Then began those awkward few minutes while the party waited outside for the previous service to finish and the chapel
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to be vacated. Everyone knew that someone else’s coffin was just sliding through the curtains into the cremation suite, but they all tried to look as though they weren’t aware of it. A female relative began to cry. A mourner smoking a cigarette by the roadway threw it down and stubbed it out with the toe of his shoe. A thin trickle of blue smoke rose from the butt until it was dampened by the rain and died.
Cooper started to feel as though he was intruding. He didn’t always find it possible to be a detached observer, unaffected by other people’s grief. But it would seem odd and disrespectful just to walk away now, so he waited until the bearers had slid the coffin out of the hearse. Hudson stepped forward to help the four men raise it on to their shoulders smoothly. Then they lowered their heads in a practised movement and entered the chapel. Gradually the mourners followed them, until they had left Cooper standing on his own in the rain.
He began to walk towards the office block behind the chapel. But he was barely halfway there when the music started, and his pace slowed instinctively until he had to stop. Cooper could never hear the first hymn of a funeral service without being pierced by that sudden sense of loss. It seemed to come from nowhere, entirely unexpected, and unrelated to any thoughts that had been in his head. The feeling was somehow bound up in the music, buried deep in the raw sound of untrained voices faltering into the opening verse of ‘Abide With Me’.
But it was ridiculous to be standing alone outside a crematorium chapel feeling like this. He tried to recall whose loss was being mourned. Was it Shirley Bramwell or Billy Booker? Their names had stayed in his mind, but the order of their disposal was already a blur.
In the office, he announced himself to a secretary, who told him that Mr Lloyd was engaged in a meeting, but would be with him shortly if he cared to wait. Cooper looked at his watch. It was his own fault - he was a bit early. He’d been
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too eager to get out of the office, even if the alternative was the crematorium.
‘I’ll take a walk round and come back in a few minutes,’ he said. And the woman looked relieved to have him out of the building.
At least the rain was easing off a bit. The cool air felt quite refreshing as Cooper walked up the roadway to the other end of the chapel. Mourners from the previous service were still milling around in the exit, and a few of them were inspecting the floral tributes. Someone exclaimed in admiration at the Pearly Gates, even though they were from a cremation earlier in the day, a tribute to a stranger. This party was in a completely different mood from the one that had just gone in. They were chatting and laughing with relief at being outside, despite the rain. Their laughter seemed odd when another service had begun behind them, the tears and the music just starting over again for someone else.
Two limousines had been waiting here to take the family mourners away, even as the next hearse rolled into the portecochere. Cooper watched the two men in black frock coats who seemed to be in charge. They were a discreet presence, taking a party of mourners each, one coming in and one going out. Crematorium attendants, presumably.
As the crowd dispersed into the car park, they left only Cooper, the two Hudson and Slack limousines and their drivers, who were taking the chance to have a break. They were standing in their black suits near the cars, smoking cigarettes and chatting. Or, rather, three of them were - Billy McGowan and the other two whose names he didn’t know. The exception was Vernon Slack, who’d lifted the bonnet of the leading limousine and was tinkering with something inside the engine compartment, checking the oil level or testing the tension of the fan belt.
Cooper began to walk towards him. Slack didn’t look up, though he was aware of somebody approaching. He
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surreptitiously disposed of his cigarette in the nearest flower bed and moved back towards his limousine, pulling a yellow cloth from the pocket of his jacket. If he kept that sort of thing in his pockets, it was no wonder his suit didn’t fit too well.
By the time Cooper reached him, Vernon had put the bulk of the limousine between them and was bending down to rub at the bodywork, wiping off the raindrops. He seemed to be trying to hide his face behind the wing mirror, as if afraid to look anybody in the eye.
‘Mr Slack?’
From the other side of the car, the young man’s head came up. He looked worried, but he didn’t answer immediately. His hand kept moving automatically over the bodywork, rubbing at the same patch with his cloth.
‘Vernon, isn’t it?’ said Cooper. ‘Vernon Slack?’
‘Yes.’
The hand stopped at last. Vernon let it fall by his side, still holding the cloth.
Cooper held out his warrant card. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I’m here to make some enquiries with the crematorium manager, Mr Lloyd. But I thought I recognized you from the other day. I was at Hudson and Slack with a colleague, DS Fry. Do you remember?’
‘You were talking to Melvyn. It wasn’t anything to do with me, was it?’
‘Of course not.’
Vernon was standing in front of a back door to the chapel, or possibly it was a staff entrance to the cremation suite, which stood at right angles to it. On the door was a notice warning that anyone caught taking floral tributes would be prosecuted. Cooper wondered what sort of person would want to steal flowers from a crematorium. He hoped no one would make a mad grab for the Pearly Gates and run off with them right under his nose.
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‘You must spend quite a bit of time here in your job, Mr Slack,’ said Cooper, smiling in an effort to put Vernon at his ease.
‘Here, or at Brimington or Sheffield. It depends where they want to go.’
