She went to the sink and washed her hands, rubbing for longer 105than necessary, trying to scrub the death from her fingertips. Then she headed downstairs and through to the embalming room.

Archie was wearing blue plastic gloves, and holding a scalpel over an elderly man with his chest bared. He made a deep vertical incision in the chest, just below the left side of the collarbone. He looked up and nodded at the corpse.

‘William Baxter,’ he said. ‘Pacemaker.’

They had to remove pacemakers by law in case they exploded in the crem furnace. Dorothy always wondered about the first time that happened, if anyone was injured or even killed. A last revenge from beyond the grave. She answered questions about it all the time at funerals because of a famous Scottish novel that opened with someone’s grandmother exploding that way.

Archie kept going over the same incision, making it longer and deeper. He pulled the skin apart to expose the flesh beneath. It moved under his fingers like a joint of meat in a butcher’s hands, nothing more. But this was something more, this was William with his dodgy heart, beloved by family and friends.

‘I want to ask you something,’ Dorothy said.

Archie picked up the scalpel again and widened the cut. Dorothy saw a glint of metal in the wound.

‘Yeah?’

‘About Simon Lawrence.’

Archie pulled the skin at either side of the cut and Dorothy saw more of the brushed-metal disc inside.

‘You already asked me about him,’ Archie said, head down in concentration. His fingers probed inside, peeling back layers and digging in.

‘I thought you might have forgotten something.’

She came closer, staring at the top of Archie’s head, watching his movements. She glanced at the body on the slab, sunken cheeks and chest, withered arms, wispy white hair on his chest, stubble on his chin. It was a myth that hair and nails kept growing on a body after death. The body starts to dehydrate as soon as you 106die and the skin shrinks and tightens around the corpse, exposing hair that was under the surface.

Archie stuck the scalpel in the hole, severing the sutures that kept the pacemaker in place, then he flipped his fingers and the disc popped out. It was an old one, the size of a flattened yo-yo, and must’ve felt obvious to the touch. It was linked via two wires at a clunky connector, the wires disappearing into the body, through the ribs into the heart. Archie snipped the wires and pushed the ends into the wound, squidging the flesh together and placing the pacemaker on a tray by his side.

He looked up. ‘Forgotten something?’

Dorothy thought there was something in his eyes, a guardedness. ‘Tell me again what you remember.’