And now the professor smiled. Fry heard a squeak of leather, and sensed Cooper shifting uneasily in his chair. So she knew it was true. But she had to press on.
‘Professor Robertson, I think you already knew about the calls that have been made to us during the past week. I believe
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you’re familiar with their exact content. Do you own a device called a voice changer?’
‘Sergeant, this is quite intolerable. When I agreed to put my time and expertise at the disposal of the police, I didn’t expect to be treated in this way.’
‘May I see your car keys, sir?’
She’d struck home this time. Fry saw the professor’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare as his expression tensed. He jerked forward in his chair as if she’d prodded him with a sharp needle.
Fighting to control his anger, he opened a drawer and tossed a ring of keys on to the desk between them. Fry didn’t touch them, but separated the keys one by one with the end of her pen. Robertson’s face suffused with blood as if she’d uttered the most deadly insult.
There was no device of the kind that Liz Petty had showed her, nothing like a garage-door remote with a tiny built-in microphone that would disguise a caller’s voice. But Fry wasn’t entirely disappointed. She pushed the keys to either side and left the keyfob lying on the desk on its own. It was a piece of ivory about two inches long, beautifully carved in the shape of a human skeleton, the skull and ribs smooth and shiny where they’d been rubbed by someone’s fingers. It wouldn’t actually glow in the dark, but to Fry it shone with significance. ‘Now, that is strange,’ she said. ‘To carry a reminder of death around with you wherever you go. What do you gain from that, Professor? Does it make death feel closer? Does it give you a greater understanding of it?’
‘I already know about death,’ snapped Robertson. ‘I know all about death.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you do, sir.’
The professor’s hand was shaking as he looked at the bottle of whisky on the shelf. But before he reached for it, he glared his anger at Fry.
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‘In the final analysis, Sergeant, I’m just like everyone else it’s life that I don’t understand.’
When Melvyn Hudson had put on his protective clothing, Vernon helped him get the body on to the stainless-steel table. They stripped off the shirt, jeans, underwear and shoes, and Vernon shoved everything into a bin liner. They removed the watch and glasses, and taped over the wedding ring. Vernon handed Hudson the disinfectant spray, and he sponged the body down, looking for infestations in the groin and around the face. He disinfected the mouth and nose with cotton swabs, then noticed some fluid in the back of the mouth.
‘Help me roll the body, Vernon,’ he said.
‘What’s up?’
‘A bit of purge from the stomach. I might have to tie off the trachea and oesophagus when I open the neck.’
Hudson massaged the limbs, then stretched them out, letting the forearms hang off the edge of the table so the blood would drain into them and expand the vessels. He rolled a thin film of superglue on to the inside of each finger and closed them together. Then he lifted the head and slid a block underneath to keep it above the level of the body. If blood ran into the head, it could discolour the tissues.
After Vernon had brought the bucket of bleach solution, Hudson washed the body again, cleaning under the fingernails and looking for staining on the hands and face. He thought about using superglue on the eyes, too, but instead he placed two plastic eyecaps over them and closed the lids so that they were held shut by the little knobs on the caps.
He looked up at Vernon. ‘Did the police talk to you today?’
‘Someone came to the house. Detective Constable Cooper.’
‘Did he talk to Abraham?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about, Vernon?’
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‘I don’t know. He was already in the house when I got home.’
The face looked a bit tense. Hudson massaged the forehead and the area around the eyes to relax the dead muscles, then stood back and examined the effect. The upper lids of the eyes had to meet to the lower lids about two thirds of the way down to get the peaceful look. Too high or low, and it made the deceased appear to be in pain, or squinting.
‘Vernon, I know you’d be careful,’ said Hudson. ‘But do you think your grandfather understands?’
‘Understands what?’
‘The importance of appearances.’
Hudson packed the throat with gauze, put the dentures back in and slid a mouth-former over them, so that its ridges of plastic knobs would keep the lips closed. He shut the mouth permanently by stitching the lips together with a needle and thread, checking that the line of the mouth wasn’t too tight before tying the thread off. Then he tilted the head slightly to the right, so it would face the grievers when they viewed it in the chapel of rest.
‘Does he look OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’
‘I think he looks ten years younger,’ said Hudson, and laughed. It was exactly what the grievers always said.
Finally, he packed the anus with cotton wool soaked in cavity fluid and rubbed a light coating of grease on to the face, neck and hands.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now the fun starts.’
Hudson used bruise bleach to remove a couple of blackened areas, spread more superglue to close the small wounds, and replaced the missing tissue with putty and hardening compound. He remembered one occasion when he’d been given a body that had been decapitated. He’d had to insert splints to stop the head sagging to one side,
