Human Remains E-Book

Elizabeth Haynes

• Herausgeber: Myriad Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

How well do you know your neighbours? Would you notice if they lived or died? Police analyst Annabel wouldn't describe herself as lonely. Her work keeps her busy and the needs of her ageing mother and her cat are more than enough to fill her time when she's on her own. But Annabel is shocked when she discovers her neighbour's decomposing body in the house next door, and appalled to think that no one, including herself, noticed her absence. Back at work she sets out to investigate, despite her police officer colleagues' lack of interest, and finds data showing that such cases are frighteningly common in her own home town. A chilling thriller and a hymn to all the lonely people, whose individual voices haunt the pages, Elizabeth Haynes' new novel is a deeply disturbing and powerful thriller that preys on our darkest fears, showing how vulnerable we are when we live alone, and how easily ordinary lives can fall apart when no one is watching.

Leseprobe

Praise for Into the Darkest Corner

‘It’s hard to put the uniqueness of Elizabeth Haynes’ writing into words. Her stories grip you by the throat and force you to acknowledge that this is what real crime and real horror look and feel like, as well as real love, hope, fear. Suddenly, much of the other crime fiction you’ve read seems, in comparison, rather like stories made up by writers. Haynes is the most exciting thing to happen to crime fiction in a long time.’ Sophie Hannah

‘Check the locks on your doors and windows and surrender to this obsessive thriller.’ Karin Slaughter

‘Utterly unputdownable. A stunning debut.’ S J Watson

‘A chilling, page-turning read that charts domestic violence without flinching and portrays OCD with insight and compassion.’ Rosamund Lupton

‘A powerful psychological drama and portrayal of obsession.’Daily Mail

‘Haynes’ powerful account of domestic violence is disquieting, yet unsensationalist. This is a gripping book on a topic which can never be highlighted enough.’Guardian

‘Amazon UK’s Book of the Year, Haynes’ claustrophobic psychological thriller is a shocking portrayal of domestic abuse.’Mslexia

‘A tense and thought-provoking debut novel with dark moments. Its portrayal of obsession will send a shiver down your spine.’Shotsmag

‘A psychological thriller packed with tension and suspense. This is a debut of such strength you have to wonder if Haynes is the next Minette Walters.’ Rhian Davies, CWA John Creasey Dagger judge

‘A compulsive thriller with sufficient twists and plot turns to keep the most action-avaricious of readers satisfied.’Bookgroup.info

‘Compelling and disturbing.’Mystery Women

‘This beautifully dark and disturbing novel is seamlessly put together and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.’Eurocrime

‘Fast-paced and chilling, with a realistic twist. Lock all your doors and settle down for one of the most gripping reads of the year!’Pamreader

‘A nervy, heart-racing page-turner. It’s a one-sitting, impossible-to-put-down kind of book.’Bookrambler

‘A harrowing psychological thriller.’Publishers’ Weekly

‘Fast-paced, this is a stunning, scary suspense starring degrees of obsession.’The Mystery Gazette

‘A tour de force debut novel that is both creepily disturbing and yet beautifully rendered.’New York Review of Books

‘The tension in the novel builds relentlessly to a stunning and frightening conclusion. An unforgettable story.’Suspense Magazine

 

Praise for Revenge of the Tide

‘Haynes’ first novel was a sensation last year and this, her second, is just as impressive and in much the same mould.’Daily Mail

‘Unputdownable, this thriller with a heart of gold reads like a breath of fresh air.’Red Magazine

‘Haynes’ first book was Amazon’s Book of the Year last year so it was always going to be a tough act to follow. Revenge of the Tide clearly shows her initial success was no accident.’Sunday Express

‘This second novel by Elizabeth Haynes is as excellent as her first one. It is full of suspense and intrigue and keeps the reader hanging on its every word. Very highly recommended.’Eurocrime

‘Fear about the loss of control is at the heart of readers’ obsession with crime. That Haynes lends Genevieve power over fear, her body and the men for whom she dances has enabled her to create a character with more complexity than is usual in genre thrillers.’Independent on Sunday

‘Revenge of the Tide delivers everything I crave from a murder mystery: suspense, emotion, an element of humour, surprise, and, just when I thought I had the answers, Haynes adds another twist.’Pretty Litter Magazine

‘A thoroughly gripping read. This is another great book from a promising author who is fast becoming one of my favourites.’Crimesquad

‘Everything you could possibly want from a thriller: an intelligent and feisty heroine, a mysterious packet, complicated relationships and a great cast of characters who are not always as guilty or as above suspicion as they might at first appear. Do you want to add tension and intrigue to your everyday life? Read this novel. Now.’Book After Book

‘Haynes’ first book was a runaway success so her second had a lot to live up to. I’m happy to say that from the first page I was engrossed in this gripping murder mystery; so much so that I finished it in just three sittings.’Peterborough Evening Telegraph

‘This racy jeopardy thriller proves that Haynes’ much-praised first novel was no fluke.’Morning Star

‘Do you know that feeling of dread when you pick up the second book of an author whose first book pulled you in and wouldn’t let you go? You’re longing for it to be of the same standard with hours of indulgent, satisfying reading ahead of you, but you’re equally conscious that it might be ‘the difficult second book’ which tells you quite clearly that this isn’t going to be an author to follow. This one sat on my desk for days and then I thought that it wouldn’t harm just to have a look, just to get an idea of what it was like… I finished it in the small hours of the following morning. It’s not long before you discover that this is the difficult-to-put-down second book. And if you haven’t read Into the Darkest Corner then you really should.’The Bookbag

‘I really enjoyed Into the Darkest Corner and was looking forward to this second book. It is every bit as engaging. The plot is excellent… Plenty for reading groups to discuss.’NewBooks Magazine

For an exclusive extract, turn to p.393

Contents

Title PageDedicationHuman RemainsAcknowledgementsAfterwordExtract from ‘Revenge of the Tide’Extract from ‘Never Alone’About the AuthorCopyright

For my best friendsAngela Wiley, Karen Aslett and Lindsay Brown with love

Annabel

When I got home I could smell the bins on the cold air, a faint bad smell that made me wrinkle my nose.

