The Sleeping and the Dead

Chapter Eighteen

Hannah’s father had been cremated. Her mother had wanted the whole business over quickly, without any fuss. Hannah remembered the undertaker coming to the house to discuss arrangements. He was young, with impeccable clothes and a nervous cough. Perhaps Edward had been his first suicide.

‘No fuss,’ Audrey said immediately, before he had a chance to sit down. ‘No show.’

‘Nothing in the papers then?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Flowers?’

‘No!’ She spoke very fiercely and he asked no more questions.

Hannah and her mother stood alone in the crematorium and watched the flimsy coffin slide behind the curtains. Afterwards they went home for tea and Battenberg, a cake Edward had always particularly disliked.

Michael’s mother, however, had been buried. There had been mourners dressed in smart clothes, a black limousine which had taken Michael from wherever he had been living as a child to a church and then to the cemetery by the lighthouse. Had he mentioned a church? Hannah thought he had. The crocuses on the lawn, a church filled with weeping people, then another ride in the car to the cemetery.

Hannah had felt lousy all day. The encounter with the detectives had left her with a thick head and a jumpiness verging on paranoia. She was frightened that they’d turn up at any time to ask more of their questions. In the prison Marty saw at once that she wasn’t well and had the kettle on before she asked him. She was tempted to seek out Arthur at lunchtime but something stopped her. More pride. She didn’t want to admit to a hangover at her age. She didn’t want him analysing her problems, coming to conclusions about her weakness and loneliness. She’d always been a person to give support, never to need it.

When Hannah got home, the house was empty. There was a cryptic note on the table from Rosie saying something urgent had come up and she’d be back by eleven. Hannah’d had nothing to eat all day but she couldn’t face supper. She couldn’t settle. So she went for a walk to the cemetery to look for Michael’s mother.

Michael hadn’t started school when his mother died. She was sure of that. It was the way he’d spoken of the wrench of her going into hospital. She must always have been around before. So, Hannah thought, when his mother died Michael would have been five at the oldest, three at the youngest. His memories had a clarity and sophistication which would have been unlikely in a toddler. The death would have occurred between forty to forty-two years previously. Even then it would have been unusual for a woman to die so young. Perhaps on the headstone there would be mention of a child. At the very least, Hannah thought, she should be able to provide Porteous and Stout with a short list of possible names. Information for the team to check, to get them off her back.

She walked along the sea front towards the lighthouse. The salty breeze and the smell of seaweed cleared her head for the first time that day. The car ferry from Bergen slid past on its way to the dock further up the river. Hannah remembered a family holiday in Norway. Rosie had been six. She’d been sick on the boat. Jonathan had sulked all week because the food in the farmhouse hadn’t lived up to his expectations and he hadn’t been able to get hold of a decent bottle of wine. Even before the arrival of Eve the temptress it hadn’t been much of a marriage. ‘You’ll be better off without him,’ her friends said. Until now it had been too much like admitting failure to agree.

The cemetery was almost empty. In the distance a workman was mowing the grass paths but the sound of the machine hardly reached her. At first she wandered aimlessly, her attention caught and held by unusual names, ornate carvings, simple messages of bereavement. Then, as the shadows lengthened she brought more order into the search. The modern graves – those dug within the last twenty years – were at the far end, the furthest inland. Those could be ignored. The remaining plots were in a more random jumble. There seemed to be no chronological order. The space was divided occasionally by a high cypress hedge or a stone arch. Rooks were gathering in the trees which separated the graveyard from the road. She walked up and down the lines of headstones to the jarring sound of the rooks, moving on quickly if the deceased were a man or too old, only stopping for a woman and if the date was right.