This is the opening chapter of The Undertaking – the second book in the Cremains comedy caper series.

I’m always interested in feedback about my work, so please feel free to comment in the box thing at the bottom of the page.

If you’d like more information about the book, click here.

Click here to buy the ebook or paperback

CHAPTER ONE

There was no denying it. “Max Dempsey and Partners: Funeral Directors” had taken a major financial nosedive, and we were at our wits’ end what to do about it. Maybe it was because we were all novices at the undertaker game or it was simply because a lot fewer people died in the middle of summer, but that was the harsh reality. If business didn’t pick up soon, we’d be staring into the abyss of what economists might call “totally screwed”.

That’s me, by the way. Max Dempsey. My real name’s Simon Golightly, though, which was absolutely fine when I was a bank manager, but didn’t sound right at all when I was embarking on my subsequent but short-lived career as a bank robber. Equally, it didn’t seem appropriate for a funeral director either. Go lightly? Not quite up there with “rage against the dying of the light”, is it?

Anyway, it was only about four months since we’d taken over the undertaker business from my erstwhile friend, latterly bitter enemy and now deceased Danny Bishop, when this guy walks into the funeral parlour and all he says is, ‘Do you collect?’

Never mind a ‘Good morning’ or even giving me a chance to put on my well-practised sombre undertaker expression and ask, ‘How may I help you?’, just ‘Do you collect?’ There was maybe also a hint of an American accent.

‘Collect what?’ I said.

‘Bodies.’

‘Seriously?’

Just so you know, that was the voice in my head and not what I actually said, and to be clear, it’s only ever the one voice in my head, and I only usually hear it in times of great stress. I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.

‘Of course we collect them,’ the voice went on. ‘What, do you think they all just wander in and pop their clogs right on the floor here? How bloody convenient that would be.’

‘We do collect, sir, yes,’ I said aloud. ‘Is there a particular deceased you have in mind?’

The guy looked like he didn’t understand what to me was a perfectly simple question. He also looked like one of those typical gangster types in the old film noir movies. Black greased-back hair and a matching pencil moustache (but without the grease as far as I could tell) and wearing a light-coloured trenchcoat that reached down almost to his ankles and with the collar turned up. He’d also been overly heavy-handed with the aftershave, so I took a step back out of range.

When he still didn’t answer my question, I decided that a gentle prompt might help. ‘A family member perhaps?’

‘France. Do you collect from France?’

‘Well, it’s not something that we usually—’

‘These are the details,’ he said before I could finish the sentence and thrust a folded sheet of paper at me.

I opened it up but had no sooner begun to read when he waved a thick brown envelope in front of my face. ‘Your fee. Half now and half when the job’s done plus any unforeseen expenses.’

As a funeral director, it would have been undignified to check inside the envelope, but it certainly felt like a generous amount of cash – unless the notes were all fivers, of course.

‘Naturally, I’ll need to consult with my partners before—’

‘You need to understand that this is a vitally important undertaking, and one thing that you must guarantee is that you will bring him back in a coffin that you will take with you to France.’

‘Oh yeah? And what else are we gonna bring him back in? A decommissioned telephone box?’

‘You’ll need this as well.’

The guy fished in the pocket of his trenchcoat and pulled out a cheap-looking mobile phone.

‘There’s only one number on this. Mine,’ he said, prodding the phone at my chest. ‘But do not use it unless in an absolute emergency. Got it?’

I nodded meekly and took the phone from him. ‘Is it fully charged?’

Of all the multitude of questions buzzing around inside my head, that was definitely the most stupid and by far the least important. Nor was there any opportunity to get even one of the more important ones out of my mouth because Mr Mysterious had turned on his heel and swept out of the parlour in less time than it took me to open my gob.

‘I’m not sure Alan and Scratch are gonna be too happy about this,’ said the voice in my head.

‘And you think I am?’ I said.

* * *

It came as no great surprise that the voice had been right about Alan and Scratch’s reaction, and although none of us were exactly enthusiastic about taking the job, we’d eventually agreed that our pockets and the business itself were well overdue for a much needed injection of cash. And so it was that the hefty dollop of moolah we’d be getting was the clincher and the one and only reason that we were now bobbing about on the open sea across the English Channel.

