Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

The Cancellation by Reginald Hill

© 1996 by Reginald Hill

Readers may be surprised to find the creator of police detectives Dalziel and Pascoe turning his band to the private-eye story, but Reginald Hill has always ranged freely across genre lines in his sixteen-year career as a mystery writer. His latest creation, black P.I. Joe Sixsmith, is as irreverently portrayed as most of Mr. Hill’s other characters, and the result, as usual, is uproariously funny.

“Hello.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Joe, Aunt Mirabelle.”

“You sure? Why didn’t you say so before?”

“Because it’s my phone in my office, Aunt Mirabelle. I always answer it.”

“Not when you know it’s me ringing you don’t, boy.”

Joe Sixsmith sighed. As a leading light among the black P.I.’s of Luton who’d served their time as lathe operators, he felt entitled to a little respect.

“What do you want, Auntie?”

“You know Mr. Tooley’s funeral?”

“We talked about it last night. You said it couldn’t be till next Thursday ’cos they’d had a rush on at the crem and I made a note and said I’d definitely be there. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. Well, it’s this afternoon. Half-past three.”

“Today? But you said...”

“I know what I said. And I told that funeral director friend of yours it was a crying shame that folk had to be kept lying around so long, especially when they’d only got one frail old sister who’d travelled all the way from Belfast to sort out the effects and had neither the money nor the strength to be travelling back home and back here again in space of a week...”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Joe, risking an interruption. “You said all this. So what’s changed?”

“Mr. Webster from the parlour rang this morning to say there’s been a cancellation and did we want it?”

“Lou said a cancellation? Of a funeral? You sure?”

“Don’t you start again, Joseph. Just be here three o’clock sharp. Don’t want that old lady going home saying they don’t know the meaning of good neighbourliness here in Luton.”

Joe grinned broadly as he replaced the receiver. It was true that for many years Mirabelle had undoubtedly been a good neighbour to old Mr. Tooley, making sure that he continued to be well fed even when, as often happened, he contrived to lose most of his pension at his much-loved dog track by halfway through the week. But this argosy of Christian charity to a miserable sinner was in risk of foundering on the rock of old Miss Tooley, the grieving sister, who, so far as Joe could judge, had no intention whatsoever of travelling home to Belfast and back in a week. On the contrary, she seemed more than content to more than fill her brother’s place, resting in his flat with Good Neighbour Mirabelle coming round with three hot meals a day, in between which she spent most of her time on the Good Neighbour’s line, pouring out her woes to her numerous acquaintance back in Belfast.

So news of the cancellation must have come like a gift from God to Mirabelle.

Possibly in compensation for these uncharitable thoughts, and in despite of the shortness of notice and the fact that at ninety-three, old Mr. Tooley had outlived most of his two-legged friends, Mirabelle had managed to drum up a fair turnout, enough to fill both funeral cars, with Joe having to squeeze in the front seat of the hearse next to Lou Webster whom he’d known since school days.

“Okay, Lou?” he asked.

“Fine. Yourself, Joe?”

“Fine. Get a lot of cancellations in your line of business, do you?”

“Not a lot. In fact, it takes something unusual.”

Joe contemplated eternity for another dignified furlong. But his mind kept drifting back to the cancellation.

“So what was unusual about this one?” he asked.

“Mr. Tallas? For a start, he died abroad.”

“You say he was called ‘Dallas’?”

“Tallas. It’s Greek. That’s where he was, in Greece, visiting his family. But seems he’d been born here, had British nationality, and wanted to be buried here. The insurance company — guy called Smith — rang to say it had to be postponed. Family complications. I wasn’t best pleased, I tell you. One thing you can’t afford in our game is smell.”

Joe tried eternity again but it was no good.

“Smell?” he said.

“You know. Bad-meat smell. Mr. Tallas died in a car accident, probably all cut up and left out in the sun till they got round to shovelling him into a coffin, you know what these wops are like, all mañana out there.”

“Think that’s Spain, Lou,” Joe pointed out gently.

“Is it? Won’t fall out about a couple of miles. Anyway, first thing I noticed when I picked him up at the airport was the pong. You had to get up close but I’ve got a nose for it. I thought, hello. Don’t want you lying around in my parlour too long.”

