Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(13)
‘Mr Berlin –’
‘Detective Sergeant Berlin.’
‘Detective Sergeant Berlin,’ Callahan leaned forward, elbows on his desk blotter, ‘my late father started this business in the spirit of serving the members of our local community in their time of loss in a professional and respectful and ethical manner, and I can assure you that I continue his legacy. Our clients, by which I mean the deceased as well as their loved ones, are at all times treated with dignity and care, and I must say what you are suggesting is truly appalling. ’
‘Mrs Moffit seemed to be quite certain about what she’d seen.’
The undertaker clasped his fingers together and spoke more softly, slowly, as if imparting a great truth. ‘Detective Sergeant Berlin, death can be a very disturbing experience for those who are unprepared. The widow, Mrs Moffit, came in unexpectedly while I was retrieving her late husband’s medals from the coffin. My thoughts are that the sight of the corpse, her husband, and the ravages caused by his illness unnerved her, quite understandably so, and she became hysterical.’
‘It sounds like he was a long time dying, and she nursed him to the end, so she knew exactly how he looked.’
‘Were you in the war, Detective Sergeant Berlin?’
It was not an uncommon question these days but it was one that always got Berlin’s back up. ‘What’s that bloody got to do with anything?’
Callahan sat back in his seat and put his hands up. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Berlin – Detective Sergeant – I didn’t mean to give offence. My point is that death is a mystery to us all and people can react in unexpected ways. In my experience, such an extreme reaction is not unusual. Sometimes, in moments of great personal distress, people’s imaginations can play tricks on them.’
‘And you learned all this in the heat of battle, or on the brutal front lines of the burial business?’
‘I did not serve, Detective Sergeant Berlin, but I am always standing ready to help my country in its time of need.’
It was an odd comment, and stopped Berlin for a moment. He wondered what the hell it was supposed to mean but he let it go.
‘Okay, Mr Callahan, if you say so. But getting back to the matter at hand, you’re telling me, despite what his wife says, that Cyril Moffit was lowered into the earth a whole man?’
He saw that tightening around the eyes again before Callahan spoke. ‘Cyril Moffit wasn’t buried, he was cremated, in accordance with what I understood to be the family’s wishes. All of him.’
Berlin stood up. ‘That’s that then. I won’t trouble you any longer. I believe I’ve found out all I need to know.’
The undertaker looked relieved as he shook Berlin’s hand.
Walking back down the long corridor, Berlin thought about his grandfather. The old bloke had been a policeman all his life and Berlin remembered his smile and his soft Scottish brogue and something he’d said to him when he first became a copper.
‘A wink might be as good as a nod to a blind man, as they say, young Probationary Constable Berlin, but you mark my words, laddie, for a policeman, for a good policeman, one lie is all you need. One lie that you know is a lie, aye, that’s all you need to start everything on a path to unravelling.’
TEN
Berlin was glad to be out of Callahan’s company but as the front door of the funeral parlour closed behind him he remembered he had to piss. Around the side of the building the man in the shirtsleeves was now running a chamois over the dripping hearse. ‘You wouldn’t have a dunny handy round here, would you mate?’
The man looked up from the gleaming duco of the hearse and pointed to a brick outhouse standing alone at the rear of the parking area.
Talkative bastard. ‘Thanks,’ Berlin said. I’ll let you get back to it.’
The rusted hinges on the toilet’s sagging wooden door initially resisted his efforts at opening. Inside, an old cast-iron cistern was set up high on the back wall, its long pull chain dangling. Roughly torn squares of newspaper were stuck on a nail in the wall, cigarette butts and used matches were strewn across the floor, and an empty bottle of Phenyl disinfectant lay on its side in one corner. The wooden toilet seat was splintered, the bowl stained brown from years of neglect, but at least these lucky bastards were on the sewer. Rebecca couldn’t wait till they were connected at home.
How much tea had he actually had? he wondered. He was pissing like a racehorse. Callahan’s strange comment about serving his country still niggled at Berlin. Bugger looked fit enough; there would have been nothing to stop him joining up to fight the Japs or the Germans that he could see. And even if he was too young for the big war he could have gone off to Korea. They’d needed lots of fit young men to be killed in that one too.
It was the lie about the cremation that was playing on his mind most.
It was stupid, like most lies, and easily checked. In fact Rebecca had described to him Beryl’s distress at the graveside as the first shovelful of soil thudded down on the coffin lid. Why lie? Callahan didn’t strike him as the sharpest knife in the drawer but he wasn’t a complete fool. But more to the point, why the hell would anyone want to take a dead man’s leg?
He buttoned up and pulled down hard on the chain and a deluge of rusty water swirled out and round the bowl, splashing over the lip and making him step back quickly.