Where the Bodies Lie

by Mark Lisac

  They walked on. Asher found it hard to take his eyes off the valley and the far-off hills. He had to for a few moments to make sure he did not slip off the path.

  Sommerfeld stopped and he stopped behind her. She was pointing to a small outcrop of sandstone wall in an opening among the grass and small bushes. A figure and letters had been carved into it. The edges of the carving were eroded enough that Asher could see it was decades old. He looked at the grooves on the ochre-coloured stone and saw a Valentine’s heart. Inside it was written “TF & MS.” Underneath the heart was the word “Forever.”

  “Tom Farber carved that,” Sommerfeld said as Asher stared. “The initials mean Tom Farber and Mary Simmons. They probably thought they had privacy, but it’s hard to have privacy anyplace there are kids around. That’s the story that has passed down in my family. It’s just a story. You can believe it or not. But the carving is real.”

  29

  THEY DIDN’T TALK MUCH ON THE WAY BACK TO ROSEMONT. They both watched the ditches for the deer that were likely stirring in the dusk.

  The implication of the carving was that Tom Farber and Mary Simmons were in love — or at least that Farber was, given that he would almost certainly have been the one to work on the stone. Then the child — always assuming there had been a child — could have been Farber’s. If it were Manchester’s, an intolerable love triangle had developed, assuming that the girl had reciprocated and that Manchester had not forced her.

  Asher told Sommerfeld he had learned that one of Farber and Manchester’s closest associates had seen evidence of considerable friction between them during Farber’s last months. Then there was Farber’s death. He was a big man. Big men with big appetites could have heart attacks. But this death was long rumoured to have involved heavy drinking. There had not been an autopsy.

  Asher dropped Sommerfeld off at her bungalow and thanked her for showing him the carving. He asked her to thank the Jensens again and wish them well.

  He checked in for the night at a motel up toward the north edge of the valley. The usual bored clerk trying her best to look bright and attentive told him the price. It was more than he would have paid for a good hotel room in the city. Frequent travelling by well servicing and roadwork crews had created a boom in the local motel business. He took the key, went to the sparsely furnished room, and watched a replay of a baseball game while he turned the image of the rock carving round and round in his head. He tried to imagine every possible way to interpret it. He looked at the picture he had taken of it with his phone. He wondered why he would bother pursuing it.

  Next morning, he decided over sausage and eggs to take a detour far east on his way back to the city. The highway traffic was light. Not many people lived out that way. Farmsteads were sparse. The towns were small and many were losing population. He still watched his speed, wary of driveways obscured by trees and wanting to enjoy the look of the rising sunlight and young plant growth in the fields and roadside.

  At the outskirts of Philpot, he looked out toward the right and saw the waist-high separation of land known as the Philpot Anomaly. It looked like a miniature model of a geological rift. Few people knew about it. He knew only because its existence was part of Morley Jackson’s vast store of information.

  The town had been named after a railway worker. The old Grand Trunk Pacific station from the early 1920s was still standing. It had held vast promise when it was built. Now, nearly a century later, it remained the grandest building in a community that had gone from dreams to survival to numbness and acceptance.

  Asher drove the few blocks of the town, seeing only four people in the warm haze of the late Sunday morning. He found the cemetery. It lay next to a field of young canola. It was the town’s major tourist attraction aside from the old railway station. Neither drew many visitors willing to spend half a day driving to and from the place, no matter how pleasant the surrounding countryside.

  He pushed open the creaking metal gate and followed the signs to the site of Tractor Tom Farber’s grave. This was one he had never visited, never felt an inclination to visit. He had found Tom Farber’s legacy was so pervasive, even inescapable, that there had seemed no point in coming to see where he was buried. Practically the whole province was his grave.

  Farber’s actual grave lay in front of a brown granite marker bearing the words He gave to the people. Asher was willing to allow him that. He felt nothing like the sense of connection or knowledge or compassion that he normally felt at a burial place.

  I’m sure you gave, he thought, then said quietly, “And what did you take?”

  He looked at the stone and at the grass in front of it. Then he looked up at the elm at the north side of the cemetery grounds and the young crop on the other side of the fence and the vast azure sky that lit everything that was still above the ground. He looked quickly once more at the gravesite and turned. He walked to the car without looking back.

  By afternoon he was back in the city and concentrating on his preparations for the next day’s work in the office. When he took a break from his reading, he thought about what to have for dinner and about Amy’s birthday. It was coming up, but he had a present already picked out for her. Sandra’s birthday would come three weeks later. They had agreed it was time for him to stop doing anything for her.

  The first day back in the office passed quickly and routinely. On the second, he stopped in for one of his regular chats with Morley Jackson. He shut the door behind him, obeying Jackson’s gesture to close it.

  Jackson asked him if anything out of the ordinary had been happening. Asher said he had learned a few things related to the Apson case but was still trying to make sense of them. He might talk them over in a day or two.

