Gelignite

Gelignite Read Free

Book: Gelignite Read Free
Author: William Marshall
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something in the water.
    Auden said, 'Well?'
    'Nothing.'
    Auden said, 'Don't get the idea you can go in the water if you want a piss. It pollutes the evidence.'
    Spencer looked shocked. 'I was adjusting my waders!'
    Feiffer said, 'Shut up and get on with it.' He felt in his shirt pocket with his wet gloves for his cigarettes, remembered he had left them in the car with his coat, and extracted his wet glove from his now equally wet pocket with distaste. Farther out, Constable Sun said, 'Sir—!' and bent down into the water to retrieve something. Feiffer went over. The water was colder and deeper and came up to his already saturated pocket and thoroughly flooded it. Sun had hold of something a little below the surface. He pulled it up and over like a waterlogged surfboard and pushed it in Feiffer's direction for his inspection. It was a complete body. 
    Constable Sun said quietly, 'Now there are three of them.' 
    Feiffer turned the body over. The face was pale and blotched, but at one time it had been a young male Chinese. There was a long ragged gash that ran from the left shoulder diagonally across the chest to the hip, and specks of white bone under the shirt showed where the flesh had been opened up to the ribs. It was a dull chopping wound made by a single sweep, but not deep enough to cause death unless by loss of blood. Feiffer said, 'You know what did it, don't you?' and Sun nodded. Feiffer said, 'I'll take the scruff of the neck and you guide the feet.'
    They took the body in to the beach. 
    Spencer called, 'I've got another one! It's complete!' He called Auden over to help him take it in.
    "Four." O'Yee thought, "There are four of them. We've got two complete ones and one Macarthur can put together, but we've only found a piece of the other one." He heard someone in the crowd ask something and then someone else—probably the driver—shout an answer back and then there were the sounds of Feiffer and Sun and Auden and Spencer sloshing back into the sea from the beach.
    Auden called out, 'Something else!' and O'Yee wondered how long it would be before the current changed and whatever else was out there in the sea floating into shore would be taken away forever. He looked at the crowd, but it was silent and immobile. 
    Auden called out, 'An arm and part of a torso!' He called out to someone, 'It's the same! It's a ship's propeller wound! It isn't murder at all!' but O'Yee thought, "That doesn't make any difference." He looked at the crowd. They were beginning to edge forwards onto the beach and he thought, "They know . They're keeping count and they know ." Macarthur's voice called, 'What was that?' and Spencer's voice called back, 'An arm! I've got an arm!'
    O'Yee closed his eyes. He thought, "My father was very particular about how and where his body was to be buried." He thought, "He showed me. He made it very clear to me what elder sons were supposed to do with their father's remains." He looked at the crowd. The humming was there again. They were on the beach and the police driver was trying to get them to move back to the seawall. He thought, "They won't move." Something floated up against him and he looked down. It was a hand and an arm. He took out a plastic bag and guided them into the bag very carefully.
    Feiffer looked over at him, but O'Yee took the bag and its contents to shore without speaking. He passed the bag into Macarthur's charnel house in the back of the ambulance and went back into the sea.
    The crowd watched him. The other three detectives were Europeans. There were two Chinese Constables (three, if you counted the driver), but the four detectives were Inspectors and they were in charge. The crowd looked at him. They saw he was half-Chinese. He heard the humming.
    The driver on the beach went quickly to the police car to answer the buzzing of the radio telephone. He motioned to O'Yee to wait, but O'Yee ignored him. The driver saw Feiffer watching him.
    The driver nodded at something someone

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