Dark Undertakings Read online

  How could she go home to Frank and her daughter, carry on as a normal wife and mother, after this? Without those secret afternoons, always spent outdoors in that long hot summer, life wouldn’t be possible. It was as simple as that. She could feel her body drying up, flaking away, uncelebrated by the lovely man who had enjoyed it so unashamedly and always thanked her afterwards.

  But she did go home, and Frank barely noticed that she’d been out. Why did she have to meet that creepy Sid and Brenda, of all people? She really hadn’t wanted to know what Jim looked like dead. A natural-looking corpse was no better than a mangled mess from a car crash. She couldn’t bear to think of Jim on the undertaker’s slab. She ran upstairs, but there was nothing for her to do. Popping her head round Cindy’s door, she saw her child asleep, limbs flung out in the evening warmth, carefree and tanned. Would this brief, secret summer simply form an unbreakable barrier between them for ever?

  ‘Hey, did you see this?’ said Frank, when she went downstairs again. He shook the paper at her. ‘Old Jim Lapsford’s dead. Can you believe it? Wasn’t he in the King’s Head, right as rain, the day before we went away?’

  Lorraine closed her eyes briefly and nodded. ‘They were all talking about him in there just now. It’s been a shock to everybody.’

  ‘You know what I heard?’ Frank went on, lowering his voice against invisible listeners.

  ‘What?’ She wasn’t paying him much attention; the thudding ache inside her head was too insistent. And she’d just noticed a telltale metallic taste on the back of her tongue. A certain sign of pregnancy, that. Oh, God, she thought.

  ‘Well, someone mentioned to me a while ago now that old Jim was having it off with that Roxanne woman. You know – the one in the caravan, with the frizzy hair. Always over there, apparently.’

  Lorraine stared at him. She felt her stomach swelling, forcing itself upwards, filling her throat. Her head clouded over inside, so she could hardly see. ‘What?’ she repeated, foolishly. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Steady on, love. You look really rough. Must be jetlag or something. Sit down, before you fall down.’

  ‘Roxanne? The one who’s in the pub sometimes? Who told you that? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Can’t remember who. Anyway, he died in his own bed, it says here. A blessing for his wife, some’ll say. Let’s go up, shall we? It’s been a long day.’

  Lorraine allowed him to chivvy her up to bed. She pretended to fall asleep as soon as the light was off, but she lay there for hours, endlessly exploring ways in which she could learn the truth. Had Jim really been having sex with Roxanne as well as her? The sense of betrayal was as painful as it was irrational. But he loved me, she kept repeating to herself. He said he loved me more than anybody he’d ever known. And then, as she finally drifted off to sleep: If he wasn’t already dead, I think I’d kill him.

  Monica’s doorbell rang three more times that day, and the telephone hardly stopped. Apparently the traditional British habit of avoiding death and anyone touched by it was long departed. Now there were people in droves, all wanting to commiserate, or ask about the funeral, or suggest helpful things they might do for her. She had known Jim was a prominent local figure, of course, but she had never fully realised how big a part he played in the lives of so many. Most of the people who called, she scarcely knew. She felt invaded, loaded down with other people’s emotions. One girl from a local shop had actually started crying down the phone, saying how much she’d miss his cheerful face every morning when he called in for his papers and peppermints. ‘I hope I haven’t bothered you?’ she said at the end, and Monica was very close to telling the truth.

  ‘It sounds as if you and the rest of the world are going to miss him rather more than I will,’ she could almost hear herself saying by the end of the day. ‘Just let me get this damned funeral over with, and Jim can rest in peace as far as I’m concerned.’ But she just murmured platitudes.

  It was eight o’clock when a fourth ring came at the door. Monica, at breaking point, opened it ready to snarl. Standing there, mouth slightly open, face slightly pink, was a huge man wearing a clerical collar and other accoutrements. ‘Mrs Lapsford?’ he enquired in sonorous tones, raising two thick grey eyebrows. ‘It’s not too late in the day for a visit, is it?’