‘I realize Hudson and Slack is a family firm from your point of view, but how long have you actually been working for the company? Would you have been around about eighteen months ago?’
Vernon’s lips moved slowly, as if he was counting up to eighteen and trying to work out how long ago that was.
‘March of last year,’ said Cooper helpfully.
‘Yes. Well, I’ve always helped out a bit. My dad, you know …’
‘Yes, of course.’
Vernon’s reluctance to meet his eyes made it easy for Cooper’s gaze to slide past him and land on something more interesting. The door behind Vernon had glass panels, and through them Cooper could see some kind of store room. The item that had caught his attention was a brand-new microwave oven, still in its box. Presumably the cremation suite staff used it to make their lunch. With a faint queasiness in his stomach, he pictured them watching a pie turn slowly in its dish as the meat bubbled inside.
‘Do you know the other bearers very well, Mr Slack?’
‘Some of them. They come and go, you know how it is.’
‘What about Billy McGowan?’
‘Billy? I’ve known him for yonks. Yonks.’
‘Has he worked at Hudson and Slack for a long time?’
‘I can’t remember how long exactly, but I know he worked for Granddad. Billy was casual for quite a few years, then Dad gave him a full-time job.’
‘Your father gave him the job, not Melvyn Hudson?’
Vernon looked down at the car, as if embarrassed at being tricked into an admission.
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‘Yeah.’
‘Is your father still with the company?’
Vernon didn’t answer, but fiddled with his cloth, itching to get polishing again. But no doubt it had been drummed into him to be courteous to people at funerals, and he seemed reluctant to make an exception, even for a police officer.
‘He’s dead.’
‘Your father died?’
The only response was a brief nod. Vernon was starting to remind Cooper of Tom Jarvis, another man who didn’t believe in wasting words. He’d seemed sullen at first, but now Vernon was just smiling and smiling. Not with pleasu
re, but with anxiety. His expression was a perpetual grimace of apology.
Suddenly he looked past Cooper and his expression changed to one of relief, as if the cavalry had arrived.
Cooper hadn’t heard any footsteps behind him. He hated it when his alertness slipped so much that someone was able to creep up on him. As a result, he hadn’t even begun to turn round when a hand landed on his arm.
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14
An unmarked car was already in position in Darton Street, parked a few doors down from number 28 to keep surveillance on the front door.
DI Hitchens picked up the radio handset. ‘Is he still at home?’
‘The suspect entered the house about twenty minutes ago, and we haven’t seen him come out again.’
‘What about a rear exit?’
‘He’d have to go over the garden wall, sir. But there’s a unit in the back alley, just in case.’
‘Good. Remember, this individual could be armed, so no one goes near him without a vest on. Understood? Just stay out of the way and let the arrest team deal with him.’
‘Understood.’
‘Here’s the van now,’ said Diane Fry, as a police Transit pulled into the end of the street and officers in bulletproof vests deployed from the rear doors.
In a few more minutes, the scene would be contained, and ready for the execution of a safe and uneventful arrest. With Ian Todd removed from the scene, they could bring in the SOCOs and search teams. But would Sandra Birley still be alive somewhere?
It was more than sixty hours since Sandra had been taken
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from the multistorey car park. Two days and three nights more than enough for her abductor to carry out whatever he had in mind. Although his supervisor at Peak Mutual confirmed that Todd had been working as normal during those two days, his job involved spending several hours on the road each day, visiting clients across North Derbyshire.
In any case, the nights had been entirely free for him to pursue his activities. He was unmarried and lived alone, so there was no one at home demanding an account of his whereabouts, or to question the condition of his car or his clothing. He could have taken his victim anywhere during that first night, before she was even reported missing. She could be at the other end of the country.
But Fry didn’t think that was the case. She thought Sandra Birley would be found within a few miles of Edendale, in a six-mile radius of Wardlow. Ian Todd had been ideally placed to make the phone calls. He had been on the road in his light green Vauxhall Vectra when both those calls had been made.
That Vectra stood on the drive of number 28 now. Shortly, it would become a crime scene and Forensics could give it a going-over.
Then the radio crackled back into life.
‘He’s out of the house, sir, going for the car. He must have seen us.’
‘Who the hell blew it?’ shouted Hitchens. ‘Never mind get moving. Block him in and we’ll take him now, before he gets his vehicle on to the street.’
The unmarked car started up and pulled away from the kerb with a squeal of tyres. The surveillance team were only yards from the driveway of number 28 and within seconds they had blocked Ian Todd’s exit. He looked up and saw them coming just as he reached his Vectra and thumbed the remote on his keyfob.
Fry was out of her door and standing in the road. She had a good view of Todd as he momentarily froze in his garden.
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He was tall, about six feet two, she guessed, and strongly built. But right now he looked scared.
‘He’s going to leg it,’ she said.
‘Diane, don’t go near him,’ said Hitchens. ‘You’re not wearing a vest.’
