Sharp scratch, p.18
Sharp Scratch, page 18
‘Dani.’
‘Danny. Like Daniel?’
No, it wasn’t like Daniel. He usually lied, dreading anyone having a laugh at his expense. Yet the urge to be honest was unstoppable. ‘Dante,’ he heard himself speak out loud.
‘Dante? Like the poet who wrote the Inferno? Wow.’
Her eyes gleamed molten gold in the firelight, staring far away. ‘“Midway on life’s journey I found myself lost in a dark wood” – or something,’ she recited softly.
His granddad had recited those very same lines. He closed his eyes and started to kiss her, lifting her hair to nuzzle her neck. Everything slowed down from lightning bolts of lust to a syrupy delight in body against body. He got a bit lost around her shoulder until his fingers found her bra strap and he slid it down, feeling a blast of desire. His tongue explored the heat of her mouth, while his hand simultaneously uncovered her left breast, warm and silky outside the cup of her bra.
He heard himself groan, floating off on a long-forgotten planet bombarded by pleasure-rays. He clambered over her, nudging himself against the taut crotch of her trousers. As he looked down, her face was a smooth cameo of amber in the candle flame, her lips parted, her eyeliner smudged around acquiescent eyes.
‘Oh God,’ he whispered and smelt lacquer and mustiness in her hair. He wondered if this was what people meant when they used that alien word, ‘love’. The word formed on his lips and he took a breath.
Then his bloody radio crackled.
‘What the fuck?’ Diaz manoeuvred it out of his pocket. His tripped-out brain struggled to comprehend the message relayed by the call-room operator. He tried to digest the news and then pressed transmit and mumbled that he was on his way. She looked up at him like an unwrapped feast, her shirt hanging open, her cheeks flushed.
He gripped her fingers tightly and stroked them. ‘I think it’s Eric Fryer.’
‘Rikki? What? He radioed you?’ She sat up too, blearily pulling her shirt tight around herself.
‘No. A fatality at the hospital. A porter. Young white male. The security guard just identified him.’
As Diaz drove through the night, the chemicals made him feel like an astronaut diving through mysterious galaxies. Yet painfully, an umbilical cord of common sense kept reeling him back home. His car radio repeated the urgent call from Brunt, to get straight over to the hospital. The operator announced she’d been trying his home number. His guts cringed when he realised Shirley must be awake too, wondering where the hell he was.
He had flashbacks of Lorraine standing at the front door, warming her hands around a mug of tea. Her face was unreadable, but he had a bad feeling she thought his leaving was for the best. He’d wanted to kiss her goodbye but she’d edged her lips away from his mouth.
Somehow he’d remembered to warn her. Reaching the car, he called out, ‘You’ll be questioned tomorrow. Best stick as close to the truth as you can. Just leave out – our little indulgence, eh?’
As the hospital rose before him like an alien city, he felt bereft. Tonight he’d told Lorraine stuff he hadn’t told anyone in years. He smashed his fist against the steering wheel. What had he done to get such evil luck?
The police lights blazed with white ferocity through spears of rain. Diaz rubbed his gritty eyes and made for Brunt, who was standing with a couple of SOCOs. Shit, the gear was still distorting reality, making the DI look like a giant hog. Together they walked into the building. Soon his porcine boss began speaking.
‘Security guy found him half an hour ago. Eric Fryer, a porter. Note the pills he no doubt pinched and used to merrily top himself with.’
Diaz didn’t speak. He was agonising over what to say so he’d sound like his usual, die-straight self. He checked the corpse’s long lean face, the eyelids so calmly closed that the drummer might have been taking a quick kip. A white plastic tub of morphine tablets had spilt all over the carpet.
‘I just saw him playing the drums down at the Students’ Union.’
Brunt swung his bulk around, his pig-eyes peering out from beneath his soggy trilby. ‘Whoa, hold it there, Giuseppe. What exactly were you doing at this musical extravaganza?’
‘Night off, boss.’
‘Shirley said you’d gone AWOL. Got hold of your mate Rob. He last saw you around eight. Trailing this smackhead, were you?’
