operate?’
‘Yes, sir. For a start, does the body always stay with the coffin after it arrives here?’
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‘Without exception. Our code of practice requires the coffin to be placed in the cremator exactly as received. When a coffin arrives in the committal room, it’s labelled with a card that accompanies the body right through until final disposal.’
‘How long does that process take?’
‘A modern gas-fired cremator can deal with the average body in half an hour.’
‘And the ashes?’
‘The cremains,’ corrected Lloyd. ‘Well, when they come out of the chamber, they consist mostly of bone residue. Sixty per cent of bone is non-burnable material, so at that stage there’ll be a number of bone fragments.’
Cooper was shown a cooling tray where bone residue was run under a magnet to sift out wedding rings and scraps of melted jewellery. When Lloyd lifted the lid, the cremated bones inside looked the colour and consistency of meringue - pale grey, granular and brittle. In places, their shape was still visible, but Cooper felt sure they would crumble at a touch.
They passed through into what Lloyd called the preparation room, where an electric pulverizer was used to reduce the bone fragments to ash. Now the grey material looked more like fine cat litter, the sort that Randy always refused to use.
‘From a man, we get an average weight of about seven and a half pounds of bone residue, and from a woman just under six pounds,’ said Lloyd.
‘So gender is reduced to a difference in bone structure, in the final analysis?’
‘You might put it that way, I suppose.’
Cooper filed that one away for future reference. It might be something he could point out to Diane Fry at a suitable moment.
‘Is it possible for the ashes from two different people to get mixed up, Mr Lloyd?’
The manager shook his head. ‘Everyone worries about
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getting the right ashes. They think more than one coffin might be cremated at a time, but that isn’t so. We’re not allowed to do that, and in any case it’s impossible. The cremator will only take one coffin at a time, and the ashes have to be withdrawn before it’s used again.’
‘But you have more than one cremator here, don’t you?’
‘Two,’ admitted Lloyd. ‘But it isn’t often that both are in use, unless we have a really busy day. We need two so we can still operate when one of them is shut down for maintenance.’ Cooper looked into the committal room, where the coffins slid through from the chapel on silent rollers.
‘And when you do get a busy day,’ he said, ‘the bodies must arrive in here faster than the staff can get them in and out of the cremator.’
Now Lloyd looked worried. ‘Well, yes.’
‘So you must have to store coffins in here for a while before they’re cremated. Cremation doesn’t happen straight after the service, as people imagine?’
‘Well…’
‘You see, I’ve always pictured the flames waiting behind an oven door that opens as soon as those curtains close. But actually, the coffin probably just gets put on a shelf for a while.’
‘Not for long. The code of practice requires cremations to take place on the same day as the service, wherever possible.’
‘The same day?’
Lloyd swallowed. ‘Wherever possible.’
‘But you could have bodies stacking up in here all day until you get a chance to clear the backlog?’
‘It isn’t like that. Not in a well-managed crematorium.’
‘Is there always someone in here?’
‘The cremator should never be left unattended.’
‘Is that in the code of practice, too?’
‘Yes,’ said Lloyd stiffly. ‘Is there anything more I can do for you?’
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‘Two more things,’ said Cooper. ‘First, I’d like details of staff members who have access to the cremation suite.’
‘All of them?’
‘Going back eighteen months, to the beginning of last March.’
‘I’ll need authority from my company’s head office to release personnel information, but we should be able to manage that.’
‘Also, I’ll need a list of cremations that took place here on Monday the eighth of March last year.’
‘It might take some time to produce the lists. We’re very busy today.’
‘You can fax them to me,’ said Cooper. ‘The number is on my card.’
He paused at the door of the cremation suite and sniffed the air. ‘It’s funny, Mr Lloyd, but I expected more of a smell in here.’
