by M J Lee
‘Give me a sec, I’ll dig them out for you. My dad wanted to throw them out last year, but I hung on to them. Gives the place an authenticity – a heritage, if you like. I was going to display them in the lobby, but it didn’t fit in with the brand image we wanted to portray. Would you like a guided tour? We’ve modernized all the operations and brought in the latest embalming machines from Porti-Boy. You know, magnetic driven pumps, precision valves and switches, digital read-outs. The latest gear basically, allowing the embalmer to match their style to the needs of the customer.’
‘I think I’ll pass. Thank you.’
Ridpath could see Mr Daly was disappointed in his lack of interest in the latest technology. The undertaker left the conference room, shouting loudly for a Miss Hargreaves.
Ridpath was left on his own. All this talk of death was unnerving him. He didn’t want to think about these sorts of places. One day somebody would have to do it all for him. Until then, the less he knew about the process, the better.
He remembered when he was told he had cancer. For a few months, pains in his back and chest had been bothering him. Even worse, they kept moving around as if something was inside his body, poking here and there. He’d visited the GP a few times but nothing had been diagnosed. He thought it was just stress from the job: the antisocial hours, eating badly, running all over Manchester chasing cons. He even tried a course of acupuncture at some quack Polly’s mother recommended.
‘He very good, trained in China.’
After two weeks of being stuck with more needles than a pin cushion he felt no better.
At the time he was in the middle of a major investigation, his first time in charge since his promotion. He had been feeling tired and achy for a month with a cough that just wouldn’t go away despite drinking gallons of Boots’ magic mixture. He thought he was just a little run-down from the pressure of being in charge. He so wanted to prove himself to John Gorman and Charlie Whitworth, repay their faith in him.
Finally, Polly had threatened him with divorce if he didn’t go to see a specialist. Of course, because he had a cough, they sent him to a thoracic consultant. He went, reluctantly, patiently explaining how busy he was at the moment and could he have some antibiotics to kill the cough. The consultant, a woman, had listened quietly, asking simple questions.
‘How long have you had the cough?’
‘About four weeks?’
‘Any other aches and pains?’
He told her of his tiredness and general fatigue, and of the ache in his bones, like he had forgotten something.
‘Sore throat?’
‘A little, but I have been speaking a lot recently.’ He showed her his Strepsils.
‘Any weight loss?’
He looked at the waistband of his trousers. It had been loose recently, but he thought it was because he had been eating so irregularly. The bastards who had been importing the crack were constantly on the move, changing houses every other day. He had to keep up with them.
She had finally put her pen down. ‘I’m booking you in for an MRI scan tomorrow.’
‘So quick?’
‘No time to waste, Mr Ridpath.’
Of course, the MRI picked up the damage to his bones straight away.
The consultant was firm. ‘I’ll give you a course of antibiotics, Mr Ridpath, to help clear up the cough, but I think you should go to see another specialist to look into the underlying causes of your tiredness and weight loss, and to examine these results.’ She pointed to the MRI scan.
‘It’s just the job. I’ll be fine once this case is in the bag.’
‘I would advise you to see a specialist at Christie’s.’
The name of the famous hospital immediately hit home. ‘You think I have cancer?’
The doctor looked straight at him. ‘I’m not sure, Mr Ridpath, but I think we need to check out the symptoms, don’t you? If it is a cancer and it is malignant, it would be much better if we catch it early.’
He hated the ‘we’.
We didn’t have cancer, he did.
‘I’d like to think about it.’
‘My advice is to check it out. I think we can get you an appointment with a specialist in a week.’
He stood up. ‘Maybe, after the case is completed.’ He held out his hand. ‘Thank you, doctor.’
The pain struck that evening. He was just debriefing the team. They were going in mob-handed the following morning to raid one of the premises of the gang. With a bit of luck, they would get the money and the drugs and the whole bloody lot of them. He was just going through the operational directions when he felt a stabbing pain shoot up through his chest. He stopped talking and sat down immediately.
Harry Makepeace was by his side. ‘You OK, boss?’
He nodded his head and tried to carry on speaking, but the pain intensified, coming in waves. He asked Harry to take over and finish for him, while he sat on a chair holding his side.
‘You’re not looking great, boss – white as the National Front.’
‘I’ll be all right, Harry. Just need a good night’s sleep. See you here at six tomorrow?
‘You sure, boss?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure,’ he snapped, instantly regretting his show of temper. ‘See you tomorrow morning, Harry.
Of course he had gone home and not said a word to Polly, holding the pain inside. But sleep was difficult, lying horizontal only making it worse. Eventually he found the only comfortable position was sitting upright in bed, the pillows supporting his back.
‘What’s wrong?’ ask Polly sleepily.
‘Nothing, go back to sleep.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just an ache. It’s nothing.’
She was instantly awake, propping herself up on her elbow. ‘I know something’s wrong. Tell me.’
It was time to own up. ‘I went to the doctor. They’ve booked me in to see a specialist at Christie’s.’
‘She sat up. ‘Christie’s, oh God, no.’
