Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  The session had been at the end of the day, following a tricky interview that had only got worse when the prisoner had had an epileptic fit in the custody suite, cracking his head open on the door of his cell. The prospect of an independent review by another inspector, although standard procedure, had meant Drake had been on edge.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ Drake tried to smile.

  ‘Have you been keeping a notebook, as I suggested?’

  ‘No. Ah… not yet.’

  Halpin gave him a resigned look, as though Drake’s reply was entirely expected.

  ‘It will help.’

  ‘By next time.’

  Drake still had his hands on his knees, but they felt heavy and he suppressed the urge to move them onto the armrest. It occurred to him to cross his legs but he left them where they were, trying to second-guess what Halpin was thinking, how he might interpret the body language.

  ‘Have you been more conscious of the rituals since we last talked about them?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. It’s been very busy at work.’

  ‘I guess it must be busy all the time.’

  ‘Always.’

  Drake allowed himself a brief moment of relaxation.

  ‘Good. Now we need to discuss some background. I mentioned trying to identify an event in your past.’

  Drake nodded.

  ‘Did you have a happy childhood?’

  Drake looked at Halpin and hesitated. Nobody had ever asked him this before. It sounded so clinical, so remote and now he did move his hands, almost without thinking, and intertwined the fingers of both hands together. Drake spent half of their allotted time explaining about his schooling, adolescence and his extended family. Halpin made notes, occasionally smiled and nodded and then tilted his head, a quizzical look on his face.

  ‘Tell me about your grandparents.’

  ‘My grandfather died when I was twelve.’

  Halpin slanted his head again and gave Drake a curious look. ‘Were you close to him?’

  ‘Yes. Looking back, I suppose I was. It’s not something I thought about at the time.’

  Halpin gave him an understanding nod of his head.

  ‘He would show me how to mend fences and look after the sheep. He was the one who insisted that I be up all night to see a lamb being born in his shed. My mother didn’t approve – she thought I was too young. He’d show me how the weather could affect the farm and he’d tell me how water could damage the field if the ditches weren’t kept clear. He knew all those sorts of things about the land. They were important to him – to his way of life.’

  Drake hesitated. Halpin waited.

  ‘I suppose it’s a way of life that we won’t see any more. He was a kind man. I never heard him say a cross word, except if I didn’t learn fast enough. He never liked that – always wanted me to pick things up quickly. He taught me the names of all the fields in the farm. And he could tell when there was rain in the wind. Didn’t need a forecast. He could almost sense it.’

  Drake slowed.

  ‘He wasn’t ill for very long. It was cancer. I remember everything as if it was yesterday. The coffin in the front parlour and all the old men gathered in the kitchen to express their condolences with my grandmother. She wore a black dress and my parents made tea and there were cakes and sandwiches.

  ‘And they made me see him in the coffin. I remember being shocked. Wanting him to get up. I can never forget his face.’

  Drake paused and silence filled the room. He looked down and realised that he was gripping his hands together so tightly his knuckles were white.

  * * *

  Drake sat by the window in a café near the surgery, his mind exhausted. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He couldn’t remember what he’d ordered until a waitress arrived and put a coffee mug on the table. Then he stared out of the window, wanting to order his thoughts, knowing that he had to believe the session with Halpin had been constructive. But he wasn’t feeling any better: he just felt bruised. Halpin had asked about the numbers, as he’d done in the first interview, which had only caused him to relive his last murder case whereby a four-digit number had dominated the whole investigation. Everywhere he turned there seemed to be numbers and now the death of Rosen had thrown up more numbers and he worried whether he really could carry on.

  He didn’t notice the weak coffee and he hardly registered his mobile when it first went off. ‘Drake.’ He had already recognised Caren’s number.

  ‘Where are you, sir?’

  For a second he didn’t know what to say. ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

  ‘Mandy Beal is dead.’

  Immediately he stood up, some of the coffee spilled as his knee jolted the table, and he headed for the door.

