The Dead Place

22

Melvyn Hudson glared at Diane Fry with barely restrained fury. For a funeral director, he had quite a temper below that dignified exterior.

‘I have no idea what all this nonsense is about,’ he said. ‘But you can’t hold up our work. We have a funeral to do in ten minutes’ time.’

‘Everything you need to know is on the search warrant, sir,’ said Fry coolly. ‘And we have no intention of interrupting your business for a moment. Please carry on as normal. Our people will try to cause the minimum of disruption.’

‘Minimum of disruption? With police crawling all over our premises? How do you think this looks to our clients? There’s a family coming here this afternoon to bury their loved one.’

‘Let’s hope so, sir,’ said Fry.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Hudson was starting to get very loud. Fry looked at the team assembling outside the doors.

‘If you’ll show these officers where records of your funerals are kept, we’ll get on with the job as discreetly as we can,’ she said. ‘The sooner we get started, the quicker we’ll be finished. And then we can get out of your way, sir.’

‘It’s an outrage,’ said Hudson, starting to go red around the ears. ‘Damn it, it’s an outrage. This is not the sort of scene a bereaved family expect to see when they deal with Hudson and Slack.’

Fry knew that various members of staff would be able to hear their conversation. They were standing in the middle of the general admin office, and doors were open nearby. She could see what looked like a staff room to one side, with a table, kitchen chairs and a sink unit. Behind the office, she glimpsed a filing room with a row of metal and wooden cabinets.

‘With respect, sir,’ she said, ‘the only person causing a scene at the moment is you. I suggest that might not be what a bereaved family expect to see from their funeral director.’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I insist on being here while you’re doing whatever you need to do.’

‘That’s your privilege, sir. But what about your funeral?’

‘My wife’s in the chapel. I’ll ask her to conduct it.’

‘Fine.’

Fry looked round and saw a woman watching from a doorway. She was dressed in a smart black suit, a sort of female equivalent to Hudson, though her hair was dark and tied neatly back. Barbara Hudson, presumably. Her expression wasn’t too friendly.

Instead of facing her, Fry turned towards the workshop. There were all kinds of smells coming from these back rooms that hadn’t penetrated the public areas. She wondered how they achieved that. She might like to use the technique in her flat, to keep out the whiff of the students.

‘Does your warrant extend to the workshop, Sergeant?’ said Hudson behind her shoulder.

‘Do you mind me looking around, sir?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

‘Surely you’ve nothing to hide?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What’s at the end of the corridor?’

‘The preparation room.’

‘And what do you do in there?’

‘We perform miracles, that’s what we do,’ said Hudson. ‘People have no idea what goes on in the preparation room. And they don’t want to know.’

‘But I’m asking, Mr Hudson,’ said Fry politely. And she was being polite, too, as far as she could manage. ‘Could we take a look?’

‘I’m sorry, but there’s a case on the premises at the moment.’

‘There’s a what?’

Hudson inclined his head slightly towards her, as if acknowledging a rebuke. ‘A deceased person under preparation. Without the express permission of the family, I’m afraid …’

‘I understand.’

He turned suddenly and shouted over Fry’s shoulder. ‘Vernon, you can leave that car alone now. Go inside and give Billy a hand with the flowers. Then get yourself changed. You’re driving.’

Vernon must not have responded quickly enough, because Hudson started to go red again.

‘And get a move on, you lazy bugger!’

Fry turned in time to see Vernon slam the bonnet of one of the limousines and wipe his hands on a cloth. He had a sullen look on his face, like a teenager who’d been told to clean his room.

‘That lad,’ said Hudson when Vernon had wandered off. ‘He drives me up the wall. But I can’t get rid of him.’

‘Because of his grandfather?’

‘Old Abraham, yes. He says we should give the lad a chance. But Vernon’s away with the fairies half the time. Look at him. The wheel’s still turning, but the hamster’s dead.’

‘How long has he been with you?’

‘A couple of years now. It seems like a lifetime.’

‘Old Mr Slack doesn’t play a part in the company any more?’

‘He’s in his seventies now. Abraham and I still own equal shares of the business, but I draw a salary as general manager on top of that.’

