The preparation room was on the other side of the Chapel of Rest and when Meehan went in he dosed the door. He liked to be alone on such occasions. It aided concentration and made the whole thing somehow much more personal.
A body waited for him on the table in the centre of the room covered with a sheet. Beside it on a trolley the tools of his trade were laid out nearly on a white cloth. Scalpels, scissors, forceps, surgical needles of various sizes, artery tubes, a large rubber bulb syringe and a glass jar containing a couple of gallons of embalming fluid. On a shelf underneath was an assortment of cosmetics, make-up creams and face powders, all made to order.
He pulled away the sheet and folded it nearly. The body was that of a woman of forty – handsome, dark-haired. He remembered the case. A history of heart trouble. She’d died in mid-sentence while discussing plans for Christmas with her husband.
There was still that look of faint surprise on her face that many people show in death; jaw dropped, mouth gaping as if in amazement that this should be happening to her of all people.
Meehan took a long curved needle and skillfully passed a thread from behind the lower lip, up through the nasal septum and down again, so that when he tightened the thread and tied it off, the jaw was raised.
The eyeballs had fallen into their sockets. He compensated for that by inserting a circle of cotton wool under each eyelid before closing it and cotton wool between the lips and gums and in the cheeks to give a fuller, more natural appearance.
All this he did with total absorption, whistling softly between his teeth, a frown of concentration on his face. His anger at Ainsley had disappeared totally. Even Fallon had ceased to exist. He smeared a little cream on the cold lips with one finger, stood back and nodded in satisfaction. He was now ready to start the embalming process.
The body weighed nine and a half stones which meant that he needed about eleven pints of fluid of the mixture he habitually used. Formaldehyde, glycerin, borax with a little phenol added and some sodium citrate as an anti-coagulant.
It was a simple enough case with little likelihood of com-plications so he decided to start with the axillary artery as usual. He extended the left arm at right angles to the body, the elbow supported on a wooden block, reached for a scalpel and made his first incision halfway between the mid-point of the collar-bone and the bend of the elbow.
It was perhaps an hour later as he tied off the last stitch that he became aware of some sort of disturbance outside. Voices were raised in anger and then the door flew open. Meehan glanced over his shoulder. Miller was standing there. Billy tried to squeeze past him.
“I tried to stop him, Jack.”
“Make some tea,” Meehan told him. Tm thirsty. And close that door. You’ll ruin the temperature in here. How many times have I told you?”
Billy retired, the door dosing softly behind him and Meehan turned back to the body. He reached for a jar of foundation cream and started to rub some into the face of the dead woman with infinite gentleness, ignoring Miller completely.
Miller lit a cigarette, the match rasping in the silence and
Median said without turning round, “Not in here. In-here we show a little respect.”
“Is that a fact?” Miller replied, but he still dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.
He approached the table. Meehan was now applying a medium red cream rouge to the woman’s cheekbones, his fingers bringing her back to life by the minute.
Miller watched for a moment in fascinated horror. “You really like your work, don’t you, Jack?”
“What do you want?” Meehan asked calmly.
“You.”
“Nothing new in that, is there?” Meehan replied. “I mean, anybody falls over and breaks a leg in this town you come to me.”
“All right,” Miller said. “So we’ll go through the motions. Jan Krasko went up to the cemetery this morning to put flowers on his mother’s grave. He’s been doing that for just over a year now – every Thursday without fail.”