  She gave a little cry of exasperation. ‘Vicar. They told me you’d want to see me. You’d better come in.’

  The clergyman burbled, like a slowly gathering tidal wave, ‘I know I should have telephoned first, but I was literally passing by, and decided to take a chance.’ He moved gradually into the house. ‘And I should have said, of course, how very sorry I am about your terrible loss.’

  Monica tried to suppress the hysteria she felt gathering in her chest. The mere sight of this man was farcical enough, without his meaningless utterances. He must weigh twenty-five stone, she thought, mentally assessing his girth. How is it I’ve never noticed him before? ‘Sit down,’ she invited, indicating the couch. He waited for her to take an armchair and then sank quite gracefully into the cushions.

  ‘I forget which church you’re from,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No matter,’ he smiled. ‘It’s St James’s, on the Hillbrow estate.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She summoned a mental picture of a functional-looking church, built in the sixties, with a huge stained-glass front wall and a futuristic cross standing outside. ‘Of course. I’m afraid Jim didn’t go to church.’

  He smiled again, forgivingly. ‘I’m Father Barry, by the way. That’s what everyone calls me. Now, perhaps we could just talk a little about the service on Tuesday, and what you’d like me to say about your husband? If it’s convenient?’

  Father Barry, Monica giggled to herself. What were his parents thinking of? Had they no inkling of their baby’s vocation when they named him? Perhaps they thought it would effectively rule out any such calling.

  The effort to concentrate was exhausting; she seemed unable to recall any suitable facts or anecdotes about Jim. She found herself idiotically telling a trivial little tale from his workplace about the time they printed ten thousand menus with ‘Lobster’ spelt as ‘Lostber’ and how lostber had become a family joke word for anything that went awry, after that. ‘But you can’t use that,’ she added lamely, at the end of the story.

  ‘No,’ he agreed regretfully. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  He stayed for an hour, and she slowly warmed to him. They drank tea together, and let a few comfortable silences develop. She knew he would do his best, and that it wasn’t his fault that she’d never been inside his church, and didn’t believe that there was any sure and certain hope of a resurrection to come. It was entirely down to her. She ought never to have agreed to have a minister at the funeral. She should have been brave enough to do the whole thing herself. Should have been – but wasn’t.

  He left her an order of service for Jack and Jodie to print up, and patted her gently on the arm. ‘I’ll see you on Tuesday, my dear,’ he said, as he departed.

  There was then a thirty-minute lull, during which she made herself a simple supper of soup and a sandwich. The day had felt aimless, and she wondered whether there were vital things she should have been doing. People always talked about the great rush and bustle of paperwork and plans following a death. She supposed they meant things like the talk she’d just had with Father Barry, and the visit yesterday to the undertaker. And the letter to the life insurance people, enclosing a copy of the death certificate. If so, then she was clearly coping wonderfully, because here she was now with half an evening still ahead of her, and no idea how to fill it.

  But she need not have worried. The final ring on the doorbell came just before nine. With a sense of being saved from her own company, she went quickly to answer it. Gerald Proctor was standing there, holding a great mass of yellow and gold chrysanthemums. His broad face with its horizontal crinkles at eye and mouth peered shyly at her from over the top of the flowers.

  ‘Oh, Gerald,’ she sigh
ed.

  He moved her gently aside and stepped into the house, closing the door quickly behind him. ‘Nobody saw me,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Your reputation’s safe.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to worry about that. And I’ll bet you one of the old dears next door spotted you through the lace curtains.’

  ‘Well, I’m here now, and I won’t stay long.’ His expression became more serious, as she watched him. His face was all curves: his eye sockets were deep, his nose rounded, his cheeks plump. Many times she had wished she was a sculptor and could make a copy of his head. His hair was white, despite his being only slightly over forty. ‘How are you, old girl?’

