A Long Time Dead Read online

  Police officers in liveried cars and vans, strategically sited wherever a space was available, observed the doorways too.

  Occasionally, boy racers in GTIs and lowered, blacked-out Escorts with drainpipes for exhausts, thundered up and down the drag hoping to catch the eye of the dolly-birds while avoiding the eye of the law.

  The earlier rain had gone, and the night was clear, the air heavy with cheap scent and cheaper aftershave. It was approaching the end of the revellers’ evening, it was nearly 2.30 – but still the profound thud of bass escaped every club door, as did groups of staggering men and giggling women. They were a throbbing crowd jostling on slick pavements.

  Most headed for the hot-dog stands and mobile burger bars, some stumbled towards the taxi ranks, some walked away merrily, others threw up in the gutter and a few, of course, started trouble. The cumulative screams, shouts and singing, were louder than a pneumatic drill.

  Shooting off Westgate like the branches of a tree were cobbled alleyways wide enough for only one vehicle, and in the nineteenth century given names such as George and Crown Yard and Woolpacks Yard. Another was Thompson’s Yard, rich with history, but now bursting with trendy solicitors’ offices. Thompson’s Yard led travellers through a brick archway between The Imperial Bank and Tony’s Pizza Emporium, and out onto Westgate. The archway, a tunnel beneath the buildings’ first storeys, was sufficiently long to be cosseted by an eerie darkness.

  Tonight, a lone car occupied Thompson’s Yard, lights off, a man at the wheel watching provocative, and sometimes alluring, young women stumble by. This was not a regular habit of Roger’s, since he worked evenings only one week in five; but when he did, he made a concerted effort to go ‘cruising’, as he called it. This was the ‘official business’ he had told Hobnail of.

  A young couple in the throes of sexual excitement chose his archway to begin kissing and fondling each other.

  As Roger became engrossed, the sudden belch of a siren made him bang his head on the side window. The police car was big and menacing in his rear view mirror, and the officer at its wheel waved furiously at him. The young couple rearranged themselves and left. Roger crunched first gear and nearly stalled in his rush to depart. He turned left, gazing hopefully in his rear view mirror. The police car turned right and sped off down the street after a GTI.

  Roger exhaled with relief, and felt his hands trembling.

  * * *

  The bed was warm. Yvonne snored in a rather feminine, petite way that somehow endeared her to him. She was disabled now, her quality of life outside home reduced, spoilt, dictated by where there were stairs and where there were not stairs, dependant on ramps and ease of access, jostling with indifferent and ignorant people. It was easier on mind and spirit to stay at home.

  Rheumatoid arthritis had come along and savagely twisted Yvonne’s beautiful body until it would fit quite neatly into a small box.

  She had every right to resent her life, he thought.

  Roger climbed into bed next to his wife.

  Eventually, sleep carried him away into another nightmare.

  Chapter Seven

  Tuesday 19th January 1999

  “So the nightmares are still—”

  “I took Valium last night. I stole a full strip of them from Yvonne’s medicine box a month ago. They’ve nearly all gone.” Roger breathed away the tension, tried to relax in the chair. A finger traced the dial on his watch, over and again. “I dread going to bed after I’ve worked on a body.” He laughed but it was derisive, hollow. “I just can’t sleep, can’t get their faces and their damned smell out of my mind.”

  “And—”

  “And I’m worried.”

  Alice Taylor’s office, like the rest of the Occupational Health Unit, was pastel green, quiet calm ruled, patience and understanding were always plentiful. It smelled of forests in springtime, and her desk was not a barrier between herself and her client, but was pushed back against the wall so together they could face each other unobstructed, sharing the problem. Gentle lighting created a soothing atmosphere, but simply her presence helped relax Roger to the point of being high. The worry slipped away – for the moment at least.

  “Have you told anyone about the nightmares; except me, I mean?” Alice asked.

  “Are you kidding? And I’d appreciate it staying between just us two.”

  “You don’t think I’d—”

  “No, no. I don’t think that at all. Sorry.” He rubbed the tiny scars that ran along the tips of the fingers on his left hand. It was as though they itched.

  She put down the pen and the writing pad. The page was thick with elaborate doodles – from an earlier meeting, she assured Roger. “I think we’ve exhausted all my suggestions,” she said. “The only thing to do is wait. I know it’s a cliché, but time really does heal - eventually.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got enough time left in me for an ‘eventually’.”

  She squirmed in her chair. “You know, sometimes I have to put suggestions forward that...”

  “Go on, Alice, don’t be shy.”

  “Is this job right for you?”

  “What! Of course—”

  “But every time you see a dead body—”

  “I know. I’m the one living through it. Shit! I’m the one who sees that dead body all through the night. I sleep with the damned things.” He stood, walked away from her and took in the view from her window, his fists resolutely planted on his hips. “I... This job is everything to me. I can’t do anything else. I don’t want to do anything else.” He tried to laugh again, but this time it just sounded feeble. “I feel like I’m a world class butcher, only to discover I’m allergic to meat, or a prize-winning hairdresser with a phobia of hair.” He felt like punching a hole in the glass.

