The Dead Place. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ of course. You’re not here to enjoy the scenery.’

      Cooper followed her into the funeral director’s, where they found Melvyn Hudson to be a dapper man in his late forties, with neat hair greying at the temples. He was wearing a black suit and black tie, and he seemed to slip effortlessly into character as he came through the door into the waiting room and held out his hand.

      ‘Come through, come through. And please tell me exactly how I can help.’

      Beyond the door was a passage, and two men walking towards them. Like Hudson, they were in black suits, though neither of them carried it off so well. The larger man had a shaven head and a prominent jaw, like a night-club bouncer, while the younger one was slender and ungainly, his suit barely concealing the boniness of his shoulders and wrists. They stopped in unison when they saw the visitors, and their faces fell into serious expressions.

      ‘Sergeant, these are two of our bearer drivers,’ said Hudson. ‘Billy McGowan – and this is Vernon Slack.’

      The two men nodded and moved on, closing a door quietly behind them.

      Hudson’s office felt like a doctor’s consulting room, with soothing décor, interesting pot plants and certificates framed on the wall. Who did funeral directors get certificates from, Fry wondered. Were there classes in undertaking at night school? A diploma in coffin manufacture at High Peak College?

      ‘You realize there are quite a lot of people like that?’ said Hudson, after Fry had explained what she wanted.

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘People who make a hobby of going to funerals. We see them all the time. Sometimes we joke to each other that a funeral isn’t complete without our usual little bunch of habitual mourners.’

      ‘You mean they go to the funerals of people they never knew?’

      ‘Of course,’ said Hudson. ‘They watch the church notice boards, or read the death announcements in the Eden Valley Times to see what funerals are coming up. And then they plan their diaries for the week ahead. For some people, funerals are their favourite type of outing. They become social occasions. Perhaps even a place where they meet new people.’

      Hudson must have noticed the shocked expression on Fry’s face.

      ‘It’s perfectly harmless,’ he said. ‘These are people who simply like funerals.’

      ‘And you recognize these individuals when they turn up?’

      ‘Oh, yes. Many of them are familiar faces to staff at Hudson and Slack, as they are to all my colleagues in this area.’

      Fry saw Cooper open his mouth as if about to join in, but she gave him a glance to shut him up. As he dropped his eyes to his notebook, an unruly lock of hair fell over his forehead. She ought to suggest it was time for a haircut again.

      ‘I don’t suppose you could let me have some names, Mr Hudson?’ she said.

      ‘As it happens, yes. The Eden Valley Times used to publish lists of mourners on its obituary page until quite recently, and it was usually our job to collect the names. We did it as part of our service to the bereaved family, you see. The names wouldn’t be hard to find, anyway. You’d only need to look through a few back copies of the newspaper and check the obituary pages, and you’d see them listed as mourners at almost every funeral in the area.’

      ‘No addresses, though?’

      Hudson shrugged. ‘I can’t help you with that. The only thing I can say is that they tend to stick to funerals on their own patch. They don’t travel very much for their hobby.’

      Fry nodded. ‘What about Wardlow?’

      ‘Well, that’s different,’ said Hudson. ‘A small village, a few miles out of town – there aren’t many funerals in a place like that, as you can imagine. Hudson and Slack are one of the busiest funeral directors in the valley, but we don’t do more than one job a year in Wardlow, if that. So if there were habitual mourners in Wardlow, I wouldn’t recognize them.’

      He smiled, a sympathetic smile that suggested he cared about everybody, no matter who they were.

      ‘And I don’t suppose they get much outlet for their interest, either,’ he said. ‘They’d be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Rather like a dead atheist.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Just my little funeral director’s joke.’

      Fry raised her eyebrows, then looked at Cooper to make sure he was taking notes. ‘Mr Hudson, you said a minute ago that the Eden Valley Times published lists of mourners until quite recently?’

      ‘Yes. But they’ve stopped doing it now. A new editor arrived, and he thought it was rather an old-fashioned practice. Well, I suppose he was right. The Times was one of the few local newspapers left in the country that still did it, so it was bound to go the way of all traditions eventually. But our customers liked it.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Well, locally, it became an indicator of status – an individual’s popularity and success in life were measured by how many mourners they had at their funeral, whether the mayor attended or only the deputy mayor, that sort of thing. Also, people would look to make sure they were on the list and their names had been spelled right. Of course, there was often a lot of gossip about who’d turned up and who hadn’t – especially if there had been some kind of family dispute. You know what it’s like.’

      ‘Not really,’ said Fry.

      Hudson looked at her more carefully. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ he said. ‘I should have noticed.’

      She tried to ignore the comment. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. The traces of her Black Country accent normally betrayed her straight away, but apparently Melvyn Hudson wasn’t quite so observant as he claimed to be. Nevertheless, Fry found herself unreasonably irritated by the implication that he ought to have been able to tell at a glance she wasn’t local.

      ‘Wouldn’t it be true to say there’s another factor?’ she said.

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘That it isn’t enough just to show your respects when somebody dies, you have to be seen to be doing it. That’s the whole point of getting your name in the paper, isn’t it? So that everyone can see you were doing the right thing, no matter what you thought of the deceased person?’

      ‘I think that’s a little unfair.’

      ‘And it’s the purpose of all the money spent on floral tributes too, isn’t it? After all, they don’t do the person who’s died much good, do they?’

      Cooper stirred restlessly and snapped the elastic band on his notebook, as if he thought it was time to leave. Hudson’s smile was slipping, but he stayed calm. Of course, he had to deal with much more difficult situations every day.

      ‘Have you had some kind of unfortunate personal experience?’ he said. ‘If something is troubling you, we can offer the services of a bereavement counsellor.’

      ‘No,’ СКАЧАТЬ