Already Dead

28

Ben Cooper had walked across the field towards the old cottage he could see standing on its own at the end of a muddy track. It really was old. Random stone walls, slipped and broken tiles on the roof, an overgrown patch of garden, rank with elder and willowherb. It had probably once been associated with a quarry, or provided accommodation for a farm worker. Its position was too uninviting to be considered suitable for anything else. Well, a holiday cottage, perhaps. Holiday cottages could be situated anywhere these days. But this was no tourist destination. It would never get any AA stars.

Cooper saw a splash of bright red and the outline of a piece of agricultural equipment standing on the edge of a field. A thousand-kilo-sized Portequip bull beef feeder with a rain canopy, positioned close against the stone wall. He passed a long line of individual sheep pens running along the edge of the sweeping pasture below Eagle Rocks, each pen with its own gate and corrugated iron roof, like a sort of sheep motel.

A death wish sheep had hurled itself off the rocks above. Its body lay broken on the track, the flesh on its head and legs already picked clean from the bones. Nothing to do with the floods, or with Spikey Clarke. Sheep were genetically suicidal.

Close up, the cottage barely looked habitable. The dirty curtains in the windows might have been there for decades. But when he knocked on the door, it was answered fairly quickly. An old man looked out at him with weak blue eyes, one skeletal hand clutching the door knob, an old grey cardigan sagging from his emaciated chest.

‘Hicklin? Is it Mr Roger Hicklin?’ asked Cooper.

‘The very same. What can I do for you?’

‘I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.’

‘Are you selling something?’

‘No, sir.’

Hicklin peered at him closely, and seemed to come to a decision.

‘Come in out of the rain.’

‘Thank you.’

Cooper shook some of the rain off his waxed coat on to the flags in the hallway. ‘It doesn’t look as though it’s going to stop,’ he said.

‘Not likely.’ Hicklin laughed wheezily. ‘I’d like to think it’s the Great Flood. You know … the Deluge.’

Cooper could hear the capital letters, and guessed Mr Hicklin was referring to the Old Testament story of Noah and his ark. The rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. It wasn’t far off the mark this summer.

‘You would, sir?’

‘Well, the world needs a good clean-out, don’t you think?’ said Hicklin. ‘We’ve turned it into a global cesspit over the centuries. It’s time that Mother Nature washed it all away and started again. Surely you must agree?’

‘No comment,’ said Cooper. Even as he said it, he reflected that he must have sat in on too many suspect interviews. ‘No comment, no comment’ — he’d heard it so often it had become a mantra, a line he couldn’t get out of his head, like the chorus of a cheesy pop song. It was a phrase that solicitors trained their clients to repeat ad nauseam, in order to avoid committing themselves.

So why had he evaded an answer to Hicklin’s question? Did the world need a good clean-out? Maybe. But not in this way.

He followed Hicklin through the hallway into a small sitting room. The grubby curtains were matched by the damp wallpaper and a few feet of grimy, rubbish-strewn carpet. The old man offered him one of the two armchairs in the room, and settled himself down in the other. Once he was inside the house, Cooper soon became aware of a steady drip, drip, drip. Not a regular pattern, but an irregular sound like a piece of avant-garde music, imaginatively played on plastic bucket and steel saucepan.

‘Aye, the Deluge. Quite a lot of us think that we’re living in depraved and degenerate times,’ said Hicklin with an enigmatic smile. ‘I’ve been waiting decades for a nice, deadly disease to wipe out a large part of the earth’s population. That’s the only answer to the situation the human race has got itself into. It’s the natural solution, the way that Mother Nature deals with chronic overcrowding in the population of any other species. I’m certain it will happen one day.’

Cooper just nodded in acknowledgement, recognising that he was obliged to listen to Hicklin riding this hobby horse if he was to get the chance to ask him any questions. Some people didn’t get many visitors. They stored up things like this, went over and over them in their own minds, and needed to let off steam when they got the opportunity. Cooper guessed he must be the first visitor to this cottage in days, perhaps weeks.

‘What will happen one day?’ he said.

‘Ah, well. These floods and hurricanes and earthquakes are all very well, but disasters are a drop in the ocean. The only thing that can do the job is an outbreak of a new flu strain, like the one back in 1918 that killed five per cent of the world’s population. Do you know it caused more deaths than the Great War did in five years of slaughter? With the enormous increase in air travel and the expansion of global trade, pandemics spread even more quickly now. One of those every month for a while would sort things out nicely.’

‘Oh, nicely,’ said Cooper.

He found it difficult to tell from Mr Hicklin’s enigmatic little smile how far he was joking, and what exactly he was serious about. A lot of Derbyshire people were like that. They could tell you anything with a straight face, and then think you were simple for believing a single word they said.

‘People are always predicting the end of the world. The Apocalypse, the Rapture, the last day of the Mayan calendar. But it never happens, more’s the pity. We live in a strange world. And people are the strangest things in it.’

‘You won’t hear me arguing with that, sir.’

‘So I suppose that’s why we have all these hippies about here,’ said Hicklin.

‘Hippies?’

