Talking to the Dead
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Talking to the Dead
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Harry Bingham
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Orion Publishing Group, London.
[Permissions acknowledgments, if any, go here.]
ISBN 978-0-345-53373-9
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53374-6
First Edition
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Contents
Cover
Advance Reader's Copy
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Cotard’s Syndrome
About the Author
1
Interview. October 2006
Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park. One blue, one yellow, one pink. Their shapes are precise, as though stenciled. From this distance, I can’t see the lines that tether them, so when the kites move, it’s as though they’re doing so of their own accord. An all-encompassing sunlight has swallowed depth and shadow.
I observe all this as I wait for D.C.I. Matthews to finish rearranging the documents on his desk. He shuffles the last file from the stack in front of him to a chair in front of the window. The office is still messy, but at least we can see each other now.
“There,” he says.
I smile.
He holds up a sheet of paper. The printed side is facing him, but against the light from the window I see the shape of my name at the top. I smile again, not because I feel like smiling but because I can’t think of anything sensible to say. This is an interview. My interviewer has my résumé. What does he want me to do? Applaud?
He puts the résumé down on the desk in the only empty patch available. He starts to read it through line by line, ticking off each section with his forefinger as he does so. Education. A levels. University. Interests. References.
His finger moves back to the center of the page. University.
“Philosophy.”
I nod.
“Why are we all here, what’s it all about. That sort of thing?”
“Not really. More like, What exists? What doesn’t exist? How do we know whether it exists or not? Things like that.”
“Useful for police work.”
“Not really. I don’t think it’s useful for anything much, except maybe teaching us to think.”
Matthews is a big man. Not gym-big, but Welsh-big, with the sort of comfortable muscularity that suggests a past involving farmwork, rugby, and beer. He has remarkably pale eyes and thick dark hair. Even his fingers have little dark hairs running all the way to the final joints. He is the opposite of me.
“Do you think you have a realistic idea of what police work involves?”
I shrug. I don’t know. How are you supposed to know if you haven’t done it? I say the sort of thing that I think I’m supposed to say. I’m interested in law enforcement. I appreciate the value of a disciplined, methodical approach. Blah blah. Yadda yadda. Good little girl in her dark gray interview outfit saying all the things she’s supposed to say.
“You don’t think you might get bored?”
“Bored?” I laugh with relief. That’s what he was probing at. “Maybe. I hope so. I quite like a little boredom.” Then worried he might feel I was being arrogant—prizewinning Cambridge philosopher sneers at stupid policeman—I backtrack. “I mean, I like things orderly.
I
’s dotted,
T
’s crossed. If that involves some routine work, then fine. I like it.”
His finger is still on the résumé, but it’s tracked up an inch or so. A levels. He just leaves his finger there, fixes those pale eyes on me, and says, “Do you have any questions for me?”
I know that’s what he’s meant to say at some stage, but we’ve got forty-five minutes allocated for this interview and we’ve used only ten, most of which I’ve spent watching him shift stationery around his office. Because I’m taken by surprise—and because I’m still a bit rubbish at these things—I say the wrong thing.
“Questions? No.” There’s a short gap, in which he registers surprise and I feel like an idiot. “I mean, I want the job. I don’t have any questions about that.”
His turn to smile. A real one, not fake ones like mine.
“You do. You really do.” He makes that a statement not a question. For a D.C.I., he’s not very good at asking questions. I nod anyway.
“And you’d probably quite like it if I didn’t ask you about a two-year gap in your résumé, around the time of your A levels.”
I nod again, more slowly. Yes, I would quite like it if you didn’t ask about that.
“Human Resources know what’s going on there, do they?”
“Yes. I’ve already been into that with them. I was ill. Then I got better.”
“Who at Human Resources?”
“Katie. Katie Andrews.”
“And the illness?”
I shrug. “I’m fine now.”
A non-answer. I hope he doesn’t push further, and he doesn’t. Instead he asks who’s interviewed me so far. The answer is pretty much everyone. This session with Matthews is the final hurdle.
