Read Online Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes - Free Book Online Page B

nothing else. Or maybe not even that. He was older than me, handsome, clever, and I didn’t think I could possibly be that lucky.
    But I was wrong. I was the luckiest boy in the world.
    After that we were together all the time. Every day. Every job we got, we either did together or else the other one would turn down any other performances to be in the audience. We simply couldn’t bear to be apart, not for more than a few hours. His voice electrified me; hearing him sing was sustenance enough for me to live on. And he would sit listening to me play, hour after hour; even when I’d practised enough he would make me carry on, sitting in the armchair behind me, his eyes half-closed, losing himself in the music.
    I don’t think anyone really understood how deep it went. We both had friends, of course, family – his more loving, more supportive than mine – but what we had together was like solid rock compared to the shifting sands of all the other relationships, people who came and went in and out of our lives, passing us by.
    I found him on the floor. He’d been there for some time, even though I’d only slipped out of the house to the shops to get something nice for dinner.
    I called the ambulance and while I was waiting for them to arrive I tried everything I could for him, pounding his chest, my warm mouth trying to breathe life into his cold one. I already knew it was no use. He’d gone. The light had gone from his eyes.
    Three months passed after he left me but I have no recollection of them. The time after had no meaning, no purpose. I couldn’t play; I didn’t even try. I couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t look at the sky, couldn’t walk in the fresh air without him because there was no reason to do it. All I could do was wait.

Annabel
     
     
    I went with Kate to the tactical meeting on Wednesday, even though it was her turn to do it. She usually managed to find some way of getting out of it, but on this occasion she was surprisingly enthusiastic. She was setting up the presentation on the computer, her back to me, the set of her shoulders and the half-smile telling me in no uncertain terms that she thought I was about to make a colossal fool of myself, and she was going to enjoy the show.
    DI Andrew Frost, two years away from retirement, one of my favourite people in the job, was last through the door. ‘Morning, Annabel. Morning, Kate. We get two analysts for the price of one today, do we?’
    ‘Sir,’ I said. I felt an instant wash of relief that it was Frosty chairing the meeting today. A couple of the other DIs had a tendency to ask questions, lots of them, even ones which didn’t make any sense. It felt as if they were trying to catch us out all the time, trying to make themselves look clever at our expense.
    Around the table they all sat, uniforms on one side, civilians on the other. DI at the head of the table; DC Ellen Traynor, DC Amanda Spitz and DC Brian Jones, also known as ‘Shaggy’. I had once asked Trigger how he’d got that nickname since he didn’t have a chin-beard or a dog called Scooby, and it turned out that he had a habit of getting things wrong, and had once answered an accusation with the phrase, ‘It wasn’t me.’ The nickname had stuck for ten years. I wasn’t expecting much of a contribution from him. On our side of the table were Jo from the Intel Unit who was going to be taking the minutes, a woman from Social Services whose name I always managed to forget, this time with an older man wearing a cardigan, Carol, and us.
    Kate did her bit first, and then began the endless discussion around the table about all the active jobs and how they were being handled, how much budget there was left to deal with them, whether the risk was being effectively managed.
    I tried not to fidget, and started to worry about what I was going to say.
    ‘Right then, any new resourcing bids? No? Alright, then. Any other business, before we wrap this up?’
    I got in first, before anyone