I hate cemeteries. I don’t have a fear of them; it’s not a phobia like someone who is too scared to fly but must fly anyhow. I just don’t like them. I can’t really say they represent all that is wrong with this world, because that wouldn’t be a fair comment. Not logically.
But I feel that way. I think it’s because they represent what happens to all the people in the world who have been wronged, and even then they only speak for the ones who are found. There are others out there in shallow graves, in creeks and crevasses and oceans, or held down by chains, who cannot be spoken for with gravestones, only by the memories their loved ones have of them. Of course, that isn’t a fair statement either. That would be like assuming all of the graves out here belong to victims of crime, and of course only a few do. Most belong to people too old to live, too young to have died, or simply too unlucky to keep living.
My cellphone rings every minute or so as I drive away and
I’m lucky the thing still works after going in the drink. Salt water would have been a different story. As soon as I get past the gates I hit the blockade, where police cars are parked on angles across the road to prevent other people coming to mourn the dead, or
prevent the dead from escaping and mingling with the mourning.
I weave my way through them into the media blockade. It’s the
circle of life out here. Vans and four-wheel-drives with news
channel logos stencilled across the side and aerial dishes mounted on top are parked at haphazard angles, the rain no deterrent for the camera crews and reporters trying to look pretty in the drizzle.
I manage to get past, pretending I can’t hear the same questions yelled at me from every interviewer.
After them comes the first wave of get-home traffic that creates a blockade in the city at this time of the day. My wet jacket and shirt are in the back seat along with the borrowed windbreaker.
I have the blanket draped over my seat so my clothes don’t soak into the upholstery. With the heater blasting on full, moisture forms on the windscreen that the air conditioner can’t keep up with. Every half minute I have to wipe away the condensation
with my palm. I turn on the radio. There’s a Talking Heads song on. It suggests I know where I’m going but I don’t know where
I’ve been. I turn the radio off. Talking Heads have got it wrong in my case.
The first call I answer is from Detective Inspector Landry,
asking me to head into the station to provide a formal statement.
He probably figures he can do the world a favour by keeping me squirrelled away for a few hours running over all the exact reasons that added up to my being in a cemetery with dead bodies that
can’t be accounted for. When I ask him if they’ve tracked down the caretaker, he tells me they’ll inform me when they do, and we both know it’s bullshit.
The next two calls are from reporters. I knew some of them
would recognise me as I was driving away. Reporters are quick
like that. I go further back than yesterday’s news, and these guys have long memories. I hang up on their questions before they can finish asking.
Then my mother calls me, telling me she saw me on TV
sitting in the back of an ambulance and wanting to know what
has happened to me. Clearly the police didn’t have the cemetery as well cordoned off as they thought. I tell my mother that I fell into the lake, that was all, and that I still have all my limbs. She tells me to be careful, that I shouldn’t go swimming with so many clothes, and that she and Dad are worried. Bridget, my wife, she points out, would be worried as well.
When I manage to hang up, the phone rings again and another reporter asks me whether I’m back on the city’s payroll. I decide to switch my phone off, which is a pretty good decision considering the alternative of rolling down my window and throwing it into the elements.
I put both hands on the wheel and start thinking about the
three bodies, wondering if there are more. I start spinning the possibilities around in my mind, but it isn’t long before I have to concentrate less on the corpses and more on trying not to
become one as the traffic becomes thick with SUVs blocking
intersections.
My office is in town, situated in a complex with a hundred other offices, most of them belonging to law and insurance firms, from whom I get most of my business. Following cheating husbands
for divorce settlements and photographing people scamming their insurance providers allows me to pay the rent, and occasionally I even get to eat. Now I’m digging up coffins and swimming with
corpses and the pay is the same. I park in my space behind the building and, still shoeless and saturated, make my way inside to the elevators and ride eight storeys closer to Heaven.
Because most of my clients are in the same building, and any
other business I attract comes through phone calls and word
of mouth, I come and go as I please, allowing my answering
machine to be my secretary. I have enough computer skills to
type up my own reports; I know how to file; and I know how to