Steven Dunne - Deity

Brook smiled. Rifkind in a nutshell. Adele was very astute. Was? He hoped she was alive, hoped she was too clever to give her life for fleeting fame and the momentary regret of loved ones.

He turned to her notebook of poems and read the piece that she’d composed on the blotter of her desk before transferring it to her notebook.

Live Forever. Question Mark

Life is not a rehearsal, They say

Life is not an audition, They say

Life is something that happens while

You’re making plans. They say

Live Forever? Make your mark

Be someone. Face on the telly.

Or embrace mediocrity, scuttle around,

Do stuff, buy stuff, fuck stuff,

Sand through the fingers, draining away.

Does this make a living? They don’t say.

He looked at the clock. Gone midnight. He took a final sip of whisky. Why was he devoting so much time to this girl and her friends? They’d run away and didn’t want to be found. They weren’t dead, he was sure of it — almost sure. Not like Phil Ward. Phil was out there, facing death. In his mind, Brook had already signed the death certificate.

Concentrate on the hope. Terri had come through, survived her crisis without him. She didn’t need him any more. Perhaps she never did. Concentrate on Adele. Adele was alive. Adele was his daughter now. He could still save her. He could be a proper father to her. He could pore over her life in the reasonable knowledge that he’d never have to stand over her alabaster corpse. He could read her deepest darkest thoughts, and take comfort from the notion that one day they might actually meet, while deep in his subconscious Brook knew that the next time he saw Phil Ward, he would be on a mortuary slab. What good was his lap and a half now?

With a feeling of dread, Brook picked up Adele’s diary and turned to the copy of the final page again. He reread the three words and tried to put a positive spin on them. She was referring to the end of her life as it had been lived to this point — looking forward to the new, to her rebirth as an internet celebrity. That had to be it. That had to be the meaning. TIME TO DIE .

Saturday, 28 May

After three hours’ sleep, Brook tiptoed down the stairs early next morning and made tea. He caught sight of his head in the kitchen window. He’d removed the bandage and replaced it with a plaster over the stitches. The area was still swollen and the bruising was beginning to colour.

He took his tea into the tiny office at the back of the cottage, turned on his computer, typed in the Deity address and loaded the page. For no particular reason he watched the archived footage of both Deity broadcasts again but gleaned no fresh inspiration. The countdown to the next broadcast had dipped under eleven hours.

He decided to search sites with information on Ancient Egyptian burial rites and clicked on a few, confirming some of Dr Petty’s conclusions about The Embalmer’s treatment of the vagrants’ bodies. He read up on the procedures. Petty was right. The Ancient Egyptians believed the heart, rather than the brain, was the seat of emotions and was necessary for the dead to proceed safely to the afterlife. After the organs were removed, including the brain through the nostrils, the heart was put back into the cavity as it had been with McTiernan and Kirk.

He read more information on embalming and made a list of some of the chemicals required. Maybe they could find Ozzy that way. Brook sniffed the air and then his arm. He could still smell whisky despite a shower and change of clothes. He looked around and spied the whisky glass he’d used the previous night. It still had a few dregs in it. Brook picked it up and padded into the kitchen to make more tea.

He was about to rinse out the leaded tumbler when he stopped and looked at the pale golden liquid. He stared for a few seconds then washed out the glass and opened a cupboard to put it away. There was a loaf of sliced bread in there. Terri had bought it for her breakfasts. Brook gazed at it in confusion while he thought things through. A moment later he broke into a grin and returned to the computer.

‘And people worry about my mental health,’ he said, typing another topic into the search engine.

Half an hour later, Brook was sitting contentedly on the garden bench sucking in the cool damp air and smoking a cigarette stolen from his daughter’s handbag. It was just after five and he had the world to himself. The telephone destroyed his reverie and Brook launched himself barefoot back into the house to answer it before Terri could wake.

‘You’re up.’

‘John. What is it?’ said Brook, breathless.

‘Another body.’

‘Jock or Phil?’ asked Brook.

‘You’d better come see for yourself.’

Terri pulled the VW on to Meadow Road and as close to the crime-scene tape as she could manage. Brook opened the door before the car had stopped and stepped out. The noise of the river was more apparent here over the quiet buzz of Derby’s city centre.

‘You’re sure you can find your way back?’ he said to his daughter.

Terri was yawning again but managed an affirmative grunt with a nod for back-up. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said once her jaw was back under control.

Brook closed the passenger door and watched her reverse the car and speed away. He turned to see Noble heading over to him. They exchanged nods then Noble led Brook across the small triangular green space towards the concrete wall at the river’s edge. The increasing noise of the weir was competing with the occasional car roaring over the St Alkmund’s Way flyover nearby.

The river bank had clearly been a hive of activity but now the body was recovered, men and machinery stood idle, as Scene of Crime Officers walked to and from the screens hiding the corpse from potential onlookers. As he approached, Brook nodded to Keith Pullin and a knot of other emergency workers sharing a joke and a cigarette.

‘Who is it?’ he said to Noble.

‘It’s hard to tell. But it’s not Jock or Phil Ward. It looks like one of our students.’

Brook shot him a glance. ‘Male or female?’ he asked quickly.

‘Male. He’s been in the water several days and the blows to the head are probably from being smacked around at the bottom of the weir.’

Without knowing why, Brook’s heart began to beat a little easier. He arrived at the body laid out on a plastic sheet. It was a well-built young male, fully dressed. The face and neck were discoloured and the body was severely bloated from the gases of decomposition. The eyes were gone, devoured by fish and microbes.

‘Several days?’ said Brook, walking around the corpse.

‘Probably more than a week, with that much bloating,’ observed Noble.

‘Then why didn’t he surface sooner?’

Noble nodded towards a pile of wet stones. ‘The body was partially weighted down or it would have popped up sooner.’

‘No ID?’

‘Nothing in his pockets except this.’ Noble pulled out an evidence bag. It contained a smaller, sealable plastic bag. Inside were the mushy remains of a few tablets.

‘Ecstasy?’

‘Or PCP. That’s cheap at the moment.’

Brook got down on his haunches. The clothes were intact along the body’s left flank but from the bloating and the youthful clothing and haircut, Brook already knew this wasn’t the work of The Embalmer. ‘You’re right. It’s not one of our vagrants,’ he muttered. ‘Messing with our heads, all right.’

‘Sir?’

Brook looked up at Noble. ‘How could I be so wrong?’

‘I don’t see. .’

‘I didn’t take it seriously, John. Four young people are missing and I didn’t take it seriously.’