Dark Undertakings (31 page)

The phone rang fifteen minutes later. ‘Control room here,’ came the broad-vowelled voice of the woman who fielded all police calls. ‘We’ve got something for you. Alarm ringing at Plant’s Funeral Director, in East Street, and the contact number isn’t answering. Funny, that. They’re supposed to be on call round the clock.’

‘I know why that is. Miss Plant smashed her car up this afternoon. She’s probably still in Casualty. We’ll send somebody over.’

‘Thanks. Sounds as if it isn’t her day.’

When they arrived at Plant’s, the police found nothing suspicious, apart from a slightly open window, which appeared to have been carelessly left unfastened. They looked at each other warily.

‘Should we open up and have a look round, do you think?’ asked one of them.

The response was immediate. ‘Nah! What’s the point? Who’s going to nick anything from an undertaker? The office looks okay – see.’ He shone his torch through the office window, to
reveal a tidy desk, a placid computer and not a hint of disturbance.

‘That’s what I hoped you’d say. You reckon we can go, then?’

‘I do. We wouldn’t know what to look for, anyway. Unless some nutter’s decided to steal a dead body, and I somehow don’t think that’s very likely. One thing’s sure – a corpse isn’t going to care, so whatever’s been going on can wait till morning. We’ll get one of the cars to patrol for a bit, keep an eye out, and leave it at that. Right?’

‘Right.’

Drew had stayed at the hospital until they threw him out at ten. Karen had been sedated, examined cautiously, and not given any X-rays. There seemed to be no suspicion that her pelvis was broken, for which he was tearfully grateful. On her uncovered body, the still-burgeoning bruise spread from hipbone to hipbone, and navel to pubis, a terrible shade of purplish red that looked inhuman. The thought of a tiny cluster of new fetal cells surviving inside such damage was impossible, despite the assurances of the doctor.

‘If she is pregnant,’ the young woman said, ‘there’s every chance that it’ll be okay. It’s almost too small to be seen by the naked eye – it can
hide in a safe little fold of flesh, deep inside, and never notice a knock or two.’

Karen and Drew looked at each other and gave wan smiles. The image conjured by the words was enticing. They considered their hypothetical little one, nestling invisibly somewhere safe behind the bruise.

‘But she’ll be very stiff for a week or two,’ the doctor went on. ‘The bruising is severe, by any standards. We’ll find some arnica, and keep her in bed for a day or so.’

‘Arnica!’ Drew was surprised.

‘It’s safe, cheap and very effective,’ nodded the doctor. ‘We’ve got very progressive lately, and returned to the ways of the wise women. They used arnica in the Dark Ages. Before that, even. I think the Romans used it.’

Karen found the herbal treatment cool and soothing, and they watched some of the redness abating. ‘Very effective,’ said Drew approvingly and gave her a long kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he promised.

Monday morning brought a number of dilemmas as well as another severe shock. He had deserted his post at the telephone, the previous afternoon, without a second thought, when the hospital phoned him about Karen. When he heard that it was his own boss who had crashed into Karen,
he was simultaneously angry and embarrassed. Attempts to phone Daphne when he got home had been in vain: he supposed that the calls were still being directed to him, and would be until someone turned up in the morning to divert them back to the office.

He had no real excuse to miss a full day at work. Karen wouldn’t need clothes or make-up until they discharged her. There was a funeral at midday which would require him as a bearer, as well as the delivery of the Lapsford coffin to Primrose Close late in the afternoon. If Daphne was off work suffering delayed effects from her accident, then it would be chaotic enough without Drew going absent as well.

He knew there was a procedure for diverting telephone calls – some push-buttoned code which Sid and Pat and the others mainly understood, but which nobody had explained to him. With some trepidation, he drove as quickly as he could from home to work, and made immediately for the office. Olga was already there, the phone to her ear. This alone brought some relief. There was no sign of Daphne, for which he felt even more thankful.

‘Are the phones okay?’ he asked Olga as soon as she finished her call. She gave him a frowning look, her large brown eyes full of puzzlement.

‘What’s been happening?’ she said. ‘Daphne
phoned me just now and told me she wouldn’t be in until lunchtime. She sounded a bit distracted and said you’d taken the phones yesterday. Sid isn’t in yet, either. And to top everything, the burglar alarm went off in the night and the police were called out.’ The phone rang, interrupting her, and she answered it.

‘Oh dear, I
am
sorry,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had a few problems overnight … I’ll make sure someone’s there right away … Yes, I know. I really do apologise.’ She turned back to Drew. ‘That was Heathlands Nursing Home. They called us at nine last night and got no reply. Said they almost decided to use a Woodingleigh undertaker.’ She shuddered dramatically. ‘Perish the thought.’

‘Karen’s in hospital,’ Drew burst out. ‘She was hit by a car yesterday afternoon – and guess who was driving it.’

