The Acolyte by Nick Cutter Page A

Tibor. You’re a heathen in a police station; everyone’s armed and nobody will think twice.”
    Goldberg tipped his chin at the portrait of The Prophet on the wall. “I am rendered paralyzed by his mesmerizing countenance,” he said sarcastically.
    I left him and put the bird on my desk. It was chirping animatedly in its box. I dug a pack of sunflower seeds out of my desk drawer and dropped a few in for it. Then I took the elevator down to SB2: Sub Basement #2. A cramped corridor led to a pair of swinging galley doors: PATH written on the left hand door; OLOGY on the right.
    I shouldered through into a large, antiseptically white room. Meat-locker cold: the chill amplified the intensity of the halogens popping and fritzing above. Storage vaults lined the walls. Red tags detailed their residents: H . GOTCHALL, M, FOLLOWER / B. FALGUNI, F, HEATHEN. The clatter of water pipes made it sound as if the cold corpses were knocking their metal cells in an effort to free themselves.
    Newbarr entered, followed by Doe. My heart trip-hammered. I thought back to the last time we’d been alone together, her naked in the moonlight. . . .
    “You’re both here,” said Newbarr. “Marvellous. Let’s get down to it, shall we?”
    He led us to vaults tagged E VE, F and J . S. KINCAID , M . When he rolled out the slabs there wasn’t much to consider: a pair of four-gallon Tupperware containers filled with charred debris, plus a Ziploc bag holding a sizzled lump of fur with the words “Canis—Erasmus” written on the plastic in black Sharpie.
    Newbarr acknowledged the slim pickings. “It’s basically guesswork. Bits of Kincaid could be mixed up with bits of Eve—even bits of the bomber.”
    “How did you separate them out?” I said.
    Newbarr gestured to Kincaid’s container, shrugged, said, “I put the most artistic looking pieces in there?”
    Doe barked laughter.
    Newbarr pried the plastic lids off. The expelled air smelled like rain-sodden cigarettes. He stirred through the meagre evidence with a speculum, turning over knobs of bone, melted dental bridgework, flame-scored costume jewellery. A diamond crucifix winked in one fire-blackened tooth.
    He plucked a slim metal ring from the ash. “Surgical stomach band—one of them had gastric bypass surgery.”
    I said, “Eve?”
    Newbarr shrugged. “Judging by his press photos, Kincaid wasn’t carrying any extra weight.”
    He rubbed his chin with the speculum. “I haven’t been acting coroner on many suicide bombings, but in those cases the bombs were homemade jobs, and badly botched: in the first case the bomb misfired and tore the bomber in half; in the second it exploded early, killing only the bomber’s accomplice. But this recent rash has been lethal: hundreds dead, hundreds more critically injured. There’s a chilling professionalism to it.”
    He shut the vaults and opened one tagged J OHN DOE, HEATHEN . Two more containers: one of ashes, another of charred metal balls. Beside them were a pair of steel-toed boots—with a pair of burnt and blackened feet still inside them. Next to them lay a scooped metal plate pitted with tiny bowl-shaped dents.
    Newbarr said, “The explosion was baffled by this.” He rapped the metal plate. “It ensured the bomber’s body and debris were blown forward, toward the crowd. Rebound effect. The blast was so fierce it snapped the ankle bones and tore the lower legs from the feet.”
    He picked up a boot and displayed the wax-smooth tread. “Melted to the stage. I had to cut them off the boards with a knife.”
    He rattled the container of balls. “Tungsten. The metal with the highest melting point. Iron or steel would’ve liquefied. The plate’s tungsten, too.”
    Doe said, “Can you give us a reconstruction?”
    Newbarr said: “Give me an intact corpse and I could examine the stomach contents, give an idea of that person’s heritage, make presumptions regarding their last seventy-two hours on this earth. Give me a crime