warm mouth trying to breathe life into his cold one. I already knew it was no use. He’d gone. The light had gone from his eyes.
Three months passed after he left me but I have no recollection of them. The time after had no meaning, no purpose. I couldn’t play; I didn’t even try. I couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t look at the sky, couldn’t walk in the fresh air without him because there was no reason to do it. All I could do was wait.
Annabel
I went with Kate to the tactical meeting on Wednesday, even though it was her turn to do it. She usually managed to find some way of getting out of it, but on this occasion she was surprisingly enthusiastic. She was setting up the presentation on the computer, her back to me, the set of her shoulders and the half-smile telling me in no uncertain terms that she thought I was about to make a colossal fool of myself, and she was going to enjoy the show.
DI Andrew Frost, two years away from retirement, one of my favourite people in the job, was last through the door. ‘Morning, Annabel. Morning, Kate. We get two analysts for the price of one today, do we?’
‘Sir,’ I said. I felt an instant wash of relief that it was Frosty chairing the meeting today. A couple of the other DIs had a tendency to ask questions, lots of them, even ones which didn’t make any sense. It felt as if they were trying to catch us out all the time, trying to make themselves look clever at our expense.
Around the table they all sat, uniforms on one side, civilians on the other. DI at the head of the table; DC Ellen Traynor, DC Amanda Spitz and DC Brian Jones, also known as ‘Shaggy’. I had once asked Trigger how he’d got that nickname since he didn’t have a chin-beard or a dog called Scooby, and it turned out that he had a habit of getting things wrong, and had once answered an accusation with the phrase, ‘It wasn’t me.’ The nickname had stuck for ten years. I wasn’t expecting much of a contribution from him. On our side of the table were Jo from the Intel Unit who was going to be taking the minutes, a woman from Social Services whose name I always managed to forget, this time with an older man wearing a cardigan, Carol, and us.
Kate did her bit first, and then began the endless discussion around the table about all the active jobs and how they were being handled, how much budget there was left to deal with them, whether the risk was being effectively managed.
I tried not to fidget, and started to worry about what I was going to say.
‘Right then, any new resourcing bids? No? Alright, then. Any other business, before we wrap this up?’
I got in first, before anyone could start asking for more overtime money. ‘Just one thing, sir.’
‘Annabel?’
‘I’ve been doing some research on unexplained deaths where the deceased has remained undiscovered for some time. It seems that the number of these cases so far this year is unusually high. I’ve done a chart…’
Dutifully Kate toggled from the tactical presentation over to the chart I’d finished earlier, nicely designed to show a huge spike.
‘I should point out that the spike shows this year to date, whereas all the other years are complete. If things carry on at the average rate for this year, we can expect the figure to be over thirty. As you can see, we’ve never had more than eleven in a year before.’
I looked anxiously around the table. Everyone was sitting in stony silence looking at my chart.
At last, Mandy Spitz spoke. ‘Sorry, Annabel, I’m not clear – are these murders?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re people who have died in their own homes and not been found for a long time.’
I thought I heard a noise like someone snorting, probably Carol. Someone else was whispering something. I felt my cheeks start to grow hot.
Frosty cleared his throat. ‘Do you have any theories as to why there are so many? Anything linking them?’
‘Well,’ I said, glancing at Kate and giving her a nod, ‘the next slide shows some interesting points of note…’
It was just a few bullet points to get their attention. ‘There is an unusually wide age range this year. The youngest was just twenty-one – that’s Rachelle Hudson, I’m sure you all remember her – and the eldest