Dark Undertakings (14 page)

‘Is it common practice for people to be buried with their dogs?’ asked Dottie. ‘It sounds rather nice to me. Though, of course, I don’t suppose they’d often die at the same time. Not unless they were in some sort of accident.’

‘It’s not a burial, it’s a cremation,’ Sarah corrected her. ‘Monica told us that yesterday.’

Dottie blinked. ‘What difference does that make?’

Sarah looked full into Drew’s face, and he could see an undimmed intelligence at work. ‘I think this young man and I both know that it could make a very big difference,’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t worry—’ she reassured him, as he cast an anxious glance at number 24. ‘I already know that you have your own suspicions.’

He frowned, and tried vainly to rewrap the dog with the cumbersome towel, stalling for time. ‘How?’ he asked at last.

‘Your complete lack of surprise at what I’ve been saying has given you away,’ she laughed, in an impressive parody of Miss Marple. ‘Well, I wish you luck. Perhaps you’d like to come and talk to us again, when you’ve got more time? Tomorrow evening, or Saturday morning, for example. I think we might be able to point you
in one or two helpful directions. But you’ll have to move fast. The cremation—’

‘We’ve got until next Tuesday,’ nodded Drew. ‘And I have to go now. But I’ll be back as soon as I can. Thank you very much, Mrs—’

‘Simpson,’ supplied Sarah. ‘Sarah Simpson. And this is Dottie. Now don’t lose that dog! It might be just the evidence you need.’

‘Visitor for you, Sid,’ announced Pat, putting his head round the mortuary door. ‘She says will you make sure there’s nothing nasty in here, before she comes in.’

Sid looked up from the coffin he was working on, in some alarm. ‘Who is it?’ he demanded. ‘There’s nothing to see, anyway.’ The coffin was empty, waiting for Jim Lapsford to occupy it in due course.

‘Don’t worry, Dad, it’s only me,’ came a familiar voice. ‘I just didn’t feel up to watching you embalming somebody.’

‘Why? You’re not pregnant, are you?’ he asked suspiciously. He moved towards her, and laid a hand on her shoulder, examining her face earnestly.

‘For heaven’s sake! The number of times you ask me that, I should do it just to shut you up. It’s obvious that that’s what you really want, deep down.’

‘Don’t start that. What d’you want? Did Daphne see you coming in?’

‘Don’t worry. I came straight round the back. I just wanted to have a little chat, away from Mum.’

‘It’s about that Craig, then, is it? I heard you’d been having a ding dong with him?’

Susie leant against the foot end of the coffin, bumping against it slightly as she rocked restlessly on the balls of her feet. ‘It’s not my fault, Dad – he just won’t take no for an answer. I don’t know what else I can do. I thought maybe if you had a word with him—?’

‘
Me
? He’s not going to listen to me, is he?’

‘He might. He respects you. If you could just tell him you know for a certainty that I’m never going to change my mind about going back with him. Say anything you like about me, as horrible as can be, if it’ll put him off. It’s really getting to me now. He follows me about, and phones and writes letters … It’s like having a stalker.’

‘You know what your mother would say, don’t you?’ Susie nodded. ‘She’d say it was all your own fault.’

‘I know she would. But I really did like him to start with. He’s into stuff that’ll get us both in trouble sooner or later. You won’t say anything, will you – about what I told you the other week?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come on – don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’

‘I said then, I didn’t want to hear.’

‘It isn’t that simple, Dad. I could get into real trouble, if you don’t help me put a stop to it. It’s getting too risky. To start with, he just made me pilfer a few things. Nothing too terrible, just prescription pads and—’

‘Just prescription pads!’
Sid hissed, in horror. ‘Don’t tell me any more. I will
not
have any daughter of mine mixed up in anything like that. The sooner you’re shot of him the better. I’m out this evening, but I’ll see if I can track him down tomorrow. Where d’you think he’ll be?’

She shrugged. ‘He drinks at the Blue Lion mostly. Can you lower yourself enough to go there?’

‘Don’t get sarky, my girl. A pub’s a pub. I only go to the King’s Head ’cause it’s closer.’

‘Thanks, Dad. I didn’t think you’d do it. I should have had more faith.’

‘Faith is just about what you need,’ he agreed. ‘If you just went to church a bit more—’

She waved a silencing hand at him. ‘Don’t start that, either,’ she pleaded. Then she looked curiously at the coffin, which she was still using as a support. ‘Is this for Jim Lapsford?’ she asked.

