Dead Like You

on chalky soil, on high ground, it was hopefully above the water table and would be relatively dry. Judging by the worsening smell, they would find out in a few minutes now.
    He finished his tea and was about to go back inside when his phone rang. It was Kevin Spinella.
    ‘Has the Argus hot-shot been having a Sunday lie-in?’ Grace said, by way of a greeting.
    There was a lot of wind roar, and the rumble of the huge portable generator, close by.
    ‘Sorry!’ the reporter shouted. ‘Couldn’t hear you!’
    Grace repeated what he had said.
    ‘Actually I’ve been doing a tour of local cemeteries, trying to find you, Detective Superintendent. Any chance I could come in?’
    ‘Sure, book a plot here, then go and get hit by a bus.’
    ‘Ha-ha! I mean now.’
    ‘I’m sorry, no.’
    ‘OK. So what do you have for me?’
    ‘Not much more than you can see from the perimeter at the moment. Bell me back in an hour, I might have more then.’
    ‘Excuse me, but I thought you were hunting for a young lady who disappeared last night, Jessie Sheldon? What are you doing here digging up an eighty-year-old lady?’
    ‘You do your work by digging stuff up, sometimes I do mine that way too,’ Grace replied, wondering how, yet again, the reporter had such an inside track.
    Joan Major suddenly emerged from the entrance to the main tent, waving at him. ‘Roy!’ she called out.
    He hung up.
    ‘They’ve reached the coffin! Good news. It’s intact! And the plaque on it reads Molly Winifred Glossop , so we have the right one!’
    Grace followed her back in. The stench was horrific now and as the flap closed behind him he tried to breathe in only through his mouth. The crowded interior of the tent felt like a film set, with the battery of intense bright lights on stands all focused around the grave and the mound of earth at the far end, and several fixed video cameras recording all that was happening.
    Most of the people in here were having problems with the stench too, with the exception of the four officers from the Specialist Search Unit. They were wearing white bio-chemical protective suits with breathing apparatus. Two of them were kneeling on the roof of the coffin, screwing heavy-duty hooks into the sides, ready to attach cables to block and tackle lifting gear once the sides of the coffin had been cleared, which the other two were now manoeuvring into position, a good yard above the top of the grave.
    Joan Major took over the excavation work, for the next hour painstakingly excavating down the sides, and under the base at each end of the coffin, for lifting straps to be placed there. As she worked she carefully bagged soil samples from above, the side and beneath the coffin for later examination of any possible leaked fluids from the contents of the coffin.
    When she was finished, two of the exhumation specialists then clipped ropes to each of the four hooks, and to the underneath of the coffin front and back, and clambered out of the grave.
    ‘OK,’ one said, moving clear. ‘Ready.’
    Everyone moved back.
    The police chaplain stepped forward, holding a prayer book. He asked for silence, then, standing over the grave, read out a short, non-denominational prayer, welcoming back to earth whoever it might be that was in the coffin.
    Grace found the prayer strangely touching, as if they were greeting some long-lost returning traveller.
    The other members of the exhumation team began heaving on a sturdy rope. There was a brief, anxious moment when nothing happened. Then a strange sucking noise that was more like a sigh, as if the earth was only very reluctantly yielding something it had claimed for its own. And suddenly the coffin was steadily rising.
    It came up, swinging, scraping against the sides, the pulley creaking, all the way until the bottom of the coffin was several inches clear of the grave. It swayed. Everyone in the tent watched for some moments in silent awe. A few clumps of earth tumbled and fell back into the grave.
    Grace stared at the light-coloured wood. It did look remarkably well preserved, as if it had been down there for only a few days, rather than twelve years. So, what secrets do you contain? Please God, something that will connect us to the Shoe Man.
    The Home Office pathologist, Nadiuska De Sancha, had already been contacted, and would head straight to the mortuary as soon as the body was loaded into the Coroner’s van.
    Suddenly there was a deafening crack, like a clap of thunder. Everyone