The Business Of Dying

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Fine. I’ll bring it down, and we’ll take it from there.’

  I couldn’t help thinking what a mistake I was making, getting involved in such a hastily planned murder. Some time soon my luck was inevitably going to run out.

  Raymond appeared to read my thoughts. ‘All this’ll be over soon, Dennis. Then we can get back to making money, pure and simple.’

  I nodded, taking a drag on the cigarette. ‘I’m thinking . . . after this I might do what my driver’s doing – you know, take a long holiday somewhere. Maybe even permanent.’

  ‘The crime figures’ll go up without you, Dennis.’

  I managed a humourless smile. ‘Somehow, I don’t think so.’

  The sound of wheels on gravel outside stirred me from my thoughts.

  ‘He’s here,’ Raymond said, looking out of one of the lattice windows. ‘I’ll get down to my office.’

  I straightened my tie, feeling almost like a new guy on his first day in the office, and put out the cigarette.

  A few seconds later the buzzer went and I leaned down to the intercom speaker and asked, in as grave a voice as I could muster, who was there. I’m not a bad mimic, and it came out pretty well.

  A flustered voice asked for Raymond. ‘We are closed at the moment, sir,’ I told him.

  ‘He’s expecting me. My name’s Barry Finn.’

  I told him to hang on while I checked with Mr Keen, sat there for a few seconds, then came back on the line. ‘Please come in.’ I pushed the small red button on the intercom, which I assumed released the lock and was pleased to find out that it did.

  That could have fucked things up, if I couldn’t even open the door.

  Barry Finn was slightly older than I’d expected, about thirty, no more than five feet seven tall with a mop of dirty blond hair. He had the pinched, wary features of a small-time villain and his eyes were darting about in overdrive. Just like Len Runnion’s always did. This was a man carrying a lot of weight on flimsy shoulders. Immediately I knew Raymond was right to want him out of the way, although it didn’t say much about his judgement that he’d used him in the first place. Still, maybe you could have said the same about mine.

  I gave him a stern, headmasterly look and pointed him in the direction of Mr Keen’s office. He didn’t say a word and took off down the hall. It felt strange knowing that he only had a few more minutes of life left in him, and a bit sad to think that it was going to be spent worrying about something he could do nothing about.

  Now it was time to wait. Raymond, however, was not hanging about. Within two minutes he phoned through, gruffly telling me to get him a coffee, not bothering to say please. I was glad then that I wasn’t a full-time employee of his. He had the sort of brash attitude with his staff that gives capitalism a bad name.

  I checked the gun for the second time since sitting down and took the safety off before replacing it in the waistband of my jeans. Then I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. While I was waiting for it to boil, I gave the place the onceover. I’ve never been in an undertakers’ kitchen before, and wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe a few jokey pictures of the employees posing with the corpses, or some coffin-shaped fridge magnets. But there was none of that. Everything looked depressingly normal. Clean and tidy as well. Scattered about the walls were postcards from various far-flung destinations. One was even from Dhaka in Bangladesh, which struck me as an odd place to spend your holidays. The photograph was of a toothless, barefooted rickshaw driver smiling at the camera. I took it off the wall and saw that it was from Raymond. He said that the weather was too hot and he was looking forward to getting back. If the photo on the front was the best the Bangladeshi tourist industry could do, I couldn’t blame him.

  The kettle boiled and I poured Raymond’s coffee, substituting salt for the two sugars he’d ordered, just so he’d know I wasn’t his skivvy. I found a battered Princess Diana memorial tea tray, put the cup on that, and headed off down the hall.

  To keep up the ruse, I knocked on the door and waited until I was called in, which took all of about a second.

  Raymond beamed at me as I stepped inside and Barry looked round quickly, just to check that everything was all right. ‘Ah, thank you, Dennis. Just what the doctor ordered. Are you sure you don’t want one, Barry?’

  Barry shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

  I walked over and Raymond took the cup from the tray, managing a brief thanks. He turned back to Barry. ‘So don’t worry about it,’ he told him. ‘It’s not going to be a problem.’

