Ten Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler Page B

fluttered his long, delicate fingers at the walls. 'Look at this place. I could go to the police about the ventilation, except we are the police. The extractors are the same ones they used when it was still a prep school. If it got too hot they simply opened the windows, but we can't do that with decomposing bodies around. Human fat sticks to everything, you know, and the smell lingers forever. No woman will come near me.'
    'You're wrong there, Oswald. Nobody at all will come near you.'
    'That's it, laugh at my expense while you still can. My job is about accumulating facts. One inaccurate detail compounds itself until the entire case collapses. It's not possible to be accurate about anything in here. And without factual evidence, everything else is just conjecture. It's all right for you to play arcane guessing games, but my reputation is on the line. I've tendered my resignation to Raymond Land. I've had enough. I'm buying a smallholding in Hastings and will see out my days there alone, an embittered untouchable.'
    'If you have to pick a leper colony, I suppose Hastings is as good as any.' Bryant stuck an exploratory finger in his ear and wiggled it, thinking. 'Will you have a leaving party?'
    'What's the point? I hate chocolate cake, and I don't suppose there's anyone left to even buy me a card. All my friends are either dead or not feeling very well.' He stared gloomily into his dissecting tray.
    Bryant checked his finger, then dug in his pocket for a sherbet lemon. The smell of the room was starting to get to him. 'What can I do to perk you up?'
    'Find me an assistant. I'm not supposed to leave an unpacked body unattended. My bladder's a colander. What if I need to go for a wee?'
    'I didn't realise you'd become incontinent as well. Every minute we're getting older. Flesh falls, hairs turn grey, we crumble to pieces as the world regenerates, so why not be happy in the knowledge that we'll all inevitably fall to bits? Why do you always see the gloomy side of everything?'
    'Oh, I don't know, it's probably a side effect of spending the last half-century surrounded by dead people.'
    Bryant squeezed his eyebrows together in concentration, racking his brain for something cheerful to say. 'I know. I've been meaning to mention this for ages. You remember Nugent?'
    'Your ostracod?' Finch's eyes strayed to the corner of his workspace, where for a period of four years a tall glass of water had stood untouched. One day, Bryant had turned up with an object that looked like a hairy yellow oyster sitting in a tumbler of liquid. He had explained that it was a rare bivalve, a primitive form of mollusk taken from deep within the banks of the Thames, and that they needed to keep it alive for an experiment the unit was conducting. Finch had named it, and assiduously fed the creature from an eyedropper containing a nutrient solution every day for four years, until one morning he had come in to find the glass empty, whereupon he was informed by Bryant that he had overdosed it and ruined the experiment. Finch had carried the guilt with him ever since.
    'What about it?' he asked.
    'Nugent didn't die,' said Bryant airily. 'It wasn't an ostracod. It was a mango seed.'
    'You are utterly impossible, ' sputtered the pathologist.
    'Oh, don't be such a spoilsport. I've done worse things. I switched Raymond Land's verucca cream for superglue last month; it took him several hours to get his shoes off. There you are, you're more like your old self already.'
    'I suppose it was you who unscrewed the handle of my brain knife as well. I was taking the lid off an Archway Bridge jumper and the damned thing nearly took my eye out.'
    'Not my suicide from last week? Why were you examining his skull?'
    'One of your lads discovered that he'd stopped in the street to complain of a headache just before he made the leap. I wondered what sort of pain would drive a man to jump from a bridge, and looked for a tumor. He had a morbid fear of hospitals and hadn't been near