by Steven Dunne
Brook got out of the chair. ‘Good idea. Night, darling.’ He turned at the door. ‘And Terri, you’ve already helped me a lot.’
She smiled at him. ‘Night, Dad.’
Brook closed the living-room door and sat at the kitchen table to read more of Adele’s diary. When he picked it up, he noticed the word Diary had been split by a hyphen added in the middle of the word. Di-ary. Why? Brook held it away from him. Di — could she be a female friend? Was Adele personalising her memoirs to make the diary an imaginary comrade?
He opened it at the first passage again. The entry was for I January 2011 but Adele had crossed out every date of every entry and replaced it with Some number, some month. WGAF?
Believe nothing. It’s not real. None of it. It pours out of the screen. And the idiots suck it up. Mums and dads, neighbours too. Look at their faces, all aglow, deformed by defeat.
‘Hallelujah. We believe.’
Here is the news. Drive to work, drive back, sit for hours plugged into the stream of stuff flowing from the tube. The surrender of life, the move from first hand to second. A headshake here, a tut there, a ‘serves them bloody well right’ somewhere else. There’s a Japanese earthquake but it’s not real. How can it be? We’re not there. There’s no tsunami. Those poor people. Look at them run. Now that’s entertainment.
A girl’s body is found. They put up the maps. It’s real. It happened here. It could happen to you. I wish it would. I’d be a star. Mum’s mouth sags in awe. ‘I’ve driven on that road. Who would’ve thought?’ No one, why start now?
Bedtime. Turn it off. The Machine Stops. Time to wake up. Time to dream. No time for reality, a better world beckons from the pillow. Even waking is a dream. A dream that today will be better, kinder, full of love and hope.
The real wake-up beckons. ‘Have a nice day, dear.’ ‘You too.’ And the hours start to die, killing the day. It’s over. File it with the others. U for Unmemorable, Unreal. Unrepeatable? If only.
Same old world. Not waking is the answer. Dream forever. Like the Lady of Shallot, I am half sick of shadows.
My hand is real. I examine it as I write. My body is real. My vagina is real. My breasts are real. I can still feel AR’s weight on top of me, inside me. My whole being throbbing. Lungs filling. Such exquisite pain. I am, I am, I am.
Brook turned the page to a fresh entry.
Dad’s face when I told Mum I was going out with someone (AR). I could almost hear the blood rushing to his head. He was in the next room but I didn’t have to shout. He listens to everything I say with bated breath. Words are so powerful. To think the word ‘boyfriend’ can deliver such a kick in the teeth. It was all I could do not to march in there and laugh in his spluttering face. And Mother? Stupid bitch. She doesn’t even know what her man is thinking, wanting. I could’ve kept AR secret and let Dad keep hoping, but I need to crush his heart now. I can’t go on. I can’t stand being around him. My own father. He comes to stand next to me just to smell me, like I’m prey. I’ve ignored his sly looks at my body too long, his enthusiastic hugs. Think I don’t know you lie on my bed when I’m not home, Dad? Give it up. I don’t want to dress like a nun around you. I don’t want to cover my tits. Cover your eyes, old man. Cover your eyes.
Brook read the last entry again. Jim Watson was telling the truth. Surely he would have removed that last section, had he been censoring his daughter’s thoughts. The missing pages must have been cut by someone else. Adele? It seemed likely.
Brook picked up the ESDA copy of the page below the absent pages. The technicians had not picked up all the text with the Electrostatic Detection Apparatus but there was enough to show that Adele had created the script for the leaflet. Live Forever. Immortal. Beautiful. She’d written the same words several times in a variety of ways, presumably as a design exercise.
Brook turned back to the diary and read other entries.
A strange boy joined our literature group. Russell Thomson. He hardly speaks and he can’t bear to look people in the eye. He has a camcorder on his wrist and doesn’t take it off. He looks like he has Special Needs and even Wilson thinks he’s smarter than him but he’s wrong. There’s something about him. I don’t know. It’s like he knows something that the rest of us can never know and he’s just working out a way to explain it to us. I saw him with his mum the other day. She’s beautiful and it’s hard to imagine the two are related. Wilson saw her too and was all over her like a ten year old with a toffee apple. He says he’s going to pop her if it’s the last thing he does. Bad boy. Dirty boy.