  * * *

  Over an hour passed before Drake drove into the small estate of two-storey semi-detached houses and killed the sound of Springsteen’s Hungry Heart. Caren pulled up behind him as he parked on the pavement. Drake paused, noticing the old cars parked in the drives and a large crack down the gable of the house opposite him. When he paid real attention to the houses he could see that they all needed painting, new windows and work on the gardens. He guessed they’d been built in the seventies, when the nuclear power station nearby had been built and money was easy to come by for new housing developments. A yellow police cordon tape flickered in the breeze and behind it the front door into Mandy’s house was ajar.

  Drake turned and watched Caren, remote in hand, locking her car before walking towards him.

  ‘What are the details?’

  ‘The body was found by one of her friends first thing this morning,’ Caren said, lifting the tape for Drake.

  He pushed open the front door and met Mike Foulds fidgeting with a box of equipment next to a door that was open a few millimetres, a strong rancid smell of stale urine coming from the toilet beyond.

  ‘She’s upstairs,’ he said.

  ‘Anybody else live here?’ Drake said.

  ‘Some girl. Hasn’t been here for days. She’s been staying with her boyfriend. Something about being home from the oil rigs for a week.’

  Drake nodded.

  ‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ Foulds said.

  The stairs squeaked and Drake noticed a couple of loose spindles as they made their way upstairs. Chunks had been torn out of the woodchip wallpaper, and from the bathroom Drake heard the sound of movement and the clicking of a digital camera. Foulds stopped at the door and looked in.

  ‘DI is here,’ he said and the CSIs left the bathroom, carrying a tripod and a bag of equipment.

  Drake took a couple of steps inside: at least it didn’t stink. He looked down into the bath and saw the wrinkled body of Mandy Beal lying in the water; her head flopped to one side. Her stomach was flat and her legs slim. Submerged under the water and resting on her feet was an electric radio, its power cable draped over the side of the bath.

  ‘We’ve disconnected the juice,’ Foulds said. ‘We wanted to wait for you to see her before we did anything else.’

  Drake scanned the bathroom. A hurried count told him there were over twenty candles dotted at various locations. An enormous towel was resting on the seat of the toilet and on the tiles beneath it were two bottles of bath salts.

  ‘There’s an empty bottle of pills in the kitchen and the remains of a bottle of whisky,’ Foulds said. ‘And a suicide note.’

  ‘Really?’ Drake turned towards Foulds. ‘So she drinks a skin full of whisky. Pops some pills and then has a bath and fries herself with the radio.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  Drake took a final look around the bathroom. ‘Where’s the note?’

  Foulds led them down the landing and into a bedroom: it was a dark colour, fashionable thirty years before but now faded with age. A double bed covered in a creased duvet dominated the room. Foulds stepped over to a cupboard pushed against the wall, covered with bottles and creams, and picked up a plastic evidence pouch. He handed it to Drake. ‘We found it o
n the table by the bed.’

  Caren stepped to Drake’s side and peered down at the line of scrawled handwriting.

  ‘I can’t go on without him,’ Caren said, reading from the page.

  Drake pushed the paper towards Caren and turned to Foulds. ‘And how long has she been dead?’

  ‘Few hours maybe. Doctor was here before you. Certified death and left in five minutes flat.’

  Drake and Caren left Foulds and walked back along the small landing to make their way downstairs. The lounge was dark and damp and two brown sofas had been pushed against the walls. A small table sat in the middle of the floor, the rings from hot mugs or damp glasses evident on the wooden surface. A family liaison officer sat with a young girl who was alternating between grabbing a handful of tissues from a multi-coloured box and blowing her nose and sobbing.

  ‘Did you find the body?’ Drake said without introduction.

  ‘This is Debbie,’ the liaison officer said.

