Pressure Head (4 page)

Gary was currently ruffling Julian’s neck fur as we waited for the food to arrive. “Who’s Daddy’s sweetie, then?” he cooed.

“That’s a good question,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “What happened to that bloke you met in London?”

Gary made a face. He’s one of those blokes who are not exactly fat but still soft all over, like an overstuffed teddy bear, although in his case it conceals a quite respectably muscled upper body. He works from his house in Brock’s Hollow, doing something in IT—or as the website has it, “implementing software solutions for the forward-looking business”. He’s got a big St Bernard called Julian that’s as soft as he is, and he treats it like a furry baby.

“Turned out to be a total
cow
. We shall not speak of him. No we
won’t
.” The last bit was to the dog. “And how’s your love life, darling?” That was to me, Julian’s love life having long been consigned to the vet’s dustbin.

“Dead as a dodo,” I admitted sadly. “Just don’t seem to meet any decent blokes these days.”

“Well, that’s a disappointment. I thought you’d dragged me up here to tell me all about your latest conquest.”

No one pouts like Gary, and I had to smile. “If only. Although I did have breakfast with a tall, well-built blond this morning…”

“Tom! I am
agog
!” He was too. His eyes were practically popping out on stalks. Even Julian was looking up at me, his tongue hanging out like a slice of Spam as he panted out bone-breath. “Tell me more. At once.”

I laughed. “Not nearly as good as it sounds. Sorry. He turned up on my doorstep before eight.”

“Now that’s just rude. Nobody’s got their face on at that hour.” Gary sat back in his seat, looking horrified on my behalf. Made me wonder just how much of a beauty routine he went through every morning.

“Yeah, well, that’s him all over. Bloke I knew at school. Phil Morrison.” I half wondered if Gary might have heard something about him. I don’t often meet a gay bloke from around here who Gary doesn’t know.

“Unlike yours truly, it doesn’t ring a bell.” Gary’s a campanologist. He likes to tell people he took up bell-ringing because he’s always up for anything with “camp” in the name. Some people even think he’s joking. “Old boyfriend?”

I made a face. “Old school bully.”

“And he’s knocking you up in the early hours of the morning
because
?”

I sighed and lowered my voice. “I found a body yesterday.”

Gary’s eyes widened to the size of the dinner plates the waitress chose that moment to put in front of us. “The girl from the estate agent’s—that was you?”

“Thanks, love,” I said, smiling mechanically at the waitress. She just gave me a funny look, probably because she’d heard what Gary had said.
Thanks, Gary
. “Well, I found her, yeah.” I stared at my steak-and-kidney pie, suddenly not feeling half as hungry as I had when I’d ordered it. “I didn’t put her there.”

“Well, go on.” Gary leaned forward over his lasagne. “Tell Uncle Gary all about it. Was she”—he lowered his voice—“
naked
?”

Gary’s a good bloke, really he is. It’s just—nobody ever really gets it. You tell anyone you’ve found a body, and it’s just not real to them. They think it’s like being an extra on
Midsomer Murders
. “No. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it, and to be honest, I really don’t want to. It wasn’t exactly the highlight of my week.”

“Sorry, sweetie. Poor you.” Gary laid a hand briefly on my arm, then chomped thoughtfully on his salad for a minute. “To coin a phrase, if I had a gift like yours, I’d return it.”

I shrugged and picked at my chips. “At least she’s been found now. That’s got to be better for her family than not knowing.” I reached for the ketchup bottle, then thought better of it, visions of poor Melanie dancing in my head and threatening to take away my appetite. “Trouble is, the old school bully is a private investigator now, and he doesn’t believe in my so-called gift. Thinks I must know something about her death I’m not telling.”

“But the police don’t think that, do they?” Gary leaned over to put a hand on my right knee, and Julian showed his concern by slobbering on the other.

Knowing from experience just how unpleasant it would be when the drool soaked through the denim, I pushed his ton-weight head off gently—the dog’s that is, not Gary’s. “No—but I ended up agreeing to talk to the girl’s parents this evening. What the hell am I going to say?”

