Can't Get Used To Losing You (Bring Out Your Dead series - Part 28)

Continued from Episode 27 - 'Under Pressure'

The story so far (you can read from the start at 'Board Stiff!'):  Josiah and Archibald, our two Undertakers, are on a mission to Spain to collect the mortal remains of Sir Lewisham Carnock.  As they near the port of Santander, they are leading (unbeknownst to them) a small convoy consisting of their van, Detectives Wood and Stone and Lawrence and Amber Hamble.  Lawrence and Amber, however, aren't going anywhere at the moment, largely because Amber thinks she's just killed Frankie Knight, who had hijacked them!  Read on for more of this everyday story of country folk :

 

 Archibald Thurble woke with a start and looked about him suspiciously, as if someone might have stolen the world whilst he was asleep and replaced it with something altogether inferior.  Unable to lay the blame for his wakeful state on anybody or anything, he yawned and stretched, shoving Josiah sideways with some force.

“Are we there yet?”  He asked, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

“I take it you have deigned to rejoin us, Archibald?” Josiah snapped, grumpily.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Archie!” Chantelle beamed at him from her position behind the wheel, “Well, mostly the living” She nodded toward their ‘passenger’ in the back of the van.

“I was having this really weird dream…” Archibald began.

“Oh no! I really don’t think we need to know about that” Josiah was definitely feeling out of sorts, a consequence of lack of sleep and being used by Archibald as a makeshift pillow.  In addition, he had firm views about people who recounted their dreams, none of them positive.

“Aww, let him tell us, Mr. O.!” Chantelle intervened, “it might while away a dull few minutes”

“Oh, if you must, Archibald” Josiah capitulated, grumpily.

“Right, well, I was on this island like, and I was being chased by this thingy…”

“Thingy?” Josiah queried, “what was the nature of this ‘thingy’?”

“Well, you know!” Archibald said, with some exasperation, “one of them walking dead thingies – zombie! That’s the word I was after”

“Yes, that sounds more like your sort of dream” Josiah nodded, “This would be because of that gentleman you believed you apprehended back at the service station”

“What gentleman was that, then?”  Chantelle asked, a horrible suspicion creeping up on her.

“Oh, Archibald thought he saw some fool dressed as a ‘zombie’ lurching around the car park” Josiah explained, “As I said to Archibald at the time, ‘little things please little minds’”

“I didn’t see anyone” Chantelle pointed out.

“You were ‘powdering your nose’…again” Archibald said with a meaningful look at Josiah and a finger firmly pressing one of his nostrils closed.

“What’s that, Archie?” Chantelle frowned.

“I’m afraid that my colleague has misinterpreted your, entirely innocent, euphemism for visiting the W.C., as a description of the ingestion of narcotics” Josiah explained.

“Ingestion of…you mean cocaine?  You think I’ve been snorting coke, Archie?”

“Telltale!”  Archibald said, huffily, crossing his arms and staring pointedly out of the window.

Chantelle’s laughter filled the van.  “I’m sorry to disappoint you boys,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “but I don’t need coke or anything else.  What you see, with me, is what you get, guys!  No need for any stimulants, eh Mr. O.?”  She winked, broadly at her blushing travelling companion.

“I never thought, for a moment…” Josiah began, crimson with embarrassment.

“Any road, do you want to hear about this dream, or not?”  Archibald interrupted.

“If you must, Archibald, if you must” Josiah sighed, but grateful for the change of subject.

“So, I was being chased by this zombie, only he had this sort of red cloak thing on what was all trimmed with white fur, style of thing, and he had this little crown thingy on his head.”

“Sounds like your Sir Lewisham” Chantelle pointed out.

“I could not possibly comment, Miss Lace, I have never seen the late Sir Lewisham in his full regalia” Josiah remarked.

“Haven’t you?” Chantelle mused, “I have!” She added quietly.

She flashed a sideways glance at Josiah and was rewarded with the sight of his eyebrows shooting up his forehead at a rate of knots.

“I do recall that you were erm, acquainted with the deceased” Josiah said, after a while, when he had recovered his composure.  What he actually recalled was that Chantelle had told him the late Sir Lewisham had gone to meet his Maker during one of her massage treatments.  He didn’t dare think about how the baronet’s robes might have been involved.

“So, this zombie was yelling at me that I should go and get knighted!” Archibald continued with his recounting, oblivious of the other ongoing conversation, “Well, I think that’s what he was shouting.  It all got a bit confused.”

“How rewarding your slumbers must be, Archibald” Josiah muttered, sarcastically.

“Oh, I like my sleep” Archibald confirmed, happily.

Chantelle cast a worried glance at the coffin behind them.  If Archibald’s ‘zombie’, assuming he even existed, had been Frankie going walkabout, then where was he now, and how could she find out?

******

Lawrence and Amber were numbly observing the body of their recent travelling companion.  Neither moved nor made any sound.  The minutes seemed to crawl by like hours.  Only the flash of headlights, as a car hurtled past on the opposite carriageway, galvanized them into action.

“What are we going to do?” Lawrence asked with more than a degree of panic.

“We could kick him into the undergrowth?” Amber nodded toward the vegetation on their right.

“You can’t do that!” Lawrence was horrified.

“Why not?”

“Well, because…it’s just not…right”

“You do remember he was threatening to kill you, don’t you?”

“I know that, but still...he’s a fellow human being and he deserves to be treated decently”

“Alright, what do you want to do with him?”  Amber asked, folding her arms and putting the ball firmly back into his court.

“We’ll put him back in the car” Lawrence said, determinedly.

“Oh yes?  What do you propose to do with him then?  Prop him up on the back seat with his seat belt on?  If you want, I could probably tape the gun to his hand and have it pointing at you!”

“Don’t be silly, Amber.  Let’s just get him in the car before anything else comes along the road”

Amber could see the sense of not being found standing over a dead body, so she helped Lawrence to haul the late Frankie Knight onto the back seat of the car.  He was surprisingly heavy and they were both exhausted by the time the body had finally been wrestled into the confined space.

“Get him…” Lawrence panted, “get him under the bags, like he was before”

Amber hastily rearranged the various bags of their luggage so that Frankie was, mostly, covered. 

“Now what?” Amber looked at Lawrence desperately.

“I’ll try and change this tyre, as quick as I can.”  Lawrence scratched his head and scowled at the dismantled jack, “You get back in the car and keep an eye out for anyone or anything coming near us.  Sound the horn if you see anything.  With a bit of luck, we can be back on the road and out of here pretty soon”

Lawrence was amazed at how blind panic and a huge infusion of adrenaline made the task that much easier.  Things that he had found beyond his limited strength before, just seemed to happen without any effort. 

The spare tyre was on, seemed to be reasonably secure and the flat was back in the boot.  Throughout he had been expecting a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder, so it was with a sense of relief that he jumped back into the passenger side and they set off again.  He was filthy, he was exhausted and they had a dead body concealed on the back seat, but at least he hadn’t been arrested…yet!

Now read Part 29