Dark Undertakings

by Rebecca Tope

  With practised ease, Pat arranged everybody according to rank. The waiting room was already full of lesser mourners, who were chivvied into taking their places in the chapel. After a moment’s consideration, he also sent Roxanne and her companions in ahead of the coffin. Strictly speaking, it should be family only who followed it in, but in a brief exchange with Monica, he was persuaded that the printwork colleagues could be permitted to share the honour. It was, after all, a very small family.

  Drew and Vince took the foot end of the coffin, and waited for Sid and Little George to take the other, as it rolled out of the hearse. With linked arms, they carried it down the short corridor, as they had done so often before. Even in his limited time at Plant’s, Drew had already done this perhaps twenty times. Pat went ahead. As they entered the chapel, it was clear that Jim had known a lot of people. About thirty were standing around the walls, an overspill from the seventy-five or so available seats. Towards the front, they passed Gerald Proctor the dentist, sitting with Dr Lloyd. The landlord of the King’s Head was evident, with his large belly crammed into a dark suit. Shopkeepers; business people; one or two complete families; the elderly ladies from Primrose Close; several men of Jim’s age, looking wary and uncomfortable.

  The coffin successfully deposited on the catafalque, the bearers all withdrew. The organ surged to a climax and then fell silent. The monumental Father Barry stepped forward, and the funeral began.

  With nothing else scheduled that day, the men were in no hurry to leave. They could wait for Pat, who as Conductor, was obliged to supervise the funeral to its conclusion, and be available to the mourners at the end. They could all drive back to Bradbourne together in the empty hearse. Vince and the Georges wandered round to the office for their customary chat with Diana, the administrator there. Drew hovered beside Sid, knowing there was something he needed to ask. ‘You knew Lapsford fairly well, didn’t you?’ he managed.

  Sid nodded reluctantly. ‘But I don’t want to talk about him, all right? I should never have said what I did just now.’

  Drew had to persist. ‘I mean – if you knew about his girlfriends and so forth – that’s pretty personal information. He must have confided in you.’

  Sid shrugged. ‘Not specially. Common knowledge. Everybody knew what he was like. But I didn’t know what Susie was doing – I only got the full story on Sunday. Look, I just don’t need this. I told you already, give it a rest. Another hour and he’ll have gone up in smoke, and good riddance.’

  ‘And yet the chapel’s full,’ Drew pressed on. ‘That suggests he was well liked.’

  ‘Liked!’ Sid squawked, loud enough for Drew to worry that people in the chapel might hear him. He flapped a subduing hand. Sid dropped his voice from long habit. ‘Nobody liked the bastard. They’re all in there now, celebrating. There wasn’t a wife in town safe from him. And precious few daughters. The man was an animal. All he ever thought about was sex. New ways of doing it. New women to add to his list. Humiliating for Monica, too. And his sons. They all had to go round with their eyes tight shut. His death has done this whole town a favour, mate. Take my word for it.’

  ‘But it wasn’t a heart attack, was it? If you know so much about him, you know that, as well as I do.’ Drew braced himself for the response.

  ‘Too late to worry about that now,’ Sid grinned unpleasantly. ‘Nobody’s ever going to prove anything now, are they. And don’t try to tell me that a few Viagra tablets are going to kill him. My conscience is clear on that.’ His expression contradicted his words. A sheen of sweat made his skin look sickly; his eyes flickered without meeting Drew’s and he seemed to be having trouble breathing.

  ‘Your conscience?’ Drew echoed. ‘I thought it was Susie’s you were worried about.’

  ‘Same thing,’ muttered Sid.

  A cold hand squeezed Drew’s guts. The murky depths of Sid’s private life were not something he wished to explore just now. Whatever Sid thought Susie had done, Drew didn’t believe it had anything directly to do with Lapsford’s death. As calmly as he could, he started to move away. ‘I’ll be in the vehicle,’ he said. ‘We’ll be off soon.’

  He then sought out Desmond, the crematorium superintendent, and found him talking to a woman in black on the flower lawn, where tributes from the weeks’ funeral were laid out. Desmond noticed him hovering, and soon made his excuses. Drew awkwardly muttered, ‘Can I have a quick word? It’s rather difficult.’

