Peter James: Not Dead Enough

‘Have you ever been violent to Ari?’

‘You’re joking. Never. Never . No way,’ Glenn said emphatically.

Grace believed him; he did not think it was in Branson’s nature to be violent to anyone he loved. Inside that hulk was the sweetest, kindest, most gentle man. ‘You have a mortgage?’

‘Yeah, me and Ari jointly.’

Branson put down his glass and started crying again. After some minutes, faltering, he said, ‘Jesus. I’m wishing that bullet hadn’t missed everything. I wish it had taken my fucking heart out.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true. It’s how I feel. I can’t fucking win. She was mad at me when I was working twenty-four/seven cos I was never home, now she’s fed up cos I’ve been at home for the past seven weeks. Says I’m getting under her feet.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘It’s your house. It’s your home as much as Ari’s. She might be pissed off with you, but she can’t actually throw you out. You have rights.’

‘Yeah, and you’ve met Ari.’

Grace had. She was a very attractive, very strong-willed lady in her late twenties who had always made it abundantly clear who was boss in the Branson household. Glenn might have worn the trousers, but his face poked out through the fly buttons.

It was almost five in the morning when Grace pulled some sheets and a blanket out of the airing cupboard and made up the spare bed for his friend. The whisky bottle and the brandy bottle were both nearly empty, and there were several crumpled cigarette butts in the ashtray. He had almost stopped smoking completely – after recently being shown, in the mortuary, the blackened lungs of a man who had been a heavy smoker – but long drinking sessions like this clobbered his willpower.

It seemed it was only minutes later that his mobile phone was ringing. Then he looked at the digital clock beside his bed and saw, to his shock, that it was ten past nine.

Knowing almost certainly the call was from work, he let it ring a few times, trying to wake up properly so he didn’t sound groggy, his head feeling like it had a cheese-wire sawing through it. He was the duty Senior Investigating Officer for this week and really should have been in the office by eight thirty, to be prepared for any major incident that might occur. Finally, he pressed the answer button.

‘Roy Grace,’ he said.

It was a very serious-sounding young civilian dispatcher from the Control Room called Jim Walters, whom Grace had spoken to a few times but did not know. ‘Detective Superintendent, I’ve a request from a Brighton Central detective sergeant for you to attend a suspicious death at a house in Dyke Road Avenue, Hove.’

‘What details can you give me?’ Grace asked, now fully alert and reaching for his BlackBerry.

As soon as he had hung up, he pulled on his dressing gown, filled his toothbrush mug with water, took two paracetamols from the bathroom cabinet, downed them, then popped another two from their foil, padded into the spare room, which reeked of alcohol and body odour, and shook Glenn Branson awake. ‘Wakey-wakey, it’s your therapist from hell!’

One of Branson’s eyes opened, partway, like a whelk in the safety of its shell. ‘Whatthefucksupman?’ Then he put his hands to his head. ‘Shit, how much did I drink last night? My head is like—’

Grace held up the mug and the capsules. ‘Brought you breakfast in bed. You now have two minutes to shower, get dressed, swallow these and grab a bite from the kitchen. We’re going to work.’

‘Forget it. I’m on sick leave. Got another week!’

‘Not any more. Your therapist’s orders. No more sickies! You need to get back to work now, today, this instant . We’re going to see a dead body.’

Slowly, as if every moment was painful, Branson swung himself out of bed. Grace could see the round, discoloured mark on his six-pack, some inches above his belly button, where the bullet had entered. It seemed so tiny. Less than half an inch across. Terrifyingly tiny.

The DS took the pills, washing them down with the water, then stood up and tottered around in his boxer shorts for some moments, looking very disoriented, scratching his balls. ‘Shit, man, I got nothing here, just these stinky clothes. I can’t go see a body dressed in these.’

‘The body won’t mind,’ Grace assured him.

6

Skunk’s phone was ringing and vibrating. Preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz . It was flashing, slithering around on the sink-top, where he had left it, like some large, crazed, wounded beetle.

After thirty seconds it succeeded in waking him. He sat up sharply and, as he did most mornings, hit his head on the low Luton roof of his clapped-out camper van.

‘Shit.’

The phone fell off the sink-top and thudded on to the narrow strip of carpeted floor, where it continued its fuck-awful noise. He’d taken it last night from a car he’d stolen, and the owner had not been thoughtful enough to leave the instruction manual with it, or the pin code. Skunk had been so wired he hadn’t been able to figure how to put it on silent, and hadn’t risked switching it off because he might need a pin code to switch it back on. He had calls to make before its owner realized it was missing and had it disconnected. Including one to his brother, Mick, who was living in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and kids. But Mick hadn’t been pleased to hear from him, told him it was four in the morning and hung up on him.

After one more round of shrieking and buzzing, the thing fell silent: spent. It was a cool phone, with a gleaming stainless-steel case, one of the latest-generation Motorolas. Retail price in the shops without any special deal would be around three hundred pounds. With luck, and probably after a bit of an argument, he’d get twenty-five quid for it later this morning.

He was shaking, he realized. And that black, undefined gloom was seeping through his veins, spreading to every cell in his body, as he lay on top of the sheets in his singlet and underpants, sweating one moment, then shivering. It was the same every morning, waking to the sensation that the world was a hostile cave that was about to collapse on him, entombing him. Forever.

A scorpion walked across his eyes.

‘FUCKSHITGETOFF!’ He sat up, whacked his head again and cried out in pain. It wasn’t a scorpion; it wasn’t anything. Just his mind jerking around with him. The way it was telling him now that maggots were eating his body. Thousands of them crawling over his skin, so tight together they were like a costume. ‘GERROFFFF!’ He squirmed, shook them off, swore at them again, even louder, then realized, like the scorpion, there was nothing there. Just his mind. Telling him something. Same way it did every day. Telling him he needed some brown – or some white. Oh, Jesus, anything.

Telling him he needed to get out of this stench of feet, rank clothes and sour milk. Had to get up, go to his office. Bethany liked that, the way he called it his office . She thought that was funny. She had a strange laugh, which kind of twisted her tiny mouth in on itself, so that the ring through her upper lip disappeared for a moment. And he could never tell whether she was laughing with him or at him.

But she cared for him. That much he could sense. He’d never known that feeling before. He’d seen characters talk about caring for each other in soaps on television, but had never known what it meant until he’d met her – picked her up – in the Escape-2 one Friday night some weeks – or maybe months – back.

Cared for him , in the sense that she looked in from time to time as if he was her favourite doll. She brought food, cleaned the place up, washed his clothes, dressed the sores he sometimes got and had clumsy sex with him before hurrying off again, into the day or the night.