Free Already Dead by Stephen Booth

while I was in the forces. Just the occasional visit home on leave. You lose touch, miss out on things happening in your friends’ lives back home, no matter how close you once were.’
    The others shifted uncomfortably when she said ‘no matter how close’. Fry could understand why. It sounded strangely possessive, as if Villiers felt she had a prior claim on her childhood friend but had diplomatically stayed out of the way in view of his engagement to Liz Petty. It seemed particularly insensitive to be referring to it now.
    But perhaps she hadn’t meant it that way at all. People were awkward in these circumstances and said the wrong things all the time. Fry was deliberately keeping quiet. She knew she’d put her foot in it the same way herself. People would be shocked and look at her as if she was a heartless monster. It was best to know your own faults – in her case, it was difficult to deny them when so many others had pointed them out over the years.
    The group around the table were looking at her now. Expectant expressions, a respectful silence. They were waiting for her to speak.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no. You can’t think that I know him better than any of you. Ben Cooper is a mystery to me. I have about as much in common with him as with that pork pie Gavin has in his pocket for later. You were at school with him, Carol. Gavin, you worked in the same division with him a long time before I came to Derbyshire. You’re both far better qualified than me.’
    They said nothing, forcing her to keep on talking.
    ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘it should be something his line manager deals with.’
    That got a response at least.
    ‘The DI? Paul Hitchens?’ Irvine laughed. ‘We’re not talking about filling in a form and booking a counselling session. It needs a bit of action outside the HR process.’
    ‘His family, then,’ said Fry. ‘He has an older brother. The one who runs Bridge End Farm. There’s a sister too. One of them, surely…’
    They still watched her, letting her run out of ideas. Well, she’d met Matt Cooper herself, and knew he was hardly the ideal person to handle an issue sensitively.
    ‘The sister,’ she said again. ‘Does anyone know her?’
    ‘She’s called Claire,’ said Villiers. ‘She’s a bit odd, in a New Agey sort of way. Doesn’t really have her feet on the ground. I don’t think Ben is all that close to her anyway. Not the way he is with Matt.’
    Fry sighed, starting to feel trapped. Those eyes fixed on her face were like the walls of the pub closing in around her.
    ‘Friends, then,’ she said. ‘He’s talked about a couple of mates he used to go on walking holidays with.’
    ‘Yes. Rakki went back to Mombasa, where he grew up before his family came to the UK. Oscar got married last year and moved to Bristol.’
    ‘All right. But … Ben must have been seeing a doctor.’
    No one commented on the obvious fact that she was straying further and further away from practicalities. The people who could realistically do something about the situation were all sitting around a table in this grotty Edendale pub. The ability was here. But perhaps only some of them had the will.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Fry at last. ‘You can count me out. I’m the wrong person for this.’
    ‘But, Diane—’ began Hurst.
    ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s a definite, definite “no”.’
    Diane Fry was driving as she and Becky Hurst turned the corner into Welbeck Street. She pulled the Audi in to the kerb and turned off the engine.
    ‘It’s number eight,’ said Hurst. ‘A bit further down the street. The blue door.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘So why have we stopped?’
    ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’
    ‘We’ll get wet,’ pointed out Hurst. ‘And there’s space just outside the house. He has the ground-floor flat.’
    ‘Yes, I can see.’
    Fry found it difficult to explain to Hurst why she didn’t want to park her car right outside Ben Cooper’s flat. She had a vague