Free The Fury by Alexander Gordon Smith

new.’
    ‘The security service?’ Murdoch said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’
    ‘You’ll understand when you see it.’ Jorgensen paused, and in that hesitation Murdoch understood that the man didn’t want to go back inside the morgue. He felt a cold sweat of his own creep over his face and down his spine. Jorgensen not wanting to go to work was like a kid not wanting to go out to play – something was seriously wrong. The man seemed to snap out of his trance, turning a pair of bloodshot eyes towards the door. ‘You’ll need a mask.’
    Murdoch looked up at the pathologist for a moment longer, then turned and walked to the steel lockers against the far wall of the waiting room. The one marked ‘Hazardous’ was already open, a couple of full-face masks left near the bottom. He slipped one over his head, switching it on and making sure the rubber seal was tight around his neck. He hated these things, the air inside them was like breathing from a dead man’s lungs. Still, better this than inhaling whatever was inside the morgue, whatever had unsettled Jorgensen so much.
    ‘This way,’ said the pathologist, as if Murdoch hadn’t been here a hundred times before. One of the morgue assistants held open the waiting-room door for them and Murdoch followed Jorgensen through, past the viewing window where loved ones had to stand and identify the remains of those they had once called mother or daughter or brother. The main entrance to the morgue was a few paces further down and yet more white-suited staff were clustered outside it. One of them pushed the door, holding it for them as they passed through.
    ‘No change, sir,’ the woman said. She had to shout over the rumble of the air conditioning units which were working overtime to cope with the heat. Even here, beneath the ground, Murdoch could feel it prickling his skin, making him itch all over.
    Jorgensen nodded at her, leading the way across the huge room towards an area sectioned off with hospital-style privacy curtains. He stopped next to them.
    ‘This is top secret, Alan, okay?’ he said. ‘Until we know what this is, nobody can find out about it. I brought you in because you’re a friend, because I trust you. But nobody else can know. Okay?’
    Murdoch nodded, trying to wipe a hand across his stubble again and knocking the mask. A bolt of pure, white adrenalin exploded in his gut and he took a couple of long, deep breaths which misted his visor. He was grateful to them, because they obscured his vision as Jorgensen reached out and pulled the curtain to one side.
    He didn’t want to see what lay in the corner of this room. He could hear it, though, a sound that rose up over the rattle and clank of the overworked air conditioners. It was a scream, a wretched, terrible, strangled scream gargled through a wet throat – not one thrown out but one clawed in , like a desperate asthmatic breath. He could almost feel that breath on his skin, breaking out a blanket of goosebumps that clung to him like a disease. It made him want to run from the room and throw himself into a bath of disinfectant, to hurl himself into the sun just so it could burn the touch from him.
    The mist on his visor was clearing, and through the plastic he saw a naked body lying on a stainless steel surgical table. It was a young man. And it was a corpse. Of this there could be no doubt because its chest had been opened up like a birthday present, torn flaps of wrapping-paper-red skin pulled to the side to reveal a gift basket of withered organs. Its body was blackened on the underside where the blood had pooled in post-mortem lividity.
    Don’t look at its face , his brain told him. Yet he could no more turn away than he could sprout wings and fly out of the morgue. His eyes drifted up from the feast of its stomach, past its pulseless throat, to a face that was still alive.
    No, not alive. Animated, yes – its mouth hung open, too wide, wide enough for Murdoch to get his whole fist