‘He was working here when I started,’ Archie said, dropping the scalpel and picking up a surgical needle and thread. ‘Doing the same as me, really. Driving, putting the coffins together, picking up bodies.’

‘What else?’

‘He was quiet, didn’t say much.’

‘What do you remember about him stopping working here?’

Archie made a couple of loops through, drawing the flesh together at the bottom of the cut, tugging it tight. It didn’t have to be neat, no one was going to see it, but Archie did a tidy job all the same.

‘What’s this about?’ he said. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘Did you speak to the police?’

Archie looked puzzled. ‘Why would I talk to the police?’

‘Simon Lawrence disappeared.’

‘What?’

‘He didn’t get a job in an office.’

Archie shook his head. ‘That’s just what I assumed, maybe Jim told me.’

‘He just vanished.’107

‘After he quit here, you mean?’

Dorothy looked at the needle in Archie’s hand, the half-closed wound on the body. ‘I don’t think he quit, I think he went missing.’

‘But you would’ve known about that, wouldn’t you?’

Dorothy put her hand out to touch the metal table, the cold of it reassuring. ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Well, then.’

‘You don’t understand, Jim lied about it.’

‘Why would he?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

Archie made another stitch in the skin.

Dorothy leaned in. ‘What I’m trying to work out is whether you’re lying to me too.’

Archie straightened up. ‘I’m not lying.’

Dorothy pressed her lips together, pushed herself away from the table. ‘I talked to the police officer who looked into the case. She said she spoke to two people here about Simon.’

Archie held the needle tight in his gloved hand. ‘I never spoke to the police, I would remember that.’

‘Either you’re lying or she’s lying.’

Archie stood there, his hands resting on William’s chest. ‘This is, what, ten years ago? Maybe the officer remembered wrongly. Maybe she spoke to Jim and someone else.’

‘There was no one else here back then.’

‘Well, maybe she spoke to someone somewhere else and she’s conflating the two.’

Archie looked at her and she held his gaze. She wanted to tell something from his expression, but she wasn’t sure at all.

Archie rolled his tongue inside his cheek. ‘Why do you care anyway? It’s ancient history.’

Dorothy thought about the bank account, the money. She thought about Rebecca in Craigentinny bringing up her daughter, no husband to help. She thought about Jim’s life assurance lie, 108Rebecca accepting the money without caring. She thought about Jim talking to the police about Simon but never mentioning it, she thought about an employee vanishing, ceasing to exist, just like William Baxter here.

‘It’s not ancient history at all,’ she said.