People rarely say what they mean under stress, and all I hear is her desperation to prove to me that she can handle this.
“Have you seen a dead body before?” I ask, interrupting.
She stands a little straighter and sticks out her chin like a disgruntled child.
“Yes. In the morgue.”
“Not the same,” I mutter beneath my breath.
There are so many things I could teach her, things she doesn’t know she needs to learn.
“I’ve been thinking about the message the killer wanted to send,” Priya says, staring back down at her notepad, where I can see the beginnings of one of her many lists.
“They wanted people to know that the victim was two-faced,” I reply, and she looks confused. “Her fingernails. I think someone cut them and wrote a message.”
Priya frowns then bends down to get a closer look. She stares up at me in wonder, as though I’m Hercule Poirot. I guess reading is my superpower.
I avoid her gaze and return my attention to the face of the woman lying in the dirt. Then I instruct one of the forensics team to take pictures of her from every angle. She looks like the kind of person who enjoyed having her photo taken, wearing her vanity like a badge. The flash blinds me, and I’m reminded of another time and place: London a few years ago, reporters and cameras on a street corner, clamoring to get a shot of something they shouldn’t want to see. I bury the memory—I can’t stand the press—then I notice something else.
The dead woman’s mouth is ever so slightly open.
“Shine your flashlight on her face.”
Priya does as I ask, and I get down on my knees again to take a closer look at the body. Lips that were once pink have turned blue, but I can see something red hiding in the dark space between them. I reach to touch it, without thinking, as though under a spell.
“Sir?”
Priya interrupts my mistake before I make it. She is uncomfortably close to me; so much so that I can smell her perfume, along with her breath: a light whiff of recently drunk tea. I turn and see an old frown form on her young face. I would have thought this whole experience—finding a body in the woods for the first time—might have fazed her, unnerved her a little, but maybe I was wrong. I try to remember how old Priya is—I find it so hard to tell with women. If I had to guess I’d say late twenties or early thirties. Still hungry with ambition, confident of her own potential, unscarred by the disappointments that life has yet to hit her with.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the pathologist to examine the body before we touch anything?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
Priya sticks to the rules the way good liars stick to their stories. She says “pathologist” like a kid who just learned a new word in school, one who wants people to hear them use it in a sentence.
“Absolutely,” I reply, and take a step back.
Unlike my colleague, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before, but this is not like any case I have previously worked on. I zone out a little again while Priya starts to speculate about the identity of the woman. It feels like this is the start of something big, and I wonder if I’m up to the task. No two murders are the same, but it’s been years since I handled a case even remotely like this, and a lot has changed since then. The job has changed, I’ve changed, and it isn’t just that.
This is different.
I’ve never worked on the murder of someone I know before.
And I knew this woman well.
I was with her last night.
Her
Tuesday 06:30
We all have secrets; some we won’t even tell ourselves.
I don’t know what woke me, or what time it is, or where I am when I first open my eyes. Everything is pitch-black. My fingers find the bedside lamp, which sheds some light on the matter, and I’m pleased to see the familiar sight of my own bedroom. It is always a relief to know that I made it home when I wake up feeling like this.
I am not one of those women that you read about in books, or see on TV dramas, who frequently drink too much and forget what they did the night before. I’m not an amateur alcoholic and I’m not a cliché. We’re all addicted to something: money, success, social media, sugar, sex … the list of possibilities is endless. My drug of choice just happens to be alcohol. It can take a while for my memories to catch up with me, and I might not always be happy or proud about what I’ve done, but I do always remember. Always.
That doesn’t mean I have to tell the whole world about it.
Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.