  “Is that the only thing worrying you?”

  His fists curled tighter. “That’s not enough?”

  “Look, I’m trying to—”

  “I know!”

  Alice leaned back in her chair, took a moment for Roger to compose himself, then asked, “How many bodies have you seen, and over how many years?”

  “Countless,” he stared into the grey clouds over St John’s churchyard. “It’s been nine years.”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there? You’ve been having nightmares for about four months, so what’s happened in that time?”

  “Us,” he said. “We’ve happened.”

  “No, no, apart from us. Come on, Roger, you know the answer already.”

  His back still to her, he shrugged. Weston? he thought. Then he stiffened, “Promotion.”

  “Go on.”

  “Ever since I put the application in, went for the aptitude tests and the interview,” he turned around to face her, “I haven’t slept soundly.”

  “Voilà,” her voice was calm, not at all patronising. “Pressure. That’s all it is. You’re worried about it.”

  “It’s close.” He glared at her, “I have a good chance of getting it.”

  “That’s what’s worrying you.”

  “Getting it is worrying me?”

  “Sounds that way. After nine years of doing the job, I’d have to say you must be competent at it, but somewhere up there in your head, you’re worried that if you get the promotion, you’ll foul it up. You’re not sure that you can take the responsibility or the pressure.”

  His eyes fell away from hers. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

  “It’s true.”

  “If it was true, why the hell would I attack myself like this, why would I...”

  She said nothing, only looked at him and raised her eyebrows in a question.

  He turned away again, his head bowed. No fists this time.

  “You were about to ask why you would decrease your own chances of getting the job?”

  “So I would never find out if I could do it or not.”

  “So you would never need to find out.”

  “But I need this promotion.” His voice had conv
iction, and his eyes mirrored it. The window was there, inviting, daring him.

  “Of course you do. It’s vital you have it. You can’t live without it.”

  “Don’t take the piss.”

  “You have a decent salary, a good home, and it’s obvious you still enjoy the job. So why do you need this promotion badly enough to put yourself through hell?”

  Roger slumped into his seat and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at the floor, fingertips playing with each other. “Nice. Never noticed that before. Your anklet.” He smiled at her. “Suits you.”

  “You think I’m a tart?”

  “I like it is what I meant. No underlying meaning, Alice; just a couple o’ words, that’s all.”

  She leaned in closer now, forcing him to look at her. “Are you going to tell me why it’s so important you get this promotion?”

  “My dad,” he whispered at last.

  “I thought your dad was dead, we went through your family already.”

  Roger’s face was ashen. No emotion pulled its features one way or the other. Impassive. “He is dead. But that’s not important. I still need to prove myself to him.” He tried a smile to cover his growing embarrassment, but it felt awkward.

  “He’s dead? And it’s not important?”

  Roger thought of looking out the window again, and then changed his mind. It was just games, just bluffs. He sat there and let it out. “My brother and sister were born with business wings, highflying accountant and highflying solicitor. They’re both senior managers in London now. Whenever visitors came to our house, Dad always bragged of their successes in Eton and Cambridge but somehow forgot about me, about how I was getting along at Bristol University doing my engineering course.” He looked back at the memory, and it hurt. He still wanted to smash the window, just to get the poison out. “And when I told him I...” he stopped, hung his head.

  “Go on, it’s okay, Roger. You’ve come this far, might as well finish it.”

  “I had prospects. That’s what he said. But I always struggled with figures and equations. When I was young, I’d pull radios apart just to see how they worked. Of course, they never worked again once I’d finished with them. But I was inquisitive. Practical, not academic.

  “When I enrolled at Bristol instead of Cambridge, the old man couldn’t hide his disappointment, didn’t even try to, really. But you should have seen him when I told him I’d flunked out, and that I’d met a girl.” He looked up at Alice, smiled and said, “He punched me. Can you believe it; he freaked out and punched me. Eventually, he came around and tried to talk me back ‘on track’. He said there was still time if I applied myself.

  “My dad wasn’t a bad man. I made him like that, I guess. He nearly had a fucking heart attack when I told him I was marrying the girl I’d met.”

  “Yvonne?”

  “Christ, you’re sharp today, Alice.”

  “Hey—”

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m... Anyway, he was disgusted, and that was one thing he did say about me. Actually, he said it frequently. Annoyingly so.” He tried to appear nonchalant, as though none of it bothered him. “At least when I moved out he didn’t have to hide me anymore when The Influential came around. Didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “Were you around when he died?”

  Roger shook his head.

  Alice clamped her bottom lip in her teeth, and stared at him. “And you want promotion to make up for that?”

  And then he did laugh. Loudly, as if purged. “I see you attended the same diplomacy school as Weston.”

  “Who’s Weston?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I don’t understand your position, Roger.”

  “Me neither. It’s stupid, isn’t it? But it won’t let go; especially now he’s dead. I can’t change the ‘Yvonne’ part of my past, but I can show him that I have wings too.” He realised how pathetic he must sound, and sat up straight, taking a moment to calm down. “You know the infuriating bit? I don’t know who I detest more for making me do this: him or me. My motives have turned me into the very person I hate. I’m doing something like this... I’m busting my arse to be something—”

  “You don’t want to be?”

