Human Remains (11 page)

‘It’s like fecking Bridgend,’ Trigger said, slamming down his copy of the
Briarstone Chronicle
on to his cluttered desk.

‘Bridgend?’ I said. ‘You mean the teen suicides?’

‘Yeah, something like that. And before you start, I know all these are natural causes.’

I said nothing. In fact they weren’t
all
natural causes; the report provided to us by the Coroner’s Office had identified the death of two to be due to alcoholism, and one was believed due to an overdose of barbiturates. Several others seemed to have starved to death. It might have been natural causes of a type, but if they’d managed to eat once in a while it was likely that they’d still be here.

‘Now the bloody paper’s got wind of it, too. This’ll turn out to be one huge pain in the arse, you mark my words. I was chatting to Dave Morris yesterday – you know Dave? Duty inspector in the Control Room. Used to work in traffic?’

I nodded as if I knew who he meant, just to stop him running through Dave Morris’s entire career history.

‘He says they’re getting loads of calls about neighbours now, thanks to the press getting involved. Every few minutes: “not seen the old girl next door for a while”, or “there’s a funny smell around here, maybe someone’s died”. He said they keep sending out patrols just in case, but it’s getting annoying now.’

I smiled at him, hoping he wasn’t expecting me to apologise. It was as if this whole thing was my fault, just because I was the one who’d drawn attention to it.

Just for a change, it was sunny outside. I’d finished the comparative case analysis and handed copies to Andy Frost, Bill, Trigger and anyone else who might have been interested, just in the hope that someone would take it on. In truth, the document was sparse. There wasn’t a lot of data beyond what I’d already unearthed; the charts looked impressive, but my intelligence requirement and recommendations were twice as long as the main body of the report. It had been all I could do to refrain from begging, in the conclusion.

I’d already read the newspaper. Trigger and Kate were assuming I’d tipped them off, but it wasn’t me. They had their own links with the Coroner’s Office; it would only have taken a passing remark about the number of decomposed bodies to spark off a journalist’s interest.

When Trigger went off to the late-turn briefing, I took the paper off his desk and turned the pages until I found the column about the bodies. It took a while to find the name – buried at the end. Sam Everett. I made a note of it in my day book, then replaced the newspaper on Trigger’s desk, exactly where he’d left it. And I went back to analysing burglaries for the crime series meeting tomorrow. I tried not to look at the name, but my eyes were drawn back to it again and again. It was as though the angels had linked me to it already.

After work I walked up the hill back to the Park and Ride, looking in the windows of the shops. Even though I’d left late, not having to shop for Mum tonight, I wasn’t in a hurry to go home. The cat could wait a little bit longer for her dinner. I wanted to be where other people were, even if those people were all rushing somewhere. Another few hours and the town would be full again: people coming out to meet friends, go for a meal, have a few drinks, maybe on to a nightclub later on. I couldn’t loiter around until then, though – and besides, how much fun would it be? They would all be getting drunk and rowdy, laughing at each other and laughing at me, the only person in the whole town out on her own. It would be like being back at school.

When I got to the stop, the back end of the bus was mocking me from the traffic lights a hundred yards further on. It would be twenty minutes until the next one, so I carried on walking through the pedestrian precinct. There was another bus stop outside County Hall which would cut off the great big circuit of the town centre, and as long as I didn’t dawdle I should get to it with about five minutes to spare. The precinct was empty, all the shops closed and shuttered, newspapers and litter chasing each other towards me, funnelled through the space by the wind.

My father worked at County Hall, years ago. Something in their accounts department, although Mum was not good with specifics. There had been a job advertised fifteen years ago that I’d wanted to apply for; at the time I was doing admin for a solicitor’s office, bored with it and the petty bitchiness that went on between the women who worked there. But Mum had put me off. ‘You’d hate it,’ she’d said. ‘Your father was never happy. All the bureaucracy. And you’re no good with figures, you’d get muddled up all the time.’

The salary had not been much better than what I was earning, but the prospects were better – once you were employed by the council back then it was a job for life – but maybe that was why she wasn’t keen for me to apply. I think she was worried about letting me go, even fifteen years ago.

When I saw the job advertised for the police, I didn’t even tell her I’d applied until I got the letter offering me the position. She was furious.

‘You’ll have to wear a uniform,’ she told me, ‘you won’t like that, will you? That’s if they can find one to fit you.’

‘It’s a civvy job, Mum; they don’t have to wear uniforms unless they’re in the control room or on the front counter.’

‘Still, you know what they say about policemen.’

‘What?’

‘They’re all promiscuous. They’re all cheating on their poor wives. You’ll be there five minutes and they’ll all be after you.’

