A Prayer for the Dying (v5) (12 page)

She started to cry. Wordless, he pulled back the covers and held out a hand. She stumbled across the room and got in beside him.

He switched off the lamp. She lay there, her face against his chest, sobbing, his arms about her. He held her close, stroking her hair with his other hand and after a while, she slept.

10

Exhumation

The car that called to pick Fallon up the following morning at seven-thirty was a black, funeral limousine. Varley was at the wheel dressed in a neat blue serge suit and peaked cap. There was no other passenger.

Fallon climbed into the rear and closed the door. He reached across and slid back the glass window between the driver's compartment and the rest of the car.

'All right,' he said, as Varley moved into gear and drove away. 'Where are we going?'

'The Catholic cemetery.' Fallon, in the act of lighting his first cigarette of the day, started, and Varley said soothingly, 'Nothing to worry about, Mr Fallon. Honest. It's just that Mr Meehan has an exhumation first thing this morning.'

'An exhumation?' Fallon said.

'That's right. They don't come along very often and Mr Meehan always likes to see to a thing like that personally. He's very particular about his funeral work.'

'I can believe that,' Fallon said. 'What's so special about this case?'

'Nothing really. I suppose he thought you might find it interesting. The man they're digging up is a German. Died about eighteen months ago. His wife couldn't afford to take him back to Germany then, but now she's come into a bit of money, and wants to bury him in Hamburg.' He swung the car out into the main road and added cheerfully, 'It's a fascinating game, the funeral business, Mr Fallon. Always something new happening.'

'I just bet there is,' Fallon said.

They reached the cemetery in ten minutes, and Varley turned in through the gate and drove up the drive, past the chapel and the superintendent's office, following a narrow track.

The grave they were seeking was on top of the hill covered by a canvas awning. At least a dozen people were grouped around it and there was a truck and a couple of cars. Meehan was standing beside one of them talking to a grey-haired man in rubber boots and an oilskin mac. Meehan wore a Homburg hat and his usual melton overcoat and Donner stood beside him holding an umbrella over his head.

As Fallon got out and splashed through the heavy rain towards them, Meehan turned and smiled. 'Ah, there you are. This is Mr Adams, the Public Health Inspector. Mr Fallon is a colleague of mine.'

Adams shook hands and turned back to Meehan. 'I'll see how they're getting on, Mr Meehan.'

He moved away and Fallon said, 'All right, what game are we playing now?'

'No games,' Meehan said. 'This is strictly business and I've a funeral afterwards so I'm busy all morning, but we obviously need to talk. We can do it in the car on the way. For the moment, just stick close to me and pretend to be a member of the firm. This is a privileged occasion. The cemetery superintendent wouldn't be too pleased if he thought an outsider had sneaked in.'

He moved towards the grave, Donner keeping pace with the umbrella, and Fallon followed. The smell was terrible - like nothing he had ever smelt before and when he peered down into the open grave, he saw that it had been sprinkled with lime.

'Two feet of water down there, Mr Meehan,' the Public Health Inspector called. 'No drainage. Too much clay. Means the coffins going to be in a bad state. Probably come to pieces.'

'All in the game,' Meehan said. 'Better have the other one ready.'

He nodded and two of the gravediggers standing by lifted a large oaken coffin out of the back of the truck and put it down near the grave. When they opened it, Fallon saw that it was zinc lined.

The old coffin drops inside and we close the lid,' Meehan said. 'Nothing to it. The lid has to be welded into place, mind you, in front of the Public Health Inspector, but that's what the law says if you want to fly a corpse from one country to another.'

Just then there was a sudden flurry of movement, and as they turned, the half-dozen men grouped around the grave heaved up the coffin. Webbing bands had been passed underneath, which to a certain extent held things together, but as the coffin came into view, the end broke away and a couple of decayed feet poked through minus their toes.

The smell was even worse now as the half-dozen unfortunate gravediggers lurched towards the new coffin clutching the old. Meehan seemed to enjoy the whole thing hugely and moved in close, barking orders.

