by Rachel Green
Chapter 9
Meinwen stepped gingerly through the front yard of Winston’s garage. She didn’t generally mind mud but the building site had more in common with the Somme than with the garage she remembered. The clusters of rusted and decaying cars had gone, replaced by an expanse of concrete and a series of low walls made of concrete blocks. The original building, made of timber and metal sheets with corrugated iron roofing still stood, though Winston had shown her the plans and it would be demolished and rebuilt when the new section had been completed. The only thing that would remain when the building work was finished was the huge radio mast occupying one fenced-off corner of the yard. It had stood since the seventies, at first a booster for the burgeoning Citizen’s Band radio enthusiasm, then for the exponential growth of mobile phones in the nineties. Red lights blinked on the top, though no airplane ever flew that low.
A light shone under the door and she hurried toward it, avoiding the larger puddles highlighted by their oily sheen of reflected streetlights. The door was, like the rest of the building, painted a deep British racing green with ‘Gaunt's Garage’ in friendly letters that made her think of ice-cream in fifties-style diners. She knocked, waited a moment and knocked again. When she still didn’t hear a reply she tried the door and since it was unlocked, stepped inside.
She could see Winston’s legs sticking out from beneath a car, an inspection light underneath throwing grotesque shadows across the garage. She put her art bag down next to a red tool chest and squatted next to his feet. She waited to see if he noticed she was there before she ventured to tap his leg.
He gave a strangled yelp and pushed himself out on a small flat inspection trolley. He relaxed when he saw who it was and pulled off a pair of earbuds. “Hello, love. I wasn’t expecting anyone this late.”
“Sorry. I was passing. I did knock.”
“Didn’t hear you.” He did a sit-up into a squat and rose to his feet. “Want a cuppa?”
“Sure, thanks.” Meinwen gave him a crooked smile. “Mind if I use the little girl’s room first? I’m bursting.”
“Sure.” He waved in the general direction. “I wasn’t expecting company, though, so there’s no scented paper.”
“That’s okay.” Meinwen went to the smallest room and opened the door with some degree of trepidation. The room was utilitarian at best, nestled against an outside wall with just a grill for ventilation. It smelled of stale urine, mud and motor oil, though as least it was well lit and, best of all, had a supply of soft toilet paper.
She tore off two squares and used it to wipe the seat before she dared sit on it. After that it was a case of emptying her bladder as quickly as possible, washing her hands in freezing water in the tiny sink and getting out before she gagged. She did have a moment to gaze at the house spider on the opposite wall and wonder if the toilet was preferable to wherever it had come from.
“Here’s your tea.” Winston gestured to a mug with the mane of a toolmaker on the side. “I wasn’t sure how you liked it so I put in milk and a sugar. I hope that was okay.”
Meinwen was torn between being a good guest and being honest. She decided on the former. “Certainly, thank you.” She picked up the mug and tried not to think about the layers of oil, fingerprints, lip prints, tea drips and tannin coating the mug. And that was the outside. “Cheers.”
Winston spotted her hesitation. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Cheers.” Winston raised his equally resplendent mug and took a sip. “Now then, you haven’t dropped in just to sample the delicacy of garage tea, have you? What can I do you for?”
“Actually, I was passing the end of the road and thought I’d drop in to thank you for your help in digging the grave this morning.”
Winston frowned. “What grave?”
“The one I phoned you about at New Eden Cemetery? You did dig it, didn’t you? Tell me you’re having me on. I promised Mrs. Maguire you’d take care of it.”
He burst into laughter. “You should see your face. Yes, we dug it. Took us longer to put the digger on the trailer than it did to dig the hole. We were in and out with half an hour to spare. Thanks for the job, actually. She paid us double what we asked because we got her out of a hole.” He sniggered. “So to speak.”
“Great. I said you were reliable.” Meinwen risked a sip of the tea and almost baulked at the taste of the sugar. She imagined it eating further into her teeth every second.
“Yeah, not only that, but she’s considering a contract to have me service her vehicles. That could turn out to be a pretty sweet deal.”
Sweet was not something Meinwen wanted to think about. “What did you think of her?”
“The funeral lady? She was nice, actually. I wouldn’t want to try to screw her over, mind. She’s got cold eyes. I can imagine her putting an ice pick through your brain without a moment’s hesitation.”
“Cold? Really? I thought her rather charming.”
“Charming like a snake.” Winston shuddered. “Still, if she follows through on her promise I’ll be as happy as a sandboy.”
“Good to know. I suggested a business deal with her myself, actually.”
“Oh yeah?”
“One of the ring stones would have sat on her land. Part of the cemetery she’s not using at the moment. I suggested she put a new stone in.”
“That’d be pretty expensive.”
“It could be considered a piece of art for the community. She could write it off against tax. Plus, it would encourage the local pagans to shop for a plot.”
“She looks the sort to be interested in making money.” Winston looked at her over his mug. “Shrewd, I mean. Keen to expand.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. I just want the village circle rebuilt. Think of the interest that would bring.”
