If Neef had known anything about street fighting he would have gone for Farro-Jones with his feet and finished the fight there and then but it wasn’t in his nature. He waited for Farro-Jones to concede. Farro-Jones remained on the floor until he had got his breath back and then pretended to get up. “All right, Neef. You win,” he said as he started to rise. Neef relaxed ever so slightly and Farro-Jones lunged at him, head first. He caught Neef in the midriff and knocked the wind out of him as his back was slammed against the doors of the body vault. Neef, to his credit, recovered quickly and slammed both his fists into Farro-Jones’ ears at the same time. He tried to finish the move off by raising his knee into Farro-Jones’ face but missed as Farro-Jones backed off.
There was still no way that Farro-Jones could get round Neef and his headlong assaults were not paying dividends. He looked around him with darting glances as Neef waited for him to try again. His eyes fell on a jar of lubricant that the mortuary porter used for the hinges on the body vault doors. It was sitting on a window-sill to his right. He quickly averted his eyes lest it alert Neef and started circling in that direction. Two or three feinted moves later he was within range. Without taking his eyes off Neef, he shot out his arm behind him, grabbed the jar and let fly with it. Neef simply moved his head a little to the left and it sailed harmlessly past to shatter on the body vault door and fall to the ground. For the first time, Neef saw defeat in Farro-Jones’ eyes and it lifted his spirits. It even made him a little careless. He had avoided the flying missile with such ease that he had overlooked the fact that its contents had spilt out on to the floor behind him. Farro-Jones saw what had happened and the look in his eyes changed again. Neef did not have time to work out why before Farro-Jones faked a lunge towards him and made him step backwards into the spreading puddle of lubricant. His feet slid away from him and he toppled over backwards against the body vault door. As luck — or no luck, would have it, his head hit the heavy metal clasp securing the door and he almost lost consciousness for a few moments. It was enough for Farro-Jones to seize the initiative. He was on Neef in a flash, raining in blows to his head until Neef was lying supine on the floor in a black world of his own.
When Neef came round he was bound hand and foot with surgical tape. Farro Jones was in the far corner of the room looking at the paperwork clip hanging above three coffins that sat in readiness for residents of the body vault. He saw Neef move, out of the corner of his eye, and came over.
“Well Neef, this is a sad day for you; you are being cremated at four thirty this afternoon.”
Neef felt his insides turn to water. The look on Farro-Jones’ face said that he wasn’t joking.
“For Christ’s sake, man, you can’t hope to keep getting away with killing people. Common sense should tell you that. Where is killing me going to get you?”
Neef’s appeal to reason only brought a smile to Farro-Jones’ face. “With you and Ann Little out of the way, no one can prove anything. No one who knows me saw me at the flats today and no one will ever see you again after you take the place of...” Farro Jones looked at the wad of papers he was holding. “James Henry Todd... at his cremation this afternoon. Come on!”
Farro Jones put his hands under Neef’s armpits and dragged his body across the floor towards the wooden trestles where the three coffins sat. “It’s going to be a tight fit; Mr Todd was a good bit shorter than you, but I’m sure we’ll manage.”
Neef was still groggy from the blows to his head but panic was bringing life to his limbs. He strained at the tape that secured him but could make no impression on it.
“I thought you’d be unreasonable about this,” sneered Farro-Jones so while you were out cold I nipped out and got a little something to calm you down. Farro Jones started to fill a syringe. “Nothing too drastic. I wouldn’t like you to miss your own funeral.”
There was nothing Neef could do to stop the injection going ahead. Almost immediately he felt his muscles go weak and his resolve slip away. He was not truly unconscious just too weak to move. Farro-Jones forced some tissue into Neef’s mouth and then gagged him with surgical tape. He removed the lid of the coffin intended for James Todd and propped it up against the vault door. “In you go,” he grunted as he struggled to lift Neef’s apparently lifeless body and finally loaded him untidily into the coffin.
“As I thought,” said Farro-Jones. “A bit tight.” He bent Neef’s legs this way and that until he had them both inside the coffin. Finally he packed the area around Neef’s head with surgical gowns so that he was held totally immobile even if he had been capable of moving which he was not.
Farro-Jones could see from his eyes that Neef was still conscious. “Good” he said. “You’re going to experience the whole bit, Neef. The drive to the crematorium, the service, the organ music, the hymns — What’s the betting it’s the twenty-third psalm, eh? You may even hear a few tears being shed before that electric motor starts and you feel yourself sink down to where the ovens are. The clank of the fire door opening and then... in you go.”
Farro-Jones lifted the lid of the coffin and Neef was aware of its shadow coming over him before all the light disappeared and he could hear Farro-Jones insert the screws one by one in their pre-drilled holes. He could already feel the temperature start to rise. He felt his own breath rebound off the lid against his face. The air supply must be limiting, he thought. With any luck it would run out before a live cremation became a possibility. It all depended on whether or not Farro-Jones was going to screw the lid down or not. Please God let him screw it right down. Asphyxia must be by far the better option.
“I’ll just leave you a little gap, Neef” he heard Farro-Jones say. “Wouldn’t like you to smother before the big event.”
Neef could see a thin chink of light where Farro-Jones had left the lid loose and wedged it open with the screwdriver he’d been using.
Neef’s nightmare situation was now beginning to threaten his sanity, so great was his sense of absolute terror. Why in God’s name had he not let the police handle it? He hadn’t even told anyone where he was going! No one knew where he was and no one would ever know what had happened to him. True, there would be a bit of a scandal when the mortuary attendants discovered that they still had the body of someone named Todd, who should have been cremated but by then it would be too late to wonder who or what had really been in the coffin that had been consigned to the flames. He could hear Farro-Jones moving about; he heard the sound of the body transporter trolley being raised and lowered as Todd’s body was returned to the vault.
“Soon be time, Neef. The hearse will be here in a few minutes,” said Farro Jones. “Then all my troubles will be over and it’s back to the rigours of the research lab. You know, I thought it was a hellish quirk of fate when Frank MacSween’s grandson became infected but if he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to tidy up things here so nicely. When all’s said and done the number of people who’ve died might be said to be unimportant when you think about the benefits my research could bring when the teething troubles have been sorted out. Don’t you think?”
The gag in Neef’s mouth prevented any kind of reply to the ramblings of the madman outside. The muscle relaxant Farro-Jones had used on him was beginning to wear off a little and his limbs were now racked with pain at being crammed and twisted into such a confined space. Cramp was already threatening in his calf muscles.