The Dead Place (32 page)

'Yes. Somebody else would have done the set-up. I mean, they'd have dressed the body and prepared it. Sometimes we do cosmetics and arrange the body with flowers for viewing by the grievers.'

'Did the family want to view the body on this occasion?'

'No. It was a closed-casket funeral. It's a lot better that way. No matter how good the preparation, there can still be a little purge.'

'Purge, sir?'

'A release of body fluids.'

'Ah. Not very nice, I presume?' said Fry.

'No. It's rather unpleasant for the grievers. When their loved one has been interred or cremated, we like our clients to go away with a sense of satisfaction that the whole thing has been done properly.'

'Would it have been possible for Audrey Steele's coffin to have gone to her funeral empty?' asked Fry.

'No, no, quite impossible.'

'What if the body had been removed, and the coffin weighted with something to disguise the fact that it was empty?'

'You don't understand,' said Hudson. 'That trick might work for a burial. But Audrey Steele was cremated. If there was no body in the coffin, it would be immediately obvious to the operators at the crematorium.'

'I see.' Fry looked around the office. 'What's security like here?'

267 'We had our security system upgraded earlier this year,' said Hudson.

'After the break-in?'

'Yes. Look, Sergeant, are you going to tell me what this is about?'

'While we're collecting the files, you might want to dig out the rest of the information we need,' said Fry. 'We want a list of all your staff, including anyone who was working here eighteen months ago but has since left.'

'That will take some time,' said Hudson.

'Your personnel records not up to date, sir?'

'Of course they are.'

'Then it shouldn't be any trouble.'

Hudson sighed heavily, but went to speak to the secretary.

Fry moved back towards the door, and found Cooper at her shoulder. 'Why can't we seize the personnel records as well, Diane?' he said.

'They aren't specified on the search warrant.'

'Why not?'

Fry looked at him 'Softly softly, remember? Someone decided on a compromise.'

Before they left, Cooper took a peek into the workshop. Three men were working inside. One of them was Vernon Slack, another the thick-necked Billy McGowan he'd seen helping to carry the coffin at the crematorium. This morning, McGowan had his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up as he lined a coffin with satin-like material and tacked a nameplate on the lid. He had so many tattoos on his arms that his skin looked like blue cheese. He might as well have had two rolls of ripe Gorgonzola hanging out of his sleeves.

A line of coffin trolleys stood to one side of the workshop. Along the walls, cupboards and shelves held rubber tubing and jars of red fluid, a stock of handles, linings and nameplates. Past the trolleys, Cooper could see a series of lockers.

268 He supposed the staff must need several sets of clothing formal funeral wear, something smart for collecting bodies, casual clothes for jobs in the workshop or mortuary. One of the lockers stood open; a black leather jacket hung on the door.

Cooper thought they ought to go carefully with Melvyn Hudson and his staff. Hudson and Slack was the sort of business that survived on reputation. It could suffer badly from gossip and unfounded rumour. Besides, these were people of guarded emotions, practised at putting up a facade. It was difficult to judge whether Hudson did it out of habit, or was trying to conceal some emotion that you wouldn't want to see on the face of your funeral director.

McGowan looked up and noticed Cooper. He smiled and flexed his muscles. One of his tattoos moved as the skin stretched. A dragon spread its wings, its mouth opening and flickering with blue flames.

As he was leaving the building, Cooper saw Vernon Slack jog past towards the compound where the hearses and limousines were parked. Vernon's bony wrists protruded from his cuffs as he tried to adjust the knot of his black tie. But doing it while he was running only made things worse. The way he moved reminded Cooper of Tom Jarvis's dog, Graceless. He looked the sort of clumsy innocent who'd end up getting hurt, simply because he knew no better.

The tree that had been planted over the body was no more than six feet high - a weeping willow sapling with slender, whippy branches and bark that looked almost yellow in the afternoon sun. Below it, the ground was barely disturbed. The earth would soon grass over and blend with the surrounding area, becoming a natural part of the young woodland. Only a small plaque wired to the trunk of the tree marked the spot as a grave.

