Human Remains (20 page)

Inside the folder was the document I’d prepared for the meeting: the slides, and the spreadsheets of data I’d kept on all the bodies found so far, which showed names, addresses, further information, which might contain anything linking them to each other, next of kin, approximate date of death, date of discovery, possible causes of death. And now it looked as though I had another two to add to the list.

I printed all the documents off and a basic version of the spreadsheet, gathered everything together and was just about to head out of the door again when the phone rang.

I looked at it, as though trying to work out from sight whether it was likely to be important or not.

Then I almost wished I hadn’t answered it, because it turned out to be him. The journalist.

‘Is that Annabel? It’s Sam Everett.’

‘Hello.’

‘How’s your mum doing?’

‘Alright, thanks,’ I said. ‘The same.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be at work, to be honest.’

‘Well, I’ve only popped in. I’m going back to the hospital in a minute.’

He hesitated for a moment, as though he’d been expecting me to say more. But what else was there to say? I wasn’t about to go into detail discussing my mother’s medical condition with a relative stranger.

‘I wondered if you had any more news – about the
investigation
?’

‘What investigation?’

He sighed, and at last resorted to sarcasm. ‘You know, the one with all the bodies? The one where I got a weird phone call from a woman who knew where the next one was waiting for your lot?’

‘There’s no need for that,’ I said, shuddering.

‘Sorry. Look, I did my bit last night – I rang the police as soon as I knew I wouldn’t be wasting anyone’s time. Any chance you can give me a bit of news?’

‘Like what? I don’t know what it is you need,’ I said.

‘What about the woman who called me? Have you traced her?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And?’

‘And what? She’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Apparently she’d been dead less than twenty-four hours when they found her today. Same as the others, just not decomposed.’

Silence from the other end of the phone. I shouldn’t have said that, I thought; I was going to get into trouble now – and the investigation was barely a few hours old.

‘Can you tell me who she is?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know that yet,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything, really – I’ve only been in the office for about half an hour. And I’m really not supposed to talk to you about this. I know people who’ve been sacked for giving away details of an investigation.’

‘Annabel, I’m not trying to put you in an awkward position. I’m sure I can find out her name from one of my other contacts. It’s just that you’re the first person who really gets what I’m trying to do with this story. I don’t want you to give anything away, I just think we could help each other out. There’s nobody else I can discuss this with who really cares about it. Could I meet up with you later, perhaps?’

‘I need to go back to the hospital,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

I realised I was being inexcusably mean towards him for no good reason other than that I felt he was putting undue pressure on me to give him information.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Look, if I find anything out that I think might be useful, I’ll give you a call. Alright?’

‘Oh, yes!’ he said, his enthusiasm reappearing. ‘That would be great. Thank you, Annabel. I really appreciate it.’

When I’d put the phone down a moment later I gathered up all the paperwork again and headed upstairs to the MIR.

The hospital rang me on my mobile at a quarter to seven. I’d been so busy, my head a tangle of thoughts and proposals and considerations and recommendations, ideas to try and unravel the tangle of people and their lives, that when the phone rang and the woman on the end said the word ‘hospital’ I realised I hadn’t thought of it since the call with Sam Everett earlier.

‘Hello,’ I said, expecting them to be giving me a list of things mother needed – a nightie? Pants, socks?

‘Is that Annabel Hayer?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Miss Hayer, I’m so sorry to be contacting you with some bad news. Your mother passed away about ten minutes ago. I’m so very sorry.’

‘Oh, God.’ I sat still on the chair, mouth open and gaping with shock. I hadn’t been there. I should have been there. ‘Thank you,’ I said, at last, as though she’d phoned up to offer me a voucher for some double glazing. ‘Do I need to do anything?’

‘You should come in, when you can,’ the woman said. Was she a nurse? Had she told me? I couldn’t remember how the conversation had started. Had she rung me, or had I called her? ‘You might want to bring someone with you, so you’re not on your own.’

