Fifth office down the corridor, I stopped and checked the plaque. Then I took a deep breath and opened the door.
There was nobody there.
The room was silent apart from the whirring of computers on standby. Given the time, I suspected the team might be out, but even so, what an incredible first impression I'd made.
I blew out heavily.
Say sorry, and try not to make the same mistake again. That's that.
I closed the door and switched on the light. It hummed and flickered before coming on, and the resulting glow hardly seemed worth the effort. It was the kind of wan, sickly efficient light you'd find in any old office, although what lay below was hardly the grandest of assignments. Five old desks, covered with too much paper for any team of five people to process; a few monitors and bulky hard drives; tangles of wires; old files stacked beside weathered chairs.
There was a triangular silver nameplate on each desk, and I quickly found mine. It would have been better if it had been empty and clear, but of course it wasn't. Among the dust and paperclips, there were several crammed files that would take days to work through. There was also a pile of CDs wrapped in a rubber band with a Post-it note attached, marked for my attention. I picked it up and then put it down again. Ongoing files - cases heading for court. Jesus. The morning felt even more insurmountable than before. Weeks of playing catch-up would have to be crammed into hours.
I glared at all the paperwork for a moment, attempting to let it know that I was in charge and would unquestionably conquer it. It didn't look particularly intimidated.
One back from mine, I found Mercer's desk.
'Holy shit.'
I didn't know whether I was surprised or if, on some level, this was exactly what I'd been expecting, but whichever, there was literally no clear surface space to work on. The piles of paper that covered it didn't look as though any single sheet in them belonged with the next. I glanced down and saw similar stacks resting under the desk. The red indicator on the answerphone showed he had a full fifteen messages.
So this was my new boss: the famous Detective Sergeant John Mercer. His workspace was a jumble of either genius or madness. I couldn't tell which, but I had a feeling that if he was suddenly hit by a truck about fifty ongoing case files would probably need starting again from scratch. Nobody was going to inherit this and hope to make sense of it.
I looked at the wall behind the desk. There was a black-and-white photocopied picture tacked to it, showing Mercer and the mayor. He'd received a civic award earlier that year for services to the community. In the top corner, he'd written '
ha! ha! ha!
' in black biro, as though the award was more embarrassing than anything else.
See what I have to put up with?
But the picture was there on the wall, and the more I looked at it, the more I thought his expression was at odds with the sentiment scribbled at the top. He hadn't been back in work long at that point, if I remembered right, and there was something sad about him around the eyes and mouth. The mayor was putting a medal round his neck. To me, Mercer seemed worried that the weight of it might be too much for him to carry.
Obviously, I'd met him at the interview, and I remembered him as being more than slightly distracted. He'd been interested in the interviews I'd done up at the Niceday Institute - especially Jacob Barrett, one of the men he'd put away - but other than that he'd left most of the questions to his team.
I was still looking at the photograph, puzzling at the contrasts within it, when the phone on Mercer's desk started ringing. I stared down for a second, feeling strangely caught out.
Get yourself together, Mark, I thought, and I answered it on the third ring.
'Detective Sergeant Mercer's office. Mark Nelson speaking.'
'Hello, Detective Nelson.' The woman's voice was relaxed and warm, and she sounded slightly amused. 'I'm Eileen Mercer. I don't believe I've spoken to you before. You must be my husband's new servant?'
She didn't actually laugh, but accented the last word enough to let me know she wasn't serious.
I smiled. 'That's exactly what it says on my new card.'
This time she did laugh. 'I'll bet. Is my husband there?'
'No, I'm sorry, he's not.' I glanced around the office as though he might materialise. 'Nobody is.'
'Nobody at all?'
'Just me.'
'This is your first day, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'I thought so. John told me about you. He said he was very impressed with your CV and he was looking forward to working with you.'
'He did?'
'Absolutely.' She didn't seem to realise she'd told me something astonishing, but added: 'I'll say that to you because I'm sure he won't. How are you finding it so far?'
