Grave Concerns

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘That body,’ Maggs said to Drew the next morning, as they drove together to visit a new supplier of willow burial baskets. ‘What’s going to happen to her? It’s a fortnight now.’

  He didn’t have to ask who she meant. ‘Dunno,’ he told her. ‘I still see that long white hair last thing at night.’

  ‘It doesn’t look as if the police are making much effort,’ she sniffed. ‘Not when you consider it’s a murder.’

  ‘They haven’t got much to go on. She might be foreign, an illegal immigrant or something. They’ll never find out who she was, if that’s the case.’

  ‘She looked a bit foreign,’ mused Maggs. ‘I mean – the necklace and stuff.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like mystery, Drew. I thought they could trace everybody these days. What about those teeth? Don’t dentists put a little label on dentures?’

  He laughed. ‘Of course they don’t. Though there might be differences between countries, I suppose. If she’s a rich Arab, she’d have gone to some private bloke, probably.’

  ‘If she’s a rich Arab, her rich relations would have reported her missing.’

  Drew sighed. ‘There’s not a lot we can do about it, with so little to go on.’

  ‘It isn’t right though, is it?’ she pressed on. ‘They’re just letting the whole thing go, just because it would cost the ratepayers a few thousand to do a proper investigation. They’re not doing their job.’

  Drew had experience of police efforts to keep costs down. Perfunctory or non-existent postmortems, unreliable testimonies accepted as hard fact, and a quick trawl through computer records used as substitute for face-to-face interviews. But this time, he did have a glimmering of sympathy. ‘They really haven’t got much to work with,’ he reminded Maggs. ‘And if there’s no realistic chance of proving murder and finding someone to charge, you can’t really blame them for admitting defeat from the start.’

  ‘But it’s all wrong,’ she persisted. Drew let her have the last word. In his heart, he agreed with her, and it was pleasing to know she shared his values.

  Maggs reached forward to fiddle with the temperamental tape player on the dashboard. The decision to buy a large secondhand Transit van had been fiercely argued, months ago, between him and Karen and Maggs. In the end, the cheapness and versatility had triumphed over the worry that bereaved families would find the vehicle just a step too utilitarian.

  ‘We’re going to be haunted by that body until we can lay her to rest properly,’ she predicted, after a few minutes’ silence.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Drew said gloomily.

  There were, of course, more details in the police files than had been revealed to the newspapers. Prompted by Maggs, Drew made a point of calling in on Stanley Sharples a few days later, to enquire as to progress. ‘Nobody claimed that body from my field, then?’ he began, aiming for a brisk approach. ‘How long’re you going to sit on it? Have you got a cause of death yet? I assume you did eventually get around to doing a postmortem?’

  ‘Over a week ago, as it happens. Fitted it in at the end of Friday morning. Lucky we did – you’ll have heard about the fire in the third-floor flat in Bradbourne on Monday? We just thank the Lord there weren’t any kiddies involved. We don’t want any more of that for a very long time.’

  ‘So – what did you find?’ Drew had learnt that with Stanley, the only way was to stick firmly to the point.

  ‘Patience, my friend,’ counselled the Officer. ‘To be honest, nothing much. Cause of death is just a list of negatives. No detectable poison, no broken bones, no lethal viruses. Various possible flesh wounds, which are most likely the consequences of natural decomposition, and nothing sinister. There’s a nasty tear – a sort of gash – on her thigh, but I gather our men dropped her at one point, and the leg got damaged then. That’s most likely all it is. We’ve told Fiona she can take over at the end of the month if nothing’s turned up by then. That’s ten more days.’ Fiona was the Recreation and Outdoor Affairs Officer for the District Council, who had somehow been landed with the task of arranging funerals for those who had nobody else to do it for them. The default choice was invariably cremation, unless there was a chance of a prosecution against anyone for causing the death, in which case a burial was deemed safer. Then, if necessary a disinterment could always be ordered, complicated and distasteful as this would be.

