by Rebecca Tope
‘We need a granny,’ he said glumly. ‘Or a nice lady next door.’
‘You’re thirty years out of date. A great-granny might just have some time to spare, but the grannies are totally out of the question.’
‘I know.’ Drew’s mother had taken a law degree in her late thirties, and was still practising in her sixties. Karen’s was running a small hotel in North Wales with her second husband. ‘Maybe a grandad would be a better bet – men seem to retire more firmly than women.’
‘Nice idea. You just have to persuade them to move down here.’
‘Well, never mind. I’m not really complaining. We haven’t had any panics yet – I was just a bit thrown by Maggs’s attitude. I can’t depend on her as I assumed I could.’
Karen frowned worriedly. ‘We do need backup, though. If you and Maggs have to go and remove a body at short notice and you can’t persuade Jeffrey to take over – or he’s not around – you’ll be sunk. It’d be different if I worked at the Comprehensive – they’ve got a creche. Primary schools aren’t so enlightened.’
‘They haven’t got the resources,’ he said pedantically. ‘Look – don’t worry. We know people in the village. There’s Jane with her twins, for instance. We could ask her if she’d mind being on standby.’
‘We can’t, Drew. You can’t impose on people like that. They’d be sure to have something planned on the day you needed them. God – this is a nightmare.’ She smacked a hand on the table in frustration, glared at him, and tightened her lips. He could almost hear the suppressed accusation: If only you had a proper job, we could afford professional childcare.
‘Hey!’ he soothed. ‘It’ll be OK. I like looking after her. She’s the light of my life. She brings me sunshine. If I have to, I can take her with me on a removal. It’ll be another break with tradition.’
‘It’ll freak people out – not least the Social Services. It’s probably child abuse to let them anywhere near a dead body. I’m not sure I’m too keen on the idea myself, come to that.’
‘It’d be wrapped up. She wouldn’t see anything.’
‘I’ve got to go and do my lesson plans.’ She stood up slowly, resting her weight on one hand for a moment. Drew watched her closely. ‘You’re not very well, are you?’ he said suddenly. ‘Pale, tired, seeing the black side of everything. What’s the matter with you?’
She shook her head. ‘On my feet most of the day – getting back into the routine. Not sleeping too well. Tired all the time. Indigestion. Nothing they invented a cure for. I’ll be OK. And I miss Stephanie.’ Suddenly she was crying, both hands hiding her face. She sat down again heavily. ‘I wish I could just stay at home,’ she wept.
‘Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and ran over her list of symptoms in his head, trying not to linger on possible diagnoses: leukaemia, Hodgkins, ME. Once a nurse, always a Jeremiah when it came to health matters. But none of these were going to happen to his stalwart Karen. Of course they weren’t.
‘Look – you’ll be late,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it this evening. Maybe we can think of something that’ll make it easier. Maybe you could go part-time?’
She wiped her nose fiercely, and stood up again. ‘Ignore me,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Too many changes all at the same time. I’m just not as tough as I thought I was.’
‘I phoned him today,’ Genevieve told her husband. ‘He’s coming round to see me.’ Willard lowered his newspaper a few inches, and threw a glance at her, sliding his eyes briefly up and down her body, as he’d done ever since they’d realised she was pregnant. She knew what he was thinking, behind those small curtained eyes. He was feeling trapped and suspicious. A child had never been part of their life plan, and her insistence on proceeding with the pregnancy had frightened and infuriated him. But his reaction had been typical: he had carried on since that first startled moment as if nothing was happening. Except that he could no longer look at her properly.
As his glance slid away, she grunted suddenly, a small ‘Oof!’ of discomfort.
Willard’s look was enough of a question.
‘Just a particularly unpleasant kick from this brute.’ She patted her bulge. ‘Nothing that need alarm you.’
‘I wasn’t alarmed.’ He was sitting at the dining table with a newspaper spread out in front of him. Other papers and magazines were stacked on the floor nearby, awaiting his attention. ‘You should leave the poor fellow alone,’ he returned to the matter in hand. ‘There’s absolutely no cause for concern over your mother. Opening cans of worms – literally, I suppose, in this instance – is never a sensible idea.’
