Page 4 of Pressure Head
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 pissed offandguilty. 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’?Iwas bloodystandoffish?” My voice rose so high on the last bit it cracked.