Inside, I opened the back door, rattling the box of cat biscuits in the hope that it would bring her scurrying. It was a clear night, so she would most likely not make an appearance at the back door until I was in the bath, when she would howl and scratch to be let in. Despite the cat flap and my efforts to get her to use it – propping it open, coaxing her and bribing her and even shoving her forcefully through it – she ignored it and came in and out only when I was home to open the door for her. I’d even tried getting rid of the litter tray, but she’d just piss on the lino in the kitchen and then pull it up at the corner with her claws to try and cover her excretions. After that I gave up.

I stood in the doorway for a few minutes. ‘Lucy?’ I called, experimentally. ‘Lucy!’

Nothing. The bloody cat could stay out there all night, I thought, knowing for a fact that I would be down here in my bath towel in a couple of hours’ time, dripping wet and freezing, rattling the cat biscuits while she sat on the lawn and stared at me, punishing me for having taken too long.

I made myself a cup of peppermint tea and some cheese on toast, and ate it sitting at the kitchen table with one eye on the open door in case the cat might walk in and I could shut it and trap her inside. When I’d finished I scraped the crusts of the toast into the kitchen bin, sniffing. Something definitely smelt bad. The last time I’d smelt something this rotten, the cat had brought in a frog and I hadn’t realised until I found it, half-slimy, half-dried, under the dresser in the dining room, right at the back. I’d had to get on my hands and knees with a wad of kitchen towel and rubber gloves on to get rid of it.

I stood in the doorway again, wondering if Lucy had killed a pigeon this time and left it by the bins, not trusting me to dispose of it appropriately. I put on my slippers, took my torch from the drawer and ventured down the steps into the darkness, listening to the sound of the traffic from the main road beyond the trees. In the alleyway between my house and next door I lifted the lid off each of the two bins: the black one, and the green one for compostable waste. Both smelt unpleasant, but that wasn’t it. I shone the torch around the base of the bins. No pigeon, no rat – nothing dead.

The house next door was unoccupied, had been for some time, but as I stood there I realised I could see a light coming from inside. A dim golden light, as though a single bulb shone in a room somewhere inside, undisturbed.

I tried to remember when I’d last been out here. Sunday afternoon? But it had been broad daylight, sunny, and even if the light had been on next door then I wouldn’t have noticed it. Maybe an estate agent had been in, or a property developer, and left it on?

When I’d first moved in, a couple had been living next door. I fought for the memory – what was she called? Shelley, that was it. She’d introduced herself to me once. It had been summer, a hot day. I was just getting home and she was working in the front garden. She stopped me for a chat even though it was the last thing I wanted. Tired, fed up as usual, all I longed for was to get inside and prise my shoes away from my hot, aching feet and have a cold drink. All I remembered from that conversation was her name, and that her ‘partner’ – which always sounds odd to me, not ‘boyfriend’ or ‘husband’ or ‘fiancé’ – was called Graham. I never met him. I think he moved out that autumn, and although I saw her coming and going a few times up until last winter I assumed she’d moved out some time after Easter because I hadn’t seen her after that, and the garden she’d previously tended had grown wild and tangled.

At first it was just a feeling, a creeping sense of dread, and then I heard a noise from the direction of the empty house. Something was wrong. I peered across into the darkness as the cat pushed her way through the gate and trotted over to me, winding herself around my legs. She was covered in something, some mess, sticky and foul-smelling, wrapping herself round and round my skirt. My hand flew up to my nose and mouth to block out the smell.

At that point I thought about going back to my kitchen and phoning the police. Looking back, that was exactly what I should have done. But it was Friday night, and because I worked at the police station I knew that all the patrols would be busy, if not mopping the blood and puke off the streets of Briarstone town centre, then back at the station booking people into custody. I’d worked with the police for years and never once had to call them out myself. I didn’t even know what to say. That there was a bad smell next door? They’d more than likely suggest phoning the council on Monday morning.

The low metal gate to the back garden hung off its hinges; beyond it the remains of what had once been a neat patch was now an untouched wilderness. The grass and weeds were waist-high in places, having outgrown their own strength and flopped over on themselves like an army midway through a battle. I stepped over the grass on to the brick path that led to the back door. The kitchen windowsill was covered in dead flies. I shone the torch into the empty room. A few flies were still crawling on the glass of the window and still fewer followed an angular flight path around the centre of the room. The door to the dining room was ajar and the light glowed through, a dim golden light from somewhere inside.

I looked down. The lower pane of the back door was missing. Dark smears marked the bottom of it, tufts of cat hair around the edge as though cats of various colours and breeds had all been in and out as many times as had taken their fancy. I tried the door. Too much to hope that it would be unlocked, of course. Then I knocked on it, the sound of my knuckles rapping on the glass, which rattled in the frame. I pushed the pane gently, and then a little harder, and before I knew what had happened the glass had fallen in and smashed into pieces on the tiled floor of the kitchen inside.

‘Oh, shit!’ I said aloud. I was really in trouble now.

I should have turned away from the door. I should have gone back into my own house, and locked my door, and thought no more about it. It wasn’t my problem, was it? But, having practically broken into the house already, I thought I might as well finish what I’d started, and see if anyone was inside.

