Already Dead

5

That was the trouble with cars these days. One looked and sounded just like another. A lot were even the same colour. There was no telling whether it was the right one until it stopped and you could see who was driving.

Ingrid Turner stared out of the window as the latest car passed. She knew she fussed too much sometimes. Glen told her himself often enough. ‘You’re like an old mother hen,’ he’d say, though he always said it with a smile and she knew he loved her to fuss over him really. She loved her son. So, yes — she was fussy about him. Of course, she tried not to get in his way too much and be a nuisance.

But there was no denying it. He ought to have been home by now.

Ingrid sat down in her armchair, then stood up again nervously. It was funny, really. She had often thought it would be a good thing if Glen didn’t come home one night. It would mean that he’d finally found himself a girlfriend. That would be such a relief. She’d worried about him for years, never been able to figure out why he hadn’t formed any relationships with women, and too scared to ask him the obvious question. Well, she couldn’t, could she? It was the sort of thing a mother shouldn’t ask her son. If he wanted to tell her, that was different. But if she pried into his private life like that, he would never forgive her.

She heard the sound of another engine in the street, a vehicle slowing down. But it was just the postman, stopping outside the house next door to deliver the stuff they’d bought off eBay. They seemed to be forever buying and selling. Taking parcels to the post office in West End, having more delivered. She couldn’t see the point of it herself.

Of course, she would have expected Glen to phone, if he’d met someone and wasn’t coming home. He wouldn’t have left his old mum wondering where he was. He’d know that she’d be worried and unable to sleep. She’d taken her pills last night, but still hadn’t slept a wink. This morning, she felt weary and her head was buzzing. She had a feeling it was going to be important to think straight today. She didn’t want to do anything hasty and mess it all up. On the other hand, she was terrified of hesitating too long.

She looked at her little patch of grass in front of the house. Somebody had walked across it during the night and left muddy prints from the bare flower beds. There was a beer can in the corner by the pavement. She’d go out and pick it up later, when it had stopped raining.

If he’d met someone and wasn’t coming home. When she thought about it baldly like that, it sounded so unlikely. She couldn’t imagine Glen picking up some woman in a club and staying the night at her place, getting up to goodness knew what. It just wouldn’t happen. Not in a million years. He wouldn’t have the confidence.

Now, all those scenarios that had run through her head during the night seemed like complete fantasies. They were so far fetched that she couldn’t believe she’d entertained them, even for a moment. Perhaps she’d been asleep after all, and dreamed the whole thing. Somehow, she’d convinced herself there was a rational explanation for the fact that Glen hadn’t come home. But there wasn’t one. Not one she could believe in any longer.

The postman ran back down next door’s drive and climbed into his van. Ingrid waited a moment, but he accelerated away. Nothing for her today. She was only putting off the moment.

She picked up the phone, and looked at the address book. She had the number of Glen’s office. She could phone his boss to see if he’d turned up for work or had called in with an excuse. But she was afraid of what they’d all say about her after she’d rung off. Afraid of what they would say about her Glen.

Ingrid put the phone down and looked at it, as if it might speak up for itself and give her the advice she needed. She dialled a ‘9’, then stopped. Weren’t you supposed to wait twenty-four hours before reporting someone missing? Especially if it was an adult, who might just be late home.

And was it really an emergency? She had no way of telling, but she didn’t want to get in trouble. There might be penalties for people who made non-emergency 999 calls. She’d read about them in the paper, all kinds of silly people who phoned to say they couldn’t find their glasses, or to ask for directions to Homebase. She didn’t want to be considered a silly woman. But she couldn’t do nothing either.

Instead, Ingrid began to dial a different set of figures. The non-emergency police number, 101. She heard a recorded message telling her that she was being put through to Derbyshire Police.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘I want to report a missing person. It’s my son.’

Luke Irvine was glad to get out of the office. He was always unsettled by change. He hadn’t been in Divisional CID long enough to get his feet firmly planted under a desk. Not the way Gavin Murfin had, and others like him.

Murfin had become the proverbial immovable object around E Division. He’d worked his roots so deeply into the carpet of the CID room that nothing had been able to shift him for years. The introduction of tenure had passed him by, performance reviews left him unscathed, the annual appraisal process had mysteriously found him doing exactly the same job each time round. None of it stirred him.

Well, not until his thirty years were up, anyway. Not even Gavin could resist that steamroller. Immovable object was meeting irresistible force. And suddenly the object wasn’t so immovable after all. In fact, DC Murfin would roll aside like so much tumbleweed under the impact of Clause A19, if the force decided to follow neighbouring Staffordshire and invoke the regulation forcing retirement of police officers after thirty years’ pensionable service. Most of those affected by A19 were senior officers, who’d worked their way up through the ranks over the past three decades and were at the top of their particular tree. Experience counted for nothing when it came time to cut costs.

And right now, E Division was down in numbers across every department — not just CID, but uniformed response, civilian support staff, even forensics.