But in the end, she didn’t have to go near Ian Todd at all. He glanced from one end of the street to the other, taking in Fry and the police vehicles. And then he ran towards the marked van, where four officers in uniforms and bulletproof vests were advancing towards him. He met them a few yards down the road, and two of them took hold of his arms, turned him round and handcuffed him. Fry saw his face then. He looked more surprised than frightened.
‘Well, he must have thought you looked really scary,’ said Gavin Murfin, arriving at Fry’s shoulder. ‘He took one look at you and ran the other way.’
‘You shouldn’t be here, Gavin,’ she said. ‘You’re not wearing a vest.’
‘He’s handcuffed. What’s he going to do, kill me with his evil stare?’
Fry scrutinized Ian Todd’s house. It looked ordinary enough, but what killer’s home didn’t?
As Fry walked up the drive to the house, the front door opened. She stopped, suddenly conscious that Todd might have had an accomplice. If there was a second person involved and they were armed, she was completely exposed. She was appalled at herself for making such an elementary error.
Then, from the shadows of the hallway, a woman emerged and stood on the step. She was dark-haired and attractive, with a startled look in her eyes. They stood frozen, staring at each other, until Fry felt the initial surge of shock give way to anger. She stepped forward and held out her warrant card.
‘Detective Sergeant Fry, Edendale Police,’ she said. ‘And you, I believe, are Mrs Sandra Birley.’
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‘Excuse me. Detective Constable Cooper?’
Cooper turned to find a man in a dark suit standing behind him. Another funeral director’s assistant? But no ….
‘I’m Christopher Lloyd, the crematorium manager.’
‘Oh, Mr Lloyd. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.’
Lloyd looked at Vernon Slack. ‘Come inside. It’ll be a little less public’
Another funeral party was gathering, even while the previous one was less than halfway through its service. Because they couldn’t go into the chapel, the mourners were milling about outside near the portecochere. They’d be in the way when the hearse arrived, but no doubt there would be someone whose job it was to herd them in the right direction.
The cremation suite itself stood at right angles to the chapel, with frosted windows under its square chimney stack. Inside, it had an inevitable industrial feel. The main room was dominated by two giant stainless-steel ovens with sliding doors just wide enough to take a coffin.
Cooper had only ever seen one cremator before, and that had been in Germany - a huge thing, fed by a machine built into the floor with an overhead crane to lift coffins into place, while others waited in line, as if on a conveyor belt. But the one he was looking at now was smaller. The only way of loading the coffins was by hand from a hydraulic bier.
To one side, he saw a computer control desk and a cremator operator wearing heat-resistant gloves and an aluminium apron. There was very little smell, except for the aroma of hot brick and metal from the ovens and the heat exchanger behind them.
‘Now, what would you like to know?’ said Lloyd. ‘Would it help if I began with a brief description of the way we operate?’
‘Yes, sir. For a start, does the body always stay with the coffin after it arrives here?’
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‘Without exception. Our code of practice requires the coffin to be placed in the cremator exactly as received. When a coffin arrives in the committal room, it’s labelled with a card that accompanies the body right through until final disposal.’
‘How long does that process take?’
‘A modern gas-fired cremator can deal with the average body in half an hour.’
‘And the ashes?’
‘The cremains,’ corrected Lloyd. ‘Well, when they come out of the chamber, they consist mostly of bone residue. Sixty per cent of bone is non-burnable material, so at that stage there’ll be a number of bone fragments.’
Cooper was shown a cooling tray where bone residue was run under a magnet to sift out wedding rings and scraps of melted jewellery. When Lloyd lifted the lid, the cremated bones inside looked the colour and consistency of meringue - pale grey, granular and brittle. In places, their shape was still visible, but Cooper felt sure t
hey would crumble at a touch.
They passed through into what Lloyd called the preparation room, where an electric pulverizer was used to reduce the bone fragments to ash. Now the grey material looked more like fine cat litter, the sort that Randy always refused to use.
‘From a man, we get an average weight of about seven and a half pounds of bone residue, and from a woman just under six pounds,’ said Lloyd.
‘So gender is reduced to a difference in bone structure, in the final analysis?’
‘You might put it that way, I suppose.’
Cooper filed that one away for future reference. It might be something he could point out to Diane Fry at a suitable moment.
‘Is it possible for the ashes from two different people to get mixed up, Mr Lloyd?’
The manager shook his head. ‘Everyone worries about
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getting the right ashes. They think more than one coffin might be cremated at a time, but that isn’t so. We’re not allowed to do that, and in any case it’s impossible. The cremator will only take one coffin at a time, and the ashes have to be withdrawn before it’s used again.’
‘But you have more than one cremator here, don’t you?’
‘Two,’ admitted Lloyd. ‘But it isn’t often that both are in use, unless we have a really busy day. We need two so we can still operate when one of them is shut down for maintenance.’ Cooper looked into the committal room, where the coffins slid through from the chapel on silent rollers.
‘And when you do get a busy day,’ he said, ‘the bodies must arrive in here faster than the staff can get them in and out of the cremator.’
Now Lloyd looked worried. ‘Well, yes.’
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