Pressure Head Read online

  For all I know, they laughed about it in the staff room too.

  And now he was here. Against all laws of probability or even human decency, apparently queer. And I was supposed to get used to it?

  Morrison must have noticed my reaction, as he looked at me with his eyes narrowed. Suddenly, his face cleared, and a half smile flickered across his lips. “Parrotski,” he said with grim satisfaction.

  Well, it could have been worse. And I was long over being intimidated by him. “That’s Paretski, if you don’t mind,” I snapped.

  “You’ve changed a bit,” he said cryptically.

  “So have you.” I tried to inject as much meaning as I could into those three words. I wanted him to know I knew his little secret. I wanted him to feel like the bloody hypocrite he was.

  Zero reaction. Either it didn’t work, or more likely, he just didn’t give a monkey’s what I thought about him.

  Dave huffed impatiently. “If you don’t mind me interrupting this touching reunion, we do have a body to look for. And Morrison? Unless you’re here to hand deliver a map drawn by the murderer, your services are not required. This is an official police investigation, not a bloody free-for-all.”

  Morrison raised an eyebrow. “Oh? When did you join the force, Parrot—Paretski? Good thing for you they dropped the height restrictions.”

  My jaw tensed. “I’m just here as a consultant.”

  “Know a lot about hiding bodies, do you?” God, I’d forgotten just how much his snide tone got up my nose.

  “Used to think about it all the time back in school,” I said pointedly.

  “Girls!” Dave broke in with an exasperated shout.

  We both whirled to look at him, probably with identical hangdog expressions. “Sorry, Dave,” I said, to establish myself firmly as the reasonable one. “Time to get started?”

  “Too bloody right. Come on. And Morrison? If I find you trampling on the evidence, you’ll be cooling your heels in jail, understood? As soon as we find anything—if we find anything—the family will be informed.” Dave grabbed my elbow and more or less hustled me into the trees. We stopped once we were out of sight of the grassland. “Right—do your stuff.”

  I sighed. “What, after all that?”

  “Oh, come off it, Tom. Don’t play the prima donna with me, now. What was all that with you and Morrison, anyway? The short version, please. Young love gone bad?”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that,” I warned. “Not unless you fancy pulling him in on a charge of assaulting an officer. We went to school together, that’s all. We weren’t exactly friends.”

  I jumped as a hand like a bag full of sausages clapped me briefly on the shoulder. “School bully, was he? I know his type. All bluster and no bloody bollocks.”

  Phil Morrison had bollocks, all right. I remembered that from the school showers. You might say I’d made something of a study of the subject. Didn’t think Dave would appreciate me mentioning it, though. I took a deep breath, and tried to clear my mind.

  Phil Morrison’s bollocks kept creeping back in there. Sod it. “You want to give me that picture again?” I asked.

  Thirty seconds staring at Melanie’s pretty, kind face soon got my mind out of the gutter. “Right. Okay.” I handed it back and closed my eyes. Could I hear something? Feel it tugging at me? I turned around slowly, trying to judge where the pull was coming from. There. I stepped forward, remembering in time to open my eyes before I walked into a tree.

  Dave didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We just followed the line I’d sensed. My work boots soon picked up a thick coating of mulched-up leaves, stuck on with mud. On a crisp, frosty morning, this might be a pleasant place for a walk, but right now it was just soggy and dirty. It even smelled damp. Every now and then a twig that had somehow managed to escape getting soaked through would snap loudly under my foot, but more often I’d put my boot in a muddy patch and have to pull it free with a squelch. Brambles snagged my jeans and clutched at my hair.

  As the pull got stronger, I sped up. Dave started puffing a bit and occasionally cursing, probably at the mess the mud was making of his shoes. I forced myself to slow down, but it was nagging at me, and I found my pace quickening again.

  It wasn’t Melanie’s voice. I don’t see ghosts—at least, I don’t think I do. The girl in the park when I was a kid had seemed like a spirit, but I think it was just the way my child’s brain interpreted things. These days, I just feel a pull, a sense of something hidden, of something not-right. It’s like . . . I’ve never taken drugs—too much weird stuff going on in my head as it is—but I imagine it’s like the pull a hopeless addict feels towards the next fix. Only without the high when I finally give in to it.

