by Lauren White
Are you going to the funeral, Auntie Kate?
Damn! That's why Carrie is dressed in black. She must think me an idiot.
Will you sit next to me?
I smile down into Jethro's eager little face. Of course, I will. Does it start soon? I'd better go and get ready.
Is it me, or does the blazer hes wearing – navy blue with a white crest on the front pocket – look too big for him. He gets the short straw when it comes to clothes. Sam, the oldest, gets new, Jethro gets seconds, and Caleb gets new again because everything is too worn out, by the time he is ready for it.
Auntie Kate, what happens to you when you die?
Trust him to come up with this now. That's quite a big subject for this time in the morning, I breeze.
His eyes are shining as he waits for me to enlighten him.
Well, I imagine we go back to where we came from.
I should have realised he wouldn't let me get away with that.
He comes straight back at me. Where is that?
I grin in defeat. That's the problem, Jethro. As soon as we're born we start to forget. He looks baffled more than disappointed. Quit while you're behind I self-counsel. Have you seen the kite over there?
He shrugs. He always was the difficult one to distract. He takes after me. He is tenacious.
Maybe you should ask Mummy where we come from, I suggest, as I stride through the doorway on my way to the bathroom. I was born before her, Jethro. I've had more time to forget.
Funerals always make me want to laugh. That's just hysteria, my mother once diagnosed, when I confided in her about this. It must have something to do with your father dying when you were only ten years old. According to her, everything which happened in our family A.D. (After Dad), including her cancer, had something to do with him dying when Carrie and I were ten years old. I didn’t even go to his funeral. The chapel of rest was the furthest I managed to get that terrible week. When the undertaker lifted the lid of my father’s coffin so I could say goodbye to him, I was confronted by this waxy doll in a night shirt. He looked like a glove puppet. He looked like Punch. Drawing the undertaker aside, I remember asking him: Don’t you think he’s wearing too much make up? The man dipped his head three or four times in a fawning gesture, I imagine he thought respectful, before breaking it to me that since my father had lain dead on his side for ten hours, his blood had pooled, creating a dark red stain under the skin. A lot of foundation is needed to cover over something like that. Oh I see, I said, struggling to take this in. Back at the corpse, I realised there were strands of what looked like cotton wool protruding from his eyes and mouth. Maybe it’s that he has been a little overstuffed then, I tried. In life, he had folds of flesh on either side of his mouth. I put my hands to my face to demonstrate. But, they seem to have been filled up with something. I puffed out the lower part of my own cheeks to show him what I meant. He was staring at me with a curious expression. I was a species of child mourner he hadn’t come across before, obviously. It doesn’t look like my father, I finally admitted to him in case he was missing my point. Then, I withdrew from my pocket a bridge of four false teeth, wrapped in a paper hanky, which I pushed into his hand. Would these help? The hospital gave them to Mum with his things. He lost the real ones in a motorbike accident. The undertaker received my tiny parcel by dipping his head manically a dozen times, although not rapidly enough to conceal his astonishment. Shall I leave you alone with the deceased? He was obviously having second thoughts about it. Perhaps, he was worried I would start rearranging my father’s stuffing myself. Carrie was the sensible one. She stayed away. I’d rather remember him the way he was, she sobbed, as she watched me with my head down the toilet, retching up my guts afterwards. How right she was. It took me months to get the glove puppet out of my mind.
Leaning across Caleb to whisper to my sister, I ask: Where's the wake being held? But, my brother-in-law butts in before she can answer.
Do we have to go to the wake?
She turns to glare at him. Of course, we do. Trevor's girl will have been up half the night doing the food.
Goody. If it is in the banqueting suite at Trevor's pub, it will be a decent bash. I wave jauntily at some friends sitting a few rows behind me. They're staring straight at me but, ridiculously, they refuse to acknowledge me. Why do people always feel so constrained at funerals? There's a couple alongside them who are the spitting image of my next door neighbours in Deptford. It can’t be them, can it? I wouldn't have thought we moved in the same circles. When I bought my flat, an ex-council place by the old wharves, it was the only one cheap enough for me to afford, but barely a year later, Bennett and Chelsee (Americans obviously) paid something obscene for theirs.
