The Dead Place

‘Ben, calm down. The senior nurse came to the hospital with her and stayed for two hours until I sent her back. The manager’s been on the phone twice to see how Mum is. They’re all concerned about her.’

‘So they should be. They’ve got some questions to answer.’

Matt took a drink of his coffee, but Ben didn’t even lift his cup. He found that his hand was shaking with anger, and he knew he would only spill it.

Someone had left a copy of the evening paper on the table, folded to the top half of the front page. Ben could see only the first inch of a photograph above the fold, but he recognized it straight away. He’d been looking at it for a large part of the day. At least Media Relations had done their job properly.

‘When will Mum be awake?’ he said.

‘They want to keep her sedated until they can do the X-rays and get her into theatre. Tomorrow we can talk to her, perhaps. But we can go and sit with her for a few minutes, if we ask the sister.’

Ben stared at his cooling coffee. It looked particularly unappealing now that the steam had vanished.

‘Let’s do that, then.’

‘It’s just a fall, Ben. A broken hip sounds bad at first, but she’s not all that old.’

‘Don’t you know what head injuries are like? Even a minor knock –’ Ben stopped, took a deep breath. ‘OK, I’m sorry. You think I’m overreacting.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Sorry, Matt,’ he said again. ‘Work, you know …’

‘Getting you down again?’

Ben didn’t like the ‘again’ part. As they walked back down the corridor towards the ward, he felt another surge of anger. He put his hand on Matt’s arm.

‘What’s the name of the manager at Old School?’

‘Robinson. Why?’

‘When I leave here, I’m going to go and see him.’

‘Ben, you wouldn’t do any good.’

‘I need to know exactly how this happened, and what they’re going to do about it.’

Matt took hold of his arm, gripping a little too tightly. His face was flushed a deeper red than usual, and he was breathing too heavily.

‘I’m warning you – don’t start lashing out at everyone you can find, Ben. You can’t get rid of your guilt feelings this way.’

Broken earth lay under her feet, like shards of glass. Two days of rain had splashed her legs with mud, and now it lay dark and damp in the cracks between her toes and in the line of an old fracture on her left thigh. Ants had emerged from the leaf mould on the woodland floor to wander among the stiff folds of her dress and crawl across her hands. One of them paused at her scentless flowers before climbing upwards. But it didn’t seem to know what to do when it reached her head. It wasn’t aware of the sky, or even of Alder Hall Woods. The ant saw only its own tiny patch of her body – an inch of her neck, its surface white and hard, and smooth to the touch.

That afternoon, someone had come into the woods. It was a figure wrapped in a coat and scarf against the wind, hands thrust into pockets, a canvas bag over one shoulder. The visitor had followed the path from the bottom of Alder Hall Quarry, crossed the stream and climbed the slope through the trees. At the edge of the clearing, the figure stopped for a few moments before moving into the open, then forced a way through the tall swathes of willowherb, oblivious to fragments of stem that caught on sleeves and clung to jeans.

Reaching the plinth, the visitor opened the canvas bag, took out a spray of flowers and placed them at the feet of the statue, then stood back to admire the arrangement. The sight brought a smile of satisfaction. The flowers were white chrysanthemums, suitable for a death.

* * *

MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE ONE

No one told me that the worst nightmares would come while I was still awake. No one ever warned me that I’d lie in my bed in the darkness, eyes wide open, praying for sleep. Those were the hours I spent counting faces in the wallpaper, seeing the shape of a monster where my clothes lay strewn on a chair. Those were the times I listened to the noises outside the house, listened as hard as I could, hoping I might make the noises inside go away. Finally, as the hours went by, there would be nothing left but the sounds of the night – the slither of the darkness as it crept across my roof.

Something lives in that darkness. It’s our greatest fear, and it’s called the unknown. Everyone knows this fear, but few of us dare to think about it. We’d never be able to go on living our lives if we really saw the grinning presence that waits behind our shoulder. It’s far better to pretend we don’t see the beast. We turn away our eyes and convince ourselves it’s just a shadow cast by the sun. It’s only a draught from an open window, a rustle of dead leaves on the other side of the door.

