by JL Merrow
Phil accepted his tea with a nod. Graham clung to his as if it were the only thing holding him back from the abyss. One knee had started jiggling, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. Despite the clutter, despite the smallness of the room, it felt empty and cold.
“Right,” Phil said with an annoyed glance my way. “Tell us what happened.”
Graham took a gulp of his tea. He didn’t complain about the sugar, so I reckoned either he usually drank it sweet, or he just didn’t have the energy to complain about it. “We were going to watch a DVD. She’d been working late a lot in the last few months, so we hadn’t had an evening together for ages. That was why . . .” He trailed off and stared into space.
“That was why you had the argument,” Phil prompted.
He drank another mouthful of tea and nodded. “I didn’t want her to go. I said it wasn’t reasonable, she should tell him she couldn’t make it. But she said it’d only take half an hour.”
“Did she say what it was about?”
Graham frowned. “You asked me this. Before. I told you—”
“This is for Tom’s benefit, Graham,” Phil interrupted, a lot more patiently than he’d have done if it’d been me, I was sure. And anyway, why did Phil want me to hear all this from Graham? Couldn’t he just have told me himself and saved Graham a bit of grief?
“All right.” He drank some more of his tea and stared out of the window. “All she said was, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go out for a bit. It’s the boss.’ She said we could start the film when she got back. Like she wasn’t going to be gone for long, you know?”
“Did she take anything with her?”
“Her handbag. Her iPad was in it.”
“Did she put it in specially?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her. She always carried it around, anyway. She used to read books on it.”
“Did she seem worried? Annoyed? Furtive?”
Graham’s knuckles were white on the handle of his mug. I hoped he wasn’t about to snap it off. “She was . . . annoyed with me for making such a big deal about it. The last time I ever saw her, and she was annoyed with me.”
“But before that?” Phil’s voice was soft and coaxing, a tone I didn’t associate with him at all.
“She was . . . puzzled, I think?” Graham frowned. “Yes. But it was almost like she was pleased too. Like she wanted to go. More than she wanted an evening in with me.”
I didn’t need to look at his face to see how much that hurt him. The pain in his voice was already almost more than I could bear.
“Well?” Phil demanded as he strode away from Graham’s flat.
There was a cold wind blowing old newspapers and discarded carrier bags through the estate, and my hip ached as I hurried to keep up. It didn’t improve my mood. “Well what?”
The breeze ruffled Phil’s blond hair, but he looked snug and warm in his posh body warmer, the git. “Was he hiding anything?”
I stared at him. “How the hell should I know? I’m not a bloody lie detector.”
Phil frowned. “I thought you could tell if things were hidden.”
“Yes—things. Actual stuff. Not if someone’s telling porkies. And it doesn’t just happen, either. I have to, you know, think about it. So if you want me to find something, next time just ask me, okay?”
“How does that work, then?” His tone was curious. “I mean, how did you first find out you could do it?”
I shrugged. “Don’t remember. I mean, I was a kid when it started. Far as I know, I’ve always been able to do it. Even when I was a toddler.”
“Have you got brothers and sisters? Because I bet they just loved you.”
I had to unclench my teeth to answer. “I’ve got one of each. Both older than me. If I’m lucky, they send me a Christmas card, but apart from that, we don’t see each other.”
“Christ, what did you find? Hard-core porn? Pregnancy tests?”
“Amongst other things. Why the bloody hell do you think I kept so quiet about it at school?”
Phil laughed, the unsympathetic bastard. “Are you having me on?”
I was going to get toothache at this rate. “What about your family? All right with you turning out bent, are they?”
He didn’t answer, which had the predictable effect of making me feel about three feet tall.
“Look, I’m sorry—”
He cut me off. “Forget it.” We got back into his car and headed off to St. Albans in silence.
I hadn’t planned on being the one to break it, but as we neared Fleetville, a thought that’d been nagging at me earlier resurfaced. “Anyway, I thought you were on Graham’s side. Why do you think he’s hiding something?”
“Because everyone does.” He didn’t even sound bitter about it. Just matter-of-fact, like this was something everybody knew.
“Well, maybe—but it doesn’t have to be anything bad. Not if they’re innocent.”
“Bollocks. Still believe in the tooth fairy as well, do you?”
“Does it make you happy, believing the worst of everyone? Because I’d rather give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“You’ll learn.” He parked in front of my house, pulling on the hand brake so viciously I wouldn’t have been surprised if it’d come off in his hand. I didn’t bother to argue anymore; my headache was bad enough already. “And no, it doesn’t,” he said as I got out of the car.
I leaned back down despite myself. “What?”
His eyes were haunted. “It doesn’t make me happy, all right?”
Then he revved the engine and put the car back in gear, so I had no choice but to close the door and let him go.
I wasn’t expecting to hear from Phil again. Morrison, I mean. I thought he’d have decided my peculiar talent was of no further use—and it wasn’t like we’d been getting on all that well.
He called me the next day. I was in the van, just coming down King Harry Lane, so I pulled into the lay-by next to the park to take the call.
Not that I thought it might be him or anything.