  Still holding the Princess Diana commemorative tea tray, I reached down and pulled the gun from my waistband.

  Barry must have sensed I was still in the room. As Raymond continued to gabble, he turned round at the exact moment I raised the gun. The wrong end of the barrel was only three feet from his head.

  His eyes widened and his mouth opened. Before he could say anything, I pulled the trigger, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

  But nothing happened. The trigger didn’t move. I squeezed harder. Still nothing. The fucking thing was jammed.

  ‘Don’t kill me! For fuck’s sake, don’t kill me!’

  The words were a frightened howl, and it struck me then that it was the first time anyone had ever had the chance to ask me for mercy. It hurt, because it made me feel doubt. Doubt that I had the strength to kill a man face to face in cold blood. He raised his arms in surrender, the mouth opening and shutting ever so slightly like a tropical fish, unintelligible pleas for mercy trembling out. I felt like I was frozen to the spot, like I was completely and utterly incapacitated. What did I do now? What could I do now?

  ‘For the love of God, Dennis! Shoot the bastard!’

  Reflexively I pulled the trigger. Again, nothing happened. I knew then that the weapon was useless. It was never going to unjam in the next five seconds.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Raymond, his face red with frustration.

  Barry half turned to his boss, still keeping one eye on the gun. ‘Mr Keen ... Raymond ... what are you doing? I won’t say nothing—’

  ‘Finish it!’

  ‘The gun’s fucking jammed, Raymond!’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

  In a surprisingly deft movement, he reached over, grabbed a medium-sized statuette of a golfer taking a swing from the side of his desk, and whacked Barry over the head with it. It broke immediately, the golfer’s head and torso flying across the room. Barry yelped in pain, but that was about it. He was hardly incapacitated.

  Raymond’s assault seemed to galvanize Barry into action. Seeing that he was dealing with people who’d have difficulty killing a rumour, he jumped to his feet in an attempt to escape, whereupon I slammed the tea tray into his face, knocking him back down again. He lashed out with his legs, but I jumped aside and tried to hit him with the butt of the gun. It caught him on the arm as he raised it to protect himself, and with his other hand he punched me in the kidneys. This time it was my turn to yelp in pain. I staggered backwards, creating an opening between him and the door. He was off the seat like a greyhound out of a trap and heading towards salvation.

  I suddenly had a vision of spending the rest of my days behind bars, stuck in segregation along with the paedophiles and informants, and it was that which stopped me from letting Barry Finn go. Raymond was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it. I jumped on Barry as he reached the door and tried to pull him backwards, dropping the gun in the process.

  But Barry had a lot of incentive to get out of there and he wasn’t going to give up easily. Despite my best efforts, which included trying to gouge out his eyes, he managed to open the door and stagger unsteadily down the hall with me on his back. He managed about four paces before Raymond came running round the front of him, his face a panting mask of adrenalin and rage.

  ‘All right, Barry boy, let’s go quietly now.’

  But Barry wasn’t going to go quietly, not if he could avoid it. He desperately tried to dodge round Ray
mond with all the agility of a pantomime horse.

  Raymond stood his ground, and punched him hard in the stomach.

  Barry gasped as the wind was taken out of him. He fell to his knees and held that position for maybe a second, before toppling over on to his side. I jumped off his back, thinking that Raymond must have one hell of a punch on him. Which was when I saw the bloodied knife in his right hand.

  ‘Pick him up, hold him,’ he demanded excitedly.

  Barry was crawling along the floor on his stomach, blood oozing out from under his body. Raymond kicked him viciously in the side, which I thought was a bit unnecessary, but he had the look of the sadist about him that day. I’ve seen it plenty of times before. Sometimes they just get carried away.

  ‘Go on, pick him up, Dennis. Now.’

  Barry coughed and tried to say something, but it just came out like a splutter. I felt sick. This was different from a shooting. It was so much more messy and, in a bizarre way, so much more personal.

