The journey felt like the longest of her life.
According to Fang’s phone, the drive should take one hour and twenty-six minutes down the M4, along the A4, past Euston and then King’s Cross railway stations, along Old Street, and heading into the East End. The roads were at least quiet, but it was one hour and thirty-one minutes before the hearse and its companion limo pulled into the discreet cobbled side street off the Roman Road.
They were here. She reminded herself to be hopeful. This was it.
The headlights caught the brass plaque at the entrance to the yard. Padraig Donne & Sons, Funeral Directors. Est. 1807. And on a smaller, white-painted sign on the other side, ‘Specialists in repatriation’. As they bumped across the cobbles through the wooden gates, a young boy, his face covered in acne, ran over to close the gates and draw the bolts. He called out, ‘Locked up tight, Plug,’ and started whistling the Funeral March as he jogged back to the Rolls-Royce he was polishing. It was night; Fang thought he should maybe leave it till the morning, but she imagined he was there to keep an eye out more than anything else.
There was a shriek of metal against concrete as unseen hands started to haul open the huge grey doors ahead of them, inviting the limousine to follow the hearse into a cavernous garage.
The plane was already thirty-five minutes late when it landed; the drive had added another five minutes to that, which meant they were getting in a full forty minutes late. Fang’s heart beat faster in her chest. The blood was pounding in her ears as, with some ceremony, the driver opened her door and she clambered out. It wouldn’t do to lose her nerve at this point in the game, she reminded herself.
Fangfang took a step back as an undertaker stepped through a door marked ‘Land of the Dead’ and waved over the limo driver to open the boot of the hearse. The undertaker was six foot seven, she was guessing. Make that seven foot in the black silk top hat with trailing black silk ribbons. This was the friend North called ‘Plug’. What kind of name was ‘Plug’? It rolled around her head awhile. ‘Plug’ as in ‘Plug Ugly’? Because they had that right – it was as if someone had moulded his head out of red clay, dropped it on the floor and stamped on it repeatedly. Scars and bulges covered it. She tried and failed to stop staring at the massive jaw, the overhanging brow and the nose, which zigzagged to a stop under the outer corner of his left eye.
Plug stripped off his black tailcoat, careful to hang it on a clothes hanger on a brass hook on the wall. In the shirt, he was a classic T-shape: huge rippling shoulders and a narrow waist. Absolutely no neck. With a grim flourish, whistling through the spaces between his teeth, he removed the top hat, revealing huge misshapen lumps for ears and close-cropped red hair. Plug frowned at Fang as he folded the cuffs of his sleeves up and over again and again, first the right and then the left.
‘You took your time, China girl.’ He reached for a metal gurney. The gravestone tattooed across his forearm sported a Celtic cross and a list of names, and it crossed Fang’s mind that they were the people he’d killed rather than loved. And ‘China girl’? The guy was patently a racist.
Plug propelled the gurney, its wheels squeaking in fury, across to the limo driver now standing by the tailgate. Alongside the hearse, the lad, who’d come in from the yard, erected a trestle table. Plug followed the path of the gurney, metal-tipped shoes tapping against the concrete.
‘Let’s get a shimmy on,’ the undertaker ordered the limo driver, nodding as together they hauled the coffin on to the gurney. The air freight cardboard box was printed all over with its declaration of human remains and the warning ‘Handle with Extreme Care’. His face set, Plug slid his enormous hand over and around corners and edges, and as the cardboard scraps tumbled to the floor, Fangfang realized he held a knife. She swallowed. If the worst had happened, she and Granny Po were trapped in this place with the world’s ugliest criminal armed with a sharp knife and a list of dead men inked on his skin.
Without its shroud of cardboard, the coffin sat on a foam mat within a wooden tray. It was oak with brass handles. Fang was no expert, but it appeared to be good quality. Substantial. And very deep. Her eyes went to the clock mounted on the wall opposite. They were forty-four minutes late.
Adults did the most ridiculous things. They were morons, each and every one. And some were more moronic than most. Like North. She should never have left this business to him. She should have come up with her own plan.
She came back to the present with the sound of a screw turning as it let go its corkscrew grip on the oak. It was cold in the garage and Fang spasmed in an uncontrollable shiver. She felt Granny Po slip a soft hand into hers and let it stay there for a second before shaking her off. Fang prepared herself – North knew the risks.
Blossoms of sweat bloomed in the armpits of Plug’s white shirt.
The limo driver stood at the foot of the coffin, Plug at the head.
‘With me,’ Plug instructed, and there was a collective intake of breath as they heaved the coffin lid up and off, before the driver crossed over to the wall to lean the lid on its tail end. The stink of must and formaldehyde rose from a shrivelled old man in a shiny black suit, his claw-like hands clasped one on top of the other, his face caved in on itself, eyes sunken, cheekbones bulging, the lips shrunken and falling in on themselves in the toothless mouth. Despite herself, Fang took a step backwards, but chatting to herself in Cantonese, Granny Po approached the corpse and patted him on the shoulder, before placing her hands together and bowing. Fang didn’t know if she was consoling him or thanking him.
‘On my count. Three. Two…’ Plug paused as the sound of a siren grew louder and louder before fading away again. Fang reminded herself to breathe. ‘… One.’
There was a fierce ripping noise as if a rubber seal was being broken, as the shallow tray of ruched satin and its tiny corpse were lifted up and away from the coffin and on to the trestle table.
Fang moved closer to the coffin. Please, let him be all right.
Plastic-wrapped packets covered the length and breadth of the figure in its Arctic jacket. One must have leaked, because when Plug moved the fur trim of the hood away from the mask that covered North’s face, a cloud of white powder rose into the air.
Fang willed her friend to move. But North’s chest was still – he wasn’t breathing, she realized. Plug reached into the coffin for the oxygen bottle alongside the body and shook it. From where she stood on the other side, Fang could see that the dial read ‘empty’. Plug swore.
North was dead.