“Do you, Henry? I wonder.”
There was a knock at the door and a small, dapper man in belted continental raincoat entered. He looked like a Southern Italian, but spoke with a South Yorkshire accent.
“You wanted me, Mr.. Meehan?”
“That’s it, Bonati. Come in.” Meehan returned to Ainsley. “Yes, I really wonder about you, Henry. Now the way I see it, this was an insurance job. She’s strictly working class. The policy pays fifty and you price the job at seventy and the old dear coughs up because she can’t stand the thought of her Bill having a state funeral.” He shook his head. “You gave her a receipt for fifty, which she’s too tired and old to notice, and you enter fifty in the cash book.3
Ainsley was shaking like a leaf. “Please, Mr.. Meehan, please listen. I’ve had certain difficulties lately.”
Meehan stood up. “Has he been brought in, her husband?”
Ainsley nodded. “This morning. He’s in number three. He hasn’t been prepared yet.”
“Bring him along,” Meehan told Donner and walked out
He went into cubicle number three in the Chapel of Rest and switched on the light and the others followed him in. The old man was laying in an open coffin with a sheet over him and Meehan pulled it away. He was quite naked and had obviously been a remarkably powerful man in his day with the shoulders and chest of a heavyweight wrestler.
Meehan looked at him in awe. “He was a bull this one and no mistake. Look at the dick on him.” He turned to Ainsley.
“Think of the women he pleasured Think of that old lady. By God, I can see why she loved him. He was a man, this old lad.”
His knee came up savagely. Henry Ainsley grabbed for his privates too late and he pitched forward with a choked cry.
“Take him up to the coffin room,3 Meehan told Dormer. Til join you in five minutes.”
When Henry Ainsley regained his senses, he was lying flat on his back, arms outstretched, Donner standing on one hand, Bonati on the other.
The door opened and Meehan entered. He stood looking down at him for a moment, then nodded. “All right, pick him up.”
The room was used to store coffins which weren’t actually made on the premises, but there were a couple of workbenches and a selection of carpenter’s tools on a rack on the wall
“Please, Mr.. Meehan,” Ainsley begged him.
Meehan nodded to Donner and Bonati dragged Ainsley back across one of the workbenches, arms outstretched, palms uppermost.
Meehan stood over him. I’m going to teach you a lesson, Henry. Not because you tried to fiddle me out of twenty quid. That’s one thing that’s definitely not allowed, but it’s more than that. You see, I’m thinking of that old girl She’s never had a thing in her life. All she ever got was screwed into the ground.”
His eyes were smoking now and there was a slightly dreamy quality to his voice. “She reminded me of my old mum, I don’t know why. But I know one thing. She’s earned some respect just like her old fella’s earned something better than a state funeral.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Mr.. Meehan,” Ainsley gabbled.
“No, Henry, you’re the one who got it wrong.”
Meehan selected two bradawls from the rack on the wall He tested the point of one on his thumb then drove it through the centre of Kinsley’s right palm pinning his hand to the bench. When he repeated the process “with the other hand Ainsley fainted.
Meehan turned to Donner. “Five minutes, then release him and tell him if he isn’t in the office on time in the morning, I’ll have his balls.”
“All right, Mr.. Meehan,” Donner said. “What about Fallon?”
Til be in the preparation room. I’ve got some embalming to do. When Fallon comes, keep him in the office till I’ve had a chance to get up to the flat, then bring him up. And I want Albert up there as soon as he comes in.”
“Kid glove treatment, Mr.. Meehan?”
“What else, Frank? What else?”
Meehan smiled, patted the unconscious Ainsley on the cheek and walked out