Louise Welsh - A Lovely Way to Burn

Joanie didn’t make it.

I thought you should know.

Derek

Stevie put her head in her hands and took a deep breath. There were ashes in her mouth. She wanted to cry but the tears that had threatened only a moment before refused to come. She whispered her friend’s name, ‘Joanie,’ but Joanie was dead and Stevie had never believed in ghosts.

‘Joanie.’

Ancient Egyptians thought that repeating the names of the dead kept them alive, but no matter how many times you said their names, the dead were dead, and there was no bringing them back.

‘Joanie.’

Stevie put her head against the wheel and closed her eyes. She was glad of her bruises, glad of the flesh-and-bone pain. She drew in a deep juddering breath. Light blasted into the car’s interior and Stevie’s eyes jerked open. She turned the key in the ignition, and pressed her foot to the accelerator, racing the car along the hard shoulder. A horn sounded and she saw a lorry speeding past, headlamps ablaze. Stevie braked. She let the lorry’s lights fade into the darkness, and then steered the Mini on to the motorway. It was best to keep moving.

The road before and behind her was dark, but the opposite side of the carriageway glowed with the headlights of cars driving away from the city. Stevie pictured herself sitting at the breakfast bar in Joanie’s sunny kitchen, sipping a glass of the Cava she bought by the crate, telling her friend all that had happened. How Simon had looked, ungainly in death in a way he had never been in life; the spider that had brushed across her face as she had slid the laptop from its hiding place; the sympathy in Dr Ahumibe’s voice as he offered to take care of the package Mr Reah could no longer receive.

Joanie’s first question would have been, ‘Was Dr Ahumibe handsome?’ Stevie smiled a smile that squeezed tears from her eyes. It would have been a ruse to distract her, a prelude to more important, more frightening questions.

‘Does the man who attacked you think you know what Simon was hiding in that computer, and if he does, how much danger does it put you in? Do you still believe that Simon died of natural causes, or do you think he was murdered?’

The questions conjured a memory of Joanie’s laugh. The recollection was so strong that Stevie could almost smell her friend’s perfume.

The Mini slid across the motorway, sickeningly fast, and Stevie suddenly came to. She turned the steering wheel hard left, correcting its course away from the central reservation and the stream of headlights blazing on the other side.

‘ Jesus Christ. Fuck! ’

An LED sign above the motorway flashed, Tiredness Kills , and was gone. She sped on, laughing at the sign’s perfect timing, though none of it was funny. She knew she should find a service station, pull over and rest, but kept her foot hard on the pedal and let the car eat up the miles.

Stevie knew what Joanie would have told her to do. It was what she should have done when she first opened Simon’s letter. She sailed down a slip road and off the motorway, the edgelands slid away and London started to rise around her. Stevie glimpsed the glow of a twenty-four-hour grocer’s, the shapes of rough sleepers curled in doorways, a young couple wobbling home, arm in arm, dressed in their nightclub finery. Joanie was dead, but the world was still going on.

She slowed to a stop at a red light and punched her destination into the satnav. The road behind her was still empty of cars. Joanie’s death was final, as all deaths were, but the reasons for Simon’s might yet be unravelled. She would try to make sure he received some kind of justice, and find protection for herself in the process.

The police station was a squat, two-storey building, dwarfed by the trio of tower blocks that loomed behind it. The station had small high windows, barely larger than arrow slits, which combined with its breezeblock architecture to make the building look as if it was expecting a sudden siege. Joanie had nicknamed it ‘Precinct 13’ and the name had stuck. Stevie imagined Derek sitting beside Joanie’s body, holding her hand, and felt an unexpected stab of jealousy. She pushed it away. Derek had followed his dick, and broken Joanie’s heart, but policemen were clannish and dropping his name to someone in his squad might mean Stevie was taken seriously, or at least given a hearing.

The police-station door was locked. Stevie swore. Derek had long complained that under-manning had rendered his station a part-time concern, but she had thought it was just another of his gripes. She pressed the doorbell anyway and when there was no response hammered against the door’s reinforced glass. There was a shadow of movement somewhere beyond the reception desk. She put her finger back on the bell, kept it there, and continued banging on the door with her other fist.

‘Hello!’ Her voice was still raw from where the man had tried to strangle her and it sounded weak in the early-morning darkness. ‘Hello!’ Stevie’s hand was aching, but she thought she could see a silhouette, vague in the gloom beyond the glass. ‘I want to make a statement.’

There was another movement behind the reception desk, a white face hazed into focus and the lock buzzed open.

‘Thank fuck.’

Stevie pushed through the door and into the station. She had slipped her bare feet into the running shoes she kept in the boot of the car, but something had happened to the muscles in her right calf and she was limping. The station smelt of cheap disinfectant and too many bodies sweating poverty and fear. There was a poster on the wall behind the counter stating the police’s right to do their job without being subjected to violence or verbal abuse. The text was illustrated by a photograph of a trio of good-looking officers of assorted ethnicities, two men and a woman, each one blandly fit. Were they real, or recruited from some model agency? It was bizarre, the thoughts that came into your head when you were in fear of your life.

‘Sorry, love, normal service has been suspended.’

Derek had often boasted that police officers retired early, but the man behind the counter looked beyond pensionable age. Stevie placed the bag containing the laptop on to the counter.

‘I need to speak with someone. I’ve got evidence that might be crucial in a murder investigation.’

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ The policeman glanced at the bag but made no move to take it from her. ‘I can see you’ve been through the mill, but there’s no one here that can be of use to you tonight. The best thing you can do now is go home, lock your doors and stay put.’

Stevie clenched her grazed palms; the pain felt good.

‘What do you mean?’

The policeman’s stubble was a day or two old and a shade greyer than his hair.

‘I mean there’s no one here to take a statement from you.’

It was an effort not to vault the desk and shake him.

‘There’s you.’

‘No,’ the policeman said with the kind of patience usually reserved for children or the mentally challenged. ‘I’m not here.’

His hands rested on the reception desk, fingers splayed on the plastic countertop. Stevie touched one. The flesh was cold, but it was alive.

‘Yes you are.’

He slid his hand free.

‘No I’m not. Everyone here is dead.’

She looked into his eyes, and she could almost believe he was a ghost.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’d go now, if I were you. Before anything else happens to you.’

His tone was gentle but Stevie thought she could detect a threat in his words. She shouldered her bag and took a step backwards.

‘I know an officer who works here, Derek Caniparoli.’