Page 3 of Pressure Head
Well, it could have been worse. And I was long over being intimidated by him. “That’sParetski, if you don’t mind,” I snapped.
“You’ve changed a bit,” he said cryptically.
“So have you.” I tried to inject as much meaning as I could into those three words. I wanted him to know I knew his little secret. I wanted him to feel like the bloody hypocrite he was.
Zero reaction. Either it didn’t work, or more likely, he just didn’t give a monkey’s what I thought about him.
Dave huffed impatiently. “Ifyou don’t mind me interrupting this touching reunion, we do have a body to look for. And Morrison? Unless you’re here to hand deliver a map drawn by the murderer, your services are not required. This is an official police investigation, not a bloody free-for-all.”
Morrison raised an eyebrow. “Oh? When did you join the force, Parrot—Paretski? Good thing for you they dropped the height restrictions.”
My jaw tensed. “I’m just here as a consultant.”
“Know a lot about hiding bodies, do you?” God, I’d forgotten just how much his snide tone got up my nose.
“Used to think about it all the time back in school,” I said pointedly.
“Girls!” Dave broke in with an exasperated shout.
We both whirled to look at him, probably with identical hangdog expressions. “Sorry, Dave,” I said, to establish myself firmly as the reasonable one. “Time to get started?”
“Too bloody right. Come on. And Morrison? If I find you trampling on the evidence, you’ll be cooling your heels in jail, understood? As soon as we find anything—ifwe find anything—the family will be informed.” Dave grabbed my elbow and more or less hustled me into the trees. We stopped once we were out of sight of the grassland. “Right—do your stuff.”
I sighed. “What, after all that?”
“Oh, come off it, Tom. Don’t play the prima donna with me, now. What was all that with you and Morrison, anyway? The short version, please. Young love gone bad?”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” I warned. “Not unless you fancy pulling him in on a charge of assaulting an officer. We went to school together, that’s all. We weren’t exactly friends.”
I jumped as a hand like a bag full of sausages clapped me briefly on the shoulder. “School bully, was he? I know his type. All bluster and no bloody bollocks.”
Phil Morrison had bollocks, all right. I remembered that from the school showers. You might say I’d made something of a study of the subject. Didn’t think Dave would appreciate me mentioning it, though. I took a deep breath, and tried to clear my mind.
Phil Morrison’s bollocks kept creeping back in there. Sod it. “You want to give me that picture again?” I asked.
Thirty seconds staring at Melanie’s pretty, kind face soon got my mind out of the gutter. “Right. Okay.” I handed it back and closed my eyes. Could I hear something? Feel it tugging at me? I turned around slowly, trying to judge where the pull was coming from. There. I stepped forward, remembering in time to open my eyes before I walked into a tree.
Dave didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We just followed the line I’d sensed. My work boots soon picked up a thick coating of mulched-up leaves, stuck on with mud. On a crisp, frosty morning, this might be a pleasant place for a walk, but right now it was just soggy and dirty. It even smelled damp. Every now and then a twig that had somehow managed to escape getting soaked through would snap loudly under my foot, but more often I’d put my boot in a muddy patch and have to pull it free with a squelch. Brambles snagged my jeans and clutched at my hair.
As the pull got stronger, I sped up. Dave started puffing a bit and occasionally cursing, probably at the mess the mud was making of his shoes. I forced myself to slow down, but it was nagging at me, and I found my pace quickening again.
It wasn’t Melanie’s voice. I don’t see ghosts—at least, I don’t think I do. The girl in the park when I was a kid had seemed like a spirit, but I think it was just the way my child’s brain interpreted things. These days, I just feel a pull, a sense of somethinghidden, of somethingnot-right. It’s like . . . I’ve never taken drugs—too much weird stuff going on in my head as it is—but I imagine it’s like the pull a hopeless addict feels towards the next fix. Only without the high when I finally give in to it.
Fortunately, I usually only feel it when I’m actively listening—I know you can’t listen for a feeling, but language really isn’t accurate for this sort of thing—or I’d probably go stark raving mad. After all, when you think about it, the average household has six to a dozen things hidden in it. The wife’s saving-up-to-leave-him secret piggy bank; the teenage son’s porn; his dad’s porn; these days, quite often, his mum’s porn. And don’t get me started on the subject of sex toys . . .
I’d veered off course, I realised. Feeling guilty, I wrenched my mind back to the matter in hand. Where had she gone . . .? Dave started to say something, so I held up a hand to shush him.
There. I stepped forward.
When you’re twenty-nine and you find a body, as I said earlier, you don’t get to go blubbing for your mother. You get Dave clapping you on the shoulder and heaving a resigned sigh, while the other police officers throw you suspicious looks. Nobody shields you from the sight as they shine their torches into the bushes and light up the mess some bastard made of a young woman’s skull. Your mind’s well able to interpret the blood, the misshapen dent where the bone pushed into the brain, and your imagination fills in the pain and the terror she must have felt.
And when you walk out of the forest and leave them to it, you find Phil Morrison waiting for you.
It was twilight by now, but he wasn’t exactly easy to overlook. He loomed out of the shadow of the trees like Herne the Hunter on steroids.
“Have they found her, then?” he demanded.
I nodded curtly and went to walk past him. He grabbed my arm.
