FIFTY-THREE
Rain billowed across the graveyard, rippling like sheets of chain mail, making the rows of wooden crosses seem even more baleful than usual. The light was fading now, and the two people standing at the graveside were shivering, although not all of that was due to the plummeting temperature and the rain seeping into their greatcoats.
An ambulance was parked nearby, as close as they could get to the grave. It contained the coffin of Sergeant Geoffrey Shipobottom, awaiting interment. But first, there was another coffin to examine.
‘You are sure about this?’ asked Brindle, a globule of rain hanging expectantly on the end of his nose, his long face a picture of misery. ‘It’s rather a lot of laws to break in one day.’
Mrs Gregson looked around the Bailleul cemetery. There was hardly another soul in sight. This section of the burial grounds was full; it had burst its boundaries. New burials were happening in adjacent plots. A few solitary figures walked between the rows some hundreds of yards away, searching for a name or number. Relatives, probably, or comrades. They paid the pair no heed, being locked in another time and place.
‘Just count yourself lucky,’ she said, ‘that they don’t do mass graves here.’ She pointed to the name on the cross. Edward Walter Hornby. ‘And it’s one man, one plot.’
The cover story for their spot of exhuming had been clever, Brindle had to admit. Mrs Gregson had told the gatekeepers that she had permission to bury Terence Hornby with his brother Edward. She even had documents saying as much. But there was no Terence Hornby. Shipobottom was playing that role. She had promised Brindle that she had written to Shipobottom’s parents with the plot number and location on it. She was adamant that any subterfuge would be undone. The driver had chosen to believe her.
‘Well,’ said Brindle in his best plummy tones. ‘I suppose we’d best get to it.’
Mrs Gregson hesitated. The confidence she had felt the previous day had evaporated overnight. She had forced herself to go through with this, to recruit Brindle, to convince him to meet her with the ambulance and the body and to start digging. It was, she had said, a matter of life and death. But at this particular moment, it felt more about death than life. That was a real body down there.
Mrs Gregson made a tentative stab with the blade of her shovel and was surprised when it slid into the soil. She looked up at Brindle.
‘Still loose from the burial, I would imagine.’ He put his own spade into the plot and lifted a dome of dark earth. Then a thought struck him. ‘Is it true the hair and nails still grow after death?’
Mrs Gregson didn’t know for sure. ‘I don’t think so. No. Unlikely.’ She carried on excavating. ‘You’ve seen enough bodies, surely?’
‘Fresh meat, mostly,’ he said. ‘And a lot of skeletons. We did do some work with bodies at St Martins, but they’d been embalmed. Death studies, as opposed to life studies.’
‘How peculiar.’
‘It made some sense. You didn’t have to pay the cadavers by the hour.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘They were like wax, shiny and unnatural. What will he look like when we open the coffin? Hornby?’
‘I have no idea.’ She leaned on the spade. ‘Not at his best, I suspect. But he’s probably past caring.’
Brindle laughed.
‘What’s funny?’ she asked.
‘You are.’
‘How do you mean?’
But he just shook his head and then bent to the digging. Mrs Gregson copied his rhythm and was soon sweating under the layers of heavy clothes she was wearing. The rain meant her hair began to stick to her forehead and cheeks, so she had to keep blowing or brushing it out of the way. Soon her face was filthy.
‘There’s another thing we haven’t thought of, Mrs Gregson,’ said Brindle when they were down about two feet.
‘What’s that?’ she gasped, glad of the chance to rest.
‘He was a big boy, that Shipobottom. It took four of us to get him into the ambulance. There’s just you and me. It’s going to be a struggle to get him in this grave.’
She looked over at the vehicle. It suddenly seemed a long way away. ‘You’ll think of something.’
Brindle hit a solid surface first, shallower than he had expected, certainly not six feet deep. So digging up Shipobottom again wasn’t going to be a problem. He would be close to the surface.
As dusk approached, they redoubled their efforts, shifting earth at a healthy lick. Soon enough, they had exposed the simple square wooden coffin. Nothing fancy, she thought.
Brindle passed her a screwdriver. ‘Me?’ she asked. ‘You want me to do it?’
‘I’ll hold the flashlight.’
