Dead Like You

going to wet yourself again, aren’t you?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘No? Well, we’ll see then. If you promise to be a very good girl, then maybe I’ll bring you some.’
    She continued trying desperately to control her bladder. But even as she heard the sound of the sliding door closing, she felt a steady warm trickle again spreading around her groin.

106
    Sunday 18 January
    The Lawn Memorial Cemetery at Woodingdean was located high up, on the eastern perimeter of Brighton, with a fine view out across the English Channel. Not that the residents of this cemetery were likely to be able to appreciate it, Roy Grace thought grimly, as he stepped out from the long, blue, caterpillar-shaped tent into the blustery wind, and crossed over to the smaller changing room and refreshments tent, his hooded blue paper suit zipped to the neck.
    The Coroner had not been wrong when she had talked about the bureaucracy involved in an exhumation. The granting and signing of the order were the easy parts. Much harder, early on a Sunday morning, was to assemble the team that was required.
    There was a commercial firm that specialized in exhumations, its main business being the removal of mass graves to new sites for construction companies, or for churches that had been deconsecrated. But they would not be able to start until tomorrow morning without punitive overtime charges.
    Grace was not prepared to wait. He called his ACC and Rigg agreed to sanction the costs.

    The team assembled for the briefing he’d held at John Street an hour ago was substantial. A Coroner’s Officer, two SOCOs, including one forensic photographer, five employees of the specialist exhumation company, a woman from the Department of the Environment, who made it clear she resented giving up her Sunday, a now mandatory Health and Safety Officer and, because it was consecrated ground, a clergyman. He’d also had present Joan Major, the forensic archaeologist, as well as Glenn Branson, whom he had put in charge of crowd control, and Michael Foreman, whom he had made an official observer.
    Cleo, Darren Wallace – her number two at the mortuary – and Walter Hordern, who was in charge of the city’s cemeteries, and drove the Coroner’s discreet dark green van to body recoveries, were also present. He only needed two of them, but because none of the mortuary trio had been to an exhumation before, they were keen to attend. Clearly, Grace thought, none of them could get enough of dead bodies. What did that say, he sometimes wondered, about Cleo’s love for him?
    It wasn’t only the mortuary staff who had been curious. He had received phone calls throughout the morning from other members of the CID as word had spread, asking if there was any chance of attending. For many of them, it would be a once-in-a-career opportunity, but he’d had to say no to all of them on the grounds of lack of space, and, in his tired and increasingly tetchy state, he had nearly added that it wasn’t a bloody circus.
    It was 4 p.m. and absolutely freezing. He stepped back out of the tent, cradling a mug of tea. The daylight was fading rapidly, and the glare of the mobile lights, situated around the cemetery, illuminating the vehicle path to the tent covering Molly Glossop’s grave, and several around it, was getting brighter.
    The site was ring-fenced by a double police cordon. All entrances to the cemetery were sealed off by a police guard and so far the public reaction had been more one of curiosity than anger. Then there was a second line of police tape directly around the two tents. No press had been allowed closer than the street.
    The team inside the main tent were getting close to the bottom of the grave. Grace hadn’t needed anyone to tell him, they all knew from the worsening stench. The smell of death was the worst smell in the world, he always thought, and he was catching whiffs of it now, as he stood out in the open air. It was the reek of a long-blocked drain suddenly being cleared, of the rotten meat in a fridge after a two-week power cut in the summer’s heat, a heavy, leaden smell that seemed to suck your own spirits into it as it sank to the ground.
    None of the experts had been able to predict what condition the body in this coffin would be in, as there were too many variables. They did not know what body – if any – was in here, or how long it had been dead before being buried. The humidity of any burial ground would be a major factor. But with this one being