“Dr. Scarpetta? My God, why I’ll be bloody damned.”
He heavily stepped off the stool, for he was not a small man. “I’m so surprised. I’m rather speechless!” He was sputtering, and his eyes wavered with fear.
“I’m surprised, too,” I somberly said.
“I quite imagine that you are. Come on. No need to talk in here with this rather ghastly floater. Found him in the Thames yesterday afternoon. Looks like a stabbing to me but we have no identity. We should go to the lounge,” he nervously talked on.
Philip Mant was a charming old gentleman impossible not to like, with thick white hair and heavy brows over keen pale eyes. He showed me around the corner to showers, where we disinfected our feet, stripped off gloves and masks and stuffed scrubs into a bin. Then we went to the lounge, which opened onto the parking lot in back. Like everything else in London, the stale smoke in this room had a long history, too.
“May I offer you some refreshment?” he asked as he got out a pack of Players. “I know you don’t smoke anymore, so I won’t offer.”
“I don’t need a thing except some answers from you,” I said.
His hands trembled slightly as he struck a match.
“Dr. Mant, what in God’s name are you doing here?” I started in. “You’re supposed to be in London because you had a death in the family.”
“I did. Coincidentally.”
“Coincidentally?” I said. “And what does that mean?”
“Dr. Scarpetta, I fully intended to leave anyway and then my mother suddenly died and that made it easy to choose a time.”
“Then you’ve had no intention of coming back,” I said, stung.
“I’m quite sorry. But no, I have not.” He delicately tapped an ash.
“You could at least have told me so I could have begun looking for your replacement. I’ve tried to call you several times.”
“I didn’t tell you and I didn’t call because I didn’t want them to know.”
“Them?” The word seemed to hang in the air. “Exactly who do you mean, Dr. Mant?”
He was very matter-of fact as he smoked, legs crossed, and belly roundly swelling over his belt. “I have no idea who they are, but they certainly know who we are. That’s what alarms me. I can tell you exactly when it all began.
October thirteenth, and you may or may not remember the case.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Well, the Navy did the autopsy because the death was at their shipyard in Norfolk.”
“The man who was accidentally crushed in a dry dock?” I vaguely recalled.
“The very one.”
“You’re right. That was a Navy case, not ours,” I said as I began to anticipate what he had to say. “Tell me what that has to do with us.”
“You see, the rescue squad made a mistake,” he continued. “Instead of transporting the body to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where it belonged, they brought it to my office, and young Danny didn’t know. He began drawing blood, doing paperwork, that sort of thing, and in the process found something very unusual amongst the decedent’s personal effects.”
I realized Mant did not know about Danny.
“The victim had a canvas satchel with him,” he went on. “And the squad had simply placed it on top of the body and covered everything with a sheet. Poor form as it may be, I suppose had that not occurred we wouldn’t have had a clue.”
“A clue about what?”
“What this fellow had, apparently, was a copy of a rather sinister bible that I came to find out later is connected to a cult. The New Zionists. An absolutely terrible thing, that book was, describing in detail torture, murder, things like that. It was dreadfully unsettling, in my view.”
“Was it called the Book of Hand?” I asked.
“Why yes.” His eyes lit up. “It was, indeed.”
“Was it in a black leather binder?”
“I believe it was. With a name stamped on it that oddly enough was not the name of the decedent. Shapiro, or something.”
“Dwain Shapiro.”
“Of course,” he said. “Then you already know about this.”