  Jackson said an odd thing had happened. He was going to finish a term on the board of directors of the People’s Finance and Credit Corporation in the fall. He had been told he would not be considered for a second term. The chairman had told him the minister wanted to move toward younger directors. “Two of the board members are older than I am, though. Jantzen told me he expects to be appointed again and Selinger, who’s a year older than I am, was appointed last fall. Tell me honestly: has my breath been getting bad? Should I start chewing mints?”

  “That’s what happens to tea drinkers sooner or later,” Asher said. “Not getting reappointed leaves you more time for reading, I guess. Did Kennett offer any theories about why they’re cutting you loose?”

  “No. He did say he got the impression he should not ask.”

  “Maybe they think you’re too likely to ask questions. Maybe there’s something they don’t want you to see. Or maybe Hannington just doesn’t like you.”

  “I’ve got along with him fine as far as I could tell. Then there’s one other thing. I received a call this morning from the registrar of the Law Society. It seems that an unnamed party has raised questions about my actions in a case last year. I’m to receive details shortly. The call was a heads-up to prepare myself for some allegations.”

  “I don’t like this. You haven’t been upsetting anyone lately, as far as I know. I did in the winter. Not lately, but who knows who may be carrying a grudge? Or worried that I may not have dropped the whole business. Maybe someone like Gerald Ryan.”

  He had seen no reason to tell Jackson about Ryan after the fiasco with the Rat Brothers. That should have been the end of it. Now he said that he suspected Ryan was involved in what had happened in Barnsdale.

  “Maybe it’s time I had a talk with him. I wanted to let things lie. Also, I didn’t know if Jimmy might be involved. I’m still not sure whether to talk to him. Let’s see how things play out for awhile, see how serious they get. Then we may have to figure out whether someone is applying pressure in hopes of getting some
thing in return, or simply lashing out.”

  Asher worked in his office the rest of the day and into suppertime. In the evening he went down to the parking garage to get his car and drove to a café he liked out on 124th Street. The light in the garage was dim, but he noticed something on the panel behind the driver’s-side door. He bent his knees to take a closer look and made out scratches that read, “Drop It.”

  He drove to the café and had veal and linguini and limited himself to one glass of Pinot Grigio as he thought things through. Back in his condo, he started to telephone Fred Jensen using his mobile. Then he stopped and decided to use a landline at the office instead.

  He arrived quickly, said hello to the cleaner, who was just on the way out, and dialed the number. Jensen answered and Asher explained that the situation had unexpectedly started developing again. It might quickly turn serious. He told Jensen in broad terms about pressure on a partner in the firm and in detail about the message scratched on his car.

  “Maybe it’s time to look into that insurance policy that Angela left,” Jensen said.

  “Then there is something.”

  “There’s something, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve held a container in my hands but I haven’t seen what’s inside it. This involves Gordon, in more ways than one. Are you able to come down here reasonably soon and bring him with you?”

  Asher said he would try to arrange it in the next few days and would get in touch to let Jensen know when.

  He reached Finley, who said he was tired of sitting around and would look forward to a trip in the country. It would be more restful than the rehab hospital. The country is always so peaceful, he said.

  30

  FINLEY AND ASHER MET JENSEN IN THE GARAGE BESIDE THE tractor. Jensen had brought out wooden chairs and coffee.

  “You know Angela was close to us,” Jensen said.

  “She came here early in the winter and told us a story about her husband. She said he had been looking into things that had made some people angry. She didn’t know who was involved, but she was sure that Victor Turlock wasn’t the only one. She also said she had some documents that Apson had left in his office safe. You apparently hid them elsewhere for awhile.”

  “That’s right,” Finley said. “Until she asked for them. They were in a sealed envelope. I never looked at them.”

  “I don’t know what’s in them either. She brought them when she visited during the winter. They weren’t in an envelope then. They were packed in a Thermos jug. She said she did not want to stir up any more trouble of the kind that got Apson killed.

  “She had thought about burning them. But she decided that they could be useful. Angela thought they could be used to scare off anyone wanting to make trouble. That’s why she called them her insurance policy. Now I have to tell you the difficult part. She didn’t want to destroy the papers, but she didn’t want to leave them unguarded. Nor did she want to put the responsibility for them onto anyone. When she knew she was dying, she asked me to put the Thermos into her casket before she was buried.”

  Asher and Finley both stared at him with mouths slightly open, not quite gasping.

  “I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. It felt wrong. But I couldn’t squirrel them away somewhere, either. So I compromised. After everyone left the cemetery, I came back while the workers were filling the grave with dirt. They had maybe a foot or more of dirt on the coffin and I threw the Thermos in and they finished filling the grave. I cleared that with the cemetery manager. If you want to see those papers, we have to go to the cemetery and dig them up.”

  Asher and Finley couldn’t speak.

  Jensen asked, “Can we even do that? I mean, the manager knows I put something in there. But we can hardly creep into the cemetery at night and start digging like grave robbers. That’s if you want to get the material at all. It’s your play, Harry. And your sister, Gordon.”

