the soil, no different to the thousands of others that lay scattered around the graveyard, as common as rabbit droppings. Except these ones were in a straight line, each of them two fingers’ width apart, an arm’s length from the small wooden cross that marked the head of the grave. Sawney knew it was two fingers and an arm’s length because he measured it out. Nice try, he thought, but some people never learnt.
It needn’t have been acorns; it could just as easily have been shells, a strategically placed stone, a couple of twigs, or perhaps a flower, placed on the grave in such a way as to detect if any interference had taken place. Many anxious relatives had adopted the practice of late.
An amateur might not have noticed, but Sawney, with his experience, had known what to look out for and he knew how to get around it.
Carefully, Sawney lifted the acorns from the soil with his fingertips, placed them in his pocket, and got to his feet. “All right, let’s do it. Sharply now, we ain’t got all bleedin’ night!”
Maggett set the lantern on the ground and immediately the two men standing beside him stepped forward. Both carried short-handled wooden shovels, the oval blades bearing closer resemblance to a paddle than a digging tool. From a sack across his shoulder, Maggett drew out a roll of canvas and laid it alongside the grave, at the same time removing from its inner folds some loose sacking and two butcher’s hooks.
Sawney, blowing on his hands in a vain attempt to generate warmth, took a look around. The burial ground was hemmed in on all sides; to the east by the church and to the north and south by the backs of houses. To the west was the rest of the graveyard, which was separated from the road beyond by a shoulder-high wall.
“Shift yourself, Maggsie,” Sawney hissed. “Let the dogs see the bleedin’ bone.”
Lemuel Ragg rested the shovel against his right knee and spat on his hands. His brother Samuel did the same. Then, trading knowing grins, they picked up their tools and began to transfer the soil from the grave to the canvas sheet.
The Ragg brothers were similar in looks and physique and had often been mistaken for twins, which they were not. Lemuel was the older by two years. Dark-haired and sallow-skinned, they were neither tall nor brawny, being both shorter and smaller in stature than Sawney, but what they lacked in height and breadth they made up for in raw cunning. Insult one Ragg boy and you insulted his brother by default; anyone foolish enough to do so risked dire, usually fatal, consequences.
The brothers worked fast. The undertaker had advised that the coffin was buried deeper than normal, supposedly as a deterrent to disinterment, which meant that there was, potentially, a larger than average amount of soil to remove. The Raggs, however, took this as a personal challenge, with the result that the excavation became a contest between them.
The grave had only been filled that morning and, despite the rime-glazed surface, the earth immediately below the topsoil was still loose and not yet compacted, which made the removal of the soil relatively easy.
The Raggs dug like men possessed. Shovels dipped. Earth flew. The hole deepened and the mound of soil on top of the canvas grew steadily higher. Occasionally, the edge of a shovel would strike a stone, but the wooden blade ensured the sound was no louder than a dull thud. It was the reason body stealers favoured wooden shovels over metal ones. Sawney checked his pocket watch by the lantern light. They’d been on site for ten minutes. They were making good progress.
The sound of wood striking wood came suddenly, accompanied by an excited hiss from Samuel, his shovel having been the one that had made contact. The brothers moved back. Sawney lifted the lantern and held it over the excavation, grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the head of the coffin had been exposed. He signalled to the waiting Maggett. Grabbing the sacking and the hooks, the big man stepped into the grave.
And from the darkness beyond the edge of the light came the sound of a low cough.
The men froze, then ducked down. Quick as a flash, Sawney blew out the lantern flame.
The sound came again, closer this time. The hairs on the back of Sawney’s neck prickled. He could feel his heart pounding like hoof beats inside his chest. He peered around him, but the mist had thickened into a solid layer a foot deep that hovered above the ground like cannon smoke, impenetrable to probing eyes.
Then, at the edge of Sawney’s field of vision, a shape appeared. It was low down, approaching quickly. Sawney’s hand eased towards the knife in his belt. Beside him, he sensed Lemuel Ragg reach inside his jacket, extract a six-inch length of tortoiseshell and, with practised ease, flick open the wafer-thin razor blade.