  I stood behind him and pulled him up by the arms. His body made a horrible squelching sound as it disengaged from the pool of blood forming below him, and I had to fight to stop myself from puking.

  Raymond’s face split open in a wild, maniacal grin and his eyes widened dramatically, as if they were trying to drink in as much of the scene as possible. Again Barry tried to get words out, but it was too late. The hand containing the knife darted out and there was a splitting sound as the blade peeled through soft flesh. Barry gasped. Raymond stabbed again. And again, his face beaming savagely, lost in the joy of murder, his right arm pumping like a demented piston. Barry tried to struggle but his movements were weak and drawn, and every thrust of the knife took just that little bit more out of him. The blood dripped heavily on to the floor and I struggled to hold him upright, slipping slightly in the mess below.

  ‘Please,’ I heard him whisper through clenched teeth, or maybe it was just air escaping, I don’t know.

  Either way it was over, and finally his resistance went altogether and he slumped in my arms. Raymond had stabbed him at least a dozen times.

  Raymond stood back, panting with exertion, and admired his handiwork. His crisp white shirt was spattered with gobs of blood. ‘All right, he’s gone. You can put him down now.’

  I laid him gently on the floor and stepped away. There was blood everywhere, although thankfully the dark hardwood flooring served to disguise the worst of it.

  Raymond, still holding the knife, wiped sweat from his brow. ‘It’s a shame he had to go like that. I always quite liked old Barry. What the fuck happened with your gun?’

  ‘It jammed,’ I said. ‘It happens sometimes.’

  ‘This is a fucking mess, Dennis. By rights you ought to clean it up as it was your gun that caused it.’

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ I asked, still partially numbed by what had just happened. I’d never seen so much blood in my life. It seemed every drop Barry had owned was now spread out between me and Raymond. Every now and again his body twitched malevolently. A faint but growing odour of shit drifted silently through the still air.

  ‘Well, he’s already beginning to go a bit ripe, so we’d better get him packaged up. We’ll stick him in one of the coffins for now.’

  He put the knife down next to the body and motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the hall and he opened up a door a little bit further down on the opposite side from his office. A number of coffins were stacked up in lines on shelves against one wall. They all looked to be much of a muchness, although some were bigger than others.

  Raymond took a quick look at them, then selected the one he wanted and pulled it down. It was a cream colour – almost white – with iron handles, and it looked quite cheap – which, I suppose, stood to reason, since he wasn’t going to be making any money out of Barry’s disposal. I got one end of it and we took it outside and put it down on one of the few dry spaces on the floor, before lifting Barry’s bloodsoaked corpse up and chucking it in. Although I worked hard to avoid it, a few splashes of blood got on my jeans, which basically spelled the end for them. Raymond put the lid down, and after that we cleared up the rest of the mess as best we could, which took a good twenty minutes and involved me doing most of the mopping up while Raymond acted in something of a supervisory role.

  When we’d finished, I went and got myself a glass of water from the kitchen. I drank it down fast, then poured myself another and drank that down as well. I was still feeling nauseous so I took some slow, deep breaths and focused on one of the postcards. This one was from India, from somewhere called Mumbai, which I hadn’t heard of. I wondered briefly who’d gone there for their holidays, but didn’t bother to look.

  When I felt a little bit better I walked back into the hallway.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Raymond asked. He was kneeling down beside the coffin hammering in nails while chewing on a cigar. He looked a bit knackered, but that was about it. You wouldn’t have guessed he’d just stabbed an employee of his to death.

  ‘I don’t ever want to have to do that again,’ I told him.

  ‘You know how it is, Dennis. Sometimes you’ve just got to do these things.’

  I snorted. ‘There’ve got to be better ways to earn a living.’

  ‘Too right, and after this I’m going back to concentrating on my core business. There’s big money to be made in undertaking. And it’s a steady market. You see this?’ He banged the coffin with his hammer. ‘One of these costs thirty-seven quid from the manufacturers. Thirty-seven quid. But you know what? The cheapest one I sell’ll cost a punter four hundred. That’s a one thousand per cent markup. And the beauty of it is that no one argues. I mean, who the fuck’s going to negotiate over the price of their nearest and dearest’s funeral costs? Only a right heartless bastard’d think about doing that. And thankfully there aren’t too many of them about.’

