by Rebecca Tope
‘A nice surprise,’ he agreed. ‘Just shows you can never predict what’ll happen.’
‘If the nursing homes would just be a bit more proactive in recommending us, things would be a lot better. Three-quarters of their inmates have no idea we exist. I think it’s a dereliction of duty. They ought to have posters up about us.’
‘That’ll be the day!’ he laughed. ‘When they do all they can to pretend everybody’s going to live for ever. You’re not allowed to even mention funerals.’
There had been several moments during the past six weeks when Drew would have loved to avoid all mention of funerals. He despised himself for it, convinced that other undertakers had no such difficulties. They would take the disposal of their own relatives in their stride, with calm competence – not floundering and changing their minds as Drew had done. But he had not been born to the work, as most in the business had. It was often a service that passed down the generations for centuries. Originally builders and carpenters, only burying the dead as a sideline, they had gradually become specialists. Drew had been a nurse in his twenties, only moving to funeral work on a whim. There were still several arcane details that he ignored or got wrong. There had always been elements he disliked – particularly those involving money. He had rapidly come to the conclusion that undertakers made too much profit from people in no position to haggle. Not only did he campaign for more ecological burials, but he kept them cheap. And as a result, his family had lived on the poverty line ever since Peaceful Repose had been set up.
The phone interrupted their desultory conversation. It was Fiona, his old friend from the council. ‘Drew, this is your lucky day,’ she began. ‘We’ve got two funerals for you!’
‘Blimey!’ he said.
‘Totally unconnected. One’s an old dipso we’ve had an eye on for months now. She’s been found dead in a doorway, poor thing. We’ll have to go through the motions, but I can safely say she’s got nobody who cares what happens next. And the other’s a migrant, we think. We’ve had him nearly a month, trying to track down his origins. He died of a brain haemorrhage, in the street, no papers at all. The police have done all they’re willing to, so now it’s down to us.’
Drew felt a wash of sadness at the lonely deaths. ‘They must have an idea of where he came from,’ he said.
‘Somalia is the best guess. It’s chaos there, you know. Nobody has proper documentation. It’s impossible to identify somebody like this. He’s black, tall, young, thin, and he died of natural causes. Frankly, Drew, with things as they are, it’s never going to get top priority. All these investigations cost money, you know.’
‘Okay. We’ll give him a decent burial.’
‘Usual rates, then. That should put a bit of bread on your table.’ Fiona knew most of the details of Drew’s life, having been attracted to his way of doing things from the start. It was she who had ensured that his burial ground got all the council funerals, of people homeless and adrift who died in the streets and ditches across Somerset. She justified the decision easily enough to her superiors by pointing out that Drew charged a hundred pounds less than other undertakers.
Even so, the eventual cheque would indeed buy some welcome bread – or shoes. Timmy had been fobbed off with cheap temporary footwear at the start of term, and would need something a lot more substantial before the winter set in.
They established the time frame for the two new burials, and Drew rang off with an unfamiliar sense of incipient well-being. ‘Busy!’ he said to Maggs, who had been hovering at his shoulder, trying to listen in.
‘Hallalujah!’ she crowed. ‘Maybe we won’t starve after all, then.’
‘They’ll both be on Thursday morning.’
‘Yes, I heard. Is Fiona coming?’
‘Probably. She usually does.’
‘She’s a good woman.’
Drew eyed Maggs thoughtfully. Did she mean anything by that remark? Was she amenable to the idea of Fiona replacing Karen, but not Thea doing so? If so, why? Fiona was forty or thereabouts, divorced, plump, good-hearted. Thea was forty-four, small, slender, impetuous and nosy. Drew was in no doubt as to which of the two would be more fun.
‘She is,’ he said.
When the phone rang again at eleven o’clock, it was to give details of a fourth funeral. Drew could hardly believe it. An inmate of the hospice had just died, leaving clear instructions that she wished to be buried at Peaceful Repose, as her friend had been a year before. Yet again, it was someone Drew had never heard of, a funeral he had been unable to anticipate. It was as if some great oak door had suddenly been opened to admit light and sweet fresh air. As if he had come to the top of a cosmic list and the gods had decided to confer a few small blessings onto him. Because to be busy was a welcome change, a timely test of his powers to concentrate and provide a decent service. He would have to remember how to behave with the newly bereaved – at least in the case of Mr Orridge and the new hospice lady. He would have to attend to details and not leave everything to Maggs.