Joe shuddered and looked behind him.

“No need to worry about Mr. Tooley. Time I’m finished with a client, you could sit him in your living room and keep him there for a month without anyone noticing, except he didn’t move much.”

“Got a girl on the cheese counter at the hyper like that,” said Joe. “So what did you tell this insurance guy, Smith?”

“Said nothing till he rang to cancel this morning. I mean, he’s paying. Has paid. Top dollar. But soon as he said there was a family travel problem and the funeral would have to be cancelled, I said, that’ll be extra for the inconvenience, and I’m not keeping him any longer than tomorrow else I’ll have the Health round. I didn’t tell him I’d already moved the coffin out of the Chapel of Rest and into my workshop.”

Joe said, “How’re you going to manage tomorrow? Not another cancellation?”

“No. We’re doing first of the day, parish job, some poor derelict. Push him through in five minutes flat, slip the cream soup a bung, and we can easily fit in another long as they don’t want no Friends-Romans and half the Messiah. Smith said fine, and if the family didn’t make it, go ahead anyway.”

Joe thought about this, slowly, as was his wont. It took him half a mile to work out that the cream soup was the crem supe, i.e. the crematorium superintendent. But there were other puzzles.

He said, “So if Smith’s not that worried about the family making it, why not go ahead today anyway?”

“Don’t ask me. All I know is, he’s paying. Also it gave me a chance to do your auntie a favour. Wise man doesn’t miss a chance like that.”

Joe took his point. Mirabelle blacking an undertaker in Luton was like the bailiffs moving in.

He sat back and looked forward to the service.

It was more entertaining than he anticipated.

First off the chaplain, due doubtless to a late rebriefing, seemed unsure whether he was bidding farewell to Daniel Tooley, retired car mechanic and greyhound enthusiast, who’d died in the fullness of years, or David Tallas, company director, who’d been cut off in his prime. In the end he settled for David Tooley, a.k.a. Daniel Tallas, who’d been good to his family, generous to his employees, loyal to his friends, and kind to dumb animals, by all of whom he would be deeply missed.

If employees covered bookies, it would do for old Mr. Tooley, thought Joe.

Old Miss Tooley certainly showed no unease until the moment approached for the final curtain. But now she prodded Mirabelle in the ribs and hissed, “When will we be having ‘Danny Boy,’ Bella?”

Mirabelle, who hated being called Bella, asked what she thought she was talking about? Old Miss Tooley said it was universally known that Daniel wanted “Danny Boy” sung at his funeral. Mirabelle said it was the first she’d heard. Old Miss Tooley said Daniel wouldn’t rest in his grave and she’d be laid low for weeks if the song wasn’t sung. And Mirabelle, feeling the implied threat and nobly resisting the temptation to point out that, as old Mr. Tooley had expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered over Trap 3 at the Luton Dog Track, resting in his grave hardly applied, looked at Joe.

“No,” said Joe.

“You got no problem singing it down that hellhole drinking den you frequent, I see no reason for you to be shy in the House of the Lord,” said Mirabelle.

And two minutes later Joe found himself standing alongside Mr. Tooley’s basic-package coffin assuring its inmate that the pipes, the pipes were ca-alling.

In fact, it was no problem. As a longtime baritone in the famous Boyling Corner Chapel Choir and a popular contributor to karaoke night at The Glit, Joe could hold a tune and had performed before more interactive audiences than this. And sizewise, it wasn’t bad either. In fact, there seemed to be quite a lot more people in the congregation than the nine or ten Mirabelle had crowded into the funeral cars. Perhaps she’d sent out a three-line whip throughout her wider sphere of influence beyond the Rasselas Estate. But Joe doubted it. There were folk here who didn’t look like they belonged to Mirabelle’s flock. Men in sharp suits with fifty-quid haircuts. Women to match.

As the final words of the song faded away, one of the mystery mourners, a handsome redheaded woman of about forty whose elegant silk suit showed she’d kept her figure in a way which Mirabelle probably considered an affront to both Nature and God, began to applaud.

Mirabelle turned and glowered, but nothing abashed, she got in three or four more hearty claps and gave Joe a smile whose warmth he felt like a turned-up fan heater.