As if! It made me laugh to think about it, now, even though when I started the job I was a little afraid. It took a while to build up my confidence – everyone seemed to know so much more than me – but I concentrated on the details and soon there were new people starting and I was the one showing them what to do.

I parked the car three streets away in the darkness, and walked briskly home. My feet were aching even though I’d been sitting down all day.

My house and next door were both in darkness, nothing to distinguish them from the street, both the front gardens full of weeds. I would have to sort that out at the weekend. I was drawn to the house next door, peered in through the window at the front, but I could see nothing – no light. The door to the hallway inside must be shut, the way it probably always had been.

I could see nothing, smell nothing.

The cat was winding herself around my ankles, no doubt wondering what on earth I was doing, standing in the overgrown flowerbed of the next-door house. You don’t live here, you stupid cow, she seemed to be saying. Have you forgotten where you live, now, as well?

I left the house alone and fished in my pocket for my key. My hallway was empty, and quiet. I’d forgotten to reset the timer on the central heating again and the house was freezing, bitter. The cat tried to trip me up all the way to the kitchen, even though I grumbled at her and told her that I was no good to her lying in the hallway with a broken ankle.

I turned on the kitchen light, found the cat biscuits from the cupboard under the sink and shook a load into her bowl. She meowed at me, her voice cracking on the highest note.

The cat fed, I should have cooked myself something. I should have gone to the fridge – or the freezer, more likely – and found myself something decent to cook that involved vegetables and something healthy. But I had no appetite. I smiled at the thought that this whole business with the bodies was finally making me lose weight where diet after diet had failed.

The house was echoingly quiet as well as cold.

I turned the radio on in the hope of getting rid of the morbid shroud that seemed to be draping itself over my shoulders, hoping for something upbeat. The song, unidentifiable, was just coming to an end.

‘…if you’ve just joined us, we’re talking about the
Briarstone Chronicle
’s campaign, which is good news for all of us, really, isn’t it? Sally, do you know your neighbours?’

‘Yes, I do! We have been in our house for a few years, though, and we’re really good friends. But the last house I lived in wasn’t like that at all – I lived there for five years and I had no idea who lived next door. And I think it’s a shame…’

‘Mmm, yes, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it – we just need to be friendly and make an effort to get to know people. You don’t need to make friends, if that’s not your thing – but you never know when you might need each other, after all – ’

‘And the population is ageing, isn’t it? I think in a few years’ time there will be many more elderly people living on their own, and having neighbours they can rely on is very important…’

‘We’re going to take some more calls on this, so give us a ring! Are you friends with your neighbours? Perhaps you’re getting on a bit, and starting to worry about being on your own? Or maybe you’re worried about your neighbours but don’t want to intrude? Give us a call on the usual number and we’ll talk to some people after the traffic…’

They were missing the point, I thought. Having neighbours didn’t make a blind bit of difference if you chose to ignore them.

‘… and on the line now is Alan from Briarstone – now, you don’t know your neighbours, is that right?’

‘Yeah, Rob, it’s like, I’ve got this old couple on the one side, yeah, and they don’t even talk to me. I mean, I said hello to them the other day and they nodded but nothing else, and – ’

‘But do you think they might be waiting for you to say more, Alan? You know sometimes elderly people can feel vulnerable, and they don’t know who they can trust?’

‘Yeah, I know, but everyone used to talk to each other, I mean, when I was growing up, yeah, everyone used to be out on the streets all the time, talking and that.’

‘And people stayed in one place for longer, let’s not forget that – these days people move around more, they change jobs or upsize or downsize all the time…’

I opened the back door to let the cat out, and gave an experimental sniff. There was a breeze tonight, stirring the branches in the trees behind the house. Beyond the trees, the main road, and, beyond that, the cemetery. I could smell nothing, and for a moment I wondered if I had imagined finding Shelley Burton next door. The odour had gone; the remains had been cleaned up, no doubt by some council workers while I’d been in the office. She was gone, completely gone, every trace, as though she’d never lived.

Sometimes these things happen very slowly, so you don’t notice them at the time. With me it was a moment, a single second that divided my life like a scythe, so that there was always a before and an after.

5th May, 2011. It was about three in the afternoon, a fine day, and although it had been hot for weeks, stifling, that day was cooler. There was a breeze, relief from the heat. I was going to the supermarket in the car thinking about my friend’s wedding, which was the following weekend, and wondering if the weather would hold. It was also the Bank Holiday, which is relevant because of course if it had been a normal Monday I would have been at work and it might never have happened.

I was at the roundabout waiting to turn in to the
supermarket
, and was about to go when a car came from the right at speed. So I braked. I remember having time to think something like
Glad the brakes work
when a van slammed into the back of me, propelling the car on to the roundabout and into the path of the other motorist.