  The superintendent raised his eyebrows and nodded. Drew went on, ‘How long have we got before you charge this coffin? The one going on now?’

  Desmond considered. ‘It’ll be after lunch. Gavin’s being very particular about getting his hour’s break these days, so I’d say it’ll be around two this afternoon before he gets to it. Why?’

  Drew forced a laugh and improvised desperately. ‘You’re not going to like it. But the chap’s little dog died, and the wife thinks it’d be nice if they could go together. But she doesn’t want the sons to know. They’d think she was crazy – and they might object to the idea. You know what people are like. So – if I can get back here with it by two, d’you think we might bend the rules a bit?’

  Desmond worked his mouth thoughtfully. ‘Can’t you get it cremated at the vet’s, and just put the ashes together later on? That’s what most people do.’

  Drew shrugged. ‘Apparently that’s not good enough. I know I shouldn’t have, but I told her I’d have a go. She asked me on the quiet, so don’t say anything to Pat or the others, will you? I don’t even need to open the coffin – just sling the dog in with him when Gavin’s charging it. Okay?’

  Desmond sighed. ‘I suppose it’ll be okay. I’ll have to see it first, though. I’m not having you dispose of your old granny, pretending she’s a German Shepherd.’

  ‘Thanks, Des. I owe you one. I’ll be back by two.’

  ‘If you’re not, then we’re going ahead without you.’

  Drew shivered at the rush of adrenalin caused by knowing he now had a mere two hours’ grace. Two hours when he could hardly hope to speak to any of his suspects, since they’d be at a funeral lunch somewhere. But suddenly anything seemed possible.

  He joined Sid in the hearse. ‘May as well wait for Pat. Don’t suppose he’ll be long,’ Sid remarked. ‘Not that I like hanging about here when I’ve got work to do in the mortuary.’

  ‘He can’t get back otherwise, can he?’ queried Drew. ‘There isn’t another vehicle here.’

  Sid frowned impatiently. ‘All right, Mr Clever. So we’ll wait. That’s what I said.’

  At five to twelve, the chapel doors opened, and Pat stepped out, holding the door like a flunkey, for Monica and her sons to emerge. Mourners then streamed out, flowing to the end of the long strip of bowling-green lawn, where they stopped and began to talk mutedly amongst themselves. At the other end of the chapel, a new hearse arrived with another coffin, and the conveyor belt system began to operate all over again. Drew visualised Lapsford’s coffin being hauled out from the trapdoor behind the catafalque, and trundled on a trolley to take its place in the queue for the furnace. He had consulted the day’s schedule earlier, and knew that it was a full day. Five or six different funeral directors, most of them from the nearby city, used this crematorium, and it was rare for there to be fewer than ten funerals each day.

  Monica was pale, her jaw clenched. She smiled vaguely at the people who approached her to offer their sympathy, but it was obvious that she did not want to linger.

  Drew watched anxiously from the hearse. He saw Jodie walk over to Lorraine Dunlop and say something to her: the beaky nose seemed to peck angrily downwards and the smaller woman put a hand to her mouth in surprise. Suddenly everyone else noticed too. David Lapsford took a few long strides towards the women, followed by Monica, Jack and Roxanne. Drew had opened the big door of the hearse and jumped down before he could stop himself. Something important was unfolding, and there was no way he was going to miss it.

  David got to Jodie first and reach
ed out to take her arm. Jack shadowed him. From the angle at which Drew stood, the two men looked like twins. Jack’s hair might be shorter, his shoulders narrower, his heavy spectacles hiding the way his eyes sat in their sockets, but their profiles were identical. Astonished, Drew took a few steps closer for a better look. The impression only grew stronger: David and Jack had the same mouth; the same nose; interchangeable ears. Was he seeing something that everyone else had always known and taken for granted – or had he made a momentous new discovery? Deep in thought, he retreated a little, aware that whatever disagreement was threatening had been diverted by David’s timely intervention. Jodie spun on her heel and headed towards the car park with Ajash trotting worriedly behind her, and Jack hovering uncertainly, close to Monica.