  Fortunately, I usually only feel it when I’m actively listening—I know you can’t listen for a feeling, but language really isn’t accurate for this sort of thing—or I’d probably go stark raving mad. After all, when you think about it, the average household has six to a dozen things hidden in it. The wife’s saving-up-to-leave-him secret piggy bank; the teenage son’s porn; his dad’s porn; these days, quite often, his mum’s porn. And don’t get me started on the subject of sex toys . . .

  I’d veered off course, I realised. Feeling guilty, I wrenched my mind back to the matter in hand. Where had she gone . . .? Dave started to say something, so I held up a hand to shush him.

  There. I stepped forward.

  When you’re twenty-nine and you find a body, as I said earlier, you don’t get to go blubbing for your mother. You get Dave clapping you on the shoulder and heaving a resigned sigh, while the other police officers throw you suspicious looks. Nobody shields you from the sight as they shine their torches into the bushes and light up the mess some bastard made of a young woman’s skull. Your mind’s well able to interpret the blood, the misshapen dent where the bone pushed into the brain, and your imagination fills in the pain and the terror she must have felt.

  And when you walk out of the forest and leave them to it, you find Phil Morrison waiting for you.

  It was twilight by now, but he wasn’t exactly easy to overlook. He loomed out of the shadow of the trees like Herne the Hunter on steroids.

  “Have they found her, then?” he demanded.

  I nodded curtly and went to walk past him. He grabbed my arm.

  To say I wasn’t happy was an understatement. I don’t like people grabbing me. Never have. “Oi! Get your bloody hands off me!”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I just want to talk to you, that’s all.” He didn’t let go.

  “Why don’t you go and talk to the police? They’re the ones doing all the detecting. I just found her for them.” His eyes narrowed, and I realised I’d given away more than I should have.

  “How did you know where she was? Did you see her being dumped here?”

  “I didn’t see anything, okay?” I tried to shake off his grip, getting more and more annoyed as he refused to let go. “I just find stuff.”

  “Stuff? Like dead people?”

  “Yes, okay? Look, for fuck’s sake, I’ve had a hard day and it ended with me cuddling up to a corpse. Will you let go of me or do I have to call one of the coppers over? I’m sure Dave Southgate will be only too happy to pull you in on the trumped-up charge of my choosing.”

  He released me, and I rubbed my arm. “So what’s the deal?” he asked. “You know people in low places, they tell you stuff, you tell the police?”

  “No. I’m just good at finding stuff, that’s all. It’s a talent. Like dowsing.”

  “What, that water-divining crap? Bollocks!”

  “Whatever.” I strode off towards my car, pissed off beyond belief to find him walking by my side, his long legs easily keeping up even with my most annoyed pace.

  “Come on, what’s the real deal? Look, I’m working for her parents, here. They’re going to be devastated when they find out she’s dead. The least anyone can do is get them some justice.”

  Great. Now I felt piss
ed off and guilty. I rubbed my hip, realised what I was doing and jammed my hand in my jacket pocket where it couldn’t betray me.

  When I glanced at Phil, I could tell he’d seen.

  “Look, I’m sorry about that,” he said, with an awkward grimace.

  “About what?” I asked nastily.

  “Well, you know. About the leg.”

  “Oh. I see. So making my last year at school a living hell, you’d do all that again, would you?” Bastard.

  “Oh, for—” Phil’s hand made some kind of abortive gesture, and he looked up and away from me. “We were kids. That was just joking around.”

  “Too bad I never went through with the suicide attempt, then. That’d have made a great punch line.”

  “Like you’d have ever killed yourself.”

  Right then, I could definitely have killed him. I’d just ripped the bandages off my soul, and all he’d done was sneer and rub salt in the wound. “Oh, and you know me that well, do you? I suppose you’ve been on one of those profiling courses, and now you think you know everything about everyone.”

  “No, but I know you. We were at school together, remember?”

