Free The Devil's Making by Seán Haldane Page B

had turned a dark smoky grey, the streaks of blood almost black. The belly was swollen. A nauseating smell wafted up. Even Parry was looking a little green.
    â€˜My goodness’, Pemberton said, as if mildly surprised. He strolled around the corpse, pausing every now and then to look closely. The hand with the severed member in it – now grey and wizened, like a dried slug – was sticking out in rigor mortis.
    â€˜Might I verify something?’ I asked.
    â€˜Of course.’ Pemberton stood aside as I went to the corpse’s head. I could not avoid looking at the eyes. They had gone misty though, and were not frightening. I gritted my teeth and reached down to touch the blood-clotted beard. It felt something like my own would feel, but one finger touched through to the flesh which was like cold wax. I tried to pull the mouth wide open but of course the muscles of the jaw were locked. I had to be satisfied with leaning down and looking into the foul half-open mouth, past the yellow teeth exposed by drawn back lips, to the blue-black tongue. I explained myself to Pemberton:
    â€˜I wondered why there had been so much blood from the mouth and in the beard. There was no sign of a wound. Nor can I see any sign now – not the slightest gash.’
    â€˜What do you mean? At any rate we’ll have an autopsy.’
    â€˜Perhaps this idea is macabre’, I said, ‘but the blood from the mouth must have come from somewhere. Yet, as the Superintendent describes the effect of these knife blows, the lungs were not punctured so as to cause an effusion of blood through the throat. If the blow near the collarbone penetrated the lung it would have bled through the wound. I believe the man’s member, now in his hand, was stuck in his mouth – pointing outwards, bleeding. He then pulled it out.’
    â€˜Good God’, said Parry. ‘If so, it confirms the savagery of the act.’
    â€˜It may mean’, I said, ‘that although the murderer left him for dead – horribly mutilated and, as it were, sacrificed – he was still alive. He pulled the thing out of his mouth at least.’
    â€˜And yelled for help’, Parry said sarcastically. ‘And the Tyee heard him almost a mile away.’
    â€˜He would have been too weak’, Pemberton interjected.
    â€˜Of course’, I said. ‘But alive for a while. He might have been discovered in such a state.’
    â€˜I see what you mean’, Pemberton said. ‘The Superintendent has briefed me on what the Tyee said.’ He paused, looking at the corpse. ‘One thing you may not know, Hobbes’, he said gently, ‘is that it’s a known practice for the Indian medicine man, in a cannibalistic frenzy, to tear out chunks of flesh with his teeth.’
    â€˜I’ve read about that’, I said. ‘But if so, then this is a singularly unsuccessful effort: the bites did not detach the flesh.’
    â€˜Touché.’ Pemberton smiled. ‘Enough of speculation.’ He turned away from the corpse.
    As the others left the room, I picked up the blanket and re-arranged it over McCrory.
    *   *   *
    Luskwaas was no longer in the large room. I hoped that at least Seeds would offer her coffee or tea and somewhere to rest. Now Harding brought in Wiladzap.
    He seemed to have changed already, from being in the cell only an hour. He appeared chastened, puzzled, not at all fierce. He sat down carefully, glancing around as if to note exactly what the rest of us were doing, but the chair did not seem foreign to him. He looked at Pemberton, but his eyes seemed out of focus.
    Pemberton began by asking how many Indians knew Wiladzap as their Tyee.
    Wiladzap explained that he was the Tyee of the people who were with him now. At Tsalak, where they came from, another man is a greater chief, his uncle, the brother of his mother. He, Wiladzap, is two men. He is an ordinary man, a warrior. He is