I put my hand through the empty frame and reached around to the inside. The key was in the lock. I struggled to turn it – it was stiff, hadn’t been opened in a long time – and at the back of my mind was the thought that there were probably bolts at the bottom and top of the door as well. But when I twisted the key in the lock it eventually turned, and the door opened easily enough. The smell from within was powerful, and sudden. And then it faded just as quickly, as if all the badness from inside had escaped and fled into the night.

‘Hello?’ I called, not expecting a reply and not knowing what the hell I would have done had one come. ‘Is anyone there?’

The house felt warmer than mine, or perhaps that was just because I was coming inside from the cold of the garden. My footsteps crunched on the broken glass, echoed in the empty kitchen and I put a hand over my mouth and nose to try to muffle the smell, which was stronger again in here. I shone the torch around the room, illuminating cupboards and shelves and a cooker, which were dirty, the surfaces dulled with a sticky film of dust.

Maybe it was just food that had gone bad, I thought. Maybe whoever had lived here had departed in a hurry and left the remains of their dinner behind. But the fridge door stood open and it was unlit, nothing but black mould inside. It was obviously unplugged.

I pushed the kitchen door open slightly and then there was enough light for me to turn off the torch. I was in a dining room, the table and chairs in place, a tablecloth covering the table and two placemats upon it. A table lamp sat on a sideboard, a modern design but, like everything else, with a thin film of dust blurring its surface. It was lit.

I could hear a sound. Low voices, but a bit tinny – it sounded like Radio 4. The radio was on? Surely, then, someone was in here? I felt as though I was being watched, as though someone just out of my line of sight was waiting.

I told myself not to be so paranoid, and went into the hallway. It looked lived-in, the house – carpet on the floor and pictures on the walls. The only light came from the table lamp in the dining room.

‘Hello?’ My voice was quieter in here, my footfalls on the carpet muffled. The smell wasn’t as bad, or was it just that I was getting used to it, growing accustomed to breathing through my mouth?

The radio was louder now, the sound of an interview between a male voice and a female, the woman arguing a point and the man placating her. Above that another noise, or was I imagining things now?

I felt something against my leg and jumped, a squeak of panic coming out of my mouth before I could stop it. But it was only the cat, winding herself around my ankles once before dashing off through the dining room door and into the next room. ‘Lucy!’ I said, urgently, not wanting to have to crawl behind someone’s sofa to try and coax her out again. I pushed open the door to the living room at the front of the house. It was dark in here, the light from the dining room not penetrating this far into the gloom. The curtains were closed, the gap between them letting in only the faintest glow from the street-lights outside. I turned on the torch again and as I did so I caught a movement, a flash of white. It was Lucy again, rolling on the carpet in the middle of the room. I could hear her purring above the thudding of my heart.

The room was furnished, but sparsely: a sofa, a low coffee table in front of it. On the table, a bunch of what must have once been carnations, stiff and brown in a waterless vase.

The beam of the torch passed over an armchair. And even having felt a presence, half-expecting to find somebody in here, in this room, I gasped at the shock of seeing a person there, one horrifically distorted out of shape: black instead of white, the skin of the face stretched and split in places, the eyelids drawn back into a wide, black, hollow stare and the belly blown up like a balloon, stretching the fabric of what it was wearing – what she was wearing, for it was a skirt, and the hair that still clung to the skull was long, fine, lank, and maybe still fair in places, although it was coated in something – grease, some substance. And what made it worse was that there was movement in the abdomen, as though she was breathing – although surely this wasn’t possible? But when I looked closer I realised that her stomach was composed of a swarming, churning mass of maggots… And despite the horror, and my deep, heaving, choking breaths, I could not tear my eyes away. One hand was resting on the arm of the chair, and the other hand, the forearm from the elbow to the hand, was on the floor beside the chair, as though she’d dropped it, knocked it off the edge like a misplaced remote control.

And then the purring began again – the bloody cat – and I looked down to see her rolling on the carpet beside the dark mess, as if the smell was catnip to her, and not the stench of the putrefying bodily fluids of a decomposing corpse.

Colin

I was eating cornflakes and reading jokes aloud from the back of the 1982 Beano annual when my father clutched his chest and dropped dead on the kitchen floor.

Looking back it almost seems comical, but I believe that this was the moment when my life took a change in direction. My father was the sort of person you could read jokes to. He would spend Sundays fixing the car and I would help him, learning where all the pieces went and what they all did. He laughed a lot and together we both laughed at my mother, who was thin, and serious, and bitter.

After he died, I couldn’t bring myself to read the Beano any more. I didn’t really laugh any more, either.

 It’s grim, feeling like this on a Monday morning. Other people have hangovers, people my age; or they’ve spent the weekend caravanning, or shagging their girlfriends. Or shagging someone else’s girlfriend. I’ve spent my weekend writing an essay, and staying up too late with whisky and porn. As a result I’m finding it impossible to concentrate on the budgets.

The trouble is that I’m not sure I even want a girlfriend any more. I like my life the way it is, carefully ordered. I like my house the way it is. I’m not pathetically tidy – no visiting psychologist would have concerns for my sanity – but I think I would find it annoying to have to accommodate someone else’s things. Clothes finding their way into my wardrobe. Books on to my bookshelf. Food into my fridge. No, I don’t want that. I don’t have room in my house. And I don’t suppose I have room in my head, either.

Still, sex would be nice.

Garth has once again failed to bathe this weekend. He’s on the far side of the office yet I still catch a sniff of him every so often. As hard as I try to concentrate on happier things, I can’t help breathing in his direction, experimentally tasting the air again and again, incredulous that such a scent could possibly come from a normal, gainfully employed adult. He picks food out of his teeth, accompanying this with a sucking noise, and while this nauseates me I find myself glancing across at him, watching him rooting around the back of his molars with a probing finger and wondering what he’s eaten that could possibly become that stuck. He has ink on his fingers, too, like a schoolboy, and, whilst I loathe the man, whilst every second in his presence is a form of torture to my senses, I have this dreadful fascination with him – an unquenchable curiosity about how someone so repellent can subsist in the modern world.

