Around the grave stood a few mourners, more faces pink and solemn, pressmen with whom Slater had worked. The black of their suits and coats and ties, under the black of the umbrellas, stark and all the blacker for the backdrop of white. Hovering at a more discreet distance were a number of reporters covering the funeral for their papers. A television crew was sheltering beneath a knot of bowed trees, the cameraman using a long lens. It would look good on film. It was a funeral symbolic of death. It had good imagery. If you were thin, drawn, tense and artistic it might do something for you. If you were someone who had known the man, had not particularly liked him and were standing in the cold out of a sense of duty you got little more out of it than cold feet, and maybe a lingering depression if you cared at all. If you were here to report it, you would go first to buy a drink and then you would write fine words about a man you never knew before you dredged up the clichés suitable to express your contrived indignation at the way the case had been handled by the Judicial Police. If you were the priest, then you were doing God’s work, and if you were Slater you were dead and none of it could touch you.
Tait shuffled impatiently beside Bannerman as the coffin was lowered into the hole that had been dug for it. He had not spoken a word during the drive from the Sacré Coeur to the Cimetière de Bruxelles, smoking one cigarette after the other. The dreary, almost pagan, ritual of the mass had done nothing to improve his humour.
Bannerman no longer cared. He was watching Marie-Ange Piard who stood at the opposite side of the grave. She was wearing a three-quarter length black dress beneath a black cape and wide-brimmed black hat with the obligatory black veil. Black patent leather fashion boots completed the outfit. You could not see her face behind the veil, and so you could not tell how she felt about it. But she did not have the bearing of a woman in mourning. You might even have thought she was bored. She stood very still and very upright and if you could have seen her face it would probably have been passive, or perhaps bleak. Bannerman could not imagine that such a woman would shed tears for anyone. He was quite certain that she had not loved Slater and yet she had been his lover. The curiousness of that relationship came back to him. He had not thought about her at all since Slater’s death, and now for the first time it worried him. She was another ill-fitting piece in this strange jigsaw.
Sally stood beside her in a long, dark coat and beret. She had glanced towards him once or twice, but had not approached him either at the church or the cemetery. Perhaps she had sensed the antagonism between Bannerman and the man at his side and had decided to stay at arm’s length. Or maybe she was simply struck by some sense of occasion and did not feel it would be right to approach him.
The priest uttered his final words as he threw a handful of dirt at the coffin. Most of it got whipped away in the wind. The heavier particles rattled on the wood. Then the mourners and the rest abandoned the graveside to the diggers who had skulked among the gravestones beyond the path like lepers. And as the little group trod through the snow towards the gates they heard the first shovelsful of earth clatter on the coffin. Bannerman became aware of Marie-Ange walking at his side. Tait was two or three yards ahead. ‘I did not expect to see you here, Mr. Bannerman,’ she said. She pulled back her veil to reveal a pale, quizzical face.
‘They do a nice line in funerals. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’
She sighed. ‘How irreverent. You could become either very boring or very interesting.’
Bannerman let that one pass, then he asked, ‘Why did you bother?’
‘With what?’
‘The funeral.’
‘Oh,’ she said, looking away as though she might have lost interest, ‘one has to keep up appearances. And anyway, I was sure you would be here.’
‘I thought you were surprised to see me.’
‘That was just a line. We never finished our conversation the other night. You were very rude.’
The mourners had reached the gates now and they stood in little groups talking solemnly. Bannerman saw Sally watching him from a distance. Tait was scuffing his feet impatiently in the snow by the car. ‘Does it mean nothing to you?’ Bannerman asked Marie-Ange. She looked surprised.
‘Does what mean nothing to me? Really, Mr. Bannerman, you are full of such strange questions.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything that Slater is dead?’ he said patiently.
‘But of course. Death is always so distasteful. Timothy and I had an understanding, a little affection perhaps. Poor Timothy, I’m afraid he took it all a little too seriously. Naturally, I regret that he should have died in the manner he did.’
‘Any idea why someone should want to kill him?’
She raised one eyebrow. ‘I understand the police have satisfied themselves that he and the man Gryffe shot each other.’
‘Oh, no,’ Bannerman said. ‘That is simply a curtain of convenience that those in power have drawn on the affair.’
‘But why on earth should they wish to do that?’
‘I have no idea. One thing is quite clear, though. Slater and Gryffe were murdered.’ He watched closely for any reaction. Was there a slight darkening of her face? But the moment was past too quickly to be sure.
‘How interesting.’
‘I suppose you have no idea what Slater and Gryffe were discussing that evening at the party?’
She smiled and opened her handbag, taking out a small memo pad and a pen. ‘None,’ she said and when she had scribbled something on the pad she tore off the top sheet and handed it to him. ‘I take it you are playing detective. And I do so love mysteries. When you have a free evening call me at this number. We can get together and you can tell me all about it.’ Bannerman folded the paper into his top pocket without looking at it. He pushed his hands into his pockets and smiled a little.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I once knew a union official. Transport and General. He started out by collecting dues from members in the days before they got those sort of things better organised, and he spent his time tramping around Glasgow visiting factories and works and depots. In those days, too, the union counted the city gravediggers among its number. And every Friday he went round all the cemeteries collecting from the gravediggers. He used to tell the story of one wet Friday when he went to a cemetery on the north side of the city. The man he wanted was out digging a grave and because it was raining, the man had placed the lids of tea chests across the part of the grave he had already dug to keep it dry. He was underneath when my friend approached and called out for him. “I’m down here,” the gravedigger said, and my friend unwittingly stepped on the lids. Of course, he crashed through them, down into the grave, on top of the digger, into the mud and the wet. He was wearing his best suit, too.’ He paused. ‘Every time he told the story, my friend would say “I must be the only union official in history who actually followed a member into the grave to collect his dues”.’
Marie-Ange stared at him, puzzled. But this time, there was a definite darkening of the skin round her cheeks. ‘Is there supposed to be a moral in that?’ she asked.
Bannerman shrugged. ‘Not really. Just an amusing story. It seemed to suit the occasion.’ He lit a cigar, and said through the smoke. ‘I just wonder who will follow Slater and Gryffe, or if this...’ he waved an arm vaguely around him, ‘...is the end of it.’ She smiled and the moment was past, leaving Bannerman as uncertain as before about what this woman knew, if anything. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.