After You Die (8 page)

Inside, she found him seated alone at a corner table, hunched over with his chin resting on his fists. He didn’t stir as she approached, stared straight through her with pink-rimmed eyes, the knuckle of one thumb caught between his teeth, as if inflicting some small physical pain on himself could wipe out the all-consuming emotional one that he was suffering.

He snapped out of it when she reached the table.

‘Is it time?’

‘We can wait for a while if you prefer,’ Ferreira said.

‘Sitting here isn’t going to change anything, is it?’

‘I’m sorry. I wish there was another way we could do this.’ She glanced around them; a few more people were dotted about, all lost in their own thoughts. ‘Where’s Sally? I think we should wait for her.’

‘I wanted to do this on my own.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I can deal with this.’

Like you dealt with Holly’s accident, Ferreira thought. Strange how only Sally could see him through that grief but he didn’t want her support during the darkest moments of this one. She thought of how he shrugged her away yesterday at the house, ran full pelt from the comfort she was offering.

‘If you’re ready then …’

They went down to a small anteroom, saturated with the exhaustion and fear and grief of all the people who had waited in it before, and Ferreira settled Warren on the sofa before she went into the mortuary.

The assistant was waiting for her, no sign of the pathologist yet.

‘Dawn and Holly Prentice, we’re here for the ID.’

The assistant ducked into his office and consulted the computer. ‘Coming in or staying out?’

‘He’s not up to coming in,’ she said. ‘We need to do this quickly, I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to keep it together for.’

‘Quick as I can then.’

In the side room Warren was on his feet, pacing back and forth with his hands wrapped around the back of his neck. Gently she sat him down again and they waited for a couple of interminable minutes with the sound of the steel drawers opening and closing audible through the wall. More than two, suggesting the assistant wasn’t as on the ball as he’d seemed. It had happened before, the wrong body brought up on screen.

But not today.

A low, monotone voice came through the speakers, giving them warning, then a white sheet filled the screen and Warren let out a keening groan that he managed to stifle as disembodied hands entered the shot, lifting the sheet away to reveal the bloated and ruined remains of Dawn’s face.

Warren lurched where he sat but held it together. ‘It’s her. That’s Dawn.’

Ferreira patted his shoulder, told him he was doing great, the words feeling stupid and inappropriate but she didn’t have any better ones and if she did she would have saved them for the next part of the process.

The screen went blue again and he was praying under his breath and cursing – God, Fate, Dawn, all of them equally to blame for bringing him here to this moment.

Then there she was, Holly, almost peaceful looking as the sheet was drawn back.

Warren moaned, rocking where he sat, unable to tear his eyes away from his daughter’s face. ‘My beautiful girl.’

The emotion clenched his limbs and tightened the muscles in his face and he kept staring at the screen long after the image was gone. Ferreira inched away from him as subtly as she could, gave him space and herself space too, feeling bruised by being in such close proximity to his grief.

‘She didn’t deserve this.’

Five minutes passed, with the dim sounds of the mortuary coming through the wall, footsteps on the tiled floor, the distant rattling of instruments as the pathologist’s assistant prepared for his arrival, humming thoughtlessly, some tune Ferreira half recog-nised and Warren didn’t seem to hear.

Finally he snapped back to reality. ‘I need to get out of here.’

The hospital was busier as they reached the reception area where people were milling about, into the newsagents and the cafeteria, a woman’s voice filling the space as she talked in an exaggerated tone to the young man she was pushing around in a wheelchair.

Outside, Warren didn’t pause, just kept walking as if Ferreira wasn’t there, head down, keys already in his hand. He stepped off the pavement straight in front of a taxi pulling away from the drop-off point and didn’t even pause.

Ferreira stopped and waved the taxi on before following him.

Warren was already half in his battered old Range Rover by the time she caught up with him. He had one leg tangled in the seat belt which hung loose outside the open door and his mounting frustration at it prompted an outburst which drew disapproving looks from a nearby couple.

She couldn’t let him drive out of here in that state, blurry eyed and emotionally shattered; anything could happen and she didn’t want another Prentice family tragedy on her conscience.

