The face looked a bit tense. Hudson massaged the forehead and the area around the eyes to relax the dead muscles, then stood back and examined the effect. The upper lids of the eyes had to meet to the lower lids about two thirds of the way down to get the peaceful look. Too high or low, and it made the deceased appear to be in pain, or squinting.

‘Vernon, I know you’d be careful,’ said Hudson. ‘But do you think your grandfather understands?’

‘Understands what?’

‘The importance of appearances.’

Hudson packed the throat with gauze, put the dentures back in and slid a mouth-former over them, so that its ridges of plastic knobs would keep the lips closed. He shut the mouth permanently by stitching the lips together with a needle and thread, checking that the line of the mouth wasn’t too tight before tying the thread off. Then he tilted the head slightly to the right, so it would face the grievers when they viewed it in the chapel of rest.

‘Does he look OK?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

‘I think he looks ten years younger,’ said Hudson, and laughed. It was exactly what the grievers always said.

Finally, he packed the anus with cotton wool soaked in cavity fluid and rubbed a light coating of grease on to the face, neck and hands.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now the fun starts.’

Hudson used bruise bleach to remove a couple of blackened areas, spread more superglue to close the small wounds, and replaced the missing tissue with putty and hardening compound. He remembered one occasion when he’d been given a body that had been decapitated. He’d had to insert splints to stop the head sagging to one side, then he’d trimmed the edges of the skin and sewn the head back on with dental floss. The suture line had been hidden by a high collar and a tie when the time for viewing came around.

Behind his respirator mask, Hudson was doing his best not to breathe in the vapours from the body cavity fluids and formaldehyde. The preparation room was claustrophobic and sound-proofed to prevent the noise of the pump or the splash of fluids from reaching the public rooms.

‘I noticed those burns on your hand earlier,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing.’

Hudson looked at Vernon over his mask. ‘As long as it wasn’t an accident at work. We wouldn’t want that.’

‘I know,’ said Vernon. ‘Bad for the image.’

Then Hudson made the first incision. He’d decided on arterial embalming for this job. But the decision had been an easy one, really. Cavity embalming took such little skill that it gave him no satisfaction. The belly punchers and the throat cutters – there were always derogatory terms for every speciality.

The scalpel felt cool and familiar in his gloved hand as he incised the skin over the left carotid artery and lifted a section clear of the surrounding tissue. Carefully, he inserted the canula into the artery, then attached a drain to the femoral vein in the groin and let the tube hang off the table into the guttering. For a body this size, he’d have to pump in about seven pints of formaldehyde solution, so there’d be a lot to drain away. As the fluid circulated, the muscles would firm up. In about ten hours’ time, they’d be so hard that he wouldn’t be able to alter the body’s position any further.