The Kingdom of Bones by Stephen Gallagher Page A

inspector in the city police’s Detective Department, fell into step beside his superior and pointed the way.
    “It’s the head slaughterman we need to speak to, sir,” Becker said. “He’s waiting for us upstairs.”
    “They use stairs?” Turner-Smith said. “Who’d have imagined such talented animals?”
    “There’s a ramp, sir. Or I could have the evidence brought down. They slaughter the animals on one floor and butcher them on another.”
    “I think I can manage the ascent. We may be in a knacker’s yard, Sebastian, but I’m not quite ready to turn myself in for cats’ meat yet.”
    “No, sir.” Becker did not blush, but nor did he smile. He directed them into a whitewashed passage that would take the party away from the auction ring and into the heart of the abattoir.
    As they entered the passage, one of the other two detectives knocked him with a shoulder and almost bumped him into the wall.
    “Forgive me, brother,” the man said without looking at him, and in a tone that did not suggest repentance.
    Sebastian knew that he was little liked by his fellow officers. In a force where promotion was mainly a matter of putting in the years and awaiting your turn, Sebastian’s appetite for the job seemed to be held against him.
    “No harm done,” said Sebastian.
    Nobody paid them any attention as they made their way through. The work here was hard, and conducted at speed because the killing floor set the pace for the rest of the workforce. The animals came unwillingly from the pens, usually having to be dragged with ropes and driven with sticks; one was in the loading enclosure as they went by, thrashing dangerously and surrounded by slaughtermen in caps and leather aprons. One swung a hammer and stunned the beast; another leaned in with a knife as it dropped, and slit its throat.
    In the time that it took the police party to reach the ramp, the others had shackled its back legs and its carcass was being lifted on a chain hoist. The blood came out of it as if poured from a bucket, steaming in the thick air and flooding into a collection trough.
    Elsewhere on the same floor, men stripped to the waist were pulling the lights out of carcasses while others flayed the hides off, adding them to a growing heap like bedsheets of bloodied rubber. Sebastian glanced back as they ascended the ramp, and noted that one of the uniformed men had taken out a handkerchief and was pressing it over his face. The sights were no doubt bearable to men as experienced as these, but the smell was unlike anything he’d encountered before. He looked at Turner-Smith, and saw that his superior seemed unperturbed.
    Sebastian could guess why he’d faced no competition when he’d picked up this case. Something questionable found in a charnel house—it was a dirty job with no promise of glory, and no doubt his fellow detectives had been amused to see him volunteer for it. If he hadn’t, they’d probably have steered it his way. It was their usual practice. If an indigent was found facedown in a sewer, Sebastian could expect to score a day in the muck followed by a week of barbed comments about some imagined stink that followed him around.
    He’d grown used to this. It was something that he could endure—if not easily, then at least without complaint. As far as Sebastian was concerned, the death of a pauper was still a tragedy, if only to the pauper. Everybody needed someone to establish their name, to record their passing, to draw out the story of their final moments on this earth. Including those who died unloved and without company.
    Especially those who died unloved.
    On this occasion, Sebastian was looking for something specific. Within a few minutes of his arrival, he’d known that there was more to this than a routine unpleasantness. After a first look at the evidence, he’d sent a message to the main police office, directly to the great Turner-Smith himself. Turner-Smith, more aware of Sebastian’s character and work