‘I see. So you pretty much have sole control of the company.’

‘On a day-to-day basis, I suppose I do.’

‘And your partner died, didn’t he? Vernon’s father?’

‘Richard was killed in a road accident last year. I expect you know that, Sergeant.’

‘And this other gentleman is Mr McGowan, if I remember rightly?’

Hearing his name, McGowan looked up at Fry. Then he edged past to get through the door. Back in the office, Fry looked at the row of filing cabinets.

‘You seem to be busy, Mr Hudson,’ she said.

‘We get about a hundred and fifty calls a year.’

‘A hundred and fifty funerals?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your job is to make all the arrangements?’

‘We serve the family’s needs,’ said Hudson. ‘That’s how we like to put it.’

‘Mr Hudson, we’re concerned with one particular family at the moment. The family of Audrey Steele, whose funeral arrangements were handled by Hudson and Slack eighteen months ago. On the eighth of March last year, to be exact.’

‘I can’t possibly remember one funeral out of so many,’ said Hudson.

‘Unless there was something unusual about it, I suppose.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Do you remember Audrey Steele’s funeral?’

‘No. Look, let me check the diary. It might ring a bell. We record the main details in there.’

‘All right.’

‘Last year? March, you said.’

‘Yes, the eighth.’

Hudson leafed through the pages of a large desk diary, the day to a page type. ‘Ah, yes. Steele. Yes, we did that job. I can’t remember it, but the details are here.’

‘Would you have seen Audrey Steele’s body before her funeral, sir?’

‘Not personally. It was a morning funeral. The deceased would already have been prepared and casketed when I came in.’

‘You mean the body was in the coffin?’

‘Yes. Somebody else would have done the setup. I mean, they’d have dressed the body and prepared it. Sometimes we do cosmetics and arrange the body with flowers for viewing by the grievers.’

‘Did the family want to view the body on this occasion?’

‘No. It was a closed-casket funeral. It’s a lot better that way. No matter how good the preparation, there can still be a little purge.’

‘Purge, sir?’

‘A release of body fluids.’

‘Ah. Not very nice, I presume?’ said Fry.

‘No. It’s rather unpleasant for the grievers. When their loved one has been interred or cremated, we like our clients to go away with a sense of satisfaction that the whole thing has been done properly.’

‘Would it have been possible for Audrey Steele’s coffin to have gone to her funeral empty?’ asked Fry.

‘No, no, quite impossible.’

‘What if the body had been removed, and the coffin weighted with something to disguise the fact that it was empty?’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Hudson. ‘That trick might work for a burial. But Audrey Steele was cremated. If there was no body in the coffin, it would be immediately obvious to the operators at the crematorium.’

‘I see.’ Fry looked around the office. ‘What’s security like here?’

‘We had our security system upgraded earlier this year,’ said Hudson.

‘After the break-in?’

‘Yes. Look, Sergeant, are you going to tell me what this is about?’

‘While we’re collecting the files, you might want to dig out the rest of the information we need,’ said Fry. ‘We want a list of all your staff, including anyone who was working here eighteen months ago but has since left.’

‘That will take some time,’ said Hudson.

‘Your personnel records not up to date, sir?’

‘Of course they are.’

‘Then it shouldn’t be any trouble.’

Hudson sighed heavily, but went to speak to the secretary.

Fry moved back towards the door, and found Cooper at her shoulder. ‘Why can’t we seize the personnel records as well, Diane?’ he said.

‘They aren’t specified on the search warrant.’

‘Why not?’

Fry looked at him ‘Softly softly, remember? Someone decided on a compromise.’

Before they left, Cooper took a peek into the workshop. Three men were working inside. One of them was Vernon Slack, another the thick-necked Billy McGowan he’d seen helping to carry the coffin at the crematorium. This morning, McGowan had his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up as he lined a coffin with satin-like material and tacked a name-plate on the lid. He had so many tattoos on his arms that his skin looked like blue cheese. He might as well have had two rolls of ripe Gorgonzola hanging out of his sleeves.

