Please, I’m just the intern. We’ll give you a free pizza if you just never message us again.
PART TWO
EIGHT
Percy Wilson had been forty-nine at the time of his death a few weeks ago. A nasty, despicable man, he had been universally detested by his neighbours and community for being a deeply racist, sexist, classist and xenophobic piece of work. He had gleefully funnelled his extravagant earnings from the high-interest small loan division of his brutal banking firm into climate change denial organisations and Stalin fan clubs. On some nights, for his own twisted amusement, he’d either place fake reduced stickers on items at his local M&S or watch videos of abandoned puppies and kittens online, laughing deeply until his stomach hurt. Percy had no one he loved and no one who loved him. So, when he died suddenly and alone in his home, the world barely seemed to notice.
Of course, I had no way of knowing if any of that was even remotely true. Similar to Mrs Lambert, I had chosen purposefully to keep any details of his actual life out of my mind. I still felt this knotting and writhing in my gut when I thought about Mrs Lambert and what I did to her, and the idea of doing it again was only tolerable if I imagined a real execrable excuse for a human being.
‘You okay, my sweetheart?’ Uncle Phil’s voice broke through my daydream, jolting me out of my dark fantasy about Percyslipping laxatives into the broth at soup kitchens for his own twisted pleasure.
‘Yes, sorry, Uncle Phil,’ I murmured, blinking a few times to reorient myself in reality. I turned my attention back to the spreadsheet of the various coffin costs on my desktop, which had become the closest thing I had to a romantic partner lately with all the time I spent staring longingly into its pixels, and all the time I shouted obscenities at it when my Excel formulas didn’t work.
Fun fact for you: coffins are marked up absurdly high. Uncle Phil, being an ethical man at heart, had always tried to keep prices fair, but despite his efforts, people always insisted on paying more for a coffin, convinced that an expensive version would somehow maybe ease their grief or maybe be more respectful to the departed. So, to please our customers, we charged at least three to four times the original wholesale price. Uncle Phil had experimented with lowering coffin costs and focusing on service, but oddly enough, people seemed more willing to shell out rather exorbitant amounts for a premium coffin than for any other part of a funeral.
‘Where are Sophie and I today, Ruth? Is it St Pancras, for Tom Newson in bay one?’ Uncle Phil asked.
‘You are indeed,’ I replied, not needing to consult the spreadsheet to answer. I always seemed to remember where everyone was going on a given day.
‘Brilliant, thank you, sweetheart. I know I can always count on you,’ he said warmly while leaning over the desk. It was a slightly cruelly disguised insult from fate, realising I’d become a reliable linchpin in a job I didn’t really enjoy and had only intended to do temporarily while I got back on my feet after being sacked from the paper. I have to admit, I had kind of baulked at the idea of working with Uncle Phil when Mum and Dad first brought it up as they were planning their move to the Maldives. At the time, I’d been cocooned in blankets and going by the maxim ‘you are what you eat’, was 70 per cent raspberry jelly. I think they thought of it as a way for a trusted family member to keep an eye on me while they were sunbathing on the beach with a Mai Tai on taxpayers’ money.
‘Uncle Phil’s funeral directors? Are you joking?’ I’d said, spitting projectiles of gelatinous comets across their faces.
Still, as mundane and sluggish as each day was, I confess I had come to appreciate the little – albeit dull – rhythm it gave my life.
‘By the way, I meant to say…’ Uncle Phil began before checking over his shoulders to make sure no one was overhearing. What was he about to tell me?
He shuffled a little bit forward so most of his torso was hanging over my desk.
‘… I’ve got some very exciting news to tell you.’
‘Oh?’ I said, not totally sure what emotion to convey in my voice? Excitement? Confusion? Fear? Why couldn’t he just tell me now?
‘All will become clear soon, Ruth, my dear,’ Uncle Phil said with a fluttery wave of his hand and then a small, short cackle before he choked a little on something stuck in his throat. ‘Right, think it’s time for us to go, Sophie,’ he said as my cousin finished talking to Claudia, the office administrator, and gave me one of her fake smiles as she passed me on the way to the hearse. She was probably practising for the day she became my boss and could tell me what to do. I’d quit before that happened, no way was I taking orders from the girl who was still in nappies aged six.
