Hot Zone (Major Crimes Unit Book 2) (18 page)

'Ma'am? Can you answer the question?'

His tone isn't combative, but respect goes two ways,
doesn't it? I could clam up, or just get with it. Dad seems to understand what
I'm thinking, sitting there all calm and cool and dead. He looks like he's in
agreement, even though I haven't said anything.

'Honestly? I don't really know...a few weeks...maybe
longer? My husband travelled quite a lot. It wasn't unusual for him to be
absent.'

'Did you notice he'd been gone for over two months, ma'am?'

'I'm not that stupid,' I tell him.

Christ, though, I think. Have I been that drunk?

He's still talking, and as I listen I wave a hand to dad to
get me a drink. He can't, but Nicola sees me waving and she doesn't need to be
telepathic to figure out my swigging action. She places a Bailey's in front of
me.

Ah, well. Beggars can't be choosers, right?

'He was in prison in South America...for...six weeks,' says
the policeman, and I figure all the pauses are for him to check some notes, or
just for effect. 'Nicaragua, then...he wasn't. We lost track of him two weeks
ago, then a week ago he passed through customs on a false passport that must
have been stolen. There was a flag on the passport, and we picked him up again.
Two days later, he disappeared. Now...'

'Detective Daniels,' I say, 'are you saying my
husband...he's like some kind of drug-lord super-spy or some nonsense?'

'That's a close summation, ma'am. Not quite, but he was
rather influential. Ties in South America, Eastern Europe...'

I find out more about my husband from Detective Daniels in
around ten minutes than I did from the man himself in twenty years.

'Ma'am...you honestly never noticed your husband's
activities? This is smacks of a drug deal gone wrong...he and a known
associate, dead in a hotel room...'

He means peg-leg...but I don't know any peg-legged men, do
I?

'Detective, this is like some kind of dream, some made up
thing. I'm not...I suppose I thought he was having an affair.'

Dad raises his shoulders, like he's saying it's not a bad
road to take them down.

But it's true, isn't it? First time I really thought about
it, I thought my husband was into getting his nuts squashed. Not anymore, I
suppose.

We go around the houses a while longer. Daniels is kind of
probing me, feeling me out...not in a good way, not a bad way. It's being
poked, sure, but after twenty years of marriage to a man I didn't like or love,
I've had worse.

Finally, he gets to the kicker. I know it's coming because
he pauses and there's not distant sound of pages rustling.

This is the tricky question, I think. This is it. Take a
breath.

After the question. After.

'It's not essential, ma'am, but would you come by and
verify his identity? You don't have to...but...'

Breathe.

I do, not putting it on too heavily. Mandy and Nicola
warned me this was coming. Dad would know why. They'll say they want me to
identify him, but they know who he is well enough. What they really want is to
gauge my reaction when I see his pallid face one last time.

Mandy's frantically mouthing something to me. She looks
like she's blowing a ghost.

At this thought, dad winks.

'Oh, Jesus,' I say. Daniels thinks I'm talking to him. I'm
not, of course. I wave them both still.

'It's been such a shock...please...I'll come down
tomorrow?'

Bereaved wife, dead husband, father was a
detective...what's he going to do?

'Thank you, ma'am,' he says. 'Once more...my condolences.'

I don't thank him. I hang up and down the Baileys.

'Got anything real to drink?' I ask.

III.

The second day of January turns into a slow day. We eat
slowly, I take a long bath, spend the afternoon drinking, sitting in the front
room with my friends. Husbands pop in, kids pop in. They get shooed out again.
We don't have the television on, but stare at the fire. We turn off our phones,
talk, drink, eat chocolate. Darkness doesn't reach the patio doors. Lights
outside glint as the snow tumbles from the sky. The fire's warm, maybe the
carbon monoxide, the drink, definitely...all these things make the three of us
nod off. Occasionally we laugh, one of us goes on the nod and wakes up with a
snort and a jump.

I watch the fire, the snow, my friends. Sometimes I think about
my husband, myself. Sometimes dad, and mum.

I think about Dave a fair bit, too. Whenever I catch myself
drifting off in that direction, I shake him away.