“Interest?” Winston shook his head. “Not much, I shouldn’t think. Not with Stonehenge and Avebury so close, let alone Cornwall. Have you seen the pagan shit they’ve got there? Old castles and burial sites and more ancient monuments than you can shake a stick at. No, love. Rebuild the Laverstone circle if you want but do it for love, not some misguided sense of altruism.”
Meinwen laughed. “There’s a turn up for the books. I come to you for pragmatic advice and you blind side me with aesthetics and altruism.”
“I’m a man of many talents. Besides, you could probably lever the council into giving you a grant toward the cost.” Winston opened the top draw of a desk piled high with paperwork, parts catalogues and invoices. Inside were dozens of keys, screwdrivers, runner bands, paperclips and a pouch of tobacco. He drew the latter out. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“I suppose not.” Meinwen shook her head, smiling. “Why is it every man I talk to immediately wants a cigarette? It’s as if the world is trying to tell me something.”
Winston held the flap of the pouch between his fourth and little fingers, digging out the tobacco and filling a cigarette paper with his others. He rolled the tube one handed and pulled out the overhanging strands, dropping them back into a pouch. “Don’t ask me. Perhaps we need to distract ourselves from your feminine wiles.” He dropped the pouch back in the drawer and took out a lighter. “Would you rather I went outside to smoke this?”
“It doesn’t bother me. This place is big enough and drafty enough to take the smoke away.”
“Ta. I shouldn’t, really, with the smoking in the workplace regulations but there’s no-one here but your and I. You won’t tell the authorities, will you?”
“Not if I want to keep your friendship.” Meinwen grinned. “Actually, seeing all those keys in your drawer reminded me of something old Joseph showed me.”
“Joseph the tat-man?”
“Was he ever a tat-man?” Meinwen tried to picture Joseph with a truck collecting scrap iron. “But yes.”
“I think he was. In the old days. One of the last Steptoes with a horse and cart.” Winston pulled on his cigarette, angling his face upward to send the subsequent plume of smoke into
the corrugated ceiling.
“I can imagine him with a horse. He’s probably better with horses than he is with people.” Meinwen put her cup down. “I see him quite often, actually. He brings me things to sell in the shop.”
“Oh?”
“Fossils, mainly, and crystals. He has a knack for knowing just which stone will contain something beautiful. I bought an amethyst cathedral off him last year.” She held her hands apart to illustrate. “Three feet high. I think it was only in the shop a week before I sold it on for six hundred. I gave him four and he was more than happy. That’s not all, though. He’s quite the artist in his own way. He makes pendants and wind chimes out of animal bones and the like. Bits of flint and old glass. He made a fantastic window out of two pieces of tree branch and a dozen old medicine bottles he’d found on a Victorian midden he’d excavated. I kept that myself, though I’ve nowhere to put it.”
“So what did he show you that sparked your interest in my junk drawer?”
“A key. An old key. Let me show you.” Meinwen pulled her phone out out and opened up the photograph folder. “Look. Have you ever seen one like that?”
Winston dropped his butt end in a soda can and took the phone from her. He held it at arm’s length and squinted at the image. “I can’t really make it out. It’s too dark.”
Meinwen grimaced. “The flash didn’t go off. Never mind, then.”
“No, wait.” Winston sat at his desk and stabbed at the keys of a desktop computer. “Would you mind if I copied it to here?”
“Not at all. I don’t have the cable with me, though.”
“That’s okay. I might have one here.” He opened another drawer and fished amongst a pile of coiled cables, pulling several out to compare them to the output on the phone. “Rats. I don’t think I have.”
“Never mind. I’ll email it to you.” She reclaimed her phone.
“Okay. No, wait.” He pulled his phone out of his trouser pocket. “Bluetooth it to me and I’ll get it off mine.”
“Ah okay.” Meinwen stared at her phone, willing it to tell her how to do it. It remained mute and inanimate. “I’ve not done bluetoothing before.” She frowned. “Blueteething?”
“Give it here.” Winston took the phone from her again and fiddled with it. “It should be under connectivity…there.” He handed it back. “Now go to the picture and press ‘more’ and ‘send via bluetooth’.”
Meinwen scrolled through her menus until she found it. “Don’t tell me. You’re ‘Big Tool’.”
“I can’t deny it.” He gave her an exaggerated wink. “Okay, got it.” He connected the phone to his computer and downloaded the picture, then cropped it and adjusted the brightness, contrast and color until he could see it clearly. “It’s a key all right. I’ve never seen one like it. Is that Joseph’s hand?”
“That’s right.”
“So…if Joseph is five foot ten his hands will be about eight inches wrist to fingertip. That makes the key five inches long.” He clipped the key from the picture, made it a new image, enhanced the contrast and deleted the background. He saved it off. “Right. Here’s a bit of my own magic for you.”
He opened another program and imported the picture of the key. “How thick was it, can you remember?”
“I’ve no clue.”
He opened his drawer and selected an old mortice lock key. “As thick as that one or thinner?”
“Thinner.”
He selected another and passed it across. “Thinner than that?”
“That’s about right.”
Winston opened another menu and input the thickness of the key. The computer beeped as it extrapolated other measurements. “Now look at this.” He pressed a button and the key appeared, spinning as a virtual object of the screen.
