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Billy sure took his time dying. Come to think of it, he took his time with everything, from getting up in the morning to getting it up, with coming too, too sheepish and awkward, too apprehensive of the noises around them to just hurry up and be done with it. In hindsight, Hickey cannot imagine why’d he think that dying, of all things, would be any different with Billy Boy. This hope of his bespeaks, is what it does, his endless if ultimately misplaced belief that the universe does not need to screw him over every damn time, and then some for good measure: the faith not supported by any evidence, but very near and dear to his heart, thank you very much. If only Billy, as he approached death, could extend Hickey the same solicitude he had for their neighbours rather than unceremoniously cough his sickness all over their straw pallet.
Hickey doesn’t budge from his outpost on the rickety stairs, his home over the last couple of days, until the hacking coughs coming from the attic finally turn into wheezing and then cease. Wouldn’t do to have the landlady wander in and turn them out onto the streets for bringing sickness into the house; wouldn’t do for him to catch whatever it is either. When he does go up to check, it’s done alright. In his thrashing, Billy must have overturned the tin cup of water Hickey left him, and a sheen of ice is already coating the floor. Hickey takes one good look at Billy’s face, no more peaceful in death than it was in life, clucks his tongue, and goes off to take care of the practicals of his modest service to the medical profession.
Now, nobody quite appreciates how hard it is for a young man without an established reputation and a penny to his name to procure a tea chest and a handcart on short notice. The day is still young, so small pedlars are of no help, crawling out and about their business like so many dung beetles. Hickey’s first stop, then, is at the cinder-man’s who lodges two stories down, not that he has much hope for the man’s helpfulness after their earlier altercation, and he isn’t disappointed. Then, he does rounds of the small shops around their wynd, all the while worrying that someone might discover and steal the corpse while he’s away. He even briefly considers pilfering a handcart to speed the matters along, but it wouldn’t do to be stopped for something so petty when ferrying a corpse. As a last measure, he does what he promised himself he wouldn’t do, unless he had no other choice—the man was too skittish to be altogether safe—and pays a visit to a certain stabler’s servant of his acquaintance. There, he finally manages to borrow all he needs against the promise not to tell the servant’s wife about their earlier dalliance. The curses that the man spews do a lot to impress even Hickey, no stranger to such responses, but needs must.
When he finally gets back to the wynd, the body is thankfully still there, if already going rigid. Undressing him poses a stiff challenge, Hickey thinks with a chuckle, but it has to be done: he wouldn’t want the rags to go to waste if they can still be pawned, and besides, selling a body with clothes on would be stealing, while the corpse as such, in the eyes of the law at least, belongs to nobody at all. Packing Billy into a crate takes some manoeuvring, so by the time he lugs the box down the stairs, the evening chill is already setting in, turning the city into one of those marzipan and sugar paste confections he sometimes sees in shop windows, and damn near unwalkable with slippery cobblestones, unless you have really good shoes, which, let’s be honest, near nobody does, or at least not in these quarters.
The young student who greets him and hastily ushers him into the basement at 10 Surgeons’ Square is a slip of a man, and if he hoped that those unruly muttonchops and preposterous wire-rimmed glasses would add him a day of age or a whit of gravitas, he was thoroughly mistaken. He watches Hickey pant and grunt under the weight of the box before moving in to help him.
“You would do well to recruit a friend if you were to continue in this line of business,” the young man says, pushing his glasses up his nose and wiping the sweat from his brow as they finally deposit the box in a long and empty room with a table in the middle. “Is this your first time as a resurrectionist?”
“Resurrectionist? I like the sound of that,” Hickey cackles, not liking to admit inexperience. “So, how much is it gonna be?”
The man looks at him with what almost seems like pity, and sighs. “We are expected to examine the wares first, as it were.”
He puts on an oversized apron and positions Billy on the table himself, as careful as if handling a small babe, holding the back of his head up so that it wouldn’t bang against the hard metal surface. Hickey watches with rapt attention as the man pulls up Billy's eyelids and peers in.
"If you smothered him, there would be small blood vessels broken in his eyes," the student explains with tired disinterest: a warning, no doubt, to dispel whatever ideas Hickey might have percolating in his head.
“‘Twas lung fever that did him in, Doctor.” He knows that the pushover on night duty doing this dirty business is no doctor, or at least not yet, but flattery opens many doors, and the man makes no move to correct him; pretends, in fact, not to have heard him at all.
"If you broke his neck, this is where you'd feel a lump. I’m sorry, but checking is rather de rigueur,” the insufferable prick prattles on without even considering whether Hickey speaks the posh man patter, “for nobody would benefit from another Burke and Hare case."
The student runs a careful hand over the back of Billy’s neck, where the curls were soft and always smelled of souring milk, and then all over his skull, checking for tell-tale bruises with a touch as soft as a lover’s. Hickey instantly envies the corpse this tenderness that the toff wouldn't have offered the man when he was still alive. He might use him, would use him, Hickey’s certain of that, for there was something in the student’s manner that instantly made him peg the man for a Mary Anne, but compassion was only for the dead, unless you, too, were born to money, that is.
It’s this hungry, angry envy that makes him close his palms around the student’s hand when he passes him the money (ten whole pounds! that’s his lodgings, threepence a night, covered for quite a while, even without having to share the pallet with anybody else, and food too, and kindling for colder nights, and maybe even good shoes!). Hickey’s mind races desperately when the student freezes, and he thinks that he may have misjudged. But then, what is the man going to do, call the police and explain the circumstances over an illegal dead body? And yet, his guess is proved correct: the man objects not to the suggested act itself, but to the environment.
"What, right here?" The young man looks as if he might have apoplexy, and gestures spasmodically at the dead body, its outlines very visible under the sheet.
"That frown does not become you," Hickey stands up on tiptoe and smoothes it out with his thumb. "Well, it's here or out in the cold alley, and here’s less likely to have your pizzle freeze off."
Unlike Billy, God rest his soul, the anatomy student proves fast to rise, fast to respond and fast to spend, a dream trick, all told. Hickey’s half-tempted to ask him to add a few shillings to the price of the corpse, but decides against it. People get mawkish whenever their private parts are concerned, so this might be a useful guarantee against a rainy day.