  That capped it. Roger stopped dead as though slapped in the face with a breezeblock. His eyes were still and his jaw slack.

  “You want to be a pretend manager, a phoney, a fake?”

  “You know how to cheer—”

  “Shut up, dammit! Stop being the jester, Roger, just for ten minutes.”

  Her hands were together as though in prayer, their bright red nails pointing at him, and he was tempted to say something humorous, but thought better of it.

  “Put all those poignant thoughts of your dead dad to one side for a moment and think about the job you’d be doing if promotion were offered. Think about it! You could actually do it – for you, Roger.” Alice pulled closer, tugged at his sleeve, and made him look at her. She nodded, “You could do it for you.”

  “I could do it for the glory, for the fame. Imagine the autograph-hunters and the magazine journos camping on my doorstep—” Alice slapped his face, and the breezeblock stopped him dead again. “Ow! You slapped me!” he laughed. “I’m your patient and you slapped me.”

  “You needed it.”

  “Do you slap all your patients?”

  “Only the annoying ones.”

  “Do I pay extra for that?” Smiling, Roger straightened his glasses. “I thought you were supposed to be helping—”

  “That’s exactly what I am doing.” She stood, smoothed out her tight skirt, hands flustered, attending to her well-kept hair. She opened a window and let in a rumble of traffic noise, embellished by a distant siren. The smell of Wakefield, of industry, commerce and learning, encroached into the room.

  The rain had stopped, but naked trees still danced in the wind.

  “Let your siblings lead their own lives, Roger. And if you want to honour your dead father, take some flowers to his grave. You can’t live your life for someone else,” she looked as though the thought repulsed her. “Don’t waste this chance you’ve got trying to prove to distant relatives something that doesn’t matter. Prove to yourself that you can do it.” And then her face relaxed. “I think you’d be very good at it, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t do this for the wrong reasons, Roger. If you do, it’ll find you out and it’ll knock you off your pedestal. You can’t use it to get back at your family.”

  Roger sat in silence. He considered her words, and in a weird kind of way he supposed, they actually made sense. “Thanks.”

  “That it? Thanks?”

  “No, I mean it. Thanks.” He reached up and held her hand. “Does this mean the nightmares will stop?”

  She shrugged, didn’t pull her hand away. Instead, she retook her seat and shuffled nearer, knee to knee, and she leaned forward, closing her eyes and kissed him softly for a second before withdrawing. “I don’t know. We can only hope...”

  “How long can we keep these visits under wraps?”

  There was noise in the corridor outside Alice’s office; and though it was nothing of concern, they separated. Roger stood, fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, admiring prints on the wall that held no interest for him. The noise was Melanie, but her voice, a length of razor wire wrapped in a soufflé, eventually faded.

  “Why the paranoia about your counselling, Roger?”

  “Allegedly, it has no bearing on promotion, but I think it does; I know how people’s minds work, even if I don’t know how mine does. Bell and his colleagues wouldn’t want a SOCO Supervisor who’s mental.”

  “You’re not—”

  “You know what I mean. They’d frown upon it. That’s why I don’t want any record of it. They dredge files from everywhere when making a promotional decision. And that’s why I can’t afford to have Chris finding out.”

  She appeared perplexed. “What’s Chris got to do with it?”

  Roger
shook his head, “Look, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll judge that, thank you. Go on.”

  Sighing, Roger said, “He made it plain that I’m his opposition. And something like this... well, he’d swing from the chandelier if he found out because he’d win on a technicality.”

  “You think he’d try to sabotage your chances?”

  “You don’t know how important this is to Chris.”

  “That’s irrelevant, Roger. If you want the job, you have to pull yourself together. You can do this job better than anyone can. But you have to believe in your own ability. Otherwise you may as well retract your application and start getting some sleep again.”

  Her hair shone in auburn waves around her slender neck; her petite hands toyed idly with the pen as she looked at Roger. “It’s about time you went shopping and bought a truckload of self confidence.”

  Eventually, he grinned. “Can you get that at Asda?”

  “That’s the good news. The bad news is that we only have another two weeks to see each other as we please before Angus comes home.”

  Chapter Eight

  The man stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, and he looked into his own private room where nobody was allowed. He listened to its silence. He observed the scruffy old school desk. It was gouged, beaten and scribbled upon. It sat beneath the small window, an equally scruffy stool nearby. By the rear wall, furthest from the window, was a comfy chair, one of those old padded things that’s far too grubby for the lounge but which is far too comfortable to throw away. Its springs groaned each time he sat in it. Above the chair, three Escher prints nestled among the small room’s darkest shadows.

  In here it smelled of dampness; it also smelled of sweat despite the deodorant he sprayed. Most of all, it smelled of alcohol. Putting his glasses on, he came into the room, drew the thin curtains and sat on the stool in front of his desk. Towards the back of the desk was a six-inch magnifying glass with a fluorescent tube around its periphery, all mounted on a spring-loaded arm. He pulled the magnifying glass over his working area and pressed the switch. The fluorescent blinked into life.