Goosebumps rose across my skin and I rubbed my arms. I felt cold just thinking about it.
Laura ran the footage forward. ‘There,’ she said, jabbing at the screen. We watched her enter the room and slide out my body bag again. She unzipped it, allowing the camera a clear glimpse of my unnaturally still body. She paused at my face for a moment and then zipped up the bag. ‘That’s me coming to get you to prep you for the post-mortem. I didn’t need to feel your pulse to know that you were dead.’ She whistled. ‘Baby, you were gone. I was just double checking that I had the right corpse before I moved you.’
Something else I didn’t want to think about too closely. ‘Post-mortem? I thought it was pretty obvious how I’d died,’ I said, frowning.
She shrugged. ‘You were murdered. A post-mortem is protocol.’
I knew that. It didn’t prevent me from shivering.
We watched as she wheeled dead Emma from one room into another. She busied herself getting her equipment ready, then the door opened and a man popped his head round the door.
‘That’s Dean,’ Dr Hawes explained. She sounded eager now. ‘He was telling me I had a phone call.’
‘Related to me?’
‘Nah. The geriatrics ward. They wanted to confirm that the body of one of their deceased patients had been moved.’
On the screen Laura nodded and walked out of the room, leaving my bagged corpse on its own. She smiled at me with morbid excitement. ‘Five minutes later, I walked back in and you were standing up. So this is the part where things are going to get really interesting.’
My stomach was churning. ‘Is there any chance that I was still alive? That I was just in a kind of coma or stasis or something, and nobody noticed?’
‘No. There is no chance.’ She ticked off her fingers while keeping her gaze on the screen. ‘Paramedics saw your body. A doctor signed you off as dead. Last night’s morgue crew checked you over when you came in. There are the photos.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘And now there’s this.’
We both stared. There was no denying what we were seeing. The body bag – my body bag – was on fire. The stench of rotten eggs that had been in the room had been from me. Sulphur. Or rather…
‘Brimstone,’ I whispered. ‘Fire and brimstone.’ My mouth felt dry. ‘Rewind the tape. Play it again.’
Laura swallowed. ‘On it.’
We watched again. To all intents and purposes, it looked as if my corpse simply spontaneously combusted. Flames appeared out of nowhere, licking upwards through the white plastic from my head to my toes. It was only when the fire had flickered out that I began to twitch, then move, sit up and fall gracelessly off the gurney.
‘I’ve seen a lot of shit in here,’ Laura told me. ‘But I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
Chapter Seven
‘You were brought in with nothing on you. No bag, no wallet, no phone. Whoever killed you took whatever you had, presumably along with the murder weapon because it’s not been found anywhere nearby. Your clothes are ruined as well – they’ve already been sent to the incinerator.’ Laura looked me up and down. ‘You can’t walk out of here like that.’
‘No kidding.’
She smiled. ‘Fortunately, I can provide you with an entire wardrobe.’
I pulled a face. ‘You mean dead people’s clothing.’
‘That’s not something to get squeamish about,’ she told me.
Probably not, but I had to get squeamish about something. I couldn’t pretend that any of this was normal. I sighed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. ‘Dead people’s clothing it is.’
‘I should report all of this, of course,’ Laura said. I started to shake my head in alarm, but she was already there. ‘However, I reckon you’ve got enough problems as it is. The faster you get out of here the better. Someone tried to kill you, Emma. Hell, someone did kill you. We can worry about the whys and wherefores of your resurrection later. Right now, you need to work out who sliced open your throat so you can stop them from doing it again. There’s no guarantee that you’ll wake up a second time.’
I couldn’t deny that thought had been bothering me, too. ‘I might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I might have been targeted.’ I clenched my teeth together so tightly it hurt. ‘The best way to find out who did this to me is to pretend I’m actually dead. If I go home, I might put Jeremy in danger.’
‘Is that your husband?’
‘Boyfriend.’ I ran a hand through my hair. ‘He’ll be out of his mind with worry, but I can’t risk his life too.’
‘You were probably just unlucky and were targeted by a mugger.’
‘Probably.’ Except it didn’t feel like an opportunistic crime. It felt like I was killed for a reason. It felt like it was personal. I shuddered. ‘Once I know for sure, I can tell everyone I’m alright. I’ll have to hope that Jeremy understands.’
‘Do you have other family?’