The fox padded past them with a vulpine look of disdain, silent as a wraith.
Sawney let out his breath. He relit the lantern using a tinderbox and a sulphur-dipped cord. “Well, don’t just sit there with your gob open, Maggsie,” he said. “Tick-tock.”
Maggett draped the loose sacking over the head of the coffin exposed by the digging. The rest of the coffin was still covered and weighted down by soil. Standing on the tail end, Maggett inserted the point of each hook beneath the sacking and under either side of the coffin lid. Then, gripping the T-bar of each hook, he heaved upwards. With Maggett’s bulk and the weight of the earth on the rest of the lid acting as a counter-weight, there could only be one outcome. The coffin lid snapped across. The sacking had been put down to deaden the sound of the breaking wood, but the noise still rang out like a distant pistol shot.
Sawney’s crew, however, did not pause. They were now racing against the clock.
Tossing the hooks aside, Maggett reached down, pulled back the splintered lid and grasped the corpse under the shoulders. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to come. Maggett’s shoulder muscles bulged. He tried again. He felt a sharp tug inside the coffin. The burial shroud was snagged. Maggett swore, put his back into it and pulled hard. This time his efforts were rewarded, accompanied by the sound of cloth tearing. The corpse came out of the coffin like a pale grey moth emerging from a pupal sac, with the remains of the shroud clinging to it like folded wings.
Maggett laid the corpse on the ground and, without pausing, removed what was left of the torn cloth and tossed it back into the open coffin. The four men stared down at the body. It was female and shapely, with dark, matted hair, skin ghostly pale against the dirt and grass.
“Nice tits,” Lemuel murmured appreciatively, his head on one side. “Wouldn’t ’ave minded giving her one.”
Samuel giggled. “Still time, Lemmy. You want us to wait?”
Lemuel grinned and cuffed his brother around the back of the head.
“Enough!” Sawney snapped. Gathering up the sacking from the top of the coffin, he tamped down the broken lid with his boots and climbed out of the grave. “Fill ’er in.”
The brothers picked up their shovels. Sawney collected the two hooks and wrapped them in the sacking, leaving Maggett to attend to the body.
Maggett knelt down and removed from his pocket three rolls of dirty bandage, two short and one long. His broad face betrayed no emotion as he concentrated on using one of the shorter rolls to bind the corpse’s ankles. He used the second short roll on the corpse’s wrists.
Maggett prodded the corpse, testing the consistency of the dead flesh. The smell coming off the body was like wet leaves. Death – the result of a convulsive attack, according to the undertaker – had taken place only the day before; long enough, Maggett knew, for rigor to have worn off, though with some corpses that could vary. Sometimes it passed off within ten hours, other times it took as long as two days.
Maggett grunted with satisfaction. This one wasn’t going to be a problem. He wouldn’t have to break any joints. Pinioning the bound wrists between the corpse’s knees, Maggett pressed the legs back towards the chest, trapping the arms. Taking the last strip of bandage, he tied it round the compressed legs and torso, cinching it tightly until the bound corpse resembled a plucked and trussed chicken. Then, after a quick check to make sure the knots were secure, he went and retrieved the sack. Stuffing the corpse inside it was easy.
Maggett finished tying off the sack at the same time as Lemuel Ragg shovelled the last heap of earth on to the top of the grave. Sawney removed the three acorns from his pocket and placed them in their original positions in the soil. Due to the digging, no frost remained on the top of the grave. The absence was noticeable compared to the rest of the terrain, but Sawney knew it wouldn’t take long for a new coating to form over the disturbed patch. Come the morning, it would all look the same. He gathered up the canvas sheet, mindful to shake the last granules of soil back on top of the grave. Then, placing the sacking containing the hooks within the canvas, he rolled the lot into a bundle and hoisted it on to his shoulder. He looked again at his watch. The removal had taken exactly sixteen minutes. He gave a satisfied grunt, looked at the others and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The four men left the gravesite and headed towards the church. Their footsteps made soft crunching sounds in the crisp frost.
They could hear the snoring from twenty paces away. There was a small, wooden hut nestling against the