That almost made me laugh. Who could I bring? There was nobody at all.

‘I’ll come in a while,’ I said. ‘Thank you again.’

‘That’s alright,’ she said. ‘We’ll see you later. Take care.’

I replaced the phone and looked around the office. I was sitting in the MIR at one of the spare desks, and all around me conversations were going on, people were on the phone. Some man standing in the doorway was laughing about something with another person standing on the other side, out of my line of sight. None of them had the faintest idea what had happened. None of them knew.

I stood up and sat down again as my legs felt as though they might not hold me up.

‘Are you OK?’ said the DC who was sitting at the desk next to mine. Was his name Gary, or had I just made that up?

‘My mum died,’ I said.

I think he thought I was joking, at first, or maybe he thought he’d misheard, because he smiled at me. Then he must have seen from my face that I wasn’t joking at all, and he said, quietly, ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Was that your dad on the phone?’

‘No, the hospital.’

I tried to stand up and this time my legs felt better, so I mumbled something about getting my coat and said a curt, ‘Excuse me,’ to the two men standing in the doorway sharing jokes with each other. That was just not appropriate on a murder enquiry, and anyone would have been irritated even without the added distress of having just heard about the death of your parent – the end of your family.

The hospital had a bag with all my mum’s things in it, which didn’t amount to much because I hadn’t had a chance to take anything in for her.

One of the uniformed women on the ward – possibly a nurse, maybe some kind of healthcare assistant or whatever they are – took me down to the Chapel of Rest. Everyone I saw spoke to me in hushed, gentle tones. I suppose that was their training, their way of avoiding me spiralling into hysteria. But, despite the tumultuous rush of events that had led up to this point, I did not feel hysterical. I felt calm, almost detached from it all. I had a job to do now, a list of things I needed to work my way through until I could get on with my life.

Number one, go and see Mum.

Collect form from someone. They’d made an appointment.

Take form to registrar to get death certificate.

Go to see Mum’s solicitor and get temporary power of attorney over her effects.

Check her house is OK.

Contact funeral director.

Arrange funeral.

Pack up Mum’s things.

Put the house on the market.

There were hundreds of other steps that would fall in between these ones, but focusing on the milestones ahead while I was sitting in the chair beside my mother’s body in the Chapel of Rest was really the only way I could cope.

I wondered if I should talk to her. What could I even say?

I was so tired it was hard to think straight. My mind was wandering, searching around for her, for a sense of her, the way I felt for the angels when I needed them. I might ask and get an answer, feel a supportive hand on my shoulder, feel a breath or hear a whispered word of love. I closed my eyes and tried to feel her presence, even though she was next to me.

Mum
, I thought,
help me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
.

I could feel nothing, nothing at all. It felt as if she had gone.

I opened my eyes again. There was music playing in the background, something classical without being spiritual. It was probably Classic FM’s Top 20 Chapel of Rest Hits, and the thought raised a smile that threatened to turn into a most inappropriate giggle. And something else struck me then. I’d nearly made it to the end of my thirties without having ever seen a dead body, and now in the space of a few days I’d seen two.

I stood up. I looked at her one more time, thinking I should touch her, I should kiss her goodbye, I should
do something
… but I could not. Instead I left her lying there with the white sheet up to her chin, turned my back on her and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind me.

I collected the form, which needed to be taken to the registrar as soon as possible. ‘I could go now,’ I said to the woman who’d handed it to me.

‘It will be closed now,’ the nurse said gently. ‘I think you might need to leave it until tomorrow.’

My first thought was that I had work tomorrow, but they were probably expecting me to take some time off. I would ring Bill, find out what they wanted me to do. After all, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have stuff to do at work. They were finally starting the investigation I’d been pushing for – how much time was I was supposed to take off?

A few minutes later I was heading back down the corridor to the main entrance, thinking of my list of what I had to do and mentally ticking some things, rearranging others and adding more tasks to it.