  ‘It’ll be a burial, won’t it?’ Drew said, trying not to sound impatient. ‘I want to put in a formal request that she be buried in my field. It’ll be cheaper, apart from anything else.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak to Fiona about that,’ Stanley said, neutrally. ‘We’re not at that stage yet, remember. The police are getting a call a day from people whose mums’ve gone missing, even now. Most of them are forty-five and were last seen getting into a car with a man they’ve known for some time. Amazing how some folks twist plain facts to suit themselves.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘It says, clear as day, in all the reports – this woman was in her late sixties or more, with long white hair. So these families think, OK, Mum looked a bit grey around the edges, on a bad day you might think she was nearly sixty. It’s worth a try.’

  ‘They’ve probably had experience of police descriptions before,’ said Drew drily. ‘Wouldn’t you give it a shot, if you were desperate?’

  Stanley shook his head. ‘My mum’s been dead for ten years,’ he said.

  Drew sighed. ‘So what’s your guess? Will we get an identification?’

  ‘Very unlikely, if I’m honest with you. Not a lot to go on, you see. We think she could be foreign – not that we’ve any real reason for that. It seems she’d recently eaten a substantial meal – chicken curry with plenty of rice. Good British fare. Analysis of the body tissue has thrown up one or two collapsed arteries. It’s all speculation, but there’s just a chance that exsanguination was the cause of death.’

  ‘She bled to death? But there weren’t any bloodstains on the clothes.’

  ‘True. Which means we’d have to invent a whole lot of hypotheses, none of which we can prove. So we decided not to pursue it. Not worth starting hares of that sort. She was a remarkably healthy woman, you know. Excellent bones for her age. Everything as it should be from top to toe. She probably would have lived to be a hundred.’

  ‘Unusual for a vagrant,’ Drew couldn’t resist remarking. When Stanley didn’t rise to this, he asked, ‘What about the necklace? And her clothes?’

  ‘Clothes were interesting. No underwear at all. Just this shapeless cotton thing. A sort of housedress, according to Helen in my office. And the patterned sheet she was wrapped in was brushed cotton, double bed size, no label or laundry mark. The shoes were made from good leather, Italian apparently. The dentures were fairly well made – they fitted her, anyway.’

  ‘You mean she didn’t pick them out of a dustbin?’ Drew again couldn’t hold back a hint of sarcasm. This time, Stanley reacted.

  ‘What’s your problem, Drew? I never said she was a vagrant, did I? I’m doing everything I can to identify her. But this isn’t America. We don’t keep our nameless bodies for years in the freezer on the vague off-chance of finding who they were. Not unless there’s a Public Prosecutor insisting on it. Once we’ve checked all missing persons, and given people as much time to respond to the appeals as seems reasonable, that’s got to be it. There’s no evidence of murder, apart from the obvious conclusion drawn from an unregistered burial.’ The tirade looked set to continue, but Drew held up both hands in surrender.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he begged. ‘I didn’t mean to criticise. I know the routine. And I’m more than happy to bury her for you. It just seems a shame—’

  ‘Of course it’s a shame,’ the Coroner’s Officer echoed impatiently. ‘Every death is a shame. We do what we can for all of them. But this one’s a non-starter, believe me. I’ve got an instinct for it. Dead six months or more, nobody but you showing any interest …’ He spread his hands in a gesture of failure. ‘Quite honestly,
you’d need a miracle to get anywhere with a case like this.’

  At home, things were becoming complicated by the fact that Karen was shortly to return to her teaching job after the birth of Stephanie. She had managed to string her maternity leave out longer than originally agreed, but the summer term was due to start in two days’ time, and nobody was happy about it.

  ‘I feel awful,’ she moaned, when Drew got home that afternoon. ‘I came over dizzy just now, when I stood up suddenly, and my back’s killing me.’

  ‘You’ve been carrying this great lump about, I suppose?’ He indicated his ten-month-old daughter, sitting astride her mother’s hip. ‘No wonder your back hurts if you kink it like that.’

  ‘Hips were designed to have children perched on them,’ she told him.

  ‘Well in that case it’s just nerves at going back to work. You look fine to me.’ He treated her to a thorough appraisal, knowing how much she enjoyed his full attention. She still looked exactly like the girl he married – wide shoulders, thick hair the colour of polished oak, curves made all the more generous by maternity. But she was paler than usual and her eyes had shadows beneath them. ‘You probably ought to wean the Sprout. You’ve breastfed for Britain – give yourself a rest.’

