The Unburied Dead (31 page)

'It's just a bit fucking weird,' he says, annoyance coming in to his voice, 'and I don't like it. So go round there, knock on her door, make sure there's nothing I should know about. Then you can go home and get some sleep.'

Holy fuck. Deep sigh and turn to head out into the night.

*

I stand at her door for more than five minutes. That's quite a long fucking time to be standing at someone's door. Five minutes. Just do nothing for five minutes, then imagine you're standing at someone's door. Almost give up, but then she finally answers. Not sure how long I'd have given it. All the time I'm wondering how pissed off she'll be at me for dragging her out of her sick bed.

She stands looking at me in the cold of night, me illuminated by a street light, and her backlit by a small lamp in her hallway.

'Thomas,' she says. 'Come in.'

She doesn't look ill, as such, but she does look absolutely fucking terrible.

I stand there looking at her. I hadn't really envisioned going in. I hadn't envisioned anything beyond standing on her doorstep, making sure she wasn't dead, checking that she definitely had the plague or something, and then leaving.

On balance,
come in
isn't exactly a shock invitation though.

I follow her in, close the door behind me. We go into her front room, she sits down in a single arm chair, I sit on the sofa opposite. The room is warm, there's a single lamp on in the corner. Quick check on the walls. Paintings. Good taste. Or, you know, so it seems to me. Like I know. There's a TV in the corner, but it's off at the wall. Looks unused.

'You all right?' I ask eventually.

'Feel like shit,' she says.

I nod.

'Flu or something? You want me to go to Boots for you? Call a doctor, some shit like that?'

'I've been sleeping with Evelyn,' she says quickly.

I look across the room. That's too far out in left field for me to be able to compute, so I don't even try.

'What?'

'We were…. You know, she was young, we just had this thing… It started at a station night a few months ago. It was just sex, you know. She called me her fuck buddy.' She lets out a bitter, unattractive laugh. I start to see Evelyn Bathurst and Sergeant Harrison as fuck buddies. Holy shit, I wish I could imagine that in other circumstances. 'We barely even talked. Just saw each other every now and again for sex. You know what that place is like. Jesus, any place… You can't just go having sex with anyone, never mind a twenty-one year-old constable. So we fucked every now and again, and…. Jesus, honestly, we never spoke to each other. Ever. We just… fucked.'

Women talk to me. I said that, didn't I? I wish they wouldn't. But this is different.

'When was the last time?' I ask, and even under these circumstances I still feel like I'm asking that question with
And is there video
attached to it.

'Friday night,' she says. 'She came to see me at… I don't know… just turned up in the middle of the night. We didn't usually do that. She came here at two in the morning, or something. She was upset but… we didn't talk… She didn't tell me what was going on, what it was about… she just wanted to take her mind off it. And I…'

She starts crying.

I'm not doing it, I'm not going over there.

'When did she leave?' I ask. 'When did she leave?'

She wipes her hand across her face, tries to pull herself together.

'I just fucked her. I knew I should have given her the chance to talk, but I just fucked her. This vulnerable little girl… What does that make me?'

'It's not about you,' I say harshly. 'When did she leave?'

'Not long before she died,' she says. Barely keeping it together. 'She must have gone straight to the station, dropped Forsyth's car off, and then walked home…'

She loses it on the final phrase. Which is understandable, given that Bathurst never got home.

'I can't… I can't….'

And what she can't do is get the sentence out.

I stand up. What I can't do is… this. This thing. Sit here, talking to a colleague in tears. I should. I should be there for her, but I've seen enough upset people in my life, enough people weeping for the dead or the missing or the raped, or weeping for what they've done or what they haven't done.

She sits there feeling like shit, and I join her in guilt and self-hatred by walking out on her. I can't help her. That's my excuse. What can a fucked up, melancholic arsehole like me do for her?

She didn't kill Evelyn. She hasn't done anything wrong, other than have a lot of people wondering who she was, and one person – me – accusing the Superintendent of having sex with the victim shortly before she met her fate.

I look down on her for a minute or so. Not as long as I stood at the door, but still a long time, standing over a woman, watching her cry. Is she expecting me to say something? Sit beside her, put my arm around her, tell her that it's not her fault?

I don't know why I stand so long. I was never going to give her the slightest comfort. She's a big girl, in a big world, she can sort herself out.

Finally I turn and walk quickly from the room, back into the hall, back out the front door. Once I'm outside I can no longer hear the sound of her sobbing.

I'll tell Taylor she needs the rest of the month off.

Of course, there's only one day of it to go.

*

Go home, destined to spend the rest of a shit night at home in front of the TV. Decide to do the honourable thing and call Peggy, pleased that at last I can do something right by her. She tells me she's tired and she'll see me another night. I've asked for that. She'd caught me lying on the phone earlier on, and had the decency not to tell me at the time. I deserve no less than to be turned away.