Jethro elbows me. Have you seen her? What's she doing here, Auntie Kate?
Who?
There at the back. It is the lady in the rocking chair.
I follow his line of sight. The one who listens to your piano practice?
He nods, earnestly, his black fringe flopping forwards. I must remember to remind Carrie it needs cutting.
The lady in the newspaper - the one with the glassy eyes, he whispers, dramatically.
It isn't possible to see her eyes from where we’re sitting but it is hard to miss the fact she is dressed in a powder blue cocktail dress. Not the most suitable attire for a funeral, I would have thought.
What does she want, Auntie Kate?
That's what I intend to find out, Jethro, I declare, rising.
The coffin has been placed on two trestles, blocking the centre aisle which makes it awkward to get past. The polished mahogany lid is crowned with a massive halo of sunflowers. They’re my favourite flowers in fact but an unusual choice for a funeral wreath. I take the side aisle to the back of the crematorium instead. Jethro's glassy eyed lady is seated alone on the last pew.
Is anyone sitting here?
She examines me with an amused expression. Does it look like it to you?
Those seven words tell me everything I need to know about her. Each syllable is enunciated with cut-glass precision and coated with a watery (bottled not tap) disdain. This is what comes from being marinated in wealth and privilege in your mother's womb, I shouldn’t wonder. This woman has a sense of superiority in her bone marrow. She is about my age, with long yellow tresses, a high Elizabethan forehead, and sapphire blue eyes. They're glassy, exactly, as Jethro described, although in me they conjure up the image of a porcelain doll. She’s petite as a doll too. I feel like a dark tower as I sit down beside her.
Are you a friend of the departed?
Not, exactly, she answers. Why are you?
Her tone is flippant and I don’t understand why. I can’t think for a moment. I feel confused. I look around me. The hall where we’re sitting is a simple white painted rectangle, with modern wooden pews. It is packed with police uniforms. We must be here to say goodbye to one of our own. But, I’m not sure...
My name is Belinda Montgomery and I need to speak with you, Detective Inspector.
That really surprises me. Missing persons are nothing to do with me, Ms Montgomery. I only investigate murders.
She is staring at me, strangely. You really don’t know, do you?
Know what?
She flicks some imaginary dirt off the hem of her dress. How have you been feeling recently Detective Inspector?
Fine, why?
You haven't had anything happen to you? Anything...violent? An accident perhaps?
She moves her index finger round in a circle, as though trying to encourage me to develop the idea. Smaller circles with her finger touching her temple, accompanied by a low warbling whistle, would more accurately describe my reaction to her question. She is mad. I slide myself a little further away from her on the pew and look for my boss, Detective Chief Inspector Bixby, in the crowd. I saw him earlier with Fester and Nigs, who work with me. If I can attract their attention, we could get Belinda out of here, without causing too much of a disturbance. She must have gone m
issing because she is having some kind of breakdown. I see Bixby heading for the podium but, the moment I stand up to wave to him, Belinda pulls me down onto the pew again, and as I fall backwards beside her, I hear the screech of a car.
Hell's teeth! What was that? There is a deafening crunch and I feel nothing. I don't understand.
Belinda is looking at me as though she isn't sure what I'm going to do next.
Was it you who ran me over?
She shakes her head.
But this is a dream, right? I don't even bother to wait for her to reply because I know it isn’t. I have to get out of here. I have to...
Don't you want to hear what they have to say?
Sliding to the end of the pew, I ease myself out into the aisle.
Do as you please, Detective Inspector, she hisses after me. It is your bloody funeral.