Fifteen yards away, Fry turned from the fence and walked

269 back across the grass. As always, she looked curiously out of place among trees. She instinctively hunched her shoulders to avoid them, as if their leaves might bite her. Cooper suspected that Fry and nature existed in two different worlds, with no points of contact.

'Is there no security of any kind in this place?' demanded Fry.

The woman in the black suit was one of the managers of the green burial site. She raised her eyebrows at Fry. 'Security? We don't need security here.'

'Oh, really? Perhaps you should think again. We'll send someone out to advise you.'

The woman scowled and went to Vivien Gill, who stood in the middle of a small group of relatives and friends.

'It's bizarre, isn't it?' said Fry when she got Cooper alone.

'Why?'

'Well, after what happened to her daughter's body, abandoned in the countryside like that? Why would Mrs Gill want to plant Audrey here? She might as well have left her where she was.'

'It makes sense to me.'

Cooper was starting to find the idea of a green burial appealing. Since all those things that happened to the body after death were inevitable, why not turn them into something positive? Here, a corpse would be giving back life.

According to the manager of the site, they were getting a number of celebrity green burials around the country now. Dame Barbara Cartland had been buried in a cardboard coffin next to an oak tree in her own garden. It was a new alternative for farmers, too. All they needed was a bit of land that wasn't used for anything else, and planning permission from the council.

Cooper hoped Matt didn't get to hear about that idea. He already had enough to say about diversification as it was. Golf courses, holiday cottages, fishing lakes - and now burial grounds.

270 'Very unhealthy, isn't it?' said Fry.

'Don't you see?' Cooper gestured around the burial site. In the middle, the weeping willow stirred its slender branches as it drooped protectively over the grave at its roots. 'Audrey Steele's tree isn't just a memorial to her. In a way, it is her. It's a continuation of her life in a different form. People buried here will never be dead. Not really.'

'Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it.'

They began to walk back towards their car, parked out of sight beyond the trees. Then Fry stopped at the sight of one of the black-suited figures.

'Ben, is that one of Audrey Steele's relatives?'

Cooper followed her gaze. The suit didn't really fit him at all. It was far too tight over his shoulders and belly. But it was certainly the man who'd let him into Vivien Gill's house that morning.

'Yes. Why?'

'I recognize him from crown court.'

'I thought he looked familiar, too. You must have a better memory than me for names.'

'Well, it was only on Wednesday,' said Fry. 'He was sitting in the visitors' gallery with the defendant's family at my murder trial. I'm pretty sure he's Micky Ellis's brother.'

271 23

When they got back to West Street, scenes of crime had inventoried the contents of the plastic box. In addition to the crayons, sunglasses, toy dog and Matchbox Land Rover, they'd found a Magic Tree air freshener, a Beatrix Potter book, a Digimon tiger, a Nike ski-pass holder, a London Zoo eraser, a glow-in-the-dark skeleton key-ring, three tungsten dart shafts, a magnifying glass, and a miniature screwdriver set.

'Oh, and a purple plastic grasshopper, with a metal tag attached to it,' said Liz Petty. 'Here it is. I thought you might like to see this item, in particular.'

Cooper picked up the transparent evidence bag. He held it up to the light and turned it slowly. He could see that the tag pointed out by Petty carried a six-figure code number on one side, and identified itself, or the plastic grasshopper it was attached to, as 'The Travel Bug'.

'What does it say on the other side?' said Fry.

Cooper spun the bag. 'It says: "I go from place to place, picking up stories along the way."'

Fry shook her head in frustration. 'What about the notebook that was in the box with all this stuff?'

'It's just an ordinary spiral notebook,' said Petty. 'You can buy this kind of thing anywhere. As far as we can tell, it

272 seems to be some kind of log book. The first page is headed "Petrus Two", and various individuals have made entries at different dates.'

'Such as?'

'Such as "Itinerant Maggie". She says: "Great location another spot I'd never have visited, if it weren't for the cache many thanks."'

'It means nothing to me.'

'Nor me.'

'Sounds like some kind of treasure hunt, doesn't it?' said Cooper.

'Does it?' asked Fry. 'A treasure hunt?' She looked at the bagged items taken from the box. 'That is not treasure, Ben. Not by anybody's standards. It looks like the debris from the back of somebody's kitchen drawer.'

