Stephen Booth - Already Dead

‘We’re okay, he’s going back to his car.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. Fasten your seat belt and put the heater on.’

‘Oh, I’m soaked.’

‘Well, put the heater on, then.’

He squinted at the headlights still reflected in his rearview mirror and waited for the other car to pull out and pass him. A minute passed. Then two.

‘What the hell is he doing? Is he waiting for me to go first?’

Dean felt uncomfortable about the idea of setting off with the other car behind him. What if this man followed his BMW into Wirksworth, maybe all the way back to his house? He didn’t want anyone knowing where he lived. He certainly didn’t want him knowing.

Finally, the headlights swung across his mirror. But instead of passing, they suddenly lit up the opposite side of the road. Dean looked over his shoulder, saw vertical sheets of rain illuminated into a glittering curtain, pools of water forming on the roadway, alive with light and fresh raindrops pouring in their surfaces. The stranger’s full beam had turned the road into a stage set. What was the next act going to be?

‘He’s turning round,’ said Sheena.

‘So he is.’

The other vehicle twisted across the road and straightened up. Its tyres hissed on the wet tarmac as it accelerated away. Dean stared into his mirror, but the rear window was blurred by rain and he could see nothing of the car but two smudges of red light moving away. By the time he got the rear wiper working, the vehicle was too far away to make out clearly.

‘Oh, well. That’s it, then.’

He wondered why he didn’t feel a lot better, now that the car had gone. The uneasy feeling had been just too strong. It would take time for it to pass. He’d need a few drinks, in fact. He had a hip flask tucked into the back of the glove compartment. Good quality brandy too. But maybe this wasn’t the time to get stopped by the police and breathalysed for drink driving.

It turned out that Sheena was even jumpier than he was. Before he could get the car into second gear, she cried out.

‘Wait. What was that?’ she said.

Dean slammed on the brakes. ‘What was what?’

‘By the side of the road. There was something … Oh, I don’t know now.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see it, whatever it was. A fox? A dead badger?’

She hesitated for a moment, then sagged back in her seat. ‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose.’

Dean released a long breath and put the BMW back into gear.

‘Don’t do that, Sheena. Just don’t do it. You nearly frightened me to death.’

Glen Turner could sense that his mind was failing now. His body had already let him down. He’d been unable to move more than a hand, and now the water had risen until it was creeping over his face.

He was incapable of forming logical thoughts any more. Just one phrase kept running through his brain, over and over and over.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

They said your whole life flashed in front of your eyes when you were dying. Yet his immediate past was a complete blank to him. His life was a desperate nightmare in which nothing had happened, and nothing ever would. When he looked into his own mind, he saw only a void. It was like standing in an echoing cave, a place as cold as rock and just as lifeless.

As the hours passed and the water rose, it stayed that way. Right up to the moment Glen Turner stopped breathing.

Wednesday

By Wednesday morning, the reality had become undeniable. In the CID room of Derbyshire E Division headquarters, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry felt herself tense with anger as she stared across the desk. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. It was like being trapped in a twisted dream. Fry felt as though she’d never be able to escape, that she would always end up back in the place she started from, no matter how hard she tried to flee, or in which direction she ran.

She chewed her lip until it hurt, tugged at her hair with clenched fingers, fought a physical urge to strike out at something, anything she could find, and smash it to pieces. How could such a disaster have happened to her? How long would the torment go on? There had to be an end to it, before she went completely mad.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any more. She had to break the awful silence.

‘I’m not going to be here much longer, you know,’ she said.

Her statement didn’t seem to have any effect. From the other side of the desk, DC Gavin Murfin merely gazed back at her, chewing slowly. His face was pink and faintly damp, like an over-ripe pomegranate. His thinning hair showed tracks of pale scalp where he’d flattened it against his skull with the waterproof beanie hat he insisted on wearing when he had to go outdoors.

‘Me neither,’ he said.

Fry tried again. ‘I mean, I’m only in E Division until everything is sorted out and back to normal. Then you won’t see me for dust. I’ll be out of here for good.’

‘Me too,’ said Murfin.

‘No one could make me stay a second longer than I need to,’ insisted Fry. ‘Not a second. Do you have any idea of the caseload waiting for me back at St Ann’s? There’s a live murder inquiry in Mansfield, for a start. Two rapes, a series of armed robberies around Derby, and a suspected human trafficking operation under surveillance in Leicester right now. That one could blow up on us at any moment.’

‘I’ve got some jobs to do around the house,’ said Murfin.

Fry stared at him in outrage. ‘You what ?’

‘Jean says the roof is leaking on the conservatory, and I’ve got some decking to lay when the weather clears up.’

‘Decking?’

‘You have no idea. My work is never done.’

‘ Decking , Gavin?’

Murfin sighed, and eased his backside into a more comfortable position in the office chair he’d been complaining for years wasn’t big enough for him. ‘I know, I just can’t wait. If only I wasn’t stuck here being a monitor.’

‘Mentor,’ said Fry, spelling it out in separate syllables like an elocution teacher with a slow student. ‘You’re a men-tor .’

But Murfin took no notice. She might as well have been talking to the desk. Fry had never been quite sure whether it was all a deliberate act with Murfin, or if he wound her up like this without even trying. Whichever it was, she had to admit it was the one thing he was really good at.

‘I wasn’t even allowed to be a milk monitor at primary school,’ he said. ‘Well, they only let me do it once. They complained there were fewer bottles of milk handed out to the kids than were delivered at the school. How was I supposed to know where they’d gone? The fact that I was collecting milk bottle tops for Blue Peter was a sheer coincidence.’

Fry looked around desperately for a more intelligent response. As usual, the younger DCs, Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst, had their heads down keeping out of trouble, though she thought she could see Irvine’s shoulders shaking behind his computer screen. Even Carol Villiers would have provided a bit of relief. She was at least mature in her attitudes, had gained her experience in the RAF Police, where perhaps they didn’t have the same tolerance for the Gavin Murfins of the world. But Villiers was out of the office on a temporary attachment to C Division, where they were short of staff for a major fraud inquiry. She was expected back in the next day or two. But right now, this was it. Fry shook her head in despair. God help her, and the law-abiding citizens of Derbyshire.

She swung her chair back, and banged her knee on the side of the desk.

‘Oh, give me strength,’ she said under her breath.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Murfin stop chewing and smile. Perhaps it hadn’t been all that under her breath after all. But she didn’t care.