  Drake glanced quickly around the room. A small bookcase against a wall by a window held various DVDs and CDs, and on the shelves were some Catherine Cookson novels. The leaves of a pot plant were turning dark brown. Drake didn’t notice any sign of heating in the room and guessed that there must be a radiator behind one of the sofas, which were disproportionately large for the size of the room.

  ‘When did you arrive home?’ Caren said, sitting by Debbie’s side on the sofa after darting a glance at Drake.

  ‘It was early.’

  ‘What time?’

  Debbie was perched on the side of the sofa, her legs tucked tightly against the edge of the leather. She had a pallid complexion, long blonde hair that stretched down over her shoulders, and a loud voice that put Drake on edge.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Debbie said.

  ‘Well, the call was received by Area Control at 7.30,’ Drake said. ‘So you must have been here by then.’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘How long was it after you arrived home before you discovered Mandy’s body?’

  She grabbed another tissue and sobbed some more. ‘I needed to visit the toilet and…’

  Caren bent forward and pitched her head slightly towards Debbie. ‘It’s all right. You didn’t realise she was home?’

  ‘I thought she was working.’

  Drake butted in. ‘Did Mandy have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Not a regular boyfriend. She’d had an affair with some creep on the boat and he’d dumped her. She used to tell me what he was like. He made her think she was the one. That she was really special and that there was no one else for him.’

  ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘Frank something. I never met him,’ she crumpled a tissue and balled it tightly before dropping it onto the table.

  ‘Do you know of any reason why Mandy would want to kill herself?’

  Debbie swallowed hard and started crying again. ‘I’ve never seen a dead body before.’ Her voice broke.

  Drake ran his hands along his trousers and then around his collar and pushed out his chin, trying to make himself feel comfortable. He wondered how quickly he would be able to get clean after this.

  ‘It’s important Debbie,’ Drake said.

  ‘I don’t know…’

  Caren reached over and put a hand over Debbie’s shoulder. ‘I know it’s difficult.’

  ‘She was happy. She had her parents and her job and she was talking about buying a house. Last year, when she was with the creep, she said things about going away and what it would be like to live somewhere warm. I don’t believe it. She would never kill herself.’

  Drake knew from previous cases that suicide notes could be distressing and that often they assuaged guilt or explained why a person couldn’t continue. Mandy’s note had seemed straightforward enough. I can’t go on without him. Drake wondered whether the him was the creep Debbie disliked so much.

  ‘Did you read her suicide note?’ Drake asked.

  Debbie took in deep lungfuls of breath and grabbed the box of tissues, as though holding it was a comfort.

  ‘I… picked it up…’

  Caren inched closer to Debbie. ‘I know how difficult it must be.’

  Debbie nodded and darted glances at Caren and then Drake.

  Drake could hear the muffled conversations from the undertakers moving the body down the stairs and once he thought they were finished he said, ‘I need you to go into Mandy’s room again.’

  ‘I can’t…’

  Caren reassured her. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll go with you.’

  ‘I can’t live here any more.’ There was a pathetic, lost look in her eyes.

  Drake stood up and waited for Debbie to compose herself and blow her nose one more time. The upstairs of the house was quieter now, but Debbie still looked frightened as Drake pushed open the door into the bedroom. She gave the bathroom a frightened look as she passed. Drake wasn’t sure if taking Debbie into the bedroom was going to help and the odd glance given to him by Caren earlier had reinforced his suspicion that it might be a waste of time. But he was paid to be suspicious and maybe Mandy hadn’t committed suicide and maybe the connection to Frank Rosen’s death was too convenient.

  ‘Is everything here?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Is there anything missing? Anything at all?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Have a good look around.’

  Debbie took a couple of steps around the room. ‘It looks like Mandy’s room. I don’t… I can’t…’ She began to sob again and Caren gave Drake a sharp look, before taking Debbie by the arm and leading her out of the bedroom.

