Viridian Tears (29 page)

His head was a different matter. His thin hair would have left the staples visible, hence her use of horse glue to re-attach the plate of bone to the skull. She’d let that dry overnight then prepare him for the memorial service by arranging the hair to cover the cut line. She’d still recommend a closed casket but ultimately it was up to the family to decide. At least she’d taken the trouble to give them the option.

She left him in the autopsy suite overnight. It was cool there but not cold and would allow the glue to dry. Legally, she had to pack him with dry ice to slow decay but the room was sufficiently cool not to need as much as the government recommendations suggested. Every canister of dry ice used was a slice of her profits. The funeral business was exactly that, when it came to the crunch. A business.

She stripped off her latex overshoes and gloves and binned them, then peeled off her gown and dropped it in the industrial cleaning hopper. The laundry was done by an outside company who also serviced the hospital and several of the other undertakers in town. Just as well, really. Even her industrial washer would have been hard pressed to cope with Frank Dibben’s fluids. It barely coped with David’s.

She trooped upstairs to find the flat still shrouded in darkness. It was after eight already, long after David was usually home and she checked the answer phone for messages. Someone wanting to book a table at the Contented Poacher. She deleted it. It her luck, or lack thereof, to have a telephone number one digit removed from that of a local hostelry. They took two or three calls a week and while the first few had annoyed her she had soon become resigned to the misdials. Once in a while she took the booking and imagined the confusion when the party turned up at the restaurant. Mostly she just gave people the right number though to her knowledge the staff at the Contented Poacher never sent any business her way.

She checked her own phone. Nothing. Not even a ‘sorry-I’m-going-to-be-late’ message. It was unlike him not to call.

She glanced at the clock again. Eight-eleven. Should she call the police? The hospital? She was about to call DI White when lights washed across the walls and ceiling. She hurried to the window in time to see David’s car go into the garage beneath her. She put the kettle to boil and went to the door to meet him. He was just coming up the stairs as she opened it and he beamed to see her waiting for him.

“I’m so sorry. I had an awkward client for public representation. He pleaded innocent on all charges despite the police having surveillance video of his misdemeanors. We had to go for a bail hearing, hence the lateness.”

“And your phone? Did that break too?”

“Actually, yes.” He fished it out of a pocket. “Darned little tyke snatched it off me, found it was keypad locked and threw it at the wall.” He showed her the cracked screen. “It’s lucky I took out the extended warranty on it.”

“It certainly is.” She took his briefcase and coat and hung the latter in the hall closet, then went to make his tea and her coffee. He was kicking off his shoes in the lounge when she returned.

“That’s it for the night. I’m not going out again. Ah!” He sat on one end of the sofa and took the proffered cup. “Thanks love. I need this. I shall be glad when my stint as public defender is over. It’s no wonder it has to be on a rota. Nobody would stick the job otherwise.”

“There are worse jobs.” Eden put her coffee on the floor and flopped onto the other end of the sofa. She kicked off her shoes and lifted her legs, shifting position to lay them over David’s ample thigh. “You should see the body I had to sort out today. Post-autopsy.”

“Hospital or Police.”

“Police.”

“Ugh.” He made a face and began stoking her feet with his free hand. “Not in one piece, I take it?”

“No. I wouldn’t mind the messy corpses if they took the trouble to be respectful. I mean, what if it was their mother? Would they do a simple basket stitch then? Of course not. It only takes a couple of minutes to change basket into blanket and the whole thing looks more professional.”

“You should complain.”

“I did, as it happens. There was a policeman here this morning.”

“About the tractor? Are we going to get it back?” He stroked the ball beneath her big toe and the stress left her body like a rubber band being released.

“God, that feels good.” She took a deep breath. “No. Well, yes, but he wasn’t here about that. Someone dumped a dead body in our compost heap.”

“Good lord.” David stopped massaging her foot to take a sip of his tea. “A body in a cemetery. That’s actually quite clever. It would have been cleverer still if they’d dug a grave. There’d be a chance of it never being found.”

“Well, whoever did it wasn’t bothered about it being found. It was an old man. A tramp, I think, or at least I got that impression. There was worse though.”

“Worse?” David reached forward to put his cup on the coffee table. He resumed massaging. “Go on.”

“Malcolm’s blackmailing me over the art projects.”

“Malcolm the gardener? I thought he was a friend.”

“So did I until this afternoon. The trouble is, I can’t get rid of him now without him blabbing to the papers about what I do with unclaimed bodies.”

“Leave it to me, love.”

“What? Are you going to kill him?”

David snorted. “Hardly. I’m a solicitor.”

“Right. I see.” She reached for her coffee and took several long swallows before putting it down again. “You’ve got contacts you can ask. Call in some favors, that sort of thing.”

“I’m not entirely certain you know what I actually do for a living. I was thinking more along the lines of a legal precedent to apply for a gag order.”

“You’ve shattered my illusions of you being a gangland kingpin. For a moment there you were the Tom Hagen of Laverstone.”

“Who?”

“Tom Hagen. You know. The lawyer from
The Godfather
?”

“Ah. Nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid. I’m just a little cog in a very big machine but leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Without letting the cat out of the bag?”

“Just so.” He ran his thumbs up the sole of her foot and she gave a low grown of pleasure, her eyes closing and her toes curling. She opened her eyes again to look at the absolute concentration on her husband’s face, then twisted one foot to rub at his groin.