'Watch it, now! Watch it! A little bit more to the left. That's it.'

The old coffin dropped into the new, the lid was closed. He turned triumphantly to Fallon. 'I told you there was nothing to it, didn't I? Now let's get moving. I've got a cremation at nine-thirty.'

The gravediggers seemed badly shaken. One of them lit a cigarette, hands trembling, and said to Fallon in a Dublin accent, 'Is it a fact that they're flying him over to Germany this afternoon?'

'So I understand,' Fallon said.

The old man made a wry face. 'Sure and I hope the pilot remembers to wind the windows down.'

Which at least sent Fallon to the car laughing helplessly to himself.

Donner drove and Meehan and Fallon sat in the back seat. Meehan opened a cupboard in the bottom half of the partition between the driver's compartment and the rear and took out a Thermos flask and a half-bottle of Cognac. He half-filled a cup with coffee, topped it up with Cognac and leaned back.

'Last night. That was very silly. Not what I'd call a friendly gesture at all. What did you have to go and do a thing like that for?'

'You said the priest would be left alone,' Fallon told him, 'then sent O'Hara to the crypt to smash it up. Lucky I turned up when I did. As for O'Hara - he and I are old comrades in a manner of speaking. He's cleared off, by the way. You won't be seeing him around here any more.'

'You have been busy.' Meehan poured more Cognac into his coffee. 'I do admit I got just a little bit annoyed with Father da Costa. On the other hand he wasn't very nice when I spoke to him yesterday evening and all I did was offer to help him raise the money to stop that church of his from falling down!'

'And you thought he'd accept?' Fallon laughed out loud. 'You've got to be joking.'

Meehan shrugged. 'I still say that bullet was an unfriendly act.'

'Just like Billy playing Peeping Tom at Jenny Fox's place,' Fallon said. 'When are you going to do something about that worm, anyway! He isn't fit to be out without his keeper.'

Meehan's face darkened. 'He's my brother,' he said. 'He has his faults, but we all have those. Anyone hurts him, they hurt me too.'

Fallon lit a cigarette and Meehan smiled expansively. 'You don't really know me, do you, Fallon? I mean, the other side of me, for instance? The funeral game.'

'You take it seriously.'

It was a statement of fact, not a question and Meehan nodded soberly. 'You've got to have some respect for death. It's a serious business. Too many people are too off-hand about it these days. Now me, I like to see things done right.'

'I can imagine.'

Meehan smiled. 'That's why I thought it might be a good idea to get together like this morning. You could find it very interesting. Who knows, you might even see some future in the business.'

He put a hand on Fallon's knee and Fallon eased away. Meehan wasn't in the least embarrassed. 'Anyway, we'll start you off with a cremation,' he said. 'See what you make of that.'

He poured another coffee, topped it up with more Cognac and leaned back with a contended sigh.

* * *

The crematorium was called Pine Trees and when the car turned in through the gate, Fallon was surprised to see Meehan's name in gold leaf on the notice-board, one of half-a-dozen directors.

'I have a fifty-one per cent holding in this place,' Meehan said. 'The most modern crematorium in the north of England. You should see the gardens in spring and summer. Costs us a bomb, but it's worth it. People come from all over.'

The superintendent's house and the office were just inside the gate. They drove on and came to a superb, colonnaded building. Meehan tapped on the glass and Donner braked to a halt.

Meehan wound down the window. 'This is what they call a columbarium,' he said. 'Some people like to store the ashes in an urn and keep it on display. There are niches in all the walls, most of them full. We try to discourage it these days.'

'And what would you recommend?' Fallon demanded, irony in his voice.

'Strewing,' Meehan said seriously. 'Scattering the ashes on the grass and brushing them in. We come out of the earth, we go back to it. I'll show you if you like, after the funeral.'

Fallon couldn't think of a single thing to say. The man took himself so seriously. It was really quite incredible. He sat back and waited for what was to come.

