The Sleeping and the Dead Read Online Free Page A

babies of their own, and photographs of them were on the mantelpiece and the window-sills.
Then there was Ruthie, the baby, ten years younger than the others, a wild adolescent with cropped hair, who had eaten with them, entertaining them with stories about school. Afterwards she had
disappeared off to a party with her boyfriend, but not without giving her father a big hug first.
    ‘You’ve no family?’ Bet had asked, as if it were a loss in his life, something to be pitied, to be compensated for with comforting casseroles and sticky puddings.
    He had shaken his head. ‘Never married.’
    He had seen them looking at each other and had read their thoughts. At first they had considered that he might be one of them – a Christian. Perhaps of the happy clappy born-again variety,
saving himself for the right girl. That might have explained his reluctance to go to the pub after work, to join in the swearing, the banter about women. But he hadn’t used the right phrases,
as recognizable as a Masonic handshake. He hadn’t made himself known.
    So then they had wondered if he might be gay. That too was something he was used to. It was a way for colleagues to explain his apparent celibacy, his love of art and theatre. He had heard the
sniggers and the jokes, though he never responded to them. Eddie and Bet hadn’t sniggered – they were too kind and too tolerant for that. But they had felt cheated because he
hadn’t been more open with them and they were curious. Later he was sure they would ask Ruthie what she thought. Porteous wondered what the answer would be.
    Now, in his office, so close to Eddie that he could smell the tobacco, he had a sudden urge to explain. It would have been like talking to a priest or a shrink: ‘Ten years ago I had a
nervous breakdown. Stress. Now I avoid it. You know, prevention better than cure. And I take the medication. I like my life ordered, predictable. That’s why I live alone. So I can control
what goes on. It runs in the family, actually, psychiatric disorder. My dad was a nutter. He jumped off a bridge in front of the Birmingham Intercity. It’s like diabetes. Genetic.’
    But it wasn’t like diabetes. Diabetes would have been no big deal; his promotion wouldn’t have been a cause for self-congratulation on the part of his superiors. ‘This shows
that we take equal opportunities seriously, Peter. You’re a trailblazer. But we suggest that you don’t make a song and dance about it. You need authority, the confidence, you know, of
your troops. Your past illness is no business of anyone else, is it?’
    He was aware suddenly of Stout watching him, waiting for him to speak. God, he thought, it won’t take him long to work out that I’m a headcase if I sit here with my mouth open,
staring into space. He pulled the three files out of his briefcase, lay them on the desk.
    ‘Do you remember any of these, Eddie?’
    Stout read them quickly, flicking his eyes occasionally back to his boss’s face.
    ‘Carl Jackson. I remember that one. I was up on the hill with everyone else searching, even when I’d come off shift. It was March but the weather was foul. Low mist. Rain. I thought
I’d been mad to move away from the coast.’
    ‘Could it be our chap in the lake?’
    ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’ He seemed angry with himself.
    ‘So it could be him?’
    ‘Carl was murdered, if that’s what you mean. There’s no way he just wandered away from the track and got lost.’
    ‘But it doesn’t say anything here about a murder investigation.’
    ‘There wasn’t one. Everyone was content to put it down as an accident. According to the press, if anyone was to blame it was the social worker who suggested that he should be allowed
to walk home on his own. But I talked to her in the day centre and I was impressed. She said Carl was deaf. No one had picked up how profound that disability was, and she thought he was more
capable than his parents allowed