Irvine decided to dodge down the narrow back streets and wind his way across town past the parish church and Edendale Community School to reach the Buxton Road. It should mean that he would bypass the traffic that always snarled up on the main shopping streets like Clappergate. Even the Market Square got congested, though the businesses in that part of town were mostly banks and building societies, estate agents and pubs. Everything else had moved into the indoor shopping centre.

Edendale was a magnet for tourists, and they seemed to come in greater numbers every year, whatever the weather. The Eden Valley straddled the two distinct geological halves of the Peak District — the limestone hills and wooded dales of the White Peak, and the bleak expanses of peat moors in the Dark Peak. Its position made a perfect base for exploring the national park, and all the usual services had developed to cater for the tourists — hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, outdoor clothing shops. Some of the old-fashioned businesses were still there, the butchers and bakers and antique shops. But to Irvine’s eye, they looked more like antiques themselves, part of the picturesque scenery.

Gavin Murfin had been working in this area for so long that he knew a lot of useful things, and the best places to go. It had been Gavin who’d introduced him to May’s Café, just off West Street, the place where everyone nipped off to now that there was no canteen. It was one of the most useful lessons he’d learned during his first week in CID.

But it wasn’t the impending departure of Gavin Murfin that was bothering Irvine. He’d felt secure with Ben Cooper as his DS. You knew where you stood with Ben. He’d tell you the facts, give it to you straight, put you on the right path if you went astray. But you knew he’d always back you up. It was what you’d want from your supervising officer. It made you feel you were a valued member of his team.

Irvine had learned that being in the police was like being part of a big family. You didn’t always agree with each other, or even get on very well. But you were still family. It was a crucial factor when it came down to the ‘us and them’, the moment when you faced a dangerous situation together.

Yes, the loss of Cooper was bad news, whichever way you looked at it — even if it was temporary, and nobody knew if that was the case or not. For Irvine, the reappearance of Diane Fry in E Division was like the tsunami after the earthquake. If you survived one, the other would definitely get you. The old one-two flattened you every time.

When he thought about it, Fry made a pretty good tidal wave. She could knock you off your feet and leave you floundering.

He wondered how Becky Hurst truly felt about Diane Fry. It was difficult to tell with women. They were nice enough to each other face to face, but it was a different matter when their backs were turned. Becky was too smart to let it show if she felt strongly, though. She was an expert at keeping her head down and her nose clean. It was a skill he’d yet to learn for himself. Keeping his mouth shut was just too hard to do sometimes.

He’d known Hurst for a while — they’d applied for CID at the same time, done their detective training together, ended up being posted to E Division as a pair of new recruits. When he looked around now at other officers of his own age, Irvine was struck by how few of them showed any interest in CID. And why should they, when there was no extra pay, no promotion, not even any additional prestige?

There were specialist jobs in uniform which looked much more exciting — firearms, surveillance, air support unit. Some couldn’t resist the continually shifting demands of being a response officer, the first on the scene to every incident, driving on blue lights all day long. But Irvine had found the continuous adrenalin rush too exhausting. The brain never seemed to catch up with the body when you were working constantly on instinct and training. Life in CID might be far more bogged down in paperwork and procedure than he’d imagined, but at least you were called on to think occasionally.

He’d thought of going into intelligence. Even a Senior Intelligence Analyst with Derbyshire Constabulary earned only about thirty thousand pounds a year. A successful professional criminal would laugh at that.

And life on the Senior Management Team didn’t look enticing from this distance either. It seemed to him that the SMT tried to solve everything with spreadsheets and matrices. Common sense scared them. Extra resources meant more mobile data terminals, and more tasers. And for months now the chiefs had hardly been able to think of anything else but the new Police and Crime Commissioner and what priorities he’d decide on for Derbyshire.

Irvine laughed quietly to himself. If he spoke those thoughts out loud, people would think he was turning into Gavin Murfin. Except that Gavin had never understood what a spreadsheet was, or a matrix — and now he’d never have to. Lucky man.

He wished he was eligible to vote in the referendum on Scottish independence. But he was one of many thousands of Scots living in England who wouldn’t get a say in the future of the union. Not unless he left Derbyshire and moved up to live there in the next twelve months. It didn’t look likely to happen.

Irvine crossed the Hollowgate bridge in the centre of Edendale and found himself halted in traffic. He looked down at the river, and was shocked to see how high it was. The water was rushing over the rocks on the river bed and building up great white heads of foam. It had risen much further up its banks than usual, and broken tree branches were being pushed against the stonework. When he wound down his window he could hear the roaring of the water above the sound of the traffic.

The streets around this part of town looked safe from flooding. They were well above the level of the river. Downstream, it might be different. To the east of Edendale the valley widened out and the land became flatter, more prone to flooding when the Eden burst its banks.

Just across the river from here was Welbeck Street. Irvine knew nothing about that particular street. Except that it was where Ben Cooper lived.