All I can think of is getting away. No, what I want to do is run away. But, that would feel too much like losing control and I have to keep a hold of myself - of whatever is left of me - otherwise...I head towards the double doors at the back of the crematorium which Val, one of the civilian workers from my office, is about to close. I can hear Belinda following behind me in her high heels, powder blue satin ones to match her dress. Bixby's deep voice with the pleasing singsong lilt of St Vincent resonates from the podium, around the hall.
Detective Inspector, Kate Madding, was such a handful. The remark is greeted by the laughter of recognition. Relief too. Relief at knowing they're still alive and I’m... She was so full of life, she left me and everyone else around her breathless. She was one of the brightest and at times fiercest detectives I've ever had the honour of knowing. She did everything in a hurry. She spoke, ate, worked, got herself promoted, everything, faster than everyone else. It was as though she knew she wasn’t going to have much time.
I am through those doors before he can say anything more.
Are you okay?
I glare at Belinda. What do you think! Why didn't anyone say something? Why didn't I realise? I feel so stupid.
You were probably too shocked to take it in. It was the same with me. Well, it is bound to be a shock, isn't it? She turns to look back at the crematorium to give me a little space to recover myself. They’re such awfully drab places, aren’t they? No character at all. I definitely want to be done in a church when they find me.
That’s when I finally fall in.
You’re dead, not missing.
She nods, grimly. Which is exactly why I’ve come here to speak with you D. I. Ghost.
What should you do if you discover you’re dead and didn't know it? I do what I've always done when something emotionally upsetting happens, I throw myself into work. I agree to meet with Belinda at my new office in the basement of my sister's house. It is full of junk but I manage to find a battered old civil service desk that Carrie picked up from a second hand store, back in the days when she did Phil's accounts, plus a couple of red plastic stacking chairs. Neither Belinda nor I actually need them. It is just as comfortable sort of hanging around. But, given the newness of our situation I decide they might help to foster an air of familiarity. The only passably useful item of furniture I add to my new haunt is a three tiered filing cabinet which Carrie painted blue for some reason. It has an empty set of buff hanging files in every drawer, hungry for distraction. I can’t help wondering, as I survey this admittedly rather desultory scene, whether I should have set myself up in my flat instead, where there is at least a study tastefully furnished from IKEA. While I was living, this provided me with the perfect retreat from the commotion of the Murder Investigation Team's shared office; from the open sewer of smutty jokes running through it, specifically. But, in my afterlife I crave commotion. I am drawn to anything and anyone that lives; to my sister and her family most of all. I fill myself up with her and the boys as though life itself were catching.
Belinda is still wearing her blue satin cocktail dress when she arrives, or to be more accurate the memory of it lingers on in her like perfume. It is hard to describe how I perceive her. She gives the impression of herself as she was in life but the source of this impression is energy and not matter.
She coolly examines the microdot of order I've created in the middle of Carrie's unwanted debris and fixes me with her glassy stare.
I want to know what happened to me, Detective Inspector, she says, with the clipped dignity of a character in a Noel Coward play. How I got to be...well, dead. And, my body is... Well, it is missing. I do realise it can't do me much good now but would like to discover where it is.
Such a surreal brief: a dead woman who doesn’t know how she died or where her body is. I always assumed when you died you’d know everything but it isn't like that at all. Both Belinda and I appear to be suffering from some kind of posthumous traumatic stress. Not the best starting point for an investigation. Fortunately, she isn’t aware of my misgivings. I must be getting more skilled at keeping some of my thoughts to myself. This is a relief. Angst sharing isn't my thing.
I suggest we begin at the beginning.
Which is where exactly?
Bixby my boss is fond of saying that a police investigation is forty percent fact and sixty percent luck. Luck Belinda and I are surely out of, which leaves us with what exactly...I decide to start with the basics.
What’s your full name?
Reassured by being asked a question to which she actually knows the answer Belinda immediately cheers up. That’s easy. My full name is Belinda Eugenia Isabel Montgomery but everyone calls me, Bim.
Everyone but me she means. What kind of name is Bim for a grown woman?
