small as Derby. A quick trip round the inner ring road past the Eagle Centre, skirting the new shopping precinct, and Brook was back at his down-at-heel rented flat on the Uttoxeter Road.
It wasn’t much of a front but it was as good a place as any. And it was central. No Barrett home in a suburban development for Brook. No tasselled sofa and MFI flat packs. Brook was used to city living, where he could be quiet and anonymous: unless, of course, he was driving the Sprite home after midnight when everyone could mark his progress through the streets. Not that he cared about disturbing people. Like all insomniacs, he assumed everyone else slept like babies.
Brook slowed the Sprite to a crawl and carefully manoeuvred the delicate bodywork onto the pavement- cum-drive outside his ground floor flat. He killed the engine, heard the fan belt call a cranky halt to its day’s work and stepped out of the driver’s seat holding his Chicken Jalfrezi, listening to the pre-ignition running before the engine finally died. He closed the door gingerly, not bothering to lock it.
Instinctively he turned to the upstairs window of the flats next door in time to see the curtain fall. Brook nodded, satisfied. Old Mrs Saunders probably slept less than he did. He supposed she’d be having ‘a word’ with him tomorrow about ‘all that noise in the middle of the night’. Comforting really, having such a busybody keeping an eye on the place. Not that he bothered about security. He had nothing of value. But then again, he
Brook hesitated before going in. He wanted a cigarette. He’d gone without for two days. He extracted a dog- eared pack from the boot of the car and flipped open the box. One left. That was good. And bad. If he were still in Battersea, he could have gone for more, any time of night. But he wasn’t. He was in Derby and it was closed.
Brook lit up and inhaled deeply, enjoying the sting and feeling an immediate and gratifying nausea. He stood by his car and looked out over the building site across the road and on, past the sweep of Derby’s low horizon. There wasn’t much to be seen. It was a dark, misty night and cold air was blowing down from the Peaks.
For the first time in the three years since his transfer, Brook was beginning to look at the skyline like an old friend. He hadn’t chosen Derby as a place to live and work. He’d picked up the first available transfer out of London. If it had been to Baghdad he would have taken it. Just to get out.
And Derby hadn’t let him down. It was a pleasingly unremarkable place to lose himself. An engineering town by tradition, which marked out the population as hard working and straightforward, it also boasted a large and well-integrated Asian population.
Frank Whittle, pioneer of the jet engine, was much honoured in a city where Rolls Royce was the main employer. Derby also had one of the largest railway engineering works in the world. It was a city built on transport, going nowhere. Obligatory retail parks ringed the city and much of the population and traffic had followed, making Brook’s neighbourhood, if not any more glamorous, then certainly a little quieter.
And despite the inevitable decline of such an industry-dependent city, crime was not excessive and murder was rare.
But what really marked out this East Midlands backwater was the Peak District, a few miles to the northwest. Brook had fallen in love with it and took every opportunity he could to drive into the hills and soak up the peace of the countryside. Ashbourne, Hartington, Buxton, Bakewell, Carsington Water. All were favoured haunts, where he could dump the car and walk for hours alone, clearing his mind of all the clutter.
And now, as a bonus, he was discovering a sense of belonging. That was good. It would prepare him for the biggest challenge of all; retrieving a sense of himself.
For the first time since joining the Met as a callow, yet confident twenty-three-year old, Brook began to believe that it might be possible to wash the garbage from mind and body. Now, here, he was only wading in the gutter. In London he’d been drowning in a sewer.
Chapter Two
Brook took a final urgent drag and tossed the cigarette. He walked up the communal access road and unlocked the back door into the kitchen of his flat. He never used the front door as it opened into his living room, a quaint reminder of a childhood spent in a back-to-back terrace, with which he wasn’t comfortable. Memories of strange, rubicund men collecting rent or insurance and breathing light ale fumes into his pram were still keenly felt forty-odd years on.
He looked briefly at the answer machine. For once it was flashing so he played the message. It was from Terri, his daughter, wishing ‘a happy birthday for tomorrow to my number one dad’, her nickname for him since acquiring a second father. She’d moved with her mother and ‘number two dad’ to Brighton after the divorce. Brook didn’t wipe the brief message but left the machine flashing to remind him to ring her.
It didn’t sit well with Brook that a father should need a reminder to talk to an only daughter and his unexpected good mood soured as a result. He looked at his watch. It
After picking at his curry and downing a celebratory glass of milk, he showered and went to bed. He remembered to leave a little food by the flap, in case Cat tired of its nocturnal foraging, and lay down to read in his box-sized bedroom, head grazing one wall, feet flat against the other for the warmth from the radiator on the other side.
For a change, sleep came quickly, though it rarely lasted beyond an hour. And too often it would be an hour of visions exploding across his brain. Some he could recognise, some he couldn’t. Then sometimes, on a case, he would see something-a face, a crime scene, a piece of evidence-and recall an echo of it in a dream he’d already had. It bothered Brook at first until he’d been able to write it off to the Job. The things he’d seen were enough to fever any brow.
Tonight even the concession of one fitful hour was withdrawn and he woke to the noise of the phone a few moments later. It was DS John Noble.
A sigh was Brook’s only answer. ‘What’s up, John?’
‘Bad as in poorly executed or bad as in not nice?’
‘So he is. Where are you?’
Brook let out a heavy sigh of frustration. ‘John, if you’re on the Drayfin, just say so.’
‘What’s the address?’ Brook jotted it down. At this time of night it wouldn’t take him long to get to the rundown housing estate on the south side of the city, built in the sixties when Britain’s city planners had decided that people were keen to live cheek by jowl in identical, low-cost boxes. It was little surprise to Brook that residents in such areas attracted more than their fair share of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. ‘I’ll be ten minutes.’
Fifteen minutes later the noise from Brook’s Sprite ensured that those houses on the Drayfin Estate still in darkness were fully alerted to the commotion in their midst, and soon switches were being flicked and curtains twitched.
If he spent much more time driving around in the middle of the night, the National Grid would be inviting him to the staff parties. The idea brought a brief smile to Brook’s lips. A pity he couldn’t introduce such levity into his dealings with others, he thought.
Brook was mulling over the comedic potential of his future transactions with Sergeant Hendrickson when, without warning, he jumped onto the brakes. The car shuddered to an unconvincing halt. Seconds later a black and white cat hurtled across the path of the Sprite and skittered away into the mist, a pink tail hanging from its
