Free Death Toll by Jim Kelly Page B

space. A single neon tube provided scant illumination.
    Shaw closed the door and leant against it while Campbell took the one vacant seat. The room was chaotic. Against one wall stood a row of metal lockers. There was a table around which three men sat, a bench holding a kettle and mugs, and a gas ring attached to a fuel bottle. Waves of heat rolled out of an industrial paraffin heater. The floor was crowded with tools, coats, stuffed black bin-liners, here and there split to reveal the rubbish inside them. The space the men occupied was reduced to where they sat. The metal walls were damp with condensation, their only adornment a calendar, curled so much that Shaw could see only the girl’s face, a fake smile failing to mask her boredom.
    â€˜This won’t take long,’ said Shaw, addressing them all. ‘You’ll know what we’ve found – a body on top of a coffin, sharing a grave it had no right to be in. So I need to know the usual procedure before and after a funeral.’
    The three men looked at each other and the youngest, who drank from a tin of Red Bull, began to fiddle with a roll-up machine and a tin of Golden Virginia. ‘Yeah, procedure,’ he said. ‘Got to follow the rules.’
    The man in the Day-Glo jacket, who appeared to be in charge, introduced himself simply as ‘Michael’ and said he’d been working in the town’s cemeteries for thirty years – first at Gayton and now Flensing Meadow – and the routine for a burial was unchanged. The council had set down procedures, as had their union – and everyone was a member.
    They all nodded at that, the youngster licking his roll-up.
    â€˜Mind you,’ said Michael, ‘the crew they’ve got in to move the bones off the riverside, they’re not union – just cheap labour. No rules for them.’
    â€˜Scabs,’ said the kid with the Red Bull.
    â€˜Right,’ said Shaw. ‘I see. But the normal procedure for burial …’
    Michael composed himself. First thing on the day of the funeral the grave was dug by two men. Nine feet by four feet, he said. If the grave was for one coffin then it was five feet deep – allowing the statutory three feet of clearance above. One of the men operated the mechanical digger, the other set down duckboards for access to the graveside. In the days before the digger it took two men two hours to dig by hand. The union had managed to keep it a two-man job – but only on safety grounds. With one man on the digger, there had to be a standby in case of accidents.
    In poor weather a shelter could be set over the open grave to stop flooding.
    They all laughed, but it was the third man, who hadn’t spoken until then, who said, ‘Useless – they’re all wet here. Every one. Down with a splash.’ He was in his mid-twenties, with hair prematurely slate grey; handsome, but when he told Shaw his name was Dan he revealed broken teeth.
    â€˜Then we cover the grave with a board,’ said Michael, nodding back down the shadowy room to the far end where they could see a set of reinforced wooden panels. ‘These days we put artificial turf at the edges and lay some over the spoil. The pall-bearers arrange the floral tributes on the turf. Some mourners scatter earth in – or throw a flower, that kind of thing. Since Diana, all sorts goes on.’
    The three of them nodded at this truth.
    â€˜We fill the grave in at the end of the service. We don’t rush people, but some days it’s busy. So we keep an eye out; then, when the mourners leave, we fill in the grave – usually with the digger again. Takes ten minutes.’
    â€˜But you always wait?’ asked Campbell.
    â€˜Absolutely – don’t want to upset no one.’
    Campbell nodded, knowing that wasn’t true. She’d been to an aunt’s funeral at Gayton the month before and she’d had to walk her mother away from the