Beside him the coffin was on the move. He returned to his seat leaving the bemused chaplain to resume centre stage. A blessing, a few moments silent prayer, then they were filing out to the piped strains of some mournful Muzak.

“Was I all right, Auntie?”

“All right for your drunken friends, maybe. No place in church for them vibratos. If you can’t hit the note, you shouldn’t be singing,” she said sharply. Then, relenting, she said, “No, you were fine, Joe. I’m just mad at that person putting her hands together like she was at some pop concert.”

A hand tugged at Joe’s sleeve, a waft of powerfully musky perfume tugged at his nostrils, and he turned to find himself looking at that person. Behind her at the crem door he could see her male companion talking agitatedly to Lou.

“Looks like there’s been a real cock-up,” said the woman in a smoke-roughened voice which rubbed you up the right way. “Seems we’ve come to the wrong funeral, but it was worth it to hear you sing. Don’t do gigs, do you?”

“No,” said Joe, flattered by her implication and fluttered by her scented proximity. “Karaoke night down The Glit, and I’m in the Boyling Corner Choir.”

“Never heard of them,” she said. “I’m Mandy Levine, I run a little club out Barnet way. Thursday night’s old-time night, always get a good crowd in, you’d go down well there. Here’s my card if you think you might fancy it.”

She laid her hand on his arm, gave him the warm smile, plus a promising squeeze and a saucy wink, then turned to join her friend, who seemed to be bringing the rest of the mystery mourners up to date. After a while they moved off en masse to the car park and dispersed in a snarl of Jags and BMWs.

On the way back, Joe said to Lou, “What was all that about then?”

The funeral director said, “Don’t know and I don’t want to know, and unless someone’s paying you a lot of money to find out, I reckon you don’t want to know either.”

One of Joe’s great strengths as a P.I. was that he never let bafflement bother him in the line of business. If, as often, he couldn’t see the wood for the trees, he was usually quite content to rest peaceful in a clearing, confident that luck or instinct or a passing lumberjack would show him the way out.

But puzzles that were none of his concern either personally or professionally fascinated him.

He took out the card the woman had given him and studied it. It read Mandy Levine, The Green Hat plus a telephone number.

“That woman offered me a spot at her club,” he said.

“Mandy Levine? I’d steer clear there.”

“Why’s that, Lou?” said Joe, getting a bit pissed with all this gratuitous advice.

“Because if it’s your deep brown voice she’s after, she’ll rip you off. And if it’s your deep brown dick she’s after, Arnie, her husband, will do the ripping off.”

“Arnie Levine? Sounds familiar. Tell me about him.”

Lou laughed shortly. Perhaps it was okay once you’d got rid of the coffin.

“Nothing to tell,” he said. “Except that colleagues of mine in north London reckon him and his mates are good for business.”

Joe digested this. It was like ripe Camembert — nasty smell but compulsive.

“And that was Arnie giving you a row at the crem?”

“That’s right. He and his friends were pissed off at not being told Mr. Tallas had been postponed.”

“So why’d you not tell them?”

“Didn’t know they were coming, did I? Mr. Smith from the Insurance said, quiet do, family only.”

And his family lived in Greece. Where he’d died. Funny.

The funeral tea was a great success mainly because old Miss Tooley had insisted on laying in a supply of bottled Guinness and Irish whisky. When Mirabelle, who was as near teetotal as wouldn’t have stirred the needle on a Breathalyzer, looked disapproving, Miss Tooley said, “Two things Daniel asked for in his will, one being the scattering of his ashes at the dog track — the other being that his friends should drink him slainte, and you can’t do that in tay!”

Mirabelle took her revenge when the old lady, in response to a question about her travelling plans, announced that, to be sure, she ought to be getting back, but the planes to Belfast were so packed now the peace was here, she doubted if she could get a seat for several days more.

“I’ve some good news for you there, Miss Tooley,” said Mirabelle, who’d just returned from her flat next door looking triumphant. “I’ve just been phoning my old friend Mrs. Marley’s daughter who works on the booking desk at the airport and when I told her how desperate you were to get back home, she played with that machine of hers and came up with a ticket for you on the eight-thirty flight tomorrow morning.”