I’m not keen on boats, I have to admit. Whether it’s a pedalo on the lake or a massive ferry on the open sea, I always reckon it’s gonna turn out like that Perfect Storm movie I saw with George Clooney. Maybe I should rephrase that. I don’t mean I was watching the film at the cinema with George sat beside me or that we were slobbing it on the settee at home, watching it on the telly while we shared a bucketful of popcorn. Not a bit of it. What I meant was that Mr Clooney stars in the movie as the captain of a fishing boat that gets caught up in this horrendous storm, but I expect you knew that already.

Even now while I’m sitting here in the downstairs bar of a cross-Channel ferry with the sea as calm as a millpond, I’m still expecting a sudden gale to whip up the waves into a terror-inducing frenzy. And Scratch is no better than me. He’s sitting opposite me with his eyes tight shut and his enormous hands gripping the arms of his chair so his knuckles are as white as his face. You’d have thought that somebody of his colossal stature wouldn’t be scared of anything less than a nuclear missile hurtling towards him, but that’s where appearances can be deceptive. He’s got a good head and shoulders on me, and I’m about average height for a bloke, and his physique is entirely in proportion to his height. Then there’s the shaved head – a vain attempt to disguise the rapidly advancing baldness – and a busted nose, so he looks like a right thug that you really wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley. But the honest truth is that Scratch wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not unless provoked. And if that happened, you – or the fly – would be in serious trouble. As for his allergies, he should probably be in the Guinness Book of Records. Whatever it was, if you could touch it, smell it or swallow it, it was odds on that Scratch would come out in a rash. Hence the nickname.

Alan, of course, never missed an opportunity to take the piss whenever Scratch refused to eat or drink something because it would bring him out in hives or somesuch. On the other hand, Scratch had plenty of chances to get his own back on the frequent occasions when Alan was moaning about his recurrent neck pain. Apparently, this dated back to his younger days as an “almost champion” weightlifter when a serious neck injury forced him into early retirement. The flesh-coloured padded neck brace that he often wore was probably intended as some kind of badge of courage to remind everyone how badly he was suffering, except never in silence. Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing one today, and while Scratch and I had headed straight for the bowels of the ship and some alcoholic anaesthetic, he’d scurried up onto the deck like a hyperactive five-year-old.

‘I’m gonna get some o’ that sea air into me lungs while you two wusses skulk down in the bar,’ he’d said, but the very idea gave me palpitations.

For most of my life, I’ve been plagued with this thing called osmophobia, which is basically a morbid fear of smells. The doc didn’t agree with me when I was first diagnosed, but I have this theory that it all kicked off in the biology lab at school. What with all the jars of dead frogs and what looked a lot like human foetuses the biology teacher insisted on having on display, the whole place reeked of formaldehyde. So, I jacked biology as soon as I could and did German instead. Dull but with a far more pleasant aroma. It doesn’t have to be what most people would describe as bad smells that spark an attack, though. Even a whiff of jasmine or a certain brand of perfume would bring on the headaches, the nausea, the trembling and all the other shit, and I very much doubted that a lungful of sea air was going to do me a whole lot of good.

Thankfully, whisky had never been a trigger for my osmophobia, and I took another slug of my third double Scotch, trying unsuccessfully to block out the voice in my head, which was persistently nagging me about the terrible mistake I’d made.

‘The money’s one thing,’ it said, ‘but you’ve no real idea what you’re letting yourself in for.’

‘Yes I do,’ I didn’t say aloud. ‘It’s a perfectly simple job. Pick up a body from France and bring it back to England.’

But once again, I knew that the voice had a point. There were too many unknowns involved and far too much “mystery” for my liking. What was it the guy had said? “This is a vitally important undertaking.” What was so vitally important about it? It was a corpse, for God’s sake. And I was only to phone him in the case of an “absolute emergency”. What the hell was he expecting? That the ferry would hit an iceberg on the way back and was sinking fast?

‘Oh, hello, Mr Mysterious. I know you said I should only call you if it was an absolute emergency, but I think this kinda counts. The thing is, you see, it seems we’re all about to drown, so I’m afraid we won’t be able to deliver the body after all. Sorry about that.’ I drained the last of my Scotch and foolishly turned my head towards the nearest window at the very moment the horizon had completely vanished.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

The Undertaking is available as a Kindle ebook and paperback. Click here to buy.

If you’d like more information about the book, click here.

Please feel free to leave a comment below.