The Dead Place

They were dependable, all right. Bring out your dead – that might be a better slogan. Sometimes Melvyn felt like the council refuse man arriving to pick up an old fridge left on the back doorstep. Nobody worried about what happened to their unwanted rubbish. Their disused fridges could pile up in mouldering mountains on a landfill site somewhere and no one would be bothered, as long as they didn’t have to look at them. Most people were even more anxious to get a corpse off the premises.

A few minutes later, Vernon drove out on to Fargate, hunched over the steering wheel awkwardly, the way he did everything. Hudson had sworn to himself he’d get rid of Vernon if he messed up one more thing, no matter what old man Slack said. The lad was a liability, and this firm couldn’t afford liabilities any more.

Hudson snorted to himself as they drove through the centre of Edendale. Lad? Vernon was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake. He ought to be learning the business side of things, ready to take over when the time came. Some chance of that, though. Vernon was nowhere near the man his father had been. It had to be said that Richard had done a poor job of shaping his son. Not that there’d be a business much longer for anyone to run.

When they reached the house in Southwoods, Hudson asked the relatives to wait downstairs. There was nothing worse than having distressed grievers watching the deceased being manhandled into a body bag. If full rigor hadn’t set in, the corpse tended to flop around a bit. Sometimes, you’d almost think they were coming back to life.

This corpse was an old man, shrunken and smelly, with a bubble of grey froth on his lips. He wasn’t quite cold yet, but his skin felt like putty, flat and unresisting. Hudson thought that if he poked a finger hard enough into the man’s stomach, it would sink right in until it touched his spine.

Vernon was standing by the bed like an idiot, his arms hanging at his sides, his mind on anything but the job.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Hudson.

‘Melvyn, when you do a removal like this one, don’t you ever notice the little things in a person’s bedroom?’

‘Like what?’

‘Just the little things. Look, there’s a glass of water he’s only half drunk. There’s a razor here that somebody used to shave him with this morning. It’s still got some of his hairs on it, even though he’s dead.’

‘Of course he’s bloody dead,’ said Hudson, struggling to keep his voice down. ‘What do you think we’re doing here?’

‘Don’t you look at those things, Melvyn?’

‘No. It’s just a job. We’re professionals.’

‘But don’t you sometimes think … Well, while all this stuff is lying around, it’s as if he’s not really dead at all. He’s still here in the room.’

‘For God’s sake, leave off the thinking, Vernon, and get a grip on this stiff.’

Hudson took the knees of the corpse, while Vernon grasped the shoulders. An arm lifted and a hand flapped, as though waving goodbye.

‘Watch it, or he’ll end up on the floor,’ said Hudson. ‘The family down there are doing their best to pretend they don’t know what’s happening. An almighty thump on the ceiling will ruin the illusion.’

They got the body on to the stretcher and began to negotiate the stairs. These old cottages were always a problem. The doorways were too narrow, the stairs too steep, the corner at the bottom almost impossible. Hudson often thought that people must have been a lot smaller when they built these houses – unless they lowered corpses out of the window on the end of a rope in those days.

They loaded the stretcher into the van, then Hudson went back into the house, smoothing the sleeves of his jacket. It wasn’t his funeral suit, of course, just his old one for removals. But appearances mattered, all the same.

‘Now, don’t worry about a thing,’ he told the daughter of the deceased. ‘I know your father was ill for some time, but it always comes as a shock when a loved one passes over. That’s what we’re here for – to ease the burden and make sure everything goes smoothly at a very difficult time.’

‘Thank you, Mr Hudson.’

‘There’s only one thing that I have to ask you to do. You know you need to collect a medical certificate from the doctor and register your father’s death? The registrar will issue you with a death certificate and a disposal certificate. The disposal certificate is the one you give to me.’

‘Disposal?’ said the daughter uncertainly.

‘I know it seems like a lot of paperwork, but it has to be done, I’m afraid.’ Hudson saw she was starting to get flustered, and gave her his reassuring smile. ‘Sometimes it’s best to have lots to do at a time like this, so you don’t have time to dwell on things too much. We’ll give your father a beautiful funeral, and make sure your last memories of him are good ones.’