  ‘Oh, Gerald, it is good to see you. I was feeling sorry for myself, and wishing I had someone to talk to. The dog died, you know, so I haven’t even got her for company.’

  ‘What – little Cassie?’ She was surprised he remembered the name.

  ‘That’s right. She was Jim’s, and I think she’s pined away already. I was never particularly fond of her, but she would have been another life around the house.’

  ‘You can get another one.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she returned. ‘Gerald, you shouldn’t be here, you really shouldn’t. I … people will think badly of me, if they see you.’

  ‘Nobody could ever say you were a bad wife,’ he assured her. ‘Jesus, Monny, you’d been married for donkey’s years. You’d earned a bit of fun. And Jim wasn’t the type to be jealous—’

  ‘Oh, yes he was!’ Gerald shrank at the forcefulness of her words. ‘He would have been devastated if he’d known about us. And don’t start trying delicately to remind me that he wasn’t the most faithful husband in the world, either. Everybody knows the rules are different for men. I’ve been terrified since Tuesday that somebody was going to take it upon themselves to whisper to me that Jim had liaisons, or some such rubbish. They think a dead man’s fair game, and that there’s no more need to keep his secrets. They don’t consider my dignity.’

  She absently took hold of Gerald’s arm as she spoke, to draw him further into the room, where he couldn’t be seen from the street. Suddenly she became aware of the contact, and of the new freedom she had. There was at least no danger of Jim returning unexpectedly and catching them. Involuntarily, she gave a little laugh at the thought.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh – life, I suppose. And death. Death is quite funny, I’m discovering. I never realised before.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he invited, frowning slightly.

  ‘It’s nothing I can spell out. Just the whole business, with doctors and undertakers and vicars. All sorts of meaningless rituals to go through. And most of it seems designed to make me forget what’s actually happened. That Jim’s in some fridge, cold and stiff and dead.’ She poked Gerald’s hand, pushing back his sleeve and taking his wrist. ‘Not like you – warm and glowing, somehow. Dead people don’t glow.’

  ‘Dead People Don’t Glow would make a terrific title for a crime novel,’ he said absently, staring intently at a corner of the carpet as some embryonic plot began to form in his head. Gerald aspired to crime writing, which was the single thing about him that Monica found ridiculous.

  ‘I woke up in the middle of last night, and I could see him, in that place, lying on some metal tray, just meat. Or a dollop of clay. Nothing. It gave me the horrors.’

  ‘You should take a sleeping pill,’ he advised.

  ‘Oh, really, Gerald.’ She looked at him again, with a kind of curiosity. Gerald’s wife had left him five years ago; he was very much available. She understood that this had already led to certain assumptions on his part, and the idea alarmed her. His clumsy lack of insight into how she was feeling similarly gave her pause. Despite his delicious eye sockets and fleshy lips, she wasn’t at all sure she really liked him as a person.

  He was briefly injured. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, simply. ‘You make things too complicated. We haven’t even had the funeral yet.’

  ‘Ah, yes. That was what I wanted to ask you. Do you think I should come to it?’

  She looked at him again, this time in disbelief. ‘Of course I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘What possible reason could you have to do that? You scarcely even knew him.’

  ‘But I know you,’ he persisted. ‘You work for me. It would be perfectly appropriate.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, thanks for the thought, but you’d better not. I wouldn’t know how to behave with you around. I’ll see you later – the middle of next week, when it’s all finished with. All right?’

  ‘It’ll have to be, I suppose,’ he pouted. ‘You’ll be back at work on Wednesday, will you?’

  She gave a little cry. ‘Wednesday’s my birthday! The first day of the rest of my life …’

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ he confirmed, and departed after a fleeting, featherlight kiss.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Friday

  Drew was making notes. He had lain awake much of the night, worrying. He now had only four days in which to gather sufficiently strong evidence that Jim Lapsford had been the victim of a clever murder; evidence strong enough to present to the police, or the Coroner. He had a whole mountain of facts and hints and possible leads, but still nothing tangible.