“Eight-thirty?” said Miss Tooley in dismay. “Now how am I going to get up and find my way to the airport at such an ungodly hour?”

“Don’t you fret, my dear,” said Mirabelle. “I’ll see you don’t oversleep. And Joe here will drive you to the airport, won’t you, Joe?” Joe, having once again been given the proof that no one messed with Mirabelle, eschewed even token resistance and said, “My pleasure, Miss Tooley.”

It looked like game, set, and match to the home team till at the height of what was now undeniably a party, Miss Tooley screamed, “The ashes! I can’t go without scattering dear dead Daniel’s ashes!” and collapsed in a fit of what Mirabelle termed the vaporizers.

Joe knew what was going to happen before it happened and was already heading out of the Tooley apartment when his aunt announced. “Don’t you give that no nevermind, Miss Tooley. Joe will fetch them. And if you set out half an hour earlier, you’ll have plenty of time for the scattering.”

Joe looked at his watch. Quarter to seven. Would the ashes still be at the crem or would Lou have had them collected? Either way, would there be anybody in either spot to hand them over? For once in his life he acted sensibly and dived into Mirabelle’s flat and picked up the phone.

It rang ten times before it was picked up and Lou’s professionally sepulchral tones announced, “Webster Funerals. How may I help you?”

“Lou, it’s Joe. Listen, you got Mr. Tooley’s ashes yet?”

“Yes. Made sure of it. Mirabelle said the old lady would be flying home very soon.”

“Sooner than she thinks,” said Joe. “Listen, we need ’em now. Any chance you could bring them round?”

“No way. It’s the annual LAUFS dinner and I’m giving the address.”

“Laughs?” said Joe. “Didn’t know you did comedy, Lou.”

“Luton Association of Undertaking and Funeral Services,” said Lou. “And I’m late.”

“Sorry,” said Joe. “Any way I can collect them myself? It’s a matter of death and death.”

He’d hit the right note.

“What I’ll do is leave the key to the workshop entrance, that’s round the back by the garages, on the ledge above the door. The urn will be just inside. Lock up behind you and push the key through the front door. And don’t hang about getting here. I get burgled, it’s down to you.”

“Thanks, Lou. I’ll be there five minutes tops.”

It was a lie. He knew it was a lie as soon as he got out into the cold night air and realized just how much he’d enjoyed of old Miss Tooley’s Irish hospitality. The car was out, and the Rasselas Estate was not the kind of place that taxis cruised.

He set off walking, wasted time waiting for a bus, saw three sweep by in convoy when he was between stops, took a shortcut, got lost, and was resigning himself to the last indignity for a P.I. of having to ask his way when he saw the sign, Webster’s Funerals.

He made his way round the back. There was a car parked in the shadow of the garages, a BMW. Lou must be doing well, thought Joe, glad it wasn’t a hearse. He took out the pencil torch he carried and ran its finger of light over the door ledge till he found the key.

As he took it down and poked the finger of light into the keyhole, a distant clock struck eight.

Superstitiously, he felt mightily relieved it wasn’t midnight.

The relief was short-lived.

Midnight was nothing, a time to frighten kids with telling ghost stories round the fire.

When you were standing outside a darkened funeral parlour and the door swung open at the mere touch of the key, didn’t matter what time of day it was, that was really scary.

He stepped inside, telling himself Lou had been careless and forgotten to lock the door. He didn’t believe himself, but that didn’t always mean he was wrong, any more than believing himself had ever meant he was right. He was in a long stone-flagged corridor. His torchlight dribbled onto an urn standing against the wall. He picked it up and gave it a little shake. It was full, presumably of Mr. Tooley.

Now was the time to withdraw, lock the door, and if in the morning it turned out someone had stolen all Lou’s gilt-edged coffin handles, say, “Hey man, I’m sorry, but I didn’t notice a thing.”

He took a step backwards. And heard a noise.

It was not the kind of noise you wanted to hear in the kind of place he was hearing it in. It was sort of frictional, like wood being dragged across wood, as in, say, a coffin lid being dragged off a coffin. Also it was so loud you couldn’t pretend you hadn’t heard it, though he was doing his best.