He didn’t have the wherewithal to lie. And Brunt would want witness statements from everyone who had last seen Rikki alive. It cost him considerable pain to come clean.
‘Not exactly, sir. Lorraine Quick is in the same band.’
‘Miss Quick, eh? An associate of this scumbag? Cough up then, lad.’
He sprang to her defence. ‘They’re in the same band but she can’t stand him. She didn’t give him the job here, her assistant did and she’s not happy.’
In the silence that followed, Diaz’s brain plunged into a helter-skelter comedown.
‘Well, we can’t have Miss Quick not being happy, can we? Been whispering in your shell like, has she? See sense, laddie. They’ve been working a scam in the pharmacy together, just like they’ve been sharing the same music stand.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, and you know all about it, do you? Pillow talk was it? I hope you’ve been keeping it in your pants, lad. And you with a decent girl waiting at home.’
Diaz told himself the safest way was not to open his mouth. And then his mouth opened of its own accord and started talking.
‘What do you know about anything, eh?’ he said so loudly that the nearest SOCOs turned to gawp at them. ‘I’m only here because the chief doesn’t think you’re capable on your own.’
Brunt waddled towards him and then shoved him so hard he went flying against the wall.
‘Till I retire, the line of command’s through me. Got that, smart-arse?’
Blazing, Diaz righted himself and straightened his jacket. He could hear his own loud breathing and he didn’t like it.
‘I won’t suspend you this time,’ Brunt was grumbling. ‘Wake up, you soft git! She’s got you by the short and curlies.’
He hesitated too long before his muttered, ‘Sir.’ Then without thinking, he blurted, ‘I tell you, she wanted rid of him.’
‘Aye, son.’ Brunt leant forward and touched Rikki’s senseless body with the toe of his shoe. ‘I can see that all right.’ He lifted his pouchy eyes to glare at Diaz before growling, ‘You keep away from her. I don’t want to see you within a dozen yards of Miss Quick.’
Brunt and his colleagues disappeared outside. Glad to be alone, Diaz lingered over the corpse. What were those magic words again? The walls of a crime scene carried rage, fear, love and hatred. If he was ever going to read those invisible clues it was now, while the walls pulsed like his own inner light show.
The dead body seemed nothing but an absence. The lad’s consciousness had gone, leaving this leftover carcass sprawled across the carpet. This was death, he thought, with what felt like deep profundity: the sudden snuffing out of all speech, memory and secrets. Brunt thought Rikki had come here to steal drugs and accidentally OD’d. No way. A long-time user didn’t just neck some morphine and pop his clogs. Maybe the tabs were poisoned? Maybe Rikki had picked up some dangerous knowledge that the murderer feared, some information that meant killing him was the only answer. They’d have to wait for the lab results and PM to know for sure. In the meantime, he felt he might burst from not knowing.
Diaz inspected the victim’s donkey jacket, worn over a grey shirt and grubby jeans. Checking no one else was around, he slid his hand into the corpse’s jacket pocket. Nothing but a handful of grubby pound notes. Then he tried the jeans pocket, flexing his wrist awkwardly so as not to disturb the body’s posture. He noticed the jacket was tented up by an object a few inches high. He lifted the jacket aside. And there it was. A rusty-looking syringe protruding from the thin fabric of his shirt. Even a contortionist of a junkie couldn’t have manoeuvred a needle so far into his own back.
‘Guv!’ Diaz ran out into the rain and grabbed his boss’s sleeve. Dragging him back inside, Diaz pointed at the victim’s back. With a grunt his boss heaved himself down and inspected the syringe that dangled at an angle, its chamber nearly empty of white fluid. Diaz squatted down beside him.
Rage, fear, love, hatred. Fear. The motive for this murder had to be fear.
‘What about this, boss? Fryer found out who killed Rose Cavanagh,’ Diaz said in a low, almost reverential voice. ‘And that put the fear of God into the perpetrator. So he stuck that’ – he pointed at the syringe emptied of propofol – ‘in his back to shut him up.’
Demoralisation
Question 36: I experience periods of distress when I feel hopeless about my life.