A line of coffin trolleys stood to one side of the workshop. Along the walls, cupboards and shelves held rubber tubing and jars of red fluid, a stock of handles, linings and name-plates. Past the trolleys, Cooper could see a series of lockers. He supposed the staff must need several sets of clothing — formal funeral wear, something smart for collecting bodies, casual clothes for jobs in the workshop or mortuary. One of the lockers stood open; a black leather jacket hung on the door.

Cooper thought they ought to go carefully with Melvyn Hudson and his staff. Hudson and Slack was the sort of business that survived on reputation. It could suffer badly from gossip and unfounded rumour. Besides, these were people of guarded emotions, practised at putting up a façade. It was difficult to judge whether Hudson did it out of habit, or was trying to conceal some emotion that you wouldn’t want to see on the face of your funeral director.

McGowan looked up and noticed Cooper. He smiled and flexed his muscles. One of his tattoos moved as the skin stretched. A dragon spread its wings, its mouth opening and flickering with blue flames.

As he was leaving the building, Cooper saw Vernon Slack jog past towards the compound where the hearses and limousines were parked. Vernon’s bony wrists protruded from his cuffs as he tried to adjust the knot of his black tie. But doing it while he was running only made things worse. The way he moved reminded Cooper of Tom Jarvis’s dog, Graceless. He looked the sort of clumsy innocent who’d end up getting hurt, simply because he knew no better.

The tree that had been planted over the body was no more than six feet high — a weeping willow sapling with slender, whippy branches and bark that looked almost yellow in the afternoon sun. Below it, the ground was barely disturbed. The earth would soon grass over and blend with the surrounding area, becoming a natural part of the young woodland. Only a small plaque wired to the trunk of the tree marked the spot as a grave.

Fifteen yards away, Fry turned from the fence and walked back across the grass. As always, she looked curiously out of place among trees. She instinctively hunched her shoulders to avoid them, as if their leaves might bite her. Cooper suspected that Fry and nature existed in two different worlds, with no points of contact.

‘Is there no security of any kind in this place?’ demanded Fry.

The woman in the black suit was one of the managers of the green burial site. She raised her eyebrows at Fry. ‘Security? We don’t need security here.’

‘Oh, really? Perhaps you should think again. We’ll send someone out to advise you.’

The woman scowled and went to Vivien Gill, who stood in the middle of a small group of relatives and friends.

‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it?’ said Fry when she got Cooper alone.

‘Why?’

‘Well, after what happened to her daughter’s body, abandoned in the countryside like that? Why would Mrs Gill want to plant Audrey here? She might as well have left her where she was.’

‘It makes sense to me.’

Cooper was starting to find the idea of a green burial appealing. Since all those things that happened to the body after death were inevitable, why not turn them into something positive? Here, a corpse would be giving back life.

According to the manager of the site, they were getting a number of celebrity green burials around the country now. Dame Barbara Cartland had been buried in a cardboard coffin next to an oak tree in her own garden. It was a new alternative for farmers, too. All they needed was a bit of land that wasn’t used for anything else, and planning permission from the council.

Cooper hoped Matt didn’t get to hear about that idea. He already had enough to say about diversification as it was. Golf courses, holiday cottages, fishing lakes — and now burial grounds.

‘Very unhealthy, isn’t it?’ said Fry.

‘Don’t you see?’ Cooper gestured around the burial site. In the middle, the weeping willow stirred its slender branches as it drooped protectively over the grave at its roots. ‘Audrey Steele’s tree isn’t just a memorial to her. In a way, it is her. It’s a continuation of her life in a different form. People buried here will never be dead. Not really.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.’

They began to walk back towards their car, parked out of sight beyond the trees. Then Fry stopped at the sight of one of the black-suited figures.

‘Ben, is that one of Audrey Steele’s relatives?’

Cooper followed her gaze. The suit didn’t really fit him at all. It was far too tight over his shoulders and belly. But it was certainly the man who’d let him into Vivien Gill’s house that morning.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘I recognize him from crown court.’

‘I thought he looked familiar, too. You must have a better memory than me for names.’

‘Well, it was only on Wednesday,’ said Fry. ‘He was sitting in the visitors’ gallery with the defendant’s family at my murder trial. I’m pretty sure he’s Micky Ellis’s brother.’