‘My parents are dead. I’ve got no siblings.’ I thought about my uncle. I’d barely spoken to him in years. I sent him a Christmas card every year out of a sense of duty – after all, he’d taken me in when I was nothing but a snotty-nosed kid. But he’d always kept his distance and we weren’t close. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t a family man either. This wasn’t the time to bother him.
Laura squeezed my arm. ‘I’ll hold the fort here. I won’t manage it for more than a couple of days, but I can postpone your post-mortem and make up something about other cases when the police come calling. It actually helps that they weren’t able to identify you immediately. With nothing else to go on, your case will be put on a back burner.’ She nodded decisively. ‘And if the worst happens, I can always pretend to lose your body for a day or two. I can’t keep it up forever, but it’ll buy you some time.’ She hesitated. ‘I should draw some blood from you.’
‘To test for vampirism or signs that I’m turning furry?’ I guessed.
‘Yeah.’ She looked apologetic. ‘There’s no sign that you are, but then I’ve never seen a corpse reanimate before.’ She peered at me. ‘You don’t feel the sudden urge to eat brains, do you?’
I tried to smile. ‘No. But I could murder a cheese sandwich.’
‘Then you’re absolutely fine.’
We exchanged looks. ‘You’re the only other person in the world that knows what’s happened,’ I said quietly. ‘If this is only temporary and I drop dead again in three days or something…’
‘I’m sure you won’t.’
‘But if I do,’ I persisted, ‘keep this to yourself, if you can. Chalk it up to the weirdness of life or something, and forget about me. I don’t want Jeremy knowing that I didn’t go to him for help. And I don’t want my corpse dissected by government scientists.’
Her gaze was solemn. ‘Your secret will be safe with me. But keep me posted with what you discover. And let me know if you start feeling ill.’
I nodded. ‘I will. I promise.’ I bit my lip. ‘Thank you. Not many people would have dealt with this as well as you have.’
‘I might say the same thing about you, Emma.’
I managed a smile. ‘It’s still only early days.’
***
Less than an hour later, I walked out of the front doors of Fitzwilliam Manor Hospital wearing jeans that were so tight they could have been sprayed on, an over-sized man’s T-shirt with a warm sweater and a large puffy jacket on top, and scuffed trainers on my feet. It was an interesting get-up but it would have to do for now.
Surprisingly, I felt full of energy. There were no strange aches and pains, and there was nothing to indicate that a few hours earlier I’d been at the rainbow bridge. I had no memory of what being dead was like. There was no tunnel with a pinprick of light at the end, no harp-strumming angels, no sign of my parents.
I sucked in a sharp breath. This was not the time to get maudlin. Somehow, I’d survived my own murder. The only way forward now was to solve it to ensure that it didn’t happen again – and that meant staying focused and returning to the scene of the crime.
Despite my feeble protests, Laura had emptied her purse and given me all her loose cash. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it would keep me going for a day or two. I hopped onto the Underground, travelling a mere three stops until I reached Piccadilly yet again. Then I re-traced my steps from the night before.
Everything looked very different in daylight. The glitz and glamour of night time had yielded to a seedier sheen, although the big screen at the Piccadilly Circus corner continued its incessant flickering of images, and there were plenty of people around.
Once I left the main tourist area, however, the crowds thinned and my apprehension grew. My eyes flicked from left to right as I examined the faces of the other passers-by. Was it one of these people who’d slit my throat? Were any of them surprised to see me? I stared so hard at one man, whose clothes and expression looked shady enough to belong in hell, that he waggled his eyebrows at me seductively. No. This was not a come-on.
I ploughed on, winding my way through the narrow streets until the spire of St Erbin’s Church was visible. Rather than stop and gaze at it, I forced my feet to keep moving. If I stopped now, I’d never manage to move again. Despite my lack of fatigue or injury, this wasn’t easy; I was trembling from head to toe and it took every bit of will power I possessed to walk up to the church gate and push it open. I can do this, I told myself. I have to do this.
Police tape cordoned off a large area of the graveyard. It flapped gently in the breeze, an unpleasant indication of what had happened. My mouth was dry, but I kept going and ducked under the tape. My feet squelched in the wet mud as I made my way to the slightly firmer grass. I didn’t stop until I was standing next to a patch of discoloured ground. There. That was my blood. That was where I’d died.