‘Your client,’ Brodie interrupted, his voice hard, ‘spent last night in a cell. So did his son. That’s just a taste, Mr Mitchell, of what the rest of your life will look like. Barlinnie or Saughton, sharing a wing with murderers and rapists, counting down the years until you die in a prison hospital bed.’
‘Detective chief inspector, that’s hardly?—’
‘Unless you help us.’ Brodie leaned back, his tone shifting slightly, offering an escape route. ‘Unless you tell us who you’ve been working with, using your facility, who made these memorial plates and left them in your warehouse. Because right now, Mr Mitchell, we have enough evidence to charge you as The Embalmer himself.’
‘No!’ The word burst out of Mitchell, loud in the small room. ‘No, I’m not – I didn’t kill anyone, I swear to God, I never?—’
‘Thomas.’ Crawford’s hand on his client’s arm was firm. ‘Don’t say anything else.’
But Mitchell was breaking, and the fear and stress of the past twelve hours finally overwhelmed his self-control. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. We didn’t murder those women.’
‘Thomas, I strongly advise?—’
‘They’re going to charge me with murder!’ Mitchell’s voice was rising, edging towards hysteria. ‘My son is in a cell, my business is destroyed, and they think I’m a bloody serial killer! I have to tell them, I have to make them understand?—’
‘Then tell us,’ Brodie said quietly. ‘Start from the beginning, Mr Mitchell. Help us understand.’
Mitchell drew a shuddering breath, his hands trembling on the table. Crawford had gone very still beside him, his expression professionally neutral but his eyes calculating, already preparing for damage control.
‘It started with Professor Hart,’ Mitchell said finally. ‘Fred Hart. He was a pathologist, worked at the university in Dundee for years. Retired about… Christ, I can’t remember. A long time ago. He said he would refer me to the families of the victims. They would be so grief-stricken that they would agree to anything.’
‘Go on,’ Brodie encouraged.
‘We got it up and running. Hart used to refer families to us. When someone died and needed a post-mortem, when there were questions about the death, Hart would handle the examination and recommend Mitchell and Son for the funeral arrangements.’ Mitchell’s voice was steadier now, falling into the rhythm of confession. ‘It was a good arrangement. We got steady business, and Hart got… well, he got a commission. A kickback for the referrals.’
‘That’s not illegal,’ Art said. ‘Unethical maybe, but not criminal.’
‘No, but what we did after…’ Mitchell closed his eyes. ‘We’d meet with the family, we’d be very sympathetic, very professional. And we’d recommend the most expensive coffins, the premium services. Families don’t question costs when they’re grieving, you know? They want the best for their loved ones. So they’d pay for mahogany coffins, brass fittings, silk linings, the works.’
Brodie could see where this was going. ‘But that’s not what they got.’
‘After the funeral, after the family had said their goodbyes, we’d bring the body and the expensive coffin back to the warehouse. We’d transfer the body to a cheap pine box – the kind we use for cremations anyway – and we’d keep the expensive coffin. Clean it up, resell it to the next family. The body got cremated in the cheap box, no one was any the wiser, and we’d pocket the difference. Sell the coffin again.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Art muttered.
‘I know how it sounds,’ Mitchell said quickly. ‘I know it’s wrong, and I’m not proud of it. But we weren’t hurting anyone, not really. The dead don’t care what box they’re burned in, and the families got the funeral they paid for. They never knew. All we had to do was put a new lining each time we sold it.’
‘Except you were defrauding them,’ Brodie said. ‘Charging thousands of pounds for coffins you never actually provided.’
‘Yes. Yes, all right, we were. But that’s all it was – fraud, theft, whatever you want to call it. It wasn’t murder. We never killed anyone.’
Brodie pulled out another photograph, this one of the brass memorial plates. ‘Then explain these. Because they look like souvenirs a serial killer would keep.’
Mitchell stared at the photograph, his face ashen. ‘We had to put the deceased’s name on a plate and put it on the coffin lid. We just took the old ones off and threw them away. Well, Barry was supposed to throw them away. Idiot.’ He stopped, his eyes widening.
‘The warehouse,’ Art said. ‘The Perth facility. Who else had access besides you and your son?’
‘Just the usual staff. And…’ Mitchell hesitated, glancing at his solicitor.
‘And?’ Brodie prompted.
‘There was one other man who came round when we were short-handed. Just to help out when there was a rush. He knew what he was doing. How to embalm women. He’s very good at it.’
Brodie’s pulse quickened. ‘Name.’
The name hung in the air.
‘Look, we paid him off the books. It would have complicated the accounts otherwise. I mean, it’s not as if he was there all the time. As I said, if we got some deceased in, like the family who were killed in a fire, six of them, we would share the responsibility with the funeral parlour and the warehouse. He would come in and give us a hand, on his day off, or at the weekend.’