  Karen put her face down to the baby’s, rubbing noses with her. ‘Ohhh!’ she moaned. ‘But it’s only once a day, at bedtime. Please, Daddy – just a couple more months.’ Together the two females looked at him, the similarity in their faces making him laugh.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ he conceded. ‘I’m hopelessly outnumbered.’

  ‘The next one’ll be a boy,’ Karen promised him lightly. ‘Have to keep it fair.’

  ‘No, no!’ he begged. ‘Give me girls, lots of girls.’ He reached out and plucked Stephanie from Karen’s hip, and began to dance round the room with her, singing, Thank heaven for little girrrls … making the child squeal with rapture.

  Karen flopped onto the sofa. ‘But I do feel lousy,’ she repeated, when the horseplay stopped. ‘And I’ve got all those lesson plans to do yet. Are you sure this is a good idea?’

  The agreement had been that Drew would be responsible for Stephanie’s care while Karen was working. He had given himself a deadline two years hence, by which time the burial ground would have to be attracting at least one funeral a week. Even that would leave them far from affluent. A second child, they’d agreed, would have to be deferred until then.

  ‘We have to eat, love,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘And you know what we agreed—’

  ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘I just hope you appreciate it. I just hope—’ She pressed her lips together, her face tightening with emotion.

  ‘Hey!’ Drew examined her with concern. ‘What’s the matter, Kaz?’

  She blinked several times, and rubbed a quick forefinger under her nose. ‘I’m being stupid,’ she tried to laugh. ‘It’s just that sometimes I forget why we’re living like this. I mean—’ She flipped a hand towards the field outside, ‘– they’re all dead, aren’t they? These people you’re making such a fuss about. Just lumps of rotting meat. Sometimes I wonder about how it all equates – you know? Mouldering corpses weighed against Stephanie’s security and my mental health. We’ve both seen what it’s like for women trying to work full time when they’ve got a young child. It’s hell, Drew. They’re whacked, trying to do it all, and they feel guilty, resentful, all that.’ She laughed again, a grating sound with no humour in it. ‘Well, that’s got that off my chest.’

  Drew put Stephanie down on the sofa beside her mother, and knelt on the rug by Karen’s feet. ‘I thought you understood,’ he said breathlessly, the shock of her words still choking him. ‘It isn’t like that – the dead can’t be just tidied away and ignored. We’re all going to be dead one day. It makes life so empty and meaningless if you don’t show proper consideration for the dead.’ He pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to order his thoughts. Rotting meat, she’d said, with unarguable accuracy. He remembered his talk with the Coroner’s Officer, and the implication that even Stanley felt much the same about at least one dead person. What did it matter? That was what everyone seemed to be asking him. And when it came to trying to explain, he found the words elusive. Worse than that, he found the conviction itself was eluding him. Was he really so shallow, so capricious, that a few comments from his overwrought wife could cast doubt on his whole enterprise?

  ‘It’s too late to go back on it now,’ Karen said reasonably. ‘I didn’t mean to even suggest it. I’m just having a last-minute panic. Take no notice.’ She looked down at him kindly. ‘I do understand, really. It’s only that it can seem so abstract sometimes. And I’m scared it isn’t going to work out. You should have had more business by now, let’s face it. If only one of those schoolkids on the bus—’

  ‘I know,’ he agreed. They’d held their breath for days, in the hope that at least one family would opt for a Peaceful Repose burial for their child. In vain. Two had been cremated, two buried in the big municipal cemetery and the rest in country churchyards. Drew had done his best to conceal his disappointment.

  Karen took a deep breath. ‘Well, this won’t get the lesson plans done. Look, Drew—’ He hated it when she addressed him by name: he heard very little affection in it. ‘We’ll give it a term, OK? I know we agreed to longer, but I don’t feel I can commit to more than that.’

  He got to his feet, suddenly energetic with irritation. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘You have to give the school a term’s notice. Once you go back, you’ll have to stay until Christmas at least. I don’t think that’s such a lot to ask.’