It’s the same fear for the child whose bedroom door has to stand open at night for a glimpse of light and for the old woman whose hand trembles as she draws back the bolts. In the end, we’re all destined to fall into the claws of that darkness we glimpse in our dreams. The great snatcher of souls, the unseen lurker on the threshold. What threshold would he lurk on, if not on the threshold of death?

Do you see that shadow now? Do you feel the chill, and hear the rustling?

These days, my dreams are different. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I see bodies moving inside their coffins. Their mouths twist, their limbs writhe, their hands open and close like claws as they reach towards the light. I try to make them settle down, to lie still so they can be buried. But it never does any good. In my dreams, the dead just won’t stop squirming.

9

Next morning, Diane Fry found two middle-aged DCs occupying desks in the CID room. They wore almost identical navy blue suits, and they were both a bit too meaty around the shoulders, so they hardly seemed to have any necks. One had a tie with blue stripes, and the other black-and-white checks. They could have been visiting sales executives from a pharmaceutical company.

‘Who are those two?’ asked Gavin Murfin.

‘CID support,’ said Fry.

‘What?’

‘They retired from D Division last year. But they’ve come back to help out for a bit, while we’re short-staffed. Mr Hitchens says they’re very experienced. They both put in their full thirty.’

‘Yes, I can tell.’

At the morning briefing on the Sandra Birley enquiry, Ben Cooper was the first to raise a hand. Keen to get noticed, no doubt.

‘Sir, do you think Mrs Birley’s attacker might have watched her for some days beforehand and worked out her habits?’

‘What habits?’ said DI Hitchens.

‘For a start, the location she chose to park her car. And her practice of not using the lift when it smelled.’

‘What, and pissed in the lift to discourage her from using it?’

‘It was just a thought.’

‘It would be too good to be true, wouldn’t it? A suspect who covered the floor of the lift with his DNA for us to find?’ The DI considered it. ‘No, it won’t work, Ben. He couldn’t possibly have known Sandra Birley would work late that night.’

‘No? Well, not unless –’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless he worked in the same office.’

‘We have to look at all her colleagues, then,’ said Hitchens. ‘How many are there?’

‘About forty people work at Peak Mutual,’ said Fry. ‘Male and female.’

‘Male and female? Good point, DS Fry. We mustn’t assume we’re looking for a male offender at this stage.’

‘The phone call, sir?’ said somebody.

‘The phone call may turn out to have nothing to do with the abduction.’

DCI Kessen was present at the briefing, but sitting to one side and letting DI Hitchens take the floor. Fry wasn’t surprised to see the acting head of CID. If the Birley case became a murder enquiry, Kessen would be appointed Senior Investigating Officer. But for now, they had no body, no evidence that there had been a serious crime. The possibility that Sandra Birley had been abducted from the Clappergate car park was just that – a possibility.

‘Are we going to get the husband to make an appeal, sir?’ asked Cooper, raising his hand. Fry nodded reluctantly to herself. At least that was one tactic they could use without committing themselves to anything.

‘We think it’s too early yet,’ said Hitchens. ‘Besides, he isn’t in any condition at the moment. I spoke to the family liaison officer first thing this morning, and it seems Mr Birley’s emotional state has deteriorated considerably since yesterday.’

Then it turned out that the two retired DCs had been working an early shift, too. They’d already been through the CCTV footage from the Clappergate multi-storey. That wasn’t anybody’s favourite job. Feelings in the room began to warm towards them.

‘First of all, we’ve eliminated the owners of the other two vehicles that were left in the car park overnight,’ said the one with the black-and-white tie. ‘The first bloke had drunk too much in the pub and sensibly decided to get a taxi. He turned up to get his car next morning, so we got a statement from him. He didn’t see anything. But how would he, when he was in the pub at the time?’

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