Genevieve flinched exaggeratedly at his all-too-appropriate metaphor. ‘You don’t care what you say to upset me, do you?’ she accused.
‘Not really,’ he told her. ‘It never makes any difference, anyway. Water off a duck’s back. If it mattered what I say, things would be entirely other than they are now.’
‘Your capacity for self-deception never ceases to amaze me,’ she told him.
‘And your lack of logic never ceases to depress me.’
‘Well, at least I’m trying to do something. We can’t go on indefinitely just assuming Mum’s perfectly OK. I want to know, Willard. Is that too hard to understand? She might not have been the best mother in the world, but in a few weeks, I’m going to be a mother myself, and believe it or not, that makes a difference. Call me childish if you like, but the truth is, I want my own mother to be around. I need her.’
He worked his mouth as if trying to spit out this sudden dollop of sentiment, then visibly braced himself to look her full in the face. ‘So – if this unidentified murder victim turns out to be your mother – and that, I suppose, can only be proven with our cooperation – you’re perfectly prepared to get involved in a police murder investigation, are you? With all the questions and intrusions that that involves. Possibly a trial, in the extremely unlikely event that a culprit is found. Can you cope with that, my sweet? My neurotic darling – can you actually see yourself standing up in court as a key witness for the prosecution? Can you see yourself listening to the defence call your mother a slut, a whore, a failure as a woman?’
She shrank away from him, wilting under the vitriolic blast of his contempt. ‘Stop it,’ she implored him. ‘Don’t be so cruel. I’m only trying to do what’s right.’
His laugh was another deluge of acid. ‘Right!’ he mocked. ‘It takes a fully grown-up person to understand what’s right. It’s well beyond your capacity, my immature little pet, believe me. But don’t let me stop you. Just you carry on your own sweet destructive way. Just don’t expect me to be around to pick up the pieces.’
Genevieve whimpered her frustration. ‘You make it all so much worse,’ she whined. ‘I thought you’d help me. I thought I could depend on you.’
‘I thought so too at one time,’ he agreed conversationally. ‘Fools, weren’t we?’ And he returned calmly to his perusal of the newspaper.
It was a familiar signal that he no longer wanted to talk to her, and she came very close to accepting it as her dismissal. But another nudge from the unborn child prompted her to persist.
‘Willard,’ she said, her tone almost normal again. ‘This does involve you, you know. If my mother isn’t here, then you’re going to have to help with the baby. Malcolm Jarvis has only agreed to come for the delivery, and make sure everything’s all right. After that, we’ll be on our own.’ Despite herself, her voice began to rise again, returning to the shrill tones that Willard’s silence so often reduced her to.
‘Millions of women face childbirth every day,’ Willard told her, without a trace of sympathy. ‘You should have thought of that earlier. Too late to decide you can’t cope now.’
‘But—’ she started to say, before another kick made her pause. She continued in a voice thick with distress, ‘I didn’t have any choice. What else could I have done?’
Willard looked away again. ‘You could have got your neuroses sorted ou
t years ago. It’s time you faced reality. You’re putting two lives at risk with this nonsense.’
‘If my mother was here—’
‘If your mother was here, she’d tell you exactly what I’ve just told you. That it’s time you snapped out of it. What happened is ancient history. You were twelve years old. It wasn’t even about you. I never could see why you had to go all to pieces over something that happened to other people.’
She leant her head on her hands, elbows on the table, pushing her thick hair back from her face. ‘It happened to me, Willard. Me and Brigid. Our lives fell apart and never got put back together. And now – if my mother really is dead, there’s never going to be any hope of setting it right.’
He stood up then, at the end of all patience. ‘All right!’ he thundered. ‘I give up – as usual. Find your blasted mother, if that’s what you want. Dead or alive, murdered or swanning around with a toyboy in the South Pacific. Just leave me out of it. I told you last year – I never want to see that bloody woman again.’