‘He raised his arms painfully to quieten her. ‘Don’t worry, Poll, it’s just the doctor covering her arse. You know, they book everyone in to see specialists these days.’
‘What did she say, Thomas Ridpath?’
There it was, his full name in all its Victorian splendour. Under her forensic questioning he was forced to tell her everything: the pains, the coughing, the aches, the sudden chills and the immense sense of weariness suffusing his body.
‘Right, you’re calling in sick tomorrow.’
‘But, the case, we’re so close—’
‘The case can bloody wait. There’ll always be another case, Manchester’s never going to be short of chuffin’ criminals: they breed them on every street. But Eve isn’t going to be short of a dad, nor me of a husband. I’m going to ring the doctor tomorrow and get you an appointment as quick as we can.’
She was as good as her word. The consultant confirmed the diagnosis of myeloma and his body was soon being emptied of blood by a nurse who didn’t look like a vampire but who certainly enjoyed her profession.
‘Just another vial, Mr Ridpath. Can’t have too much blood for our tests.’
Oh yes, you can, he thought, but kept his mouth shut.
Daly interrupted his memories by bustling in through the door carrying a simple black book under his arm. On the cover, ‘2008’ was embossed in gold against the black leather. ‘Now which month would you be wanting?’
Daly flicked open the book. Each separate page contained a date, time of funeral, name of the deceased, name of the chief mourners, time and place of the service, time and place of the burial, number of mourners, number of cars, make and model of the casket, and finally the instructions for the burial. Next to some of the names were symbols in bright red ink: a downward arrow, an upward arrow and a Maltese cross. They must be some arcane undertakers’ code, he thought.
Ridpath glanced across at a few of the instructions for burial:
The deceased to be dressed in a floral yellow
dress with a picture of the grandchildren next to her.
The deceased to be buried with a book of common prayer.
The deceased to have an open coffin in the church. Canon Birch to deliver the memorial words beside the grave.
These were the wishes of the dying to be carried out by the living.
During his illness, just after he’d started chemo when he felt like death warmed up, Ridpath had left the same kind of instructions: his favourite Bowie song, ‘Starman’, to be played as his body entered the church. Then, a non-requiem mass with the lesson read by his wife. Even though he was not a religious man, he had chosen John 14: 27 as a message to her: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.’
As he left the church in his coffin, Ewan MacColl’s ‘The Joy of Living’ to be played through the speakers. Shame he wouldn’t be able to hear the Salford Scot’s voice.
It had been one of the darkest days in his whole life. The day he planned his own funeral.
‘What date would you like?’ asked Padraig Daly.
The undertaker’s voice dragged him back to the present. Ridpath tried to remember what Mrs Seagram had told him. ‘March 21st, I think. The deceased was called Alice Seagram.’ He was even talking like them now.
Daly flicked though the pristine pages of the book. January, February, March – so many deaths, so many burials.
18 March: one burial, one downward arrow.
19 March: two burials.
20 March: one burial, one upward arrow.
23 March: three burials, one with a downward arrow.
24 March: one burial.
25 March: one burial.
Daly flicked back through the pages. ‘It doesn’t look like there were any interments on that day. Are you sure you have the right date?’
Ridpath checked through his notes. March 21st, Alice Seagram buried at Stretford Cemetery. O’Shaughnessy, undertaker. ‘It’s the right date.’
Daly flicked through the pages again, more slowly this time, checking each individual page and continuing on until the end of the month. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid. Are you sure O’Shaughnessy was the funeral director?’
‘Can I take a look at the book?’
Daly handed it over.
Ridpath went through each individual entry. Nothing for an Alice Seagram.
He was about to close the book when his finger caught on a torn edge in the gutter of the entry for 20 March. He picked it up and opened it as wide as he could, holding it up to his nose so he could look down the crease between the pages.
There it was. The faintest suggestion of an edge hidden in the binding. He found the opposite page on 10 May and checked it out. The page had been cut with something sharp – a scalpel perhaps.
Two days were missing.
March 21st and 22nd.
One of them just happened to be the day Alice Seagram was buried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sarah Castle took a long swig from the coffee on her table and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was bitter, cold and tasted like somebody had pissed in it.
Perhaps somebody had pissed in it.
She looked over her shoulder. None of the other officers was looking at her and none sniggering like schoolboys behind their hands.
She exhaled and let her shoulders relax. You’re getting paranoid. Sarah, the bastards are starting to get to you.
It was only to be expected. She was one of the fast-track people: detective sergeant in only four years, slated for promotion to inspector three years from now after time spent at the police training school in Hendon. All she had to do was keep her nose clean and she would enjoy a rise like a rocket on bonfire night.
It helped having the deputy chief take an interest in you personally. Totally professional, of course, but she couldn’t help notice him staring at her open blouse in the interview. Stupid tosser. Five minutes online would have told him she wasn’t interested in men. Or dogs.
The investigation still hadn’t discovered the name of the victim. It should have been easy with such a distinctive tattoo, but last year there were 100,000 incidents of missing women in England. And those were only the cases reported. There must be countless others where a disappearance went unreported; when there were no living relatives, people no longer talking to each other, no close friends or simply nobody who actually cared.