'Not good.' I slid into Mercer's seat. 'I was late. To be honest, I don't even know where everyone is at the moment.'
'That was going to be my next question.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Oh no, no, don't be. Poor you. For what it's worth, I'm sure they'll understand. The roads are a nightmare at the moment. My husband got lost at the weekend, so don't let him give you any grief.'
'Okay.'
'You're new to the city, I'm guessing?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I moved over from the coast a couple of days ago. But I still can't believe I've turned up late.'
'Can I call you Mark?'
'Of course.'
'How old are you, Mark?'
'I'm twenty-eight.'
'So young. I tell you what, Mark. You sound very nice, and I know how intimidating my husband can seem - to other people, anyway. So what I suggest is this. If you do me a favour, I'll make sure John goes easy on you. He does listen to me.'
'That's nice of you,' I said. 'But I'll do the favour regardless.'
'Well, the favour's easy. I want you to tell my husband I phoned. And tell him: "Don't forget."'
'"Don't forget,"' I repeated.
'That's right. It won't please him much, I imagine. And don't ask him what it means.' Her voice dropped to a stage whisper. 'It'll just annoy him.'
'I think I can manage that.'
'That's good--'
Another shrill tone interrupted us. I swivelled on the chair and looked at my desk. My phone was flashing.
'Er ...'
Eileen Mercer saved me any embarrassment. 'That'll be one of the gang, Mark. You have to go.'
'I hope so.'
'Remember the message and have a good day. I'm sure I'll talk to you again.'
'Okay. Take care.'
'You too.'
I hung up and scrambled over to my desk, thinking: Don't forget, don't forget. If I didn't remember to pass on the message, the sheer irony would kill me before Mercer did.
'Detective Nelson.'
'Mark? Pete.'
Pete Dwyer was Mercer's second-in-command. At the interview, it had been him who asked most of the questions, looking slightly baffled and annoyed by all the paperwork throughout. He was an amiable bear of a man, constantly either frowning or thinking about it, but he'd done his best to put me at ease, and I'd mentally thanked him for it.
'Hi Pete. I'm--'
'Don't worry about it. We need you out here in the field. You got a pen?'
'Uh-huh.'
He explained the situation briefly. We had a dead body out in the suburbs. Suspicious circumstances. Simon Duncan, who was the forensics expert on Mercer's team, was working with scene-of-crime officers right now, so official judgments were being reserved, but it was almost certainly a homicide. They needed me to get the door-to-doors started with the neighbours - probably about half an hour ago.
'Right,' I said, scribbling furiously. 'Where am I heading?'
3 DECEMBER
21 HOURS, 10 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
10.10 A.M.
Eileen
After talking to Mark Nelson, Eileen found herself wandering through the house from room to room. It felt like she was waiting for something to happen, and was reluctant to do anything else until it had. In the meantime, she couldn't settle.
Which was strange. Her schedule was free for the day, and although her sister sometimes called round she never turned up unannounced. There were no pressing tasks, no appointments; her calendar was clear. But still, when she heard the knock at the door, the sudden, apparently unexpected noise seemed to resolve something.
It had been this way since before the weekend; she'd been suffering from a sense of unease ever since the dream on Friday night.
Eileen had gone over it in her head upon waking, and then talked about it with John a little later. The dream had been brief and uneventful, consisting of her walking around the house and noticing that things had changed and items were missing. In the way of dreams, her mind conjured up a flash of complicated back-story to explain it all, but all she remembered was that John had left her. It was his possessions that were gone. Books leaned at angles on the shelves, supporting each other. Pictures had been taken down from the walls, leaving pale stamps on the paint. Her clothes, hanging in their shared wardrobe, formed a multicoloured barcode.
'I hope you're not planning on running off,' she'd told John over breakfast.
