Read Online The Love of the Dead by Craig Saunders - Free Book Online

managed to cover it by biting down on her cigarette filter so hard she cut it in two. Detectives came, people took photographs, made drawings, took notes, asked her questions.
    They did what the police always do: clean up other people’s shit. They went again, like they always do. But Coleridge came with them, and they either left him behind because he’d failed, like a punishment, or he stayed off his own back. Beth couldn’t decide, and she was far too drunk to think much about it.
    She looked at him but her eyes hurt. Her head hurt. She wanted to carry on drinking, but drinking with an audience had never been her thing. It was a private solace, something for her to know, maybe Peter, of course Miles, but it was nothing to do with the policeman.
    With the rest of them, it had been impersonal. It hadn’t mattered that she was falling down, pissing herself drunk. They hadn’t mattered. Just a bunch of people, treading softly ’round the blood but traipsing shit everywhere else.
    But Coleridge...Coleridge had a way of looking at her that was making her angry, because his face said he thought he understood.
    But he didn’t understand a damn thing.
    “You got coffee?” he said.
    “You staying?” she said.
    “I am.”
    “Can I do anything about that?”
    “Sorry,” he said. “It’s the way it’s going to be.”
    “I could kick you out.”
    “You could. It’s pretty windy. Cold out this time of year. Fat man like me, bad circulation?”
    “I don’t care.”
    He pursed his lips, looked at her sadly. She got angry all over again. But she didn’t really want to be on her own. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t need people. She didn’t need company.
    She sure as hell didn’t need a fucking friend.
    “Coffee’s in the cupboard in the corner. Pot’s in the cupboard over there.”
    He nodded, busied himself making coffee. She thought about talking to him, but she figured it wasn’t up to her to make conversation. If he wanted to talk, he could come out on the porch.
    The back door slammed in the wind, so she put a chair from her garden set in front of it. She could hear the coffeemaker going in the kitchen. She tried to ignore it and focus on the sea. Whiskey in hand, glass on the table. Cigarettes in her pocket. Should be a lovely night.
    The sky was clear and black, no clouds or moon, just a cloak of stars. The wind was chilly—probably freezing, she knew—but she’d drunk enough to be insulated against the worst of it.
    She tried to light her cigarette, but the wind snatched her flame again and again.
    “Fuck it.”
    She got up and went into the kitchen. The policeman was sitting at her table. Her kitchen table. It was hers. Not his. He looked completely at home, even though he had no right to be.
    He nodded at her.
    She lit her cigarette and went back out to the porch to smoke.
    The sea was high. She could see the whitecaps foaming in the weak light from her kitchen. She watched that and tried not to think about the policeman. She tried hard, but she was angry and wasn’t thinking straight. She was scared. Pretty drunk, too. She didn’t need him here. She could feel him, right there. Looking at her. Sizing her up, like he was waiting for the right moment to hit her, but with kind words instead of a bunched fist.
    She lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first and pretended she didn’t know he was standing behind her in the doorframe.
    “You want to talk about it?”
    “I don’t want you here,” she said. Like it would do any good. She couldn’t throw him out. She probably couldn’t even push him an inch. He must weigh as much as your average hatchback.
    “Not that.”
    “What else is there?”
    “Mrs. Willis...”
    “Don’t call me that. If you’re going to rape me in my own home call me Beth, at least, or bitch, or whatever rapists do, but don’t be fucking polite .”
    “What?”
    “This is my home!”
    “Beth, I’m not here to wind you up. I’m