‘That’s right,’ he nodded curtly.

‘People seem to be getting into quite a sweat over him,’ she commented, deliberately casual. ‘Your Daphne phoned Dr Lloyd again yesterday. Has someone been asking questions about the papers, or something?’

Sid frowned. ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘Why should they?’

‘Come on, Dad. Dr Lloyd pushed it through when he never should have done. It was only because he’s scared of annoying the Coroner again that he did it. You can’t blame him – he’s absolutely sure it was a heart attack.’

‘That’s what it looks like to me,’ Sid nodded confidently. ‘He’s the fourth man of his sort of age we’ve had here this year. They weren’t all Dr Lloyd’s, were they?’

‘Three of them were.’ Susie was evidently in no hurry to leave. She leant over the coffin earnestly, as if trying to make a point. ‘And don’t you remember me telling you at the weekend about Mr Lapsford not seeing a doctor for twelve years?’ she went on. ‘No wonder people are talking.’

‘People will talk about anything,’ Sid told her. ‘I’ll be glad when he’s well and truly burnt.’

She stood up straight and walked the length of the coffin to where Sid had remained all along at the head end. She kissed his cheek, and he put a brief arm around her, pulling her close.
‘Thanks for listening, Dad. And if you can get Craig off my back, I’ll be eternally grateful.’

‘Anything for you, my darling,’ he said.

Drew had stowed the dead dog in the bottom of the chiller, and gone back to the workshop. Both Georges, Pat and Vince were there, engaged in minor tasks. Vince and Little George were itemising coffin handles, crucifixes and name plates, at the same time as tidying up the boxes in the store cupboard as they went. Big George came up to Drew. ‘Hey, Andy – there’s a big memorial to come off a grave, in the cemetery,’ he said. ‘Daphne thought you might like to come and help.’ George was given most of the heavy jobs, including removing headstones from graves preparatory to a second burial. His muscles stood out on his upper arms, and his neck would have done a bull proud.

‘Fine,’ Drew agreed. ‘When do we go?’

‘Now, if you’re ready. Looks as if it might rain later on.’

Both the Georges were proving more resistant than the others to Drew’s attempts at friendship. Little George was a surly individual, inclined to detect insult or malice in the most innocent comments. At the same time, his sharp tongue made him readily offensive to others. Drew had quickly decided to give him the widest
berth he could, and the decision appeared to be mutual. Big George, the oldest of all the men, was more affable, despite the tedious ‘Andy’s. Given to reminiscing about the old days, he had witnessed every kind of funeral from Hindu to Humanist. His memory was legendary; even Daphne consulted him on family histories. Drew was quick to grasp the opportunity of an hour alone with this fount of information.

‘Daphne said we’d done another Lapsford funeral, ages ago,’ he began, as they rode in the old van kept for such jobs as the headstone removal.

‘That’s right,’ George confirmed. ‘Must have been in the seventies. I’d say at a guess 1976. Yeah, it was that hot summer. Remember?’

Drew laughed. ‘I was only seven, but I do remember we had the paddling pool out in the garden, and even my mum would get into it with us, because she was so hot.’

‘Well, it was a bad time for funerals. Or good – depending on how you look at it. The heat finished them off like flies, and we couldn’t keep them cool. The fridges weren’t as good as they are now. We had this woman, quite young she was, as I recall. She died of MS, went off just like that. Her name was Lapsford. I remember her mother came to view, and we had to spray air freshener everywhere to cut the stink.’

‘What relation was she to this chap, then?’

‘Well, that I’m not too sure about. I didn’t go on the funeral. I guess he’s her nephew, maybe, or a cousin. Daphne said she’d look up the records, but she’s probably forgotten.’

As they reached the cemetery and located the grave in question, it began to drizzle. ‘Look, there’s that woman – the one we were talking about this morning,’ George remarked. ‘What the hell’s she doing here?’ Drew followed his gaze and saw a wide-shouldered woman with a frizz of dark hair, bending over a patch of long grass close to the boundary of the cemetery.

George answered his own question. ‘Gathering herbs for one of her potions.’

‘You mean the woman they say was having it off with Lapsford?’ Drew ventured. ‘The one from the caravan?’ He remembered the blue pill in his pocket, and fingered it delicately. Lapsford’s use of Viagra didn’t strike him as particularly unusual, in the circumstances. He simply needed to find out whether it could have somehow contributed to the man’s death.