Then came a second sound, this one human, like a gasp, or a groan, perhaps even a yuck!

Joe went cataleptic for thirty seconds, or it might have been thirty minutes. When the power of thought returned, he wished it hadn’t, for it was a funny thing, but now that he was really scared, there was no choice but to go forward and take a look. Something wrong there, surely?

A lesser man might have used this interesting psychological contradiction as an excuse to stand still and ponder, but Joe’s anti-intellectual feet were already carrying him steadily down the dark corridor. As he moved, he felt his senses sharpened by fear. He could feel the sensuous curve of the urn he was still carrying like a cupped breast; he could hear smaller sounds, rustling, heavy-breathing sounds; he could see the outline of the door behind which they were being made, and he could smell a whole complex of smells. In it were woodshavings and embalming fluid, the things you’d expect in such a place, plus a heavier, muskier, and somehow familiar perfume. And finally, as he gently pushed on the unresisting door, blotting all these out completely, he was hit by the foul and fetid stench of rotting flesh!

On the last turn of the hinge the door squeaked, and so did the redheaded woman standing by an open coffin with a funerary urn in her hands, and on her handsome face, lurid in the light of a fluorescent lantern perched on a workbench, an expression of mixed shock and guilt.

“Hello, Mrs. Levine,” said Joe. “Still looking for talent?”

She recovered quickly, you had to give her that.

“Jesus Christ, it’s you, the baritone blackbird! What the hell are you doing here? Not where you work, is it?”

As she spoke she put the urn on the workbench and from a large canvas toolbag removed a long slender screwdriver which glinted like a stiletto in the light. Joe eyed it uneasily.

“No,” he said. “Actually, I’m a P.I., a private investigator.”

And not someone you should mess with was his intended implication, but instead it sent her into peals of laughter.

“Hey, that makes you the Singing Detective,” she gasped. “Even better billing than the Baritone Blackbird. Why don’t we clear up here and go somewhere to talk about your career?”

“First you tell me what makes you so keen to take a last look at your friend, Mr. Tallas?” he said.

She smiled and glanced fondly into the coffin.

“David and I were once very close. Arnie never knew — he’d have killed me if he’d found out. So you see why I wanted to pay my last respects alone.”

It was clearly crap, but spoken with such sincerity that Joe wasted a second working out the odds it was the truth. His abacus mind had difficulty computing the figures, and the effort of concentration must have switched off his fear-heightened senses for a second because it was a change in Mandy’s expression rather than what must have been the not inconsiderable noise made by a man walking on crutches that alerted him to the danger behind.

He twisted round, fast enough to see but not to avoid the blow from the crutch handle. But at least the movement diverted it from the back of his head where it might have produced unconsciousness, to the side of his face where it just felt like he’d been kicked by a misanthropic mule. As he fell back, the man swung a plaster-cast leg at him. Joe scrabbled backwards across the tiled floor, and more by chance than judgment his left foot hooked around the man’s other crutch, now bearing all his weight, and pulled it from under him. The man teetered for a moment and Joe, supine, hurled Mr. Tooley’s urn at his chest.

There wasn’t enough force in the projectile to do any damage, but the impact was enough to tip the balance and with a shrieked word which Joe didn’t recognize but which sounded like an oath, his attacker fell backwards like a felled pine.

Joe closed his eyes in relief and opened them again to find the gleaming tip of Mandy Levine’s screwdriver poised three inches above the left one, of which, being the stronger, he was particularly fond.

She was holding the implement in both hands and he did not doubt that the full weight of her generously structured upper deck could drive it via his eyeball into his almost paralysed brain.

But she wasn’t looking down at him, she was looking towards the fallen figure of the intruder. Joe did not dare raise his head to follow her gaze, but his straining ears could hear no sound to indicate the man was preparing to return to the attack.

Then the bright blade wavered and the woman rose. Joe sat up quickly too, and winced as he found that Mr. Tooley’s urn, as though in revenge for being so impiously misused, had rolled back between his legs. Holding it, Joe got groggily to his feet.

Mandy Levine was kneeling by the fallen man.

“Bring the light,” she commanded.

