Dr. Caropreso finished putting on her gloves and depressed the steel lever, opening the rubber seal on the door. The stuff under Hector’s nose was supposed to over-power the smell of death, but it didn’t. Some of the corpses in the room were far too ripe for that. He’d need a bath after this. They all would. A short man with oriental features looked up from one of the coffins that covered the floor and came toward them with an outstretched hand. He offered it first to Silva.
“Your reputation precedes you, Chief Inspector. I’m Tanaka, Policia Civil.”
Silva shook his hand and introduced Arnaldo and Hector. “This is Agente Arnaldo Nunes, temporarily attached to our headquarters in Brasilia.”
Tanaka nodded at Arnaldo.
“And this is Delegado Costa, from our Sao Paulo field office.”
“Ah, yes. Your nephew,” Tanaka said.
Hector hated it when people brought that up. The impli-cation was that he owed his position to nepotism. The truth was that his uncle had never wanted him to be a cop in the first place and was more demanding of him than he was of anyone else on the force. But he could hardly hope to explain that to Tanaka or to anyone else.
As if she sensed his embarrassment, Dr. Caropreso deftly intervened: “We’d prefer to use the floor space for only the most desiccated of bodies-or not at all-because that would keep the smell down, but it doesn’t usually work out that way. This place was built thirty years ago, for the needs of thirty years ago. The number of cases has more than tripled since then. We never have enough space in the lockers.”