Rules of Honour Read Online Free PDF Page B

shirt, tie and black suit. Most funerals I’ve ever attended have been dour events conducted under leaden skies, and it felt unusual to feel the sunlight dance on my face. To banish the unfamiliar sensation I kept my head tilted down, but that was more befitting the ceremony at any rate.
    I was like a brother to Rink, as I’ve said, and by virtue of that relationship a second son to Yukiko and Andrew Rington, and I’d been allotted a place at the graveside. Rink was supporting his mom under the protective arch of his arm, while I stood to her other side. I felt a little awkward standing there in my stiff new suit and could have done with someone else to hold on to. Ordinarily my girlfriend, Imogen, would have been beside me, but not now. In the past few months we’d kind of drifted apart, the spells when we didn’t see each other, or even speak on the phone, growing longer. I’d told her about Andrew’s murder, and she’d been saddened, but hadn’t offered to join me at the funeral. I took that as her way of cutting me adrift. It had been coming, and my skipping off to the other side of the continent was as good an excuse as any. Partly I was happy she was moving on, partly I was disappointed that our relationship had come to an end. It was a depressing fact that we’d got together due to a violent death and now we had parted because of another.
    There were few other mourners. Not that Andrew wasn’t well liked or that he had no friends, but that had been a thing of the past. Most of his contemporaries were now in graves of their own; it’s a sad reflection that the longer one lives the fewer people there are to mourn your passing.
    The vicar presided, saying a prayer. Having helped us to lower the coffin, the four pallbearers supplied by the undertaker service stood back from the grave. Opposite us were two elderly ladies, friends of Yukiko, and three old guys who were passing acquaintances of Andrew. Behind us stood two more mourners. A thin old man with watery grey eyes and an aquiline nose who had introduced himself as Lawrence Parnell, and another heavyset old man with a bald head mottled by fine scars, called Rodney Faulks, were Andrew’s only genuine friends in attendance. I’d noticed Yukiko share nods with both men, before she’d frowned then searched the graveyard for someone else. When the missing person didn’t appear her expression had altered from grief to one of mild concern. But now, as the vicar made the sign of the cross over the coffin to a soft chorus of amen from the mourners, I saw that her attention had returned fully to her beloved husband’s interment.
    The cemetery was on a sloping hill, encircled by a stone retaining wall and towering eucalyptus trees. Between the trees stretched a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the blue waters of the bay and the rolling hills of the US mainland beyond. It was a picture-perfect view but held no interest for me. Though I had my head tilted in respect, I was peering from under my brows, watching. I didn’t doubt that there could be plain-clothed police officers out there somewhere, because it was standard practice at funerals of murder victims. Occasionally a killer liked to turn up at a funeral, mingle with the mourners and take perverted satisfaction from the grief they’d caused. Over the top of rows of headstones I didn’t see anyone suspicious, but then I didn’t have a full field of vision.
    A small bowl holding earth was passed around. Yukiko was first to sprinkle dust on the coffin, as well as casting in a single lily she’d brought for just that purpose. Rink followed, then I took a pinch of dust and did the same. Once we had finished we moved away, with Rink still cradling his mom, and it was my first opportunity to scan the space beyond the Spanish Revival-styled rostrum and up towards the entrance drive where we’d left the funeral cars. A couple of people were up there, but they could have been visitors to other graves showing us a