A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (8 page)

“Get out of here,” he whispered, “I wasn’t…”

Roger stopped the embarrassment; he was too tired and it would lead to the same conclusion as it did last time. And the time before. “If you’re really in a fix, I could run to twenty.”

Chris’s mouth snapped shut at the offer. “You don’t mind? I’ll make sure you get it back. Promise. I think I lost some, you know, that’s why I’m skint.”

Roger said nothing, but wondered on which three-legged horse Chris lost his money.

More rain accompanied Roger as he drove home with the heater fan on full and the wipers grating across the windscreen. Pink Floyd played
Comfortably Numb
on the stereo. Under his reddened eyes were dark bags; around his face the earlier five o’clock shadow had matured into a nine o’clock beard. He yawned constantly and sighed in between.

Even as Roger pulled onto the drive outside his home, the scene at Turner Avenue continued to buzz with police activity. Two SOCOs, one upstairs and one down, brushed aluminium fingerprint powder over every suitable surface, and three gloved-up detectives pulled out drawers, read bank statements and love letters, lifted scraps of carpet, and searched in the loft.

They were being thorough. Thorough enough to find eventually the late Sally Delaney’s diary in the dust up on top of the wall unit.

After a thin and fitful sleep, Roger was back in the office, feeling as though he had never been away. His shift began at six o’clock in the evening, always a busy time. But by ten, the calls had dwindled, and when he closed his fingerprinting kit on the last burglary for the evening, he made straight for Weston’s house.

He drove past at speed. Then he drove past slowly. Then he parked the van and walked past. Weston was at home, Roger saw him in his spacious lounge, with his feet up and what looked like a glass of whisky in one hand and the TV remote in the other.

And that always dismayed him. Weston was running guns, and all Roger needed was to catch him just once; it would blow the death-dealing bastard right out of the water. In the last six months of improvised surveillance, he hadn’t even come close; never saw so much as an air pistol, never mind a Glock! He’d seen him go fishing once down at Bretton Sculpture Park, west of the city centre, saw him again twice more, just going for a walk there.

Roger suspected there was something illegal inside the tackle box or the rod case, and if there wasn’t when he went down to the lake, there sure as hell would be on the way back. And so Roger had followed. For three hours, he had crouched by an oak and watched. But Weston was as good a fisherman as he was a diplomat. He had caught nothing and left with the same gear he’d taken.

It was now midnight, the waxy smell of aluminium powder filled his nostrils and the clinical smell of detergent filled the SOCO office. From the exhibit store, he booked out the photograph he’d seized from Sally Delaney’s lounge floor, the one with a smudged footmark on it. And he stared at the picture: a smiling teenage girl and a small child in a blue woollen hat. Sad.

The mark on the photograph was fragmentary, and it was in dust which meant any attempt to apply powder would destroy it. He shone the office torch across the mark and noticed even more detail than before. “Hush Puppies.” He decided to photograph it.

It worked well, and half an hour later, he dropped an envelope containing the negatives, into the secure internal mail tray, and wrote his report.

The last he heard, CID still hadn’t found Sally’s murder weapon, presumed to be a three-inch, single-edged, non-serrated knife – something similar to a penknife, something that everyone from Boy Scouts to bus-drivers carried. This nudged the morale of the investigation lower still because everyone knew that the chances of nailing a murderer declined rapidly after the first couple of days of a fruitless investigation.

And then the press got hold of Sally’s details, her circumstances. Easy enough to do: throw a tenner to anyone on her street and you’d get an instant report of her being Mother Teresa if that’s what you asked for. They needed an angle that would sell papers and the one they chose described her as a lonely single mother attacked in her own home for no apparent reason. It sold more papers, but it also put the police under more pressure to catch the killer quickly before public apprehension increased, before the fear of crime gained more prominence than the crime itself.