‘Students, ramblers, campers, motorcyclists. You know.’

Cooper nodded. He’d heard it said, or read it somewhere. As far as some of these old farmers and quarrymen were concerned, a hippy was anyone not wearing a tweed cap and wellies.

As he sat in Hicklin’s armchair, Cooper began to notice that the sounds around him were changing, their pitch rising and becoming more liquid as the buckets gradually filled with water. Drip, drip … ping.

Hicklin noticed his attention straying.

‘Lead,’ he said. ‘You just can’t get it these days. Or at least, not without nicking it off someone’s roof.’

Cooper produced his identification. Mr Hicklin should have asked for it before he let him into the house, of course. But Cooper had felt reluctant to use it, and it might not have got him in any more easily.

‘You probably don’t remember me,’ he said. ‘I’m a police officer.’

‘I thought you were,’ said Hicklin.

‘I dealt with a case some years ago that you were involved in. You were a victim of the Gibson brothers.’

‘They bled me dry,’ said Hicklin. ‘I should have stood up to them, I suppose.’

‘Sometimes it’s not so easy, sir.’

‘Has something happened?’

‘I’m following up on a new inquiry.’

It was a vague enough statement, but he would have a hard job justifying it if he was ever challenged on the truth of it. ‘They were blackmailing you, weren’t they?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Well, you’ll know all about it. Ryan was the one who put the squeeze on me, and enjoyed doing it too. He has a brother, who was just as nasty.’

‘Sean.’

‘Yes, Sean. Ryan and Sean Gibson. Two signs that we’re living in a cesspit, if ever I saw them.’

‘What they were blackmailing you for — it wasn’t very serious, as I recall,’ said Cooper.

‘No. I was only siphoning off a few stores — an air filter, a box of washers, some small electrical items. And farmers have all kinds of uses for a length of conveyor belt. I was just trying to make a bit extra to keep us going. It might seem like nothing to some people now. What’s a bit of thieving these days? But I felt ashamed of what I was doing. And I knew it would have killed Mary if she’d found out where the money came from. She thought I was working overtime.’

‘Mary. Yes, that’s your wife.’

Hicklin followed his gaze as he looked round the old cottage, taking in the damp wallpaper, the dirty curtains, the carpet covered with rubbish.

‘Yes, Mary died anyway,’ said Hicklin quietly. ‘A heart attack. And I lost my job. So it was all for nothing.’

Cooper shifted uncomfortably. ‘Mr Hicklin, I remember you, and I think I know the sort of man you are. You believe in justice, don’t you?’

‘I believe in it,’ said Hicklin. ‘But I don’t expect it. Not any more.’

‘But I think you might have kept track of what happened to the Gibson brothers. Their court cases, the length of their sentences, when they were released. Perhaps where they’re living now?’

With suddenly astute eyes, Hicklin studied him for a long moment. ‘What is this about really?’

‘I can’t tell you exactly, sir.’

Hicklin seemed to come to a decision, just the way he had when he first saw Cooper standing on his doorstep. He heaved himself out of his chair and shuffled off into another room. Cooper heard him opening a drawer. He came back with an old yellow pocket file, well worn around the edges and repaired with a bit of sellotape.

‘This will be what you mean,’ he said.

‘Can I borrow it, please?’

‘Aye,’ said Hicklin. ‘Just bring it back when you can. If the world hasn’t ended by then.’

Cooper stood up and slid the file under his coat, then said, ‘Ryan Gibson worked just over there at A.J. Morton and Sons, didn’t he?’

‘Still does,’ said Hicklin. ‘I see him occasionally. You can imagine how that feels.’

A few minutes later, Cooper left Mr Hicklin in his old house with its leaky roof. Outside, the downpour was torrential. He might even have said biblical. The landscape had disappeared behind dense curtains of rain, and large pools of water had formed in Hicklin’s overgrown garden, almost blocking access to the gate.

‘You’re not in danger of flooding here, are you, sir?’ he asked.

‘I hope not,’ said Hicklin. ‘I can’t afford the insurance.’

Ryan Gibson was on his forklift truck in the huge storage yard at A.J. Morton amp; Sons. The site was well screened from the nearby roads. Even from the entrance, you would never guess the size of it. Everywhere he looked, Cooper saw stacks of crusher and screening spares, conveyor belt sections and rubber skirting, boxes of bearings and filters.

Cooper stood in front of the forklift and waved him down. Gibson stopped in surprise and turned off the engine.

‘What do you want? You’ll have to go into the office.’

Gibson looked over his shoulder and began to swing the steering wheel to reverse away from him.

‘Ryan?’ said Cooper.

Gibson turned and stared at him. Recognition was a long time coming, but it reached his face eventually. ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I never talk to the coppers. And I’m not supposed to stop work to chat anyway. So you might as well be on your way.’

‘How’s your brother?’ asked Cooper. ‘Sean?’

‘No idea,’ said Gibson. ‘I haven’t seen him. He’s gone abroad.’

‘Oh? Where to?’

‘I don’t know. He doesn’t send me postcards.’

Gibson revved up the forklift and headed away across the yard to lift a pallet of rollers.

