Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘You forgot to mention the fee,’ said Hall, sarcastically.

‘Never, dear boy. Never forget the fee. And yours should take care of the rent for a year or two.’

There were some muted calls from the grave and almost at once an instinctive move forward. The cleric immediately halted it, indicating a cleared area of canvas to be left for the coffin. One of the diggers lowered himself gently into the grave to thread lifting straps beneath the casket. After several grunted minutes he re-emerged to call for help. The second gravedigger eased himself into the hole and the vicar said, ‘Be careful! Do be careful! It’s probably very rotten by now.’

For the first time Hall became aware of a smell he’d never experienced before, an odd combination of sour mustiness which was at the same time sweet: at first it was almost pleasant, an unusual perfume but very quickly it became overwhelmingly sickening and Hall’s stomach began to churn at the very moment everyone around the grave, with the exception of the two men inside and the vicar, puiled back. Hall saw Phylib Shipley and Hewitt put on nose clips.

‘Ready,’ declared one of the diggers, clambering out of the grave. Two other cemetery workers who had been standing apart came forward, hefting the lifting straps. The vicar was bowed-headed again, praying aloud now. The count of ‘one, two, three,’ clashed irreverently. Every camera light came on at the emergence of the coffin as it swung on to the waiting canvas. The police photographer at last had something to do.

Hall became aware of the sound of one and then another helicopter overhead. The graveside police superintendent immediately glanced up, then began talking urgently and loudly into his radio. Hall over-heard ‘licence revoked’ and ‘bugger off.’ To the waiting forensic teams, he said, ‘Is it going to interfere?’

‘Not at the height they are at the moment,’ said Hewitt.

‘But it’ll blow everything about if they come much lower,’ added Phylis Shipley.

The officer went back to his radio, talking and listening. He said, ‘We’ve got their registrations from their flight plans. They’ve been warned.’

‘Warn them also that if there’s the slightest interference from their down-draught with what we’re doing here I’ll sue them in a civil court,’ said Hall. ‘And I’ll also ask Mr Justice Jarvis to include them in his precincts ruling, for whoever they represent to be jailed.’

There were several more minutes of muttered exchanges and then a perceptible lessening in the overhead noise, as the helicopters gained height.

The distraction of the helicopters momentarily took all their attention from the contents of the grave. There was bewildered astonishment when they looked back. It was Keflin-Brown who spoke, the exclamation without any religious connotation: ‘Jesus Christ!’

The coffin was pristine. No earth attached to it. The pale oak glistened, as it must have done on the day of the burial. The brass fittings dazzled the reflected light from all around.

‘I don’t think Jesus Christ has anything to do with this,’ said Hall.

The two men who had re-dug the grave had recoiled from its smell, hands at their faces.

Urgently Keflin-Brown said, ‘It shouldn’t be opened! That’s what we’re supposed to understand. That we shouldn’t open it.’ He stepped back.

The vicar had launched into a confused, jumbled litany. Hall recognized ‘forgiveness’ and ‘mercy’ and a lot of references to ‘evil.’ The permeating sick, sweet, cloying miasma enveloped everything and everyone, wrapping around them like an embalming shroud, layer after layer, lingering from the open grave but seepingly far more overpoweringly from the still closed coffin. Someone retched and there was the raucous sound of vomiting. Everyone groped handkerchiefs from their pockets: Billington and Carter finally but very hurriedly attached their nose-clips.

‘The judge’s order says the coffin has to be opened,’ insisted the superintendent, voice muffled through his handkerchief but making no effort to perform the duty with which he was officially entrusted. Unnecessarily he said, ‘But I don’t think I can do it.’

‘We’re certainly not going to,’ said the first grave digger.

The vicar mumbled on, standing well back.

‘Here!’ demanded Hall, reaching out for the screwdriver being offered to the unresponsive police officer.

There seemed a solid although invisible wall of fetid, putrid stink against him. Having gone forward he was at once forced back, bile stinging his throat. Hall inhaled as deeply as he could, then held his breath to approach again. The wood gleamed at him, the brass glittering. There was almost a physical sensation of something – the smell – being wound around him, again and again and again. It stung his eyes, making him squeeze them almost shut, so it was hard to connect with the real lid screws beneath their artificial, decorative caps. Hall was alone now, isolated and oblivious in his total concentration. Three times, like a boxer pulling back from a punch – actually feeling dizzy, on the very edge of unconsciousness – Hall had momentarily to retreat, to breathe out and inhale less stinking air.

The bolts unscrewed with the smooth newness of the rest of the container. Just before he was driven back, gasping, for the fourth time, Hall managed to push against the lid, skewing it to provide easy-lifting handholds.

From beyond the barrier there were camera flash fireworks. And from the helicopters above, startling them all, two separate, piercing spotlights stabbed into the scene.

‘I can’t lift the lid by myself,’ croaked Hall.

No-one around him spoke. No-one moved.

‘Help me get the lid off!’

Still no-one spoke. Or moved.

‘You!’ said Hall, demanding finger towards the police superintendent. ‘You have by law to enforce the judge’s order!’

The policeman didn’t think to hold his breath, as Hall was doing. The retching caught the man’s breath, became a spasm and finally he began to hyperventilate.

In one, panicked heave, they lifted the lid free. The superintendent staggered back, gasping.

The overhead fluttering of the helicopters and the rumble beyond the police line totally hid the audible reaction from the graveside group, although a lot of their horrified facial reactions were caught on film. The police photographer was frozen. The noise was a whimpering mix of gasps and groans and even some barely held-back screams, all of incredulous terror. The agonized vicar fell to his knees, hands cupped before his face, and audibly said, ‘Oh dear Lord, protect us from this evil and from mysteries we do not understand,’ and began reciting the Lord’s prayer, head bent, refusing after the first instant to look inside. Unhesitatingly the cemetery workers followed, loudly joining the invocation with their hands clasped before them: two crumpled to kneel to pray. They all averted their eyes from the coffin.

Once more Hall inhaled as deeply as he could before biting into his handkerchief and pinching his nose beneath it to lean forward better to focus. Perry did the same, but Keflin-Brown still held back, making choking, gagging sounds.

Hall didn’t have any anticipation. At most he’d expected a properly defined skeleton, all the bones in their normally accepted and physically proper place. None was so in the coffin, apart from the fleshless, grinning skull. Adorning that, appearing freshly combed and dressed and very full, was abundant hair, still visibly blond despite the artificial discolouring caused by so much light.

Nothing else was intact. Instead, running the entire length of the coffin – still lined in perfectly preserved and plush vivid red velvet – FUCK YOU was spelled out, straight bones like the tibia and fibula and femur and humerus and radius and ulna and larger fingers forming the upright letters, the curved but individually separated ribs fashioned into the Us and the C and the O. There had been sufficient, even, for the rejection to be finished off, as if forming an exclamation mark, with what was clearly a stiffly upright middle finger.