The Resurrection of the Body Read Online Free PDF

little Easter garden with its empty papier mâché tomb, made by the children from the Sunday School. The children came up to collect their Easter eggs with happy, eager faces. I ended my sermon with a reference to that so often misquoted saying of David Jenkins, that whatever else the resurrection was it was not just ‘a conjuring trick with bones’. We had to understand it in the spiritual sense and not just the physical one. The sermon seemed to go down well; one or two people said that they had particularly enjoyed it, and certainly nobody took me to task about it afterwards.
    When I got back to the vicarage Harriet and her sister Frances had the lunch well organised, the children were running round the garden with their three cousins, everything seemed under control; there was nothing in particular that I needed to do. There was that strong feeling of anticlimax which always follows the Easter marathon. Normally I would have sat down in the living room and read the papers, but this morning there was no hope of that. It was two hours till lunchtime. I told Harriet that I had to see someone urgently; I made my apologies to Frances, took the car, and drove down to the city.
    The city mortuary is situated near the Barbican, in that no-man’s land of huge modern office blocks and streets devoid of life. It is a grey modern concrete building, with the mortuary on the ground floor and the coroner’s court and office above it, and from the signs I could see that the building contained, among other things, a family planning clinic. I recognised it only from the presence of police carsoutside. There is no large sign saying where the mortuary is. People are not supposed to die; all signs of death are carefully hidden away. Probably if they put up a sign people would complain about it, think it in poor taste; nobody likes to be reminded of their mortality. There were two or three police cars in the street, and police standing about, looking, I must say, fairly bewildered. I went up to one of them and explained who I was, and asked what had happened.
    It appears that what had happened was this.
    On Saturday morning the body had been transferred here from the hospital, so that the post mortem could be carried out by a forensic pathologist. This had been done early on Saturday afternoon, and the body then returned to one of the storage cabinets. Although there is someone present during the day, the building is not manned at night.
    Whoever it was had got in through the ambulance bay at the back. The alarm had gone off, but at that time, in the early hours of Easter Sunday morning, no one had been there to notice. The bell could have rung for hours without anyone hearing it. Just after dawn a police car patrolling the empty streets had heard the bell and driven to the scene. They found the green concertina doors drawn back, but no signs of anything damaged or broken.
    The police had informed the mortuary superintendent, who had come down to have a look, and established that one of the bodies, marked as U/K369, was no longer there.
    ‘Was it easy to break in?’
    ‘Child’s play. There’s just a simple mortice lock, and agap between the two doors – easy to force open. Once inside, they could get the keys, no problem … Are you waiting for somebody?’
    I asked if Detective Chief Inspector Stone was there.
    ‘He’s inside. Do you want to wait in here? You can sit down if you like.’
    I followed him into the porter’s office. There was a tray with a kettle and cheap mugs. I could see the little key cupboard, which hung open, displaying a row of keys hanging on hooks. There was a rather outmoded alarm system mounted on the wall. The policeman sat on the desk.
    ‘This is all a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it? What do you make of it?’
    ‘So the lock was forced?’ I asked.
    ‘Seems like it.’
    ‘Did they have to break anything else?’
    ‘No. When the porter closed up last night he forgot to lock the key cupboard … they