'I meant treasure in the loosest sense, Diane. The fun of a treasure hunt isn't the value of what you might find, but the excitement of the hunt. It's a quest. People are always figuring out ways to take part in quests.'

'Really?' said Fry.

'If it helps,' said Petty, 'there's a website address on the Travel Bug tag.'

'So there is - www.groundspeak.com. Anyone heard of it?'

There were shrugs all round the table. Fry looked across at Cooper.

'Ben, you're getting to be a bit of a whizz on the internet, aren't you? See if you can find out what this is all about.' She picked up the skeleton key-ring and spun it thoughtfully in its bag. 'We need to know who's been messing around up at that rock, when they were there, and why. If the people involved have no connection with our enquiry, then we need to eliminate them.'

'OK.'

Fry put the key-ring back on top of the Beatrix Potter book, covering a quaint illustration of a fox wearing a coat and

273 scarf. 'Anyway, we've got some more news this afternoon. The forensic anthropologist had a toxicological analysis conducted on a sample from the first set of bones.'

Cooper looked at her. 'Bones?' he said. 'You mean Audrey Steele's remains?'

'Yes, Ben. The old bones the walkers found.'

Normally, Cooper wouldn't have reacted to something so minor. He'd heard far worse from Fry. In fact, he put up with rudeness and insensitivity from her all the time, because he genuinely believed she had other qualities. But something in the way she spoke so casually about the remains of a human being triggered a response, tipped him over his tolerance threshold. Perhaps it was the personal involvement Cooper felt with Audrey Steele, ever since he'd seen her reconstructed face in the lab at Sheffield. Or maybe it was because he was about to start all over again with another unidentified victim whose remains were even now being recovered from a hillside in Ravensdale. But for once, he couldn't take it.

'For God's sake, Diane, she was a person with a name, you know. A human being. Not some heap of old bones thrown out for the dog.'

Fry looked up in astonishment. 'What?'

'Audrey Steele. That's what she was called, remember? She deserves to be talked about with a bit more respect.'

'Oh, you think so, do you?'

Cooper was fighting the quickening of his breath, the tendency for his hands to shake when he got angry.

'Yes, I do.'

'Well, thank you, DC Cooper. I'm sure we'll bear that in mind.'

Fry had gone faintly red around the ears at being spoken to like that in front of the SOCOs, and Cooper knew he'd suffer for it later.

'Anyway, be that as it may,' she said, 'someone at the lab pulled their fingers out and got us the report through, even

274 though it's Saturday. They found traces of glycerine, phenol and formaldehyde.'

'What does that mean?' said Cooper, trying to steady his breathing and appear calm. 'Audrey Steele had been working with chemicals? Or would they have been used in her hospital treatment before she died?'

'Neither. Apparently, those are the common constituents of embalming fluid, the sort used in the preparation room of a funeral parlour. Such as the one at Hudson and Slack.'

'Who does the embalming there?'

'I don't know.'

Cooper got up and walked over to his PC, where he called up Melvyn Hudson's details.

'OK, Mr Hudson is accredited with the British Institute of Embalmers,' he said.

'So probably Hudson takes care of the embalming, when required,' said Fry.

'And the break-in they had - the stuff that was stolen . . . Chromotech? That was embalming fluid.'

'The theft was too late to have any connection with Audrey Steele, Ben.'

'It means they probably have routine access to that kind of material at Hudson and Slack, though.'

'Of course.'

'And what about the second set of remains from Litton Foot?' said Cooper. 'Any more news there?'

'I rang earlier this afternoon. The van was just arriving at the lab in Sheffield.'

'So when can we expect some results? Tomorrow, perhaps?'

Fry sighed. 'I had a long conversation with the anthropologist. But we're dealing with the academic world now - and tomorrow is Sunday.'

'Damn.'

'We'll just have to try not to be impatient. Still, there are plenty of other things to do.'

275 'Such as looking a bit more closely at Melvyn Hudson?'

'I don't think much of Mr Hudson,' admitted Fry. 'Apart from anything else, he treats Vernon Slack like shit. You'd never think he was the grandson of one of the owners.'