The Secrets of Life and Death Read Online Free Page A

She leaned disturbingly close and smiled up at him. She was a leggy, auburn-haired girl, with a healthy tan. He shook off the momentary attraction and smiled.
    ‘Thank you, I’m fine. Or I will be – when I unlock this.’ The mechanism thumped internally and the door swung open.
    ‘Professor Guichard?’ His assistant Rose’s stern tone came from behind him. It got rid of the girl, who mumbled something about coming back later in the week.
    ‘To the rescue, as always.’
    ‘It’s just transference, you know,’ she said. ‘Indiana Jones has a lot to answer for.’
    ‘He’s archaeology, I’m anthropology,’ he said. ‘He’s also completely fictional.’
    She took the parcel off him. ‘Well, she’s eighteen; she can’t help herself. Don’t encourage them, that’s all. You aren’t exactly unattractive, and you have that fatherly thing going on …’
    Before he could form a cutting retort, he saw her standing by the desk, looking down at the bulky package. Her round, middle-aged face looked pensive.
    ‘That’s the post-mortem photographs from the police,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you would be able to help me with them.’
    ‘I thought so. Is this case going to cut into your time?’
    Felix dropped his briefcase on the desk and slid the laptop onto his chair. ‘Maybe. How many departmental meetings are there this semester?’
    She handed him the envelope. ‘You never go to them anyway. Is this to do with that poor girl on the train? I saw it on the evening news.’
    He hesitated, feeling the weight of the package in his hand. He could feel a flutter of adrenaline just holding it. ‘She was covered with symbols, some of them Enochian letters.’
    ‘Well, let’s have a look at them. At least they didn’t make you attend the autopsy.’
    ‘They called me to the scene to view the body.’ He fumbled with the seal. He slid the pictures onto the desk, large glossy prints that catalogued every inch of the dead girl’s inscribed skin.
    ‘Good God.’ Rose picked up a picture showing the girl’s torso, with two concentric circles drawn over her hollow belly and flattened breasts. ‘That poor girl.’ She reached for another picture, peering at a symbol at the top of her chest. ‘These ones look Enochian. But these others, what are they?’
    ‘They look cuneiform, but unlike anything I’ve seen before. Is the layout familiar? I keep thinking I’ve seen something similar.’
    Rose started laying out photographs on the desk, as Felix cleared piles of paperwork and academic journals onto his chair. There was a stack of ten-by-eights of both sides of the body. The circles on her back were smaller and were composed of less figures.
    ‘Do the letters spell anything?’ she asked, looking up at Felix with a frown.
    He reached for a pen and started jotting on the back of a memo he hadn’t read and had even less chance of responding to. ‘T … G … C … E … is that an O?’ In between were other shapes, more elaborate.
    She traced one, her finger almost touching the paper. ‘It’s so sad. She doesn’t look much older than my daughter.’
    He glanced across at the pictures that included the dead face. Blonde hair, almost white, had fallen back away from her pale forehead. Her half-open eyes were shadowed with a soft grey. ‘I don’t know how old she was. Young.’
    ‘The shapes do look familiar.’ She stepped back, head cocked on one side.
    Felix felt a surge of excitement as memory flickered in his mind, just out of reach. ‘That’s what I felt, at the station. Only, on something metal. Coin, maybe?’
    She started. ‘A medal, perhaps? Do you remember … ?’
    He crouched down and pulled open the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets. ‘There were two medals, the ones Dee was awarded by the king of Poland. I did an authentication for an auction house, around 2009, I think.’
    ‘I remember. There were some letters with them, and some notes. I photocopied them for you.’
    He