But these were much older. I could tell that even at a glance.
I crunched across the debris littering the floorspace of the warehouse shell. Rain streamed in through the roof holes, illuminated as a blizzard of white specks by the cold blue beams of the arbites' floodlights shining into the place.
Arbites officers were all around, but they hadn't touched the discovery itself.
Mummified and shriveled, these fpetally curled, pitiful husks had been in the wall a long time.
'What's that?' I asked.
Fischig leaned forward for a closer look. 'Adhesive tape, wrapped around them to hold them against the partition. Old. The gum's decayed.'
That pattern on it. The silver flecks.'
'I think it's military issue stuff. Matt-silver coating, you know the sort? The coating's coming off with age.'
These bodies are different ages/ I said.
'I thought so too/ said Fischig.
We had to wait six hours for a preliminary report from the district Examiner Medicae, but it confirmed our guess. All three bodies had been in the wall for at least eight years, and then for different lengths of time. Decom-positional anomalies showed that one of the males had been in position for as much as twelve years, the other two added subsequently, at different occasions. No identifications had yet been made. The warehouse was last used six years ago/ Wrex told me. i want a roster of workers employed there before it went out of business.' Someone using the same т.о. and the same spools of adhesive tape had hidden bodies there over a period of years.
The disused tannery where poor Mombril had been found stood at the junction between Xerxes Street and a row of slum tenements known as the Pilings. It was a fetid place, with the stink of the lye and coroscutum used in the tanning process still pungent in the air. No amount of acid rain could wash that smell out.
There were no stairs. Fischig, Bequin and I climbed up to the roof via a metal fire-ladder.
'How long does a man survive mutilated like that?'
'From the severed wrists alone, he'd bleed out in twenty minutes, perhaps/ Fischig estimated. 'Clearly, if he had made an escape, he'd have the adrenalin of terror sustaining him a little/
'So when he was found up here, he can have been no more than twenty minutes from the scene of his brutalisation/
We looked around. The wretched city looked back at us, close packed and dense. There were hundreds of possibilities. It might take days to search them all.
But we could narrow it down. 'How did he get on the roof?' I asked.
'I was wondering that/ said Fischig.
The ladder we came up by../ Bequin trailed off as she realised her gaffe.
'Without hands?' Fischig smirked.
'Or sight/1 finished. 'Perhaps he didn't escape. Perhaps his abusers put him here/
'Or perhaps he fell/ Bequin said, pointing.
The back of a tall warehouse over-shadowed the tannery to the east. Ten metres up there were shattered windows.
'If he was in there somewhere, fled blindly, and fell through onto this roof…'
"Well reasoned, Alizebeth/ I said.
The arbites had done decent work, but not even Wrex had thought to consider this inconsistency.
We went round to the side entrance of the warehouse. The battered metal shutters were locked. A notice pasted to the wall told would-be intruders to stay out of the property of Hundlemas Agricultural Stowage.
I took out my multi-key and disengaged the padlock. I saw Fischig had drawn his sidearm.
"What's the matter?'
'I had a feeling just then… like we were being watched/
We went inside. The air was cold and still and smelled of chemicals. Rows of storage vats filled with chemical fertilisers lined the echoing warehall.
The second floor was bare-boarded and hadn't been used in years. Wiremesh had been stapled over a doorway to the next floor, and rainwater dripped down. Fischig pulled at the mesh. It was cosmetic only, and folded aside neatly.
Now I drew my autopistol too.
On the street side of the third floor, which was divided into smaller rooms, we found a chamber ten metres by ten, on the floor of which was spread a sheet of plastic smeared with old blood and other organic deposits. There was a stink of fear.