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Gary declaimed, one hand on his heart and the other thrust skywards. Heads turned, as they often do when Gary’s around.

“It’s not going to be what they want to hear. Don’t s’pose you fancy meeting up for a drink afterwards, drown my sorrows and all that?”

“Can’t, sweetie—Wednesday is practice night, remember?”

I remembered. I hunched up one shoulder and did a passable imitation of Quasimodo lisping, “The bells! The bells!” Gary just smiled and gave me a V sign.

Chapter Three

Morrison knocked on my door on the dot of seven that evening, which meant that as a job had overrun, I was still shovelling pasta into my gob at the time. I answered the door, plate in hand, and gazed up at his bulky figure, still chewing. He’d dressed up to go and see the Porters, even put a jacket and tie on. He looked good—but it made him seem more remote, more dangerous, without his hard lines softened by cashmere. I jerked my head to indicate he should come in. It’s rude to talk with your mouth full.

“Do you ever stop eating?” he asked, once again following me into the kitchen like he owned the place.

I was stung and swallowed my mouthful a bit more quickly than I really wanted to. “Do you ever stop to consider it might be someone’s mealtime before you start beating down their door?”

He went to fold his arms, then obviously remembered it’d crumple his expensive jacket, and put his hands on his hips instead. The gesture could have looked camp but somehow, on him, it really didn’t. “First, do you think you could stop being so sodding touchy about everything? And second, we had an appointment.”

“Oh, excuse me. I suppose I should have left the lady with water dripping through her ceiling and told her I’d come back tomorrow, because sorry, I’ve got an
appointment
.” I rolled my eyes, shoving the plate back on the kitchen counter. I’d had enough anyway.

Morrison sort of huffed. “Does everything have to be such a bloody production with you?”

“Comes of being queer, I expect. Wouldn’t you say?” I put a bit of emphasis on the
you
, narked he was making me out to be such a drama queen. Anyway, it was about time we got it all out in the open.

He stilled. “Who told you?”

I wasn’t about to drop Dave in it, even though he probably couldn’t give a monkey’s if Morrison was pissed off with him. “Maybe I read your mind,” I joked weakly. “Maybe there’s no end to my psychic powers.”

For a split second, he actually looked worried. Then his expression relaxed. “Stop trying to mess with my head, Poof—shit.” He looked away and didn’t say anything more.

I took a couple of deep breaths. I was about to say,
look, let’s just leave it, okay
—but he beat me to it. “Sorry,” he said, like it caused him physical pain to say it. “That wasn’t—I didn’t mean anything by it.”

There was a short silence. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded curtly. Acknowledging his apology, although not necessarily accepting it.

Morrison spoke again. “I checked up on you today. Apparently you’ve got previous, on the finding-things front. Doesn’t mean I believe in all this mumbo-jumbo.”

Bloody fantastic. He’d checked up on me—so now he knew which porn I watched and had read all the rubbish I’d posted on Facebook after a few beers too many. “If you’re not going to believe what I say,” I said slowly, to make sure he was really listening, “then what’s the point of asking me questions?”

“Are you going to come with me to the Porters or not?” he asked, sidestepping the issue.

I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

This being late November, it was dark and beginning to get a bit nippy as we drove off in Morrison’s silver VW Golf. The car wasn’t new, but the interior was impersonal, devoid of any touches of personality like the “ironic” retro furry dice I had swinging from the rearview mirror of my Ford Fiesta like a couple of cubist bollocks. As we passed under a street lamp, something glinted, and I noticed for the first time that Morrison was wearing a wedding ring.

“You’re married?” I blurted out, just managing to stop myself carrying on with,
To a man?

Morrison’s gaze flickered over at me. For a moment, I thought there was something like hurt in his eyes, but it was gone before I could tell for sure, and he turned his attention back to the road. “No.”

“But you wear a ring.”

There was a pause before he answered. “People are more ready to trust a married man.”

