Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

She watched the cab until it disappeared towards Paignton round the first corner of the seafront road. Then she swung around and walked briskly into the building. She stepped into the old erratic lift which did its usual shaking and juddering act, but for once did not even consider its idiosyncrasies. Her head was buzzing.

Attempting to pull herself together she gave herself a telling-off for even considering inviting Phil Cooper in. A much longed-for arrest and a skinful of alcohol were no excuse for such reckless stupidity. In her much younger days Karen had once come close to losing her entire career because of an unwise romantic liaison. Indeed, only the innate decency and judgment of that most unlikely of creatures, a tabloid journalist in the form of one John Kelly, then a top Fleet Street man, had saved her.

She shook her head, partly to clear it and partly in disbelief at her behaviour. At her age, and with her seniority in the job, it was totally absurd even to have considered embarking on any kind of relationship with a married junior officer. And a much younger one at that. Even a one-night stand would be trouble. In fact, perhaps particularly a one-night stand.

She had considered it, though. Very seriously. And she couldn’t help wondering if Phil Cooper would have accepted her invitation had she issued it. Something, maybe that goodnight kiss, light though it had been, made her pretty sure that he would have done.

On the fifth floor she stepped out of the lift and made her way along the corridor into flat number 12, trying desperately to concentrate only on her work, which was after all currently rather important, and to think just of what needed to be done the next day on the Richard Marshall case. But it was no good. Phil Cooper would not go away. She could see his face far too clearly, feel his hand on her arm and his lips on her cheek. And as she undressed for bed she realized that she was feeling distinctly horny. It had been some months since she had had sex at all, and then it had been little more than a one-night stand with an old flame.

Karen liked sex a lot. But she had never seemed to be very good at relationships, or indeed at picking the right man. Phil Cooper was most definitely not the right man.

“What you need is a cold shower, my girl,” she told herself sternly.

She had, however, no intention whatsoever of taking one. Instead she preferred to curl up in the warmth of her lone bed and imagine that Phil was there with her. She knew she shouldn’t, that she was entering into dangerous territory, but she couldn’t help it.

“Well, a bit of fantasizing won’t do any harm, will it?” she muttered, as if finding a need to justify her actions even to herself.

She knew all too well what lay at the root of the problem. She laughed too easily with Phil Cooper, much too easily. That night the laughter had been so very welcome. And when she laughed with a man like that, somehow it always did something to her heart. She pulled the covers up around her and in the warm and private darkness of her bed she gave in to all her fantasies.

“To hell with it,” she muttered. With one hand she shoved a protesting Sophie off her usual sleeping place on top of the bed, as she did not really wish to share this moment with a cat. With the other she reached between her legs. And as the pleasure spread through her body there was no way that she could stop herself imagining that it was Phil Cooper touching her and driving her wild.

In the morning Karen woke with a hangover accompanied by a strong sense of foreboding which she couldn’t quite explain to herself. She just didn’t feel optimistic about the day or about anything much really. The euphoria of the night before had completely evaporated along with the happier effects of the alcohol. She was now left with the residuals, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

She jacked herself out of bed and made for the shower. Her head ached. Her mouth felt like a cross between an ashtray and an old sack.

Oh, God, she thought, remembering what she had so nearly done the night before. And indeed what she had done — admittedly, all alone.

As she brushed her teeth she considered the tasks facing her that day. The biggest and most problematic was that she had to go and see the chief constable at headquarters in Exeter.

Karen neither liked nor respected Harry Tomlinson, and she was quietly confident that the feeling was mutual. She thought the chief constable was a small-minded pedantic little man more interested in politics than policing. And she had a fair idea that he considered her far too much of a maverick, too much of a free spirit, not enough of a stickler for rules and regulations. She also reckoned he was enough of a dinosaur still to be prejudiced against women police officers in senior jobs.

She peered at her somewhat red eyes in the mirror. Her mouth still tasted disgusting so she decided to give her teeth a second brushing. It didn’t help much but three cups of tea lifted her slightly. Unusually she gave the cigarettes a miss. She didn’t think her throat or her lungs could take any tobacco that morning. She had no idea how many she had smoked the night before, but she knew it was a lot.

She kicked her favourite designer trainers out from under the bed and began to rummage amid the obligatory pile of clothes covering the little Victorian nursing chair while she decided what she was going to wear that day. Reluctantly she knew she must take the Harry Tomlinson meeting into consideration. It would help if she didn’t antagonize him just by her appearance. Karen justified her usual extremely casual look — her much-loved trainers, baggy shirts and jackets, roll-up cotton trousers, sometimes even jeans — by saying that she was, after all, a detective. Detectives were supposed to blend. Detectives were supposed to fit into the communities in which they were doing their detecting. Neat little business costumes and high heels were not only dated but set women who wore them apart from the vast majority. Anyway, she managed to force a grin even though it hurt, she didn’t like those sorts of clothes. It didn’t suit her to be dressed up like a dog’s dinner, and she knew it. It made her feel old, too. She liked young funky clothes, slightly off the wall. One of her favourite pairs of trainers appeared at a glance to be made of plain white canvas, but was actually covered with tiny silver spangles which danced and glittered as she walked.

However, for the chief constable Karen knew she must attempt to look the part of a detective superintendent — or rather the part as Harry Tomlinson saw it.

She delved into the back of her wardrobe and emerged with a dark-grey linen trouser suit of the permanently-crumpled look she favoured for practical reasons as much as anything else — not quite the tailored outfit Tomlinson would prefer but something of a compromise — and a cream T-shirt. Trainers, she told herself sorrowfully, would never do, so she plunged into the assorted shoes piled high in the bottom of the wardrobe and eventually found a pair of tan-coloured suede mules with small built-up heels which she reckoned Tomlinson might almost approve of and which she could just about bear to have on her feet. Then she gritted her teeth and prepared for war, which is what her meetings with the chief constable were inclined to resemble. Picking up her bag she rummaged in it for her car keys and only then remembered.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” she said aloud.

Until that moment she had completely forgotten that she had left her car at the police station. It had seemed such a good idea the night before. But then, so had quite a lot of activities which most definitely would not have been. Now it seemed she had drunk so much that she was suffering from alcoholic amnesia.