‘Annabel!’

I looked across the crowded reception area and to my dismay it was him again. Sam Everett. I continued walking towards the door, hoping he was here for some other reason and not because he was stalking me.

‘Hey! Annabel!’

He touched my sleeve and then I supposed I could no longer ignore him.

‘Sam. Hello again.’

He looked at me closely. ‘Are you alright?’

I realised I must be behaving oddly. ‘My mother died,’ I said. ‘I just came to collect her things.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. He looked as if he meant it, and as if he had been expecting something like that. ‘Come and have a drink with me.’

‘No, thank you, I have lots of things I need to do.’

‘Just a quick coffee. Over there,’ he said, indicating the WRVS cafe which was still full of people. ‘Come on.’

It was easier to give in. I followed him, still clutching the carrier bag they’d given me with my mum’s possessions inside, and stood dumbly behind him while he moved a tray in a painfully slow progress towards the automatic drinks dispenser and thereafter the till.

‘Coffee?’ he asked, when he finally got to the till. ‘Cappuccino OK?’ All the other buttons on the machine were taped up with ‘not working’ written on the tape in a wavering handwriting.

‘Sure.’

While he paid I went and sat down, and a few moments later a woman came and cleared up the two trays overladen with dirty crockery and half-eaten bits of food that were taking up most of the space on the table. ‘It’s a self-clear area,’ she said to me, pointing at the sign. ‘You’d think people could read in this day and age, wouldn’t you?’

I looked up at her and she didn’t speak to me again. Did I have some mark on my face, I wondered? Some sign that said ‘Recently Bereaved, Handle with Care’? I even smiled at her, but still she left me to it, taking the dirty trays with her.

Sam sat down in front of me and slid a mug of beige-coloured foam across the table in my direction, followed by a handful of sugar sachets and a KitKat.

‘I don’t really take sugar,’ I said.

‘Have you eaten anything? When did you last have something to drink? I think you could do with some sugar.’

‘Are you my personal dietician now or something?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Put sugar in it and I might leave you in peace for a while.’

He made me smile, but I did as I was told. When I started eating the chocolate I realised I was hungry. My stomach growled and churned at the food. I sipped at the drink, expecting it to be boiling hot, but it was barely lukewarm.

‘I think their machine’s had it,’ I said. The coffee tasted of UHT milk.

‘Yeah.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me about the case?’

‘Interesting as that conversation might be, that’s not what I’m here for.’

‘Oh? What are you here for?’

He leaned forwards slightly. ‘I rang your office again. Then I rang DI Frost. He told me you’d suffered an unexpected bereavement and that you wouldn’t be in for a while.’

‘So you came here…?’

‘To find you.’

‘Why?’

‘To see if you were alright. Do you have anyone? Brothers, sisters? Other family?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Anyway, as I said to you before, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of things, I always have. I just have to work my way through a list…’

I gulped at the coffee, thinking that the sooner I drank it, the sooner I could get out of here and get home. Something was building up inside me, a feeling of unease, as if I was going to be sick or was coming down with something. I didn’t want to be here any more. I wanted to be outside, in the fresh air, and then I wanted to go home and lock the door and not open it again.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I lost my mum last year. I know a bit about what it’s like. I just thought I might be able to give you a bit of support.’

‘Why?’

‘What?’

‘Why did she die? Was she ill?’

‘She had cancer.’

I nodded, although I had no frame of reference for this. My mother had suffered a stroke. Yes, she was housebound. Yes, she was elderly and frail. But aside from that, and the chest infection, she hadn’t been seriously ill at all. Only yesterday she’d been muttering some complaint about the prime minister while I cooked her dinner and put the shopping away.

I tried to remember the last thing she’d said to me. Had she even said goodbye? When was the last time I’d said something nice to her? Asked her how she felt, if she was happy? When was the last time I’d told her I loved her?