He didn’t bother with hello. “Can you come round to Graham’s?”
Again? What the hell had happened? “What, now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The police have taken him in for questioning again.”
“And?” It was like pulling teeth.
“I want to have a look around his place while he’s not there.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “That’s illegal. And, hang on, I thought you and him were mates?”
“We won’t be breaking in. Melanie’s mum gave me a key. Are you coming?”
I sighed. It was a good thing I hadn’t given the customer a definite time I’d be there. “Fine. I’ll be around fifteen minutes, okay?”
The gods of the traffic lights smiled on me, and I got there in ten. Phil was sitting in his car outside the flat. Probably tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, but if so, I didn’t manage to catch him at it. As I parked my van behind him, he got out of the Golf and stood waiting for me on the path, arms folded.
“Ready for the crime spree?” I asked, tongue in cheek.
He almost smiled. “All in a day’s work.”
We set off across the grass to Graham’s front door. “What do you reckon we’ll find?”
Phil shrugged. “Maybe nothing. That’s the best-case scenario.”
“And the worst-case scenario?”
“Oh, blood-stained clothes, murder weapon, and a video recording of the whole thing so he can sit down and watch it on cold winter evenings when there’s nothing on the box?”
It was a bit sick, but we both laughed. Phil’s laugh was a low, quiet rumble of genuine amusement that took me right back to when we’d been at school, reminding me I’d noticed more about him than his physique back then. You get a bunch of teenage lads together, often it’s like they’re competing to see who can laugh the loudest, but he’d never been the sort to fake it like that.
&nb
sp; Funny, the stuff I’d forgotten about him. I shook my head. “Seriously, I can’t see Graham as the killer. I mean, come on, this has practically wiped him out.”
“Guilt can do that to a bloke.” He looked away from me.
“Got a few skeletons in your own closet, have you?” I couldn’t resist needling him. “Still, at least you’re not sharing it with them anymore. Must have been bloody uncomfortable, that—all those bony elbows.”
He gave me a look as we jogged up the stairs to the flat. “Yeah, well, I’m surprised you ever came out of yours.”
“Why?” I asked, suspicious.
He smirked. “Wouldn’t have been short of headroom, would you?”
“Are you making fun of my height? Don’t answer that. Where do you want me to start, then?”
Phil shrugged. “I don’t know. Just do your stuff. Get out your divining rod, or whatever it is you do.”
“I’ll get mine out if you show me yours,” I said with a leer. He pointedly turned away to start searching a bookshelf.
I sighed and started looking. It wasn’t easy to concentrate with Phil in the room, so I decamped to the bathroom—you wouldn’t believe the kinds of stuff I’ve found in toilet cisterns over the years. Red faces all round, and a husband who’d be getting an ear-bashing when he got home from work.
I had to do it the old-fashioned way, using my eyes—all that water messes with the vibes—but all I found in Graham’s bathroom was a flourishing crop of mildew. And it looked like the loo would need a new siphon pretty soon.
I moved on to the bedroom. It was small—barely bigger than the admittedly king-size bed. There were built-in wardrobes with not an inch of door clearance to spare, and a small chest of drawers that obviously served—had served—as Melanie’s dressing table. It was covered in sad, abandoned little trinkets of costume jewellery, and various skin and hair products, all cheap brands. Maybe the iPad had been a present from her parents—Melanie’s salary must have gone to support her and Graham, which made me wonder what he was doing for money these days. A photo stood in the centre, showing Melanie’s parents looking around twenty years younger than they had when I’d met them.
There was definitely something there—the mental tinnitus started up immediately. Trouble was, it was coming from all directions, making it hard to isolate what was where. Most people hide stuff in the bedroom. Not just what you’d think, either. Besides the porn and the marital aids, there’s usually jewellery, old love letters, all kinds of stuff. I tried to get a bead on the nastiest trail. There was a greasy, dirty, shameful sort of feel to one of the tracks. It yanked at my mind, and I took a step towards the bed—
“Find anything?” Phil’s voice grated in my ear, making me jump a mile and totally lose concentration.
“Chance’d be a fine thing with you yelling in my ear the minute I get close,” I snapped.
He backed off, holding up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to smudge your aura or scare away the spirit guides, whatever. But we don’t know how long they’re going to keep him in, so we can’t afford to hang around.”
“I know, all right?” I sighed. I turned back away from him and tried to regain my scattered focus.
Phil, for once, was quiet. Didn’t mean he wasn’t distracting me, though. I could imagine those hefty forearms sliding around my waist from behind, that hard body pressing up against my back . . .
Damn it. “I need you to leave the room, okay?”
“What? You’re telling me you can’t do it while I’m watching? How old are you?”
“It’s just—you make me nervous, standing behind me like that. Happy now?”
He didn’t answer, but walked slowly out from behind me and around the bed, until he was standing pressed against the wall to one side of it. In my field of vision, but not right in my face. “Better?”
