The Business Of Dying

'Well, do me a favour and make yourself scarce, there's a good man.'

He didn't need asking twice. He'd obviously had to piss off at short notice before. I didn't like the way he looked at Raymond either. There was fear in his expression. He knew things about Raymond he'd rather not know, that was my impression. He nodded, got his coat, and went out the door without another word.

'So, how are we going to do this?' Raymond said, looking about him for pointers. One word described his overall attitude: excited. He seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of committing murder. 'Come on, Dennis. Help me out here.'

I thought about trying to reason with him but knew there was no point. I could have walked out and left him to it, but it wouldn't have done me any good. One way or another, Raymond's man was going to die, and at that moment I guessed that if I co-operated in his demise I might be helping myself out at the same time.

'The best thing is to put me on reception. When he arrives, I'll let him in and tell him to go down to your office. He'll go down, you'll start talking, then I'll come down and knock on the door. You'll ask me to come in, so in I come. I'll have a couple of coffees ready. I'll put them down, you carry on talking to him, and when his back's turned to me, I'll shoot him.'

'I don't know, Dennis. I don't really want it done in my office. Can't you just do it here?'

'How?'

'Well, either when he opens the door, or when you've directed him down the hall. Maybe you can just walk up behind him and pop him while he's en route.'

I shook my head. 'It wouldn't work.'

'Why not?'

'Too risky. If he's as nervous as you say he is, he'll probably suspect something like that. He'll be watching his back on the walk down to your office, and if I try anything, chances are it'll fuck up. Same with shooting him when he walks in the door. There's too much scope for failure. It's got to be done in an enclosed place where he can't escape.'

He nodded slowly, digesting my words. 'All right, fair enough. But we're going to have to do something about your clothes. You look far too casual to be working in a place of rest, even on a Saturday' He disappeared into one of the rooms off the hall and reappeared a few seconds later with a shirt and black tie. 'That should fit,' he said. 'There's nothing I can do about the jeans. Hopefully by the time Barry notices them he'll be half a second away from a fully ventilated head.'

I took the gun out of my leather jacket pocket, removed the jacket and the sweatshirt I was wearing underneath, and chucked them down behind the reception desk, out of sight. I then hurriedly pulled on the shirt and tie and stuffed the gun down the back of my waistband. The shirt was a bit small and I couldn't do the top button up – not without choking myself, anyway – but I didn't suppose Barry would be paying too much attention.

'You've got to sound very respectful when you speak as well. We're very customer-orientated in this business. Try to talk slowly, and sound like you're thinking about what you're saying.'

'I'll see what I can do.'

I sat down behind the desk and lit a cigarette.

'Blimey, Dennis, you can't just sit there with a fag in your mouth. It doesn't set the right fucking tone. Respectful, remember.'

'It's Saturday, and we're not expecting punters. Call it a perk for having to work odd hours.'

He shook his head in an annoyed fashion, but let it go. 'Right, let's get this straight. You send him down to my office, we start talking-'

'You offer him a cup of coffee because you're having one yourself. You phone through to me in reception, and I go and make it. Now, where's your coffee-making equipment?'

'That door behind you goes into a kitchen. All the stuff you need's in there.'

'Fine. I'll bring it down, and we'll take it from there.'

I couldn't help thinking what a mistake I was making, getting involved in such a hastily planned murder. Some time soon my luck was inevitably going to run out.

Raymond appeared to read my thoughts. 'All this'll be over soon, Dennis. Then we can get back to making money, pure and simple.'

I nodded, taking a drag on the cigarette. 'I'm thinking… after this I might do what my driver's doing – you know, take a long holiday somewhere. Maybe even permanent.'

'The crime figures'll go up without you, Dennis.'

I managed a humourless smile. 'Somehow, I don't think so.'

The sound of wheels on gravel outside stirred me from my thoughts.

'He's here,' Raymond said, looking out of one of the lattice windows. 'I'll get down to my office.'

I straightened my tie, feeling almost like a new guy on his first day in the office, and put out the cigarette.

A few seconds later the buzzer went and I leaned down to the intercom speaker and asked, in as grave a voice as I could muster, who was there. I'm not a bad mimic, and it came out pretty well.

A flustered voice asked for Raymond. 'We are closed at the moment, sir,' I told him.

'He's expecting me. My name's Barry Finn.'

I told him to hang on while I checked with Mr Keen, sat there for a few seconds, then came back on the line. 'Please come in.' I pushed the small red button on the intercom, which I assumed released the lock and was pleased to find out that it did. That could have fucked things up, if I couldn't even open the door.

Barry Finn was slightly older than I'd expected, about thirty, no more than five feet seven tall with a mop of dirty blond hair. He had the pinched, wary features of a small-time villain and his eyes were darting about in overdrive. Just like Len Runnion's always did. This was a man carrying a lot of weight on flimsy shoulders. Immediately I knew Raymond was right to want him out of the way, although it didn't say much about his judgement that he'd used him in the first place. Still, maybe you could have said the same about mine.

I gave him a stern, headmasterly look and pointed him in the direction of Mr Keen's office. He didn't say a word and took off down the hall. It felt strange knowing that he only had a few more minutes of life left in him, and a bit sad to think that it was going to be spent worrying about something he could do nothing about.

Now it was time to wait. Raymond, however, was not hanging about. Within two minutes he phoned through, gruffly telling me to get him a coffee, not bothering to say please. I was glad then that I wasn't a full-time employee of his. He had the sort of brash attitude with his staff that gives capitalism a bad name.

I checked the gun for the second time since sitting down and took the safety off before replacing it in the waistband of my jeans. Then I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. While I was waiting for it to boil, I gave the place the once-over. I've never been in an undertakers' kitchen before, and wasn't sure what to expect. Maybe a few jokey pictures of the employees posing with the corpses, or some coffin-shaped fridge magnets. But there was none of that. Everything looked depressingly normal. Clean and tidy as well. Scattered about the walls were postcards from various far-flung destinations. One was even from Dhaka in Bangladesh, which struck me as an odd place to spend your holidays. The photograph was of a toothless, barefooted rickshaw driver smiling at the camera. I took it off the wall and saw that it was from Raymond. He said that the weather was too hot and he was looking forward to getting back. If the photo on the front was the best the Bangladeshi tourist industry could do, I couldn't blame him.

The kettle boiled and I poured Raymond's coffee, substituting salt for the two sugars he'd ordered, just so he'd know I wasn't his skivvy. I found a battered Princess Diana memorial tea tray, put the cup on that, and headed off down the hall.

To keep up the ruse, I knocked on the door and waited until I was called in, which took all of about a second.

Raymond beamed at me as I stepped inside and Barry looked round quickly, just to check that everything was all right. 'Ah, thank you, Dennis. Just what the doctor ordered. Are you sure you don't want one, Barry?'