Cooper watched him working for a moment. He hadn’t expected to get any answers here. Not from the likes of Ryan Gibson — he was too old a hand. All he’d wanted to do was see him, and read whatever he could find in Ryan’s face. And that had been bad enough.

When he arrived back in Edendale town centre, Cooper thought about Roger Hicklin and his Deluge. The world needs a good clean-out, don’t you think?

Cooper looked at the water pouring down the main roads and swirling away into the alleys on either side. The water was dirty brown, and its stink was vile. It was filled with mud and debris scoured from the hillsides or forced up out of the drains and dumped on to the streets of the town. For all the world, it looked and smelled as though nature had developed a nasty case of unstoppable diarrhoea. Clean wasn’t the word for it.

By the time Charlie Dean and Sheena Sullivan left the house in Green Hill that Sunday, it was already late afternoon, and it had started to rain again.

They’d stayed much longer than Charlie had intended, and they would both have to work on their excuses before they got home. But the house had been so comfortable compared to other locations they’d used in the past that it was hard for either of them to tear themselves away.

As he waited for Sheena, Charlie looked out of the sitting room window. This property had views to die for over Wirksworth, and beyond the town to the hills on the far side of the Ecclesbourne Valley. It stood at the top of one of the steepest hills in Derbyshire, and on one of the narrowest roads in the county too. He knew exactly what it was like up here — his own house was on the adjacent road, The Dale, which was just as steep and narrow. It curled back and linked into Green Hill at the top, where the sides of the quarries prevented either road from continuing further west.

‘Are you ready?’ he called. ‘We need to be moving.’

‘Nearly.’

Charlie cursed quietly. She could be such a nuisance. She didn’t seem to take things seriously enough. This was all going to fall apart one day, thanks to her. Either Barbara or Jay would become too suspicious, and that would be the end of it. He could foresee unpleasant scenes sooner or later.

When Sheena finally appeared, they went outside. The BMW had been standing under the car port out of the rain, and out of sight of the neighbours. The owners of the house must have kept cans of petrol here, or some motor oil. He could smell it when they left by the back door and he paused for a moment to unlock the car. He wasn’t worried that the car might have developed an oil leak — he was very careful about things like that, and always had the BMW serviced regularly. It paid to look after the possessions you valued. He walked round the car, though, just to make sure.

‘Hurry up, Charlie, I’m getting wet,’ said Sheena. ‘I hate getting wet. You know that.’

‘Well, don’t stand out in the rain, silly cow,’ he said.

‘Don’t call me a silly cow.’

‘For goodness sake-look, the car’s open. Get in. And be careful where you’re stepping. It smells as though there might have been some oil spilled in here.’

As soon as he pulled out on to Green Hill, Charlie Dean knew there was something wrong. The brake pedal felt spongy when he pressed it to hold the car on the steep hill. He pumped it desperately, got only a slight response, then felt the pedal go flat to the floor.

‘What’s wrong, Charlie?’

‘There’s nothing in the brakes,’ he said.

‘We’re going too fast.’

‘I know!’

The car just made the first of the tight corners.

The pedal hit the floor.

‘Shit.’

‘Charlie, do something!’

‘I can’t. The steering’s gone too.’

The car slewed round another corner, scraping the wall of a house and peeling off shards of limestone. Metal screeched in protest all along the side of the car. A flower tub went flying, a recycling bag scattered its contents across the windscreen. Sheena began to scream.

‘Shut up, shut up!’ yelled Charlie, wrestling the steering wheel in futile fury.

His tyres bumped crazily over the stone setts, the nearside wheel hit a step and a tyre burst. The wing of the BMW dipped and sparks flew into the air as the bodywork scoured itself against the stone, leaving a trail of red paint flakes on the road. The rear end began to slew from side to side, swiping a Fiat Uno parked at the kerb and sending its wing mirror spinning off into the distance.

The car continued to veer from side to side, dented a telegraph pole on one side, and took out a plastic grit bin on the other. An overhanging bough of ivy rattled across the roof like gunshots.

Eyes wide, his hands sweaty, Charlie stared at the hill ahead. The narrowest corner was coming up, where there was an ancient stone house with mullioned windows. He knew it was the last bend before the run down into the Market Place past the bookshop and the hairdresser’s. Beyond it, if he couldn’t stop the car, he’d be flying out into the traffic on St John’s Street.

He’d forgotten the junction with The Dale. Ironic, when it was the street he lived on. When he was within a few yards, a white delivery van nosed out of the junction. The driver saw him coming and stopped, gaping at the vehicle swinging from one side of the road to the other.

Charlie only had one option. He yanked on the handbrake. The rear wheels locked, the back end swung round, the nose caught a stone step and the BMW flipped over, turning twice in the air before it hit the van, crushing its bonnet, then bounced off and slid into St John’s Street on its roof. A Sixes bus ploughed into it, pushing it up on to the pavement in front of Ken’s Mini Market, where it lay with its engine still running and fragments of glass showering into the gutter.

For a moment, everything was unnaturally silent. Then people began to shout. And Sheena Sullivan continued to scream.