Book 24 in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, 2009

accelerando

Midnight.

Splintered woodwork, bedroom door flung open, feet pounding across the floor, duvet ripped off, grim faces looking down at him, his wife screaming as she’s dragged naked from his side…

He sits upright and cries, ‘NO!’

The duvet is in place, the room empty, the door closed. And through the thin curtains seeps the grey light of dawn.

As for Gina, she hasn’t been by his side for…days?…weeks?…could be months.

The digital bedside clock reads 5.55. He’s not surprised.

Always some form of Nelson whenever he wakes these days: 1.112.22 3.33…

Meaning something bad.

Things go on like this, one morning soon he’s going to wake and the clock will read 6.66…

He is still shaking, his body soaked with sweat, his heart pounding.

He gets out of bed and goes on to the landing.

Even the sight of the front door securely in place can’t slow his pulse, even the shower jets cooling and cleaning his flesh can’t wash away his fear.

He tries to analyse his dream, to get it under control by working out its meaning.

He conjures up the men. Some in uniform, some masked; some familiar, some strangers; some wielding police batons, some swinging hammers…

He gives it up, not because the meaning is too elusive but because it’s too clear.

There is no one to turn to, nowhere to hide.

He looks out of the window into the quiet street, familiar from childhood, whenever that was. Now it seems strange, the houses skewed, the perspectives warped, all colour washed out, like a sepia still from some old horror movie.

He realizes he no longer knows where it leads.

Maybe that’s where salvation lies.

If he doesn’t know, how can they know?

All he has to do is walk away down that street. Once round the corner he’ll be somewhere nobody knows about. He will be free.

Part of his mind is asking, Does this make sense? Are you thinking straight? Is this the only way?

He makes one last effort at coherent thought, trying to find an answer by looking at the past, the trail that has brought him here, but the view is blocked by a small white box. For some reason it’s got a silver ribbon around it, making it look like a wedding present.

Maybe it was.

He tries to look beyond it, but it’s like staring into fog rolling off the ocean at dusk. The harder you look, the darker it gets.

Time to turn his back on that box, that fog, that darkness.

Time to walk away.

‘Shit,’ said Andy Dalziel as the phone rang.

In twenty minutes the CID’s monthly case review meeting was due to start, the first since his return. In the old days this wasn’t a problem. He’d have rolled in late and watched them bolt their bacon butties and sit up straight. But if he was late now they’d probably think he’d forgotten the way to the Station. So time was short and Monday-morning traffic was always a pain. Nowt that using his siren and jumping a few red lights couldn’t compensate for, but if he wasn’t on his way in the next couple of minutes, he might have to run over a few pedestrians too.

He grabbed his car keys and headed for the front door.

Behind him the answer machine clicked in and a voice he didn’t recognize faded behind him down the narrow hallway.

‘Andy, hi. Mick Purdy, remember me? We met at Bramshill a few years back. Happy days, eh? So how’re you doing, mate? Still shagging the sheep up there in the frozen north? Listen, if you could give me a bell, I’d really appreciate it. My number’s…’

As the Fat Man slid into his car he dug into his memory bank. These days, especially with recent stuff, it sometimes seemed that the harder he looked, the darker it got. Curiously, deeper often meant clearer, and his Mick Purdy memories were pretty deep.

It wasn’t a few years since he’d been on that Bramshill course; more like eight or nine. Even then, he’d been the oldest officer there by a long way, the reason being that for a decade or more he’d managed to find a way of wriggling out of attendance whenever his name came up. But finally his concentration had lapsed.

It hadn’t been so bad. The official side had been slightly less tedious than anticipated, and there’d been a bunch of convivial colleagues, grateful to find someone they could rely on to get them to bed when their own legs proved less hollow than they’d imagined. DI Mick Purdy had usually been one of the last men standing, and he and Dalziel had struck up a holiday friendship based on shared professional scepticism and divided regional loyalties. They exchanged harmonious anecdotes offering particular instances of the universal truth that most of those in charge of HM Constabulary couldn’t organize a fuck-up in a brothel. Then, when concord got boring, they divided geographically with Purdy claiming to believe that up in Yorkshire in times of dearth they ate their young, and Dalziel countering that down in London they’d produced a younger generation that not even a starving vulture could stomach.

They’d parted with the usual expressions of good will and hope that their paths would cross again. But they never had. And now here was Mick Purdy ringing him at home first thing on a Monday morning, wanting to renew acquaintance.

Meaning, unless he were finally giving way to a long repressed passion, the bugger wanted a favour.

Interesting. But not so interesting it couldn’t wait. Important thing this morning was to be there when his motley crew drifted into the meeting, seated in his chair of state, clearly the monarch of all he surveyed, ready to call them to account for what they’d done with their meagre talents during his absence.

He turned the key in the ignition and heard the familiar ursine growl. The old Rover had much in common with its driver, he thought complacently. Bodywork crap, interior packed with more rubbish than a builder’s skip, but-courtesy of the lads in the police garage-the engine would have graced a vehicle ten times younger and five times more expensive.

He put it into gear and blasted away from the kerb.