  ‘You were restless,’ Karen said with more irritation than sympathy. ‘I don’t need to ask why, do I?’

  ‘It’s really getting to me,’ he admitted. ‘Only four days to go now, and I haven’t got anything definite. If the cremation goes ahead, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

  ‘Why do anything? What difference will it make?’

  Something about her impatience, the faint whiff of accusation, tipped him back into the nightmare he’d forgotten until now. At some point in the small hours, he had dropped off to sleep, only to be haunted by the event that he could never quite escape.

  In the busy, short-staffed chaos of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Drew had found himself on the paediatric ward the previous November, working the night shift. He’d been covering for sickness amongst the staff, and had not been properly briefed or trained in what was a specialised branch of nursing. Baby Nicholas had been brought down from Intensive Care, well on the road to recovery after a nasty attack of pneumonia. He was ten weeks old, and had not thrived as he should have done since birth.

  The baby’s mother had three other children at home, and no husband. She came to visit when she could, but never stayed the night, as most mothers did. The other babies on the ward were all off the danger list, and also had parents popping in to feed or simply observe them, during the night. Nicholas was Drew’s main charge. He was a nice little baby, undersized, but with a placid manner, and Drew had played with him for a few minutes before he dropped off to sleep. His temperature and heart rate were monitored, but all other machinery had been removed. He was breathing well without assistance.

  The ward was quiet, as midnight came and went. Whispering people tiptoed back and forth, and Drew relaxed. He even started to consider paediatrics as a specialty for the future. The babies seemed to respond well to a man, and many of the mothers remarked on how good it was to see him there. When he checked Baby Nicholas, at 1 a.m., the child was showing no overt cause for concern, despite a slightly lowered temperature and a skin colour just a shade less pink than an hour earlier. Drew fleetingly wondered whether a few minutes of oxygen would help, but it seemed unnecessarily unkind to wake and disturb the baby. He would cry, which in turn couldn’t fail to stir up some of the others.

  He tucked the blanket tighter, and resolved to make another check in twenty minutes. Caught up in conversation with a restless mother, it was half an hour before he went back. Nicholas was still sleeping peacefully, but his colour had darkened again. His heart rate was fractionally slower, too. But Drew believed it to be within normal limits, and something that often happened in the small hours of the night. He ran through his options: administer oxygen; take the baby back to Intensiv
e Care; call a houseman; pick the baby up and assess his condition when awake. He had never set up an oxygen chamber for such a small child, and knew it needed to be very carefully monitored. He doubted whether he was authorised to do it unsupervised. By rights there should be at least two other people within calling distance, but there were only nurses of the same standing as himself, each with their own ward to deal with. He could go and consult one of them, but pride prevented him. He leant over Nicholas, listening to his breathing, and concluded that he was in no danger for the time being.

  An hour later, a buzzer sounded above the baby’s cot. His heart had stopped. Drew shook himself out of the semi-doze he’d fallen into, and hurried over. He lifted Nicholas free of his coverings, still not unduly worried; machines could give false alarms, and it barely occurred to him that there could be a serious problem. But the child was limp in his hands, the eyes half open. Drew gave a startled cry, which echoed around the corners and corridors, but brought no assistance. Even then, he was loathe to make a commotion, to bring the clattering cacophony of the resuscitation trolley.

  But he had to, and it all got taken out of his hands, and baby Nicholas officially died at 4.15 a.m. Shakily, Drew gave his account of the events of the night, and everyone agreed that the signs had not been sufficiently clear to justify any intervention. He was told, repeatedly, that he had done nothing wrong.

  But doing nothing was wrong in itself, he concluded. Never again would Drew err on the side of inertia. His nightmares since then had all involved watching something or somebody die, hands loose and helpless at his sides, his mind repeating, It’s not your responsibility, you don’t have to act. It isn’t up to you. But he knew it was. Everything depended on him. If he didn’t act, then nobody else was going to.