Already Dead(70)

‘And that’s the trouble,’ said Cooper.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, they were both loners. Oh, they might have had a few things in common, but a loner is still a loner. I bet they hardly knew anything about each other. Edge didn’t even know exactly where Turner lived. He wasn’t really interested, either. That’s hardly what you’d call a friend.’

‘No, you’re right.’

‘I usually am,’ said Cooper confidently, as he got out of the car. ‘About other people, anyway.’

A few yards away, Diane Fry stopped abruptly on the pavement in St John’s Street. A figure was moving ahead of her towards the corner by the town hall.

She stared at the figure, her hand in her pocket reaching for her radio and cuffs, even as she was overcome with the feeling of familiarity. For some reason, that feeling churned her stomach with dread. She felt like a ghost hunter finally facing the moment she’d dreamed of, yet afraid to look the phantom in the face. She was terrified of what she’d see. Yet she couldn’t hold back from looking.

‘Ben?’ she said.

The shoulders of the figure stiffened. It might, or might not, be him. Even as she told herself this, she was moving forward in complete certainty, her physical instincts sure of what her mind still doubted. It was that stiffening of the shoulders to the sound of her voice. She’d seen the reaction before, so many times. Too often to mistake it.

‘Ben?’ she said again. ‘It’s Diane. Diane Fry.’

At last he answered. ‘Oh. Hi.’

He sounded distracted and vague, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was at first. Fry had to repeat her name.

‘It’s a bit of a surprise seeing you here,’ she said.

‘Why here?’

‘Well … anywhere, I suppose.’

Cooper just looked at her. Fry began to feel uncomfortable. She felt like a child, finding herself unexpectedly thrust into a social situation with an adult, and having no idea what she was supposed to say. None of the conventional small talk seemed appropriate.

‘You know, we’ve all been worried about you, Ben,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow, the first sign of animation in his face.

‘Have you? All of you?’

Fry bit her lip, tried not to look guilty. ‘Everyone in the office has been asking how you are. But we haven’t been able to make contact with you. Why do you never answer your phone?’

She realised she was already starting to sound accusatory. Hearing her voice rising an octave towards shrillness, she fought to control it.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just wanted a bit of time on my own, without having to explain myself over and over again. I know everyone means well. But it gets too much. You can’t imagine what it’s like.’

Having delivered these words, he gave her a kind of curt nod. Fry thought he was about to walk off, and she couldn’t help blurting out the first thing that came into her head.

‘I do understand, you know,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I know all about it. Of course I do.’

‘Knowing about it and understanding are two totally different things,’ said Cooper. ‘Did you never grasp that? You have to experience something to understand it properly.’

‘Okay, okay. Explain it to me, then.’

‘Explain it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want me to explain it.’

He looked as if she was asking him to do the impossible. Well, perhaps she was. She had no idea, really.

‘It’s like … it’s like having a huge build-up of pressure inside you,’ said Cooper. ‘Talking about it achieves nothing. But you know that one day the dam is going to burst, that the whole massive weight will explode and take you with it. Isn’t it better to do something about it before that happens?’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Fry.

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever it is you’re planning, Ben.’

Cooper shrugged. ‘I’m not planning anything. I’m just coping day by day, you know.’

Fry was unconvinced. She gazed at him, wishing she could see into his mind. She used to be able to guess his thoughts more or less accurately but now he was too distant, too detached. It was as if he’d severed the connection between them, cut the line and drifted away. He’d got caught up in an unpredictable current that might lead him anywhere. Danger could lurk downstream when you allowed yourself to drift like that.

‘Ben, I don’t know what’s on your mind,’ she admitted.

‘Well, then. Maybe there really isn’t anything on my mind at all.’

But something about the way he spoke made Fry’s creeping feeling of unease return. She’d heard a similar tone too often from people she knew were lying but who needed to keep up a facade, an official assertion of innocence for the records. Fry reminded herself that she couldn’t know what it was like to be in Cooper’s position. She had no inkling of how his mind might be working right now, what emotions would be flooding through him, potent and uncontrollable. Her insights were lacking, just at the moment she needed them most.