But I keep coming back.

It's a day for thinking. Ruminating, even.

Before I finally give up and turn in for the night, I
figure out exactly how it is I feel about the whole thing. The truth is, I
hadn't known my husband at all for ten years, very little for the ten before
that, and I hadn't seen him for more than a month in the last year.

Also, it turns out he was an utter bastard.

I'm tired, but it's not from grief. It's just tired. I can
deal with it.

The 10th Day of Christmas

The
Husband's Bed-head

I.

Tenth day of Christmas. It seems like a hundred days ago
that I was thinking maybe my husband might come home, make it to Christmas
dinner. But my husband's dead.

Mandy's going to drive me to identify his body parts. I
kind of hope one's enough.

The BMW, Mandy behind the wheel, terrorises the other
traffic on the way to the morgue. We know where it is.

I haven't got my phone, so I can't tell mum.

Of course, that's nonsense. I could. I could call her
easily enough. But I won't. Not yet. She'll call me honey. Dave's right. She
does that, I'll say something you can't take back with a simple apology. I love
her, but I know her, too.

II.

The detective I spoke to is there. Daniels, I remember,
without needing to check a note pad.

'Are you sure you're ready?' he asks.

I know he wouldn't have asked me down here for nothing.
Mandy's right, they want to see if I faint or look surprised. I shouldn't think
I'll have any trouble looking surprised. I've had plenty of practise this week.
Plus, you know, seeing your dead husband on a steel slab...that's pretty
surprising, naturally.

I don't know what the policeman expects. I wonder if he
thinks I'm going to laugh and point at his corpse, maybe telephone a hit man to
say thanks. That's not going to happen.

I don't need to lie. The police don't know anything about
me. Mandy and Nicola and their husbands and my husband, almost definitely. But
they don't know anything about me.

So I think.

'I'm ready,' I lie. I'm getting even better at this than I
thought.

I take a deep breath and Mandy holds my hand as we go in to
see him.

III.

'Oh,' I say.

When they said he'd been decapitated, they hadn't been
lying. He really does have two steel tables all to himself.

Daniels could have warned me. He didn't, I know, because he
wants it this way.

I'm not angry. It's just the same as any other dead body, I
suppose, but like a story in two parts instead of one. There's the head,
there's his body, like a sequel. The sequel never lived up to the promise,
though. I could testify that to Daniels. I don't think that's the kind of
information he's looking for, though.

'You need both identifying?' I ask. I ask in a flat, simple
tone, and he has the good grace, at least, to seem embarrassed.

'I...ah...just the top part,' he says.

I nod. He lifts the sheet. Thankfully not high enough so I
can see any gristle or anything.

It's him, alright. My husband's head is on this table. I
don't need to check for my benefit or Detective Daniels if the rest is on the
steel slab behind me. Two slabs. Good gangster name, that, I think. He always
was greedy, I think.

I nod again. 'It's him,' I say.

Mandy takes my arm a little tighter, which is just perfect
timing, because she stops me from falling on my arse.

As she guides me along the impersonal corridor that's seen
so much death, another door opens and I see a different man on a steel slab.
There's no sheet, because no one's coming to identify him, but I recognise the
leg sticking up into the air, at forty-five degrees, the knee part at one end,
the peg part firmly in the man's arse.

IV.

Outside, away from the smell I hadn't even noticed at first,
the fresh air slams me hard and I feel dizzy.

Dad's there, and puts his arm around me, as though to
steady me, but he's all ethereal and it doesn't help at all. He moves aside as
I go in for a hug, even though I know he isn't there. Mum's right behind him,
though. When he moves, she steps in and puts her arms around me. Arms that are
deadly in a melee, deadly enough to send teeth flying like confetti, and
strong, still. She holds me tight.

'Ah, honey,' she says. 'It was never going to end well, was
it? Bless you.'

I cry, then. She's right. Of course it wasn't going to end
well.

Then, something hits me, like a tickly-itch I can't reach.