And fuelled by those newspapers, that apprehension manifested itself in the question most heard by officers on the beat: was this the beginning of another serial killer; a second Yorkshire Ripper, someone who targeted women because he was sick in the head. The police officers had responded with cautious statements along the lines of it being highly unlikely something similar could happen now, twenty-odd years after Sutcliffe; technology and hard-learned lessons made that kind of thing almost impossible. But what frightened Roger most of all, was the word
almost
. Almost impossible. And since no one had been arrested for Sally’s murder yet, offering unofficial statements like that, though well-intentioned, seemed a little reckless.

Even the reports on Shelby’s desk, of a white middle-aged man, well built and wearing a dark overcoat, seen at Sally’s door sometime in the afternoon, did little to raise Shelby’s optimism. He was heard to say, ‘Well that fucking narrows it down, doesn’t it!’ before slamming the office door on his way out.

The Town Hall clock chimed twice. Gratefully, Roger switched off his mobile and pager, and shut down the computer and the office lights. He traipsed through the security gates to the staff car park, a yawn never far from his mouth and thoughts of bed comforting his mind.

The security barrier was still open, and he drove straight out of the car park.

Later he would recall this night, and others like it, and would wish he
had
gone home to bed.

In 1888, Wakefield matured into a City, stealing northern eminence from Pontefract, but lying blissfully in Leeds’ shadow. More than a century later it gained a reputation as a historical locale with a modern outlook. Wakefield blossomed. Socialising boomed.

The club scene promoted Wakefield with the panache of a sledgehammer crushing a fly. A night out here was an event big enough to attract the youths of surrounding villages and even those of nearby cities. It promised an unrivalled array of pubs, each advertising an ‘Unrivalled array of beers’, ‘Happy hour, eight till eleven’, topless barmaids, ear-crunching ‘music’, stomach-crunching cuisine and all the flesh one’s bleary eyes could consume.

Bass permeated the cold air, belched from dark doorways manned by large men who wore long black coats and dicky bows. Westgate alone boasted twelve such doorways, some marked with flashing neon lights, others more discreet, more choosy of their clientele.

Police officers in liveried cars and vans, strategically sited wherever a space was available, observed the doorways too.

Occasionally, boy racers in GTIs and lowered, blacked-out Escorts with drainpipes for exhausts, thundered up and down the drag hoping to catch the eye of the dolly-birds while avoiding the eye of the law.

The earlier rain had gone, and the night was clear, the air heavy with cheap scent and cheaper aftershave. It was approaching the end of the revellers’ evening, it was nearly 2.30 – but still the profound thud of bass escaped every club door, as did groups of staggering men and giggling women. They were a throbbing crowd jostling on slick pavements.

Most headed for the hot-dog stands and mobile burger bars, some stumbled towards the taxi ranks, some walked away merrily, others threw up in the gutter and a few, of course, started trouble. The cumulative screams, shouts and singing, were louder than a pneumatic drill.

Shooting off Westgate like the branches of a tree were cobbled alleyways wide enough for only one vehicle, and in the nineteenth century given names such as George and Crown Yard and Woolpacks Yard. Another was Thompson’s Yard, rich with history, but now bursting with trendy solicitors’ offices. Thompson’s Yard led travellers through a brick archway between The Imperial Bank and Tony’s Pizza Emporium, and out onto Westgate. The archway, a tunnel beneath the buildings’ first storeys, was sufficiently long to be cosseted by an eerie darkness.

Tonight, a lone car occupied Thompson’s Yard, lights off, a man at the wheel watching provocative, and sometimes alluring, young women stumble by. This was not a regular habit of Roger’s, since he worked evenings only one week in five; but when he did, he made a concerted effort to go ‘cruising’, as he called it. This was the ‘official business’ he had told Hobnail of.

A young couple in the throes of sexual excitement chose his archway to begin kissing and fondling each other.

As Roger became engrossed, the sudden belch of a siren made him bang his head on the side window. The police car was big and menacing in his rear view mirror, and the officer at its wheel waved furiously at him. The young couple rearranged themselves and left. Roger crunched first gear and nearly stalled in his rush to depart. He turned left, gazing hopefully in his rear view mirror. The police car turned right and sped off down the street after a GTI.

Roger exhaled with relief, and felt his hands trembling.