Olga shook her head reproachfully. ‘How can I possibly guess?’ she asked in her usual solemn manner.

‘Daphne, that’s who,’ he told her. ‘Karen’s not badly hurt, but it was a terrible shock.’

‘It must have been. How extraordinary! Is that why Daphne’s not here this morning? Was she hurt at all?’

‘I have no idea where she is,’ he said. ‘But her car’s a write-off. It smashed into the front
of a shop that had an anti-theft barrier across it. Very solid, by the sound of it.’

‘Well you and Vince had better get off to Heathlands,’ she dismissed him. ‘We can’t keep them waiting any longer. Let me just type up the slip for you.’

The removal was carried out efficiently, the body stiff by this time, and heavy; the other inmates of the nursing home distracted by a loud singsong in the dayroom while the staff ushered the undertakers out by a side door as unobtrusively as possible. Drew wondered what the point of the secrecy was. Would poor old Mrs Dunmow simply drop out of everyone’s awareness now, as if she’d never existed? He had not yet shaken off the sense of something Stalinist about this kind of institutional death – a person deleted overnight, no questions asked.

In the mortuary, there was still no sign of Sid. Vince opened the door of the chiller and pulled out a tray. Drew went to the foot end of the newcomer and prepared to lift her onto the tray; as he did so, he automatically glanced down.

‘Hey!’ he yelped. ‘Where’s the dog?’

Vince almost dropped Mrs Dunmow’s head as Drew failed to take his share of the weight. ‘It was here,’ Drew continued, bending to examine the whole length of the bottom tray.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Vince grunted. ‘Get this one in first, will you?’

Impatiently Drew thrust the new corpse onto its rack and resumed his search for Cassie’s body. It was gloomy inside the fridge and the dog was, after all, small. Ignoring Vince’s spluttered protests, he hoisted himself up, one foot on the lowest shelf, and peered into the recesses of the fridge. ‘She’s definitely not here,’ he announced. ‘Somebody’s taken her!’

There was nowhere in the mortuary a dead dog could have been hidden. And who would have done such a thing, even as a joke? Drew stared frantically at Vince. ‘Someone’s stolen it,’ he shouted angrily. Then he remembered what Olga had told him. ‘The alarm went off in the night. That must have been it. Someone broke in and took Cassie away.’

Vince grinned slowly, then hooted a deep guffaw. ‘Just one bloody farce after another, this place,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And I always said there was nothing anyone’d want to steal at an undertaker’s. Just shows how wrong you can be.’

‘But …’ Drew was desperate. Any idea that he was alone in his suspicions, investigating a crime that nobody else would acknowledge, had long evaporated. Now he was a puny meddler in something much bigger than he was, something
dangerous. Nothing was what it seemed. He forced himself to think. The disappearance of the dog’s body could mean a dozen different things, ranging from an objection on principle to an animal sharing a human coffin on the one hand to a cunning removal of vital evidence on the other.

Who knew it had been there? Everyone at Plant’s, for a start, plus the whole Lapsford family and whoever they might have told. The two old women next door, who had seen him take Cassie away, possibly the people at Jim’s printworks. Any number of people, in fact.

‘You okay?’ Vince asked curiously. ‘Something I ought to know about?’

Drew regarded him narrowly. Vince had acted innocent from the start, bluffly dismissive of anything suspicious. Drew wondered now how much he’d been deceived. If he’d been forced to point a finger at any of his colleagues, it would have been Sid, with his startled reactions and solitary habits. But Vince had known Sid for years and would probably protect him if the need arose. Drew felt as if he’d walked into a bog and his feet were slowly sinking into clinging black mud.

The associations formed slowly. ‘You know why Sid’s not here, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Course I do,’ came the ready answer. ‘His
girl’s bloke’s hanged himself – not so funny, that. Specially since Sid was one of the chaps called out to collect him. The kind of thing we all dread.’

‘Did Sid like him? I got the impression it was otherwise from what he said the other day.’

‘That’s not the point, is it? It’s the shock. Bound to cause trouble in the family, a thing like that. But he’ll be in soon, you’ll see. He’s not one to let us down when he’s needed.’

Drew felt a strong desire to go somewhere quiet and have a good think. It couldn’t be as complicated as it seemed. The answers must surely lie in working out what everyone’s basic motives were, and that was something he’d always imagined he was good at – understanding people. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded at Vince. ‘I expect you’re right.’

Karen was stiff, as the doctor had predicted, but she was also deliriously happy. When there had been no overnight bleeding or undue pain, the ward sister had suggested they do a pregnancy test. ‘You’re late enough now to make it worth a try,’ she said. Together they had applied the drop of urine to the magic scrap of chemically-enhanced cardboard, and within seconds a blue line was clearly visible. When Karen cried, the sister had given her a hug. ‘Congratulations,’ she said.

