The Resurrection of the Body Read Online Free PDF Page B

could have helped themselves . Besides, the cold storage cabinets there aren’t locked … they just had to whip the body out and take off with it.’
    ‘But there must be some security … don’t they have video cameras or anything?’
    The policeman laughed. ‘Well, I have to say this sort of thing doesn’t go on very often, you know. Of course, there’s very strict security in all the usual procedures … you can imagine what kind of a fuss relatives would kick up if a body went astray. But if someone is determined to take a body … well.’ The policeman shrugged. ‘Is it theDetective Chief Inspector you’re wanting to see?’
    I said that it was.
    ‘Hang on a minute. Wait, come down with me. I’ll see if he’s free.’
    We walked down a long corridor. We walked past the post-mortem room and I looked through the glass panels in the door, at the cold comfortless metal tables where the bodies would be laid and the reflections on the shiny white tiled surfaces. We went through into the room where the bodies were stored. There was one large cabinet, with glass panels on the doors. Inside one I could dimly see a body, shrouded in white, spookily reminiscent of the drawings I had seen of Christ bound in grave-clothes in the tomb.
    Detective Chief Inspector Stone was in the room. He looked exasperated when he saw me.
    ‘So you’ve come to see the evidence of the resurrection ,’ he said to me drily.
    I told him I thought the remark in very poor taste.
    ‘Well, what is it then?’
    ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I’ve remembered something that could be important.’
    ‘Yes?’ His manner showed me plainly that he had no time for me.
    I said, ‘I’d rather talk in private, if you don’t mind.’
    Stone took me across the street to his car. We went and sat in the front seats; I don’t know why he chose this place, perhaps it was the only way he could get away from everyone. As I walked with him my heart was pounding. I had nothing to say to him; I didn’t know why I was doingthis. My mind was racing, trying to think of something rational I could say which would justify my intrusion into his time. I wanted to speak to him, I wanted to find out something which would explain what was happening, but I had no specific detail to impart.
    We sat in the car and he lit a cigarette. He looked at me sideways with his shifty eyes. ‘Well?’ he asked.
    I wildly said the first thing that came into my head. ‘I thought when I looked at that man in the church that I had seen his face somewhere before,’ I said. ‘I’ve just realised what it was. When I was giving my sermon this morning, I was looking at the picture of the baptism of Christ which is at the back of the church, behind the font. The likeness is quite amazing.’
    Detective Chief Inspector Stone stared at me. I realised with a cold shock even as I said these words that they were quite true. I must have noticed this, as I had said, during the service, and repressed it, because the thought was so frightening. I began to wonder whether I really had gone mad.
    ‘You can verify it yourself, if you want to,’ I said. ‘You must have taken photographs of the body in the mortuary.’
    ‘Yes, we have,’ said Stone. ‘Photographs, dental impressions, fingerprints. There was no identification on the body. Nobody has come forward. We haven’t had a lot to go on. Nobody has seen anything, there was nobody answering his description in the local pubs, nothing from the house-to-house calls, nothing from anybody on thestreet. Nobody has seen a thing, not a dicky-bird. All indoors, having lunch, watching television. They might as well all be dead.’
    He looked at me again, inhaled deeply on his cigarette. ‘Of course, this theft may make things easier. It’s no longer an ordinary assault. Somebody wants to make sure we don’t get at the body. Why?’
    I said, ‘There are some religions who are opposed to post-mortems. The orthodox Jews, I believe,