The daughter began to cry, and Hudson took her hand for a moment before leaving the house.

Back in the van, Vernon reached for the pad of forms under the dashboard.

‘Leave the paperwork,’ said Hudson. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

‘I know how to do it, Melvyn.’

‘I said leave it. You just concentrate on driving.’

‘Why won’t you let me do the forms?’

‘Oh, shut up about it, Vernon, will you? You get the best jobs, don’t you? I let you drive the van. I even let you drive the lims.’

‘I’m a good driver.’

Hudson had to admit that Vernon was quite a decent driver. But everyone liked driving the limousines. You got to hear some interesting stuff from the grievers in the back. They didn’t care what they said on the way to a funeral, and especially coming back. They gave you a different view of the deceased from what the vicar said in his eulogy. Vernon was the same as everyone else – he liked to earwig on the grievers. But if he was going to go all moody and yonderly on a removal, it was the last straw.

A few minutes later, they drew up to the back door of their own premises, got the body into the mortuary and slid it into one of the lower slots of the refrigerator. Even Vernon would have to admit a corpse was just a thing once it was removed from the house, away from the half-drunk glass of water and the hair on the razor. There was no other way to think about it, not when you did the things you had to do to prepare a body – putting in the dentures, stitching up the lips, pushing the face back into shape. It never bothered Hudson any more. Unless it was a child, of course.

‘Watch it, don’t let that tray slide out.’

Vernon jerked back into life. His attention had been drifting, but so had Hudson’s. Even at this stage, it wouldn’t do to spill the body on to the floor.

Vicky, the receptionist, was in the front office working on the computer, but there were no prospects in, no potential customers. The last funeral was over for the day, though the next casket was waiting to go in the morning, and one of the team was already attaching the strips of non-slip webbing to hold wreaths in place.

Hudson knew that some of the staff thought he fussed too much. They sniggered at him behind his back because he got obsessed about timing, and was always worrying about roadworks or traffic jams. But he wanted things to be just right for every funeral. It was the same reason he spent his evenings on the phone to customers, advising them on what to do with their ashes, getting feedback on funerals, hearing how the family were coping.

It was all part of the personal service. And personal service was Hudson and Slack’s main asset. Probably its last remaining asset.

Ben Cooper drove his Toyota out on to the Sheffield ring road, just beating a Supertram rattling towards the city centre from Shalesmoor. Technically, he was off duty now, but he plugged his mobile into the hands-free kit and called the CID room at E Division to check that he wasn’t needed. He didn’t expect anything, though. In fact, it would have to be really urgent for somebody to justify his overtime.

‘Miss is in some kind of meeting with the DI,’ said DC Gavin Murfin. ‘But she didn’t leave any messages for you, Ben. I’ll tell her you checked in. But I’m just about to go home myself, so I wouldn’t worry about a thing.’

‘OK, Gavin. I’ve hit rush hour, so it’ll take me about forty minutes to get back to Edendale anyway.’

Brake lights had come on in front of him as scores of cars bunched at the A57 junction. A few drivers were trying to take a right turn towards the western suburbs of Sheffield. But most seemed intent on crawling round the ring road, probably heading for homes in the sprawling southern townships, Mosborough and Hackenthorpe, Beighton and Ridgeway. Some of those places had been in Derbyshire once, but the city had swallowed them thirty years ago.

‘Gavin, what’s the meeting about?’ said Cooper, worried that he might be missing something important. Everything of any significance seemed to happen when he was out of the office. Sometimes he wondered if Diane Fry planned it that way. As his supervising officer, she wasn’t always quick to keep him informed.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Murfin. ‘She didn’t tell me. I’ve got some files to give her, then I’m hoping to sneak away before she finds another job for me to do.’

‘There’s no overtime, Gavin.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Cooper had come to a halt again. Clusters of students were standing near him, waiting for the tram to re-emerge from its tunnel under the roundabout. They all wore personal stereos or had mobile phones pressed to their ears. The main university campus was right across the road, and he could make out the hospital complexes in Western Bank. The one-way system in central Sheffield always baffled him, so he was glad to be on the ring road. He didn’t want to stay in the city any longer than necessary.