  Drake stood by the bed and focused on everything in the room, the bedclothes, the bedside table, then the mirror on the cupboard and the row of bottles and cotton buds and mascara and eyeshadow. He’d never noticed whether Sian had this number of bottles and potions and he studied them again, wanting to believe that something was out of place, something misplaced. Without any real reason he began opening the drawers of the cabinet, hoping to find something to reinforce that feeling that Mandy’s death had not been suicide, but all he found were neatly stored clothes. He stood, looking at the room from another angle, and realised how small it was with a double bed taking up most of the floor, its bedclothes neatly piled into one corner. Drake caught himself thinking about who would deal with Mandy’s belongings, sort out her clothes – charity shop, maybe – and her finances. Who was going to mourn her passing? He stepped towards the window and looked down at the CSIs milling around the Scientific Support Vehicle while on a drive of the house opposite were two men, deep in conversation. Caren emerged with Debbie and walked with her to a car parked on the pavement nearby.

  Drake didn’t have the resources for the normal house-to-house inquiries. There was a suicide note after all, so the coroner’s officer could do any work needed. He walked downstairs and out into the spring air. Debbie dragged heavily on a cigarette and outside her gaunt and pale complexion was even more striking. He turned to Caren. ‘Let’s go and see her parents.’

  * * *

  Drake rubbed his hands over his forehead then examined his palms as though he’d captured something. Then he tugged at his trousers before sitting down. He ran his fingers around his collar before straightening his tie.

  Caren had noticed these particular habits earlier when they were sitting with Debbie, but now she was certain he’d repeated them. And it only reinforced what she already knew about Drake. It had taken her a while to really notice the rituals, the neat columns of Post-it notes on his desk, the little regular adjustments to the framed pictures of his daughters whenever he left or arrived in his office.

  They sat in a small room warmed by a coal fire. Mr and Mrs Beal sat on a sofa, a combination of fear and uncertainty in their faces.

  ‘I’m very sorry to have to break bad news, but Mandy has been found dead,’ Drake said.

  Caren thought that he could have got a little more emotion into his voice.

  The colour
drained from Mrs Beal’s face and she started crying until the tears ran down her face and then she grasped her husband’s hand, as he blinked away tears.

  ‘What? I mean how did she…?’ Mr Beal asked.

  ‘She left a suicide note.’

  Caren wanted to interrupt Drake and tell him to put more sympathy and feeling into his voice. They had lost a daughter, after all. She gave Drake a brief smile that was supposed to tell him she was going to say something; she doubted that he really noticed these things.

  ‘Can I get you a glass of water or some tea?’ Caren said.

  Mr Beal gave Caren a stiff look and straightened his back, but his wife mumbled that water would be fine. In the kitchen, Caren filled a glass and returned to the sitting room where Mr Beal was adding coal to the fire. Caren sat down by his wife and handed her the glass.

  ‘I know it must be a shock,’ Caren said. ‘We’ll need to ask you some questions about Mandy, when it’s more convenient.’

  ‘When is there a convenient time to discuss death?’ Mr Beal said, his eyes dark.

  ‘Do you have any other children?’ Caren said.

  ‘She was my only daughter,’ Mrs Beal replied.

  They spent another fifteen minutes with Mr and Mrs Beal, Caren trying to interject as much sympathy into the conversation as she could. As they left the house and travelled back to headquarters Caren thought how utterly uncomprehending the pain would be to lose an only child.

  * * *

  Drake arrived home in time to read to Megan and Helen but his mind was awash with the conflicting emotions following the counselling with Tony Halpin and the images of Mandy Beal. He couldn’t remember the last time he had read to his daughters at bedtime and Sian’s comments, that one day he’d regret not spending time with them when they were young, had made him feel guilty. That evening he sat with Megan who’d reached for two books – one in Welsh and another, in English, about endangered animal species that she had bought at the trip to the mountain zoo at the weekend.

  ‘Did you like those lemurs, Dad?’ Helen said.

  Drake flicked through the pages of the book, hoping to find a section that he could read quickly.