The chapel and the crematorium were in the centre of the estate and several hundred yards from the main gate for obvious reasons. There were several cars parked there already and a hearse waited with a coffin at the back, Bonati at the wheel.

Meehan said, 'We usually bring the hearse on ahead of the rest of the party if the relations agree. You can't have a cortege following the coffin these days, not with present day traffic. The procession gets split wide open.'

A moment later, a limousine turned out of the drive followed by three more. Billy was sitting up front, beside the driver, Meehan got out of the car and approached, hat in hand, to greet the mourners.

It was quite a performance and Fallon watched, fascinated, as Meehan moved from one group to the next, his face grave, full of concern. He was particularly good with the older ladies.

The coffin was carried into the chapel and the mourners followed it in. Meehan joined on at the end and pulled at Fallon's sleeve. 'You might as well go in. See the lot.'

The service was painfully brief, almost as synthetic as the taped religious music with its heavenly choir background. Fallon was relieved when the proceedings came to an end and some curtains were closed by an automatic device, hiding the coffin from view.

'They pull it through into the funeral room on a movable belt,' Meehan whispered, 'I'll take you round there when they've all moved off.'

He did a further stint with the relatives when they got outside. A pat on the back where it was needed, an old lady's hand held for an instant. It was really quite masterly. Finally, he managed to edge away and nodded to Fallon. They moved round to the rear of the building, he opened a door and led the way in.

There were four enormous cylindrical furnaces. Two were roaring away, another was silent. The fourth was being raked out by a man in a white coat.

Meehan nodded familiarly. 'Arthur's all we need in here,' he said. 'Everything's fully automatic. Here, I'll show you.'

The coffin Fallon had last seen in the chapel stood waiting on a trolley. 'Rubber doors in the wall,' Meehan explained. 'It comes straight through on the rollers and finishes on the trolley.'

He pushed it across to the cold oven and opened the door. The coffin was at exactly the right height and moved easily on the trolley rollers when he pushed it inside. He closed the door and flicked a red switch. There was an immediate roar and through the glass peep-hole, Fallon could see flames streak into life inside.

'That's all it needs.' Meehan said. 'These ovens operate by radiant heat and they're the last word in efficiency. An hour from beginning to end and you don't need to worry about pre-heating. The moment it reaches around a thousand degrees centigrade, that coffin will go up like a torch.'

Fallon peered through the glass and saw the coffin suddenly burst into flames. He caught a glimpse of a head, hair flaming, and looked away hurriedly.

Meehan was standing beside the oven where Arthur was busily at work with his rake. 'Have a look at this. This is what you're left with.'

All that remained was a calcined bony skeleton in pieces. As Arthur pushed at it with the rake, it broke into fragments falling through the bars into the large tin box below which already contained a fair amount of ash.

Meehan pulled it out, picked it up and carried it across to a contraption on a bench by the wall. 'This is the pulveriser,' he said, emptying the contents of the tin box into the top. He clamped down the lid. 'Just watch. Two minutes is all it takes.'

He flicked a switch and the machine got to work, making a terrible grinding noise. When Meehan was satisfied, he switched off and unscrewed a metal urn on the underside and showed it to Fallon, who saw that it was about three-quarters full of powdery grey ash.

'You notice there's a label already on the urn?' Meehan said. 'That's very important. We do everything in strict rotation. No possibility of a mistake.' He pulled open a drawer in a nearby desk and took out a white card edged in black. 'And the next of kin get one of these with the plot number on. What we call a Rest-in-Peace card. Now come outside and I'll show you the final step.'

It was still raining as they moved along the path at the back of the building between cypress trees. They came out into a lawned area, criss-crossed by box hedges. The edges of the paths were lined with numbered plates.

A gardener was working away beside a wheelbarrow hoeing a flower-bed and Meehan called, 'More work for the undertaker, Fred. Better note it down in your little black book.'

The gardener produced a notebook into which he entered the particulars typed on the urn label. 'Number five hundred and thirty-seven, Mr Meehan,' he said when he'd finished.