Then it was back to her relationship with Rifkind and the passion spilled off the page again.
Adam Fucking Rifkind. No more secrecy. No more sneaking around. No more AR code, Adam Fucking Rifkind. I should Facebook the shit out of your guilty secret, then where would you be? You think you’re a god to women. Is that why you don’t want me and say you don’t love me? You only love yourself. You want your slag of a wife and the brand new screaming receptacle of piss and shit she’s carrying. Fuck you, Adam Rifkind. (Good title for a poem.) Fuck everything about you. And another thing. Your novel is shit. You think you’re God’s gift to literature. You’re not. No more suggestions from me. Or is that the point? I’ve cured your infantile story, put a line through the puerile, and you don’t need me now.
Brook smiled. Rifkind in a nutshell. Adele was very astute. Was? He hoped she was alive, hoped she was too clever to give her life for fleeting fame and the momentary regret of loved ones.
He turned to her notebook of poems and read the piece that she’d composed on the blotter of her desk before transferring it to her notebook.
Live Forever. Question Mark
Life is not a rehearsal, They say
Life is not an audition, They say
Life is something that happens while
You’re making plans. They say
Live Forever? Make your mark
Be someone. Face on the telly.
Or embrace mediocrity, scuttle around,
Do stuff, buy stuff, fuck stuff,
Sand through the fingers, draining away.
Does this make a living? They don’t say.
He looked at the clock. Gone midnight. He took a final sip of whisky. Why was he devoting so much time to this girl and her friends? They’d run away and didn’t want to be found. They weren’t dead, he was sure of it — almost sure. Not like Phil Ward. Phil was out there, facing death. In his mind, Brook had already signed the death certificate.
Concentrate on the hope. Terri had come through, survived her crisis without him. She didn’t need him any more. Perhaps she never did. Concentrate on Adele. Adele was alive. Adele was his daughter now. He could still save her. He could be a proper father to her. He could pore over her life in the reasonable knowledge that he’d never have to stand over her alabaster corpse. He could read her deepest darkest thoughts, and take comfort from the notion that one day they might actually meet, while deep in his subconscious Brook knew that the next time he saw Phil Ward, he would be on a mortuary slab. What good was his lap and a half now?
With a feeling of dread, Brook picked up Adele’s diary and turned to the copy of the final page again. He reread the three words and tried to put a positive spin on them. She was referring to the end of her life as it had been lived to this point — looking forward to the new, to her rebirth as an internet celebrity. That had to be it. That had to be the meaning. TIME TO DIE.
Nineteen
Saturday, 28 May
After three hours’ sleep, Brook tiptoed down the stairs early next morning and made tea. He caught sight of his head in the kitchen window. He’d removed the bandage and replaced it with a plaster over the stitches. The area was still swollen and the bruising was beginning to colour.
He took his tea into the tiny office at the back of the cottage, turned on his computer, typed in the Deity address and loaded the page. For no particular reason he watched the archived footage of both Deity broadcasts again but gleaned
no fresh inspiration. The countdown to the next broadcast had dipped under eleven hours.
He decided to search sites with information on Ancient Egyptian burial rites and clicked on a few, confirming some of Dr Petty’s conclusions about The Embalmer’s treatment of the vagrants’ bodies. He read up on the procedures. Petty was right. The Ancient Egyptians believed the heart, rather than the brain, was the seat of emotions and was necessary for the dead to proceed safely to the afterlife. After the organs were removed, including the brain through the nostrils, the heart was put back into the cavity as it had been with McTiernan and Kirk.
