To Dream of the Dead

No detective, anyway. Never let them tell you any different: this was why you were here, why you hacked through all the paperwork, wiped off the abuse like spittle, merely rolled your eyes at the latest edict from a Home Secretary who looked like she might be good at running playgroups. Young cops liked mixing it on the street, tossing yobs into the back of a van, traffic cops liked burning rubber and screaming through red lights. And detectives — no getting round it — liked murder. A headline-grabbing, incident-room, unlimited-overtime murder.

The thing was, Acting Superintendent Annie Howe, fast-tracking at Headquarters, already had one. On her own doorstep, in Worcester, a witness in a high-profile paedophile case found dead in his garage.

Was that not enough for anybody?

Why did the bitch have to nick his?

Bliss put down the phone. Gerry Rowbotham, the greybeard duty sergeant at Gaol Street, looking up and sniffing theatrically.

‘I smell Worcester on the wind?’

‘Well, it wasn’t me, Gerry.’

She’d given him an earful for not alerting her sooner. Calling from HQ, where she’d just dropped in to pick up some people before coming over.

Coming over.

Shit.

Pick up some people.

Fuck.

‘She’s only appointed herself SIO,’ Bliss said. ‘She’s only bringing her own bastard crew.’

‘Well, you know why,’ Gerry said.

‘No, we don’t know why. We’re not sure yet.’

Gerry nodded at Bliss’s laptop.

‘Would it help if I had a glance?’

‘That’s the idea, Gerry,’ Bliss said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

Slim Fiddler, the senior techie, had been the first to venture an ID. He’d done a few courtesy pictures once during an official visit to Gaol Street by the police authority. Pretty sure he’d had this head in his lens when it was still turning on a neck. The pathologist, Billy Grace, also thought he knew the face, but he’d shaken off civic functions years ago so couldn’t be sure. Only one thing Billy had been fairly sure about.

‘Power saw, Francis. So I’d say wherever it was done…’

‘Looks like a spam factory?’

‘Definitely take a while to hoover up all the bits. I’d say chainsaw.’

‘McCullough or Stihl?’

‘Ha.’

Back at Gaol Street, Karen Dowell, divisional computer whizz, had fed some piccies into Bliss’s laptop and Bliss had spent some of his precious time hawking them around. But with what had been done to the face nobody could be quite sure. Bliss had Karen ring the wife, ask for the guy. The wife said he was out. Didn’t know when he’d be back.

‘All right, then.’

Bliss planted the lappie in front of Gerry Rowbotham, who’d been in Hereford since coppers were allowed to slap kids round the ear for pinching apples off the backs of carts in High Town. Through the glass, he saw Karen Dowell coming in through the main door, taking off her baseball cap, shaking a cupful of rain off it.

Gerry put on his reading specs as Bliss opened the laptop’s lid and clicked on the photo icon.

‘There you go.’

The head trembling into focus, coming up sharper and brighter than it had looked in the flesh. And yet artificial, somehow, like it had been sent over from props. Bliss zoomed it up to full screen, looked at Gerry.

Gerry winced.

Bliss said, ‘This is Ayling. You’re sure?’

‘He bought me two pints once. You don’t forget that level of generosity.’

The old feller quite pale in the bilious light. Stepping back, taking a couple of breaths and risking his ticker with another good long look. ‘This was summer, Francis, we’d be turning off all the fans. Gonner throw up more shit than my brother’s muck-spreader.’

A light cough. Bliss waved Karen in.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing dramatic so far, boss. Problem is, most of the neighbours are elderly people. Almshouses, you know? Doors locked, curtains drawn, tellies on, mugs of Horlicks.’

‘CCTV?’

‘Couple of possibles. One or two iffy hoodies. Trouble is, in this weather everybody’s a hoodie. A live witness would be nice.’

‘Keep at it. Somewhere there’s an old dear who sees all. I want her.’

Preferably before Howe arrived with the entourage.

‘Er…’ Karen trying not show excitement. ‘Actually right, is it, what they’re saying?’

‘Well, yeh.’ Bliss accepted a Polo mint from Gerry Rowbotham. ‘Does indeed begin to look like it. So much for gangland, eh?’

‘God,’ Karen said. ‘What happens now?’

‘It gets corporate. Doesn’t it, Gerry?’

‘Francis,’ Gerry Rowbotham said, ‘You haven’t actually said…’

‘What?’

‘What’s happened to… you know, what they’ve done to his eyes?’

‘Ah, yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘The eyes.’

You didn’t need to be much of a detective to know that the thing with the eyes was going to be central.

THURSDAY

But we should not criticise councillors because of their ineptitude. We wouldn’t berate an idiot for not comprehending quantum theory.

Reader’s letter to the Hereford Times, February 2008

8 Viler Shades

The heating, such as it was, was due to kick in at seven, for a strict one and a half hours. A cost-of-oil thing. You could get twenty-five per cent of your fuel costs from the parish, for business use of the vicarage, but Merrily had never bothered. Stupid, probably, but too late to start now, at these prices. So she and Jane had cut back. Lost the old Aga, for a start.

Merrily moved rapidly around the kitchen, putting the kettle on, activating the toaster, feeding Ethel, and then running back into the hall, calling up from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Flower?’

Her lips could hardly frame the word, all the nerves in her face deadened by the cold. On the wall by the door, Jesus Christ looked down from Holman Hunt’s Light of the World with a certain empathy, obviously not drawing much heat from his lantern.

‘Jane!’