After You Die (6 page)

Sunday evening was diehards-only time in the gym and Ferreira saw the same old faces sweating on the static bikes, grunting through another five reps on the machines as Lite FM blared across the open-plan space. She nodded to a couple of people as she tucked her ear buds in, making for the bank of treadmills pushed up close to the windows overlooking the car park and the industrial estate beyond it, pleased to see the one she wanted was free.

She stepped up and chose a programme that would take her across a series of demanding hills at a speed she was still struggling to maintain, wanting to stretch herself tonight, test the progress she knew she was making, despite the dire predictions of the NHS-approved physio she’d stopped going to almost two months earlier. He didn’t know what she was made of, was too used to advising people wallowing in self-pity.

Instead she listened to her body and it said go on, go harder, fuck that pain, like some half-insane personal trainer who wanted to see her wrecked and on her knees. She’d been there; dropped weak legged off the treadmill and dragged herself into the changing rooms, every step an impossible agony, cried while she hid in a shower cubicle, desperate for one of the prescription painkillers she’d been told to take three times a day.

She didn’t even collect them from the pharmacy, sure they would drag her down faster, shield her from the damage so she wouldn’t have to face the uphill battle of healing.

It was easy to give in. It was what losers did. Christian Palmer would love to think of her defeated and addicted, given the lifetime of suffering he’d blown himself up to escape.

Thinking of him made her calf itch again but she ignored it, focused on her breathing and the rhythm of her feet hitting the belt.

The police psychiatrist was obsessed with Palmer. No matter what they discussed and how she tried to move the conversation on he always came back to Palmer and how she felt about him. She was supposed to learn to understand him, accept his actions and ultimately find it in her heart to forgive him. Because he was troubled or sick, not in complete control of himself when he thumbed that detonator.

She knew better, remembered his words: ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mel.’ The venom in them. He’d felt no remorse for his actions and went out content in the belief that he was taking her and Zigic with him.

It was one of the last things she did remember from that day.

After that all she had were snatches, odd words and images, but nothing coherent, no sense of how it all unfolded.

Ferreira glanced at the treadmill’s console, twenty minutes done, another twenty to go and the big climbs were coming up. She felt her thighs beginning to ache, muscles burning. The ligament behind her right knee, the one which took the most damage, was complaining but not loud enough for her to listen to it. She thumbed the volume up on her iPod, kept going.

On the television set bolted to the wall beside her she saw the local news starting and turned away from it, focused on her reflection in the window, the sky darkening now, lights popping on across the car park. They would be leading with the story, no real details to report, just two bodies found in Elton, victims not yet named.

Zigic wanted her to handle the official identification tomorrow. They could have sent a family-liaison officer but he was dubious about Warren and decided it was important for her to be there, use the opportunity to study his reaction to his daughter’s corpse.

His love for the girl was obvious but Ferreira knew it didn’t rule him out as her killer. Especially when you factored in the violent manner of Dawn’s death.

Except there had been no animosity which could spark off such a brutal attack. Not that Ferreira had seen. When she’d spoken to Dawn, at that initial interview last year, she gave the impression that everything was fine between them and when Ferreira suggested he might be responsible for the harassment Dawn shot the idea down instantly. He was too dedicated to Holly to do anything that might upset her.

Was there something more to it, though?

Warren had abandoned Dawn with their disabled daughter, putting the full burden of care on her. She should have been raging and instead she defended him, insisted he was a good father and good man.

Maybe she saw his relationship with Sally as a temporary aberration, something she was going to let him work out of his system before returning to his family, writing it off as just another element of the breakdown which hit him after Holly’s accident.

Ferreira couldn’t understand it but she knew there were women capable of patiently waiting for a cheating partner to come back to them, apologetic and re-dedicated. The kind of passive-aggressive women who delighted in the martyrdom of their quiet forbearance.

