You Are Dead

56

Monday 15 December

Roy drove in silence, in the slow traffic behind the cortège, with Cleo at his side. The rain was falling harder, the sky as dark as their mood.

‘I’ve never been to a sadder funeral,’ she said, suddenly.

He nodded, too choked to speak at the moment.

‘Normally,’ she said, ‘you know — there’s something uplifting. Most of the funerals I’ve been to have been of elderly relatives. Lives lived. I went to one, a couple of years ago, of an old school friend who’d died at twenty-seven of cancer, but even that one, although desperately sad, didn’t affect me in the way this one has.’

‘I guess in the police we all know the dangers. Glenn was shot during that raid to try to free a kidnapped couple. Had the bullet gone a couple of inches either way, he’d have been killed or paralysed. And then EJ was inches from being crushed to death by a van she was trying to stop.’

‘And you, my darling? Honestly, how many risks have you taken, my love?’

‘A few,’ he said. ‘I suppose one of the closest was at Beachy Head last year, when I had to go over the edge of the cliff to save Pewe’s life. And I hated the bastard.’

‘With good reason. I’ll never forgive him for what he did.’

Grace thought back to Pewe’s humiliating attempt to prove he had murdered Sandy by having the garden at the home they’d shared scanned and excavated

‘He was determined to prove I had killed her. Then I put my life on the bloody line to save his. Now he’s my sodding boss. How great is that?’

‘Well, maybe he’ll now show his gratitude.’

Grace touched her thigh, gently. ‘You know, that’s one of the ten thousand things I love about you. You’re always looking for the good in people.’

‘And you’re always looking for the bad?’

‘That’s what twenty years of being a copper does for you.’

‘Don’t ever stop looking for the good, Roy. There is good in everyone. Sometimes you just have to drill down deep.’

‘I’d like to believe you. Especially when you look at someone like Bella, who was devoted to her job and equally devoted to looking after her elderly, sick mother, then you have a truly good person. I’ve encountered too many people who were totally dedicated to doing evil.’

‘How many of those ever had a chance in life? How many got warped in childhood by abusive parents, lack of education and no role models?’

‘Most of them. But does that excuse them? Hey, I’m awfully sorry, I just beat an old lady to death so I could burgle her house, but it’s all right because my mum used to get drunk and hit me.’ He drove in silence for some moments, then he said, ‘I’m sorry, darling, I don’t want to sound cynical. I don’t ever want to be a cynic. But Bella died a hero. A true hero. I’m not sure how many of the scrotes we have to deal with every day in this city would ever be capable of heroism. Or of even doing anything good.’

Finally they entered the hilltop cemetery, and saw the cortège a short distance ahead. They wound past the rows of flat tombstones — the only ones permitted here now because of the long history of vandalism — and halted. A short distance away was the freshly opened family grave, where Bella’s father had been buried some years earlier. Green AstroTurf covered the mound of earth on one side, as if peeled from inside the grave. Two planks of wood lay across.

Oblivious now to the wind and driving rain, they hurried over to the limousine that had halted behind the horse-drawn hearse, just as Norman Potting, looking utterly lost and bewildered, tears streaming down his face, and clutching a plastic bag, climbed out.

Grace put a supportive arm around the Detective Sergeant, who was crying inconsolably. ‘Be strong for her, Norman,’ he said quietly to him. ‘Just be strong for the next short while.’

‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to go on living without her.’

‘You’re going to have to go on sodding living, because I need you.’ He led him towards the chubby, white-haired figure of Father Martin, who stood by the grave, oblivious to the weather in his black cassock and purple stole, as Bella’s family and friends gathered around.

The coffin was carried to the grave and tapes threaded through the handles. For some moments there was total silence, just the sound of the wind and the falling rain, and the deep, intermittent sobs from Norman.

‘I am the resurrection and the light, says the Lord,’ intoned Father Martin. ‘He who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live and shall not die eternally.

‘Friends, welcome here, to these few moments in the cemetery as we come and bring Bella to this final resting place. We are reminded in the scriptures that we brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let’s bow our heads for this first prayer.’

Grace listened to the words of the prayer and remembered Father Martin’s reading earlier, blinded now by his own tears. He continued to support Norman Potting, who was shaking. He heard the priest’s words intermittently.

‘But someone may ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ he heard. ‘The body that is sown is perishable. It is raised imperishable... Where, oh death, is your sting?’

Potting’s sobbing became louder. Grace tried to comfort him.

‘We are going to commend Bella to God’s keeping,’ Father Martin said.

The pall-bearers bowed their heads. Slowly they lowered the coffin, until it was out of sight.

‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger... He remembers that we are but dust, our days are like the grass, we flourish like a flower of the field. When the wind goes over it is gone and its place will know it no more, but the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever... We have entrusted our sister Bella Kathleen Moy to God’s mercy, and we now commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Then, after the final amen, Bella’s mother stepped forward shakily, holding on to the arm of a family member, and threw a handful of earth into the grave.

Moments later, suddenly silent, Norman Potting broke free from Grace’s grip, stumbled up to the grave, and knelt. Then from the plastic bag he was holding he pulled a small red box.

Looking around wildly, almost insane with grief, he said, ‘Bella will need these. She’ll need them. She will.’

He leaned forward, headlong into the grave, and dropped the box of Maltesers on top of the coffin.

Then he staggered back to his feet, helped by Roy who ran forward to support him.

‘She will,’ Potting said. ‘She’ll be giving them out in Heaven, to everyone she meets.’