  Jack Merryfield is David Lapsford’s father, Drew said to himself. The encounter at David’s home on Saturday afternoon, which now seemed so misguided and pointless, had involved some mention of David’s parentage, he remembered. He needed to check out the relevance of this piece of information, but he had only two hours in which to do it. Which of these people would be most likely to provide him with the help he needed?

  By five past twelve, the full team was back in the hearse and Pat was driving back to Bradbourne. ‘Went okay?’ Drew asked him; as Conductor, Pat had been the only member of the crew to witness the actual funeral service.

  Pat nodded. ‘There were some tears,’ he said. ‘The blonde girl – the one that came in the following car. Was that the Dunlop wife? She cried the whole time. The gypsy woman had her arm round her.’

  ‘She’s not a gypsy,’ muttered Drew.

  ‘May as well be,’ Sid corrected him. ‘The way she lives.’

  ‘What was that just now with the girl from the printworks? Did you catch what she said to Mrs Dunlop?’

  ‘Something about her having a nerve, showing up like that, pushing in where she wasn’t wanted. All true. I was shocked myself.’

  ‘The Mrs didn’t seem to mind,’ remarked Drew. ‘Women can be funny like that. Unpredictable.’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Pat, and Vince and George echoed the laugh.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Vince added with feeling, ‘I’ve been having a right earful from Alicia lately. Worse than ever since she heard about young Rawlinson.’ Drew barely listened. He was repeated over and over, Jack Merryfield is David Lapsford’s father. Almost bursting with the frustration of not knowing enough of the background, and the stress of the imminent cremation, he still had no idea what he should do next.

  Everyone was presumably going back to Monica’s house after the funeral. He glanced at the road ahead and behind, hoping to see one of the cars that had followed the hearse earlier. ‘Where did they go?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Who?’ asked Vince.

  ‘The family. They left at the same time as us.’

  ‘Most of them turned the other way. Going back to work, apparently.’

  ‘Surely not!’ Drew was shocked. The cold-bloodedness of it was almost offensive. Then he remembered – the wake had been the previous day. To gather everyone together for a second time, with another round of tea and sandwiches would be excessive. How would Monica be feeling now, he wondered. Did he have the nerve to try to find her and ask?

  The phrase ‘back to work’ stayed with him. Work meant the print place. Work was Jodie and Ajash and Jack Merryfield. And that little group included the people he might most fruitfully speak to. ‘Drop me off here, will you?’ he said suddenly as they entered the outskirts of Bradbourne. The industrial estate was a quarter of a mile away. ‘I want to … er … go and see someone. Tell Daphne I’m having a long lunch hour, because of Karen. She won’t make a fuss about that.’

  Walking into the industrial estate, Drew realised he ought to have gone back to Plant’s first, to retrieve his car. He’d forgotten that he’d used it that morning, since Karen had no need for it. It would take a precious twenty minutes now to get back to it – time that might make a crucial difference to what happened next.

  And what happened next depended on the reactions of Jodie and Jack when he appeared at their workplace.

  It was twelve twenty-five when he got there. The door, when he tried it, was locked: not surprising, he realised, when he paused to consider his next move. At the very least, the threesome would surely have gone for some kind of drink or meal after the funeral. He dithered for several minutes, torn between waiting for someone to turn up and needing to make the best possible use of the time remaining.

  While he stood there, a car drove up, with a woman at the wheel. He didn’t recognise her, but she seemed to be heading directly for him. For a second he worried that she intended to drive right into him, but she braked in good time. She met his eyes as she opened the car door. ‘You’re Drew, aren’t you?’ she said. He nodded, and she introduced herself. ‘I’m Alicia, Vince’s wife.’

  His mouth dropped open. ‘It’s all right,’ she laughed, ‘there’s no mystery. I work at the Path Lab at the Royal Vic and I know your friend Lazarus. I caught him doing some unofficial tests this morning and he told me a bit about it. Well, obviously I’d heard about Jim and I put two and two together. I was waiting for the hearse to get back to Plant’s just now, to have a word with you or Vince. I saw him and he told me where you were headed. And I just made an assumption – lucky I was right.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, still bewildered. ‘But …’

  ‘Look,’ she said briskly, ‘it’s pretty obvious that Jim was deliberately given that codeine. Laz is in a state because he thinks he’ll be arrested for concealing important evidence. He wants your permission to discard that sample – but first he has to be sure that the actual cremation has taken place. We both know it can be quite a while after the funeral. So I said I’d come and find you, take you back to the hospital and do the necessary together.’

