Viridian Tears (12 page)

“Onward. To the freezer!” David waved goodbye as she closed the closed the door. She was still smiling as she clattered down the stairs. At the bottom she turned left into the cryotorium rather than directly out through the front door. It had been one of David’s conditions when she mooted the idea of living above the shop that they have a separate entrance. He hadn’t wanted to come home from work every night and have to wade through dead bodies to get to the upstairs flat. The front door was served by a second driveway, though it had taken the local funeral parlors several weeks to stop blindly following the satellite navigation systems to the house instead of using the other gate to the cryotorium.

She checked on Edward Burbridge. The cryo-machine had already finished the vibration cycle and switched to freeze-drying the remains, sending the resultant dust into the collection hopper. There would be bones to grind in the morning but the only metal she could see was the remains of the coffin furniture. There was usually some in the skull, too. He’d had good teeth and good teeth generally meant pins and crowns.

She left the machine and went to the garage where the hearse and tractor were kept. She should consider building a second garage for the backhoe if it was in danger of being stolen again. If she ever got it back. She fished her keys out of her pocket and opened the cupboard. Inside were her tools of the trade. Wireless webcams, time-lapse cameras, brushes, pulleys, blocks and tackles, shovels, crowbars and a small hydraulic jack. She selected some tools and dropped them into a shoulder bag.

Outside, she pulled her coat closer against the cold and headed out to Artist’s Corner, a small section of the cemetery marked by a slowly rusting abstract structure. It had been a source of contention during the summer. The sculptor, Elizabeth Trader, assured her the polymer coating on the steel had been weatherproof. It hadn’t been and the color began to flake off before a year passed. Now it was covered in rust and although Eden didn’t mind it personally, since her whole life was built around the concept of decay, her patrons were often less than pleased to be reminded of their impermanence.

Around the statue were several unremarkable graves, most of them showing nothing more than a small brass plaque over a body-length slab of granite. Of the five, three were clients and two were her personal projects, bodies left unclaimed at the municipal morgue and sent to Eden for disposal. She treated them as well as she could and revered them in the best way she knew how.

Working by feel, she found the indentation in the slab that fitted the edge of her crowbar and levered it up far enough to insert the edge of her hydraulic jack. The smell of corruption wafted out. There was no embalming on these bodies, nor coffins to encase their decay. She took a few breaths to get used to the smell before levering the slab to a forty-five degree angle, sufficient to view the body beneath. Flies speckled the surface, lethargic in the November chill but the warmth of the body was home to a myriad of maggots, worms and beetles.

“How are you doing, Hannah?” She used her torch to inspect the state of decomposition. Most of the skeleton was visible now, with the skin stretched like a drumhead over the bones, marked like a colander thanks to the holes maggots had made as they burrowed in and out. “Well look at you.” Eden picked up her camera and took several photographs of the girl’s left shoulder. Just as David had predicted, the bone had fallen out of the socket, probably as a result of early-onset osteoporosis brought on by childhood trauma. Had she lived, Hannah would have been in agony until she’d had the shoulder surgically strengthened.

The mass of maggots were concentrated in her torso, cleaning the last of the internal organs and muscle in the area. Hannah had been here three months, the cold weather accounting for the slow rate of decomposition, and would remain until the spring. When she was eventually reduced to bone, Eden intended to gather her up and cryomate her remains, re-burying her in a corner of the cemetery she’d already reserved for David and herself.

Satisfied with the numbers of pictures she’d taken, she closed up Hannah’s grave and opened John’s. Like Hannah, John had been an unclaimed body who’d died of a drug overdose in one of the flats in Chervil Court, an area of maisonettes to the north-east of Laverstone. Unlike Hannah, he’d been exposed to a full autopsy before his arrival, which had left him, like Francis Dibben this morning, without the top of his head.

Eden shooed away the flies. Fragments of bone gleamed in the light of the torch. The skin had sloughed away from John’s face leaving his teeth exposed against darkly festering gums, the bottom jaw open to reveal the bulbous black mass of his tongue balled into his throat. The stitches on his autopsy wound had split from the combination of decomposition gasses and insect activity, leading to a spill of maggots down his bronzed abdomen.

She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and climbed inside the shallow grave, careful to avoid treading on any body parts. Lifting the corpse’s arm, she shone the torch beneath to check the paper he’d been laid upon. The whole sheet was damp and liable to tear the moment she moved it but the stains had litmussed across the weave faster than ink on tissue. Fat had melted from the flesh and made whole areas of the paper semitransparent and other fluids had left a thick blackish paste over the surface. It was, she thought, reminiscent of Marmite.

She began photographing the body from a height of six inches. She’d print them all out and assemble them in a process derived from the joiners of David Hockney in the eighties, though she doubted he’d ever used a similar subject. She’d never exhibit the photographs since the act would break the bond of trust a mortician had with the people in her care but it would serve as a good basis for a future painting. She smiled as she photographed the skull. “You don’t mind, do you, John?”

The corpse didn’t answer. Indeed, it seemed rather to relish the prospect.

Back in the house, she put away her tools and stripped off her clothes, grateful there was no one but David and the dead in the whole building. In the robing room was an industrial washing machine she used when the corpse had to wear the clothes it died in. It came in useful when she’d been working, too. There was a shower room as well, a necessity when she came in from a grave site but it was for the use of all staff and therefore industrial and impersonal. She’d rather use the one upstairs, given the choice.

She headed up and was enveloped by the scent of hot cheese and bacon. She hugged David from behind as he stirred a pot of white sauce. “That smells delicious.”