Martha saunters in late. New shoes, I notice – the third pair this month by my reckoning.

‘Morning, Colin – good weekend?’

She doesn’t really want to know, of course. It took me a while to work out that the question is rhetorical, a ritual for a Monday morning. The first few times she asked, I told her at great length what I’d done over the weekend, carefully editing the details that even I knew were not appropriate to share with a colleague. She looked vacant after a few minutes. She stopped asking, after that, and only recently – I believe when someone else asked me the same thing within earshot and got a brief response – did she recommence with the Monday ritual.

‘Fine, thank you. And you?’ It had certainly been eventful, especially Friday evening, but of course I wasn’t about to supply her with the details.

On occasion I heard her telling one of the others all about her weekend – kite-flying or baking or hiking or going to a fête or watching football or visiting her cousin or landscaping the garden – but her reply to me was invariably the same.

‘It was good, thanks.’

Vaughn sends me an email asking if I want to go to the Red Lion at lunchtime. I’m tempted to ask if he wants to go now; I doubt things are going to suddenly get more exciting here in the next three hours. It’s sad that the thought of half an hour in a dark, mouldy pub next to the gasworks with Vaughn Bradstock is so cheering.

When I get to the Red Lion, twenty minutes early, not even noon, Vaughn is already there at our usual corner table, with a pint of John Smith’s waiting for me. Vaughn and I worked together, many years ago. He used to be a contractor in the IT department at the council, and for some reason we developed a friendship that endured even when he moved on to other projects. He gave up contracting in favour of the security of something more permanent, and now he works for a software development company in the town centre. Handy for the Red Lion.

‘Colin,’ he says tonelessly in acknowledgment of my arrival.

‘Vaughn,’ I reply.

He wants to talk about his girlfriend again. It’s usually that, or philately.

I brace myself with a couple of good swallows of the bitter, wondering whether it’s too early to be thinking about a whisky chaser. Meanwhile Vaughn chunters on about whether his girlfriend is having an affair. I want to point out that she can hardly be in the first flush of youth – surely it’s unlikely? But he’s convinced that she is lying to him about something. He sits with his head bent low over his pint, pondering whether taking her to Weston-super-Mare in the caravan is a good idea.

My mother took me to Weston-super-Mare on holiday the summer after my father died. We stayed in a guest house three streets back from the seafront; close enough to hear the gulls, not close enough to hear the sea. I was almost thirteen years old and already I didn’t fit into my own skull. I read Eliot and Kafka and watched documentaries on BBC2. Stayed up late and got up early to watch the Open University programmes, back when it was all beards and flared trousers. My mother wanted me to build sandcastles and run in the sea, laughing. I don’t think I laughed once the whole time I was there. I sat in the shade and read until she took my books away. After that I sat in the shade and tried not to look at the girls on the beach.

‘Weston-super-Mare’s probably a bad idea,’ I say.

In the end I take pity on poor old Vaughn and tell him about cortico-limbic responses and non-verbal cues, poor bugger.

‘What the hell’s a limbic response?’ he asks me. And then, before I can respond, ‘Oh, don’t tell me. It’s that bloody course you’ve been doing, isn’t it?’

Poor Vaughn: he likes to think he’s intellectual because he reads the Guardian and drinks a Java blend at weekends.

‘It’s how you can tell if someone’s lying to you,’ I explain. ‘You look at body language, visual cues, autonomic responses, that kind of thing. And you may scoff, but the course has been fascinating, in fact.’

He looks blank.

‘Alright,’ I say, ‘let’s try a little experiment. I’m going to ask you three questions, and I want you to deliberately lie in one of your answers. I’ll see if I can tell when you’re lying. If I’m right, you can buy me another pint. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy your drinks for the next month. Want to have a go?’

‘Oh, yes, alright, then,’ he says. I get the impression he’s cheering up a bit. He’s smiling, but I don’t always trust my instincts with Vaughn. He might be suicidal for all I know. I have been known to get it wrong. Eleanor smiled at me that night, after all, didn’t she? And look how that turned out.

‘Right, then,’ I say, ‘let’s see. Have a think back to the bedroom you had when you were a teenager. Picture what it was like. Now I want you to describe it to me, just as if you’re standing in the doorway looking in. What can you see?’

‘Well, goodness. I guess it’s the dorm I shared with Roger Hotchkiss at St Stephen’s. There are two beds, one on each side of the room – mine is neatly made, Hotchkiss hasn’t made his, of course – a wardrobe at the foot of each bed, nearest to the door… Then the window straight in front of me which looks out over the kitchens. And a large desk underneath the window. Bookshelves above the beds. We weren’t allowed posters.’

He pauses for a moment, tapping his chin thoughtfully, his gaze up and to his left. This is going to be too easy.

‘That it?’

‘I can’t think of anything else.’

‘OK, then, next question. What does your mobile phone ringtone sound like?’

‘It’s just the standard ring, I’m afraid. I can never be bothered with anything more elaborate.’

That one was a bit quicker, but I still pick up on the cue that tells me he is telling the truth. In fact, I know it’s the truth because his answer reminds me that I’ve heard his phone go off in the pub before now. Maybe I’m subconsciously trying to cheat? In any case, the next question is going to be the one.

‘Right, final question. Tell me about your journey home last night. Did you go straight home? What time did you get there?’

It’s only a small hesitation, a brief flick of his gaze up and to the right, but it’s plenty. When he speaks, he even raises his pitch – too easy, way too easy.