Drew got Stephanie dressed and fed and carried her round to the office. Sensing his pessimistic mood, she was unusually uncooperative, stiffening her small sturdy body when he tried to put her on the floor, clinging stubbornly to his neck. It was cold out, and the sky was a flat grey: a fit setting for Drew’s gloom. The field looked bleak and unappealing. The building felt damp and draughty, all the disadvantages of an old cottage manifesting themselves at once. The office had originally been a lean-to, housing logs and tools and an ancient washtub. It had had a corrugated iron roof and whitewashed walls. Drew and Karen had replaced the roof with tiles and erected a more solid outer wall, but it still felt insubstantial.
There hadn’t been a single phonecall for two days apart from the one from Genevieve Slater. Maggs was going mad with boredom. The money from the labrador had all gone on fencing materials.
‘I need another source of income,’ Drew muttered to himself, as he tried to cajole Stephanie into taking an interest in her toys. ‘Maybe I could become a childminder.’
Maggs arrived on her bike a few minutes later, and clumped noisily into the building. She wore boots with enormous soles, which made Drew feel old and stuffy. ‘What’re we going to do today, then?’ she demanded aggressively. ‘The fence is all done, and there’s a limit to the amount of tidying up I can do.’
‘We knew there’d be quiet spells,’ he said. ‘It was like this at Plant’s sometimes. People don’t die in a nice regular pattern – it goes in clusters. Any time now, we’ll be doing two funerals a day and wishing it was nice and quiet again.’
‘Dream on,’ she scoffed.
He sighed. ‘We could have a go at enlarging the car park. Widen the entrance and cut down some of the thistles and brambles. We got planning permission for twelve spaces, if I remember rightly, and at the moment you can barely get three in.’
‘Twelve! Where are you going to put them?’
He shrugged. ‘Eventually, all along the inside of the road hedge. It’ll be tarmacked and marked out – but I haven’t got the cash for it yet. Trouble is, it’ll be a Catch 22 at this rate – nobody’ll come because they can’t park – and if nobody comes, we can’t afford to give them a parking space.’
‘You sound a bit down, same as me,’ Maggs observed.
‘Yeah, well, we might have to rethink what happens with Stephanie. It isn’t going to be fair to her to have her tagging along here all the time.’
‘I did wonder what you thought you were doing.’
‘I expected we’d be getting more business by now, and could afford to pay someone to mind her.’
‘Maybe this chap’ll be the one we’re waiting for,’ she said, nodding at the car drawing up outside the gate. As always, there was a moment of indecision as the driver wondered where he was supposed to park. Drew could see a leather coat, and the side of a man’s head. He looked late middle-aged, judging by the way his head sat stiffly on his shoulders.
‘Don’t stare,’ he told Maggs. ‘Try and look busy.’
‘Just don’t ask me to take Stephanie for a walk while you talk to him,’ she warned.
Drew had already surmised that the man had a newly dead parent, or wife, and had seen the publicity about the cemetery. He’d learnt that you couldn’t identify those people who’d be interested in alternative funerals just by looking at them. This man, however, seemed even less of a likely customer than Hubert Grainger had been. He was pulling off black driving gloves, and working his thin lips as if rehearsing what he was going to say, as he approached the open door of the office. ‘Is this the Peaceful Repose Cemetery?’ he asked. ‘It’s taken me bloody ages to find you.’
Drew held out a friendly hand, not so much to shake as to usher the man into the building. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We are a bit remote. That’s part of the attraction, of course.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t require your services. My name’s Jarvis. Dr Jarvis. I’d like to have a private talk about the body you found here last month.’ His face was high-coloured, as if he’d been in the winter sun somewhere, and his hair looked incongruously dark, given his apparent age. Drew almost sighed aloud. A day or two earlier, he might have been intrigued, even excited, but the flat mood of this morning was so powerful he felt little but irritation at the loss of a potential customer and the prospect of getting involved again in the mysterious body’s story.
Jarvis eyed Stephanie suspiciously as she sat calmly surrounded by toys in her usual corner. Every day Drew had added more amusements and comforts for her, until she had a play area worthy of any day nursery. ‘My daughter,’ he explained. ‘She’s very good.’
