Grave Concerns Read Free Page A

another part of the answer to his earlier self-questioning. Just an old woman who nobody cared about. Nobody had been searching for her, worrying about her. And maybe she hadn’t been murdered after all. Maybe she’d died somehow, out in the open last summer, and as an act of unthinking sensibility someone had buried her in the new cemetery. It had a neat touch, a nice thoughtfulness which Drew found appealing, but he knew, inescapably, that it didn’t ring true. Pity , Drew said to himself. It’s a pity she couldn’t have just lain there undisturbed . And he cast a look of such venom at Jeffrey that the gravedigger flinched in bewildered alarm.
    * * *
    Drew lingered after the body had been delivered to the Path Lab at the big Royal Victoria Hospital. The Coroner’s Officer, Stanley Sharples, met him in the corridor outside and clapped him on the upper arm. He looked weary and drawn.
    ‘What’s all this then?’ he said. ‘Someone jumping the gun in your new cemetery?’
    Drew forced an answering grin. ‘Something like that,’ he nodded. ‘An elderly woman – the police seem to think she’s probably a vagrant.’
    ‘Funny vagrant – wearing jewellery, I gather,’ Stanley demurred.
    ‘You must have come across it before,’ Drew said. ‘Most people, even tramps, hang on to one special possession. It’s human nature, isn’t it? Even if you’re living rough, hooked on drugs, as deep in the pit as you can get, you need something special to call your own. Especially women. Some lover probably gave it her fifty years ago.’
    Stanley was only half-attending. Drew was irritated. Never mind that the man was in the middle of the worst disaster of his career, it was still his job to give this new case his full concentration.
    ‘Or maybe it wasn’t hers. Perhaps it’s a parting gift from whoever buried her?’ he went on. ‘Somebody cared enough to lay her out properly, wrap her up, and bring her to my field. Maybe they wanted her to have something nice in therewith her.’ Drew had seen countless instances of the modern version of grave goods. Families put a bizarre assortment of objects in the coffin with their dead relatives.
    ‘Don’t get complicated about it,’ the Coroner’s Officer begged. ‘In any case, this one’s going to have to wait. We haven’t got time for it now. God knows, Drew, we’re stretched to the limit here at the moment. I’ve just been talking to the mother of two boys, both killed in the back of that bus. She hasn’t got any other kids. Can you imagine what that’s like?’ There were tears in Stanley’s eyes. Drew accepted defeat.
    ‘OK,’ he said, a heavy knot of pain and fear collecting in his chest. He didn’t want to imagine what it was like to lose your family in a ghastly accident. He didn’t want to listen to Stanley any more. ‘OK,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll just wait to hear from you, then. In a week or two.’
    ‘Don’t worry, son,’ Stanley told him. ‘We’ll get around to her eventually. She isn’t going to go anywhere, is she? And I can tell you already, we’re not likely to find much of any use. It’s going to be one that gets away – lack of sufficient evidence. Death by person or persons unknown. Usual platitudes. Even if we’d had nothing else to do, it’d come to the same thing in the end.’ He eyed Drew ruminatively for a moment, remembering his past reputation. ‘So – don’t yougo stirring things up, there’s a good chap. None of your romantic amateur detecting on this one.’ He smiled wanly. ‘Tell you what – I’ll put in a word with Fiona at the Council – make sure you get the funeral when it happens. How’s that?’
    ‘Thanks,’ muttered Drew. ‘But I shouldn’t hold my breath – right?’
    ‘Right,’ said Stanley.

CHAPTER TWO
    There was a police presence of one sort or another at the field for the next three days. Every atom of material from the dead woman was carefully removed from the shallow grave. ‘If it