Greek.’ Cooper looked at the professor and raised his eyebrows to indicate that he was none the wiser. Robertson beamed with satisfaction and allowed himself a small dramatic pause before he explained.
‘Loosely translated,’ he said, ‘the name means “flesh eater”.’
Before either of the detectives could react, Robertson began to amble around the flagged paths, casting backwards and forwards as if trying to pick up a scent.
‘If you’re interested in old graveyards, you’d like those in Perthshire, where I hail from,’ he said. ‘Near Pitlochry, there’s a churchyard where some of the graves were protected by mortsafes - a kind of iron cage over the grave, to prevent body snatching. A pernicious activity, which we Scots were particularly good at, it seems.’
Cooper looked at him in surprise. ‘Body snatching? Yes, a particularly unpleasant crime.’
‘Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m surprised to find myself putting you right on a matter of law, Detective Constable.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘Body snatching wasn’t an offence. Once you were deceased, your physical remains couldn’t be owned by anyone, and therefore couldn’t be stolen. A body snatcher was only
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committing a crime if he stole other items with the body, even the shroud. It was popular opinion that turned against the resurrection men, not the law.’
‘But Burke and Hare …?’
‘A different case altogether. They weren’t content to wait for a supply of dead bodies to become available, so they decided to procure their own from among the living. Murder was their crime. It was all a question of market forces at work. The demand for bodies for dissection was enormous.’
‘There are probably other reasons people might want to obtain a dead body,’ said Cooper.
‘Undoubtedly.’
Robertson followed Cooper’s gaze as he looked around the graves in the churchyard.
‘Oh, there are no records of body snatching taking place in Derbyshire,’ he said. ‘People feared it, nevertheless. They had a superstitious dread of the body being removed from its last resting place. It meant they wouldn’t be able to rise from the grave on Judgement Day.’
‘So I believe.’
Robertson glanced up at him. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have called it superstition. I don’t want to be offensive.’
It sounded almost like an apology. Cooper waved it away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
The professor straightened up with a sigh. ‘Nobody can be sure when society developed its distaste for death. But for centuries it’s been kept out of sight. Few people ever see the process of decomposition now. Only those whose profession is death have that privilege.’
‘Pathologists, funeral directors?’ said Cooper. ‘Police officers?’ ‘All our good friends,’ agreed Robertson. ‘God bless them.’
Cooper looked at Fry, and knew it was time to leave. Dusk was falling, and the churchyard was filling up with shadows. They softened the edges of the tombs, obscured the inscriptions,
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and made the stone slabs look a little less cold. Too much daylight didn’t suit the dead.
The “flesh eater”, Professor,’ he said. ‘What did the Greeks mean by that name?’
‘Well, the original phrase was lithos sarkophagos: “flesh eating stone”. It reflected a belief that a certain type of limestone consumed the flesh from the body, and was therefore the perfect material to be used as a receptacle for the dead.’
Cooper laughed, and gestured at the hills on all sides. ‘Limestone? This is the White Peak. Everything is limestone here.’
‘Yes,’ said Robertson doubtfully. ‘Of course, we only have the word of Pliny the Elder. Pliny said limestone could consume a body in forty days. Personally, I wouldn’t rely on it too much as a forensic theory.’
As Fry lifted the latch on the churchyard gate, she turned towards them, and Cooper saw that her face was set into an expression of impatience and scorn.
‘Thank you for the history lesson, Professor,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ve improved DC Cooper’s education immensely. He’ll be a much better detective from now on.’
Fry moved off towards the car, but Robertson touched Cooper’s sleeve to hold him back as they reached the gate.
‘There’s one more word that I’m sure you know,’ said the professor.
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Sarcasm. Another figurative expression handed down to us from the Greek. It means tearing or biting at the skin, like an animal. The Greeks didn’t like sarcasm very much.’
Fry was waiting by the Toyota, tapping her fingers on the roof as she watched people walking by on the street. Cooper unlocked the car, and she slid quickly into the passenger seat.
‘Oh yes, we doctors do so love our Latin and Greek,’ she said, fastening her seat belt. ‘It’s so, so fascinating - but only for those with a little knowledge of the classical world. Not
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for the ignorant plebs who studied useful subjects, instead of some ancient dead language.’
‘Diane …’
She looked at him with irritation. ‘A real bloody Aristotle we’ve got there, haven’t we? I bet he can’t get in the bath without jumping out again and shouting “Eureka!”’
‘I think that was Archimedes,’ said Cooper, waving to Freddy Robertson as they pulled away from the church.
