Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

'Please,' I heard him whisper through clenched teeth, or maybe it was just air escaping, I don't know.

Either way it was over, and finally his resistance went altogether and he slumped in my arms. Raymond had stabbed him at least a dozen times.

Raymond stood back, panting with exertion, and admired his handiwork. His crisp white shirt was spattered with gobs of blood. 'All right, he's gone. You can put him down now.'

I laid him gently on the floor and stepped away. There was blood everywhere, although thankfully the dark hardwood flooring served to disguise the worst of it.

Raymond, still holding the knife, wiped sweat from his brow. 'It's a shame he had to go like that. I always quite liked old Barry. What the fuck happened with your gun?'

'It jammed,' I said. 'It happens sometimes.'

'This is a fucking mess, Dennis. By rights you ought to clean it up as it was your gun that caused it.'

'What are we going to do with him?' I asked, still partially numbed by what had just happened. I'd never seen so much blood in my life. It seemed every drop Barry had owned was now spread out between me and Raymond. Every now and again his body twitched malevolently. A faint but growing odour of shit drifted silently through the still air.

'Well, he's already beginning to go a bit ripe, so we'd better get him packaged up. We'll stick him in one of the coffins for now.'

He put the knife down next to the body and motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the hall and he opened up a door a little bit further down on the opposite side from his office. A number of coffins were stacked up in lines on shelves against one wall. They all looked to be much of a muchness, although some were bigger than others.

Raymond took a quick look at them, then selected the one he wanted and pulled it down. It was a cream colour – almost white – with iron handles, and it looked quite cheap – which, I suppose, stood to reason, since he wasn't going to be making any money out of Barry's disposal. I got one end of it and we took it outside and put it down on one of the few dry spaces on the floor, before lifting Barry's bloodsoaked corpse up and chucking it in. Although I worked hard to avoid it, a few splashes of blood got on my jeans, which basically spelled the end for them. Raymond put the lid down, and after that we cleared up the rest of the mess as best we could, which took a good twenty minutes and involved me doing most of the mopping up while Raymond acted in something of a supervisory role.

When we'd finished, I went and got myself a glass of water from the kitchen. I drank it down fast, then poured myself another and drank that down as well. I was still feeling nauseous so I took some slow, deep breaths and focused on one of the postcards. This one was from India, from somewhere called Mumbai, which I hadn't heard of. I wondered briefly who'd gone there for their holidays, but didn't bother to look.

When I felt a little bit better I walked back into the hallway.

'Are you all right?' Raymond asked. He was kneeling down beside the coffin hammering in nails while chewing on a cigar. He looked a bit knackered, but that was about it. You wouldn't have guessed he'd just stabbed an employee of his to death.

'I don't ever want to have to do that again,' I told him.

'You know how it is, Dennis. Sometimes you've just got to do these things.'

I snorted. 'There've got to be better ways to earn a living.'

'Too right, and after this I'm going back to concentrating on my core business. There's big money to be made in undertaking. And it's a steady market. You see this?' He banged the coffin with his hammer. 'One of these costs thirty-seven quid from the manufacturers. Thirty-seven quid. But you know what? The cheapest one I sell'll cost a punter four hundred. That's a one thousand per cent markup. And the beauty of it is that no one argues. I mean, who the fuck's going to negotiate over the price of their nearest and dearest's funeral costs? Only a right heartless bastard'd think about doing that. And thankfully there aren't too many of them about.'

There wasn't a lot you could say to that. 'So what are you going to do with the body?'

'I'll put it in the back of one of the hearses and drive it up to some associates of mine.' I raised my eyebrows. 'They're professionals, Dennis. Don't worry. They know how to make people disappear.'

'Are you sure you can trust them? This is a body we're talking about here, not a caseload of porno videos.'

'Let's just say I've worked with them before and they've proved reliable.'

'And they can be trusted to get rid of him?'

He stood up and smiled at me. 'Dennis, you of all people should know that if you want to make someone disappear, and you know what you're doing, then, bang' – he clicked his fingers – 'they'll just vanish into thin air. Never to be seen again.'

I thought of Molly Hagger then and shuddered.

'Grab the other end, will you?' he said.

I did as I was told, and together we loaded the coffin into one of the hearses so that it could begin its final journey to an anonymous resting place.

It was twenty past three when I picked up the phone and called Coleman House. I was back at home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Someone whose voice I didn't recognize answered, and I asked to be put through to Ms Graham. I could hear my heart thumping. I wasn't sure whether it was because of the shock of what I'd been a part of earlier, or simply nerves at the prospect of speaking to a woman I fancied, and trying to get her to see me.

I pictured Barry Finn. I could hear the gruesome gasping noises he made as Raymond stabbed him, like an old man with emphysema.

'Hello, Mr Milne. Dennis.'

'Hi, Carla, sorry to bother you.' My heart was beating louder than ever. For a second I wanted to put the phone down and get the hell out of my flat. Go for a run or something. 'You heard about the charges being laid for the Miriam Fox murder?'

'Against the pimp? Yes, I saw it in the paper.'

'I tried to reach you to tell you yesterday but you were out, and I didn't really want to leave a message.'

'Thanks for letting me know. I suppose that means you won't have to come back here again.'

'That's right.' I paused for a moment, wondering how best to put this. 'There were a couple of things I wanted to run by you, though.'

Her tone didn't change. 'What sort of things?'

'Nothing to worry about, just some background information I need. I'd rather not discuss it over the phone. Is it possible we could meet somewhere?'

'Is it very urgent?'

I didn't want to alarm her. 'Not particularly, but it would be nice to get it out of the way.'

'I'm trying to think when I'm around…' She didn't sound unduly worried. 'I've got a lot on this afternoon.'

'This evening?' I ventured.

She thought about it. 'How about tomorrow evening? That'd be easier. Why don't you come round to my flat? It's up in Kentish Town.'

This was an invitation if ever I'd heard one. 'Yeah, of course. I could do that. What's the address?'

She told me, and I wrote it down in my notebook. 'I'll find it. What sort of time?'

'I normally eat at about seven. Come round after that. About eight?'

It sounded as though we were arranging a date, and I suppose in a way we were. 'Eight o'clock's fine. I'll see you then.'

We said our goodbyes and I hung up, not knowing whether to feel pleased with myself or not. I was glad that I was going to get the chance to see her again, even if what I had to say wasn't exactly going to endear me to her. I was interested too in what her answers were going to be. I didn't at that point think that she'd had anything to do with the murder, but something had definitely been up between her and Miriam Fox and I wanted to know what it was.