then he’d trimmed the edges of the skin and sewn the head back on with dental
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floss. The suture line had been hidden by a high collar and a tie when the time for viewing came around.
Behind his respirator mask, Hudson was doing his best not to breathe in the vapours from the body cavity fluids and formaldehyde. The preparation room was claustrophobic and sound-proofed to prevent the noise of the pump or the splash of fluids from reaching the public rooms.
‘I noticed those burns on your hand earlier,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing.’
Hudson looked at Vernon over his mask. ‘As long as it wasn’t an accident at work. We wouldn’t want that.’
‘I know,’ said Vernon. ‘Bad for the image.’
Then Hudson made the first incision. He’d decided on arterial embalming for this job. But the decision had been an easy one, really. Cavity embalming took such little skill that it gave him no satisfaction. The belly punchers and the throat cutters there were always derogatory terms for every speciality.
The scalpel felt cool and familiar in his gloved hand as he incised the skin over the left carotid artery and lifted a section clear of the surrounding tissue. Carefully, he inserted the canula into the artery, then attached a drain to the femoral vein in the groin and let the tube hang off the table into the guttering. For a body this size, he’d have to pump in about seven pints of formaldehyde solution, so there’d be a lot to drain away. As the fluid circulated, the muscles would firm up. In about ten hours’ time, they’d be so hard that he wouldn’t be able to alter the body’s position any further.
‘Just remember, Vernon,’ he said, ‘there are a lot of things around here that can be dangerous, if you don’t watch your step.’
‘Yes, Melvyn.’
Hudson took a grip on the trocar and thrust the sharpened point through the skin and into the belly with one firm stroke. He was pleased with his ability to do this. So many embalmers jabbed and lunged, as if they were spearing fish. All it took
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was the confidence to make a firm thrust through the abdominal wall, and the assurance to leave the trocar in place as it began to release the gases and liquids that had built up in the body’s cavities.
He infused about sixteen ounces of preservative into the abdomen through the trocar, and the same amount into the chest. He examined the genitals in case they needed a thrust of the trocar too, but decided his technique had been good enough for the formaldehyde to reach all the small blood vessels.
Then he thought about the skull. How much gas and fluid might have collected in the cranium? It was possible to pass the trocar up through the nose and into the skull through the thin bone at the top of the nostrils. He could instil cavity fluid and pack the nose with cotton wool to prevent leaks. But he looked at his watch and decided it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he used a series of trocar buttons to close up the holes he’d already made.
Then Hudson realized that Vernon was watching him across the corpse, his eyes wide and anxious over his mask.
‘Well, Vernon,’ he said, ‘that’s a good job done. Let’s get it back into the freezer. This is one corpse that won’t decompose in a hurry.’
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29
‘Don’t forget to send us the bill for your services, sir,’ said Fry, as she reached the bottom of Professor Robertson’s gravel drive.
It had been a protracted interview, long on talk and short on information. Highly unsatisfactory, from Fry’s point of view. Worse still, once he’d recovered from his momentary show of temper over the key-ring, the professor had seemed entirely unperturbed by her visit.
‘Ah, you don’t know, then?’ said Robertson. ‘I’m giving my time entirely free and gratis. As a favour to my friend, Councillor Edwards. And in the public interest, of course.’
‘Very commendable, sir.’
Fry watched the professor walk up the drive towards his house. Even from the back, he looked smug. But entirely free and gratis. She sighed. So that was it. Who could resist the services of an expert when they were provided for nothing?
As he waited by the car for Fry, Cooper recalled the professor’s distaste for what he called the mechanical spectacle of death, the intrusion of machines into the natural process of dying. He’d sounded sincere. But had it all been an act?
‘At least he didn’t quote the Bible to you,’ he said as Fry
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walked towards the car. He was hoping she’d forget to ask him why he’d let slip to Robertson about the phone messages.
‘Why do you say that, Ben?’
‘He did last time I was here.’
‘Robertson quoted the Bible? He didn’t strike me as religious. Not Christian, anyway. Quite the contrary.’
‘Well, it was a passage from the Old Testament. Everyone uses the Old Testament for their own purposes.’
‘What part of the Old Testament was he quoting?’ asked Fry.
‘Why?’
‘It might be relevant. What was he trying to tell you?’
Cooper cast his mind back to the conversation with Robertson. ‘Something about death.’
‘Naturally. But what?’
‘Ecclesiastes, he said it was. That’s right. Ecclesiastes 3.’
Now Fry looked interested. ‘The famous part?’
‘Famous part? I suppose so. It was the bit about “dust to dust”, but it wasn’t quite worded like that in the