He read more information on embalming and made a list of some of the chemicals required. Maybe they could find Ozzy that way. Brook sniffed the air and then his arm. He could still smell whisky despite a shower and change of clothes. He looked around and spied the whisky glass he’d used the previous night. It still had a few dregs in it. Brook picked it up and padded into the kitchen to make more tea.
He was about to rinse out the leaded tumbler when he stopped and looked at the pale golden liquid. He stared for a few seconds then washed out the glass and opened a cupboard to put it away. There was a loaf of sliced bread in there. Terri had bought it for her breakfasts. Brook gazed at it in confusion while he thought things through. A moment later he broke into a grin and returned to the computer.
‘And people worry about my mental health,’ he said, typing another topic into the search engine.
Half an hour later, Brook was sitting contentedly on the garden bench sucking in the cool damp air and smoking a cigarette stolen from his daughter’s handbag. It was just after five and he had the world to himself. The telephone destroyed his reverie and Brook launched himself barefoot back into the house to answer it before Terri could wake.
‘You’re up.’
‘John. What is it?’ said Brook, breathless.
‘Another body.’
‘Jock or Phil?’ asked Brook.
‘You’d better come see for yourself.’
Terri pulled the VW on to Meadow Road and as close to the crime-scene tape as she could manage. Brook opened the door before the car had stopped and stepped out. The noise of the river was more apparent here over the quiet buzz of Derby’s city centre.
‘You’re sure you can find your way back?’ he said to his daughter.
Terri was yawning again but managed an affirmative grunt with a nod for back-up. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said once her jaw was back under control.
Brook closed the passenger door and watched her reverse the car and speed away. He turned to see Noble heading over to him. They exchanged nods then Noble led Brook across the small triangular green space towards the concrete wall at the river’s edge. The increasing noise of the weir was competing with the occasional car roaring over the St Alkmund’s Way flyover nearby.
The river bank had clearly been a hive of activity but now the body was recovered, men and machinery stood idle, as Scene of Crime Officers walked to and from the screens hiding the corpse from potential onlookers. As he approached, Brook nodded to Keith Pullin and a knot of other emergency workers sharing a joke and a cigarette.
‘Who is it?’ he said to Noble.
‘It’s hard to tell. But it’s not Jock or Phil Ward. It looks like one of our students.’
Brook shot him a glance. ‘Male or female?’ he asked quickly.
‘Male. He’s been in the water several days and the blows to the head are probably from being smacked around at the bottom of the weir.’
Without knowing why, Brook’s heart began to beat a little easier. He arrived at the body laid out on a plastic sheet. It was a well-built young male, fully dressed. The face and neck were discoloured and the body was severely bloated from the gases of decomposition. The eyes were gone, devoured by fish and microbes.
‘Several days?’ said Brook, walking around the corpse.
‘Probably more than a week, with that much bloating,’ observed Noble.
‘Then why didn’t he surface sooner?’
Noble nodded towards a pile of wet stones. ‘The body was partially weighted down or it would have popped up sooner.’
‘No ID?’
‘Nothing in his pockets except this.’ Noble pulled out an evidence bag. It contained a smaller, sealable plastic bag. Inside were the mushy remains of a few tablets.
‘Ecstasy?’
‘Or PCP. That’s cheap at the moment.’
Brook got down on his haunches. The clothes were intact along the body’s left flank but from the bloating and the youthful clothing and haircut, Brook already knew this wasn’t the work of The Embalmer. ‘You’re right. It’s not one of our vagrants,’ he muttered. ‘Messing with our heads, all right.’
‘Sir?’
Brook looked up at Noble. ‘How could I be so wrong?’
‘I don’t see. .’
‘I didn’t take it seriously, John. Four young people are missing and I didn’t take it seriously.’
‘Nobody did.’
‘Well, it’s serious now.’ Brook looked at the recently bagged hands, clenched into a fist, bright green weeds protruding from between the knuckles. ‘Where’s Higginbottom?’
‘Been and gone. He said from the teeth he’s confident it’s a teenager. Definite drowning and no obvious signs of foul play.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Well, the stones rule out an accident.’