She was, Joe guessed, a woman accustomed to being obeyed. He, being from long practice a man accustomed to obeying women accustomed to being obeyed, swapped the urn for the lantern and carried it over to her.

Expertly she raised the man’s eyelids, examined his eyes, felt for a pulse in the neck, and said flatly, “Dead. You’ve killed him. Cracked his skull.”

“Hang about,” protested Joe. “It was an accident. He’s dead, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. Who the shoot is he, anyway?”

He knew the answer before she said it. Sometimes the impossible is also the inevitable.

“Tallas,” she said. “David Tallas.”

Joe went to the coffin and shone the lantern into it.

“Shoot,” said Joe. Mirabelle’s soapy-mouthwash aversion therapy had made this his strongest oath, but under provocation he could utter it with an intensity that would have won him style points in Billingsgate.

The coffin was a showy mahogany affair, with ornate gilt handles and the kind of brocade silk upholstery which, even though ripped so that the stuffing trickled through, must have cost an arm and a leg. Of arms there was no trace, but there were legs aplenty, four to be precise, all belonging to a deceased and decomposing goat.

It wasn’t very big, barely more than a kid, but its bouquet was enormous.

“Mrs. Levine,” said Joe, gagging. “Maybe you ought to tell me what’s going on.”

The woman slowly rose. Her foot kicked against one of the crutches. She picked it up and held it two-handed as she eyed Joe calculatingly.

Joe would have liked to be sure she was merely working out what to say to him, but the memory of the screwdriver poised over his left eye was still strong, and he had an uneasy feeling that she was still weighing war against jaw.

Words won, temporarily at least.

“I’ll give it to you straight, Joe,” she said in that husky, caressing voice. “The reason David here went to Greece was as agent for a little syndicate put together by my Arnie and his friends. He was good at that sort of thing, David. Could sell false teeth to tigers, and buy their stripes at the same time. There was a fair amount of money involved, hard cash money which he took with him, so imagine how Arnie and the others felt when they heard the news. David, driving from the airport in a hire car, had swerved on a mountain road to avoid a goat, bounced down the hillside, got thrown out, hit a rock, broke his neck, while the car had gone up in flames. Nothing left but unidentifiable ashes.”

“To avoid a goat?” said Joe, glancing at the coffin.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. More chance of David avoiding a dirty weekend at the Ritz than swerving to avoid a goat. Came in useful though.”

“So he faked his death to pocket the syndicate money?”

“You got it, Joe,” she said admiringly.

“Must’ve taken some doing,” said Joe dubiously. “I mean, even in Greece there must be regulations...”

“Sure there are. But the cousin who’s his closest relative over there happens to be a police chief out in the sticks. Just the guy to know all the forms and formalities as well as all the fiddles. Wait till the goat’s beginning to pong a bit so no one wants to get too close to the coffin, screw it down, and send it home. Easy.”

Joe pondered this, conscious of the woman’s eyes upon him. He didn’t have the kind of detective mind which made connections like a digital exchange, but put a goat in his path and he’d fall over it.

He said, “Easy, yeah. But not so easy as fixing a fake funeral in Greece. Lot less risky too. And why’d he come back himself? And how come if he faked the accident he’s up to his hams in plaster? And why did he cancel the funeral today? And why’s he hobbling round here trying to kill people? And just what the shoot are you doing here, Mrs. Levine?”

“Mandy,” she said. “Call me Mandy. I like to be on first-name terms with people I do business with.”

“We’re doing business?” said Joe. “Have I missed something?”

She smiled and said, “Come on, Joe. No need to play quite so dumb, even when you’ve got the face for it.”

She really did believe he knew what was going on. It was quite flattering. He turned away from her so that the bewilderment on his face didn’t show quite so bright. And he found himself looking into the coffin again... the torn silk lining... the stuffing oozing out... powdery, white... what kind of stuffing did these Greek undertakers use anyway?

He licked his finger, touched it to the powder, tasted the grains on his tongue. They said it helped you see things clearly. It certainly worked for Joe Sixsmith.

“Smack,” he said. “That’s what he went to buy.”