“Okay. Your father knows you’re applying for this job?”
“Yes.”
“He must be pleased.”
Another statement in place of a question. I don’t answer it.
Matthews examines my face intently. Maybe that’s his interview technique. Maybe he doesn’t ask his suspects any questions, he just makes statements and scrutinizes their faces in the wide open light from the big Cardiff sky.
“We’re going to offer you a job, you know that?”
“You are?”
“Of course we are. Coppers aren’t thick, but you’ve got more brains than anyone else in this building. You’re healthy. You don’t have a criminal record. You were ill for a time as a teenager, but you’re fine now. You want to work for us. Why wouldn’t we hire you?”
I could think of a couple of possible answers to that, but I don’t volunteer them. I’m suddenly aware of being intensely relieved, which scares me a bit, because I hadn’t been aware of having been anxious. I’m standing up. Matthews has stood up too and comes toward me, shaking my hand and saying something. His big shoulders block out my view of Bute Park and the kites. Matthews is talking about formalities and I’m blathering answers back at him, but my attention isn’t with any of that stuff. I’m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead.
2
May 2010
It’s true. I do like routine work, but you can have too much of a good thing.
A former copper with the Met in London—twenty-two unblemished years on the force—was obliged to retire following an injury received in the line of duty. He took a job as bursar of a Roman Catholic boys’ school in Monmouthshire. He started nicking bits of money. Didn’t get caught. Nicked more. Didn’t get caught. Went crazy: bought himself an upright piano, a golf club membership, two vacations, a conservatory, a share in a racehorse.
The school authorities were dopey, but not actually brain-dead. They came to us with evidence of wrongdoing. We investigated and found a whole lot more evidence, then arrested the suspect, Brian Penry, and took him in for interview. Penry denied everything, then stopped talking and waited out the session staring at the wall and looking like crap. On the tape, you can almost hear his slightly asthmatic breathing, a thin nasal whine sounding like a note of complaint between our questions. We charged him on eleven counts of theft, but the correct number is probably somewhere closer to fifty.
He’s still denying everything, which means that we have to prepare the case for court. Five minutes before the trial starts, Penry will change his plea, because he’s completely stuffed and he knows it and it won’t make much difference to his sentence whether he pleads guilty now or on the day itself. In the meantime, I’ve got to go through every single detail of his bank records over the last six years, every single credit card payment, every single withdrawal from the school’s bank account, and identify each and every rogue transaction. I’ve got to do all that and document it so meticulously that a defense lawyer won’t be able to pick trivial little holes in our case when it comes to court—which, as I say, it never will, because Penry is stuffed and he knows it.
My desk is covered with paper. I loathe all banks and credit card companies. I hate every digit between 0 and 9. I despise every dopily run Catholic boys’ school in South Wales. If Brian Penry were in front of me now, I would try to force-feed him my calculator, which is as large and chewable as a Bakelite phone.
“Having fun?”
I look up. David Brydon, a detective sergeant, sandy-haired, thirty-two, a moderate case of freckles, and a disposition so friendly and open that I sometimes find myself saying something obnoxious, because too much of a good thing can be disconcerting.
“Sod off.”
I don’t count that. That’s just my version of friendly.
“Still on Penry, are you?”
I look up properly. “His correct title is bastard, thieving, wish-he’d-go-and-drown-himself Penry.”
Brydon nods sagely, as though I’d said something sensible. “I thought you had sophisticated views on moral responsibility.” He holds up two mugs. Tea for him, peppermint for me. Sugar in his, none in mine.
I stand up. “I do, just not when I have to do this.” I gesture at the desk, already hating it a bit less. We go over to a little seating area by the window. There are two chairs there and a sofa, the sort with tubular chrome legs and stain-resistant gray upholstery that you get in offices and airport lounges and nowhere else. There’s a lot of natural light here, though, and a view of the park. Plus I do actually like Brydon. My bad mood is increasingly just for show.