  Asher recovered first. He said it was probably a decision for the cemetery manager. The Cemeteries Act referred disinterment to the Vital Statistics Act. But that act said only that a permit was needed for any disinterment. This would not actually be a disinterment because the body and the casket would remain undisturbed. They probably would not even have to expose the casket. “But I think it’s your call,” he said, looking at Finley. “I have an interest in seeing those papers. Angela obviously thought they were important. I don’t know how important. I don’t know if it’s worth disturbing her grave.”

  Finley was staring at the floor. Asher thought it was the first time he had seen Finley at a loss. Confronting the danger in the barn, waking up to a missing half-leg — he had taken those things calmly enough. Now he was thinking hard but still didn’t show visible emotion. Asher thought his face probably looked the same as it did while changing tires on a rim. He wondered if Finley even got worked up when he was at the team bench during the Barnsdale Bulldogs’ games. Then he crossly told himself to stay focused.

  Finley said he didn’t like it. But he had to consider two things, he added. The first was potential danger to Asher and possibly to himself. The second was that Angela would have destroyed the papers if she had not wanted to leave open the possibility of their being recovered someday.

  “You’re sure?” Asher said.

  “Saying no just doesn’t feel right.”

  Jensen said he would phone the cemetery office to arrange a discussion with the manager as soon as possible.

  They drove out later in the day. The manager was a man in early middle age with dark, thinning hair. He wore a nondescript navy blue suit. His respectful expression and the modulations in his voice were the same ones he used with families and friends of the deceased who passed briefly into his responsibility. He said he had never encountered such a situation and had strong doubts. He thought a check with a lawyer would be wise.

  Asher gave him a business card and cited the law. He said the law was easy to look up on the Queen’s Printer website, although he thought a cemetery official would already be familiar with the relevant sections. He also pointed out that Finley was the next of kin and the legal owner of the burial plot.

  They had brought a shovel and could be finished digging and restoring the earth in a couple of hours. Jensen added that if it was a matter of covering any workers’ costs for a final cleanup to make sure that the site met cemetery standards, he would be happy to contribute two hundred dollars.

  The manager said he didn’t know if that would be necessary, but he appreciated the offer. “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm,” he said, pondering. Finally, he said, “It’s your relative and your plot. You can go ahead, but I’ll need to watch to make sure you stop short of the casket. And I’d like you to do it all now and finish before late afternoon. That’s when we’re more likely to have someone visiting one of the other graves.”

  They drove into the grounds. Finley said he’d had a lot of experience digging slit trenches, often in soil harder than they would encounter in a fairly fresh burial plot, and it should go quickly.

  Asher and Jensen took turns digging. They rejected mechanical help for fear of breaking the container or accidentally getting down to the casket. They shovelled fast. It was sweaty work. Dirt coated their shoes and pant legs.

  No one talked. They heard only the grating shwiiick of the shovel sinking into the dirt and the scattered hmmppff of each shovelful hitting the ground. They didn’t look at one another. Finley mostly stared at the deepening hole except when he checked the office and the road entrance for anyone approaching. Jensen felt his chest tighten every few minutes. He mostly looked down at his feet when he wasn’t shovelling; sometimes he looked up into the sky.

  Asher’s throat felt dry and bitter but his eyes felt wet. He
felt dizzy a couple of times. He told himself it was probably the heat from the exertion in the barely shirtsleeve temperature of late spring. But he knew that pictures of the many graves he had visited were running through his mind. He had never thought about opening them, not even to see what the soil was like under the grass. Now he was opening the grave of someone whose face he could picture in the dark horizon. It felt disrespectful. Not ghoulish, but like a stripping away of privacy. He had a floating sensation, then a sensation like the blood was draining from his head and its circulation was slowing down, leaving him faint. He was relieved when he heard the shovel blade make a clicking sound.

  They found the large Thermos bottle quickly and retrieved it undamaged. They thanked the manager, who returned to his office saying he trusted them to fill the hole neatly but that he would have a worker do any necessary final tidying the next day. Then they shovelled the excavated dirt back into the hole, Asher’s breathing more shallow than the exertion itself warranted. They brushed off their pants and shoes and drove back to Jensen’s place.

  Jensen left Asher and Finley in the garage. They had agreed that he did not need to know the details of whatever was in the jug unless both Asher and Finley thought it was a good idea and worth whatever risk might be entailed. He was probably already at some risk as a result of helping them.

  Asher twisted off the top and saw a few sheets of tightly rolled paper inside. He tried to pull out some of the sheets with a finger but had to use one of the screwdrivers hanging over Jensen’s workbench. He pulled all the papers out and arranged them between himself and Finley. Then they decided that only Asher would read and that he would tell Finley what he found only if it seemed essential. He started turning over the pages one by one.

  Some were photocopies and some held notes in what Finley said looked like Apson’s handwriting. The top pages were written on lined yellow paper. They contained Apson’s notes related to Mary Simmons and a son that she had borne.