Already Dead(4)

He tried to make his voice sound firmer: ‘Get in, Sheena.’

But he was betrayed by a tremble on the last word, the final vowel sound cracking and pitching too high, like the voice of a pubescent schoolboy. It made him sound as though he was asking a question. Begging or pleading, even.

At last she moved. The passenger door opened and she squelched into the BMW, fumbled automatically with the seat belt. Dean winced when he thought of the damage to his leather seats from the water.

‘Bye, then,’ he said, and pressed the button to wind up the window. With that thin sheet of glass between him and the stranger, he instantly felt safer.

‘Where did he come from?’ said Sheena, when the windows were safely closed.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he come out of the woods?’

‘I couldn’t see.’

‘He scared me, Charlie.’

‘We’re okay, he’s going back to his car.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. Fasten your seat belt and put the heater on.’

‘Oh, I’m soaked.’

‘Well, put the heater on, then.’

He squinted at the headlights still reflected in his rearview mirror and waited for the other car to pull out and pass him. A minute passed. Then two.

‘What the hell is he doing? Is he waiting for me to go first?’

Dean felt uncomfortable about the idea of setting off with the other car behind him. What if this man followed his BMW into Wirksworth, maybe all the way back to his house? He didn’t want anyone knowing where he lived. He certainly didn’t want him knowing.

Finally, the headlights swung across his mirror. But instead of passing, they suddenly lit up the opposite side of the road. Dean looked over his shoulder, saw vertical sheets of rain illuminated into a glittering curtain, pools of water forming on the roadway, alive with light and fresh raindrops pouring in their surfaces. The stranger’s full beam had turned the road into a stage set. What was the next act going to be?

‘He’s turning round,’ said Sheena.

‘So he is.’

The other vehicle twisted across the road and straightened up. Its tyres hissed on the wet tarmac as it accelerated away. Dean stared into his mirror, but the rear window was blurred by rain and he could see nothing of the car but two smudges of red light moving away. By the time he got the rear wiper working, the vehicle was too far away to make out clearly.

‘Oh, well. That’s it, then.’

He wondered why he didn’t feel a lot better, now that the car had gone. The uneasy feeling had been just too strong. It would take time for it to pass. He’d need a few drinks, in fact. He had a hip flask tucked into the back of the glove compartment. Good quality brandy too. But maybe this wasn’t the time to get stopped by the police and breathalysed for drink driving.

It turned out that Sheena was even jumpier than he was. Before he could get the car into second gear, she cried out.

‘Wait. What was that?’ she said.

Dean slammed on the brakes. ‘What was what?’

‘By the side of the road. There was something … Oh, I don’t know now.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see it, whatever it was. A fox? A dead badger?’

She hesitated for a moment, then sagged back in her seat. ‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose.’

Dean released a long breath and put the BMW back into gear.

‘Don’t do that, Sheena. Just don’t do it. You nearly frightened me to death.’

Glen Turner could sense that his mind was failing now. His body had already let him down. He’d been unable to move more than a hand, and now the water had risen until it was creeping over his face.

He was incapable of forming logical thoughts any more. Just one phrase kept running through his brain, over and over and over.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

They said your whole life flashed in front of your eyes when you were dying. Yet his immediate past was a complete blank to him. His life was a desperate nightmare in which nothing had happened, and nothing ever would. When he looked into his own mind, he saw only a void. It was like standing in an echoing cave, a place as cold as rock and just as lifeless.

As the hours passed and the water rose, it stayed that way. Right up to the moment Glen Turner stopped breathing.





2





Wednesday




By Wednesday morning, the reality had become undeniable. In the CID room of Derbyshire E Division headquarters, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry felt herself tense with anger as she stared across the desk. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. It was like being trapped in a twisted dream. Fry felt as though she’d never be able to escape, that she would always end up back in the place she started from, no matter how hard she tried to flee, or in which direction she ran.