“How about letting the little fellow out to play?” She rubbed against it with the side of her foot. “Feels like you’re under a little pressure there.”

He leaned forward to kiss the toe of the stationary foot, then back against the settee to unbutton his trousers. His penis sprang up like an x-rated Jack in the Box.

Eden grinned and shuffled far enough down to allow herself some leeway to move her feet, then arranged them on either side of David’s erection, grasping it between the balls of her feet and her toes. She began to squeeze and release in a rhythm she knew from long experience pleased him.

He placed his hands over her feet and she tutted at him. He raised them again and held them up, obviously unsure where to put them.

“Sit on them.”

He smirked and did as he was told, the slight lift thrusting his penis higher. She curled one foot after the other over his engorged tip, using the gel of his pre-cum to lubricate the shaft. She speeded up the rhythm, alternately gripping and releasing the shaft with her toes until his head lolled back and his breathing changed.

She moved her feet to take the shaft between the arches, using her knees to control the up-and-down motion while the pressure against the shaft rolled it enough to a give him a twist of pain with the building orgasm. He began to gasp; a series of almost inaudible breaths of air that increased in pitch the closer he came to orgasm. She increased the pressure against his cock but slowed the rhythm down until he was quivering with the need for release, and which point she stroked him as fast as she could, his body arching as the orgasm ran through him, great gouts of semen spurting high into the air like the water spout of a whale, only stickier.

As David let out the breath he’d been holding, Eden relaxed her feet against his rapidly diminishing penis and relaxed as well, looking up at the ceiling. She chuckled and pointed and a spot of semen near the light fitting. “I do believe that’s your personal record.”

Chapter 32

The funeral of Frank Dibben was at least well attended, if not actually quiet. Eden was pleased to see a couple of out-of-uniform-but-obviously-coppers had come along, partly to make sure he was thoroughly dead but mostly because they knew there might be fireworks. She was especially grateful for their presence when Frank’s wife and mother of his three teenage children met his other, younger wife and mother of his six-year old. Father Cullen from St. Pity’s had the presence of mind to press the button to lower the coffin when Mrs. Dibben the first threw a punch at Mrs. Dibben the second and Mrs. Dibben the elder, Frank’s mother, clumped Colin Birchall, Mrs. Dibben the second’s lodger, with her walking stick.

The wake was performed at the police station, accompanied by several uniformed officers and a number of solicitors. Eden wondered if David had become embroiled in the drama. Most of the mourners had left to follow the riot wagon but there were a few stragglers, old colleagues of Frank’s from his work at the racecourse, who owed loyalty to neither of the families and were happy to accept a cup of tea and a biscuit while they waited for the pub to open.

Emily knocked on Eden’s door a little before lunchtime and held up a plastic bag. “They’ve all gone, including Father Cullen. What should I do with the lost property?”

Eden stifled a groan. “What was left behind?”

Emily opened the “A handbag, a hearing aid, a pair of glasses, three mobile phones, a grubby patchwork doll and a pair of false teeth.”

“Oh dear.” Eden wrote the list on her telephone messages pad. “Box them up with a label and put it in collection storage. I’ll ring Mrs. Dibben to let her know.”

“Unless she’s been charged with a breach of the peace.”

“Even so, she’ll be out on bail by tonight.” She put the pen down. “There should be three deceased coming in from the hospital after lunch.”

“Three? Not contagious, are they?”

“I don’t think so. One’s a child, though, so be extra sensitive with the families.”

“Oh.” Emily’s face fell. “I hate it when kids die. It’s not right. Would you do that one, please?”

“Yes, of course. Let me know when it arrives, will you? I’m going upstairs for lunch.”

In her own flat, Eden kicked off her shoes and heated up a pot of instant noodles. She ate it on the sofa with her feet up and a tea towel in lieu of a bib, watching the news. When she’d finished her food she fetched her laptop and looked through the photographs she’d taken the night before last. Settling on an image of Hanna where the skin of her chest had slipped and split leaving an effect akin to lace curtains, she pulled out a pad of watercolor paper and began to sketch.

The rest of the lunch hour flew by as she drew, back-shading the lines and adding highlights and mid-tones as she blocked in the background of a brothel. Another hour passed before her phone rang, startling Eden out of her reverie. “Shit.” She grabbed at the handset. “Yes?”

“It’s Emily. There’s a huge truck just pulled up outside. I think it’s our digger.”

“Marvelous. I’ll be right down.”

Eden got outside to find Emily and Malcolm already watching two uniformed policemen unloading the backhoe from a flatbed truck. After laying down two steel ramps, one of them climbed into the cab and started it with a screwdriver and drove it onto the New Eden car park. He took his screwdriver back when he got out of the cab.

The other policeman handed her a clipboard. “Sign here, please.”

Eden dashed off her signature. “Where are the keys?”

“Keys? There weren’t no keys, Madam. We rigged it for you to just make the connection with a screwdriver. That should do you. It’s not like anyone’s going to pinch an excavator, is it?”

“Someone did. That’s why you had it in the first place?”

“Is it?” He shook his head as he tore off a carbon sheet. “They never tell us these things. Here’s your copy. You’ve fifty-six days to pay up.”

“Pay up?” “Eden stared at her copy of the receipt. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the figure buried among the small print two-thirds of the way down the page. “Four hundred and sixteen quid? You’ve got to be kidding me.”