  There wasn’t a lot you could say to that. ‘So what are you going to do with the body?’

  ‘I’ll put it in the back of one of the hearses and drive it up to some associates of mine.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘They’re professionals, Dennis. Don’t worry. They know how to make people disappear.’

  ‘Are you sure you can trust them? This is a body we’re talking about here, not a caseload of porno videos.’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve worked with them before and they’ve proved reliable.’

  ‘And they can be trusted to get rid of him?’

  He stood up and smiled at me. ‘Dennis, you of all people should know that if you want to make someone disappear, and you know what you’re doing, then, bang’ – he clicked his fingers – ‘they’ll just vanish into thin air. Never to be seen again.’

  I thought of Molly Hagger then and shuddered.

  ‘Grab the other end, will you?’ he said.

  I did as I was told, and together we loaded the coffin into one of the hearses so that it could begin its final journey to an anonymous resting place.

  21

  It was twenty past three when I picked up the phone and called Coleman House. I was back at home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

  Someone whose voice I didn’t recognize answered, and I asked to be put through to Ms Graham. I could hear my heart thumping. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of the shock of what I’d been a part of earlier, or simply nerves at the prospect of speaking to a woman I fancied, and trying to get her to see me.

  I pictured Barry Finn. I could hear the gruesome gasping noises he made as Raymond stabbed him, like an old man with emphysema.

  ‘Hello, Mr Milne. Dennis.’

  ‘Hi, Carla, sorry to bother you.’ My heart was beating louder than ever. For a second I wanted to put the phone down and get the hell out of my flat. Go for a run or something. ‘You heard about the charges being laid for the Miriam Fox murder?’

  ‘Against the pimp? Yes, I saw it in the paper.’

  ‘I tried to reach you to tell you yesterday but you were o
ut, and I didn’t really want to leave a message.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know. I suppose that means you won’t have to come back here again.’

  ‘That’s right.’ I paused for a moment, wondering how best to put this. ‘There were a couple of things I wanted to run by you, though.’

  Her tone didn’t change. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, just some background information I need. I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. Is it possible we could meet somewhere?’

  ‘Is it very urgent?’

  I didn’t want to alarm her. ‘Not particularly, but it would be nice to get it out of the way.’

  ‘I’m trying to think when I’m around . . .’ She didn’t sound unduly worried. ‘I’ve got a lot on this afternoon.’

  ‘This evening?’ I ventured.

  She thought about it. ‘How about tomorrow evening? That’d be easier. Why don’t you come round to my flat? It’s up in Kentish Town.’

  This was an invitation if ever I’d heard one. ‘Yeah, of course. I could do that. What’s the address?’

  She told me, and I wrote it down in my notebook. ‘I’ll find it. What sort of time?’

  ‘I normally eat at about seven. Come round after that. About eight?’

  It sounded as though we were arranging a date, and I suppose in a way we were. ‘Eight o’clock’s fine. I’ll see you then.’

  We said our goodbyes and I hung up, not knowing whether to feel pleased with myself or not. I was glad that I was going to get the chance to see her again, even if what I had to say wasn’t exactly going to endear me to her. I was interested too in what her answers were going to be. I didn’t at that point think that she’d had anything to do with the murder, but something had definitely been up between her and Miriam Fox and I wanted to know what it was.

  I sat there for a few seconds mulling over the possibilities, but I found it difficult to concentrate. The problem was, I couldn’t help thinking about Barry Finn. Usually I can rid my mind of inconvenient thoughts – it’s something you’ve got to be able to do if part of your life involves ending the lives of fellow human beings – but this killing had hit me a lot harder than any of the others. It was the indignity of it. Right now, he was probably laid out on tarpaulin in someone’s garage being slowly and carefully dismembered like a piece of rancid meat.