‘That’s the one. Roxanne Gibson. Her sister is Pauline Rawlinson, and
her
son is Craig, who goes out with Sid’s Susie. Got it straight now?’

Drew shook his head in wonderment. ‘It’s amazing,’ he laughed. ‘Bradbourne’s got a population of twenty-five thousand people, and
somehow they’re all related to each other.’

George rested on the large granite headstone. ‘Twenty years ago, you know, this was a very small town. Say eight thousand, at the most. Then the developers moved in and added all those new estates, one after the other. That made it seem like a much bigger place – but the
real
Bradbourne, which is the bit along the river, and up to the church, is much the same as it always was. Even if folks have moved into the new houses, and their kids get flats out on the city road, they’re still all connected.’

‘But there’s loads of newcomers like me, surely?’

‘Yeah, but a lot have got family here already.’

Drew picked at a tooth thoughtfully. ‘It makes a big difference if people work locally, I guess,’ he concluded. ‘That’s where the hospital comes in. They employ a thousand or so, all told.’

‘And the supermarket soaks up all the rest,’ added George.

Drew watched the dark-haired woman so intently that she turned towards him, as if she felt his eyes on her. She was thirty or forty yards away, so he couldn’t see her face clearly, but he was sure she was beautiful. He let out a long, unconscious sigh. She wore a long blue cotton skirt and a skimpy purple singlet,
apparently careless of the cold and damp. Her arms were strong and brown, and as she bent down again to pick another leaf or stalk, he could see heavy breasts swinging braless inside the top.

George echoed Drew’s sigh. ‘Lovely, ain’t she,’ he said softly. ‘Every man’s dream. Like some sort of goddess.’

Drew looked at him in surprise. He was unaccustomed to such poetry from George. But he nodded agreement, and his eyes returned to the woman. It was true – she had a kind of magical quality, something special about her. He remembered the rosy, self-satisfied look on Lapsford’s face.
Lucky bugger
, he thought.

They wrestled the hunk of granite into the back of the van, stuck a marker in the grave, and drove off. They had to pass the woman, where she stood tall against the hedge. Drew met her eyes for a second or two, aware of tawny depths. He could see now that she was older than he first thought, and less conventionally beautiful. She smiled at him, self-mocking as she stood in the drizzle with bare shoulders and a large basket at her feet. Even as he felt a stab of attraction, he shivered a little, too. She was dangerous, he sensed. He very much hoped that he would see her again soon.

‘What can I do for you, Jack?’ Monica asked wearily. This was turning into a very long day, and it was still barely two o’clock. The thought of a nice rest with her feet up and something mindless on the telly made her impatient to get the visit over with.

‘Well, we were wondering—’ he began, in some confusion, ‘whether you might want some sort of service sheet printed. For the funeral. Or some cards for people – thanking them for writing, or sending flowers. I … we thought it would save you some trouble, if we could do that. And Jim’d like it. Printed on his own machines. Don’t you think?’

‘Jack, that’s a lovely idea,’ Monica gushed, while her heart sank at the prospect of composing all-purpose thank you messages, or hymn sheets for a funeral she still couldn’t begin to imagine. ‘And how are you managing at the works, without Jim? It must be very strange for you. I know how much he put into it. You were his second family, in many ways.’

‘We’re managing,’ he said shortly. ‘I know you saw Jodie this morning. She said something about David. The lad’s not ill, is he?’

‘What?’ The sudden change of subject caught her unawares. ‘Oh, well, you know David. Always some drama.’ Even as she spoke, she felt disloyal. The problem of David lay on her chest
like undigested plum pudding, and she knew she’d have to make another attempt to have a serious talk with him, before long. Not that it was any of Jack’s business.

‘It must be a great loss to him – Jim going so suddenly.’ The sympathetic words were halting. ‘And to his brother, of course.’

‘Yes, of course. But they’re grown up now. They’ll be all right. Once David gets over this latest crisis and the funeral’s all done with, it’ll all settle down again. Their lives won’t change. Though I suppose there’ll be a bit of money coming to them, from the life insurance. It’s only fair that I should give them a share.’

Jack seemed ill at ease. She hadn’t asked him to sit down, which now seemed rather rude. He rested his knuckles on the back of the sofa, and faced her over it. She could see the man from the undertaker’s standing outside on the pavement, talking to Sarah and Dottie from next door. Doubtless they were sticky-beaking again. She tried to keep her attention on her visitor, wondering if he had anything else he wanted to say. Almost idly, she remarked, ‘Jim was with you on Monday night, wasn’t he.’