“That’s right. Greece has got borders like a lace curtain. Most of the stuff pouring in from Pakistan and the East hits Europe there. But moving it on to where the big markets are is a lot harder, especially for the small-time operators. So David set up a deal to pay his cousin what was a small fortune in his terms, and buy enough shit to make Arnie and his chums a large fortune in their terms. It looked an all-round winner. Only David fancied a bit more than his commission. In fact, the lot, not just the money but the sell-on profit. And he could only get that by selling the stuff here.”

“So he had to come back. And he used his own coffin to carry the heroin. Smart,” said Joe, with genuine admiration. “But what went wrong?”

Mandy laughed.

“Apart from you cancelling his ticket, you mean?” she said. “Silly bugger got himself involved in a real accident here before he could arrange for a bit of quiet meditation by the dear deceased’s coffin and remove the shit. He realized last night he was in no state to come and collect for himself, so he rang me at the club. I nearly had an accident too when I heard his voice, I tell you.”

“Why’d he ring you?” asked Joe.

She smiled and gave him her saucy wink.

“Like I said, we were quite close once,” she said.

“You didn’t think of telling Arnie he was alive?”

“Why would I think of that? He’d just want to sort out Dave, and Dave’s not such a gent he wouldn’t let Arnie know what we’d been up to before he went under. No, keep stumm seemed best. I went to see him. Couldn’t do anything last night, I was meeting Arnie later. So we fixed for him to cancel this morning, then he discharged himself from hospital this evening and I brought him along here. Don’t think he trusted me by myself. He was sitting in my car, must have seen you coming in after me and thought he’d better hobble to the rescue, poor bastard.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re going to miss him.”

“A bit. But I’ve mourned for him once, haven’t I? And that’s enough for any man. Question now is, what are we going to do, Joe?”

“No question,” said Joe. “I’m going to go out of here and ring the police.”

“No,” she said, hefting the crutch. “Don’t think so. Anyone rings the police, it’s me.”

“Sorry?”

“Mobile in the car. I go out there, say I think something terrible’s happening. Got this call from David asking me to pick him up at the hospital. Didn’t know what to make of it. He asked me to drive him round here, saying he’d explain everything. And we arrived to find the door already open. He went in. I heard a scuffle and rushed in to find you here, the coffin open, and David dead upon the floor. Think about it, Joe. Man just out of hospital against advice, in plaster and on crutches, gets cancelled by fully fit, highly qualified P.I. What kind of questions would that make the police ask, eh?”

Joe guessed that the main kind of question it would make the local force ask was, what the shoot did she mean by “highly qualified”?

But qualified or not, he knew a deal when he was being offered one.

“What’s the alternative?” he asked.

“Well, the way I see it, Joe, is, we’ve got a coffin with contents all legally certified as the body of David Tallas, deceased. And we’ve got the body of David Tallas, deceased.”

It took his breath away, which he didn’t mind as it gave a respite from dead goat.

“And the stuff in the coffin?”

“Plenty of room for both of them,” said Mandy.

“I didn’t mean the goat.”

“Oh, the shit. Straight split? Or I’ll take the lot, sell it, and then split the divvy with you?”

Joe considered for a moment.

There was a lot to be said for not getting mixed up with the police, some of whom would be glad of a chance to think the worst of him. Also, once it got public, however it panned out, he was going to end up as the man who’d made Arnie Levine unhappy, which he didn’t mind doing so long as Arnie took his unhappiness to jail. But there was no offence he’d committed here.

He said, “You may be on to something, Mandy. Hang about.”

He turned to the canvas tool bag on the workbench. She’d come well equipped. He took out an old-fashioned auger, drew a deep breath, and leaning over the coffin, began punching holes in the lining.

She watched approvingly for a while, then approval turned to puzzlement as he ran his tiny torch beam along the shelves which lined the wall till he saw what he wanted.

And puzzlement turned to horror as he unscrewed the top off a carboy of formalin and began to pour it into the coffin.

“What the hell...!”

“Nice mix,” he said. “Mainline this and you’ll get a high that will last forever!”

For a second he thought she was going to come at him and possibly hope that the coffin would take two. Then she shook her head and began to laugh.

“Okay,” she said. “Do I take it this means I’ve got half a deal?”

“Why not?” he said. “I don’t approve of wife beating.”

