Dead Like You

do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me?’
    Blood was trickling from her mouth.
    ‘Rachael? Do you want something to drink? Want me to get you something to eat? You want a McDonald’s? A Big Mac? A Cheese-burger? Or maybe a submarine? I could get you a submarine. Yeah? Tell me, tell me what filling you’d like in it. Spicy sausage? Something with melted cheese? They’re really good those. Tuna? Ham?’

NOW

30
    Thursday 8 January
    Yac was hungry. The chicken-n-melted cheese submarine had been tantalizing him for over two hours. The bag rolled around on the passenger seat, along with his Thermos flask every time he braked or went around a corner.
    He’d been planning to pull over and eat it during his on-the-hour tea break, but there were too many people around. Too many fares. He’d had to drink his 11 p.m. cup while driving. Thursday nights were normally busy, but this was the first Thursday after the New Year. He had expected it to be quiet. However, some people had recovered and were out partying again. Taking taxis. Wearing nice shoes.
    Uh-huh.
    That was fine by him. Everyone had their own way of partying. He was happy for them all. Just so long as they paid what was on the meter and didn’t try to do a runner, as someone did every now and then. Even better when they tipped him! All tips helped. Helped towards his savings. Helped towards building up his collection.
    That was growing steadily. Very nicely. Oh yeah!
    A siren wailed.
    He felt a sudden prick of alarm. Held his breath.
    Flashing blue lights filled his mirrors, then a police car shot past. Then another police car moments later, as if following in its wake. Interesting, he thought. He was out all night most nights and it wasn’t often he saw two police cars together. Must be something bad.
    He was approaching his regular spot on Brighton seafront, where he liked to pull over every hour, on the hour, during the night and drink his tea, and now, also, to read his paper. Since the rape in the Metropole Hotel last Thursday he had started to read the paper every night. The story excited him. The woman’s clothes had been taken. But what excited him most of all was reading that her shoes had been taken.
    Uh-huh!
    He brought the taxi to a halt, switched off the engine and picked up the carrier bag with the submarine inside, but then he put it down again. It did not smell good any more. The smell made him feel sick.
    His hunger was gone.
    He wondered where those police cars were headed.
    Then he thought about the pair of shoes in the boot of his taxi and he felt good again.
    Really good!
    He tossed the submarine out of the window.
    Litter lout! he chided himself. You bad litter lout!

31
    Friday 9 January
    One good thing, or rather, one of the many good things about Cleo being pregnant, Grace thought, was that he was drinking a lot less. Apart from the occasional glass of cold white wine, Cleo had been dutifully abstemious, so he had cut down too. The bad thing was her damned craving for curries! He wasn’t quite sure how many more of those his system could take. The whole house was starting to smell like an Indian fast-food joint.
    He longed for something plain. Humphrey was unimpressed too. After just one lick, the puppy had decided that curries were not going to provide him with any tasty leftover scraps in his bowl that he would want to eat.
    Roy endured them because he felt duty-bound to keep Cleo company. Besides, in one of the pregnancy-for-men books Glenn Branson had given him, there was a whole passage about indulging and sharing your partner’s cravings. It would make your partner feel happy. And if your partner felt happy, then the vibes would be picked up by your unborn child, and it would be born happy and not grow up to become a serial killer.
    Normally, he liked to drink lager with curry, Grolsch preferably or his favourite German beer, Biltberger, or the weissbier he’d developed a taste for through his acquaintance with a German police officer, Marcel Kullen, and from his visits last year to Munich. But this week it was his rota turn to be the Major Crime Branch’s duty Senior Investigating Officer, which meant he was on call 24/7, so he was reduced to soft drinks.
    Which explained why he felt bright as a button, sitting in his office at 9.20 a.m. this Friday, sipping his second coffee, switching his focus from the serials to the emails that poured in as if they were coming out of a tap that had been left running, then to the