Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi by John Grant

jabbed her feet into the tired black sandshoes that were as much in need of a respite as her jeans – they smelt like a man's socks, and there was a tear at the toe of one of them where her uncut nails had stabbed through. Half a minute later she was coming out through the concrete tunnel onto the pavement to join the rest.
    "What's happening?" she said to Greta.
    "The pub."
    The black-painted doors were firmly closed.
    "So what?"
    "Do you know what time it is?"
    "No." She hadn't the first idea. These days she just got up when the notion took her and staggered through her hours of wakefulness until booze or exhaustion or both sent her back to her bed again.
    "It's nearly one."
    "Oh." The information took a while to sink in.
    "Not as it makes much difference to some of us," said Greta slyly. She'd caught a whiff of Joanna's breath.
    The crowd fractured, like a puddle that's just been stepped in, as a police car pulled up by the side of the road and then turned to park in Ham's Lane. Two young policemen climbed out and ambled across the road. While one of them began to ask the villagers what was going on, the other, absent-mindedly scratching his beard, turned the handle of the doors.
    They opened.
    Shrugging, the policeman pushed his way in, and without pausing to think Joanna followed him.
    The first thing that struck her was the smell: the redolence of smoke and alcohol was even stronger than in her bedroom upstairs, but it was also overlain by the stink of feces.
    The policeman glanced at her, and made a face. "I think you'd best stay outside, young lady," he said.
    "I know what to expect." She did. Aunt Jill's bedroom, that morning only a fortnight ago, had taught her.
    "I mean it," he said.
    "So do I." She managed a grim smile. "If I go straight back out now, people will start to think things are even worse than they are."
    He nodded. "Come on then."
    They found Jas right at the back of the bar, lying half in and half out of the door that led to the lavatories. For a second Joanna had a picture of him dashing through to try to reach them before his bowels loosened, but then she saw that his body was lying the wrong way around: he'd been coming out when death had struck him.
    The policeman knelt down beside Jas's head. He put his hand briefly inside Jas's waistcoat, then stripped back one of the body's sleeves to feel for the pulse at the wrist.
    "I really think you ought to go, ma'am." There was no command in his voice. Whatever had ensnared the rest of Ashburton seemed to have acted on him as well.
    "I can help you," she said.
    "You can't help him . He's dead."
    "Still." He paused, pulling the arm of the suit back down, covering up Jas's white flesh. "You a journalist or something?"
    "Yes," she lied, then added: "Or no. Whichever you'd prefer."
    "Figures." He cracked his knuckles. "Could you nip outside, Joanna, and fetch my partner?"
    She was at the door before she realized he'd used her name. She turned back, staring at him.
    "Didn't recognize me under my beard, eh?" said the policeman, face splitting into a grin. "You didn't know I'd taken on a day job, did you?"
    She was pushing through the noisy knot of villagers, all of them tugging at her, demanding that she answer their questions. Her mouth tightly closed, her face set in rigid lines, she just shook her head and burrowed with her shoulders.
    She eased a little as she got into the concrete passage, which echoed to the sounds of her hurrying footsteps. Luckily she'd left the flat door open, so she didn't have to stop for the ritual struggle with the lock.
    Upstairs, in the kitchen, she tugged a fresh bottle of whisky from the cupboard where Aunt Jill had kept her cornflakes and raised it to her mouth. It was only as the liquid clug-clugged in the bottle's neck that she began to have coherent thoughts once more.
    No! I don't believe it. I can't believe it.
    But it was him.
    It was Steve.
    ~
    Ronnie Gilmour rang to tell Joanna they were burying Jas that afternoon.