Funeral Note

Sarah Grace

The lab results had just come back when the call came in, not through the hospital switchboard but on my cellphone. The screen told me that it was Bob’s number in Gullane, but I didn’t expect it to be him. The witch? Surely not her either.

I hit the green key. ‘Mum,’ James Andrew began, ‘can I have a mobile?’

I had to grin at his tone, that of a boy who knew he was pushing his luck, but who hoped nonetheless. ‘Have you asked your father?’ I said.

‘Yes. He says not yet.’

‘Then don’t play us off against each other, Jazz. Does Mark have one yet? He’s older than you and I don’t recall seeing him with one.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ he admitted, grudgingly. He paused, then added, ‘But if he does get one, then I want one too.’

‘I’ll discuss it with your dad, okay? What’s brought this on anyway?’ I asked.

‘I had to come back to the house to call you,’ he replied. ‘I was on my way to the beach; if I had a mobile I wouldn’t have had to come home.’

‘Then the sooner you tell me what it’s about,’ I pointed out, ‘the sooner you can get back on down there.’

‘It’s the computer. I was on it last, and I forgot to switch it off. Mark says it shouldn’t be left on or somebody could hack into it. Can you do it?’

Sharp kid, that Mark. The boys have their own computer at my house and another at Bob’s. At some point in time they might have a laptop each, but it can stay as it is for now, as it allows parental supervision. That’s one of the things that my former husband and I still agree on.

‘Yes, I will,’ I promised. ‘Now get on back outside.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

I frowned a little, as I heard him hang up. Eight years old, and yet he sounded just like his dad on the phone, give or take a few octaves; the same accent, the same intonation, and even a hint of the same authority in his voice. I took a strong hit of nostalgia.

There were some things I liked about my ex. Hell, face it, woman, there still are, and that voice of his is one of them, that and his presence; charisma is an over-used word but Bob has it, no question, and so, when you see him among his peer group, has James Andrew.

When Bob made his ‘we’ve fallen out of love’, speech, I went along with it, even though it wasn’t entirely true on my part. If I had told him so, it might have sounded like I was pleading with him, and that is one thing I have never done: this gal has way too much pride for that. Besides he was right about the nub of it, our relationship was a mess and was finally broken beyond repair: probably.

I’ve always been good at loving Bob. I was crap at being married to him, that was all. Yes, I gave him a hard time when I came back to Edinburgh to my new job, but that doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of wishing him well, or that I never worry about him any more.

As an example, I was concerned about the way he had been at the grave site the night before: there had been something not quite right about it. I hadn’t expected him to turn up, but he must have known that there was a fair chance I’d be the attending pathologist, so I couldn’t put it down to shock at my presence, or even mild surprise.

Embarrassment? Hardly, for two of the people there didn’t know me from Eve, and he and I are an open book as far as Mario and Jack McGurk are concerned.

Professional difficulties? Not a chance. Bob has supreme confidence in his ability to do his job. I’ve seen him in the most stressful conditions that the most gifted crime fiction writer could imagine, and I’ve never known him to be rattled.

Trouble at home? No, that couldn’t be. Bob was never one for silent huffing and if there had been a barney between him and Aileen, surely I’d have picked up a whiff of it from Mark, a sensitive kid who’d have been upset by it. But hold on, the kids were with me, so. .

‘No, couldn’t be,’ I murmured. ‘It’s paradise in Gullane these days, Sarah, remember.’ But something had unsettled him: I was sure of that.

I set the thought aside and looked at the lab results from my morning autopsy. I scanned though all the tests and analyses, looking for anything that might have been a contributory factor to the fatal collapse, but there was nothing.

I’d left the stomach contents till last. It’s the only part of a postmortem examination that makes me feel at all squeamish. I do not read the entrails if I can avoid it; instead I leave it to the lab to analyse the deceased’s last meal. I glanced at it, saw ‘chicken’ and almost set it aside; then I had a second look and reached for the phone.

I dug out the card that I’d made DC Haddock give me and dialled the direct number of the Torphichen Place CID suite. It was he who answered.

‘Sauce,’ I began, ‘this is Sarah Grace. Have you identified your man yet?’

‘No, Doctor,’ he admitted, ‘not yet; we’re exploring possibilities but we haven’t had a result. Are you going to tell me you’ve found that bar code after all? If you have, I hate to think where it was.’

I laughed: I was getting to like the kid. There was a self-confidence about him, but it stopped well short of the arrogance I’ve seen in quite a few cops. ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I can’t put a name to him, but I might let you focus your search a little more tightly.’

‘How?’

‘Circumcision,’ I said. ‘How much do you know about it?’

‘I know I don’t fancy it, not at my age,’ he replied, cheerfully. ‘Aside from that, it means you’re Jewish, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s the stereotypical UK gentile image,’ I conceded, ‘but actually, those boys don’t hold the copyright by any means. Nobody lines them up and counts them but I’ve seen figures that suggest that about half of the American male population is circumcised. In the Jewish faith, the practice is regarded as a command from God, but it’s also widespread in Islamic peoples. Among the rest it’s seen as precautionary, or even therapeutic; there’s evidence that it lessens your chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. The World Health Organisation estimates that worldwide around one in three men are circumcised and that two-thirds of those are Muslim.’

‘I stand corrected,’ Haddock chuckled. ‘So, are you saying that worldwide we can eliminate two out of every three men from our investigation?’

‘I’m saying more than that. All I was doing was putting it in context, saying that you cannot look at a man who’s had the procedure and say he’s Jewish, which is why I didn’t do that. But look at a man who’s been trimmed, and whose last meal, consumed a couple of hours before he died, was matzoh ball soup followed by geffilte fish, then that, Detective Constable, is the way to bet.’