  We’d reached the car park by now. I fumbled in my pocket for my keys. “Like I could ever forget—”

  “Yeah, and I remember you too. You were always so bloody . . .” He threw his hands up, as if clutching for a word. “Self-contained,” he finished.

  “‘Self-contained’? What the bloody hell does that mean?”

  “Oh, you know. Don’t try and pretend you don’t. Like you didn’t need anyone else. Like we were all just a little bit thick compared to you.”

  What? I stared at him, speechless.

  “You know,” he continued, “you wouldn’t have got so much stick from everyone if you hadn’t been so bloody standoffish.”

  “‘Standoffish’? I was bloody standoffish?” My voice rose so high on the last bit it cracked.

  “Yeah. Always looking down your nose at people like me just because we came from the council estate.”

  “I— What? Bloody hell, Morrison, have you even noticed you’re a foot taller than I am? If I wanted to look down my nose at you, I’d need a sodding stepladder! I can’t believe you’re even saying that. I was the one nobody liked. Poofski, remember? Because I haven’t bloody well forgotten what it was like, being the butt of your oh-so-funny jokes every . . . bloody . . . day.” The keys in my hand jangled as I punctuated the last few words with jabs of my finger at his overdeveloped chest.

  Then I got in my van, slammed the door, and drove home, seething.

  I’ve got a little house in Fleetville, which is part of St. Albans but has its own shops and pubs, so it feels like a separate community. It’s way less pretentious than most of the villages around here. It’s pretty ethnically diverse, so the shops are more interesting than in a lot of places—there’s a halal food shop and more takeaways than you could get tired of in a month of not cooking. You see a lot of ladies in saris or headscarves, and blokes in ethnic gear too. Brightens the place up, I always think. I live just off the main road, handy for the shops and the pub. Parking can be a pain—well, it’s St. Albans, isn’t it?—but I can fit the van on the drive, and there’s usually room to park my little Fiesta in front.

  At least the cats were pleased to see me, I thought with a smile as I walked in my front door. Merlin wove his slender, black body in and out of my legs ecstatically, and even Arthur deigned to get off his fat, furry arse and pad into the hall to welcome me.

  They’re both toms, although most people assume slim, sleek Merlin is a she. Personally, I think he’s gay. He’s always rubbing up against Arthur as if he’d like them to be more than just good friends. Fortunately Arthur’s too thick to notice. He’s a big ginger bruiser who’d probably flatten Merlin if he realised he fancied him. Not very metrosexual, old Arthur.

  I fed them the dish of the day (lamb with rabbit, yum, yum) and set about rustling myself up some comfort food. A mug of Heinz tomato soup the size of your average bathtub, and hunks of baker’s bread with tangy cheddar cheese melted into it. Lovely. For dessert, I took a couple of ibuprofen. I don’t like popping pills all the time, but my hip was really killing me, and every twinge was a reminder of Phil bloody Morrison. And the accident.

  I’d been seventeen when it happened. I’d made the mistake of heading out to the shops on my own. Just as I turned a corner, I ran straight into Phil Morrison and his gang. Literally.

  He hadn’t been pleased to see me. “Oi, watch where you’re going—bloody hell, it’s Poofski!”

  “He was touching you up, Phil!” That was Wayne Hills, a nasty little shit who did an awful lot of arse-kissing for a rabid homophobe.

  “Get him!”

  After a greeting like that, there was only one thing to do. Run. When it came to verbal sparring, I liked to think I gave as good as I got, but there were four of them threatening to get very physical, very fast, and they were all bigger than me.

  So I ran.

  Unfortunately, my talent for knowing where things are didn’t extend to the oncoming car that hit me square on, shattering my pelvis and breaking my leg. With hindsight, it would have been a lot less painful to stand my ground and take the beating they’d threatened. As violent thugs went, Phil and his gang were strictly minor league. The car, on the other hand, was a four-by-four. With bull bars on the front.