‘I don’t suppose you fancy going for a drink tomorrow night?’ said Murfin.

‘Don’t you have to be at home with the family, Gavin?’

‘Jean’s taking the kids out ice skating. I’ll be on my own.’

‘No, I’m sorry. Not tomorrow.’

‘You’re turning down beer? Well, I could offer food as well. We could have pie and chips at the pub, or go for an Indian. The Raj Mahal is open Wednesdays.’

‘No, I can’t, Gavin,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve got a date.’

‘A what?’

‘A date.’

‘With a woman?’

‘Could be.’

At last, Cooper was able to take his exit, turning right by the Safeway supermarket and the old brewery into Ecclesall Road. Ahead of him lay a land of espresso bars, Aga shops and the offices of independent financial advisors. In the leafy outer suburbs of Whirlow and Dore, the houses would get bigger and further away from the road as he drove into AB country.

‘Are you still there, Gavin?’

Murfin’s voice was quieter when he came back on the phone.

‘I’m going to have to go. Miss has come out of her meeting, and she doesn’t look happy. Her nose has gone all tight. You know what I mean? As though she’s just smelled something really bad.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘So it looks as though I’ve blown it. I just wasn’t quick enough.’

‘Good luck, then. Speak to you in the morning.’

Cooper smiled as he ended the call. Murfin’s comment about Diane Fry had reminded him of the forensic anthropologist’s report on the human remains from Ravensdale. The details in the document had been sparse. Like so many experts’ reports, it had seemed to raise more questions than it answered. But he’d made a call to Dr Jamieson anyway, mostly out of optimism. In the end, there was only one person whose job it was to find the answers.

‘The nasal opening is narrow, the bridge steepled, and the cheekbones tight to the face. Caucasian, probably European. An adult.’

‘Yes, you said that in your report, sir.’

‘Beyond that, it’s a bit more difficult. We have to look for alterations in the skeleton that occur at a predictable rate – changes in the ribs where they attach to the sternum, or the parts of the pelvis where they meet in front. We can age adults to within five years if we’re lucky, or maybe ten. So you’ll have to take the age of forty to forty-five as a best guess.’

‘And the chances of an ID?’ Cooper had asked.

‘To a specific individual? None.’

Dr Jamieson had sounded impatient. Probably he had a thousand other things to do, like everyone else.

‘Look, all I can give you is a general biological profile – it’s up to you to match it to your missing persons register. I’m just offering clues here. I don’t work miracles.’

‘But it’s definitely a woman?’ Cooper persisted.

‘Yes, definitely. That should narrow it down a bit, surely? You don’t have all that many missing women on the books in Derbyshire, do you?’

‘No, Doctor, we don’t.’

And Jamieson had been right. The problem was, no one had ever filed a missing person report answering the description of Jane Raven.

Fry got herself a cup of water from the cooler and waited a few moments before she went back into the DI’s office. She was vaguely aware of Gavin Murfin lurking rather furtively in the CID room, sitting down again when she looked his way. But the rest of the place was already deserted. It smelled stale, and ready for the arrival of the cleaners.

She walked back in and put her water down on Hitchens’ desk.

‘He was on the phone for more than three minutes,’ she said. ‘Why haven’t they traced the call?’

‘They have. He was in a public phone box.’

‘Of course he was. No doubt in some busy shopping centre where no one would notice him. And I suppose he was long gone by the time a patrol arrived?’

Hitchens looked at her with the first signs of impatience, and Fry realized she’d gone a bit too far. She blamed it on the headache, or the fact that she felt so exhausted.

‘Actually, Diane, the phone box was in a village called Wardlow.’

‘Where’s that?’ She screwed up her eyes to see the map on the wall of the DI’s office, making a show of concentrating to distract him from her irritability.

‘On the B6465, about two miles above Monsal Head.’

Fry kept the frown of concentration on her face. She thought she had a vague idea where Monsal Head was. Somewhere to the south, on the way to Bakewell. If she could just find it on the map before the DI had to point it out …

‘Here –’ said Hitchens, swinging round in his chair and smacking a spot on the map with casual accuracy. ‘Fifteen minutes from Edendale, that’s all.’