Her tone had made it clear she wasn't serious, but even so she'd been waiting for an answer. Eileen often talked about dreams when they bothered her. Sometimes she even made the contents up, so that she could discuss any issues they were having in a more circumspect way. John didn't know that, but they had been married for a long time, and he understood her well enough to know she was asking for reassurance, which he generally gave. After over thirty years together, it would have been odd if he couldn't read between her lines.
'I'm too old to run,' he'd said.
'Is that the only reason?'
He'd thought about it. 'Too tired, as well.'
'That's all right, then.'
But reading between the lines went both ways, and Eileen had noticed that his first response had been play, his second more considered. There were a hundred other reasons John would never leave her, of course, but he'd known she'd take those as givens. Instead, he'd raised something else. Too tired.
She'd watched him all weekend, thinking that tired didn't cover it. Tired was a problem that sleep could solve, whereas over the past few weeks John had looked as though he slept fine, but woke up every morning a little bit more depleted than the night before. Too lost was a more accurate reason. In order to run away, after all, you needed a direction to start off in.
And so, after talking to Nelson, Eileen wandered the house, wondering if it was this new detective's appointment that was concerning her husband. 'He reminds me of me,' John had said, sounding unsure whether that was a good or a bad thing. Maybe it was that, playing on his mind. Perhaps it was just replacing Andrew. Or it could be nothing in particular. The last two years had been full of good and bad times, and she hadn't been able to pin them all down. Sometimes, he'd barely had the energy to get out of bed; other times, he'd been the same as before his breakdown. But whatever it was now, it was
something
, and she wished he would
talk
to her about it, the way--
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
She stopped. There was somebody at the side door, at the extension she reserved for her clients. She didn't need to check her diary to know she hadn't forgotten an appointment. It was Thursday, a day off. Her private working week had finished yesterday.
'Just a moment.'
Eileen gave herself a cursory glance in the glass front of one of the kitchen cabinets. She had a tendency to slob a bit when there was nobody to see, and while she wasn't vain it was important that her clients were met with a professional facade. Because of the nature of counselling, it was necessary that personal information flowed only one way. She looked slightly messy - jeans and a blouse - but her hair was okay. No face mask, at least.
Knock, knock, knock.
'I
said
, just a moment.'
But the knocking continued regardless. Eileen made her way through, halfway between concerned and annoyed. Reaching the door, she buried the second emotion as deeply as she could. Even more than a face mask, obvious irritation had no business being seen on a counsellor.
Before she opened up, she checked through the fish-eye lens.
James Reardon was on her doorstep.
He had one hand in his pocket, and was jigging impatiently on the spot: looking down the drive anxiously, as though watching for someone.
Eileen reached out to unhook the security chain, but then hesitated. She had been counselling Reardon on and off for over a year now, and he was one of her few private clients with a criminal record and a propensity for violence. In her clinical work she was accustomed to that, but by necessity that work was always done in safer surroundings. None of those people would she ever have allowed into her home, even if any of them had been free to visit.
In James Reardon's case, however, she knew that both problems were largely down to his domestic situation and alcohol. He had always been quiet, polite and respectful in their sessions. Reardon was a confused and angry young man, but he was also intelligent and seemed genuinely interested in the process: determined to engage. She had often seen him agitated by what they talked about and had never felt in any danger. But she'd never seen him like this.
Eileen opened the door, but kept the chain on. Reardon's attention snapped to where she was standing.
'Eileen.'
'Hello, James,' she said carefully. 'I'm sorry, I don't think we have an appointment today.'
'I know. I'm sorry.' He looked away again, and then back to her. His face was scared, plaintive. 'I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry.'
'Sorry for what, James?'
'I've tried my best, I really have. Over the last year, it's been so hard.'
'I know it has.'
'But you've really helped me, honestly. You've been the only person who's been there for me.'
She kept her expression neutral, but what he said was twisting their relationship a little. Under normal circumstances, she might have tactfully corrected him. He paid her to be there for him, but it was a specific type of support, involving nothing more difficult than listening. She allowed him the space to understand the fragments of his life, one small piece at a time. She certainly wasn't his friend.