A. Often
B. Occasionally
C. Never
High score description (option A.): Emotional discomfort, feeing discouraged, loss of control, overwhelmed, pessimistic, poor self-esteem.
Sunday 6th March
Grimy daylight brought Lorraine a new mood of caution. Rikki was dead. He’d been an annoying prat, but no way had he deserved to die. And he was the second person she had known who had died within a fortnight. Thank God Diaz had not stayed the night. As soon as the investigation was over, Diaz would vanish and she could get her life back on track again.
Yet still she couldn’t bear to take off the two-tone shirt that smelt of him, that felt alive against her skin. She hugged it close and closed her eyes. Shit, why couldn’t it have worked out for once? Her skin still felt sticky. Overheated hormones battled with common sense. God, she felt horribly alone. She risked a short walk to the phone box and rang Lily. After what must have been fifty maddening rings her friend picked the phone up with a string of sluggish curses. She went quiet when Lorraine told her Rikki was dead. And then she grew panicky when Lorraine warned her that the police would question them all. It was a relief when the beeps started and she could drop the receiver back in its cradle.
Soon after she got home, a loud rat-a-tat-tat at the door made her almost jump out of her skin. The WPC on her doorstep asked Lorraine to accompany her to the local station. She recited that it was a simple matter of speaking to everyone who knew Eric Fryer, beginning with those who had been with him at the Students’ Union last night.
There was something depressingly institutional about Salford Crescent police station – a reminder of the battered corridors of her down-at-heel secondary school, save that here the windows were barred. She waited in a reception area stuck over with fuzzy photographs of wanted criminals. Taking a seat on a filthy chair, she felt a surge of pity for Rikki. With hindsight, Rikki’s stories of being stuck in hospital as a kid were even more poignant: the medical team’s efforts to heal his bones had all come to nothing now he’d died so young. Lorraine rubbed her damp palms against her jumper. The killer felt very close; not only watching from just behind her shoulder when Rose was killed, but drawing Rikki back to the hospital, too.
She longed for a glimpse of Diaz but instead she had to face Brunt. He looked up with a bilious expression, his bulk shoved behind a scarred Formica table with the WPC squashed in beside him. As he lit his pipe, she silently ordered herself to keep it all together. Letting herself become a suspect would waste everyone’s time. More than anything she wanted to help the police find Rikki’s murderer. All she had to do was stick to the truth. Well, save for just one lie.
The opening questions were straightforward. How well had she known Eric? When did he join the band? And how did he get the porter’s job? She told him emphatically that her assistant Edith had appointed him. She reminded Brunt that she’d tried to warn Diaz about Rikki and given him a statement about his being in the hospital on the day of Rose’s death.
Next, she told him about the gig and that Diaz had surprised her by turning up and offering her a lift home. No, she hadn’t even told him where she’d be. At least that gave her a brilliant alibi for the time of Rikki’s death.
‘You’re looking the worse for wear today,’ he said, then released a cloud of blue sweetbriar smoke that made her cough.
‘Last night I learnt that another person I know has died. I might not have liked Rikki but it’s still a terrible shock.’
Brunt pinched his flabby lips. ‘So how did it work, the set-up between you and Fryer?’ he asked with sudden aggression. ‘We know you’ve both been taking drugs from the hospital pharmacy.’
The WPC looked up from her notebook.
‘That’s ridiculous. Ask anyone. I don’t even have access to the pharmacy.’
‘But your friend was a drug dealer. And your work’s been suffering. According to Mr Pilling you lost some important documents.’
‘No. What really happened was that someone stole some professional certificates from my office. How about investigating that?’
His big shoulders shrugged. ‘Because it’s not a matter of interest.’
‘So the theft of medical qualifications for the black market isn’t a crime?’
Annoyingly, he jumped topics. ‘Did you slip an illegal substance in my sergeant’s drink last night?’
All the body language theory she knew stated that a liar would displace anxiety and grow fidgety under questioning. Might touch their nose or blink fast. So she sat very still and kept her gaze in direct contact with Brunt’s pouchy little eyes. Even as she did so, a niggle bubbled up in her mind: had Diaz left the empty wrap at her house? It would have her fingerprints all over it. She forced herself not to waver. She was pretty sure he’d thrown it away.