God, and here I’d been thinking… I don’t know what I’d been thinking. But not this. “So it’s just a prop? For fuck’s sake, that’s so bloody cynical.” Disappointment sharpened my tone. “I suppose you’d do anything, say anything to get what you want.”

“And you’ve never told a customer work needs doing when it doesn’t, or got them to pay for fancy copper pipes when plastic would do?”

“No, actually, I haven’t. And I fucking well resent you even suggesting it.” I folded my arms and glared out of the window. I could see this being a very long evening. Why the hell hadn’t I brought my own car?

“Look,” Morrison said after a painful silence. “If I’m going to do my job—the job my clients pay me to do—sometimes I need to get people to trust me. So maybe some of it’s an act—but don’t go telling me you don’t do the same thing in your line of work.”

“What, lie to people? No, I don’t.”

“And I suppose you’ve never flirted with a housewife? Just so she won’t argue about the bill, or to make sure it’ll be you she calls in next time some work needs doing?”

“That’s different, and you know it.”

“Is it? Didn’t notice any rainbow stickers on your van.”

“Yeah, well, for some reason, I thought it might be safer not to advertise I’m queer. Can’t imagine where I got that impression, can you?”

“For fuck’s sake, I never laid a finger on you! It was that prick in the Chelsea tractor who did the damage, not me.” He was breathing hard, and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I was starting to wonder just how safe I was in his car when he spoke again. “What the hell do you expect me to do? I tried to apologise, but—fuck it.” Morrison clammed up, his jaw tense.

I wasn’t sure if I felt more angry at him—or guilty. Was my moral high ground really the boggy ditch he was making it out to be? Then again, did he think an apology was some kind of emotional Band-Aid? Stick it on, give the kid a kiss better, and all the pain goes away? “You can’t just turn up after a dozen years, say
oh, sorry
, and expect us to be best mates all of a sudden,” I said, softening my tone a bit. “It doesn’t work like that.” I wished I knew how it bloody well did work.

“Want me to go down on my knees, do you?” Phil asked wearily, and all of a sudden I got a picture of just that. Him in his posh suit and all. My throat closed up with desire, and things below the belt got a bit uncomfortable. I stared straight ahead at the pitch-black road lined with trees that loomed ominously over us, dark shadows against the cloudy sky. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Phil—Morrison—flashing me a strange look. Did he know? I wondered—could he tell he still got to me?

I cleared my throat. “So where’s this house, then?”

The Porters’ house, like Morrison’s suit, was big and posh, out in the well-kept rural wilds towards Kimpton. I wondered what they’d thought about their daughter moving in with an ex-junkie on a council estate. Morrison had said they believed Graham was innocent, but just because they didn’t think he was a murderer didn’t mean they necessarily thought he was a good prospect for a son-in-law.

I supposed I’d find out soon enough. Morrison rang the doorbell, which even sounded classy—old-fashioned and mellow, like something Gary might approve of, not a tinny little buzzer like the one that’d come with my house. The door was opened by a lady who looked to be in her sixties. She tried to raise a smile for us, but her mouth settled back into its haggard lines before the effort really got off the ground. Melanie’s mother, I guessed.

“Come in, please,” she said.

Morrison’s voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it as he introduced us. “Mrs. Porter, this is Tom Paretski.”

She nodded and held out a cold, dry hand for me to shake. “Please come in,” she said again, and led us to a largish sitting room. A man who must be Melanie’s father was sitting in an armchair, staring at the curtains. His gaze flickered to us briefly, then returned to the pale pink damask.

I really, really didn’t want to be here.

“Howard, this is Tom Paretski,” Mrs. Porter said. “He’s the one who…who found Melanie.”

The man didn’t react. “Please sit down,” she told us, and we perched gingerly on the sofa while she sat in an uncomfortable-looking upright chair. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

I wished she’d offered something stronger. “No, I’m fine, thank you,” I said firmly. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. What was the point of me even being here, intruding on their grief? “I’m really sorry about your daughter,” I said, the inadequacy of it a bitter taste in my mouth.