She had tried to phone Drew at work, only to be told that he was out. ‘Please ask him to come to the hospital as soon as he can,’ she begged Olga. ‘You can do without him today, can’t you?’

‘Probably not until this afternoon,’ Olga replied carefully. ‘Things are a bit chaotic here. Daphne’s having the morning off – oh, I suppose you know all about that – and there’s a funeral at midday. I don’t think we can let anyone go until it’s finished. That’ll be about two-thirty.’

‘That’ll have to do, then,’ said Karen, lying back on her pillows. She found that she didn’t mind waiting. After all, she would have to do a lot of it over the coming months.

But the time was filled instead by an unexpected visit. Daphne Plant herself came hesitantly around the nurses’ station, peering at the people in the beds, dodging trolleys and chairs. As far as Karen could tell, the woman was suffering no ill effects from the previous day’s accident. Even so, she felt a mounting nervousness at the likely reason for the visit.

‘Sit down,’ she invited, nodding at the
metal-framed
chair beside the bed.

Daphne did so, leaning forward earnestly, speaking in a low urgent voice. ‘You must be wondering what all that was about yesterday,’ she began. ‘I gather that you and Drew knew
Sid’s daughter’s connection with yesterday’s suicide? You might even be aware that Susie works for Dr Lloyd. Well, anyway, when I asked Drew to take the phones, I admit I made up a story about the reason. It’s delicate, you see – professionally, I mean. Dr Lloyd phoned me and wanted to talk about the whole thing. He’s worried about rumours involving him and Susie – which have absolutely no foundation in fact. He’s got a few other problems as well, which I’ve known about for some time. To be frank, he’s not always as careful as he should be about controlled drugs and prescription pads. He’s not the most organised person in the world, to put it mildly. Now poor old Sid’s got himself involved, too. He came to see me first thing this morning. Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really must ask you to have a word with Drew. He’s more likely to listen to you. I know he’s got some funny ideas – so, just tell him to drop it, will you? The Coroner has been getting at the doctors for sending too many bodies for post-mortem. He told them to use common sense, which is exactly what Julian did. It wouldn’t be fair to involve him in any trouble, not at this stage. There’s a world of difference between procedure as laid down in the rule book and real everyday life. Drew’s going to have to understand that if he wants to go on working for me. Now I’ve got
to get back to the office. I hope you’ll be better soon – and congratulations on the baby. Brilliant news.’ Then she was getting up to go.

Karen gazed at her. The dark hair had been carelessly brushed and the clothes were crumpled. The anxiety in Daphne’s face was acute. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I hardly understood a word of that. I have no idea why you’re telling me, or what you want me to say.’

Daphne drew back as if stung. She blinked several times, and glanced around the quiet ward. ‘Don’t play games with me,’ she hissed. ‘This is
serious
.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Karen nodded. ‘It’s just that you seem to think I know something that I assure you I don’t. If you and Dr Lloyd are operating some sort of racket, and you think Drew’s onto you, well, I’m afraid you’ve come here needlessly. I’m sure he’s got no suspicions of that sort at all.’

Daphne narrowed her eyes. ‘Maybe I’ve jumped the gun a bit. But I’ve been watching your husband. He isn’t such an innocent as he’d like everyone to think. Now as far as the accident is concerned, I think we can agree that we were both careless, and there’s no need to take it any further.’

Karen’s head swam. Something was deeply awry in all this. Annoyed, she sat up straighter.

‘I think we can leave all that until I’m home again,’ she said. ‘It seems very odd to me that you should come here making veiled threats, considering you don’t even know me. The best interpretation I can put on it is that you’re suffering from shock and not quite right in your mind.’ She shivered at her own boldness, wondering whether there was any hope at all for Drew’s new career after all this.

Daphne got up, and smiled tightly. ‘I think we do understand each other,’ she insisted. ‘I can see that there’s little harm done, except to my poor car. I’m sure we’ll be able to put it all behind us, once everything’s … settled down.’

She left, with Karen staring after her. Nothing made any sense. Except that she couldn’t help feeling that what they had actually been talking about, all along, was the sudden unexpected death of Jim Lapsford.

Monica was feeling fraught. She had invited all and sundry to come and pay their last respects to Jim from five o’clock onwards, and belatedly realised that they’d expect tea and cakes. Or should it be wine and cheese? She ticked off on her fingers all the people who might show up. Philip and Nerina, Sarah and Dottie, Gerald, Jodie, Jack, and assorted mates from the King’s Head. Monica had asked Daphne Plant to
tell anyone who enquired that they would be welcome to come to the house. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was now this awful business with Craig, which meant that Pauline would not be fulfilling her promise to help with the wake. Not only that, but Monica knew she should be at Pauline’s house commiserating with her on her loss. That was far more important than organising what amounted to little more than a party.