‘I didn’t go straight home, no. I stopped off at the Co-op and bought some sausages and potatoes for supper. I probably got home – ooh, at about a quarter past six.’

I sit back and polish off the last of my pint. I press my fingertips into my temples and close my eyes, taking a deep, noisy breath in through my nostrils as though some peculiar psychic process is taking place.

‘Your last answer wasn’t quite true,’ I say at last. ‘Although I think the lie was quite nicely buried. You did get home at about a quarter past six, so you probably did stop off somewhere. You did stop off at the Co-op, but whatever it was you bought, it wasn’t sausages and potatoes. Am I right?’

He’s shaking his head and for a moment I wonder if I’ve got it wrong, or if he is going to try and fudge his way out of it.

‘A bottle of Zinfandel and a toffee yoghurt,’ he says softly.

‘Another pint of John Smith’s,’ I reply.

After I get home I stay up far too late again: too much whisky again, useless porn again, a fruitless wank in the end. Too much whisky, as I said. When I got back from my visit earlier, I started off reading something improving – forensic biology in this case, a topic of endless fascination – then moved on to reading something improving but possibly not in the way the original writers intended it to be, and then something that’s unlikely to improve anything other than the bank balance of some seedy porn producer in Eastern Europe. Not that I pay for it, of course.

I’m still feeling rather pleased with myself. Vaughn was so impressed with my display of brilliance that he demanded to know how I’d done it. I explained about non-verbal clues, how to watch a person’s eyes to establish visual construct as opposed to recollection, how to spot signs of discomfort, and how each of the little clues adds up to form an indisputable picture. I pointed out that, when he’d considered the last question, his eyes had flickered up to the right, a sure sign of visual construct, followed by a look up to the left, indicating that there were going to be some elements of recollection in what he said, too. This told me that he was planning to frame his lie around some elements of truth. Added to this, the discomfort he showed when I prepared to ask the last question, the tensing of his shoulders, the shifting in his seat – slightly away from me, I noticed – and his breathing, told me that he’d clearly told the truth in answer to the first two questions and knew that this one was going to have to contain an untruth. When he told me about his shopping, the sausages and the – what else was it? – potatoes, that was it – bangers and mash, how utterly appropriate – he moistened his lips swiftly with the tip of his tongue and then rubbed his fingers across his mouth. A natural gesture, of course, and in any other context it might have been simply an itch, a sniffle, a crumb. But it confirmed the lie.

I told him all that, and of course gave him some ideas of things to look out for the next time he and Audrey are discussing indelicate matters. I try hard not to picture Audrey because, as soon as I do, I find myself imagining her naked and from then on it’s a short hop to seeing Vaughn naked too, and the pair of them fucking away, a happy missionary pairing if ever there was one. Despite my best efforts, I still end up thinking about it all the way to Vaughn suddenly tensing and crying out, shouting in a way I’ve never heard him shout in the office, or the pub either, for that matter.

Feel rather grubby after that little lapse in concentration and have to get up out of bed at 02:45 to have another shower.

Martha asked me once about my parents. I must have been feeling communicative on that particular occasion, or else it could have been one of those situations where to refuse to answer might have appeared rude; in any case, I told her how my father died when I was eleven.

‘You poor boy,’ she said. I wondered if I should be offended, but then understood she was addressing my younger self. ‘It must have been incredibly traumatic to lose your father at such a difficult age.’

I did not understand what she meant by a difficult age, nor what she meant, really, by traumatic. ‘Life goes on,’ I said with a shrug.

‘Yes, but still – such a shame.’

‘The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species at that.’

‘That sounds like a quote, Colin. Who said that?’

‘I did. Well, to be fair, I’m paraphrasing Nietzsche. I’m assuming you would prefer to hear it in English rather than the original German.’

She thinks I’m weird; they all do. This was at the beginning, when I first started working for the council – they were all very chatty back then. Now I find that they leave me alone and avoid falling into conversation with me, unless circumstances force them to do so. Even then they seem to look at me warily. I think Martha views me as something of a personal challenge.

My father’s funeral was held on a Saturday to enable his work colleagues to come along. There was considerable debate about whether I should be allowed to attend. I remember overhearing a conversation between my mother and her friend a few days before.

‘You know what he’s like,’ my mother was saying. ‘He thinks about things so much.’

‘But he’s nearly an adult, Delia. It might help him come to terms with things.’

In the end my mother relented – although it might have also been due to the lack of available babysitters to keep an eye on me. As it ended up being such a dramatic occasion, I remain glad to this day that I got the chance to attend.

I had no appropriate outfit so I wore my school uniform, even the blazer and cap. It was a hot day, with fierce, unrelenting sunshine, and of course the assembled throng were all dressed in black. My mother even had on her black coat, the one with the mink collar he’d bought her in New York. Everyone sweltered on the way to the church, gained some relief during the service and then sweltered outside for the interment. Bored beyond bored, I roasted and sweated – my shirt was damp under my blazer. I stood next to my mother and thought about something I’d read: how King Henry VIII’s body was so bloated by decomposition gases while it was being transported from Whitehall to Windsor that the coffin burst open overnight. The next morning they found dogs feeding on the remains of the king. And that was in winter! What would the body of my father look like, given that it was the height of summer? I considered that his body, held in storage for nearly three weeks pending the post mortem and the inquest, might actually still be frozen, defrosting slowly in that box like a melting choc ice. I felt compelled to touch the wood, to feel if it was cold. As the vicar warbled on, I took a step forward towards the coffin, which was on a bed of plastic green grass of the sort you see covering the tables at the greengrocer’s. My mother, who must have panicked at my sudden movement, lurched forward, her hand out to grab my shoulder, and stumbled over the uneven ground. In doing so, she knocked me over too and we both ended up lying inches from the open grave. The shock of it all, or maybe the excessive heat and her ridiculous coat, or maybe even the gin she’d consumed earlier to fortify herself for the ordeal ahead, caused her to vomit as people rushed to pull her to her feet. I couldn’t help laughing at them, being sprayed with vomit as my mother continued to heave. Some of the mourners started to retch themselves. The vicar’s face…

It was the primary topic of conversation at the wake which followed. All conceivable options were considered: my mother had fainted and I had tried to catch her; she’d suddenly been taken unwell and had fallen against me; we were both so grief-stricken that one or both of us were trying to throw ourselves into the grave. My mother, pale and weeping, replenishing her bloodstream with more gin and fanning herself with the Order of Service, kept a close eye on me at the wake and, afterwards, it was never spoken of again.