Irrationally, with a secret inner smile, he associated the abrupt change of fortune with the glimpse he had had of Thea on the TV the previous night. If the gods had begun to smile, then possibly, just possibly, they would find a way of linking him once more with the woman whose image lurked in his mind, nearly all of the time.
Chapter Sixteen
Thea’s anger against this second corpse made her feel guilty. She ought to be appalled, enraged at the violence and the sudden death of a healthy young man. Instead she simply wanted to run away and forget the whole messy business. She felt personally attacked, the body set down carefully just where she was about to walk. But how could anybody know she would be coming this way? She and Gladwin had already been down the alley that morning – when there was definitely no dead man obstructing the way. The fact of him now was ludicrous. It was the stuff of fantasy.
‘Good Christ!’ Fraser Meadows exclaimed, after a lengthy delay. He had stared blankly at the body for what seemed like several minutes, while his daughter uttered high wordless squeaks and Thea’s mother stepped back and turned away, acting out something of what Thea herself would have liked to have done.
‘Has anybody got a phone?’ Thea asked. She had left hers at Thistledown.
Mo produced one like a magic trick, and held it up. ‘999?’ she asked.
‘No, we should call Gladwin direct. I know the number.’ She dictated it, and then snatched the mobile when Mo said it was ringing.
Gladwin answered her own mobile phone on the third ring. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘This is a private number.’
‘It’s me. Thea. I’m standing in Murder Alley, with the body of a man. I know who he is. He’s dead, Sonia. There’s been another murder. It’s the same as that girl. Everything’s the same.’ Her voice was rising dangerously and she paused for breath.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Yes you do. And it means he must have known who the girl was. They must be connected somehow.’
‘Who, Thea? Who is he?’
‘He’s called Reuben Hardy and he lives right here, in Silk Mill Lane. He’s got a wife and a puppy. It’s a sweet puppy.’ Somehow the puppy loomed largest in her mind, which she knew was daft and embarrassing, but the mind did that sort of thing in a crisis.
‘What do you mean, it’s the same? What’s the same?’
‘The way he’s lying. On his back, with his hands folded on his chest. Like an effigy on a tomb. It’s ghastly.’
‘Can you stay there until I reach you? Fifteen or twenty minutes, okay?’
‘There’ll be people. There are already people,’ she noticed, looking up the alley to the street at the top. ‘What should I say to them?’
‘Say you’ve called the police and they’ve asked you to keep everybody away. Are you there on your own?’
‘No,’ said Thea tightly. ‘And that isn’t really a lot of help. There are four of us.’
‘Send them away, then. Sorry – I’m
ringing off now. I’ll be as quick as I can – and I’ll send a squad car. It’ll probably get there before me.’ The urgency in the detective’s voice went some way towards placating Thea, who was still experiencing some sense of personal outrage.
Her mother inadvertently contributed, too, by saying, ‘Poor man. So young! Doesn’t he look peaceful, though? Isn’t death the strangest thing!’
‘It is,’ Thea sniffed, caught unawares by sudden emotion. ‘I don’t think anybody really understands it.’
Fraser and Mo had retreated back to Silk Mill Lane, speaking in low voices and ignoring the others. Thea called down to them, ‘Go back to the house, will you? If Jason comes back, you can tell him what’s happened. I can manage here.’ Evidently, the couple were unsure as to whether or not to obey her. They stared all around them, as if seeking another opinion. Then they slowly moved out of sight and she forgot about them.
Thea had spoken too soon about managing. Before she knew it, a red-faced person was shouting at her, demanding answers to fatuously obvious questions. It took Thea a few moments to recognise the woman of the previous day who had shown her and Gladwin the path through Oliver’s woodland. Heap – that was her name. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’ she shrilled. ‘For God’s sake, why are you just standing there?’
‘The police are coming,’ Thea said tightly. ‘It’s all under control.’