  ‘Right,’ said Drew again. His mouth was dry. ‘I’d better get my car, otherwise I’ll be stranded at the hospital.’ It was the only way he could find to give himself some time to think.

  ‘No problem,’ she smiled. He noticed what a friendly, open face she had, what intelligent eyes and generous mouth. For the first time, in spite of his discussions with Karen, he wondered just what it would be like to have been married to an undertaker for the whole of your adult life. Alicia made him think you probably had to be someone rather special.

  She drove him back to Plant’s and waited discreetly out of sight while he went to fetch his car. He followed her the six miles to the hospital, impressed by her fast and competent driving. They pulled up side by side in the small car park next to the mortuary; only them did Drew become aware of a third car pulling up next to them. With some apprehension, he waited for a police constable to emerge and walk towards him. His thoughts were turning slowly, gradually coalescing on the crematorium and a sense of stubbornly unfinished business there.

  ‘Mr Slocombe?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Drew, with a sense of impending doom.

  ‘We have to ask you some questions, sir,’ the officer continued. ‘Would you please follow us back into town?’

  ‘But—’ Drew looked wildly at Alicia. ‘I’ve got important things to do here.’

  ‘They’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. We’ve got an officer at your house with your wife. Now, now, sir, there’s nothing to worry about.’ These last words were spoken with a soothing motion of outspread hands, in response to Drew’s anxiety-impelled forward jerk. ‘Everything’s quite all right. We know about her accident and she’s in no danger at all. We just wanted to settle a few little worries that have arisen. Would you follow us, sir, please? Now.’

  Drew looked again at Alicia; she nodded sympathetically and moved towards the mortuary. Drew could only hope that she would protect Laz from trouble, while at the same time preserving the stomach contents sample for a little while longer. It would be disastrous if it were destroyed at this juncture.

  With a sigh of resignati
on he turned his car round and followed the police vehicle back to Bradbourne. It was five to one when they reached his house. Another police car was parked outside.

  The next forty minutes passed grindingly slowly: Drew assumed the police had stopped the cremation, and therefore had all the time in the world. They allowed him five minutes upstairs alone with Karen, during which the couple exchanged puzzled guesses as to what was going on, and mutual reassurance. ‘It’s all terribly mysterious,’ Karen said. ‘It seems to be more to do with Craig Rawlinson than Jim Lapsford. Apparently they’re here mainly because of what I said when we stopped on Saturday afternoon. Do you remember?’ Drew shook his head. ‘I said “It’s not David Lapsford, is it?” I never thought they’d register that as remotely important.’ Then they all sat down in the living room: Drew and Karen, the policeman who had stopped Drew at the roadside, and a policewoman.

  The officers were very gentle and polite. And agonisingly slow. Unsure of the precise nature of their suspicions, Drew was careful not to give them too much information. It felt like walking on eggshells, where one false step could incriminate the wrong person. Images of Sid and Susie, Roxanne, Jodie, Monica and David flitted through his mind, each of them vulnerable to accusations of murder or something very close to it. If he’d been certain, he would have freely told them all he knew. As it was, he felt all too aware of the trouble he might cause. And anyway, it soon became apparent that this was far from being an investigation into the death of Jim Lapsford.

  Karen had been right – they were trying to satisfy themselves about Craig Rawlinson, in the light of a rumour they’d heard concerning the illegal sale of drugs. Did they have any idea why he had hanged himself? None at all, Drew and Karen insisted. They had never seen him alive – apart from Drew’s glimpse of him arguing with Susie on a pavement a week ago. Had they any knowledge of his criminal activity? Certainly not. What precisely did they have in mind, Drew demanded, losing his patience. The policeman rubbed his jaw and indulged in a long thoughtful silence. ‘Young Mr Rawlinson was not unknown to the police,’ he said repressively. ‘Now perhaps we could proceed.’