 

Briarstone Chronicle

March

Dead Woman Lay Undiscovered ‘For Up To A Year’, Police Report

The body of a woman was discovered yesterday at a house in Laurel Crescent, Briarstone. A police spokesperson said that the body was in an advanced state of decomposition and was found in the bedroom to the rear of the detached property.

The building is one of several in Laurel Crescent scheduled for demolition and police were called after construction workers noticed that the building was apparently still occupied.

Letters found at the address indicate that the deceased may have lain undiscovered for up to a year. The name of the deceased has not been made public as police and the coroner try to trace relatives or anyone who may have known the woman.

Judith

My name is Judith May Bingham, and when I died I was ninety-one.

I was afraid of many things until the end, which sounds very silly now because of course at the end nothing matters, nothing matters at all. I was afraid of the people who lived next door, the teenage boys who came and went whenever they felt like it, and banged the door, and sat outside my house on the pavement, or even once on my fence, until they broke it. They would drive up and down the street on their motorcycles, or sit smoking and drinking from cans and shouting and throwing things at each other.

I was afraid of running out of money and not being able to buy food or keep the house warm.

I grew to be afraid of going out.

I was afraid of the woman who came from Social Services once to check up on me. She said she had heard I might need some extra help. I told her I did not, but she kept talking and talking until I asked her to leave. In fact I told her to fuck off. She wasn’t expecting to hear that and she tried to tell me off. She said she had a right to a pleasant working environment the same as anyone else and that there was no need for me to be rude. I said there was no need for her to speak to me in my own home as though I was an imbecile, and that I had asked her to leave nicely and she had ignored me.

At that time I was brave – and when she went and I locked the door behind her I laughed for a little while. It had been a long time since I used that word, and it felt good. It felt like being young again.

Forty years ago I was running a pub by the docks. It was a rough place. We had some nights where hardly anyone came in, and other nights when a ship or two had put in to shore when the place was full and people were spilling out on to the street outside. We had working girls in, too. When my husband Stan was alive he used to try to send them on their way, but as far as I was concerned their money was as good as anyone else’s. What they did to earn a crust was neither here nor there.

We had fights all the time. It was part of the plan for them when they came off a ship – get drunk, find a girl, get into a fight, sober up, back to the ship in time for the tide. If we were lucky they took their disagreements outside; if we were unlucky the odd chair and several glasses might get broken. Once a young lad was stabbed. That was terrible; he lived, though. Was fine, after. A few stitches and on his way.

Back in those days I wasn’t afraid of anything. I lived every day as it came and I expected there to be bad days; I knew I would get through them just the same as I did the good days. One thing you can’t stop is time passing.

As I said, I used to use that word all the time but I haven’t had cause to since I retired from the pub trade. Until Miss Prim and her leaflets turned up and tried to tell me what to do.

A few hours after her visit, though, I grew afraid. I was afraid she’d come back with some official form or something to tell me I had to leave my house, go into a nursing home. I would rather have died than gone into a home. I thought about finishing things, about doing something to make sure that I wouldn’t end up being taken away, but you need courage for that and by then I had none left.

I went to the Co-op at the end of the road twice a week to get my shopping, and to the doctor’s to get my prescription, but apart from that I never went out. I planned ways to finish it over and over again but it felt wrong to give up, and, besides, I was afraid of getting it wrong, not doing it properly. But all through my life I’d made choices for myself, and for the first time other people were starting to make choices for me. It was this that I objected to. I was a grown woman, an old woman, and while I still had all my marbles I wanted to be able to choose to finish this life that had become so wearing, so empty. But of course that’s not done, is it? If I wanted to end things, then I must be ill, or depressed, or something and therefore I needed help to cope, help to find new ways of enjoying the world. This is how the young see it, from their position of complete and utter ignorance.

I wished for someone to help me. I wished for someone I could trust who would make sure that it happened, that I wasn’t left half-dead… to make sure that I couldn’t change my mind.

Annabel

There was nothing more miserable than starting a Monday in the dark with cold, wet feet.

By the time I got to work the bottom of my skirt and my suede boots were wet through. Days like this, the Park and Ride was no fun. Getting to the car park early, before it was even properly light, waiting inside the steamed-up car for the bus, then swaying in my seat, still half asleep, all the way into town. I still hadn’t worked out which bus stop dropped me off nearest to the police station. I opted for the war memorial stop today, but I’d forgotten about the blocked gully in Unity Street. There was no way past it, unless you crossed the road, of course, but that wasn’t easy. So I waited for a break in the traffic and took my chance, crossing that bit of pavement next to the vast puddle before another van came splashing through it and soaked me.

I was never quite quick enough. Not built for running, me.

I let myself in through the back gate, letting it swing with a heavy-duty clang behind me. The rain was easing off by now – typical. My access card bleeped through five different security points – count them: the back gate, the gate from the car park, the back door, the doorway to the Intelligence Unit and finally the door to the public protection office. I hung up my coat and my long scarf, both wet, felt the radiator – cold, of course; it was Monday after all – and filled the kettle with water from the two-litre bottle that we would carry back and forth from the kitchen, which was about half a mile away.

