He was on time, but people were already oozing out of the door. Liz must have decided that the service itself was private. Karl stood by his car and scrutinised the mourners. Some of the men who came out of the church were big, mean-looking brutes in suits who shook dozens of hands and were given space wherever they stood or stepped or turned. He assumed these people were other ganglords, maybe rivals who had turned up to pay their respects. They might have been employees, hired muscle mourning the loss of their beloved boss, or just their beloved jobs. Many of the other attendees were ladies attached to those men and a host were children and teenagers. This scene fitted more with the gangland community picture that he’d had in mind, but overall there seemed nothing untoward. It was just a funeral. He wondered how many of the sixty or so present actually wanted to be here. He certainly didn’t.
He didn’t see Liz.
The burial was elsewhere.
He crossed to the café to fetch Katie.
* * *
She was silent for most of the drive to the cemetery and he had a good idea why. She had never quite forgiven Liz for entering their lives and all the damage she brought.
When they arrived at the cemetery, she announced that she would wait in the car.
The crowd was bigger at this venue. At least a hundred, all in black. The sky was overcast, the gravestones were grey, and even the grass in this monochrome world was washed out, all of which added to his depression. Here, further indication of Grafton’s criminal status: the gates were manned by shady-looking big guys to keep out intruders. Others lined the perimeter wall at intervals. Karl had a mad moment when he searched the skies for some enemy of Grafton’s coming in by parachute.
Finally, he spotted Liz. She was in a black suit dress and had black hair now, dyed to match this dark occasion. It was also cut short, as if she’d opted for practicality rather than appearance. During the burial, she kept her head bowed, dabbing at her eyes now and then. Karl kept back, beside a large mausoleum some 260 feet away, and watched the show. He felt like an intruder.
He couldn’t hear anything, and, although the silence was eerie, he preferred that. The things said around the grave wouldn’t gel with what he believed about Ronald Grafton. He tried not to look at an open grave near where he stood, lined with wooden planks and tarpaulin, a great mound of dirt next to it. He tried not to wonder which poor bastard was going into that one later today. He pictured a family milling outside the church, waiting for their turn. Busy places, graveyards. People were dying to get in, so went the old joke.
The coffin was lowered. Liz and another woman, facing each other across the hole, tossed in a handful of dirt each. Liz then lowered a small wooden box using a length of rope, tossed the rope in and stepped back.
And then it was done. He wondered why he’d come since he’d been nothing but an observer, and always from a distance. He watched people file away, but Liz broke off and approached him.
‘Glad you could come.’ She lit a cigarette. Had she started smoking since he’d last seen her?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, thinking that was the line to use at a burial.
She nodded.
Beyond them, the final few people were vanishing. They were alone except for a mourner off to the left, coming in their direction. Some guy in a suit with an opened umbrella covering most of his head, as if he expected rain to pay its weekly respects to a dead relative. But the grey skies were all bark and no bite.
‘The wake is at my house. Both welcome, if you like. I’m guessing your wife felt awkward being here today. I hope she and the baby are okay, by the way.’
As she raised the cigarette to her lips, he noticed a bandage along the underside of her hand where the paw print tattoo was. Or used to be.
She saw his eyes drop to her hand and said: ‘Part of the accepting.’
He understood: why pretend the journey wasn’t over?
‘The wake?’ She prompted.
Karl noticed the mourner had veered off a path, and was heading their way. He looked around to make sure he wasn’t standing too close to a grave. ‘I think I need to get home,’ he said. ‘Katie and the baby are fine though. Thank you. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, too. This has been the hardest part. Hopefully life gets easier from here.’
Karl had buried his father five years earlier. He could testify that time was a good healer. But he said nothing. The events of last week had mentally battered and bruised him and he wondered how his wounds would heal over the next five years.
Liz heard the approach of the suited mourner, turned; Karl saw that he was weaving his way past graves just thirty feet away. She sounded like she wanted to wrap things up before the stranger was in their vicinity. ‘Well, I should get back. Maybe we’ll meet again, Karl Seabury.’
‘Maybe, Elizabeth Grafton,’ he replied, before he could wonder if she’d reverted to her maiden name. To accept the journey’s end.
Liz turned to go. She paused to let the mourner walk across her path, but he didn’t. As Karl watched in shock, the mourner stepped across a grave laid with coloured stones, dropped his umbrella, and yanked her, one-handed, into him. He slipped an arm across her chest and his elbow in her throat in a vice-like lock. Even before her scream of shock, Karl recognised the man. The head was shaved and ragged stubble covered his face, but Karl couldn’t fail to identify the face that surfaced in his mind a hundred times a day.
Mick McDevitt put a blade to Liz’s face and said: ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
‘Run, Seabury, and I’ll gut her right here, and you’ll have to live with that.’
He started walking, dragging Liz with him, towards Karl, who backed off, his mind racing. He could scream out, but would that help? The nearest people were over 200 feet away, and even if some of those big guys heard and raced this way, it wouldn’t happen immediately, would it? Maybe nobody would see their bodies in the grass at this distance. Just a guy in a suit who’d cried out in distress by the grave of his loved one.
‘Stop and turn around,’ Mick said. The last thing Karl wanted to do was give this guy his back out here, alone, but his body disobeyed his mind. He stopped, and he turned, and braced for overwhelming pain. But none came. A hand grabbed his shirt collar and he was pushed onwards, and just inches behind was Liz’s ragged breathing. The ground levelled out and they hit a path, but didn’t follow it. Across, and onto a section of ground where new gravestones poked up, perfectly upright, amid mown grass.
There was an open grave. His fear rose as they moved towards it. There was nobody here. Karl realised McDevitt planned to throw their bodies into that open hole. His eyes searched the ground ahead for a weapon. He’d already decided he was going to make a move, and he even saw it in his mind, like a remembered movie scene: at the edge of the grave, he would grab Mick’s hand, clamp it down hard onto his shoulder, and leap over the hole. He’d land on the other side, and Mick and Liz would be yanked into the abyss. From his sunken position, knife or no, Mick wouldn’t stand a chance thereafter.
But they were one grave short of the final setting for this blockbuster when Mick pulled him up short. He felt a jerk, and a yell from Liz as she was thrown aside, then a kick to the back of his knees. He landed on his arse, and scrabbled aside, hands thrown up to deflect a blow that never came. As he turned, he saw Mick, just feet away, haul Liz’s tiny frame to her feet with ease, and push her hard towards… not the open grave, but the gravestone of its neighbour. She hit it hard, head first, and collapsed onto the grass. He grabbed her hair, that other hand still holding the knife, and ground her face hard into the stone.