‘Maybe some of this head trauma will turn out to be premortem,’ said Brook.
‘Higginbottom says not. He also said rigor’s dissipated so the deceased has been in the water at least five days, but to float with stones in his pocket is more likely a week or more.’
‘So around the night of the party would be about right.’ Brook stood back from the body. ‘Russell or Kyle? Can you tell?’
‘No.’
Brook ran his eye over the Nike trainers, the green combat trousers, Derby County football shirt and green flak jacket. The jacket had large open pockets from which the stones had been removed.
‘Last seen wearing?’ prompted Brook.
‘I’ll need to check the paperwork,’ answered Noble. ‘I’m pretty sure Kyle was jeans and a blue hoodie.’
‘You’re right.’
‘What about Russell?’
‘His mum wasn’t sure,’ answered Brook. He turned away and stepped from behind the screen leaving SOCO to photograph, scrape, bag and tag the remains before removal to the mortuary.
He walked with Noble to the edge of the river. ‘Speaking of Yvette Thomson, do you remember Len Poole saying he didn’t know her?’
‘At Alice Kennedy’s, yes.’
‘I think he lied. I dropped off Russell’s computer last night and Len was there and they didn’t behave like strangers.’
‘Maybe they’re not. Len’s originally from North Wales, same as her. Don Crump told me last night when I dropped into the lab. And don’t forget he’s moving back there with Mrs Kennedy.’
‘Chester’s not in Wales, John. And why would Len Poole’s name come up?’
‘I didn’t mention him but Don’s put in nearly thirty years. He knew Len before he retired. He heard he was back.’
Brook nodded. ‘I suppose Poole must know a lot of the old guard.’
‘I would think. I can run a background on Poole if you want?’
‘I do want,’ said Brook. ‘There’s a connection with Yvette Thomson and I’d like to know what. What news from the lab?’
‘Don was whingeing about SOCO. He said they’re slipping. He’s trying to match the blood from the plaster.’
‘And?’
‘It isn’t Kyle’s, Becky’s or Adele’s.’
‘What about Russell?’
‘That’s just it. SOCO did a number on Russell Thomson’s bedroom and didn’t come up with any useable DNA.’
‘Nothing? No hair?’ Brook looked at Noble. ‘They’ve lived there six months — is that even possible?’
‘Unusual not impossible,’ sai
d Noble. ‘Russell can’t have spent much time there.’
‘It might explain the missing toothbrush.’
‘Toothbrush?’
‘There was only one at the house. It was Yvette’s.’
‘Or maybe SOCO are slipping.’
‘They’ve got a lot on, John, but if that is Russell we just pulled out of the river, they need to get back over there and try again.’
‘What about dental?’ asked Noble.
‘Get on it. Yvette and Russell have moved around a lot but there must be records.’
They turned and walked towards the group of emergency rescue workers chatting by the river wall. Pullin nodded at Brook.
‘Keith,’ Brook said, after a pause to double-check his memory.
‘That’s correct, Inspector,’ answered Pullin with a grin. His colleagues joined in. They obviously knew the background to his reply.
Brook pressed on. ‘How deep is it down there?’ he said, looking down at the water.
‘Deep enough.’
‘We’re missing four students,’ continued Brook. ‘This looks like one of them. Could there be more bodies down there?’
Pullin narrowed his eyes. ‘If they’re weighed down — it’s possible.’ There was a long pause. ‘Would you like us to have a look?’
Brook smiled his reply and Pullin turned away disconsolately to brief his divers.
Brook sauntered along the river wall, looking across the Derwent to Riverside Gardens, with its steps leading down to the water. Swans and ducks were gliding around on the deceptively still surface. Beyond stood the City Council House and further round to the right an inquisitive crowd was gathering on Exeter Bridge even at such an early hour.
‘Tell me we’ve got some film to look at, John.’
‘Cooper’s already at the Control Room.’
A commotion from Meadow Road turned both their heads. A yellow taxicab was pulling away and its passenger made a bee-line for the boundary tape.