Already Dead(13)

He’d just remembered the mud on his car. It must be all over the bodywork and the hubcaps, and coating the inside of the wheel arches. He’d forgotten about it last night, when he came back from the pub, but it would be obvious this morning in daylight. He recalled that he’d even plastered some over his number plate, in a misguided attempt at secrecy. If the number was still illegible he could get stopped by the police – not that many police officers were seen in Wirksworth these days. Just as bad, his bosses at Williamson Hart might start asking questions. He would be ruining his image. He couldn’t do anything about it now, though. He’d have to find time to go through the car wash on the way to the office.

He looked at his watch. Damn, he was going to be late if Barbara didn’t hurry up. He hated that. He wanted to be known as the perfect employee – the best salesman, the top negotiator, the guy who always arrived on time and stayed until the work was done. That made it much easier to get away with the rest of it.

So what was she up to? Surely she couldn’t still be on the phone? He knew she must be doing this deliberately. For some reason, she had it in for him this morning. Well, what was new? She’d never needed a reason before.

Charlie looked down at the surface of the drive he was standing on. Lumps of wet mud lay on the concrete, either side of a set of dirty tyre tracks. Could he blame the binmen for that? Probably not. They came to The Dale too early in the day. Anyway, Barbara would notice the mud as soon as she set eyes on the car.

He took a deep breath, and knew he’d have to face the worst. He had a couple of minutes perhaps to come up with a credible story. A new property that was half built, a site where construction hadn’t been finished and the access road was full of mud? It might work.

Last night, he’d driven in forwards and parked the BMW pointing towards the back of the garage. He normally reversed in, to give himself an easy exit. But last night he didn’t want to be messing about turning in the road. There were always too many nosy people around, too many pairs of eyes peering from behind their curtains in The Dale.

He unlocked the doors of the car, and the lights flashed. He turned back from the road and looked at the BMW.

‘Oh, shit.’

He froze, not knowing what to do. Or, at least, what to do first. He thought about panicking, kicking the walls, sitting in the car and turning on the engine to fill the garage with exhaust fumes and ending it all, right here and now. It would be preferable to going indoors to Barbara and telling her everything. He might as well kill himself now, rather than wait for her to do it. He could make it painless anyway. Barbara wouldn’t consider that option.

Finally, he fumbled for the remote and closed the garage door, glancing over his shoulder again to see if anyone was outside the house, watching. He had a horribly vivid vision of the man in the red rain jacket, hood up against the downpour, watching him from the dark. But the road was empty. The coast was clear.

Dean let himself into the house, and poured warm water into a bucket with a trembling hand. He added a splash of washing up liquid, though he’d always told people it was too astringent and could damage your paintwork. He went back to the garage and found an old sponge on the shelf. He hesitated for only a moment before he began to remove the bloody hand print from the boot of his BMW.





5





That was the trouble with cars these days. One looked and sounded just like another. A lot were even the same colour. There was no telling whether it was the right one until it stopped and you could see who was driving.

Ingrid Turner stared out of the window as the latest car passed. She knew she fussed too much sometimes. Glen told her himself often enough. ‘You’re like an old mother hen,’ he’d say, though he always said it with a smile and she knew he loved her to fuss over him really. She loved her son. So, yes – she was fussy about him. Of course, she tried not to get in his way too much and be a nuisance.

But there was no denying it. He ought to have been home by now.

Ingrid sat down in her armchair, then stood up again nervously. It was funny, really. She had often thought it would be a good thing if Glen didn’t come home one night. It would mean that he’d finally found himself a girlfriend. That would be such a relief. She’d worried about him for years, never been able to figure out why he hadn’t formed any relationships with women, and too scared to ask him the obvious question. Well, she couldn’t, could she? It was the sort of thing a mother shouldn’t ask her son. If he wanted to tell her, that was different. But if she pried into his private life like that, he would never forgive her.