‘Why there?’

‘We can’t be sure. At first glance, it might seem a risky choice. It’s a quiet little place, and a stranger might be noticed – or at least an unfamiliar car parked by the road. Normally, we’d have hoped that somebody would remember seeing a person in the phone box around that time.’

‘So what wasn’t normal?’

‘When a unit arrived in Wardlow, a funeral cortege was just about to leave the village. There had been a burial in the churchyard. Big funeral, lots of mourners. Apparently, the lady who died came from Wardlow originally but moved to Chesterfield and became a well-known businesswoman and a county councillor. The point is, there were a lot of strangers in the village for that hour and a half. Unfamiliar cars parked everywhere.’

Hitchens drew his finger down the map a short way. ‘As you can see, it’s one of those linear villages, strung out along the road for about three-quarters of a mile. While the funeral was taking place, every bit of available space was occupied, including vehicles parked on the grass verges or on the pavement, where there is one. Some of the villagers were at the funeral themselves, of course. And those that weren’t would hardly have noticed one particular stranger, or one car. On any other day, at any other time. But not just then.’

‘So it was an opportunist call? Do you think our man was simply driving around looking for a situation like that to exploit and took the chance?’

‘Could be.’

Fry shook her head. ‘But he had the speech all prepared, didn’t he? That didn’t sound like an off-the-cuff call. He either had a script right there in front of him in the phone box, or he’d practised it until he was word perfect.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right.’

‘Either way, this man is badly disturbed,’ she said.

‘That doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about what he says, Diane.’

Fry didn’t answer. She was trying to picture the caller cruising the area, passing through the outskirts of Edendale and the villages beyond. Then driving through Wardlow and spotting the funeral. She could almost imagine the smile on his face as he pulled in among the mourners’ cars and the black limousines. No one would think to question who he was or why he was there, as he entered the phone box and made his call. Meanwhile, mourners would have been gathering in the church behind him, and the funeral service would be about to get under way.

‘The recording,’ said Fry. ‘Have Forensics been asked to analyse the background noise?’

‘We’ll make sure they do that,’ said Hitchens. ‘But why do you ask?’

‘I wondered what music was playing. “Abide With Me”, perhaps. Or “The Lord’s My Shepherd”. We might be able to tell what stage the funeral service had reached, whether he was already in the phone box as the mourners were going in, or waited until the service had started to make the call. Maybe there were some late arrivals who noticed him. We’ll have to check all that. If we can narrow it down, we might be able to trace the people who were most likely to have seen him.’

‘That’s good.’

‘And another thing –’

‘Yes?’

‘I wonder if he just drove away again as soon as he’d finished the call.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, that would make him stand out, wouldn’t it? Someone might have wondered why he left without attending the service. If he was really so clever, I’m guessing he’ll have stayed on.’

‘Stayed on?’

‘Joined the congregation. Stood at the back of the church and sung the hymns. He might have hung around the graveside to see the first spadeful of dirt fall on the coffin. He probably smiled at the bereaved family and admired the floral tributes. He’d be one of the crowd then.’

‘Just another anonymous mourner. Yes, I can see that.’

‘One of the crowd,’ repeated Fry, struck by her own idea. ‘And all thinking about the same thing.’

‘What do you mean, Diane?’

‘Well, we know nothing about him yet, but I bet he’s the sort of person who’d love that idea. All those people around him thinking about death while he made his call.’

She paused and looked at Hitchens. He turned on his chair and met her eye, his face clouded by worry. Fry saw that she’d reached him, communicated her own deep uneasiness. The caller’s words in the transcript were bad enough. Now she found herself anticipating the sound of his voice with a mixture of excitement and dread.

‘Except that his death,’ said Hitchens, ‘the one he was talking about in his call, was nothing to do with the deceased councillor who was being buried in Wardlow churchyard. It was a different death altogether.’

‘Of course it was,’ said Fry. ‘But we have no idea whose.’

The DI looked at his watch. It was time to call it a day. Unlike some of his officers, he had good reasons for wanting to get home on time – an attractive nurse he’d been living with for the past two years, and a nice house they’d bought together in Dronfield. But it’d be marriage and kids before long, and then he might not be so keen.