I'd like you to tell me the last thing you remember, before you realised you were dead, Belinda.
Did that seem weird to her too? Apparently not, she launches into a long explanation.
I was on my way to the cocktail party, my company had organised for some new clients - merchant bankers. Do you know what they are? Well, we hired a restaurant in Bayswater, near to our public relations agency. I set off in my company BMW from my home Greenwich - I have a mews house there, close to the river. It was about seven o'clock in the evening when I left. But, I never arrived.
I can’t decide whether she is answering my question or trying to impress me because the words that leap out at me are: cocktail party, merchant bankers, Bayswater, BMW, and mews house.
Do you have any idea why you didn’t arrive?
Well, I'm thinking abduction and murder, Detective Inspector, the same as everyone else. But, my mind is pretty much a complete blank from the time I drove away from home. The next thing I remember, I was wandering about in the street in an extremely distressed state but nobody could see or hear me. I didn't realise it at first but I was dead.
I read in the newspaper you went missing on June 7th.
I remember the date particularly because it was the very day on which I myself turned out to have died. Belinda’s car was found abandoned in New Cross, the following day, only ten minutes drive away from her home. There was no sign of a struggle. Nor had the car broken down. Yet, it was obvious to the police that something untoward must have happened because her handbag - with her purse, driver's licence, and credit cards - was discovered under the passenger seat.
When does your memory kick in again?
Three nights and two days later.
This puts an end to that line of questioning. She could have been taken to the Outer Hebrides and back in that time. Her body might be anywhere. I change tack.
Does anyone stand to gain from your death?
The beneficiaries of my Will, I suppose, but they're all members of my family and frankly Detective Inspector none of them is strapped for cash. An account executive at work is likely to be promoted into my role but there's no way of knowing who yet. I won’t be easy to replace, I can tell you that. My death is a disaster for the agency. They’re bound to lose clients because of it.
Do you have a partner?
Not as such...She hesitates.
But?
It’s a bit of a cliché.
What is?
I've been having an affair with my boss.
This is more like it. Most murder victims are killed by someone they know.
It’s a him?
She nods.
Is he married?
No, what do you take me for? He’s divorced.
So how long have you been seeing him?
Six months but we’ve kept it quiet. Nobody knows at the office. We didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable about it. You know, working together, sleeping together. It could be embarrassing...
Would your boss have any reason to want you dead?
She pauses almost imperceptibly, before she bludgeons me with her rebuttal.
No, forget that, Detective Inspector! Definitely not! Not in a billion years! The man wouldn't harm a hair on my head!
I have my prime suspect. Call me a cynic but trusting the intuition of a murder victim doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. Let’s face it. They’re not exactly likely to be the best judges of character, are they?
My desk at work is exactly as I left it. Nobody has taken so much as a paper clip. I feel proud to have been part of a team like that. I choose not to sit at it, however. I may be invisible but I don't feel it. Blind panic pulses through me every time someone living looks in my direction. My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Bixby, is on leave so I go to his office to use the computer there. I'm betting he won’t have gotten around to blocking my access yet. Perhaps, they don’t if you die which is a bit of an oversight as it turns out. As I wait for the system to crank into life, my attention is drawn by one of the framed photographs, hanging on the wall. It was taken last Christmas in our local pub. There we are - Bixby, Fester, Nigs, and I - rat-arsed and grinning from ear to ear. Little did any of us know back then that within another six months one of us would be dead. I don't know how - I’m not even touching it - but the photograph seems to leap off the wall at me. I’m so surprised, I let it smash onto the floor and before I can recover from the shock of this, the door flies open and Nigs comes in. He looks perplexed while he tries to locate the source of the noise which has brought him running. Spotting the shattered frame under Bixby's desk, he picks it up and bangs it against the inside of the paper bin to release the remaining shards of glass. He is about to place it on the table, when he does something extraordinary. He lifts it to his mouth and kisses it. He kisses me to be precise and stranger still I swear I can feel the caress of his lips on mine.