It was, actually. I tried to relax. My vision unfocused, and the tugging started up in my brain again—in several different directions, like it had before. My eyes dropped half-closed, and then I had it. Clearly fate liked a laugh as much as the next girl, because the strongest vibes were coming from right next to Phil. I strode up to him, thought, What the hell, and dropped to my knees.
His expression was priceless. Managing not to laugh, I felt all around the corner of the pine bed frame—and found a packet taped to it. It felt plasticky but soft—like, say, a packet of some kind of powder.
Shit. “I think I’ve found Graham’s drugs stash,” I said, looking up. Phil seemed around fifty feet tall from this angle, a big unfriendly giant. Getting down even lower, I managed to peel away the tape holding the packet to the wood, and I passed it up to him. It was a sturdy plastic Ziploc bag holding half a dozen little baggies, and the powder in the smaller bags was light brown in colour—for some reason I’d been expecting white, but maybe that was just coke. Like I said, I don’t do drugs and I never have.
Phil echoed my thoughts. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Can you tell what it is?”
His scowl deepened. “It’ll be heroin. The stupid prick. I’m going to kill him.”
I felt all around the bed frame again, but there was nothing else. Awkwardly, because Phil was still taking up way too much space, I stood, my hip giving a sharp twinge to remind me it didn’t hold with crawling around on floors.
As I hissed in a breath, I felt Phil’s hand under my elbow. Supporting me. Sending electric tingles up my arm from the point of contact. Suddenly this whole situation seemed way too intimate. I muttered something I hoped he’d interpret as thanks and stepped back, hurriedly, to a distance where I couldn’t feel the warmth of him anymore.
“Are you going to tell the police?” I asked, hoping my heartbeat would slow down now.
Come to that, Phil seemed a bit short of breath himself. “What the hell do you think? If they find out about the drugs, they’ll stop looking for anyone else. Christ, what a wanker. I’m going to put the fear of God into that stupid little tosser. What the bloody hell was he thinking?” Phil paced up and down the narrow bit of space in the bedroom so fast I expected to see sparks flying from the cheap carpet.
Maybe he saw it as a personal failure or something. “Don’t a lot of ex-addicts slip up in times of stress? I mean, this hasn’t exactly been a picnic for him.”
“So handing the police a motive on a silver platter is going to help his case? You know what they’ll think: he started using again; she came home from work and found him high as a kite; they had a massive row; and he bashed her head in.”
I winced as his words brought back images of Melanie, lying dead up on Nomansland Common. “Look, I hate to say it—but maybe that’s how it was?” I held up a hand to ward him off as he advanced on me like a pissed-off pit bull. “People change when they’re on drugs. Do stuff they wouldn’t dream of, normally.”
Phil’s glare deepened to an extent that started to get a bit worrying—then he sighed and sat down heavily on the bed, his face in his hands. “I just don’t want to believe it. We got, well, close, back when he was picking himself up from the streets. And no, not like that, all right? It kind of . . . Helping him got me through a difficult time.”
I wondered what that had been, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate me asking about it. I sat down next to him, and put a hand awkwardly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. What were you hoping I’d find? Really?”
“Graham told me, before, she’d been a bit distant in the last week or so. Like she’d had something on her mind.” He lifted his head, and immediately that weird, unsettling intimacy was back, so I let my hand fall from his shoulder. A tiny frown creased his forehead, just for a moment. “I can think of a couple of possibilities. She could have been having an affair—in which case, there’s another bloke running around who’s a prime suspect for the murder. Or maybe there was something funny going on where she worked. That call from the boss—sounds dodgy to me. Particularly as I happen to know he’s denied meeting her that night.”
“So . . . y
ou weren’t looking for dirt on Graham at all?” I frowned. I wasn’t too keen on the way he’d been holding out on me.
“Oh, for—” He stood suddenly and flung his arms out, so wide I ducked instinctively. “I’m looking for whatever there is to find, all right? I don’t know who killed her. I don’t know. I’m hoping it wasn’t Graham—but if there’s evidence he did it, I’m not going to cover it up.”
“Apart from the drugs,” I reminded him, nettled.
“That’s just evidence he’s a prat!”
I stood, not much liking the added height difference with him standing and me not. “It doesn’t mean he’s a prat; it just means he was desperate. Have you ever tried to give up something you were desperate for?”
It was a rhetorical question, so I was surprised when he answered it. “What the hell’s that got to do with you?”
“You were on drugs?”
“What? No, I wasn’t.” His fists clenched, and I tensed, wondering what the hell this was all about. Phil turned away from me, and I heard him take a couple of deep breaths. “Was there anything else? Hidden in here, I mean.”
“Yeah.” I frowned, not that he could see me. It was probably just as well. “You’ll need to get the drugs out of here, though, if you want me to find it.”
“Why? We’ve found them—they’re not hidden anymore.” He turned but made no move to do as I’d asked, the annoying git.
“I don’t know why! They’re still giving off vibes, all right?” Actually, they were already shouting at me a lot less brightly—oh, you know what I mean—but I was damned if I was going to backtrack now.
He stared at me, eyes narrowed. I stared stubbornly back.
“Fine.” Phil stomped out, plastic baggies of heroin stashed in his pocket.