‘Just remember, Vernon,’ he said, ‘there are a lot of things around here that can be dangerous, if you don’t watch your step.’

‘Yes, Melvyn.’

Hudson took a grip on the trocar and thrust the sharpened point through the skin and into the belly with one firm stroke. He was pleased with his ability to do this. So many embalmers jabbed and lunged, as if they were spearing fish. All it took was the confidence to make a firm thrust through the abdominal wall, and the assurance to leave the trocar in place as it began to release the gases and liquids that had built up in the body’s cavities.

He infused about sixteen ounces of preservative into the abdomen through the trocar, and the same amount into the chest. He examined the genitals in case they needed a thrust of the trocar too, but decided his technique had been good enough for the formaldehyde to reach all the small blood vessels.

Then he thought about the skull. How much gas and fluid might have collected in the cranium? It was possible to pass the trocar up through the nose and into the skull through the thin bone at the top of the nostrils. He could instil cavity fluid and pack the nose with cotton wool to prevent leaks. But he looked at his watch and decided it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he used a series of trocar buttons to close up the holes he’d already made.

Then Hudson realized that Vernon was watching him across the corpse, his eyes wide and anxious over his mask.

‘Well, Vernon,’ he said, ‘that’s a good job done. Let’s get it back into the freezer. This is one corpse that won’t decompose in a hurry.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Don’t forget to send us the bill for your services, sir,’ said Fry, as she reached the bottom of Professor Robertson’s gravel drive.

It had been a protracted interview, long on talk and short on information. Highly unsatisfactory, from Fry’s point of view. Worse still, once he’d recovered from his momentary show of temper over the key-ring, the professor had seemed entirely unperturbed by her visit.

‘Ah, you don’t know, then?’ said Robertson. ‘I’m giving my time entirely free and gratis. As a favour to my friend, Councillor Edwards. And in the public interest, of course.’

‘Very commendable, sir.’

Fry watched the professor walk up the drive towards his house. Even from the back, he looked smug. But entirely free and gratis. She sighed. So that was it. Who could resist the services of an expert when they were provided for nothing?

As he waited by the car for Fry, Cooper recalled the professor’s distaste for what he called the mechanical spectacle of death, the intrusion of machines into the natural process of dying. He’d sounded sincere. But had it all been an act?

‘At least he didn’t quote the Bible to you,’ he said as Fry walked towards the car. He was hoping she’d forget to ask him why he’d let slip to Robertson about the phone messages.