Warren and Sally made no sense as a couple. He was younger than her, handsome even through his wailing grief and shabbiness, no hiding the good bones in his face and the lean body. She was an almost matronly woman with a grating personality and a teenage son – hardly a catch. Especially placed next to Dawn who had been pretty in that petite and girlish way most men seemed to love.

Had Warren and Dawn still been close? Closer than they should have been?

Warren wouldn’t be the first separated man to cheat on his girlfriend with his wife.

The treadmill began to level out, the belt slowing to a fast walk and then finally a full stop and Ferreira’s attention returned to the room as she stepped down.

She wiped the sweat off her face and took a long drink of water, looking at what was left of the early-evening crowd; a couple of women on the bikes, another sitting on a power plate by the door, two men grunting among the free weights, their bodies grotesquely pumped and glowing under the lights. A boxercise class was emptying out of the studio at the back of the gym, lots of high fives as the wannabe pugilists made for the juice bar and the changing rooms, veins still flooded with adrenalin.

In another hour or two they’d be back at home, wine and ready meals and something soporific on the television, softening them up for another Monday morning.

Ferreira went into the studio to tape her fists.

The room was close and high smelling, sweat and liniment, the scent of all that suppressed rage and frustration punched out during the previous forty-five minutes, strong enough to give her a contact high if she’d needed it. But she didn’t.

There was a knot of fury permanently lodged somewhere behind her solar plexus, throbbing dully, pulsing harder every time Christian Palmer entered her mind, insinuating his way in during an absent moment or suddenly breaking through her thoughts, prompted by the sight of a nail head or a short blond haircut, or, more commonly, a police uniform.

She hadn’t told her therapist about that. If he knew how many times she’d almost lashed out at some PC since returning to work he’d have never signed her off for full duties.

In her darker moments she imagined digging up Christian Palmer’s corpse and battering it until his skull or her knuckles broke, but it was a thin and unrewarding fantasy because there was nothing left of him, just the lumps of flesh and odd bone fragments scraped off the walls of that cellar his wife had had cremated.

She’d even been denied the pleasure of spitting on his grave.

‘Fourth time this week, you’re keen.’

Ferreira tucked the end of the bandage into the gap behind her fingers, looked up to see one of the personal trainers watching her. His name tag said
Aaron
and he suited it, a wiry, tan-skinned bloke with a severe undercut and full-sleeve tattoos writhing up both arms.

‘Fifth, actually.’

He smiled. ‘You want to take a go on the pads this time? Most people won’t stand still while you knock them about.’

Ferreira shrugged. ‘If you’re happy to risk it.’

He grabbed a set of black and grey pads, shoved his hands into them, smiling at her again, small white teeth, sharp and back slanting. ‘Tell you what, if you can catch me I’ll buy you a drink.’

She gave him the once-over as they squared up, being blatant about it, and he played up to the appraisal, showed her an Ali shuffle, quick on his feet, ducking and weaving.

‘How about this,’ she said. ‘If you can stop me, I buy you a drink?’

‘You’re on.’

He took a wide stance, leading with his right foot, braced for the first few straight shots she threw at him, peppering the pads as he held them high, covering his face. He taunted her from behind them – ‘Come on, girlie, you got better than that!’ – shuffling forward, forcing her to give ground. She landed a quick jab, no power in it, and he swung at her, a wide arcing path which disturbed the air above her head and left his right side open. Ferreira poked at the gap but he skipped away from her.

‘You really want me to buy you that drink,’ he said, grinning at her, guard lowered.

‘Seems like you’re working harder than I am.’

‘Worried about my pretty face, aren’t I?’

‘Bit late for that.’

Aaron showed her his chin but she let it hang there, went for the pads; hook, jab, jab. As she moved in close he covered up his face, tucked his elbows into his ribs and rode out the body shots she threw at him, taking them all on the arms. She was finding a rhythm now and it was different from working the bag, more challenging and more satisfying. No room for Christian Palmer in her head as she studied the way Aaron moved.

They danced around on the mats, their grunts and hard-slapped impacts the only noise in the room, the closed door reducing the music from the gym to nothing more than a bassline.

