To Dream of the Dead

‘What’s more…’ Committed now, Bliss advanced on the biggest kid, the old accent kicking in like nicotine ‘… I also happen to have a key to the notoriously vomit-stained cell we fascist cops like to call Santa’s Grotto.’

Bliss smiling fondly at the kid, and the kid sneering but saying nothing.

‘Fancy a few hours in the Grotto, do we, sonny? Sniffing icky sicky, while we wait for our old fellers to drag their arses out the pub and come and fetch us? Or maybe they won’t bother till morning. I wouldn’t.’

A movement then, from one of the others in the shadow of a darkened doorway — hand dipping into a pocket down his leg. Knife?

Jesus… careful.

Kids. Frigging little scallies. Grown men were easier these days, these three too young and maybe too pissed to understand that sticking a cop bought you zero sanctuary.

Difficult. Bliss didn’t move, snatching a quick glance at the plastic plod who’d got his arms spread like a goalie, which meant that if knifeboy went for him now the old feller would catch it full in the chest. Mother of God, who trained these buggers?

The hand came out of the pocket, the fear-switch in Bliss’s trip-box giving a little tremble. Best to stay friendly.

‘Up to you, son. B-and-B in the grotto, is it?’

Boy’s hand still in shadow. Instant of crackling tension. Wafting stench of hot meat from a fast-food van.

Nah. Empty.

Pretty sure. Most likely the pocket was empty, too. This was still Hereford. Just. Feed him a get-out.

‘Yeh, thought not. Now piss off home, yer gobby little twats.’

Watching them go, one looking back, about to raise a finger, and Bliss taking a step towards him—

‘You do that again, sunshine, and I will frigging burst you!’

— as the mobile started shuddering silently in his hip pocket and the carousel invited them all to have a merry little Christmas.

‘Good of you, sir,’ the community-support woman said. ‘It’s, um, DI Bliss, isn’t it?’

‘No way,’ Bliss said. ‘Not here, luv. Got enough paperwork on me desk.’

Realising he was sweating, and it wasn’t warm sweat. This sharpend stuff… strictly for the baby bobbies and the rugby boys. Ten years out of uniform, you wondered how anybody over twenty-five could keep this up, night after night.

He dragged out his still-quivering phone, flipped it open, feeling not that bad now, all the same, and not considering the possible consequences until he looked up and saw those familiar female features gargoyling in the swirl of light from the carousel and remembered that he wasn’t here on his own.

‘You bastard.’

Gloved hands curling into claws.

‘Kirsty, tell me what else I—’

‘You swore to me you’d left that bloody thing at home.’

Bliss squeezed the phone tight.

‘Never gonner change, are you, Frank?’

Kirsty’s face glowing white-gold as the little screen printed out KAREN. Bliss slammed the phone to an ear.

‘Karen.’

‘Thought you’d want to know about this, boss. Where exactly are you?’

‘Pricing vibrators in Ann Summers.’ Bliss was feeling totally manic now. ‘Complete waste of money nowadays, Karen, what’s a mobile for? Pop it in, get yer boyfriend to give you a ring. Magic.’

Stepping blindly into the extreme danger zone; no way he could share that one with Kirsty.

Like, indirectly, he just had.

‘You could be there in a few minutes, then,’ Karen said.

Bliss looked up at the clock on the market hall. Eight minutes to nine.

‘You shit, Frank!’

‘Kirst—’

‘You stupid, thoughtless, irresponsible piece of shit! Suppose one of them youths’d had a knife? Or even a gun, for Christ’s sake? What about your children?’

‘Jesus, Kirsty, it’s not frigging Birmingham!’

Kirsty spinning away in blind fury, Karen saying, ‘Um, if you’ve got a domestic issue there, boss, I can probably reach Superintendent Howe—’

‘Acting Superintendent.’ Bliss saw the carousel stopping, his kids getting down. ‘Let’s not make it any worse. What is this, exactly? Go on, tell me.’

‘It’s a murder, boss.’

‘We’re sure about that, are we?’

‘You know the Blackfriars Monastery? Widemarsh Street?’

‘That’s the bit of a ruin behind the old wassname—?’

‘Coningsby Hospital. Look, really, if there’s a problem…’

‘No problem, Karen.’

Bliss pulled out his car keys, shrugged in a sorry, out-of-my-hands kind of way, and held them out to Kirsty. It was like pushing a ham sandwich into the cage of the lioness with cubs, but they’d need transport.

‘Five minutes, then, Karen. You’re there now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You all right, Karen?’

Something in her voice he hadn’t heard before. Other people’s, yes, coppers’ even, but not hers.

‘Yeah, it’s just… I mean, you think you’ve seen it all, don’t you?’

‘Doc ’n’ soc on the way?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t bother coming home tonight, Frank.’ Kirsty ripping the bunch of keys from Bliss’s fingers, the two kids looking pitiful. ‘You can go home with Karen. Spend the other five per cent of your time with the bitch.’

Bliss covered the bottom of the phone, the plastics looking on; how embarrassing was this?

Karen said, ‘Before somebody else tells you, boss, I’ve contaminated the crime scene. Threw up. Only a bit. I’m sorry.’

‘It happens, Karen.’

Not to her, though. Bliss was remembering how once, end of a long, long night, he’d watched Karen Dowell eat a whole bag of chips in the mortuary. With a kebab? Yeh, it was a kebab.

Kirsty was walking away, holding Naomi’s hand in one of hers, Naomi holding one of Daniel’s. Of course, the kids were both a bit too old for that; Kirsty was blatantly making a point, the kids playing along, the way kids did.

It was six days from Christmas.

And yeh, he felt like a complete shit.

But not really lonely any more. What could that mean?

‘So don’t say I never warned you, Frannie,’ Karen Dowell said.

2 Moon Sat Up

Coming up to seven p.m., it stopped raining and Jane went to get some sense out of the river.