Free Surrender by Donna Malane Page A

of the autopsy — that would have been too easy — but the forms noted that Snow’s body had been released to Hooper Funeral Directors. Killers often go to their victim’s funeral, which is why cops attend the funeral as well. Families think cops are being sensitive. If they knew the funeral was also being filmed they might rethink the sensitivity bit. I hadn’t seen Snow at Niki’s funeral. I hadn’t really seen anything except that coffin. It occurred to me I’d never asked Sean if Niki’s funeral had been filmed.
    It was only when I waved goodbye to the Ben Harper fans as they drove off and I stood looking blankly at the empty car park space that I remembered my car was still parked outside the Wainuiomata Police Station.

CHAPTER 7
    I knew enough about Snow to bluff the telephonist at the Hooper Funeral Directors into believing I was a relative of the deceased who wanted to attend the final service for my good old cousie Snow. I was relieved I didn’t have to taxi over there to bullshit her in person. She told me the service was at two thirty today at St Joseph’s — a big, modern hybrid of a church that motorists swing past between Regional Wines and the Mt Victoria tunnel. Having a church at the entrance to a tunnel seemed appropriate somehow.
    I had about half an hour to get there. Given my carless state and the fact I hadn’t yet eaten, the timing was perfect. I’ve always considered stomach rumbling at funerals bad mannered, topped only by farting and taking phone calls during the service. I would behave well at Snow’s funeral for the sake of those poor bastards who had loved the prick at some time in his useless excuse for a life. If it had just been between me and Snow’s ghost, I’d have had no qualms about dancing naked on his coffin, stomach rumbling, farting and singing loudly into my phone.
    The walk from the Newtown hospital to Mt Victoria and theseafood with double cheese sandwich on the way made me feel better in opposite yet strangely complementary ways. I was at the church in plenty of time to pick out the tinted-window van parked in Brougham Street from which the cops were filming the arrivals, and to find myself a place in the church where I could watch the grieving mourners without being too noticeable. I’d been to funerals at the U-shaped St Joseph’s before and knew that the best sight line was over by the organ to the far right of the entrance.
    The church was filling up but I excused my way past the few people already seated and shuffled to an empty possie at the tip of the U. From there I could see pretty much everyone face on, except those directly in front of me. The design and architecture attempted a fusion of modern and classical, Christian with secular. A big ask but they’d done their best. I craned my neck at the ceiling — looking heavenward is what you’re supposed to do in a church. The architect had gone for a lofty form with dark-stained, arched beams ribcaged across the ceiling, presumably in an attempt to simulate flying buttresses of the gothic variety.
    It made me feel as if I was trapped underneath an upturned boat but it didn’t seem to be having that effect on anyone else. It was hard to tell though, given that most of the fifty or so people were looking distressed anyway. Funerals do that to you. Floor-to-ceiling stained glass window panels separated the congregation on either side of the altar but there were no shepherds or bleeding hearts for the rosy light to shine through. Instead they’d gone for safe geometric shapes which I believe were popular in the ’70s as background to shag-piled conversation pits.
    The coffin was centre stage, one step down from an almost aggressively simple linen-covered altar. There was a pervasive smell of alcohol — either the mourners had been drowning theirsorrows already, someone had gone overboard with parallel import aftershave, or the priest had been sampling the altar wine. Perhaps all three.
    A trio of large,