Free Grave Concerns by Rebecca Tope Page A

family – he’d be expected to find money for college fees when he was fifty, pressured to make a respectable income for at least the next twenty years, surrounded by noisy demands.
    Before they left, Hubert Grainger handed over a cheque for three hundred pounds and shook Drew vigorously by the hand. ‘Excellent job, excellent,’ he said. ‘You chose a perfect spot for the poor old boy to rest in. We read about this place in the local rag, you know. It’s every bit as pleasant as we imagined it would be.’ He turned and looked towards the top of the field, more or less exactly at the place where the body had been found. Drew held his breath, expecting somecomment about the discovery of the dead woman, but it never came. Instead, the man went on to ask, ‘All right if we come by for a visit from time to time, is it? Just for old time’s sake?’
    ‘Of course,’ Drew told him. ‘That plot’s yours now, to visit whenever you like.’
    ‘D’you hear that, Mildred?’ He turned to his wife, who was standing with her back to them, gazing up the field, apparently lost in painful thoughts. ‘Mr Slocombe says we can visit whenever we like.’
    The woman turned slowly to face him. ‘I’m not sure I’ll want to do that, Hubert. It’s all so sad here.’
    ‘Buck up, old thing,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll be all right, you see.’ And he led her back to the Volvo, pausing only to nod a final thanks.
    It was the first time Drew had buried an animal – although he’d once had cause to keep a dead dog in Daphne Plant’s mortuary fridge – and he was astonished at how moving the experience had been. As he watched the grieving couple drive away, he blinked rapidly for a few moments.
       
    It was definitely coincidental that Drew was at the local police station to collect a burial order when the fax came through from the Cullompton Police to say there was a possible witness to the burial of the unidentified body in Slocombe’s Field.
    ‘Hey, Drew – come and look at this,’ invited PC Tony Stacey, who was holding the sheet of paper. ‘They’re talking about you again.’ He beckoned Drew to his desk, and proffered the faxed message.
    ‘Witness has come forward to say she saw two people burying something shaped like a human body in the Slocombe Burial Ground at North Staverton. Mrs Caroline Kennett was on a train late at night, and saw something going on from the window. Date said to be 12th August last year. Over to you, mate. Give us a call if you’d like to interview the witness .
    ‘Well, well. There is a railway line running alongside your field, isn’t there?’
    Drew nodded. ‘But how can she have seen anything? Everything’s pitch black, in the countryside, and she was on a well-lit train.’
    ‘We can ask her to explain. Not that it helps much. Just means we have a date.’
    ‘One that’s easy to remember anyway,’ said Drew casually.
    ‘Why’s that then?’
    ‘Glorious twelfth? Grouse shooting starts, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Not much of a shot myself,’ said PC Stacey, with a parody of modesty that did nothing to conceal the flash of dislike. ‘Not a date that immediately thrills my heart.’ He leant forward.‘To be perfectly honest, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it. Not the sort of circles I move in.’
    ‘Well, me neither, really,’ said Drew, suppressing a sigh. Yet again he’d managed to make himself look arrogant, or pretentious, by being too clever. It happened depressingly frequently, always in the company of other men. No wonder he preferred being amongst women: they never seemed threatened by displays of knowledge.
       
    The burial order he’d been collecting was for one Cynthia Smithers, aged seventy-two, dead of congestive heart failure without having consulted a doctor for nearly a year. Her two sons and three daughters had collectively agreed on a Peaceful Repose funeral, having read about it in the local press. ‘There’s precious little money around,