‘It’s the Ellis case in the morning, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What time are you on, Diane?’

‘Ten thirty.’

‘Is everything put together?’

‘DC Murfin is doing a final checklist for me.’

‘Good. Well, the undertaker who conducted the funeral at Wardlow is based right here in town,’ said Hitchens. ‘You’ll have time to drive round and speak to him in the morning before you’re due in court.’

Fry wasn’t looking forward to her court appearance next morning. But at least she’d done everything she could to make it as straightforward as possible and give the CPS a solid case. With a bit of luck, there’d be another long-term resident occupying a bunk in Derby Prison by the end of the week.

Many of the details of the Micky Ellis case were depressingly predictable. Whenever officers of E Division got a call-out to a body on Edendale’s Devonshire Estate, they expected it to be another domestic. A killing in the family, a Grade C murder.

‘You know, it never ceases to amaze me how often the offender calls in the incident himself in a case like this,’ said Fry, checking through the files Gavin Murfin had gathered for her. ‘They can’t think what else to do when they see the body on the floor, except dial 999.’

‘Well, I think it’s very considerate of them to worry about our clear-up rate at a time like that,’ said Murfin.

‘Is everything there, Gavin?’

‘All tied up with a neat bow. Fingers crossed for a short hearing, then,’ said Murfin as she closed the top file. ‘I hear Micky is pleading guilty, so it should all be over by Christmas. Not that he had much choice in the matter.’

‘It was just a walkthrough,’ said Fry.

‘The best kind. I hate the whodunits, don’t you? All those computers thinking they can tell me what to do, and every bugger in the building complaining about my paperwork.’

‘I presume you’re referring to the HOLMES system.’

‘HOLMES – who thought up that name? Some Mycroft down in Whitehall, I suppose. One day they’ll sack all the dicks and let the computers out on the streets.’

‘When is your tenure up, Gavin?’

Murfin said nothing. He worked in silence for a while. Out of the corner of her eye, Fry could see his mouth still moving, but no words came out.

‘Only a few months left now, aren’t there?’ she said.

‘Could be.’

‘Back to core policing for a while, is it?’

‘Unless I get promoted,’ said Murfin bitterly.

‘Let’s hope for the best, then.’

Fry was aware of the look that Murfin gave her. Of course, they might have different ideas as to what the best might be.

Ben Cooper was still smiling as he cleared the outskirts of Sheffield and dropped a gear to start the climb towards Houndkirk Moor. At the top of this road was the Fox House Inn, where he crossed back into Derbyshire and entered the national park. As soon as he passed the boundary marker at the side of the road, Sheffield seemed to fall away behind him quite suddenly. And when he saw the moors opening out ahead of him, burning with purple heather, it always filled his heart with the pleasure of coming home.

Cooper looked again at the file on the passenger seat. In all likelihood, the area he was entering had been home for Jane Raven Lee, too. Somewhere in the valleys and small towns of the White Peak would be the place she’d lived, a house full of her possessions, perhaps a family who still missed her and wondered what had become of her. But a family who loved and missed someone reported them missing, didn’t they?

The previous weekend, Cooper had spent a couple of days walking in the Black Mountains with his friends Oscar and Rakesh. There had been plenty of fresh air to blow away the cobwebs, and a chance to forget the job for a while. But there had been an undercurrent of unease that he hadn’t been able to identify until they were on their way home, driving back up the M5 from South Wales.

It had been Rakki who dropped the first bombshell. He was due to get married next April, and he’d started to talk about moving back to Kenya. His reasons had seemed impractical, even to Cooper – something to do with the smell of lemon chilli powder, tiny green frogs in the grass, and the moonlight on the beach at Mombasa. But Rakki had been five years old when his family emigrated to Britain in the late seventies, and those were the only memories he had. Later, when they stopped off at Tamworth Services, he’d mentioned Gujarat, the Indian province his grandparents came from. Rakki had never even seen it, but his brother Paresh had visited last year. There were endless opportunities for the educated Gujarati, apparently.