‘Ah. Not very nice, I presume?’ said Fry.
‘No. It’s rather unpleasant for the grievers. When their loved one has been interred or cremated, we like our clients to go away with a sense of satisfaction that the whole thing has been done properly.’
‘Would it have been possible for Audrey Steele’s coffin to have gone to her funeral empty?’ asked Fry.
‘No, no, quite impossible.’
‘What if the body had been removed, and the coffin weighted with something to disguise the fact that it was empty?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Hudson. ‘That trick might work for a burial. But Audrey Steele was cremated. If there was no body in the coffin, it would be immediately obvious to the operators at the crematorium.’
‘I see.’ Fry looked around the office. ‘What’s security like here?’
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‘We had our security system upgraded earlier this year,’ said Hudson.
‘After the breakin?’
‘Yes. Look, Sergeant, are you going to tell me what this is about?’
‘While we’re collecting the files, you might want to dig out the rest of the information we need,’ said Fry. ‘We want a list of all your staff, including anyone who was working here eighteen months ago but has since left.’
‘That will take some time,’ said Hudson.
‘Your personnel records not up to date, sir?’
‘Of course they are.’
‘Then it shouldn’t be any trouble.’
Hudson sighed heavily, but went to speak to the secretary.
Fry moved back towards the door, and found Cooper at her shoulder. ‘Why can’t we seize the personnel records as well, Diane?’ he said.
‘They aren’t specified on the search warrant.’
‘Why not?’
Fry looked at him ‘Softly softly, remember? Someone decided on a compromise.’
Before they left, Cooper took a peek into the workshop. Three men were working inside. One of them was Vernon Slack, another the thick-necked Billy McGowan he’d seen helping to carry the coffin at the crematorium. This morning, McGowan had his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up as he lined a coffin with satin-like material and tacked a nameplate on the lid. He had so many tattoos on his arms that his skin looked like blue cheese. He might as well have had two rolls of ripe Gorgonzola hanging out of his sleeves.
A line of coffin trolleys stood to one side of the workshop. Along the walls, cupboards and shelves held rubber tubing and jars of red fluid, a stock of handles, linings and nameplates. Past the trolleys, Cooper could see a series of lockers.
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He supposed the staff must need several sets of clothing formal funeral wear, something smart for collecting bodies, casual clothes for jobs in the workshop or mortuary. One of the lockers stood open; a black leather jacket hung on the door.
Cooper thought they ought to go carefully with Melvyn Hudson and his staff. Hudson and Slack was the sort of business that survived on reputation. It could suffer badly from gossip and unfounded rumour. Besides, these were people of guarded emotions, practised at putting up a facade. It was difficult to judge whether Hudson did it out of habit, or was trying to conceal some emotion that you wouldn’t want to see on the face of your funeral director.
McGowan looked up and noticed Cooper. He smiled and flexed his muscles. One of his tattoos moved as the skin stretched. A dragon spread its wings, its mouth opening and flickering with blue flames.
As he was leaving the building, Cooper saw Vernon Slack jog past towards the compound where the hearses and limousines were parked. Vernon’s bony wrists protruded from his cuffs as he tried to adjust the knot of his black tie. But doing it while he was running only made things worse. The way he moved reminded Cooper of Tom Jarvis’s dog, Graceless. He looked the sort of clumsy innocent who’d end up getting hurt, simply because he knew no better.
The tree that had been planted over the body was no more than six feet high - a weeping willow sapling with slender, whippy branches and bark that looked almost yellow in the afternoon sun. Below it, the ground was barely disturbed. The earth would soon grass over and blend with the surrounding area, becoming a natural part of the young woodland. Only a small plaque wired to the trunk of the tree marked the spot as a grave.
Fifteen yards away, Fry turned from the fence and walked
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back across the grass. As always, she looked curiously out of place among trees. She instinctively hunched her shoulders to avoid them, as if their leaves might bite her. Cooper suspected that Fry and nature existed in two different worlds, with no points of contact.
‘Is there no security of any kind in this place?’ demanded Fry.
The woman in the black suit was one of the managers of the green burial site. She raised her eyebrows at Fry. ‘Security? We don’t need security here.’
‘Oh, really? Perhaps you should think again. We’ll send someone out to advise you.’
The woman scowled and went to Vivien Gill, who stood in the middle of a small group of relatives and friends.
‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it?’ said Fry when she got Cooper alone.
‘Why?’
‘Well, after what happened to her daughter’s body, abandoned in the countryside like that? Why would Mrs Gill want to plant Audrey here? She might as well have left her where she was.’
‘It makes sense to me.’
Cooper was starting to find the idea of a green burial appealing. Since all those things that happened to the