The fridge, needless to say, had been raided. There had been at least a pint of milk left in there on Friday but the plastic bottle had been emptied and placed neatly back on the shelf, as though that made it acceptable. My half-eaten tuna sandwich from Friday was still there, though. The smell brought back sudden memories of the house I’d been in on Friday night and everything that had happened afterwards.

Holding my breath, I took the sandwich out, carried it into the corridor, down to the patrol office, and dropped it into one of their bins. They would have been the ones who nicked the milk. They could have the sandwich as well.

I made myself a tea, black, and logged on to my computer. Everything was on a go-slow. I could hear the tannoy from the hallway; in a few hours I’d be able to tune it out, concentrate on other things, but for the time being it was insistent.

DC Hollis, if you’re on the station, please contact Custody. That’s DC Hollis, contact Custody thank you…

Penny Butler, Penny Butler, please ring 9151. That’s Penny Butler, 9151. Thank you…

Could the driver of a blue VW Golf parked in the rear car park please move it immediately.

I gave up trying to drive in about a month after I started working at Briarstone. There were only three spaces allocated for the Intel Unit, and in fairness I didn’t need my car during the day as some of the others did. It cost twelve quid a week for the Park and Ride, but at least I didn’t have to fart around moving my car every five minutes because I was blocking someone in.

I always got in at least an hour before everyone else. It gave me a chance to get settled, to do things quickly that needed to be done. A chance to brace myself for another week of it.

There was no telling what order they’d roll in – it depended on traffic, the sort of weekend they’d all had, the weather and, in the case of the uniforms, whether they’d been called out for any reason. But one thing was sure: Kate would always be last, pushing it as far as she could, and when she arrived she would say hello to everyone in the office except for me.

‘Morning, Trigger. Kettle on, is it? Morning, Carol – good weekend? Morning, Jo, Sarah. Where did you get to on Friday? I lost you after the pub! Did you go to Jaxx? What was it like in there?’

Eventually – a good twenty minutes after she’d taken her coat off and hung it on the back of the door – she’d turn the computer on and complain about how bloody slow the system was. And maybe twenty minutes after that, Jo or Amy or Sarah or someone from the office next door would call for her and they’d all go up to the canteen on the top floor for breakfast.

Today, it was Carol.

‘You coming?’ she said.

Kate was already on her feet, purse in hand. ‘Absolutely. I’m chuffing ravenous.’

‘Morning, Annabel,’ Carol said to me, sweetly. ‘Do you want anything bringing back?’

Sometimes they asked me this. They never asked me if I’d like to go with them, of course, because they were afraid I’d say yes and then they’d have to make conversation with me.

‘No, thanks.’

They’d already turned away from the door and the office was blissfully quiet again. If any of them had asked about my weekend, I would have told them. If they’d bothered, they could have heard all about how I found the body next door. I could picture their faces, rapt, over their platefuls of bacon sandwich, toast and cheese scones. For once, they would listen and not interrupt. For once, my news would trump anything they could offer.

But they didn’t ask, and so I kept it to myself.

I’d forgotten to ask Kate to get a pint of milk in the canteen, and there was no way she would think of it herself, so after ten minutes of enjoying the peace in the office I got up, found my purse in my bag, and took the lift up to the top floor.

They were all gathered around a table near the till, heads together. I could hear snatches of the conversation as I found a pint of semi-skimmed in the fridge and checked the sell-by date.

‘You see, I told you, didn’t I?’

‘He’s only just moved out, Kate, he’s not even taken all of his stuff with him yet…’

So, Carol had chucked poor old Rick out of the flat, then. I waited behind two PCs in their full patrol kit: stab vests, Airwave radios bleeping. Behind the counter Lynn was adding a generous glug of vinegar from an industrial-sized plastic bottle to the poached-egg pan. It already had an ugly brownish scum of vinegar and egg-white froth floating on the surface. I looked away.

‘You started talking to the walls yet, then?’ Sarah was asking Carol.

‘Don’t laugh. It is horribly quiet without Sky Sports on every bleeding second of the day though.’

‘You’ll be getting a cat next…’

‘Hey, don’t knock it,’ Kate said. ‘It’s only her cat that stops Annabel from going completely batty, you know.’

‘Don’t be mean,’ Amy said. ‘She’s not batty.’

‘She’s heading that way, if you ask me.’

I stared at them, wondering if they really hadn’t noticed I was standing right there or if they were being deliberately rude.

‘Is that all you want, Annabel?’ asked Lynn. She’d plopped eggs into the pan and was spooning brown water over them to hurry the cooking process along. I turned towards the till, opening my purse.

‘Yes,’ I said. My cheeks were burning.

‘Oh, shit,’ I heard someone say from the table behind me.

They were all silent, then. I handed over a pound coin and took the milk and hurried away, not looking at the table, not looking at Lynn even though I heard her say, ‘Wait – your change!’

The Chief’s Summary arrived by email at half-past nine, just as Kate came back into the office. In the twenty minutes or so since the scene upstairs in the canteen, I’d had a few private tears, washed my face in the Ladies’ and decided to put it behind me. I knew they talked about me, after all. They talked about whoever wasn’t currently in the room, so I couldn’t consider myself special.

Kate put the kettle on behind me and cleared her throat. ‘You want a tea?’

‘Yes, please. I’d love one.’

She’d obviously been hoping I’d say no, but it gave me a perverse pleasure to take her up on the offer. When it was plonked on to the desk, it was very milky. I was thirsty enough for it not to matter. She was making some sort of an effort, after all.

‘Thanks, Kate. Looks smashing, just how I like it.’