‘Control! How can you say that, with two killings in twenty-four hours? What the hell is happening here? We’re not safe in our beds, that’s obvious.’
The woman had every reason to be hysterical, Thea told herself. She could understand it perfectly well. The madness of it was making her feel rather hysterical herself. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s terrible.’ It was a feeble word for the circumstances, but words always were feeble when somebody died. Mo’s inarticulate cries had been more fitting.
But why Reuben? His superior smirks and subtle insinuations had been annoying, admittedly. Perhaps he had worked out who killed Melissa and challenged the killer. That seemed a viable explanation, even if he would have had to move extremely quickly. Everything had been so fast. ‘The police are coming,’ she said again. ‘Don’t let those people get any closer.’ A knot of townsfolk were hovering at the end of the alley, perhaps having sent the red-faced woman as emissary. ‘Go and tell them they have to stay back.’
Somewhat to her surprise, her order was obeyed, but only after Priscilla had bent down and given the inert face a swift stroke with her fingertips. ‘I just wanted to make sure,’ she mumbled. Then she was gone and Thea was left with her mother and a dead man. Maureen stood straight-backed against the stone wall, watching and listening, but saying nothing. Her dilated pupils gave Thea some cause for concern. ‘Mum? Are you all right?’
‘Of course not. Only a psychopath could be all right, just at the moment.’
It was the sort of thing her father would have said. He had encouraged an open acknowledgement of emotion as a good rule to live by. ‘Don’t bottle it up,’ he would say, when one of his children was miserable or angry or frightened. ‘There’s no shame in having feelings.’ Their mother had been the repressed one, clamping her lips shut against tears or rage. Her feelings leaked out in a trickle of complaint and sighs.
‘I’m sorry,’ Thea said, limply. ‘You don’t have to stay. They’ll be here in a minute.’
‘I’ll stay. You might need reinforcements.’
It was reassuringly close to being a joke. ‘I might,’ she agreed, with a glance at the band of onlookers.
The alley was longer than she remembered it from earlier that morning. It began as a tunnel, the roof closed in, and then opened into a lane with plants sprawling over the walls, and a modern concrete block addition at the lower end. Reuben Hardy lay at the narrowest point, about halfway along. How was it possible that his killer could have been sufficiently calm to arrange the body, in broad daylight, and make an unnoticed escape only yards from a town centre? The answer was not difficult to find. Winchcombe on a Monday morning was far from busy. There was little expectation that the alley would be used more than once or twice a day. It was at the eastern end of town, beyond the shops, where few people would be walking. The opening to the alley was narrow and shadowy. Nobody driving past would have time to look in and focus on an object lying on the ground. If you had the nerve for it, then it was probably not such a risky enterprise after all. Somehow this made Thea feel sadder than ever.
At least they had an identity for this one, she thought, with a wife they could interview and a life they could dismantle in the search for a reason for his murder. And it was highly likely that a link would be discovered with the other victim, arranged in a similar funereal attitude. The neatness of it was repellent, suggesting something cynical and cold. She thought of Drew, gently settling his people into their coffins, and shuddered at the difference. Being placed like this in the open air, prey to birds and other scavengers, was dreadful. The lack of blood, the closed eyes, removed much of the violence associated with murder, and replaced it with something even worse.
At last, the police arrived, in a single car, without fanfare. It drew up in Silk Mill Lane, some distance past the bottom end of the alley, having failed to notice it. ‘They don’t know where we are,’ said Thea’s mother. ‘I’ll go and fetch them.’
They were two uniformed policemen, who herded the local people away and ran tape across the upper opening to the alley. They eyed Thea and her mother uncertainly, confused as to their precise role. Thea recognised them as having been present the day before, and they quite certainly recognised her. She quailed beneath their glances, aware that they were thinking dark suspicious thoughts.
Gladwin was there in another five minutes, arriving with two other plain-clothes officers. She questioned Thea, her manner intense and jittery. There were no smiles or jokes. The profound seriousness of the situation could not be avoided. ‘We were just here,’ she burst out. ‘Less than four hours ago.’
‘Yes,’ said Thea. ‘I know.’