“That’s amazing.” Meinwen stepped closer. “That looks just like it.”
“If I had a three-dimensional printer I could give you a real one.” Winston grinned up at her. “Unfortunately, they’re too expensive for me as yet, though I’ve got my eye on a model Magelight makes. They’ve got one at the technical college. Does he know what the key’s for?”
“No, he says he found it by the canal.”
“Really?” Winston returned to the flat image and cropped out the bow, the section of the key furthest from the lock. “It looks like an eye to me.”
“With a bar instead of a pupil.” Meinwen bit her lip as she looked over his shoulder, his musky oil-and-cologne scent filling her nostrils. “Like a goat’s eye.”
“Maybe.” He copied the picture into a search engine and did a reverse image search. Half a dozen close matches appeared and he clicked on the most similar. He gave a low whistle as the page appeared, dominated by the woodcut image of a woman on a pyre.
Meinwen read over his shoulder. “The goat’s-eye symbol belonged to John Stearne, a close associate of the self-styled Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins and author of A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft in sixteen forty-eight.” She scanned the rest of the page. There’s no mention of a key.”
“No.” Winston sat back. “But where there’s a key there’s a lock it was made for.”
Chapter 10
Eden thanked Mrs. Peterson profusely but declined the invitation to attend a wake for the deceased. She’d attended several when she first became a funeral director but they always turned out to be awkward. Nobody felt really free to talk about their dearly departed when the funeral director still had dirt under their fingernails, and similarly, it was difficult to be cheerful with her standing in the corner like an angel of death whom someone invited to be polite.
She ushered the last of the mourners away from the grave and spent another minute looking down at the coffin with its smattering of soil from those few mourners who’d dared sully their hands.
“Happens to us all.” Reverend Dodgson looked down with her. “Sent under the ground until judgment day.”
“So they say.” Eden turned away and made sure the family had left the vicinity before indicating Malcolm could fill in the grave. He’d grumble about doing it by hand but it was a lot easier to fill in a grave with a spade than dig it out. She began to walk back to the building. “How do you feel about ossuaries, Reverend?”
“Very popular with the Victorians, I understand, and with the Catholics in Europe but they never really caught on over here. There were tales of a secret bone cathedral somewhere round here a few years back but it petered out. If it ever existed I never found out where it was.” He shook his head. “Never seen much call for them, personally.”
“It depends upon how you view the resurrection, I suppose.” Eden looked across at the spire of St Pity’s, still visible despite the failing light. “If you believe you’ll need your body you’d do your best to preserve it.”
“All very well before the population boom but there’s hardly enough room for all the live people without all the dead ones as well.” He gave a low chuckle. “Much as I can understand burials I heartily approve of the alternatives. Whatever the Bible says I can’t believe God would intend us to keep our mortal bodies, corrupt as they are.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I refer only to the physicality of flesh.” He grinned, showing one yellow tooth that grew almost perpendicular to the remaining pearly whites. “I wouldn’t presume to comment upon the morals of a lady like yourself.”
“I should hope not. Stones and glass houses, as they say.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” He walked on a few places, lifting his cassock when they arrived at a particularly muddy patch where Winston and his friends had unloaded the mini-digger. “Why did you ask about ossuaries, anyway? You’re not thinking of building one, are you?”
“I was, actually.” Eden stopped and pointed to the end of the car park. “I applied for planning permission to build a garage there and had it granted. Then I altered the plans to make it a chapel and it was refused. When I asked why the council said it was disinclined to promote rel
igious building on secular land, particularly when I already had two chapels of rest in the main building.”
“I see. And did you mention you wanted to decorate it with disinterred bodies?”
“No. I hadn’t got that far.”
“Just as well. There’s a law against desecrating human remains as you well know. You’d have to become a recognized religious property to have the right to manipulate the bones of those buried here.” They reached the paved area and he gave a huff of relief and let go of his hemline. “I’ve thought about it myself, once or twice. St Jude’s only has a limited amount of space in the graveyard and all those old tombs can be quite tiresome to look after. It would be lovely to clear the graveyard and start again but the bishop won’t hear of it. Too many town center churches are becoming picnic sites and parks, he says, and I have to admit he’s right. He still doesn’t offer any solution to the problem of hooligans breaking the gravestones and leaving their beer bottles all over the place.”
“No, I suppose not.” They reached the main doors and Eden held one open for him. He nodded his thanks. “I try to run a green cemetery here. No headstones as such but they creep in anyway despite my threatening to remove them. I don’t have the heart to, to be honest. The last thing I want to do is to upset a grieving family by digging up the headstone they’ve just paid a fortune for.”
“So you’re in the same bind?”
“Not exactly. I don’t have a bishop to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’ll leave them until the lease has run out on the grave and then decide.”
“Good idea.” He pulled off his surplice and sighed at the mud on the hem. “You think the Lord would have a bit of pity for his earthly minions. Would it be too much to ask for dry weather at a funeral?”
Eden laughed. “At least you can wash yours. My suit is dry-clean only. Still, the proportion of burials to cryomations is reducing slowly.”
