Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes Page B

until I found the column about the bodies. It took a while to find the name – buried at the end. Sam Everett. I made a note of it in my day book, then replaced the newspaper on Trigger’s desk, exactly where he’d left it. And I went back to analysing burglaries for the crime series meeting tomorrow. I tried not to look at the name, but my eyes were drawn back to it again and again. It was as though the angels had linked me to it already.
     
     
    After work I walked up the hill back to the Park and Ride, looking in the windows of the shops. Even though I’d left late, not having to shop for Mum tonight, I wasn’t in a hurry to go home. The cat could wait a little bit longer for her dinner. I wanted to be where other people were, even if those people were all rushing somewhere. Another few hours and the town would be full again: people coming out to meet friends, go for a meal, have a few drinks, maybe on to a nightclub later on. I couldn’t loiter around until then, though – and besides, how much fun would it be? They would all be getting drunk and rowdy, laughing at each other and laughing at me, the only person in the whole town out on her own. It would be like being back at school.
    When I got to the stop, the back end of the bus was mocking me from the traffic lights a hundred yards further on. It would be twenty minutes until the next one, so I carried on walking through the pedestrian precinct. There was another bus stop outside County Hall which would cut off the great big circuit of the town centre, and as long as I didn’t dawdle I should get to it with about five minutes to spare. The precinct was empty, all the shops closed and shuttered, newspapers and litter chasing each other towards me, funnelled through the space by the wind.
    My father worked at County Hall, years ago. Something in their accounts department, although Mum was not good with specifics. There had been a job advertised fifteen years ago that I’d wanted to apply for; at the time I was doing admin for a solicitor’s office, bored with it and the petty bitchiness that went on between the women who worked there. But Mum had put me off. ‘You’d hate it,’ she’d said. ‘Your father was never happy. All the bureaucracy. And you’re no good with figures, you’d get muddled up all the time.’
    The salary had not been much better than what I was earning, but the prospects were better – once you were employed by the council back then it was a job for life – but maybe that was why she wasn’t keen for me to apply. I think she was worried about letting me go, even fifteen years ago.
    When I saw the job advertised for the police, I didn’t even tell her I’d applied until I got the letter offering me the position. She was furious.
    ‘You’ll have to wear a uniform,’ she told me, ‘you won’t like that, will you? That’s if they can find one to fit you.’
    ‘It’s a civvy job, Mum; they don’t have to wear uniforms unless they’re in the control room or on the front counter.’
    ‘Still, you know what they say about policemen.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘They’re all promiscuous. They’re all cheating on their poor wives. You’ll be there five minutes and they’ll all be after you.’
    As if! It made me laugh to think about it, now, even though when I started the job I was a little afraid. It took a while to build up my confidence – everyone seemed to know so much more than me – but I concentrated on the details and soon there were new people starting and I was the one showing them what to do.
    I parked the car three streets away in the darkness, and walked briskly home. My feet were aching even though I’d been sitting down all day.
    My house and next door were both in darkness, nothing to distinguish them from the street, both the front gardens full of weeds. I would have to sort that out at the weekend. I was drawn to the house next door, peered in through the window at the front, but I could see nothing – no