His eyes were smoking now and there was a slightly dreamy quality to his voice. 'She reminded me of my old mum, I don't know why. But I know one thing. She's earned some respect just like her old fella's earned something better than a state funeral.'

'You've got it wrong, Mr Meehan,' Ainsley gabbled.

'No, Henry, you're the one who got it wrong.'

Meehan selected two bradawls from the rack on the wall. He tested the point of one on his thumb then drove it through the centre of Ainsley's right palm pinning his hand to the bench. When he repeated the process with the other hand Ainsley fainted.

Meehan turned to Donner. 'Five minutes, then release him and tell him if he isn't in the office on time in the morning, I'll have his balls.'

'All right, Mr Meehan,' Donner said. 'What about Fallon?'

'I'll be in the preparation room. 'I've got some embalming to do. When Fallon comes, keep him in the office till I've had a chance to get up to the flat, then bring him up. And I want Albert up there as soon as he comes in.'

'Kid glove treatment, Mr Meehan?'

'What else, Frank? What else?'

Meehan smiled, patted the unconscious Ainsley on the cheek and walked out.

The preparation room was on the other side of the Chapel of Rest and when Meehan went in he closed the door. He liked to be alone on such occasions. It aided concentration and made the whole thing somehow much more personal.

A body waited for him on the table in the centre of the room covered with a sheet. Beside it on a trolley the tools of his trade were laid out neatly on a white cloth. Scalpels, scissors, forceps, surgical needles of various sizes, artery tubes, a large rubber bulb syringe and a glass jar containing a couple of gallons of embalming fluid. On a shelf underneath was an assortment of cosmetics, make-up creams and face powders, all made to order.

He pulled away the sheet and folded it neatly. The body was that of a woman of forty - handsome, dark-haired. He remembered the case. A history of heart trouble. She'd died in mid-sentence while discussing plans for Christmas with her husband.

There was still that look of faint surprise on her face that many people show in death; jaw dropped, mouth gaping as if in amazement that this should be happening to her of all people.

Meehan took a long curved needle and skilfully passed a thread from behind the lower lip, up through the nasal septum and down again, so that when he tightened the thread and tied it off, the jaw was raised.

The eyeballs had fallen into their sockets. He compensated for that by inserting a circle of cotton wool under each eyelid before closing it and cotton wool between the lips and gums and in the cheeks to give a fuller, more natural appearance.

All this he did with total absorption, whistling softly between his teeth, a frown of concentration on his face. His anger at Ainsley had disappeared totally. Even Fallon had ceased to exist. He smeared a little cream on the cold lips with one finger, stood back and nodded in satisfaction. He was now ready to start the embalming process.

The body weighed nine and a half stones which meant that he needed about eleven pints of fluid of the mixture he habitually used. Formaldehyde, glycerine, borax with a little phenol added and some sodium citrate as an anti-coagulant.

It was a simple enough case with little likelihood of complications so he decided to start with the axillary artery as usual. He extended the left arm at right angles to the body, the elbow supported on a wooden block, reached for a scalpel and made his first incision halfway between the mid-point of the collarbone and the bend of the elbow.

It was perhaps an hour later as he tied off the last stitch that he became aware of some sort of disturbance outside. Voices were raised in anger and then the door flew open. Meehan glanced over his shoulder. Miller was standing there. Billy tried to squeeze past him.

'I tried to stop him, Jack.'

'Make some tea,' Meehan told him. 'I'm thirsty. And close that door. You'll ruin the temperature in here. How many times have I told you?'

Billy retired, the door closing softly behind him and Meehan turned back to the body. He reached for a jar of foundation cream and started to rub some into the face of the dead woman with infinite gentleness, ignoring Miller completely.

Miller lit a cigarette, the match rasping in the silence and Meehan said without turning round, 'Not in here. In here we show a little respect.'

'Is that a fact?' Miller replied, but he still dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

He approached the table. Meehan was now applying a medium red cream rouge to the woman's cheekbones, his fingers bringing her back to life by the minute.

Miller watched for a moment in fascinated horror. 'You really like your work, don't you, Jack?'

'What do you want?' Meehan asked calmly.

'You.'

'Nothing new in that, is there?' Meehan replied. 'I mean, anybody falls over and breaks a leg in this town you come to me.'

'All right,' Miller said. 'So we'll go through the motions. Jan Krasko went up to the cemetery this morning to put flowers on his mother's grave. He's been doing that for just over a year now - every Thursday without fail.'

'So the bastard has a heart after all. Why tell me?'

'At approximately ten past eleven somebody put a bullet through his skull. A real pro job. Nice and public, so everyone would get the message.'

'And what message would that be?'

'Toe the Meehan line or else.'

Meehan dusted the face with powder calmly. 'I had a funeral this morning,' he said. 'Old Marcus the draper. At ten past eleven I was sitting in St Saviour's listening to the vicar say his piece. Ask Billy - he was with me. Along with around a couple of hundred other people including the mayor. He had a lot of friends had old Mr Marcus, but then he was a gentleman. Not many of his kind left these days.'

He brightened the eyebrows and lashes with Vaseline and coloured the lips. The effect was truly remarkable. The woman seemed only to sleep.

Miller said, 'I don't care where you were. It was your killing.'

Meehan turned to face him, wiping his hands on a towel. 'Prove it,' he said flatly.

All the frustration of the long years, all the anger, welled up in Miller threatening to choke him so that he pulled at his tie, wrenching open his collar.

'I'll get you for this, Meehan,' he said. 'I'll lay it on you if it's the last thing I do. This time you've gone too far.'

Meehan's eyes became somehow luminous, his entire personality assumed a new dimension, power seemed to emanate from him like electricity.

'You - touch me?' He laughed coldly, turned and gestured to the woman. 'Look at her, Miller. She was dead. I've given her life again. And you think you can touch me?'

Miller took at involuntary step back and Meehan cried, 'Go on, get the hell out of it!'

And Miller went as if all the devils in hell had been snapping at his heels.

It was suddenly very quiet in the preparation room. Meehan stood there, chest heaving, and then reached for the tin of vanishing cream and turned to the woman.

'I gave you life again,' he whispered. 'Life.'

He started to rub the cream firmly into the body.

6

Face to Face

It was still raining when Fallon crossed Paul's Square and went up the steps to the main entrance. When he tried the office it was empty and then Rupert appeared, having noticed him arrive through the glass door of the flower shop.

'Can I help you, sir?'

'Fallon's the name. Meehan's expecting me.'

'Oh yes, sir.' Rupert was exquisitely polite. 'If you'd like to wait in the office I'll just see where he is.'