Private London

Chapter 85

The Sun was still high in the sky that Sunday.

But it was late afternoon, almost evening, now and a light wind had picked up. The caretaker was doing his final rounds in the cemetery and it would soon be time to lock up.

He looked across at a lone figure, the only visitor left in the park. Kneeling in front of a child’s plot that had a large white marble headstone. Disproportionately large compared with the tragic smallness of the plot. It was more than a headstone, it was a monument in the grand Victorian style.

Fresh flowers had been laid there every day for the last month. Some parents looked after their children in death better than others did in life, the caretaker thought to himself as he glanced at his watch. He’d give it five minutes and then he’d have to lock up. Sad world, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time, in which you have to lock a cemetery against the ravages of vandalism and mischief.

The inscription on the gravestone read: ‘In loving memory of Emily Jane Lloyd: she danced through our lives all too briefly, and now she dances with the angels. 14/2/2000 – 19/3/2009.’

There was a small lidded chalice at the front of the plot among the stone angels and the vases of flowers. The surgeon leaned forward and raised the lid.

If the caretaker had been able to see what was inside the chalice, he would have had far more troubling thoughts about the state of the world than those caused by mere vandalism that he’d had earlier.

The surgeon opened a small handkerchief and removed the object inside. A scarred, burned piece of flesh. A human finger. Or part of it. The surgeon put it in the pot among the others and closed the lid, replacing the container back with the other objects adorning the shrine to the dead girl.

The voice was a soft whisper, almost a chant. ‘Just one more to go, my darling.’