It wasn't something anyone was comfortable with. Although the police could act solely on the authority of the coroner, they always sought permission from families to prevent a legal challenge. Most cooperated, although some were distressed by the newspaper and television pictures of staff in clinical white overalls, working under arc lights as excavators dug up the graves. The family of one woman buried in Malta refused permission for her body to be removed from consecrated ground and Shipman was not charged with any offence connected with her death. A specialist exhumation company was brought in to begin work at about 4am, partly to escape the attention of the media and to provide time for thorough investigation of the bodies, partly to fit the work in around the daily routine of the cemeteries.
Funerals happen and people come to put flowers on graves.
The exhumations have been very traumatic. It has been a psychological trauma for the relatives and a physical trauma for the police who have had to dig up the graves. He had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, and his arrogance revealed itself when he was first questioned about a catalogue of suspicious deaths. Mike Williams, the senior investigating officer on the case. Det Supt Postles, who headed the inquiry, says Shipman was very difficult to deal with and was contemptuous of the low rank of the officers facing him.