  ‘You think you know it all, don’t you,’ she snapped, echoing his tone. ‘Don’t forget you’ve got a new responsibility yourself. It won’t be all smooth sailing, trying to fit Steph into your working day – even if you don’t ever do any work. She’ll have colds and tummy upsets, and new teeth and filthy nappies.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late to change it now,’ he summarised, as she had done already. ‘We’ll just have to get on with it, won’t we.’

  The prickly silence that followed was becoming unbearable when Karen suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh – there’s a letter for you. It came second post. It looks very odd.’ She picked up an envelope from the windowsill and thrust it at him. As an ice-breaker, it was only partially effective.

  Drew looked at it for a moment. The address was printed on a sticky label and attached to a long brown envelope. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL was written in capitals in the top left corner. He opened it and took out a single sheet of A4 paper.

  The message was printed in crazy type in the centre of the page.

  YOU ARE GOING AGAINST NATURE

  CHILDREN ARE DYING

  GET OUT AND STAY OUT

  ‘Blimey!’ said Drew, half joking, half horrified. ‘It’s an anonymous letter. Hate mail, they call it, don’t they?’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Karen took it from him and stared at it. ‘“Children are dying”. That’s not very nice, is it. Do they mean the children in that bus crash?’

  ‘Presumably. Hardly my fault, though.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed faintly. ‘Must be a nutter. They seem to think you’re committing some crime against the natural order, and this made the bus crash happen.’

  ‘What – burying people in a field, instead of a nice consecrated churchyard?’ Drew was still stunned. The phrase hate mail kept circling in his head. The one thing Drew couldn’t bear was being hated. The idea that somebody disapproved so passionately of what he was doing came as a serious blow.

  ‘Look, you mustn’t pay it any attention,’ Karen decided. ‘We’ll burn it and forget all about it. I wish I hadn’t given it to you now. If any more come I’ll just throw them away.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that. I don’t need protecting. It was just so – unexpected.’ He forced a smile. ‘We’d better not burn it, though. If they keep coming, we might have report it.’

  ‘To the
police, you mean?’

  He nodded. ‘If it’s a one-off, then that’s the end of it. But I think it’d get to me if there were more.’

  ‘Shit,’ Karen burst out. ‘This is all we need. Isn’t life complicated enough without this?’

  Her anger seemed at least partly directed at Drew, and he chose not to react. He folded the letter and put it in a drawer of their dining table, where they kept oddments of string and useful bits and pieces. ‘Let’s just try to forget about it,’ he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maggs and Jeffrey often found themselves working side by side – he putting the finishing touches to his hedges, and she marking out grave positions on a careful grid reference. Without formal headstones, the individual graves needed to be recorded in precise detail. ‘It might not seem particularly difficult now,’ Drew had said, ‘but once we have fifty or a hundred people buried here, you’ll see what I mean.’

  ‘D’you reckon this’ll ever work out?’ Jeffrey asked, as he took a rest from his hedge-trimming.

  Maggs paused in her mapping and looked at him. ‘What – you mean this natural burial thing?’

  He nodded. ‘Out of the way spot, this. Not many people would ever dream of being buried at North Staverton.’

  ‘That’s the attraction, though,’ she pointed out. ‘Something different from the usual routine. They think if they can be buried here, it’ll make them special. Everybody wants to be that bit different, so long as it doesn’t cost too much or make them look daft.’

  Jeffrey shrugged. ‘So what’s the story with this woman, then? The one with the necklace. Going on three weeks ago already – can’t keep her in the cold store forever. Any sign of them finding who dumped her here?’

  Maggs considered before replying. ‘OK, this is just guessing, right? I can think of at least two completely different explanations. First one – the woman gets herself killed, maybe by accident – some yobbos fooling about, or trying to mug her. They might not have been thinking straight, when it came to disposing of the body. Just panicked and hit on the first place that seemed quiet and undisturbed. They might not even have known about Drew and his new cemetery. A coincidence.’ She paused, thinking it through. ‘Actually that doesn’t feel right. You saw the way she was lying. It didn’t look like something done in a panic. It felt more to me as if the people who buried her wanted her to have something proper. Something appropriate. This place was in the papers back last summer. Say they saw it and decided to put her here. It wouldn’t have been difficult. Drew and Karen hadn’t moved in then, and the field was open to anybody.’