The DCI had asked Janet to do the death message and to take Rachel with her. The worst thing about delivering the bad news was the sheer unpredictability of the reaction you got. One woman laughed, another threw up. Some people simply refused to believe you, arguing the toss, insisting that so-and-so was fine, they had seen them last night, they’d spoken to them on the phone. You had to sit them down and spell it out in big fat letters: D.E.A.D. Repeat it until they stopped blethering on: she was going on holiday, he’s only twenty-two, she’s got an operation next week, she’s got children. As if these facts – mundane, domestic, particular – could gainsay the truth. As if death could be reversed because he’d got an interview for Morrisons tomorrow.
Other people went numb, they listened and they nodded and didn’t utter a peep. They were polite and cooperative, but when you looked in their eyes there was no one home. They were absent, hiding. Then there were the ones that shot the messenger, tried to shut the door on them, and if they couldn’t do that in time, told them to fuck off, even lashed out, pinching, slapping, shoving.
Janet once had a cup of tea flung at her. A woman whose son had been killed in a homophobic attack. Five of them kicked him to death. When Janet broke the news, the woman had flinched, twisting her head to and fro as if trying to escape the facts she’d just heard, then reached for her mug and hurled the contents at Janet. The tea was hot but not boiling. Though she reared back, Janet had not cried out. She had simply wiped at her face and repeated her condolences, then assured the woman that they would find the people who had done it and put them in prison for life. And the woman had sat, shaking uncontrollably, the sound of her teeth chattering clear and loud in the stuffy room.
Where the victim was embroiled in violent crime already, the next of kin often knew before you said a word. He’s dead, isn’t he? The stupid fucking bastard. And behind the ruptured words all the years of effort and loving and arguing and fighting and the bitter knowledge that this was how it would end and now it had. I told him. Never listened – silly sod wouldn’t have it.
Most were shocked, bewildered, sometimes tearful. It was important to keep things simple, straightforward, to give the minimum amount of information possible, because at that point in time dead, murdered