‘I think you should take a couple of minutes,’ she said. ‘Just get yourself together, okay?’

‘I’m perfectly safe.’

‘No, Warren, you’re not.’ He moved to close the door but she had hold of the frame. ‘You’re shaking. Come on, don’t force me to be a policewoman about this.’

Warren glared at her. ‘I can’t believe you’re wasting your time ordering me around when you should be out there looking for whoever killed Holly.’

‘There’s a team setting up in the village right now. We’re going to get whoever was responsible. But I need to be sure you’re okay before I let you go.’

His head dropped again and he withdrew his hand from the door.

Ferreira reached out and took the keys from him. ‘I’ll get us a drink.’

She went back into the cafeteria and waited in line behind a man who hacked his lungs up all over the display of sandwiches and wraps. He paid with a pile of change and the woman at the till only realised it wasn’t enough money when he was already gone. She rolled her eyes at Ferreira and took her order.

Warren was sitting with the door open when she returned to the car and she was thinking how much calmer he looked a split second before she caught the scent of skunk on the air, sweet but diesel tinged. He reached over to let her in, took his coffee from her.

‘You’re not going to be a policewoman about this too, are you?’ he asked, gesturing at her with the joint.

‘Whatever you need to do.’

He took a deep drag and held it down for a few seconds. ‘I stopped smoking years ago, hadn’t even had a cigarette since I left uni. Then Holly had her accident … you think alcohol’s going to do the job but it doesn’t.’

Ferreira rolled one of her own – unadulterated – and cracked the window before she lit up, needing a through wind to drive the scent of Warren’s green out of her hair and clothes. If she went back to the station reeking of it there would be questions.

For a while they talked about Holly, Ferreira doing no more than prompting, Warren relaxing as he smoked but she could see it was only a temporary fix. Occasionally a bolt of anger would shoot through his narcotic neutrality; at the instructor who hadn’t checked Holly’s ropes properly, the surgeon who should have done more. Not at Dawn though.

‘I should have made more of an effort with her,’ he said. ‘I should have helped Dawn out more but I didn’t know what to do. And she wouldn’t ask. She was always so bloody stubborn.’

‘Was she getting any help?’ Ferreira asked.

‘She had a nurse come once a day. She handled the medication, that stuff.’

Ferreira wondered why the nurse hadn’t raised the alarm and made a mental note to follow up on that.

‘Dawn seemed quite isolated when I spoke to her.’

‘She was.’ Warren frowned. ‘You’d be amazed how quickly people abandon you when things get tough.’

‘She must have kept in touch with some of her friends?’

‘Julia and her stayed close.’ He crushed the butt of his joint in the ashtray between their chairs. ‘But Julia isn’t like the rest of them. She’s used to dealing with other people’s problems. She lives for it.’

‘Nosy, you mean?’

‘Let’s just say she’s a good listener.’ He took the lid off his coffee and swallowed a mouthful of bad cappuccino. ‘If anyone knows what was going on in Dawn’s life, it’s Julia.’

‘Like who she’s been seeing lately?’

‘There’ll be someone,’ Warren said, no judgement in his tone. ‘Dawn was always a very – um – physical woman, you know? She needed someone.’

‘You’ve no idea who?’

‘It’s not the kind of thing you ask your estranged wife.’ He looked down into his coffee. ‘Especially not when you walked out on her.’

‘But there was Holly to consider,’ Ferreira pointed out. ‘If Dawn was having a relationship, surely you’d want to know who was in the house with your daughter.’

‘Dawn wasn’t stupid,’ he said. ‘She’d never put Holly in danger.’

He started to roll another joint and Ferreira stopped him.

‘One of them and I can let you drive home. Two – we’ll be here a while.’

He slipped the foil wrap back into his tobacco pouch and tucked the bundle away. Whatever was already in his system was beginning to clear and a morose expression darkened his face.

‘Do you know how Hol died?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. We’ll have more information tomorrow, but there were no signs of violence. It looks like she might have died from complications in her condition.’

‘Neglect, you mean? Dawn was dead and she couldn’t look after her, so she died?’