Chapter Seventeen
In London that morning, they told Oliver that things were progressing more or less as expected, and that he should prepare himself to be called either late that afternoon or first thing the next day. He would not be permitted to observe the proceedings or hear other people’s testimony. He was free to leave, of course, but it would be appreciated if he would return by three o’clock. It was then ten-thirty. The intervening hours stretched emptily before him. ‘What am I meant to do until then?’ he asked plaintively.
‘Go to a gallery? A film? First showing’s around midday in the West End. It’s a nice day. Sit in one of the parks, perhaps. Go and see the rose garden – it’s lovely at the moment.’ The official was briskly sympathetic, leaving an impression that she had made this identical set of suggestions a thousand times before. Oliver felt helpless. He was reminded of one of his favourite novels – The Warden by Anthony Trollope – where Mr Harding was forced to pass several hours in central London while he waited for a very similar appointment to Oliver’s own. He had walked up and down the Strand, just as Oliver felt constrained to do, pausing for a long slow drink in a coffee shop. The parallel was disorienting and by midday he was resolved to break it.
There would be birds in the parks, he presumed, if only town sparrows and pigeons. His interest in birds had blossomed over twenty years into a passion. He knew every detail of their bone structure, the way feathers grew and beaks were adapted to different food types. He knew about their social patterns, and which species dominated which. He knew the songs and calls, and the size of their broods. Now and then he dreamt he was an eagle, soaring high and watching the world’s puny affairs unfold far below. He understood that he had been in that detached mode for the greater part of his life, and that it was both desirable and deplorable.
But instead, here he was, embroiled in something so repulsive, he still could not find words for it. His own motives were opaque and fragile, the compulsion to t
estify in public an astonishment from which he still had not recovered. For a while he had assumed it to be revenge, pure and simple. That would be easy to understand and relatively easy to live with. But it was infinitely murkier than that. He lingered on the word testimony, suspecting that the clue lay within it. A setting straight, an exposure of a reality that was in many ways banal, but which had done extreme damage. For a man to escape into fantasies of becoming a bird, because normal human life was impossible for him, was at best a waste. Every life should engage in some ordinary interaction with other members of the same species. He would have enjoyed being a father, and all the sociable exchanges that family life involved, if he had been allowed to develop into the person he expected to become when he was still young and innocent.
He had been betrayed and worse. He had been damaged beyond repair, and the truth of it could not remain hidden any more. There was a basic morality to it that the world had, much to his amazement, come to recognise so powerfully that proceedings such as he was now participating in were commonplace. With great trepidation he had presented himself, never expecting to be embraced as a key element, to be treated with such gentle respect. His age had only increased the sympathy, it seemed. ‘The law pays no regard to the passage of time,’ they said, and reminded him of senile Nazis and derelict tyrants, facing their accusers in the final moments of their lives.
Faces filed through his imagination, as he sat in St James’s Park, watching pigeons with deformed or missing toes. Faces that belonged to another part of London altogether – the sooty ghettoes of the East End, in the calamitous decade that had been the nineteen forties. His father, craggy and aloof, in the Victorian costume that his profession demanded. A grand old man by any standards, living to the age of ninety-nine, energetic to the last. His death had come less than a decade before, his presence still real for a great many people. There had been women fawning over him right to the end. His mother was infinitely less memorable: the younger second wife, colourless and eternally exuding a faint disgust with everything around her. She had been dead for so long that the only lingering details were that little pucker of her lips and a scent of lily of the valley. And looming over it all, he could not evade the image of his older motherless brother, Cedric, who had been capable of anything. It still made Oliver breathless to remember what Cedric had been capable of. And finally Fraser, the rebel, whose motto, after all the bereavements wrought by the war, was there’s nothing more to lose. In his way, Fraser, too, had been capable of anything. It was mere good luck that his nature was essentially benign, and his adventures accordingly harmless and ordinary. A near-forgotten bereavement brought another blurred and wispy face to mind. Their baby sister, Joyce, with her huge eyes and tiny hands. Joyce had died when she was two, choking and resisting to the end. Oliver remembered her little white coffin more vividly than he remembered the child.