So that's me, a little before half nine. A packet of smokes, fridge full of v&t, and a couple of pieces of toast for company. Dying to call Charlotte. Not sure why, other than the obvious. Do I want to apologise for accusing her of fucking Bathurst? Really? She seemed happy to let me think that she had, although looking back, that seemed to be more my assumption.

Of course, I really just want to call her because I'm love sick, which is fucking pathetic, and induces even more self-loathing than walking out on Eileen Harrison did.

Finally, after an hour of shite television and wandering thoughts, I lift the phone. No answer at the flat in Kelvinside, so I try Helensburgh. Phone lifts and before my beating heart wanders casually up into my mouth, Frank says hello. I hang up without saying anything. Feel cheap, and wish I hadn't called.

So I sit for another two hours watching general mince and slowly getting pished out of my face. Wonder about Crow and Healy and Miller and Bloonsbury and Bathurst and Harrison and every other bastard on the force, if they're all joined up in some great secret society, dedicated to murdering their own. Finally fall asleep and drift into dreams, where I'm back in the forest, and they're all there, in Croatian uniforms, chasing me, dogs unleashed. And Taylor's in amongst it all, one of them, with Morrow at his side.

Wake up to a discussion of pre-war Spanish sculpture at a little before three o'clock in the morning. Holds my interest for a while, then I crawl off to bed. Fall asleep before I can clean my teeth. Wake up to the alarm at seven o'clock, mouth like the inside of a golf ball, face you could fry bacon on.

Miserable as fuck with it.

Wednesday morning. Last day of the year, and good riddance to it. Ann Keller's funeral today, nine days after the event. That's what happens with murders like this. Suppose the time of year hasn't helped. Anyway, for whatever reason, they managed to process the corpse of PC Bathurst a little quicker. Her funeral is on Saturday morning. Herrod's will probably be on Monday. A bright start to the New Year.

Into the station at just after eight o'clock. Expect wild cheering from the studio audience that I made it in time, but silence all round. Hard little workers beavering away. Still feel as if I'm about an hour and a half late. Stopped by Ramsey as I'm about to head for the first floor. This is a man who never leaves his post.

'Aggravated assault, Sergeant. Domestic,' he says.

'No way, mate. Morrow's got to be around.'

'Already handed him a burglary on Main Street. No sign of Sergeant Harrison again, so…' he adds, looking down his list. 'Pretty much everyone's taken. You want to speak to Taylor.'

Christ. 'Aye, all right. Give you a call.'

Up the stairs. I hate domestic assaults. Am still pondering what kind of cases I actually like investigating when I walk into Taylor's office.

'Ramsey wants me to do some domestic assault thing.'

He looks up from his desk. Looks like shit. I mean, really… why bother even mentioning it? Take everyone here and stick them out on parade and it would look like a fucking zombie movie. We are all so completely fucked.

'Yes,' says Taylor, 'he does.'

'Do I have time to deal with a domestic assault?'

'Got to be done,' he says. 'Until Healy shows his hand, there isn't much for any of us to do. You got any brilliant ideas I'll go with them, but otherwise you might as well make yourself useful.'

I've thought of going on holiday. That was brilliant.

'Nope.'

'Right then,' he says, 'you might as well get it over with. You know it anyway, so you're the best person.'

'What d'you mean?'

He smiles. Don't like the look of this.

'Mr and Mrs Jenkins,' he says.

'You're pulling my fucking chain…'

He smiles, the bastard. The pen in the eye brigade that I spent a day on last week. The couple where one was as bad as the other.

'What is it this time?'

'To put none too fine a point on it – he kicked fuck out her. She's in the Victoria. He's got a bruise or two himself, so they say, but we don't know whether he did it to himself to make it look like she started it.'

'Christ.'

'Exactly. The quicker you see to it, the quicker you can get back to our user-friendly serial killer case. If you need to bring the guy in, just do it.'

'Aye, right.' Start to head out the door.

'You go to see Sergeant Harrison?'

I stop. Deep breath. Turn round. I hadn't been sure what I was going to say at this moment, so I intentionally didn't give it a moment's thought. I have nothing.

'Yes.'

I don't add to that, as if by presenting him with silence he'll decide to let me walk out without asking any further questions.

'You seem reticent,' he says, dryly addressing my silence. 'I presume you slept with her, despite her life-threatening illness?'

Funny. I wish I had. The other reason I hadn't been thinking about her, of course, was because I was a complete and utter shit and walked out on her without giving her the merest quantum of solace. Of all the times I've been a complete bastard with women… well, that's probably in the top five. Although some of the others might dispute that.

'Didn't sleep with her,' I say.

He makes a face like he's impressed. I keep the colourful retort to myself.