‘As far as we’re concerned it’s still a murder investigation. Whoever killed Dawn left Holly to die.’ Ferreira glanced at the dashboard clock; the post-mortem would be starting soon and she needed to get back to the office. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to do this?’

He shook his head, turned away from her.

‘If Dawn didn’t have many visitors we’re looking at a limited range of possibilities. Who’s in that range?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Me, I suppose, Julia definitely, maybe Matthew – that’s her husband.’

Warren drew the car door shut, suddenly ready to leave, done with the conversation. But Ferreira still had his keys in her pocket.

‘Who else?’

He hesitated. ‘She’s got a builder in at the moment.’

‘We know about him.’

‘Can I have my keys back, please?’

Ferreira took them out, held them in her closed fist. ‘Either it’s the green or you’re just not very good at hiding what you’re thinking, but I can see that you know who I need to talk to.’

‘It’s nothing.’ He reached for the keys and she pulled her hand away.

‘Then tell me.’

‘Julia has a couple of kids living with her at the moment. A boy and a girl – she’s a foster carer, so God knows what kind of shit they’re capable of.’

‘And?’

‘I’ve seen them at the house a few times.’

‘Is that all?’

He shot her a hard look but didn’t reply.

It was a big conclusion to draw from such a small thing, Ferreira thought, and she didn’t like the way he’d immediately jumped on them as a threat when they were probably victims of circumstance themselves.

‘They made you uncomfortable,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘The boy.’ Warren’s fingers closed around the steering wheel, white-knuckle tight. ‘Nathan. The last time I went to visit Hol he was in her bedroom.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Just standing there,’ Warren said. ‘Looking at her.’

Nathan woke with a start and instinctively lashed out, his fists finding nothing but air and darkness and then, just a few inches away from his shoulders, solid wood. He stifled a scream and rubbed his throbbing knuckles, telling himself not to panic.

Just breathe. Think.

He tried the exercise Julia had taught him, running the alphabet backwards in his head as he took deep, slow breaths, picturing each letter in the gloom, making it solid and real in front of him, always blue. That was the calmest colour, she’d told him. Clear skies and calm seas and cornflowers.

He saw it differently. The bright blue of Everton’s home strip, the number 3 his mum bought him, Leighton Baines.

There was blood on the top.

Blood on the walls and the floor. In her hair, on his hands.

Nathan felt his heart pounding behind his ribs, felt himself losing control again. He made the floating letters green; the safest colour. He couldn’t think of anything bad that was green.

Slowly his eyes adjusted and he realised he was in a wardrobe. Saw the dimensions coming out of the shadows around him, a big wardrobe, with a chrome rail above his head, empty except for a couple of wire hangers. The floor of it was carpeted and he whined quietly to himself when he realised it was wet. He tugged his combats away from his groin, the damp fabric sticking to his skin.

It was the nightmare.

The man in the lorry with the tobacco breath and the yellow teeth. The knife …

Nathan scrambled in his pockets, turned them inside out, panic tightening his skull. The knife was gone and it wasn’t a nightmare.

He fell out of the wardrobe into an empty room, blinking against the sunlight flooding in through the bare window. The sight of the patterned carpet and papered wall triggered a surge of memory that was almost too much for him to control.

Everything was jumbled up in his head, Dawn and Holly and his mum and his brother and that man, the one who seemed nice but wasn’t, who said he’d take him home but didn’t. Nathan tried to put the memories in order, deal with them how Julia told him to, push away the things that hadn’t happened and focus on what he needed to know right now.

He walked around the empty room – moving helped – dragging his fingertips over the bumpy patterned wall, watching his feet until he noticed the blood on his trainers. The man told him to sleep for a bit but he only pretended to.

When he reached the bedroom door he stopped. Scared suddenly.

Who else was in the house?

There was no furniture here but not everyone had loads of furniture.

He pressed his ear to the door and listened for a long time. No sounds of life. Nothing but his own breathing and heartbeat and the gurgling of his stomach.

It was too late to be scared.

Slowly he opened the door and explored the rest of the upstairs. Two more bedrooms, both of them empty, and then the bathroom. No toilet roll or towels. The open window brought back something more. An image there and gone in a second. He caught hold of it, focused.