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told her. He didn’t know where his father was living, or even if he was still alive. “Let’s invite Harry Parsons instead,” he said. The wedding took place in Stockport, and Susie’s stepfather, the car-dealer, paid for everything. They’d been married for less than a year when Susie became pregnant again, and this time she didn’t lose the baby.
    In the coroner’s office the phone started ringing, and the sound brought Billy swiftly out of his chair. Stepping into the cramped room, he picked up the receiver.
    “PC Tyler,” he said.
    The woman on the other end told him that her name was Marjorie Church, and that she was the charge-hand porter. “We’ve got a body to bring down,” she said.
    Five minutes later, Billy heard a knock, and when he opened the mortuary doors a short, solid woman in a blue shirt and dark trousers was standing in front of him.
    “Marjorie?” he said.
    “That’s me.”
    Behind her were two men with a trolley. One of the porters was middle-aged and bald, with clownish tufts of hair protruding from both sides of his head; the other one was younger, in his twenties.
    Billy stood aside to let them in, making sure the doors were properly bolted after them. He would have to write their names down in the scene log, he said.
    The younger porter blew some air out of his mouth. “Is that really necessary? We’re only going to be a moment.”
    “It’s standard procedure,” Billy said. “It applies to everyone, me included.”
    “You like your job, do you?”
    The number of times Billy had heard that.
    He looked at the porter. “You can take it up with the sergeant if you want.”
    “There’s other people dying round here,” the porter said, “not just her.”
    “His name’s Peter Baines,” said the porter with the clown’s hair. “I’m Colin Wilson.”
    The young porter scowled at him.
    “Thanks, Colin.” Glancing at Billy, Marjorie raised both her eyebrows, then she moved over to the bank of fridges and opened one of the doors.
    Using his right foot, Wilson pumped up the trolley until it was on a level with an empty compartment, then Baines helped him slide the body on to a steel shelf. The body was wrapped in a whitish shroud, but the head was uncovered, and Billy glimpsed the crown of an old man’s head, the scalp mottled and waxy.
    Marjorie closed the fridge door. “No need to lock this one in,” she said.
    Billy smiled faintly. He watched as she took a black marker pen out of her pocket and wrote the dead man’s name on the fridge door, then he returned to the log and recorded what had just occurred.
    Moments later, Wilson wheeled the trolley off down the corridor, with Baines walking behind, still grumbling. Marjorie went to follow them. On reaching the doorway, though, she paused and then turned round.
    “It’s that woman,” she said. “She upsets people.”
    “I understand that,” Billy said.
    “It’ll be good when she’s gone. When things are back to normal.”
    Billy nodded.
    Her face brightened suddenly, as if whatever had been awkward or difficult was now over. “Anything I can get you?” she said. “A cup of tea?”
    “No thanks, Marjorie,” he said. “I’m fine.”

9
    Alone again, Billy noticed something on the floor under the table. Bending down, he picked up a metal nail file with a handle of pearly white plastic. He doubted that Marjorie would have brought a nail file to the mortuary—and besides, the iridescent handle didn’t seem in character—so he could only assume that it belonged to the young blonde constable who had preceded him. He turned the nail file slowly in his hand. If he had asked the constable what she thought of the woman in the fridge, what would she have said? What would she have made of it all, born as she undoubtedly had been in the early seventies? Would she have wanted to try and understand how it was possible for a woman who had once been a trusted babysitter to become involved in the torture and murder of