‘That’s fine,’Morton answered.
‘Got to go. Seeyou later.’
‘Bye.’
He pocketed hisiPhone and thought back to Peter’s garbled voice message, which he'd leftwithin two hours of Morton having left his house. The message askedMorton to phone back as he'd found something important. Morton neverreturned the call, figuring that it could wait. A frenetic surge ofthoughts and questions bounced around his brain. The idea of Coldricktopping himself seemed ridiculous. Then he remembered the money. Coldrick had paid Morton way over and above his usual fee. Whopays someone all that money in the morning then kills themselves that samenight? It didn’t make any sense.
The sun was shrouded behind voluminous,concrete-grey clouds when Morton set out, rendering the drive an uncomfortablefusion of stickiness and claustrophobia, which only worsened as the ten-milejourney progressed. By the time he reached Peter’s house on WestminsterRise, his skin was clammy and his pulse racing. He didn’t know what hewas expecting to find when he got there – one police car and a few nosey neighboursmaybe – but the reality was very different: an angled police car dramaticallyblocked the road, its blue warning lights flashing rhythmically, matching thebeat of two further police cars and an ambulance parked behind it. Astrip of yellow tape proclaiming in thick black letters: POLICE LINE DO NOTCROSS, cats-cradled its way between lamp-posts and gateposts across thestreet. Behind the cordon were what appeared to Morton to be half ofKent’s emergency personnel, idly chatting and drinking hot drinks. And behindit all quietly stood the mournful little council house containing Coldrick’sdead body, penned in like a quarantined animal. He felt slightly sick ashe parked up and climbed from his car. Morton, handsome with a boyishface that belied his being in the final few weeks of his thirties, was dressedcasually in a loose-fitting, white t-shirt and faded jeans. He ran hisfingers through his short, dark hair, as his chestnut-brown eyes surveyed thescene before him; he blended well with the crowds of spectators who hadgathered on the pavement.
In hisperipheral vision, a uniformed figure broke from the mêlée, headingtowards him. It took a double-take to realise that it was Juliette,thunder etched onto her face, ducking under the cordon tape. Althoughshe’d been a PCSO for more than six months now, he still hadn’t got used toseeing her in uniform. His presence here wasn’t going to go down toowell.
‘What’re youdoing here?’ she demanded. Morton shrugged. He didn’t know.
‘I just wantedto see… Is there any news?’
‘SOCO are stillin there. Nothing else to report. There’s no need for you to behere, Morton.’
‘I’m sure hewouldn’t have killed himself, you know, Juliette,’ Morton ventured.
‘Not what itlooks like in there. Besides which, you knew him for what, six hours?’
‘It justdoesn’t feel right. Have you actually been inside?’
Juliettenodded.
‘And?’
‘I’ll talk toyou later. The sarge is sending someone over to talk to you at home.’
‘Coldrickwanted to show me something, Juliette. Can you get me in?’ Morton said,knowing it to be a futile question, but hoping that she could flash her badgeor whatever she did and wave him through.
Juliettelaughed, glancing over her shoulder. ‘You think going out with me isgoing to get you past that lot? No chance. Go home.’ And withthat she turned, stooped under the yellow tape and was reabsorbed into the seaof fluorescent yellow jackets.
Morton returnedto his car and started the engine. All he needed to do was stick it inreverse and leave this unpleasant place behind. But he was mesmerised bythe spectacle playing out through the windscreen, his own television set withno off button. He supposed that was why cop shows always did so well onTV; there was something strangely appealing about life going so terribly wrongfor someone else. He wasn’t a great fan of emergency servicesdramas. Juliette loved and loathed them in equal measure, usually lappingup the crime then decrying the police work with angry snorts of ‘It’s obviouswho the murderer is’ or ‘That wouldn’t happen in real life’. Not likethis, this was real life and he knew that if he waited long enough, hewould see it – that one defining image that he’d seen a hundred times on tellyand, sure enough, it came. Half an hour later Peter Coldrick’s lifelesscorpse, enveloped in a black body-bag, was rolled out onto the pavement by twosombre paramedics, his head and feet cutting revealing shapes into the shiny,dark material. Seconds later, in front of the mesmerised audience, he wasloaded into the yawning rear of the ambulance and slowly driven away. Nosirens. No blue flashing lights.
He started thecar and headed home.
Morton looked out from the lounge windowof his home, a converted police station that fell in the long shadow of Ryeparish church. Whilst some deemed it disturbing that Morton’s nearestneighbours were the long-deceased, he found it strangely comforting to livethere. As far as he was concerned, the dead were so much more predictablethan the living.
He stared at aweathered sandstone grave, attempting to recall his journey home fromColdrick’s house, but there was nothing for him to latch onto. After theambulance had pulled away his mind went blank, as if somebody had recorded overhis memories with white noise. No matter how Morton allowed his mind towander, it immediately boomeranged right back to the conundrum of Coldrick’sapparent suicide. Did a few hours spent in his company really affordMorton the absolute certainty in his belief that Coldrick hadn’t killedhimself?
He realisedthat his strong feelings might well stem from the harrowing circumstancessurrounding Coldrick’s death, rather than the death itself. It somehowhad managed to crank open the lid of an area of his brain that he only accessedwhen absolutely necessary. He imagined that place to be like a smallwooden chest with a tight-fitting lid that only he could open when hechose. It was the same place that he kept memories of his childhood, hismother and questions surrounding his own identity and hidden past.
Morton's addledbrain leapt from Coldrick's death to his brother, Jeremy, who was on the vergeof being posted to Afghanistan. Was this how it would feel to be told thathe'd
