Human Remains (14 page)

There was the word:
hopeless
. The word I need to hear, to start things off.

‘It’s easy to make things better,’ I said. ‘The end of the road is easy to find, and it’s a very simple road to take.’

‘I’m afraid of pain,’ she replied.

‘Could there be any pain worse than this?’

‘No. But I might – do it wrong. I might get things wrong, and that would be worse…’

‘There are no wrong decisions. You can decide this, and feel better about everything. It’s a decision you can make. The decision is completely in your hands. You have the power to do this, and the strength to do it.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said.

‘There is always peace,’ I said, softly. ‘Peace, and quiet, and an end to all the pain. You can choose for it to be painless, and quiet, and completely on your terms. It’s for you to choose.’

From a purely technical aspect, it really is that simple. The techniques I’ve learned – language patterns, inducing a trance state and a heightened relaxation state in people purely through conversation – were the easy part all along. It’s just a case of listening closely to what they are telling you, not just with their words but far more importantly with their bodies, with their eyes, with their movements and shifts and subtle changes in tone. It isn’t rocket science (an inexcusable cliché), but nor is it pseudo-science. It’s reassuringly easy when you know how.

You want to know how I do it, don’t you? I can imagine it, your fervent interest, your curiosity that others might describe as morbid: I can see it in the sparkle in your eyes. Well, ask me, then. Go on. I know you’re dying to…

In any case, I can’t and shan’t reveal the details. Do you think I stumbled upon this overnight? Do you think this level of awareness is something everyone can master? It’s a long, slow process, not just the learning of the techniques required but the effort involved in tailoring that same process to the individual concerned. It starts with a simple conversation, but this is just the first of many such meetings, many such conversations. The hard part is knowing if they are ready, and spotting the ones who are close enough to make it work.

I’m not sure if Leah is quite at that point, and I am thinking about leaving her for a few weeks, maybe trying to reconnect with her after a time. She will go one way, or the other. If she chooses the right path, then I will be ready for her.

Sometimes I meet people who aren’t ready, and I leave them to continue on their own. If they need me later on, then I shall find them again.

It’s not as if I don’t have others to look out for, in any case.

On Monday morning I got to work feeling empty. The sky was dark grey, threatening rain, like the inside of my heart.

Kate was off today, which meant it was just me and Trigger. I wasn’t in the mood for him today, Trigger and his ever-changing moods, cheerful one minute and grumpy the next. But the office was deserted. As usual, the milk carton I’d bought on Friday and used once only was empty in the fridge. I needed a cup of tea, and the theft of the milk, such a petty thing, made me want to cry. It was the early turn, probably, who started work long before the shops opened, and needed a drink to keep them going through the dark hours before dawn. But that was no excuse for being too lazy or thoughtless to bring in their own milk. The fridge in the kitchen that served the management corridor actually had a padlock, and that was the reason.

I made a cup of green tea instead and logged into the system. I opened my email. Twenty-four new messages since I’d logged off last night. Where did they all come from?

I scrolled down, looking for ones that were interesting, and my eyes were drawn to one name: Sam Everett. I ignored it, working my way through all the intelligence reports and requests to log out of systems I didn’t use anyway because they were going to reboot the servers. There was an email from the Force’s Recreation Association asking me to join the monthly lottery, an email about a sergeant from Tactical Operations who was planning to run a marathon in Tibet and wanted sponsorship, and a request for additional copies of the bi-monthly Violence Profile from two people who had just joined the Strategic Planning Department.

That was it. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Sam Everett – newsdesk,
Briarstone Chronicle
. The title of the email: ‘Recent deaths’.

Below that was a landline number and a mobile phone number. I closed the email and went back to the others, working my way through them methodically, before putting even that aside and starting work on the next sex offender profile.

In the kitchen at work someone has left a copy of today’s
Briarstone Chronicle
on the table. It’s covered in crumbs, has a smear of butter on the front page, and in normal circumstances I would lift it between finger and thumb and deposit it in the waste paper bin before wiping the surface down with disinfectant and washing my hands.

But today the side bar on the front page catches my eye. I stand over the table, reading. It’s about their pathetic ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ campaign which they launched on Friday – and it seems to be an exhortation for everyone to knock on their next-door neighbour’s door and check they are still breathing.

If I weren’t within earshot of the two people sitting at desks just outside the kitchen door, I would probably have laughed out loud. What good do they think it’s going to do? At the very best, all it will achieve is to find the ones who have still not been found. I don’t know how many that is. I don’t always see the paper, and many of them wouldn’t even make the news.

And suddenly I have a bright idea. A wonderful, glistening, delicious and dangerous idea. I could ring them up, the people at the newspaper, and tell them where to look. Save them the trouble of their campaign. After all, the good people of Briarstone have better things to do with their days than to bother with checking up on their neighbours. Surely it would be a kind thing for me to do, to let them know (without troubling the police, who, let’s face it, are already under tremendous pressure to solve burglaries and assaults and all manner of other horrible crimes) where the others could be found?

I find myself shuddering with excitement and, to my surprise, sporting a sudden and huge erection.

I sit down at the kitchen table, something I never usually do since you don’t know which of the scutters has sat there before you, in order to disguise the disarrangement of my trousers. Could I do it? Should I do it? Why not, after all? I could do it in such a way that would not identify my involvement. And it would make everything suddenly much more interesting, much more exciting. I’ve enjoyed the last year very much indeed, but the last ones haven’t been nearly so entertaining. It still feels like the right thing to do and I get a thrill of excitement each time I walk away from them, leaving them behind, but the stimulation I get now is not nearly the same as it was the first few times. I need to – how do the tabloids put it? – up my game.

