‘He and Melvyn Hudson were contemporaries?’ said Hitchens.
‘If you like. Their fathers set up the firm, but both retired and left their interests in the business to their sons. Old Mr Hudson died, but Abraham Slack is hanging on - he just doesn’t play an active part in Hudson and Slack any more.’
‘So what happened to Richard?’ said Hitchens.
‘He was killed in a car crash last year.’
‘You know, I remember it,’ said the DI, leaning forward in his chair. ‘There was a lot of stuff in the local paper about him. But it didn’t happen on our patch, did it?’
‘In C Division,’ said Murfin. ‘It was a bit ironic, actually. He was on a late-night call at the time, collecting a body from a house near Holymoorside. He was driving one of those unmarked vans with blacked-out windows.’
‘Was this before or after Audrey Steele’s funeral?’
‘After, by nearly two months.’
‘Well, I suppose funeral directors have to meet their end the same as the rest of us,’ said Hitchens.
Murfin shrugged. ‘Also, Dad’s Army have been helping me make some enquiries into the state of business at Hudson and Slack. It seems they’re almost the last family-owned funeral directors in the valley. All the other independents have gone. Most of them belong to the big chains now, though they often keep the old names to make people think they’re still locally owned, like. A couple of them are run by American companies.’
‘Has this affected Hudson and Slack?’
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‘The word is that they’ve been struggling for a while,’ said Fry. ‘Apparently, they’ve lost a lot of business over the last few years to the big boys. I suppose it’s a question of advantages of scale, like any other business.’
‘The larger players will always push out the small men, if they’re allowed to,’ said Hitchens. ‘That’s the way it goes.’
‘From what we hear, they can be pretty ruthless. They put the word about that a small funeral director is likely to turn up for a funeral with vehicles that don’t match, or a bunch of staff in badly fitting suits who’ve never been nearer to a funeral than the bar of the Cemetery Inn. Everybody wants a funeral to go off without a hitch, and they’re making decisions under stress anyway.’
Hitchens looked from one to the other. ‘Hudson told us that business was good, didn’t he?’
Fry shook her head. ‘What he told us was that there’s an increasing demand. Changing demographics, and all that. That doesn’t mean all the new business is coming his way, does it? It depends what inroads the competition are making in this area. I wonder how his partner fitted in? Was Richard Slack a modernizer or a traditionalist? Which of them was the real driving force behind the business? It would be interesting to know the relationship between them.’
Fry tapped her teeth with a pen for a moment, then stopped suddenly and looked at the end of the pen in horror.
‘There’s one other thing of interest,’ said Murfin, sounding a bit smug.
‘Have you been saving the best for last?’ said Hitchens.
Murfin smiled. ‘A few months ago, Hudson and Slack reported a breakin at their premises in Manvers Street. Among other items, the thieves took a plastic drum containing twenty-five litres of embalming fluid - some stuff called Chromotech.’
‘What use is that to anybody?’ asked Hitchens.
‘It provides a new drug experience, if you’re into that kind
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of thing. Apparently, the latest trend is to mix embalming fluid with cannabis for a special high. Another idea imported from the USA.’
That sounds ridiculously dangerous.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
Fry leaned forward across the DI’s desk. ‘The medical advice is that this stuff is highly corrosive if exposed to skin or taken orally. Mixed with cannabis, it makes users violent and psychotic. It causes hallucinations, euphoria, increased pain tolerance, and produces feelings of anger, forgetfulness and paranoia. In extreme cases, it can result in blindness or even death.’
Hitchens raised an eyebrow. ‘Interesting. Were drug users blamed for the breakin? Was anyone charged?’
‘There were no charges,’ said Murfin. ‘But the theory was that someone read about the idea on the internet and decided to experiment. They took some other stuff at the same time, property worth about ten thousand pounds in total. Anything small and easy to dispose of for a few quid.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
Murfin looked at the incident report again. ‘Oh, you know scalpels, hypodermic needles, medical supplies. Anything that looked like pharmaceuticals, I suppose. There’s a whole list of items. Including a set of trocars, whatever they are. And don’t tell me - I don’t think I want to know.’
‘Hold on,’ said Fry. ‘Let’s have a look at that list.’
She took the report and scanned through. Gavin was right, the list was a long one. Many of the items were things she’d never heard of and couldn’t imagine a use for. Eye caps, canulas, a mouth former …
‘What is it?’ asked Hitchens.
‘It was just a breakin, Diane,’ said Murfin. ‘All right, it’s never been cleared up, but it seems obvious it was addicts looking for kicks and some quick money to pay for their next fix.’
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‘It was just a thought,’ said Fry. ‘I was wondering if there’s enough stolen equipment on this list for somebody to perform their own private embalming.’
When Cooper returned to the office, he found an urn had been left on his desk for return to Susan Dakin. According to the report, the cremains had been weighed in by the lab at eight pounds five ounces. It was strange to think that Mr Dakin probably weighed about the
