Gay Longworth - The Unquiet Dead

‘Detective?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What did she say to you?’

Jessie handed him back the polystyrene cup and thrust her hands deep inside the pockets of her leather trousers. ‘Thanks, but I’m giving up coffee for Lent.’

‘Lent? Are you feeling all right, Detective Inspector?’

Jessie looked at the train, still jacked up. The body had gone. The shell. The casing. She could feel the crisp white paper that held a tormented girl’s last words. But not her last wish. Finally she looked back at the policeman, his pencil poised over the pad.

‘She said she fell.’ A rush of wind from a neighbouring tunnel sucked at Jessie’s legs as another train on another track sped off to another destination.

Jessie turned into her street and saw the tell-tale desert boots sticking out from between the pillars that flanked the entrance to her flat.

‘Bill!’ she shouted, beginning to run. The boots retracted and moments later a tall, blond, bedraggled specimen emerged smiling through the iron gate and on to the pavement. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said and she hugged her brother.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Something came up.’

‘I’m sorry, did you wait at the airport for ages? I should have got a message to you, or called the airport police –’

‘Jessie, calm down, it doesn’t matter.’

‘I meant to be there.’

‘Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t even look for you in arrivals?’ Bill said laughingly.

‘I’d be furious, I took the fucking morning off.’

Jessie put her key in the lock.

‘So, no Maggie then?’

‘No, she’s gone. Why? You desperate?’

‘Yes, actually.’

They walked up the stairs dragging Bill’s ancient canvas kitbag and a plastic carrier bag holding cartons of duty-free cigarettes. ‘No stunning French female doctor to cavort with this time?’

‘My colleague was a fat Scottish doctor called Rob, who, though I love, I couldn’t bring myself to shag.’

‘Nurses?’

‘All nuns.’

Jessie winced. ‘Poor Bill. Well, for a little light porn, Maggie has a late-night chat show, and I still have her number – though I fear you may not be famous enough or rich enough for her now. Then again, she might like the look of your prescription pad.’

‘Bitchy.’

‘Maggie taught me everything I know.’ Jessie opened her front door and caught their reflections in the hall mirror. ‘You are so brown,’ she said, disgusted at her own pallid complexion.

Bill ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Even the equator has its plus points.’

‘I look like a ghost compared to you.’

Bill put his bag on the floor and pointed to Jessie’s hair. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

Jessie tried to flatten it. ‘Piss off! I’m growing it out and it’s at a funny in-between stage.’

‘You’re telling me.’

Jessie took Bill to a small Italian basement restaurant that their elder brother Colin supplied wine to. As well as free wine and quick service, Jessie always got a flurry of compliments in hurried Italian that was often the perfect antidote to a bad day in CID. Today was no different once the waiters had established that Bill, six foot three and built like a rower, was family and not an over-protective boyfriend.

‘So tell me everything,’ said Bill after rapidly downing half a glass of red wine.

‘No. You first.’

‘Aids. Death. Aids. Poverty. Aids. Famine and flashes of extraordinary human courage. More Aids. Your turn.’

‘Didn’t you get my letter?’

‘There’s a glitch in the Médecins Sans Frontières’ postal system – everything keeps getting stuck in Paris.’

‘Well, I had my first big case. I made some good decisions and caught the guy, but I made some bad decisions too. Guess what everyone remembers?’

‘Would these bad decisions have anything to do with a well-known singer who happened to be married to the first victim?’

Jessie frowned.

‘Even in the wilds of the Sudan you can get your hands on a copy of a tabloid or two.’

Jessie bowed her head and groaned. ‘I can’t think about it, it’s too embarrassing.’

‘You don’t see him any more, then?’

A waiter arrived with warm bread and olive oil, and Bill was temporarily sidetracked. Jessie watched him eat. P. J. Dean had been like a destructive whirlwind; he’d spun her around and sent her flying off course. He believed they had a bond. A detective and a pop star. Not very likely. She’d made her mind up that it was a bad idea for all concerned. And most of the time she was sure she’d done the right thing.

‘So do you?’ asked Bill, tearing apart another piece of bread.

‘I try not to.’

‘What does that mean, Jess?’

‘It means I try not to.’

Brother and sister eyed one another knowingly. Bill backed down first.

‘And how’s work?’

‘Good. Things are better with the other DI, Mark Ward. We finally seem to have found a common ground.’ That common ground was a crypt in Woolwich cemetery where together they had watched a man bleed to death, but she wasn’t ready to tell her brother that story. ‘My boss is leaving. His replacement is a woman. Though I admire and like Jones enormously, I have to admit it will be a nice break to have another woman around. Better still, one who is higher ranking than me.’

‘It’ll take the heat off you, you mean?’

‘More than that, I’ll have someone on side, someone who understands what it’s like to be surrounded by a bunch of pricks.’

‘Literally or metaphorically?’

‘Both.’

‘Jessie, first signs of bitchiness and now what’s this? A whiff of bitterness in the air and you cut all your hair off. Please don’t become some wizened old man-hater, it’s so last century.’

‘I told you, I’m growing it out.’ Jessie poured out more wine. They were halfway down the bottle and hadn’t even looked at the menu. ‘I’m not a man-hater, but it’s hard, they are pricks … well, some of them. If they were more like my brothers –’

‘A commitment-phobe who likes to play god in a very small pond, be hero-worshipped by people who have no alternative and has the occasional disturbing fantasy about a nun? I hope not.’

‘One nun in particular?’

‘A flock of nuns.’

Jessie nodded. ‘I think we should order.’

Bill refilled their glasses, smiling conspiratorially. ‘You don’t really have to go back to work, do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I haven’t seen you for eight months. I’m not here for very long and what’s the point of being the youngest DI in the Force if you can’t play hooky occasionally?’

Jessie thought about this for a second. It was true, she didn’t really have that much on, she was owed masses of holiday time and many’s the time she’d covered for DI Mark Ward while he was in the pub. ‘I suppose I could call Mark and ask him to cover for me …’

‘Excellent. More wine.’

The following morning Jessie walked to work. She didn’t trust herself on the bike, suspecting that she might still be over the limit. She and Bill had ordered their food finally, but not until they had finished the first bottle and drunk most of the second. They did not stop talking until after midnight. Even then they had only touched the surface. Bill had been working for MSF for six years, in places no one else would brave; he’d witnessed death on such a massive scale from disease, starvation and massacre, that the idea of a nice clean general practice somewhere in England coping with endless complaints of a sore throat and chesty cough was absurd to him. He’d been known to drive sick children through areas occupied and controlled by armed tribes with no scruples, just to see them safely to an international hospital. He’d put his life on the line time and time again, even though he knew he could only ever make a tiny difference, for the problems in Africa were so vast. It made what Jessie did seem very small. She would allocate months of her time and enormous sums of taxpayers’ money to bring one person to trial, and even then it was not certain they would end up behind bars, or that bars were indeed the answer. Meanwhile thousands were dying and the culpable – corrupt leaders, multinationals, the ‘first’ world – would never pay. If there really was good and evil in this world, she knew her brother was all good. Even if he did fantasise about nuns.