Time To Play by KA Richardson (best book club books of all time TXT) 📗

stop, had been building in momentum for weeks. A thousand dead souls screaming at him and telling him that all the shit in the world was his fault.

Maybe it is. Maybe I should just kill myself and be done with it.

At this errant thought, his expression stilled. He somehow managed to push the sadness and tears back inside the box from whence they came, and a slow burn of shame appeared instead. He was too much of a coward to kill himself.

He swiped at the remnants of the salty rivers on his cheeks, set his expression, and went inside.

 

Chapter Seventeen

Dive Team HQ, South Shields – 10 November

M arlo stepped out of the shower in the functional ladies’ room and wrapped her towel around her. She’d been in the shower for twenty minutes and could still smell the sickly sweet stench of ‘dead guy’.

The job they’d been called to that morning had turned out to be a long one. The RIB had to navigate through reeds and water lilies to get to a small island in the middle of a river. How the body had even been spotted she didn’t know, but it had been there for a while and was ripe.

It had been a man, at least she thought he was a man. Most of his head was missing – the blast from the shotgun at his feet had turned his brain to mush and shattered the bones in his face and skull. She knew that both the pathologist, and Deena who had attended the scene, would agree it was a suicide. The note tucked in his pocket had been the clincher.

As the team had manoeuvred the body, the flesh had released its hold on the muscles due to the build-up of gases. The skin had split, covering both Marlo and Deena in stinking body fluids. Among those fluids were the decaying lipids that stick to your hair and clothes, and even lodged in your pores. Marlo had only ever had it happen once before. And that hadn’t been this bad.

Even now as she stood drying her hair, she caught a waft of the stench and almost gagged. Sharpie and Connor had had the grace not to laugh, but she could see they were glad it hadn’t been them. They’d all gone home an hour before, but there was no way she was leaving the nick smelling like she’d crawled backwards through a rubbish dump filled with toxic waste and dead fish.

Sighing, she unwrapped the towel and stepped back under the showerhead, setting the temperature to a notch below scalding. Her drysuit had been bagged for the incinerator: there was no getting back from the filthiness and biohazard dead guy juices presented. It seeped through the white crime scene suits, soaked into the top of her boots, and the cuffs above her gloves. It was standard procedure in cases like this that all clothing and shoes be burnt, and new kit issued. She sighed again. Damn, that means breaking in a new pair of boots.

Squirting a huge blob of shower gel onto the scrubber, she started rubbing it hard over her skin again. This was her fourth shower: maybe this one would get rid of the stench.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom opened, and she stilled, listening.

‘Hello?’ she called out, turning the shower off and pulling her towel from the hook on the back of the door. She heard footsteps retreating, soft footsteps, not like those from police issue boots. What the fuck?

Marlo was the only female diver: no one else would be in the nick at that time of night. Pulling open the cubicle door, she stepped into the bathroom and grabbed her mobile phone from the sink. Quickly dialling, she waited for the control room to answer.

‘This is 5402 Buchanan from the dive team. I’m at HQ in South Shields. Everyone has gone home, and I think there’s an intruder in the building. I’m going to do a walk-through but don’t have my radio on me. I’ll leave this line open.’

She pulled on her sweatpants and T-shirt and softly padded out of the bathroom and into the canteen area. It was almost in darkness, the street lights from the car park outside the only glow. Listening intently, she heard nothing. But she was certain someone had opened the bathroom door. Or did they? I’m tired. Maybe I just thought they did? Doubt trickled in and suddenly she felt like an idiot for immediately ringing comms.

‘What you doing sneaking about?’ came Sharpie’s voice from behind her. Marlo jumped about twenty feet in the air and turned, punched him on the arm and then put her hand to her chest. ‘You bloody idiot! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’

Sharpie backed away, his hands held out in front of him. Unable to stop himself, he started laughing loudly, tears springing to his eyes as he held his sides. ‘Priceless…’ he gasped, ‘your face was a picture. Jesus, I wish I’d recorded that! Would’ve got me £250 on You’ve Been Framed, that bad boy.’

‘Jackass. Did you come in the bathroom too, just to get me all on edge? I thought you’d left with the guys?’

‘I did, forgot my mobile though, and then started working on a report. Besides, you know I don’t like the idea of a female being left in the nick on her own. Didn’t come in the bathroom, though.’

‘Yeah, you don’t like that idea, yet you’re willing to scare said female half to death,’ grumbled Marlo. I must have imagined the door opening. How weird. What a dufus. Deciding she’d get her own back at a later date, she turned back towards the bathroom. ‘I’ll be ready to go in a sec. Let me grab my bag.’

Dive Team HQ, South Shields – 10 November

Elvie had almost died when she’d walked in the