“Arnie got wind of any of this, beating would be the easy option,” she said grimly. “You want to take his feet? Okay. Lift!”

Five minutes later they were on their way out. As Joe locked the door he asked. “How’d you get in anyway?”

She raised the canvas bag in which she was carrying her tools and lantern.

“Skeletons,” she said. “Fitting, huh?”

“Don’t get stopped,” warned Joe. “Going equipped’s a crime.”

“Hope not, Joe,” she laughed. “I always go equipped. Like a lift?”

“No thanks. I’m parked round the corner,” he lied.

“Okay. Take care, Joe. And if you ever do decide you’d like a tryout at my club, you’ve got my number.”

He watched the car lights vanish out of the yard, then took a deep breath of the lovely cold odourless night air. It felt good to be out here alone, with Mandy Levine moving away from him at a rate of knots and a strong locked door between himself and that coffin with all its grisly freight...

And the thought put him in mind of Mr. Tooley’s ashes, resting quiet in their urn, back inside on the workbench top where he’d left it.

“Oh shoot!” said Joe Sixsmith.

Next morning he stood with old Miss Tooley in front of Starting Gate 3 at the Luton Dog Track.

Joe tested the wind with a damp finger and said, “I think we’d be better the other side.”

“I take your point,” said Miss Tooley. “Dearly though I loved Daniel, I don’t fancy taking him home in my eye. Give us the urn, Joe.”

He handed it over.

She said, “Thanks, Joe. And thanks for everything. You’ve all been so kind to me. I’ll miss you all like my own legs. But it’s no distance at all now I’ve found you. Tell Mirabelle I’ll be back to see her as soon as I can manage.”

“She’ll look forward to that,” said Joe.

“I know she will. Soul of hospitality, your aunt. I didn’t think I would take to her so much at first, but it shows how wrong you can be about people, doesn’t it, Joe?”

“It certainly does,” said Joe. He was thinking of Mandy Levine. Okay, he wouldn’t have liked to have given her the choice of himself dead and David Tallas alive. But he could admire a realist, someone who could look at how things stood and accept whatever the fates threw up with a smile. She’d taken his trick with the formalin pretty well considering he’d ruined what must have been close on a million quids’ worth of dope, street value. Yes, a feisty lady, as they said. Perhaps he would take up her offer of a spot at her club... after all, it had been made before any of that business last night...

Miss Tooley had unscrewed the top of the urn and was peering inside.

“Ah, that’s good,” she said. “You hear such tales of people finding eggshells and clinker, but I see that Daniel’s burnt down to a fine white ash, just as I’d have expected. You can see the pure living just by looking at what he’s become.”

She held out the urn so Joe could share the experience.

He looked at the fine white powder it contained with the rapt expression of a man seeing eternity.

What he was actually seeing was Mandy Levine when he first interrupted her in the funeral workshop. She’d been holding an urn which she had then placed on the workbench. Where he later had placed Mr. Tooley’s remains.

No wonder Mandy had taken his sabotage of her hopes of great profit so well! Not trusting the slippery Tallas to give her the promised split, she’d already stashed herself a nice little nest egg in the nearest handy receptacle. But she’d picked up the wrong urn.

Joe hoped that she’d discover her mistake before she tried to trade old Mr. Tooley on to some hardnosed dealer.

Whatever, he thought it best to postpone his professional singing debut just a little while longer.

He settled down to watch that remarkable old lady, Miss Tooley, scatter about a hundred grand’s worth of pure smack into Trap 3. The wind carried most of it away, but not all.

They stood with their heads bowed for a moment.

Old Miss Tooley said, “I’d have liked him to have some sort of lasting monument, but this is what he wanted. And I’m sure his friends will not forget him.”

“No indeed,” said Joe. “In fact, I was thinking I might come here tonight and back the 3 dog through the card, just as a kind of tribute.”

“Now that’s a lovely thought,” said old Miss Tooley. “You’re a darling boy, Joseph. Put a fiver on for me, for I’m sure the Lord will be after smiling down on such a kind and loving gesture.”

And Joe, looking down at the scattering of white over the ground inside Trap 3, said, “I think He’s smiling already, Miss Tooley.”