I sniff like I'm trying to pull the tears back in. It's
cold outside the morgue. Mandy's off to one side, on her phone, calling Nicola
or her husband. There's a guy in a suit a little way off. He's either a very
well paid cop or Brian's 'security'. I wonder if his name is Colin. I wonder if
he's got a gun in his suit.

Wait...

What did she say?

'Mum?'

'Hmm?'

'It was never going to end well? He got his...head...clean
off, mum...but we might have had a crappy, in fact, shitty, marriage...but...'

'Well, never a pretty end for one of us, is it, love?'

Again, I'm reeling in a boat full of holes in a big fucking
wavy storm out at sea.

'One of...us? Mum?'

'What?' she says, like I just called her dad or something.
Like you might to an elderly relative who's losing her marbles. 'What's that,
dear?'

'One of us?'

'Well,' she looks honestly taken aback. 'Gangsters, love.
What...you...what did you think your man did, love? Work in a bank or
something?'

'I...what? I never asked! Why would I think that? Why would
I even ask? You knew? You knew and you, even you...even you didn't fucking tell
me?!'

'I thought you knew!' she says as she backs away. The man
in the suit is coming closer, as is Mandy.

'Why?! Why would I know? Who would think that, for
fucking...fuck...'

I'm suddenly breathless and my knees give way. My knee
beards take the brunt of the impact on the rough pavement.

'Well,' she says, and her words dance around my head,
mocking, little bastard bluebird words like this is some crappy Disney movie.
Where are the dwarves? Are they going to come and laugh at me, too? 'I never
asked what your father did to make his money either, love...but come on.'

'I don't...mum...I...'

'What? You think your old man was a straight man? A copper?
Honey, where do you think your man got the money to buy in? Your dad paid him
in. Never did want to. He knew it'd end up like this...but he did it for you.'

'Paid...in...? Mum...I feel sick...I think...'

I hit the ground almost fully this time. My head,
fortunately, lands on mum's foot, and I hear her swear like only a pub landlady
(and gangster's wife) can, so I don't kill myself on the cold paving stones.

'Oh...ow...fuck...cunting fuck that fucking hurts...thick
head broke my fuckity foot!'

Good, I think, then I'm gone.

V.

It feels like a dream. Mandy's there. I'm in the back of a
big, expensive car. It smells of some kind of floor cleaning fluid, but it's
not the car I'm smelling, it's my hair. I've picked up the stink of the
mortuary, and there's a stale cigarette butt from the pavement stuck in my
hair, which I pull free and flick from the X6's window.

It's not a dream, though.

The security guy took mum to the local emergency room. My
thick head really did, it turns out, break her foot. I could have said my
piece, caused a big shit storm, but I fainted and broke her foot with my head,
so that worked out just fine.

I try out a little smile about that, resting in the back
seat. It doesn't fall right off my face, which is a pretty good result for my
first smile since I woke up.

Mandy drives like a lunatic, but I don't think we're in any
danger of crashing. I'm beginning to think in terms of my body, this is as safe
as it gets. Mandy's protected...so am I. Mum's in some kind of syndicate, but
instead of sharing out the lottery winnings they share out their criminal
proceeds.

My criminal proceeds...

I'm just as culpable, aren't I?

It feels like a dream, of course, but it isn't. You don't
get yourself out of a BMW X6 on the massive drive of your half-best-friend's
sprawling mansion just west of London, escorted into a house by security while
a man with a Doberman Pinscher on a leash walks round the grounds in a black
suit and no overcoat, in the snow. My footfalls crunch through the fresh powder
on the way to the door. For some reason, the man on my left seems to be on my
flank, watching everything but us.

He's on my flank, I think. Like a soldier.

He's not a soldier, is he?

But then...maybe he is. Maybe he was. Maybe he's trained in
the equivalent of the gangster's S.A.S.

I'm in winter-fucking-lala-land.

Thank Christ gangsters buy good brandy.

VI.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Dave takes me out for
dinner.

Dave the Butcher. He's not a butcher. Of course he's not.
I'm getting wise to this game. It's taken twenty years, but when I get my head
around something, I really get my head around it. Like drinking. I used to
dabble, then I got serious. I'm a good drunk. Dedicated, even.