Talking to the Dead Read Online Free PDF

logic behind what has or has not been done.
    I walk around, not doing anything, just trying to see if I feel anything being here. I don’t. Or rather: I feel a dislike for the place, its red swirly carpet, its ugly sofa, the dirt marks on the wall, its smell of discount store and blocked drains. I feel strange and disconnected.
    From the crime scene photos on Groove, I recognize where the two corpses were lying when they were found. Where April was lying, a pool of dried blood has caked into the carpet. It doesn’t look like blood though. A curry stain, more like.
    I bend down and feel the floor where April breathed her last, then move round till I’m in the spot where Janet died.
    You want to feel things at times like this. Some sense of the dead. A lingering presence. But I don’t get anything. Just nylon carpet and a lingering smell. The halogen lamps make everything unreal. Under the front window, there’s a wooden storage unit that has been given a back and arms, so that it can double up as a window seat.
    The SOCO from upstairs comes down, two steps at a time, crashing his way through into the living room.
    “All right?” he says.
    I indicate the window seat. “That thing. Did it have seat cushions?”
    The SOCO points to a place, four feet away, where a dirty black-checked cushion leans up against the wall. The cushion clearly fits the seat.
    “And were there drawings on the property? Kids’ drawings, the sort of thing that April would have done.”
    “Big stash of them there.” The SOCO points down the back of the window seat. “Flowers mostly.”
    “Yes.”
    I lift the red curtain and stare out onto the street. You get a good view from this window. Half of Allison Street and a parking area beyond. I sit on the window seat, imagining that I’m April.
    The SOCO stands close, breathing audibly through his nose. He wants me gone and I have no reason to be here, so I oblige him by going.
    I step from the too-bright living room, out into the too-dark hall, then out onto the hot, sunshiny street. Everything feels odder now. The boy has taken his red ball somewhere else. The house and street look as normal as anything, but inside Number 86, April Mancini was definitely murdered and her mother quite likely was. All the difference in the world. I’ve had my mobile phone off, ever since Cefn Mawr. I turn it back on now, and there’s a short blizzard of incoming texts, half of which are from my superior officers asking where the hell I am.
    I think about going back in, but I haven’t yet had lunch and, besides, my visit to Allison Street has left me feeling unsatisfied. Itchy.
    I wander around hunting for a corner shop. I was sure I saw one on my way over here but, typically, I make a hash out of tracking it down. I’m not always good at locating large, static, well-advertised objects in brightly lit locations. Still, I find it at last and go inside.
    Newspapers. Chocolates. A chiller cabinet with milk and yogurt and the sorts of cooked meats that will block your arteries in about the same time as it’ll take an intensively farmed piglet to bulk up, squeal, and die. Some tinned foods, sliced bread, biscuits. Some sad-looking fruit.
    I help myself to orange juice and a cheese and tomato sandwich. The girl on the till is called Farideh. She has a plastic badge that says so, anyway.
    “Hi.” My opening gambit.
    She ducks that one and reaches for my goods to put them through the till. A CCTV monitor above her head flicks between pictures of different viewpoints in the store. It’s scrutinizing an old-age pensioner bending over the chiller cabinet right now.
    “I’m on the police inquiry,” I say. “You know, the mother and daughter who were murdered up the road.”
    Farideh nods and says something bland and pacifying, the sort of thing that people say when they’re trying to indicate a general willingness to be helpful but without the crucial ingredient of such an attitude—namely, actually being