The Dead I Know by Scot Gardner Page A

the living, ambulance officers protected the injured and we protected the dead. All as it should be.

17
    J OHN ANSWERED HIS mobile as the garage door closed. With one hand, he helped transfer the casket containing the motorcyclist’s remains to a gurney and sent me off to the coolroom with it.
    I flicked the light switch and opened the door. The tubes strobed and the darkness between the flashes seemed cosmic. I rolled the gurney inside and the chill tap-danced on my spine. I could smell a hint of Amanda Creen; at least I thought I could – something turning in the back of the refrigerator. I propped the trolley beside her pale coffin and shut the door behind me on the way out.
    I had the sudden urge to clean, to scrub and vacuum and polish until everything sparkled – but everything already sparkled with yesterday’s effort. I craved some simple and tangible task that might steer my mind away from the questions it wanted answered. How do we care for thebroken man? Undress him? Wash him? Free his head from his helmet? Left to my own devices, I’d build him a box and screw the lid on tight. A little privacy. Somewhere to get changed into something more . . . elemental.
    ‘Change of plans,’ John said upon his return. ‘We’re to take our most recent addition to the coroner for post-mortem.’
    I lit up the coolroom again and retrieved the trolley.
    John steered while I pushed.
    ‘I wonder . . . with all that modern science . . . if they’ll be able to ascertain the cause of death?’
    I looked at him askance, unable to work out if he was being sincere or . . .
    A smile bent his lips.
    I smiled too, involuntarily. He knew he’d got me.
    ‘They need to test his blood. Why they can’t send someone around I’ll never know. I get the feeling they’re all too important for that.’
    A fifteen-minute drive, a ten-minute wait and we were rolling the gurney back to the van with the full casket on board.
    ‘Now, about your driving,’ John said, as he merged into the traffic. ‘How much experience have you had? Has your . . . someone taken you for a cruise in the car park on a Sunday?’
    I shook my head. Mam didn’t drive.
    ‘Then that’s where we’ll start.’
    He drove us to the golf club. There were a few cars in the car park but they were bunched around the entrance to the clubrooms. He parked the van away from the othervehicles and we swapped seats, my fingers shaking as I took the wheel.
    ‘Controls,’ he said. ‘Go pedal. Stop pedal. Gearshift. Handbrake. Windscreen wipers. Indicators.’
    I wondered if my heartbeat disturbed him; it was certainly a distraction for me. He told me to start the van. With the gearshift firmly in N and the handbrake on hard, I revved the engine, as instructed. By lunchtime I’d reverse-parked. It was that easy. Apparently, there are people for whom driving seems natural.
    ‘I had to drive the length of the town with one of the local cops on board in order to get my licence,’ John said. ‘Just a lap of the main drag.’ He shook his head. ‘Somehow, I managed to fail three times.’
    He poked at me with a single finger. ‘Not a word of that to anybody, you hear?’
    I zipped my lips.
    ‘Not . . . a . . . word.’
    We had a deal, as long as he didn’t mention the fact that my first driving lesson was conducted in a golf club car park with a mangled corpse bumping around in a box in the back.
    On the way to the office, John stopped in the loading zone in front of the newsagents, ducked from the car and returned with a bag that he unceremoniously dumped on my lap.
    ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said.
    Christmas? In May?
    It was a guide to the learner-driver test.
    ‘Read it. Cover to cover. Let me know when you want to do the examination.’
    He looked across, his eyebrows raised expectantly. When I didn’t get the hint, he cupped his ear.
    ‘Thank you, John. You’re very kind,’ I said.
    He beamed.
    He parked at the shopping centre. I waited in the car while he