‘How gentlemanly of you.’
The lid eased off after three digs and twists with the screwdriver. It looked as if the army were economizing in nails too. As she levered the top up, the box seemed to belch the vilest of smells. She staggered backwards, against the edge of their earthworks. Brindle let out a groan, found his handkerchief and pressed it against his nose.
Mrs Gregson waited for the attack of nausea to subside. If she was going to be sick, she’d be sick. She found her own handkerchief, ripped it in half and screwed one portion into each nostril. This wasn’t the time to worry about appearances.
‘There’s flashlights over there,’ said Brindle with some alarm. ‘Looks like a foot patrol. They must be closing up the cemetery.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘Mrs Gregson, I don’t want to be in some stockade for grave robbing.’
‘We are not robbing.’
‘Molesting then.’
‘I’ll molest you with the sharp edge of this spade in a minute,’ she said. It didn’t sound as if she was joking. ‘I need a light here, Brindle.’
His whining gave her courage, and she pushed the coffin lid up, holding her breath as she felt another waft of noxious gas brush over her face.
This must be the worst time to do this, she realized. In another few weeks all the decomposition would have been completed and the flesh and organs mostly liquefied. Here, the digestion was in full swing, hence the stink.
‘I hope this is worth it,’ she said to herself as she flipped open the canvas sheet that covered him. There was the sound of scuttling.
Hornby was naked under the shroud. The hands, she noticed, were still curled to claws. Despite herself, she looked at the face. The eyes had been pushed forward from the sockets. There were tiny creatures, bright red in the torch beam, running over the clouded, sightless hemispheres. The tongue, startlingly black, had been forced between the teeth. The skin had shrunk hard onto the skull. But, she noticed with relief, the skin was still intact over the upper body. A vile colour, perhaps, but intact.
She took out the magnifying glass and began to look at the blue-grey covering of his torso, examining the throat and chest, trying to ignore the red mites and other scavengers. Three, she reminded herself. You are looking for the numeral three. A series of slashes. Something regular, artificial.
Sure enough, the skin had split here and there, but in ragged lines. There was nothing that looked like a knife or a scalpel mark.
‘They’re getting closer. The guards.’ Brindle sounded frightened.
Mrs Gregson swore vigorously, which made her feel better. ‘Just a minute. I’m rushing it as it is.’
‘I’m bloody rushing you,’ said Brindle. ‘They’re coming right for us.’
She stood up, away from the coffin, and took in a lungful of relatively sweet air then, as if about to dive for pearls at some great depth, plunged in again. She waved her arms to direct the beam that Brindle controlled. The rain was hissing on Hornby’s taut skin and she risked brushing away the film of surface water. A piece of Hornby’s outer flesh the size of a dinner plate came away on her fingers. She tried to shake it off, but it seemed glued tight. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
She could hear voices now. It was hopeless. So much for playing the great detective-ess.
She scraped the pancake of skin off on the side of the coffin and replaced the lid. She stood on it, hoping that might push some of the fixings into place and then scrambled up the side of the grave.
‘Aye, aye. What’s going on here?’
There were two of them, dressed in oilskins and helmets, but, judging by their ages, not front-line soldiers.
‘I slipped in. Sorry. Gosh, that wasn’t nice. Look, we’ve been asked by the family to make sure that these two brothers are buried together. As a personal favour. And, well . . .’ She wiped the rain off her face.
‘You can’t just come here and do your own digging,’ one of them said.
‘No. I can see that now.’ She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a flask. ‘I need a drink after that tumble. Anyone? Filthy night ahead by the look of it.’
The two newcomers shrugged in unison. She moved round the hole in the ground and handed them the rum. She had intended it as a gift for Brindle, a thank you for joining her, but needs must, she supposed.
As they drank she took the flashlight off the driver and waved it at the ambulance. ‘The thing is, we’d be awfully grateful if you could help us get the coffin in here.’ She swung the flashlight down into Hornby’s grave. She heard Brindle give a little gasp. Her efforts to reseal the coffin had dislodged some of the clumps of soil that had clung to it. There, in the beam of light, as clear as if they had been recently scored, were three deep single grooves in the lid, capped and underscored by lighter strokes. The Roman numeral for three.