The summary normally contained about five or six items of note: crimes and incidents that had taken place on the previous day. Anything classed as a critical incident was included – armed robberies, sudden and suspicious deaths, suicides. Rapes and murders were the ones that were of particular interest to me, in case any of the offenders I was supposed to monitor had crossed the line. Although I could search through the overnight crimes on the system, the summary was a handy shortcut, since the most serious offences would always be included.

And there it was.

Suspicious Death

At approximately 2032hrs on Friday patrols attended an address in Newmarket Street, Briarstone. The neighbour had noticed a strong smell coming from the address and had entered the property and discovered the decomposed remains of a female in the living room. The deceased is believed to be a 43-year-old who lived at the address. Next of kin have been informed. Major Crime Department attended the scene and, although investigations are ongoing, the opinion was that there are no suspicious circumstances.

That was all. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting – some sort of fanfare maybe – but it was bland description, deliberately designed to inform those who needed to know and to obscure things from those who didn’t.

The house next door had been full of people for much of Saturday. The forensics van parked outside my house, and, although I’d spoken to the first patrol that turned up, I waited around all day to be interviewed properly.

My emotional state had been fragile, spinning from nausea and shock at what I’d seen and done, to annoyance that they were taking so long about it all, and guilt that I hadn’t rung them straight away, instead of breaking in like some lumbering real-life Jessica Fletcher.

After I’d found the body, I’d gone back home and shut the door. Then I’d opened the door again and thrown the cat out and shut the door behind her. In putting my hand under her belly I had felt, instead of soft fur, cold, wet, slimy muck all over her.

The smell of it, on my hands, on my tights, my skirt. Black and green and brown, the colours you get when you mix together all the colours in the paintbox, combined with the odour of putrefaction. I took my clothes off, right there in the kitchen, and put them in the washing machine. I turned the temperature up to sixty degrees and was about to turn it on when I suddenly realised that I shouldn’t. Maybe it was evidence.

Of what?

I washed my hands with antibacterial handwash that had a strong perfume, but even when I rinsed it off my hands still smelt bad. I got some kitchen roll and dampened it, then squirted some of the blue soap on it and rubbed at my legs, in case the substance had come through my tights on to my skin.

And all the time, I was struggling not to vomit. Every so often I’d catch the smell at the back of my throat and cough, and gag.

When I finally felt clean, I called the police.

‘Kent Police, how can I help?’

‘I just found a body in the house next door. It’s badly decomposed.’

‘Right,’ said the female voice on the other end. I could hear her rattling away at her keyboard already, entering the opening code 240B for ‘suspected body’. ‘Can I take your name?’

‘Annabel Hayer.’

I went through all the responses – address, phone number, all the details of what I’d seen (the light on) and heard (nothing) and smelt (putrescence) and seen (a body in the armchair) – until I’d convinced myself in my head that I’d imagined the whole thing.

‘We’re very busy tonight,’ she said, ‘but a patrol will come out to you as soon as one is free.’

I went upstairs, had a shower and washed my hair, and dressed in clean clothes, yet I could still smell it, fainter now but nevertheless there. I looked outside but there was still no sign of the patrol.

The cat cried to be let in, and I shut the kitchen door and ran her a makeshift bath in the kitchen sink. I’d tried to bathe cats before and this was every bit as traumatic as all my previous experiences. She scratched my arms to shreds as I sponged her back and undersides down with my best organic pH-neutral additive-free shampoo and warm water. I got most of it off. She’d been licking herself too, her fur sticking up in spikes. The thought of it, and the smell of her, even when she’d been washed and rinsed and dried off with a teatowel, was enough to make me heave. As soon as she struggled free of the towel she started hurtling about the kitchen in a panic, knocking things flying. Fearing for my crockery, I opened the back door and she shot straight out.

The patrol had arrived by then, and, having gone next door, and called in that there was indeed a body and could they please have someone else to deal with it, they had agreed that I could go off to bed.

In the cold light of day on Saturday morning, everything had looked very different. The cat was sitting on the back step, looking exceptionally pissed off. She came in when I opened the door and immediately turned her back on me, sitting in the corner of the kitchen and only moving when I filled her bowl with cat biscuits. The fur on her back and belly stood out in sticky spikes, but at least the smell had faded.

I’d never met the Major Crime DC who eventually interviewed me, and, although he showed me his warrant card when I let him in, I instantly forgot his name. He told me he’d worked at Briarstone police station for the past year, and, when he said that, I recognised him from the canteen.

‘How are you?’ he asked me at last, coming into the living room. ‘Must have been quite a shock.’

It was late afternoon, and I’d not eaten all day. Every time I thought about it, I remembered the horrible inflated shape of the body, the colour of the skin and the puddle under the chair.

‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘I think I was kind of expecting it, given the smell.’

‘Yes, it’s quite bad in there.’

‘You want a tea? Coffee?’

‘Coffee would be great, thanks. Two sugars. Alright if I use your loo?’

I pointed him in the direction of the toilet and then I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, waiting for it to boil. On the windowsill of the kitchen was a little statue of an angel that I’d bought in a New Age shop in Bath. It was lit up by the sunshine, shining as though surrounded by a halo of glory.

I brought the coffees through to the living room. He was already sitting there, his pocket notebook out on his lap, writing something, head bent over the task.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You work in Intel, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m the public protection analyst. And I’m also one of the divisional analysts.’

‘You’re doing two jobs?’

‘Pretty much. There were four of us and I just did public protection, and then two of the team were redeployed last year and now there’s just me and another analyst. We share the stuff for the division between us.’

He wasn’t remotely interested in our job descriptions but I was always hopeful that someone would eventually take note of the injustice of having to do twice as much work for no extra money. I nearly added something about how Kate just did the analysis for the North Division, and