Free Dragged into Darkness by Simon Wood Page B

days.”
    “You sound like the police.”
    Mack smiled wryly, shaking his head, like it was obvious and she should have known.  “No, not plod, just a victim of my own stupidity.”
    The woman nodded.  “Well, they learnt from your mistake.  I’m taking in all their deliveries.  Funny enough, they’ve been receiving a box every day for the last few.”
    “Good.  As long as everything’s safe and sound.”   He paused for a moment.  “Anyway, I’d better get going.  Thanks for your help.  It was nice meeting you.”
    The neighbor stood back from the gate, giving Mack room.  He saw himself out and returned to his car.  When he turned into the next street, he was on his mobile. 
    “Ben, it’s Mack.”  It was Harker’s voicemail again.  “Marcus is on holiday.  He doesn’t know about the packages.  He’s in the south of France.  Check with French immigration, find out when he’s returning and detain him.  I don’t want Joan and him coming home to a war zone.  His parcels are with a neighbor across the street.  Address is 87 Hillcrest Road.  A convenient B ‘n’ E is required to get those packages.  I’m sure you can arrange it.”
    ***
    Mack barged through the morgue’s swing doors with two parcels.  Harker and Kempton were waiting by three uncovered examining tables.  Body parts were arranged anatomically on the tables.
    “These are my recent additions,” Mack announced, placing the boxes on a bench and removing the contents.  “The leg is yesterday’s and the arm is today’s.  So, which one’s mine?”
    “This one.”   Kempton took the limbs and added the pieces to the second of the three body jigsaws . 
    “And which one is Jack’s and which one is Jerry’s?” Mack asked.
    “This one’s from Jerry Manning’s.” Kempton tapped the partial corpse closest to Mack, then the one furthest away.  “And this is Jack Davenport’s.”
    “Where’s Marcus’?”
    “I’ve decided to leave his in situ ,” Harker replied.  “It won’t do us any harm to leave the packages with the neighbor until we have everything.  We haven’t tracked Marcus down in France but we do know he left by ferry and immigration is going to stop him on his return.  I have someone house sitting at Jerry’s, bringing the packages as and when.”
    Mack shifted the boxes out of the way and leaned against the lab bench.  “I suppose all three bodies are identical.”
    “Correct,” Kempton answered.  “The cadavers share the same DNA.  These people are, as you say, identical.”
    “But that’s not all,” Harker chipped in.  “Tell him.”
    Kempton frowned and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.  “It seems that the limbs aren’t dead.”
    “You’re joking,” Mack blurted.
    “The body parts aren’t decomposing.  Haven’t you noticed the smell?”
    “What smell?”
    “Exactly.   Decomposition hasn’t started and doesn’t look like it’s going to either.  I don’t know how best to say it, except that these limbs are dormant.”
    Mack stared at his partial cadaver.  He studied what he had been sent and the spaces where something should have been.  There was no point speculating.  It was all too ridiculous.
    “In six days, we’ll have everything, a complete stiff,” Mack said.
    Kempton mulled and nodded.
    “What are we going to do in the meantime?  What’s the plan?  Wait?”
    “I don’t see what else we can do,” Harker admitted.  “We’ve exhausted all our avenues of enquiry.  Nothing’s coming out of Russia.  By the time anyone gets close to finding out, we’ll have all the body parts.  And the way things are going, there’s not going to be a note.
    “Because the body is the note,” Mack remarked. 
    “ Right, and we just haven’t understood what they’re saying.  Whoever’s doing this is using technology way beyond us.  The best we can hope for is that the heads will tell us something.”
    “And I bet that’ll be the last