opened for a day or two now, and the scum on top says it’s probably turned. But that’s one of the benefits of not being able to smell or taste anything. You drink it straight off, staring out of the window at the trees silhouetted against the sky. When you set the empty glass back on the kitchen table, the smeared interior gives it a ghostly translucency in the gathering dark.
You like that idea: a ghost glass.
But the pleasure soon fades. This is the part you hate most, the waiting. Still, it won’t be much longer now. You look across the room at where the uniform hangs on the back of the door, barely visible in the deepening shadows. It wouldn’t stand close inspection, but most people don’t look too closely. They see only a uniform in those first few seconds.
And that’s all you need.
You pour yourself another glass of milk, then stare out of the dirty window as the last of the light vanishes from the sky.
CHAPTER 13
THE DENTIST LAY exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him. He was still sprawled on his back, lying with the immobility only the dead can achieve. But he’d changed in other ways. The flesh had dried in the sun, skin and hair slipping from him like an unwanted coat. After a few more days stubborn tendons would be all that remained of the soft tissue, and before much longer there would be nothing left but enduring bone.
I’d woken with a nagging headache, regretting the last glass of wine I’d had the previous night. Remembering what had happened before that hadn’t made me feel any better. As I’d showered I’d wondered what I should do until I heard from Tom. But there was really no decision.
I’d had enough of being a tourist.
The car park had been nearly empty when I’d arrived at the facility. It was still in shadow, and I shivered in the early morning chill as I pulled on a pair of overalls. I took out my phone, weighing up whether or not to leave it on. Normally I turned it off before I went through the gates—there seemed something disrespectful about disturbing the quiet inside with phone conversations—but I didn’t want to miss Tom’s call. I was tempted to leave it on vibrate, except that then I’d spend all morning waiting for its telltale buzz. Besides, realistically I knew Tom wouldn’t ring Gardner until later anyway.
Making up my mind, I switched off the phone and thrust it away.
Hoisting my bag on to my shoulder, I headed for the gates. Early as it was, I wasn’t the first there. Inside, a young man and woman in surgical scrubs, graduate students by the look of them, were chatting as they made their way back down through the trees. They gave me a friendly ‘Hi’ as they passed, then disappeared about their business.
Once they’d gone, silence descended on the wooded enclosure. Apart from the birdsong, I might have been the only living thing there. It was cool inside, the sun not yet high enough to break through the trees. Dew darkened the bottoms of my overalls as I went up the wooded hillside to where the dentist’s body lay. The protective mesh cage meant that, among other things, I could observe how his body decomposed when no insects or scavengers were able to reach it. It wasn’t exactly original research but I’d never carried it out before myself. And charting something firsthand was always better than relying on the work of others.
It had been a few days since I’d been here, though, so I’d some catching up to do. Stepping through a small door in the cage, I took a tape measure, calipers, camera and notepad from my bag and squatted down to work. I made heavy going of it; the headache was still a nagging throb behind my eyes, and the thought of the phone in my bag was a constant drag on my attention. When I found myself taking the same measurement twice I shook myself angrily. Come on, Hunter, focus. This is what you came here for.
Closing my mind to distractions, I buckled down to the task. Headache and phone were temporarily forgotten as I was drawn into the microcosm of decay. Viewed dispassionately, our physical dissolution is no different from
