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When Henry Ainsley regained his senses, he was lying flat on his back, arms outstretched, Donner standing on one hand, Bonati on the other.

The door opened and Meehan entered. He stood looking down at him for a moment, then nodded. 'All right, pick him up.'

The room was used to store coffins which weren't actually made on the premises, but there were a couple of workbenches and a selection of carpenter's tools on a rack on the wall.

'Please, Mr Meehan,' Ainsley begged him.

Meehan nodded to Donner and Bonati dragged Ainsley back across one of the workbenches, arms outstretched, palms uppermost.

Meehan stood over him. 'I'm going to teach you a lesson, Henry. Not because you tried to fiddle me out of twenty quid. That's one thing that's definitely not allowed, but it's more than that. You see, I'm thinking of that old girl. She's never had a thing in her life. All she ever got was screwed into the ground.'

His eyes were smoking now and there was a slightly dreamy quality to his voice. 'She reminded me of my old mum, I don't know why. But I know one thing. She's earned some respect just like her old fella's earned something better than a state funeral.'

'You've got it wrong, Mr Meehan,' Ainsley gabbled.

'No, Henry, you're the one who got it wrong.'

Meehan selected two bradawls from the rack on the wall. He tested the point of one on his thumb then drove it through the centre of Ainsley's right palm pinning his hand to the bench. When he repeated the process with the other hand Ainsley fainted.

Meehan turned to Donner. 'Five minutes, then release him and tell him if he isn't in the office on time in the morning, I'll have his balls.'

'All right, Mr Meehan,' Donner said. 'What about Fallon?'

'I'll be in the preparation room. 'I've got some embalming to do. When Fallon comes, keep him in the office till I've had a chance to get up to the flat, then bring him up. And I want Albert up there as soon as he comes in.'

'Kid glove treatment, Mr Meehan?'

'What else, Frank? What else?'

Meehan smiled, patted the unconscious Ainsley on the cheek and walked out.

The preparation room was on the other side of the Chapel of Rest and when Meehan went in he closed the door. He liked to be alone on such occasions. It aided concentration and made the whole thing somehow much more personal.

A body waited for him on the table in the centre of the room covered with a sheet. Beside it on a trolley the tools of his trade were laid out neatly on a white cloth. Scalpels, scissors, forceps, surgical needles of various sizes, artery tubes, a large rubber bulb syringe and a glass jar containing a couple of gallons of embalming fluid. On a shelf underneath was an assortment of cosmetics, make-up creams and face powders, all made to order.

He pulled away the sheet and folded it neatly. The body was that of a woman of forty - handsome, dark-haired. He remembered the case. A history of heart trouble. She'd died in mid-sentence while discussing plans for Christmas with her husband.

There was still that look of faint surprise on her face that many people show in death; jaw dropped, mouth gaping as if in amazement that this should be happening to her of all people.

Meehan took a long curved needle and skilfully passed a thread from behind the lower lip, up through the nasal septum and down again, so that when he tightened the thread and tied it off, the jaw was raised.

The eyeballs had fallen into their sockets. He compensated for that by inserting a circle of cotton wool under each eyelid before closing it and cotton wool between the lips and gums and in the cheeks to give a fuller, more natural appearance.

All this he did with total absorption, whistling softly between his teeth, a frown of concentration on his face. His anger at Ainsley had disappeared totally. Even Fallon had ceased to exist. He smeared a little cream on the cold lips with one finger, stood back and nodded in satisfaction. He was now ready to start the embalming process.

The body weighed nine