The PCU itself should have been disbanded by now, but had successfully skated over every trap laid for it by the Home Office. Even Land had argued for the unit’s closure behind his colleagues’ backs, but had then surprised himself by fighting in order to preserve it.
Life, it seemed, was every bit as confusing and disorderly as the PCU’s investigations.
Now, the annoyingly upper-class pathologist Giles Kershaw was to be promoted into Finch’s position in charge of the Bayham Street morgue, which meant that the PCU was losing another member of staff. With grim inevitability, the Home Office would doubtless seek to use the loss as a method of controlling and closing them down. The oldest members of staff would be for the chop. Land had given up hope of ever finding a way to transfer out. He had nailed his colours to the unit’s mast when he had reluctantly supported his own staff and attacked his superiors. Now, they would never find him a cushy detail in the suburbs where he could quietly wait out the remaining years to his retirement.
Land sighed and looked about the pub’s upstairs room. Plenty of officers from Albany Street, West End Central and Savile Row nicks, even former ushers from Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court had turned up for the wake, but the Home Office had chosen to show their disdain by staying away. Finch had upset them too many times in the past.
Sergeant Renfield, the ox-like desk officer from Albany Street, was watching everyone from his lonely vantage point near the toilets. Land headed over with two bottles of porter clutched between his fingers. ‘Hello, Jack,’ he said, refilling Renfield’s beer glass with the malty liquid. ‘I wondered if you’d show up to see Oswald off.’
‘You bloody well knew I’d be here.’ The sergeant regarded him with a baleful eye. ‘After all, it’s partly my fault that he’s dead.’
‘There’s no point in being hard on yourself,’ said Land. ‘People working in close proximity to death face unusual hazards. It’s part of the job.’
‘Try telling that to this lot.’ Renfield gestured at the room with his glass. ‘I know they blame me for what happened.’ The sergeant had made a procedural shortcut that had been revealed as a bad decision in the light of Finch’s death. To be fair, it was the sort of mistake that often occurred when everyone was under pressure.
‘Actually, Jack, today isn’t about you. Besides, you’ll get a chance to have your say.’
Renfield looked anxious. ‘You haven’t already told them, have you? Have you said something to Bryant and May?’
‘Good God, no. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought we’d get Oswald into the incinerator before I gave them the good news. Come to think of it, perhaps you should be the one to make the announcement.’ Land patted the sergeant on the shoulder and moved away. He wasn’t alone in disliking Renfield, who was a Met man, as hard and earthy as the ground he walked on. Renfield had no time for the airy-fairy attitudes of the PCU staff, and didn’t care who knew it. Left alone in the corner of the room once more, he decided to concentrate on fitting sausage rolls into his mouth between slugs of beer.
Over at the bar, Arthur Bryant adjusted his reading glasses, held up the aluminium funeral urn and turned it over to examine its base. ‘Made in China,’ he muttered. ‘A lightweight wipe-clean screw-top final resting place. I suppose Oswald would have approved. But how quickly we sacrifice dignity for expedience, even in death.’
‘Well, he didn’t choose it for himself,’ said John May. ‘He’d have picked something less vulgar. He was always so thorough, and yet he decided to entrust his remains to you.’
‘He knew I’d do the right thing,’ said Bryant with a knowing smile.
‘Which is?’
‘I’ve been instructed to plant his ashes in a place that would annoy Raymond. I thought the little park behind Pratt Street would do nicely, because Land always goes there for a quiet smoke. I’m going to stick it right opposite the bench where he sits, so he’ll have to keep looking at it. I’ve already had a word with the park keeper.’
‘Do you think Oswald would want to be buried there?’
‘Why not? It’s handy for the office. He worked in the same place for fifty years. People don’t like change, alive or dead.’ Bryant lifted his rucksack from the floor to place the urn inside it, but changed his mind. ‘One thing puzzles me, John. He didn’t want floral tributes, but requested posthumous contributions for the Broadhampton Hospital. He never mentioned the place before. I thought it might be where his old school pal was kept, but no. Maybe he has a family friend staying in there, some kind of debt to be honoured. He probably wouldn’t have wanted to discuss the matter in life. It’s an asylum, after all.’