  So I ended up missing my A levels, and I never did go back and take them. My parents were disappointed, but with my older brother a consultant oncologist and my sister a barrister, I suppose they thought on average, they’d done all right by their kids. Either that or they were worn out with the whole thing by then. My sister’s ten years older than me, my brother, twelve—I’m fairly sure my parents thought I was the menopause. I’ve never quite dared ask if they were pleased or not to find out the truth.

  The plumbing thing came about more or less by chance, although once I’d thought of it, it seemed like the obvious choice. We’d had a pipe burst under the floor, and after ten minutes idly watching the plumber effing and blinding as he tried to work out where the leak was, I realised I could tell him to the inch. His comment of “Are you trying to do me out of a job, son?” got me thinking.

  Anyway, as my dad always says, it’s useful having a plumber in the family. Usually, he says this right before he asks me if I’ll take a look at the drip in the shower.

  (At which point I generally say, “Oh, I didn’t realise my brother was visiting, and won’t he mind me staring at him?” Family rituals—you’ve got to love them.)

  I put down my mug and scratched Arthur’s chin. He leaned into me and purred—he might look like a bruiser, he might even swagger like one, but he’s just a big softy at heart. Talking of swaggering bruisers . . . Phil Morrison, a poof. Who’d have thought it?

  Of course, it occurred to me, just because Dave had heard Phil was queer didn’t mean he actually was. I smiled to myself. Maybe he’d been the other sort of bent copper, and Dave had got the wrong end of the stick. Now that I could believe.

  I was eating my breakfast next morning when the doorbell rang, so I went to answer it with my hair uncombed, my face unshaven, and a slice of toast and marmalade in my hand. I don’t know anyone who manages to look presentable before eight o’clock in the morning. It’s just not natural.

  I wasn’t pleased to find myself facing an immaculate Phil Morrison. His broad shoulders filled my doorway, and a hand rested casually in the pocket of his designer jeans. “How did you find out where I live?” I asked, just about managing not to spit crumbs all over his sweater. It looked expensively soft, maybe even cashmere, not that I’d be able to tell for sure without reading the label. Knowing him, if he had to get it dry-cleaned, he’d probably send me the bill.

  He smirked. “Private investigator, remember?”

  “What do you want?” I was uncomfortably aware I’d been wearing this shirt yesterday. I had a clean T-shirt on underneath—I’m not a slob—bu
t he still made me feel like something the cats had dragged in and then played with for a bit before losing interest and batting it under the sofa.

  “Can I come in?” Phil asked, sounding annoyingly reasonable.

  My first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but I was brought up proper, so I muttered, “If you must,” and stood aside for him to enter. He walked in, casting a professional, and no doubt unimpressed, eye all over my little semidetached house, which I liked to think of as cosy and unpretentious. Morrison probably saw it as poky and scruffy.

  “Nice place,” he said in a tone so completely devoid of sarcasm I reckoned he had to be taking the piss.

  “Yeah, and the weather’s lovely for the time of year. Now are you going to get to the point? I’ve got a blocked drain that was put off yesterday, and all the jobs booked in for today.” I shoved the rest of my toast in my mouth impatiently, still standing in the hall. I wasn’t going to invite him to park his arse on my sofa and get comfortable. That was the last thing I wanted.

  Morrison watched me chew for a moment. “Melanie Porter’s family want to meet you.”

  “What? Why?” This time I did spit out a few crumbs.

  “You found their daughter, remember?” His gaze was open and bland, and I didn’t trust it as far as I could throw its owner. “Maybe they think you’ll be able to tell them something about how she died.”

  “I won’t.” I pushed past him and stalked off to the kitchen, where I’d left my morning cuppa. Merlin and Arthur were busy demolishing their breakfast, furry bums in the air. I envied them. Life was so much bloody simpler for a cat.

  Morrison followed me in, and I briefly wished I’d gone for a couple of Dobermans. “Come off it, Paretski—you must have had some grounds for knowing where to find her.”

  I took a long, steadying swallow of PG Tips. “I didn’t. I told you yesterday, I’m just good at finding things, that’s all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.” I shoved my plate into the dishwasher, gulped down the rest of my tea, and rinsed out my mug.