‘You’re throwing from the shoulder,’ he said.

She brought the next shot up from her toes, aiming for the pad protecting his midsection, and at the last moment he drew it away, letting her fist crunch into his abs.

‘Shit.’ He winced. ‘You got me. Looks like I’m buying.’

Ferreira shook her head, smiling despite herself. ‘I’ll meet you downstairs.’

In the changing rooms she stripped out of her sweaty gear, thinking of what a cheesy come-on it had been. He was decent looking, though, had a good body; she didn’t need him to be original too.

She showered quickly, the hot water making the scars on her legs prickle. As she dried off in the cubicle her hand kept returning to the odd little lump under the skin of her right calf. She knew what needed to be done but not here or now and definitely not tonight.

A couple of middle-aged women had come in while she was showering and they shouted to each other across the room as they pulled sweats on over their shorts and T-shirts, too bashful to strip off but confident enough to rip apart someone they’d been working out near.

As Ferreira walked past them the conversation cut dead. She could feel their eyes on her, knew the look they were sharing because she’d seen it so many times before in here.

‘What happened to your legs, love?’

She turned and fixed the woman with a hard stare. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Your legs? What on earth have you done to them?’

The woman’s friend said her name, very quietly, but she wasn’t giving up.

‘Accident, was it?’

‘No, not an accident.’ Ferreira forced herself to smile. ‘Just bad luck. Like your face.’

She dropped her towel and started to get dressed as the women sniped on in an undertone. A minute later they were gone and Ferreira let out the breath she’d been holding, sank onto the slatted wooden bench, and swore into her hands.

Christ, being pitied by someone who looked like that bitch.

She thought of Aaron waiting for her downstairs. They both knew what was going to happen tonight, all the talk of a ‘drink’ just a bullshit nicety, the real communication already done. But what was he going to think when he saw her naked?

Maybe she could distract him from her scars, move in fast, take control.

A bloke like him wouldn’t go for it, though. He was the full-contact type, she could see it on him and that’s what she wanted, a properly comprehensive fuck after months of self-conscious and unsatisfying quickies where she’d been too obsessed about hiding the damage to fully let herself go.

There would be no hiding anything from him.

Her hand strayed to her right calf again, stroking the hard nugget under her skin. She pinched it between her fingertips and the sensation of it, moving there, made her stomach turn.

She imagined Aaron running his hand up her leg, the frown on his face as he stopped, wondering what the hell that was.

It shouldn’t matter, she kept telling herself, as she pulled on her jeans and T-shirt, slipped her feet into her Converses and threw the dirty kit into her holdall.

Who was he to judge her? After what she’d been through.

But he would. Because she was flawed now and women weren’t allowed to be.

She went down the stairs into the reception area, saw him stand as she approached the cafe, a wide smile spreading across his face, a promising hint of greed in his eyes which almost changed her mind.

‘Where d’you fancy then?’ he asked. ‘Draper’s Arms?’

‘Sorry, I can’t.’ She held up her phone. ‘Work called.’

‘On a Sunday night?’

‘I’m a copper, we don’t get to say no.’

He nodded, looking around them, awkward suddenly.

‘Another time, then?’

‘Sure,’ she said, knowing there wouldn’t be.

Zigic woke to the sound of a dog barking, high yelps coming from the floor near the foot of the bed, the sound of a paw scratching insistently at the rug. Sleep fuddled, he kicked off the thin, summer sheets and hauled his heavy head from the pillow.

Since Stefan had worked out how to open the back door their neighbours’ dog kept mysteriously finding its way into the house and he didn’t relish the prospect of taking it home again at this time of morning, making the same apology they were all getting tired of. The little mongrel was good-tempered at least, which was more than you could say for its owners.

‘I’ll deal with this, will I?’ he said to Anna, who smiled at him and rolled over towards the wall.

He got up, only one eye fully open. ‘Come on, Lucky. Come here, boy.’