Fry put her headphones back on and returned to her tapes. Half an hour had passed before it occurred to her to wonder what Cooper would do after he’d visited his sick mother.
It might happen in the next few hours. We could synchronize our watches and count down the minutes. What a chance to record the ticking away of a life, to follow it through to that last, perfect moment, when existence becomes nothing, when the spirit parts with the physical. The end is always so close … I can smell it right now, can’t you?
But Cooper had given himself a job to do that night. While he’d been waiting for visiting time to come round at the hospital, he’d driven to the big DIY store on the retail park and bought himself a flat-pack shelving unit. It was something he’d been meaning to do for months. Well, he certainly needed something to distract his mind, to prevent the phrase ‘recurrent stroke’ from slipping so often into his thoughts, spoken softly and accompanied by a meaningful look or a sympathetic nod at the unspoken implication.
Tonight, his mother had been conscious and lucid, though her right side was partially paralysed and her sight impaired. For some time now, she’d been losing her colour and she was paler than he could ever remember her. Looking at her in the hospital bed, it had seemed no surprise to Cooper that the blood had failed to reach the left side of her brain. Matt was right, of course, that she wasn’t all that old - still in her sixties, after all. But tonight she’d seemed much older.
Randy’s ear pricked up, and a second later the doorbell rang. At this time of the evening, Cooper always assumed that it was somebody ringing the wrong bell. They usually wanted his neighbour in the flat upstairs or his landlady next door.
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But when he reluctantly got up and went to answer the bell, it was Gavin Murfin he found standing on his doorstep.
‘Ben, you know it’s mad,’ said Murfin fifteen minutes later. ‘They want to get rid of people like me using tenure, but at the same time they can’t get anybody else to come into CID. There’s no waiting list any more. When did we last have a new DC in this division?’
‘I can’t remember.’
They’d walked to Cooper’s local, the Hanging Gate, a pub sitting in its own little yard off High Street. At least Gavin had insisted on buying the drinks.
‘There are vacancies in every section station,’ said Murfin. ‘The only way we can get people into CID is if they transfer for the sake of promotion. They come straight in at senior level from uniform, and they have no idea what detective work is all about.’
‘Why don’t you take it up with the Federation?’ said Cooper.
‘Dogberry and his mates? What use are they?’
Cooper smiled at the reference to the Police Federation’s cartoon character. He knew Murfin was right, about some of it at least.
‘And that’s not to mention Dad’s Army,’ said Murfin. ‘Talk about short-term measures. The geriatric brigade won’t last for ever, and there’s no one to take their place. You can’t create an experienced detective out of thin air.’
Murfin drank silently for a while. ‘I was thinking about what you were saying, Ben. About Hell.’
‘It was nothing, Gavin.’
‘But it’s obvious, isn’t it? Hell is us. If there really is a Hell waiting for me when I kick the bucket, that’s what it’ll be. Just me. Me, messing myself up for the rest of eternity.’
Cooper stared at Murfin openmouthed.
Murfin nodded. ‘You know, don’t you, Ben? Who needs a demon with a pitchfork, eh?’
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‘Have you talked to Diane about how you feel?’
‘What? Why would I talk to her?’
‘She’s your DS.’
‘I’d rather talk to the Yorkshire Ripper. We’d have more empathy.’ Murfin suddenly looked tired. ‘Sorry, Ben. But sometimes I lose my sense of humour, like.’
‘I understand. Do you want another drink?’
But Murfin drained his glass. ‘No, thanks. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Ben. I’ll go home now.’
‘Will you be OK?’
‘I’m fine. Hey - what about that date of yours? What happened?’
‘I put it off. There’s too much happening this week.’
‘Pity. Won’t she mind?’
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘She’ll understand.’
He waited with Murfin until a taxi came to take him home, and then walked back to his flat. Once away from the town centre, the streets were very quiet. Cooper knew that he’d have to face up to his own death some time. Like most people, he’d always thought he could avoid it for ever. And perhaps he’d read too many stories in which people didn’t actually die. Instead, they passed away, breathed their last, or were no more. In polite conversation, death was skated over rapidly, like thin ice.
Sometimes, he could sense that thin ice beneath his feet, and he didn’t want to look down. There was too much dark water lying just below the surface.
MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE THREE So here is the reality. People change shape when they die. The muscles go slack, and gravity drags down the skin. It sinks into the cheeks and pools in the eye sockets. Our flesh forms new contours, like a tide going out and exposing submerged islands. The body cools, our extremities shrivel. Blood settles towards to the ground as the earth begins to draw us closer. Then the skin discolours from red to purple, from green to
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black. Our final transformation is a Technicolor performance.
When the heart stops pumping blood and the cells have no oxygen, we say a person is dead. Well, the brain might die, but the body doesn’t - not really. Our intestines are packed with microorganisms, digestive enzymes and bacteria, and they don’t die with the cells. When there’s nothing left for those enzymes to digest, what do our organs do? They start to digest themselves. In the end, we are our own flesh eaters.
Ah, decomposition. The classic two-act play. But the final act is drawn out too long. There’s a weathering away