So what, if the press then know it is being done deliberately? They will have no idea how, or why. They will quite likely not believe that such a thing is possible. The individuals concerned all died of natural causes, after all. There is no question of foul play.

The thought of ringing someone up – or, no, perhaps it would be better done by email, or by post – and the result of it! The story they would print for the next edition! It would be immense. It might even attract national attention.

The erection is growing, not diminishing. I’m past the point of decision. It’s no longer about the ‘if’ – it’s now all about the ‘when’ and the ‘how’. It has given me a completely new way of approaching the matter. A new inspiration.

I pick up the newspaper, no longer concerned about the crumbs or the smear of butter, and fold it in half. Holding it casually against the front of my body, I leave the kitchen and hurry past the desks outside to the lobby, ducking into the disabled toilet tucked away around the corner by the lifts. I lock the door and undo my trousers, laying the newspaper out open on the grubby floor, a double page spread with pictures of them as I’ve never seen them, pictures of smiling faces from a different age, happy faces before I met them, before I released them from their pain, before I showed them the way to escape from it all. And looking at them again turns me on even more, rubbing myself hard enough for it to hurt, thrusting into my fist until I find relief, all over the newspaper, over their faces.

The Park and Ride was quiet on a Tuesday lunchtime. I’d only ever seen it at seven in the morning, the buses busy but the car park still empty. Now I had to drive all the way to the far side before I found a space. Annoying to have to walk all the way to the bus stop and then all the way to the very back of the car park before I could start to drive home. And then, no doubt, to have to park three or four streets away from home.

I’d taken the morning as flexible hours because I’d woken up with a fierce headache, one that made me nauseous. I’d almost expected it to last the day, but by eleven o’clock it had subsided to a dull thudding, and I was bored at home anyway.

On the bus, my mobile phone rang. It rang so infrequently that it always gave me a jolt when I heard it. I felt for the phone, vibrating and playing a tinny rendition of Mozart at the bottom of my bag, tangled up in the rubbish I carried around with me everywhere I went and never needed. Someone sitting behind me tutted with annoyance at the noise, which got louder and louder as I held my bag open.

At last, when I was convinced the caller was going to give up and it was going to go to voicemail, I felt the trembling phone and grabbed it.

‘Hello?’

There was a pause and I thought again that they must have rung off.

‘Hello, is that Annabel?’

‘Yes,’ I said, wondering if it was a sales call and how I could get out of it. ‘I’m just on a bus, I can’t hear you very well.’

‘This is Sam Everett,’ said the voice. ‘I’m a journalist with the
Briarstone Chronicle
.

‘Oh, yes. I got your email. How did you get my mobile number?’

‘Ah – a lady in your office let me have it. Sorry, she said she thought you wouldn’t mind.’

Of course. Kate would assume I wouldn’t mind; I never minded anything, did I? I felt cross, but that wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference now.

‘No, I guess it doesn’t matter.’

For some reason, I’d assumed Sam Everett was a woman. I had no idea why; I just suspected that a journalist interested in a human interest story like this one would be female, empathetic, kind. Maybe Sam Everett the man had a completely different take on it – maybe it was the bodies he was interested in, the decomposition, the potential for violence.

‘Is it a good moment to talk?’

‘Not really. I’m on the bus, on my way to work.’

‘Ah. Maybe I could meet up with you later? What time do you finish?’

‘Well, I’m late going in already,’ I said.

‘It won’t take long. Look, I’m in the town centre. I could meet you off the bus and buy you a very quick coffee. What do you think?’

‘Well…’

They didn’t even know I was coming in, to be honest. I’d not phoned to let them know, reasoning that neither Kate nor Bill would answer their phones, and, if they did, they probably wouldn’t much care.

‘I’d really appreciate it,’ Sam said. ‘I think we could really help each other out with this, you know? Nobody’s taking it seriously enough, and too many people are dying.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Where was this conversation heading? It was making me feel uncomfortable.

‘So you’ll meet me? What bus are you on?’

I told him, which he took to mean I had assented.

‘If you get off at the stop before the shopping centre, I’ll wait for you there, OK? See you in a few minutes, then.’

He rang off. I put the phone back into my bag and looked out of the window at the houses lining the road. Big houses, large front lawns. The bus paused in traffic, outside a house that was obviously empty: no curtains at the windows, the lawn overgrown, weeds growing up through the cracks in the paving stones. Was there someone inside, after all? Someone waiting to be found?

A few minutes later the bus turned the corner into the High Street. Four hundred yards further on, the shopping centre entrance would be the first of my two possible stops, there or the war memorial; from the shopping centre I would walk through the arcade, usually empty and cold first thing in the morning, but at this time of day it would be heaving with shoppers. And the bus was full of them now, too, about to get off. That was why he’d asked me to meet him at the earlier stop – I would be the only one. He wouldn’t have to guess who I was, and he wouldn’t have to risk me going off without him.

I stood and went to the front of the bus, holding on to the pole and swaying as it bumped its way through the potholes. I could see through the front windscreen a figure standing waiting at the bus stop, and as I got closer I realised this must be Sam Everett.

He was younger than I’d expected, certainly younger than me, maybe no more than twenty-five. He had dark hair that was long enough to curl over his collar, and wore neat glasses, black jeans and a black thigh-length coat over what looked like a band tour T-shirt. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before, but the memory wouldn’t come. When I stepped down from the bus I saw it was a Pulp T-shirt that he was wearing and I thawed a little towards him then, because I’d loved Pulp when I’d been at university, they were my all-time favourite band. I gave him a smile.