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A moment later, a limousine turned out of the drive followed by three more. Billy was sitting up front, beside the driver, Meehan got out of the car and approached, hat in hand, to greet the mourners.

It was quite a performance and Fallon watched, fascinated, as Meehan moved from one group to the next, his face grave, full of concern. He was particularly good with the older ladies.

The coffin was carried into the chapel and the mourners followed it in. Meehan joined on at the end and pulled at Fallon's sleeve. 'You might as well go in. See the lot.'

The service was painfully brief, almost as synthetic as the taped religious music with its heavenly choir background. Fallon was relieved when the proceedings came to an end and some curtains were closed by an automatic device, hiding the coffin from view.

'They pull it through into the funeral room on a movable belt,' Meehan whispered, 'I'll take you round there when they've all moved off.'

He did a further stint with the relatives when they got outside. A pat on the back where it was needed, an old lady's hand held for an instant. It was really quite masterly. Finally, he managed to edge away and nodded to Fallon. They moved round to the rear of the building, he opened a door and led the way in.

There were four enormous cylindrical furnaces. Two were roaring away, another was silent. The fourth was being raked out by a man in a white coat.

Meehan nodded familiarly. 'Arthur's all we need in here,' he said. 'Everything's fully automatic. Here, I'll show you.'

The coffin Fallon had last seen in the chapel stood waiting on a trolley. 'Rubber doors in the wall,' Meehan explained. 'It comes straight through on the rollers and finishes on the trolley.'

He pushed it across to the cold oven and opened the door. The coffin was at exactly the right height and moved easily on the trolley rollers when he pushed it inside. He closed the door and flicked a red switch. There was an immediate roar and through the glass peep-hole, Fallon could see flames streak into life inside.

'That's all it needs.' Meehan said. 'These ovens operate by radiant heat and they're the last word in efficiency. An hour from beginning to end and you don't need to worry about pre-heating. The moment it reaches around a thousand degrees centigrade, that coffin will go up like a torch.'

Fallon peered through the glass and saw the coffin suddenly burst into flames. He caught a glimpse of a head, hair flaming, and looked away hurriedly.

Meehan was standing beside the oven where Arthur was busily at work with his rake. 'Have a look at this. This is what you're left with.'

All that remained was a calcined bony skeleton in pieces. As Arthur pushed at it with the rake, it broke into fragments falling through the bars into the large tin box below which already contained a fair amount of ash.

Meehan pulled it out, picked it up and carried it across to a contraption on a bench by the wall. 'This is the pulveriser,' he said, emptying the contents of the tin box into the top. He clamped down the lid. 'Just watch. Two minutes is all it takes.'

He flicked a switch and the machine got to work, making a terrible grinding noise. When Meehan was satisfied, he switched off and unscrewed a metal urn on the underside and showed it to Fallon, who saw that it was about three-quarters full of powdery grey ash.

'You notice there's a label already on the urn?' Meehan said. 'That's very important. We do everything in strict rotation. No possibility of a mistake.' He pulled open a drawer in a nearby desk and took out a white card edged in black. 'And the next of kin get one of these with the plot number on. What we call a Rest-in-Peace card. Now come outside and I'll show you the final step.'

It was still raining as they moved along the path at the back of the building between cypress trees. They came out into a lawned area, criss-crossed by box hedges. The edges of the paths were lined with numbered plates.

A gardener was working away beside a wheelbarrow hoeing a