“Which is more than I can say for you.” He wrinkled his nose. “You smell of oil paint and corruption.” He turned round. “Though you look significantly better than Botticelli’s Venus.” He flapped his hands to shoo her away. “Off to the bathroom with you.”

“Yes, sir, sorry.” She grinned and padded down the hall to the bathroom. When she had applied lemon juice in liberal quantities to her hair and was finally clean, she returned to the table in her bathrobe. She watched David put the finishing touches to a bed of roasted garlic and take a dish from the oven. He carried it to the table in a series of short, quick steps designed for maximum speed and minimum burns. “Would you set the trivet out, darling?”

“Sorry?” He was already half way to the table and she stared at him hopelessly. “I’m sorry, I was miles away. You were right about Hannah’s shoulder being dislocated.”

“The trivet.” He gestured with a pointed twist of the head. “The trivet. A mat. Put a mat down. This will burn the table if I put it on the wood.”

“I see.” She set out one of the tablemats they’d been given when they married. It used to have a reproduction of Constable's
Haywain
but years of hot pans and plates had reduced the image to a two-tone blur.

David dropped the dish just in time and sucked on overheated fingers. “Dish it out, would you? I’ll just get the condiments.”

“Is there someone else coming?” She reached for the runcible spoon and a plate. “There’s an awful lot for just the two of us.”

“No, just us.” He returned with salt and pepper, the dish of garlic and a pot of ready-grated Parmesan. “I’ll freeze anything left over.”

“This smells marvelous.” Eden dug through the crusty topping into the white sauce and pasta. “Carbonara? It’s been ages since we had this.”

“I hope you like it.” He produced a bottle. “Wine? It’s a sauvignon blanc.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ll stick with water, I think. Perhaps a tea after the meal.” She put the filled plate in front of him and picked up a second.

“It’s a very good one. A ninety-six.”

“You’re such a snob, David.”

“Only about things that matter.” He grinned. “Like you.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

Chapter 12

Michelle smiled at the waiter. “Hello again, Federico.”

“Ah. It’s you? From the supermarket?” He beamed as he handed a menu to Graham, then to her. “Fettuccini with olives, yes?”

“Yes, please. Followed by the spaghetti al funghi.”

“A very good choice, and for sir?”

Graham looked at her over the menu. “I’ll have the garlic mushrooms followed by the New York pizza, please.”

“Very good. And to drink?” Federico smiled at her. “We have the lemon and honey drink if you wish it?”

“No, I’ll have a glass of red wine, please” Michelle handed back her menu. “He’ll have tea.”

“Right away.” Federico plucked Graham’s menu from his hand and scurried off. Graham looked as if he was about to have a paddy. “I didn’t want tea. I wanted a beer.”

“You’re driving, remember?” Michelle reached for a breadstick and bit off an inch. “Besides, we can’t turn up at Enfield House smelling of beer. What would they think of us? If this goes well we could break into a better circle and a better circle mean patrons who are more generous to the woman who puts them in touch with their dearly departed.”

“It’s not like I was going to get drunk, was it? Give me some sense of self respect.”

“You can’t have one so shut up about it. Ah! Here are our drinks.”

She smiled at Federico as he set her wine and Graham’s tea on the table. “I added you on Facespace.”

“Ah, the computer? Alas, I do not get on it as much as I like. Busy busy, you know?” He tucked the tray under his arm and hurried away again, pausing to collect a pair of empty soup plates from the next table. “Your food will be just a minute or two longer.”

“You fancy him, don’t you?” Graham poured tea from a pot that dribbled onto the tablecloth. “I can tell by the way you moon at him when you think he isn’t looking.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We just happened to meet in the supermarket, that’s all. It reminded me how much I liked Italian food and how often do we have it really?”

“We have pizza fairly often.”

“I don’t mean pizza. I mean real Italian food. Pasta with garlic and herbs and the like. Olives and peppers pickled in oil and sun dried tomatoes. Pasta that doesn’t come out of a packet.” She picked up her glass and took a sip of wine. It was much drier than she normally liked and she tried to hide her reaction as Graham took a small box from his inside pocket. She wondered if he was going to propose.

“I’d like you to have this.” He pushed it across the table toward her.

She stared at it, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “What is it? It’s not a ring, is it?”

“A ring?” His face clouded, then cleared. “An engagement ring? God, no. It’s a necklace.”

“Oh.” She pulled the box closer and opened it, unsure whether to be relieved it wasn’t a ring or hurt by his reaction. The sight of the necklace drove all such thoughts away. “It’s beautiful.” She took it out and held it to the light where the stones glittered like port in crystal. “Are those rubies?”

“And diamonds. Four half-carat diamonds and four one-carat rubies in a twenty-four carat gold setting. Hand made in Salzburg in nineteen twenty-six and given me by my grandmother.” He paused. “I want you to have it.”

“Graham, I couldn’t. It’s too much.”

“Nothing’s too much for you.”

“Help me put it on.” She held it around her neck while he fastened the clasp. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

“It looks even better on you than it did in the safety deposit box.” He leaned in to kiss her but she managed to offer her cheek instead.

“Sit down, Graham. Here’s Federico with our starters.”

“Garlic mushrooms for sir, fettuccine with olives for madame.” He put the dishes on the table with a flourish. “We make all our pasta fresh. Corleone’s takes pride in never using dried pasta. You can be assured of the quality.” He took away their soup spoons. “
Bon appetit
.”