‘Well, he’s already beginning to go a bit ripe, so we’d better get him packaged up. We’ll stick him in one of the coffins for now.’
He put the knife down next to the body and motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the hall and he opened up a door a little bit further down on the opposite side from his office. A number of coffins were stacked up in lines on shelves against one wall. They all looked to be much of a muchness, although some were bigger than others.
Raymond took a quick look at them, then selected the one he wanted and pulled it down. It was a cream colour – almost white – with iron handles, and it looked quite cheap – which, I suppose, stood to reason, since he wasn’t going to be making any money out of Barry’s disposal. I got one end of it and we took it outside and put it down on one of the few dry spaces on the floor, before lifting Barry’s bloodsoaked corpse up and chucking it in. Although I worked hard to avoid it, a few splashes of blood got on my jeans, which basically spelled the end for them. Raymond put the lid down, and after that we cleared up the rest of the mess as best we could, which took a good twenty minutes and involved me doing most of the mopping up while Raymond acted in something of a supervisory role.
When we’d finished, I went and got myself a glass of water from the kitchen. I drank it down fast, then poured myself another and drank that down as well. I was still feeling nauseous so I took some slow, deep breaths and focused on one of the postcards. This one was from India, from somewhere called Mumbai, which I hadn’t heard of. I wondered briefly who’d gone there for their holidays, but didn’t bother to look.
When I felt a little bit better I walked back into the hallway.
‘Are you all right?’ Raymond asked. He was kneeling down beside the coffin hammering in nails while chewing on a cigar. He looked a bit knackered, but that was about it. You wouldn’t have guessed he’d just stabbed an employee of his to death.
‘I don’t ever want to have to do that again,’ I told him.
‘You know how it is, Dennis. Sometimes you’ve just got to do these things.’
I snorted. ‘There’ve got to be better ways to earn a living.’
‘Too right, and after this I’m going back to concentrating on my core business. There’s big money to be made in undertaking. And it’s a steady market. You see this?’ He banged the coffin with his hammer. ‘One of these costs thirty-seven quid from the manufacturers. Thirty-seven quid. But you know what? The cheapest one I sell’ll cost a punter four hundred. That’s a one thousand per cent mark-up. And the beauty of it is that no-one argues. I mean, who the fuck’s going to negotiate over the price of their nearest and dearest’s funeral costs? Only a right heartless bastard’d think about doing that. And thankfully there aren’t too many of them about.’
There wasn’t a lot you could say to that. ‘So what are you going to do with the body?’
‘I’ll put it in the back of one of the hearses and drive it up to some associates of mine.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘They’re professionals, Dennis. Don’t worry. They know how to make people disappear.’
‘Are you sure you can trust them? This is a body we’re talking about here, not a caseload of porno videos.’
‘Let’s just say I’ve worked with them before and they’ve proved reliable.’
‘And they can be trusted to get rid of him?’
He stood up and smiled at me. ‘Dennis, you of all people should know that if you want to make someone disappear, and you know what you’re doing, then, bang’ – he clicked his fingers – ‘they’ll just vanish into thin air. Never to be seen again.’
I thought of Molly Hagger then and shuddered.
‘Grab the other end, will you?’ he said.
I did as I was told, and together we loaded the coffin into one of the hearses so that it could begin its final journey to an anonymous resting place.
21
It was twenty past three when I picked up the phone and called Coleman House. I was back at home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
Someone whose voice I didn’t recognize answered, and I asked to be put through to Ms Graham. I could hear my heart thumping. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of the shock of what I’d been a part of earlier, or simply nerves at the prospect of speaking to a woman I fancied, and trying to get her to see me.
I pictured Barry Finn. I could hear the gruesome gasping noises he made as Raymond stabbed him, like an old man with emphysema.
‘Hello, Mr Milne. Dennis.’
‘Hi, Carla, sorry to bother you.’ My heart was beating louder than ever. For a second I wanted to put the phone down and get the hell out of my flat. Go for a run or something. ‘You heard about the charges being laid for the Miriam Fox murder?’
‘Against the pimp? Yes, I saw it in the paper.’
‘I tried to reach you to tell you yesterday but you were out, and I didn’t really want to leave a message.’
‘Thanks for letting me know. I suppose that means you won’t have to come back here again.’
‘That’s right.’ I paused for a moment, wondering how best to put this. ‘There were a couple of
