Naked Angels. Judi James

her voice.

      The two men shared a quick glance over her head.

      ‘No.’ Inspector Kovacs sounded equally sure. ‘No drugs, Dr Janus.’

      ‘How can you tell?’ She sounded tired rather than angry.

      ‘No syringe nearby, no needle marks. I checked. The boy is clean. He must have had a weak heart, or a fit, or something.’

      The pathologist gazed at him. Her eyes were a watery shade of hazel. Brown eyes. That meant she was not a true blonde. That meant …

      ‘Would you be prepared to risk money on your theory, inspector?’ she asked.

      Kovacs sucked in his top lip. A bet? That was different.

      ‘Look.’ Janus leant forward and the men leant forward too, because her overall had gaped a little at the top. There was a sweepstake back at the station over whether she wore underwear beneath her gown or not. Confident of a captive audience, she held the corpse’s upper arm with both hands and squeezed. To the policemen’s amazement a tiny teardrop of red blood appeared at the inner elbow.

      ‘No apparent needle marks,’ Janus said. ‘He used a sharp syringe and most likely he was not an actual junkie. I suspect I could do the same trick with the other arm. He probably injected heroin in one and cocaine in the other. I believe they call it a Speedball in the United States. I dare say the heroin was too pure. There is a batch doing the rounds at the moment. We had a similar death in here last week.’ She smiled then, for the first time that day. ‘Never take appearances for granted, inspector,’ she said, ‘they can easily be deceptive, you know.’

      ‘He didn’t use drugs! He wasn’t a junkie!’ Anger had overcome the young boy’s fear and guilt and he stepped out into the full glare of the light for the first time. They all turned to see who had spoken. For a second they looked shocked. He stared at the adults’ faces; for a while they appeared guilty, then they started to look angry too.

      He had a round, shining face, like an angel, and his eyes were swollen with tears. His nose was running because he had not dared to move in order to wipe it. His clothes were clean enough – cleaner than him, at any rate – but they were old clothes, well out of style, and looked strange, somehow not right. The policemen tried to gauge the boy’s age. Kovacs guessed eleven and Molnar thought maybe twelve. They knew his sort straight away; the streets were running with them in parts of the city. Lisa Janus did not know his type. She thought he just looked very young and very sad.

      ‘What are you up to, son?’ Molnar asked. He had three kids of his own at home and they all got up to tricks but none of them would have been stupid enough to hang around a mortuary for fun. Then he noticed the boy was shaking with fear.

      ‘I was sent here,’ the boy said. ‘I came to identify …’ He pointed to the corpse on the trolley in front of them.

      ‘You know this lad?’ Kovacs asked.

      The boy nodded slowly. ‘He’s my brother.’

      Even in the bright lights he could see the policeman blush. Kovacs looked down at the balloons. He prayed the boy was lying.

      ‘How can you tell?’ he asked. Perhaps he was lying. After all, he could barely see from where he stood.

      ‘I can smell him,’ the boy said. ‘I can smell his cologne. I could even smell it in the corridor. That was why I came in here. I knew he was here. I found him myself. He’s my brother. I would know him from his smell. He’s dead, isn’t he?’ He tried hard but his voice broke on these last words. Until you say it you don’t have to believe it. Now he had said it. Andreas was dead.

      Molnar and Kovacs looked at each other.

      ‘How long have you been standing there?’ Lisa Janus asked the boy.

      ‘A few minutes. Before you arrived.’

      The pathologist tugged the balloons off the sheet and threw them in the policemen’s faces.

      ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?’ she whispered. ‘At least let him come and see if he’s right, poor little fellow.’

      Kovacs motioned the boy forward. He had to stand on tiptoe to see the body properly. The policemen stood back, their faces grave. Then the boy leant across and kissed the corpse full on the mouth.

      Molnar looked away with an expression of distaste.

      ‘Peasants!’ he muttered, and Lisa Janus gave him a stern look.

      Kovacs pulled the boy away, noticing it took quite a deal of strength to do so, even though the kid felt like a sack of bones underneath his clothes.

      The boy was fighting for breath. He had to get some answers out of him before the tears started in earnest.

      ‘What’s your brother’s name, son?’ he asked.

      ‘Andreas.’

      ‘And your name?’

      The boy stared at his brother’s body. He felt dead inside himself, now. Did it matter who he was? Would they arrest him for what he had done? ‘Mikhail,’ he said, though he had not heard his full name used for years, ‘Mikhail Veronsky.’ There was no point in lying now. Andreas was dead. Nothing mattered any more.

       2

       Boston 1966

      The day they moved the old windmill from the cowfield behind Mrs Jackson’s house to its new home looking out over Saul Peterson’s cranberry bog, the local school turned out to cheer its progress down past the wild apple trees along the high street and around Jeakes’s corner. The truck doing the towing took the corner a shade too sharp, though, dragging strips of vine down off the white clapboard walls, and a smell of sour grapejuice filled the air along with the stench of the diesel.

      Summer was sweet that year. The children ran barefoot down the old dirt track, skirting vast uncut fields that were thick with golden-rod and clicking with grasshoppers, and making for the cooler air that hung around the lower marshes. They waved at the workmen and the workmen waved back, and the sound of the World Series came at them from the radio inside the truck’s cabin, mingled with plumes of grey smoke from fresh-lit roll-your-owns.

      One child did all the route-planning for the others. When Evangeline Klippel grew up she grew ugly-attractive. At six, though, she was just plain ugly – but that didn’t matter so much because she was rich enough not to have to notice.

      Ever since the youngest of the O’Connell boys got expelled for doing things to Chimney, the school dog, Evangeline could claim quite fairly to be able to spit further and out-wrestle any of the boys in her class.

      She cut a fearsome enough sight, running wild through the emerald marshes, her shock of crinkled brown hair bouncing with each beat of her small thumping feet and the sun glinting off her gleaming silver braces as she smiled her gummy, victorious grin.

      She had grass stains on her dress, which would mean trouble at home that night. Not big trouble, just a grumble or two, maybe – and if Patrick jumped up at her the minute she got in, like he usually did, she could say it came off his paws instead.

      No one ever scolded Patrick because he was easily the oldest hound the town had ever known – maybe even the oldest hound alive – just like no one scolded her baby brother Lincoln, because he was too little and wouldn’t understand.

      Last month Evangeline had loved Patrick the most but the sun was no friend to old dogs and made them smell pretty bad. It was this month baby Lincoln had gone and learnt how to smile, too, and so Evangeline loved him far the best for the moment. His grip was getting good, as well – she tested it each morning with her finger. The way he was growing she reckoned they would be climbing the cedar outside the nursery window together by the fall, easily.

      As