‘Hardly the best place for her, I’d have thought,’ said the man shortly. ‘Don’t you keep bodies here?’
‘In the cool room, yes. I don’t think she’s at any risk from them.’
‘Or they from her?’ The flash of humour made some difference to Drew’s assessment of his visitor. He settled the man in his best chair and then took another for himself. He did not sit behind his desk, disliking the connotations of interviews and supplication. ‘Well – how can I help?’ he asked.
The man chewed his lip for a moment. ‘It’s very delicate,’ he began. ‘When I read the description of the woman you found here, and the estimated date when she must have died, I wondered whether it might be – someone I knew. I assume you’re privy to more detail than was published in the newspapers, and – well – I’d like to be sure in my own mind before taking any further action.’
Drew acknowledged the strong sense of déjà vu that swept over him, listening to what the man was saying. It was as if he’d taken the script directly from Genevieve Slater. ‘She was very difficult to identify,’ he said cautiously. ‘There really isn’t much more to go on than clothes, dentures and the necklace. Just as the papers said.’
Jarvis became more agitated, cupping a hand tightly around his jaw, and digging his fingertips into his cheek as if suffering from toothache. ‘Tall, elderly, slim. Wearing jewellery from Egypt – where I know she was last year – I’m sure it’s her. She hasn’t been seen since last summer by anyone in the family. I just don’t understand who would have buried her here. At least – I do have a very unpleasant suspicion.’ He wriggled uneasily in the chair, looking anywhere but at Drew. ‘It’s difficult to know how much to tell you. I realise you wouldn’t want to be privy to any information that might get you into trouble.’
This is ridiculous thought Drew. They must know each other. He raised his eyebrows encouragingly, but said nothing.
His visitor went on, ‘There is one possibility the police don’t seem to have considered. If it’s the woman I’m thinking of, I believe she committed suicide – and left instructions to be buried here unofficially, to save all the trouble of an inquest and so on. She was very keen on the idea of natural burial and all that sort of thing. In fact – if I can be satisfied in my own mind that it’s the woman in question, I’d be happy to finance a
reburial here. From a first glance, it seems very pleasant.’
‘Suicide?’ Drew picked up the idea with considerable scepticism. ‘But—’
‘I know. It sounds most peculiar. That’s why I’m here – I hoped you’d divulge a few more of the medical details. Set my mind at rest.’
Drew shook his head. ‘I very much doubt whether I can do that,’ he said. ‘As I’ve already told you – the cause of death is uncertain.’
‘But have you heard anything which would make suicide out of the question? Any further details the police haven’t made public?’
Drew pressed his lips together, in an effort to control his rising temper. He was being played with – that was becoming very obvious – and he didn’t like it. ‘Might I ask why you’ve come to me?’ he said coldly. ‘And why you think I’d answer a question like that?’
‘Because it doesn’t hurt you. Because I’m desperate. Because it’s the only way I can get any peace,’ the man burst out. ‘I know it all sounds crazy – but I’m not the only person involved. There’s a family, as well.’
Drew’s patience snapped. Any other day, and he might have listened with more sympathy. Now he’d had enough.
‘If you believe you know the woman’s identity, you have a duty to go to the police,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s nothing I can tell you. As you rightly say, by merely coming here and talking like this, you make me an accessory to the crime of obstructing a murder enquiry.’ He frowned severely, and slapped one hand down on the desk for emphasis. It felt rather good, and he did it again.
‘But—’ the man attempted, ‘– but, just hear me out. I promise you have nothing to lose by doing that. There is absolutely no chance that I’ll go to the police, and I’m trusting that you won’t do so, either.’
‘The point is, I absolutely can’t help you,’ Drew repeated. ‘I don’t know anything beyond what was in the papers.’ He paused, remembering his conversation with Stanley. Wasn’t wearing any undies – not even knickers. Ate a substantial meal … chicken curry … There might be more, if he racked his brains. What harm could it do, he wondered, to share these snippets with Dr Jarvis?