‘No. I don’t take drugs. Drugs are incompatible with my job.’
She had purposely draped a huge bandolero-style scarf around her neck. Like many nervous interviewees her throat turned blotchy when anxious. Brunt was looking directly at her neckline. He whispered to the WPC, who left them alone. With a grunt he leant forward across the table, two pillow-like elbows moving into her personal space. His fat knees prodded against hers.
‘What were you up to when you invited young Diaz back to yours? Keeping him out of the way while Fryer was done in?’
‘No. I told you. Diaz invited himself.’
He scrutinised her as if she were something revolting at the bottom of a dustbin.
‘You stay away from my sergeant. I weren’t born yesterday. Not like young wet-behind-the-ears miladdo. Got it?’
She mutely nodded.
‘I’ve had a look at you. False accusation of rape back in ’75.’
‘It wasn’t false!’
‘Strung your boyfriend along and then made up a nasty little story. Luckily for him you didn’t have the bottle to press charges.’
Lorraine opened her mouth to protest but couldn’t form words. A spasm of grief blurred her eyes. She had tried to finish with Andy and he had forced himself on her at his flat when she went round to pick up her clothes. Egged on by a desperate phone call to the Rape Crisis Centre, she had reported it to the police. It had been one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Now she knew better. It was always on the news these days, that women were to blame if they wore the wrong clothes or gave off the wrong signals. As that judge had said last year, it was common knowledge that if you begged a man to stop attacking you, you were only a slutty tease. Cowed by Brunt, she dropped her head.
The frigid silence continued until the policewoman returned and Brunt spoke with fake courtesy. ‘Right you are, Miss Quick. Just check and sign the statement.’
She was so relieved that she asked, ‘I can go?’
‘A car’ll fetch you home once we’re done.’
Machiavellian Egocentricity
Question 37: The creation of the world’s great civilisations was worth the enslavement of its workers.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): A lack of empathy and sense of detachment from others for the sake of achieving one’s own goals.
I went into work and listened for news. It wasn’t long coming; an announcement that the police were hastily arranging interviews. At my interview the DCI hopelessly flailed around in search of facts until I told him where I was. He made no comment, only scowled. It was that easy.
Dear God, I learnt that my mystery caller was a porter! A brighter blackmailer would have smelt a poisonous rat but Eric Fryer – a former public schoolboy slumming it in the ancillary grades – swallowed my bait.
It is a diverting game to work out who is leading the board as chief suspect. I took my lunch in the canteen, doodling in my notebook, a cup of undrinkable coffee cooling in front of me. A gaggle of domestics settled near my table. In a hospital the cleaners are always the closest to the ground in every sense.
A fat creature with thinning hair spouted forth, ‘I were telling my Frank, there’s a bleeding poisoner wandering the hospital, murdering us all as we work. And the bizzies haven’t got a flaming clue.’
A flood of reminiscences of the porter followed: that he was ‘a lovely lad’ and ‘the salt of the earth’.
After these dim-witted platitudes, another woman spoke up, a creature with gold medallions strung around what looked to me like a goitre from acute thyroiditis. ‘Did you ’ear who he were out with just before he were topped? Playing the drums at some student place in town. And who were up on stage at the same time? Blondie. ’Er in Personnel. Miss Quick.’
Eric Fryer and Lorraine Quick. I listened intently. I reached absent-mindedly for my coffee, but at the first sensation of wrinkled milk-skin I started to cough. The women ignored me; like gannets, they were too busy tussling over the carcass.
‘She’s a dark horse.’
‘D’you think it were ’er what done it?’
I made my escape. This changes everything. Surely Fryer must have told her that he was returning to the hospital that night? And whom he intended to meet? Lorraine Quick is a threat to me. My first instinct is to deal with her at once. In my office I inspect the empty wall spaces that formerly held my credentials. The slightly faded rectangles make me uneasy. I thought I’d fully dealt with that girl’s interference.
