Buried

‘Do you want tea?’

Hendricks had spent a few weeks staying at the flat the previous year and Thorne had never bothered to get the spare key from him once he’d returned to his own place. He’d used it a couple of times since, but Thorne was fairly sure that Hendricks hadn’t come over to feed the cat tonight.

‘How long do you want to stay?’

Hendricks spoke a little louder, turning towards the kitchen. ‘This is just a one-off,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going to stay overnight, but once it got late I just thought, Fuck it, and got the bed out.’

‘It’s fine.’ Thorne walked back in, and headed over to the stereo. He put on a CD by Iris DeMent, a singer/songwriter from Arkansas he’d first heard on Radio 2’s Bob Harris Country. These were mountain songs, about blessings and blood; simple and honest and suited to the hour. Thorne waited for the first few notes picked out on an acoustic guitar, adjusted the volume and went back to get his tea.

‘I didn’t argue with Brendan about “nothing”,’ Hendricks said.

Thorne sat down gently and pulled up his knee. ‘I never thought you did.’

‘The other day, I said I couldn’t remember what we’d fallen out about, that it wasn’t anything important, remember?’

‘I remember you being a bit cagey…’

‘We were arguing about kids.’

‘What, did you finally get round to telling him that you couldn’t have any?’

Hendricks smiled, but it was just punctuation. ‘I want to have them. That’s exactly the point. I know it’s a fucking nightmare and we probably wouldn’t stand a chance in hell anyway, but I wanted to talk about adoption. Brendan wasn’t interested. He thinks I’m being selfish, that I should have told him when we first got together, but I didn’t know I wanted them then, did I?’

The springs of the sofa-bed creaked beneath Hendricks as he shifted position. The guitar had been joined by a piano, and the voice, a rich Ozark twang, snaked between the two of them.

‘So, when did you know?’ Thorne asked.

Hendricks let his head fall all the way back, and spoke to the ceiling. ‘I went to that conference in Seattle last year, remember?’

‘Round Easter, wasn’t it? You were saying how cold it was.’

‘There was a demonstration of some fantastic new mortuary facilities one of the days, and they had these viewing suites. Specifically, for viewing children’s bodies, you know?’ Hendricks cleared his throat. ‘Anything from stillbirths to pre-teens in gangland shootings. We’re starting to get these here now, but back then I’d never seen anything like it. Basically, it’s about trying to minimise the trauma for the parent, to make the process less impersonal… less shocking. So they lay the body out on a refrigerated bed. The whole suite’s done up to look like a kid’s bedroom, yeah? There’s teddies and dolls and what have you for the very young ones, and there’s music if you want it, and it’s all geared towards making it seem like the dead child’s asleep. Creating something peaceful, just for those few minutes, or whatever.

‘Nobody’s kidding anyone, you need to understand that. It’s not cheesy and plastic. It really isn’t like that at all, even if I’m making it sound like it is.

‘So, they’re showing us round, right? Giving us the tour. There’s a bunch of us from the UK, from Germany, Australia, whatever and everyone’s making notes and asking questions. “How is the temperature of the bed regulated? What are the set-up costs?” All sorts. And I’m just looking at the empty bed, at the racing cars on the duvet, at the soft toys, at the curtains… And I’m seeing a child on the bed.

‘A boy…

‘I’m seeing his face in real detail. How long his eyelashes are, and the hands crossed on top of the duvet and the perfect crescents of his fingernails. I’m seeing every strand of his hair, and I can see exactly how much colour they’ve put on his lips, and I think that maybe I can see an inch or so of the PM scar, red against his chest where the button’s come undone on his pyjamas. I’m seeing all that, I’m recognising it, because for some reason I’m seeing through a parent’s eyes and not a pathologist’s.

‘Does that make any fucking sense at all?

‘That was all it took really; that was what changed. The child I’d imagined on that bed wasn’t anonymous, wasn’t a body I’d worked on. He was mine. I’d bought him those pyjamas with rockets and stars on them. I was the one who was going to have to bury him. I suddenly knew how much, I could suddenly admit how much I wanted a child. Because I knew how terrible it would feel to lose one…’

Hendricks sniffed and cursed under his breath, but from low in his armchair there was no way for Thorne to see if that meant there were tears. He would have needed to stand up; and, truthfully, he had no idea what he would have been expected to do then. With Hendricks lying down in bed, it was hard. It was awkward. So he stayed where he was and felt bad, because he didn’t know how to make his friend feel better.

And they both listened to Iris DeMent singing about God walking in dark hills, and Jesus reaching, reaching, reaching down to touch her pain.

It was the biggest manhunt in Metropolitan Police history: the ongoing search for a serial rapist who had broken into nearly a hundred homes in south London since the early nineties, sexually assaulting more than thirty elderly women and raping at least four. The man, dubbed the ‘Night Stalker’, always worked in the same way. After breaking in, he would cut the victim’s phone line and switch off the electricity before making his way to the bedroom.

She’d read extensively about the case over a number of years, disturbed by it yet fascinated. She’d had some experience of dealing with deviancy, with those in its grip and with those who had been its victims, so part of her was engaged on a professional level. But, more than that, she’d read about what this man’s victims had been through, she’d watched the reconstructions on the television and she’d felt their terror as if it had been her own. The old women, many in their eighties and above, all described that same dreadful moment of waking, of seeing a dark figure at the end of the bed, and she couldn’t help but ask herself what she would do in the same situation. How might she react?

She lived in a different part of London, of course, and she wasn’t quite as old, yet, as this man seemed to like them, but still she’d sat and asked herself the question…

‘I said don’t move.’

She froze, her arm outstretched. ‘I just wanted to put on the light. I wouldn’t be as frightened if it wasn’t so dark.’

‘I like it dark,’ he said.

Her heart was making the thin material of her nightdress dance against her chest, but she felt amazingly calm; clear-headed enough. There were ideas, pictures, words flying around inside her head like fireworks – rape, scream, weapon, pain – but there was still a strong, focused train of thought.

This was the way to deal with him. He needed to be engaged. She had to make him care about her.

‘I’m sorry if you’re frightened,’ he said, ‘I can’t help that.’

‘Don’t be so silly, of course you can.’

‘No…’

‘You could just leave. I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

She saw him lower his head, as though he were considering what she’d said, feeling guilty about it. She was doing very well, doing what the women who’d been confronted by this man in the past and had not been attacked had done. Those women had spoken afterwards about their appeal to something in him – to his conscience, perhaps – as being the moment when he’d changed his mind and decided to leave them be.

‘What would your mother think?’ one old woman had asked him.

He started to walk around the bed and she felt a surge of panic. He must have seen it in her, or perhaps she made a noise, because he told her to shush.

‘I know you don’t want to hurt me,’ she said.

He moved closer.