Every time I got a ‘good job’ or a ‘well done’ from Uncle Phil, I swear I could feel a twinge in my neck from across the room, like she was itching to drag a knife across it.
Exciting news, though? I wonder what that was all about? Redundancy for Clive and Eddie? Now, that would be very exciting news. I would want a front-row seat to that, popcorn in one hand, slushy in the other.
Once Uncle Phil and Sophie left, I got back to thinking about the next stage of the operation: Hearts and Crafts.
I checked my phone, wondering if Chlo would drop me a message at some point today asking if I got home safe. But she didn’t and I can’t say I blamed her, honestly. I knew I’d have to reach out first and try to patch things up between us. Iwasn’t quite sure how to start. Chlo had, admittedly, always been the one to make peace between us if we ever fell out, so I was in uncharted territory. Which, I know, makes me sound awful, but I’ve had a lot on. How do I start? ‘Soz, babes. Hope you still got laid?’
Luckily, as the morning continued, the office only grew quieter and quieter. While early week usually had our busiest days, it had been a stroke of luck that it was a particularly hectic Friday. Then again, it was January, which unfortunately meant it was a very good season for business.
I’d had my eye on Percy Wilson’s – or whatever his actual name was – coffin as an involuntary donor for my scheme from the moment I clocked in today. I remembered from the calendar that he was scheduled for cremation tomorrow, and at forty-nine, his heart would probably look young and fresh enough for a police forensics team to believe it belonged to the person the TellTale Killer had presumably captured, recorded their whimperings and then subsequently killed after receiving no response. This part of the plan hadn’t been meticulously considered. I’d thought one heart and a voice recording would be enough to get the case reopened but evidently from my conversation with Detective Carlota this morning, more was needed.
The only snag was that Percy wasn’t a woman, and his heart needed to play the part of one to match the audio recording I had sent to the police. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be an issue, but women’s hearts are, on average, about 50 grams lighter than men’s. Still, I was going to take the chance that, in traditional Shakespearean fashion, his heart could perform a gender-flipped role in my grand production without arousing too much suspicion. While I was no biologist, surely the vast varieties of body types between men and women meant that it would be difficult to distinguish sex from heart alone.
I began formulating my strategy. The Chuckle Brothers, Uncle Phil and Sophie, wouldn’t be back until around 12.30 if my rough guess was right. Claudia, the only other person in the office, was the one variable I had to consider. I just needed to find a way to gether on her lunch break early and that would give me a solid thirty minutes to get in, retrieve the heart, and get out.
After my carbonara breakfast this morning, I’d snagged one of Bill’s fancy vacuum-sealed meal prep containers, the kind he used to store his more extravagant dishes for his day job as a software engineer. It was airtight and smell-proof, and its thick, onyx-black coating meant no one could peer inside and wonder why my lunch looked suspiciously like a canopic jar.
Once home, I’d transfer the heart into another of the wooden cases I could buy at the garden centre on my way back. How I’d send it and what message it would contain, I’d work out later.
Percy was slated for cremation tomorrow which meant I had a limited window if I wanted to pickpocket his heart. I went into the morgue briefly to go check on his casket and a small card on the gurney confirmed he was prepped, suited, and ready for the service – meaning no one would be opening his coffin again before then. Result.
Trying to appear as casual as possible, I began mentally ticking off my checklist: gloves, surgical scissors, suture thread and needles, face mask, bottles of my chemical concoction to keep the heart fresh, everything I could get my mitts on. I went back and forth between the morgue and my desk as I placed the various items neatly in a carrier bag beneath my computer so I could easily snatch it up and head to the morgue when the coast was clear. I wasn’t about to explain why an Ann Summers bag was lurking in the morgue containing dead body equipment, not when Claudia had a habit of wandering in unannounced. Far safer to stash it beneath my desk, where I hoped no person would dare investigate anyway. While I had attempted to be at least a little clandestine, I realised at around 10.30, that I needn’t have bothered; Claudia’s small, short snores from the other side of the office confirmed she wasn’t paying too much attention to what I was doing.
