The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.

How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?

The dead are way more organized than the living.

...the dead have a way of becoming saints in the eyes of their survivors...

The act of shopping for what he needed, and of setting up the bare necessities for himself, had lulled Strike back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what needed to be done, without question or complaint.

There are always loose ends in real life.