Page 6 of Pressure Head
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—but 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,andall 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.
“You’ve changed, Paretski,” he said, and this time the tone was clearly disapproving. His impressive bulk loomed even larger in the narrow confines of my kitchen, and it didn’t help that I was only in my socks. One of which had a hole in the toe, I noticed. “I’d never have thought you’d leave an old mate in the lurch like this.”
I whirled, droplets of water flying onto his tan leather jacket from the mug still in my hand. I hastily put it in the sink before I could ruin his entire wardrobe. “‘An old mate’? For fuck’s sake, Morrison, we hated each other’s guts!”
There was an odd look on his face. “Not me. Graham Carter.”
For a moment, I couldn’t place the name. It’d been so long since I’d heard it. Then it hit me.
We’d been friends at school, of a sort, me and Graham. He’d distanced himself from me after thePoofskithing broke, but I hadn’t blamed him really. The poor sod had had a hard enough time already, without being tarred with the same brush as me. He was a kids’ home boy, shy, nerdy, and crap at games. He really didn’t need to hand the bullies any more ammunition.
Now I thought about it, I couldn’t actually remember Morrison being a git to Graham. He’d saved that for me, the bastard.
“What the hell has Graham Carter go to do with all this?”
“Melanie Porter was his girlfriend. They lived together, up on Dyke Hill. He was the one who gave the Porters my number, back when Melanie first went missing.”
“You and Graham are friends?” I couldn’t keep the scepticism out of my voice. It was like hearing Tweety Pie and Sylvester had suddenly become BFFs. “How the hell did that happen?”
“That’s not important. Whatisimportant is that he’s being set up for this.”
I folded my arms and leant against the draining board. “I thought you were working for Melanie’s parents, not for Graham.”
“I am. They don’t believe he did it—and they want to find the bastard who did.”
It didn’t seem to add up to the picture I’d formed in my head. “Dave Southgate said Melanie’s boyfriend was a junkie.”
“He was. Past tense.” Morrison sighed. “Look, he went through a bad patch after leaving school. A lot of us did,” he added, but went on before I could ask him about it. Not that he’d have told me anything, I thought sourly. “He was living on the streets for a while, doing smack, petty crime, that sort of thing—but he’d started to sort his life out even before he met Melanie.”
“So at which point did you and he become friends? The junkie bit, or after?” I persisted.
Morrison folded his arms, mirroring my posture. I couldn’t help noticing he had a lot more trouble than I had getting his beefy forearms in position. “I help out at Crisis, all right? Saw Graham there and got talking to him.”