The bed was warm. Yvonne snored in a rather feminine, petite way that somehow endeared her to him. She was disabled now, her quality of life outside home reduced, spoilt, dictated by where there were stairs and where there were not stairs, dependant on ramps and ease of access, jostling with indifferent and ignorant people. It was easier on mind and spirit to stay at home.

Rheumatoid arthritis had come along and savagely twisted Yvonne’s beautiful body until it would fit quite neatly into a small box.

She had every right to resent her life, he thought.

Roger climbed into bed next to his wife.

Eventually, sleep carried him away into another nightmare.

“So the nightmares are still—”

“I took Valium last night. I stole a full strip of them from Yvonne’s medicine box a month ago. They’ve nearly all gone.” Roger breathed away the tension, tried to relax in the chair. A finger traced the dial on his watch, over and again. “I dread going to bed after I’ve worked on a body.” He laughed but it was derisive, hollow. “I just can’t sleep, can’t get their faces and their damned smell out of my mind.”

“And—”

“And I’m worried.”

Alice Taylor’s office, like the rest of the Occupational Health Unit, was pastel green, quiet calm ruled, patience and understanding were always plentiful. It smelled of forests in springtime, and her desk was not a barrier between herself and her client, but was pushed back against the wall so together they could face each other unobstructed, sharing the problem. Gentle lighting created a soothing atmosphere, but simply her presence helped relax Roger to the point of being high. The worry slipped away – for the moment at least.

“Have you told anyone about the nightmares; except me, I mean?” Alice asked.

“Are you kidding? And I’d appreciate it staying between just us two.”

“You don’t think I’d—”

“No, no. I don’t think that at all. Sorry.” He rubbed the tiny scars that ran along the tips of the fingers on his left hand. It was as though they itched.

She put down the pen and the writing pad. The page was thick with elaborate doodles – from an earlier meeting, she assured Roger. “I think we’ve exhausted all my suggestions,” she said. “The only thing to do is wait. I know it’s a cliché, but time really does heal - eventually.”

“I’m not sure I’ve got enough time left in me for an ‘eventually’.”

She squirmed in her chair. “You know, sometimes I have to put suggestions forward that…”

“Go on, Alice, don’t be shy.”

“Is this job right for you?”

“What! Of course—”

“But every time you see a dead body—”

“I know.
I’m
the one living through it. Shit! I’m the one who sees that dead body all through the night. I sleep with the damned things.” He stood, walked away from her and took in the view from her window, his fists resolutely planted on his hips. “I… This job is everything to me. I can’t do anything else. I don’t
want
to do anything else.” He tried to laugh again, but this time it just sounded feeble. “I feel like I’m a world class butcher, only to discover I’m allergic to meat, or a prize-winning hairdresser with a phobia of hair.” He felt like punching a hole in the glass.

“Is that the only thing worrying you?”

His fists curled tighter. “That’s not enough?”

“Look, I’m trying to—”

“I know!”

Alice leaned back in her chair, took a moment for Roger to compose himself, then asked, “How many bodies have you seen, and over how many years?”

“Countless,” he stared into the grey clouds over St John’s churchyard. “It’s been nine years.”

“There’s something else, isn’t there? You’ve been having nightmares for about four months, so what’s happened in that time?”

“Us,” he said. “We’ve happened.”

“No, no, apart from us. Come on, Roger, you know the answer already.”

His back still to her, he shrugged. Weston? he thought. Then he stiffened, “Promotion.”

“Go on.”

“Ever since I put the application in, went for the aptitude tests and the interview,” he turned around to face her, “I haven’t slept soundly.”

“Voilà,” her voice was calm, not at all patronising. “Pressure. That’s all it is. You’re worried about it.”

“It’s close.” He glared at her, “I have a good chance of getting it.”

“That’s what’s worrying you.”

“Getting it is worrying me?”

“Sounds that way. After nine years of doing the job, I’d have to say you must be competent at it, but somewhere up there in your head, you’re worried that if you get the promotion, you’ll foul it up. You’re not sure that you can take the responsibility or the pressure.”