All around her the other detectives had been chasing up leads, out on the streets knocking on doors or following up with other forces. She had just one job to do: call Belmarsh HSU and ask after James Dalbey. But she’d been putting it off since she returned from the graveyard.
She had spent the morning there, closing up the grave of Alice Seagram after the forensics team had finished. By the time she had arrived, the gravediggers, who dressed and talked like some throwbacks to the English Civil War, had already begun.
‘You should have waited for me to get here.’
The older one stopped shovelling the earth back into the grave for a moment, resting his foot with its new boot on the spade. ‘Got a double to do before noon. Mother and daughter killed in a car crash. Don’t know what the world’s coming to. Cemetery will be full soon at this rate.’
He resumed digging. The younger gravedigger had never stopped, shovelling earth with all the regularity of a human metronome. Within half an hour they were finished. The only evidence of an opened grave the mound of fresh black earth .
The undertakers’ men came later to pull down the blue tarpaulins and take them away.
When they had finished, she stood next to the grave. She wasn’t at all religious but it felt right to have a moment of silence. In the quiet, she heard a blackbird singing from the yew tree. Was it the same one as yesterday?
Probably. Even in this place of death, life carried on. A shudder went down her spine. She didn’t like graveyards. Too many dead people.
One last check of the site and she left to return to the station, only the blackbird calling her to stay.
After a quick lunch at her desk – cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread – she started her breeze block research for Ridpath.
Despite all the modern advances in police detection, she still used Google when she wanted to find stuff. With police resources so stretched, she might get an answer to a query in five days if she was lucky. With Google she had her answer in 0.18456333 seconds recurring.
A bit slow today.
She stared at the image on her screen. It looked exactly like the three breeze blocks they found in the coffin. Or casket. Or whatever they called them these days. The breeze blocks had a name, Cloverleaf, a design popular in the sixties and early seventies, but hardly manufactured any more. Who would have used them in 2008? Were they freshly made? Or were they left over from some building site? They might have a maker’s mark on them. She would ask the forensics team to take a look when she went to the lab this afternoon with Ridpath.
Time for a break. She wandered over to Harry Makepeace’s corner and sat on his desk. ‘Something’s been bothering me, Harry.’
‘There’s a cream for it from Boots.’
Makepeace was being his usual droll self. ‘You know I was working with Tom Ridpath over at Stretford Cemetery?’
‘What about it?’ he said without looking up from his computer.
‘Well, what’s his story?’
Makepeace looked over his shoulder twice. ‘Ridpath? He was one of the guv’nor’s blue-eyed boys…’ he whispered.
‘Was?’ She found herself leaning closer to him as he spoke.
‘Blotted his copy book last year during an investigation. Collapsed, didn’t he? The guv’nor put it about it was cancer, but I know better.’ He touched the side of his nose. ‘Reckon it was a nervous breakdown. Couldn’t handle the stress of being a DI, could he? Gorman had somehow wangled it to give him time off on sick leave for nine months.’
Ridpath didn’t look like some
one who would buckle under pressure – exactly the opposite. From what she saw yesterday, he loved it, thrived on it even more than she did. Some people crumble; she was one of those who sucked it up and asked for more. Tom Ridpath seemed exactly the same type.
She caught Makepeace looking down her blouse as he spoke to her. She sat up straight. ‘Thanks, Harry, but cancer is not one of those things you use as an excuse.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whatever. Still think Ridpath’s not up to the job. That’s why they’ve put him out to grass as a coroner’s officer.’
She got up from the DI’s desk and wandered back to her own. Makepeace was an idiot.. Everybody knew around the station.
She checked the clock on the wall. Like everything in headquarters it was running five minutes late. She couldn’t put it off any more.
‘Come on, get it over and done with. Procrastination is your middle name, Sarah,’ she said out loud, geeing herself up.
‘I thought it was Emily?’
This was from Alan Butcher on the computer opposite. Smart-arse.
She ignored him.
Time to ring Belmarsh. The phone was answered after three rings by an operator and she was transferred to a deputy governor.
‘HMP Belmarsh, Reynolds speaking.’
She coughed once to clear her throat. ‘Hello, Mr Reynolds, this is DS Sarah Castle from Greater Manchester Police. I just wonder if you could tell me about James Dal—’
‘Who are you?’ he interrupted.
‘DS Sarah Castle from Greater Manchester Police and I’d like to find out about James Dalbey.’
‘How do I know that?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How do I know you are DS Sarah Castle? You could be anybody.’
She had a right one here. A jobsworth. ‘I’m ringing from Greater Manchester Police HQ.’
‘Perhaps you are, I don’t know.’ Then there was a pause at the other end. ‘Listen, DS Castle, I don’t want to mess you about, but since the high court decision to exhume Dalbey’s victim, I get 20 phone calls a day pretending to be from police officers or probation officers or his solicitors, and this morning I had a call from his wife, even though I know he’s never been married.’