I tell Neil everything I can remember. When I’m done, his forehead is so creased a pencil can practically fit between the folds.
“You see?” I say, pointing to the piece of paper on the table. “It’s a manifesto of Lisa’s feelings, not a suicide note.”
He looks it over, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “And you told her to write it?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I read about it online,” I say. “Writing your feelings in a letter helps clarify things. To be honest, I was lost. And I didn’t know what she wrote until… well, now.”
Neil purses his lips. Then, as if deciding something, he pulls the page closer. “If you read this without knowing any of that, it could still be a suicide note,” he says. “Plus, there are other things.”
“Like what?”
“Lisa texted her friends and her mum the day she went missing. All apology messages.” He raises an eyebrow like I’m supposed to be surprised. “Plus, the autopsy confirmed she had painkillers and alcohol in her system. A lot. And to top it off, she showed self-harming behaviour in the past.”
I sit back, surprised. “Self-harming?”
“They found cuts on her arms and inner thighs,” Neil says.
I lean forward again. “Some girls do that. Lots of girls, actually.”
“Do you?”
“I used to,” I say, thinking back to high school, when listening to Fall Out Boy and bleeding used to be cool. “It’s not a sign of suicide. And those apologies Lisa sent? That was part of the advice I gave her. To apologise to all the people she had wronged.”
My words all sound fine, but they don’t feel fine. I feel as if I’m reaching, sliding backwards fast.
Neil stares at me. “So, she what—just fell into the water?”
He thinks I sound like an idiot too.
My fingers intertwine. “It could happen.”
Neil studies the page in front of him, scanning it for information that’s not there.
“Who was the last person to see her?” I ask, grabbing for another angle.
“The fiancé’s sister. She saw Lisa that afternoon.”
“And the fiancé?”
“According to his statement, he returned from work in the evening and was with his sister and mother the whole time,” Neil says. “They only realised something was wrong when Lisa didn’t come home that night.”
I frown. Something about that makes little sense. “You don’t find that suspicious?”
Neil shrugs. “He said he thought she was at Deb’s. Or just walking around. Seeing people from her Spanish class, maybe. I couldn’t poke holes in his alibi with the sister there to corroborate it. His mother went to bed early, so she couldn’t confirm, but his sister did.”
“And Deborah?”
“She texted Lisa that day, but didn’t see her.”
I follow his eyes to the transcripts on the page, and the dots start to connect. “So, that means…”
“You’re the last person that spoke to her.”
I stare at the transcripts. Our first call was at 13:21, our second at 19:37. What happened in between those times? And what did I tell her in the second call? A heavy sensation builds in my core, like spilled ink, seeping into every crevice of my body.
I stare at the second timestamp. 19:37 on the annual worst day of my life. 14 January. I’d done my rounds, called who needed to be called, and bought the vices I needed to pass the time. The sun would have set by then, my senses numbed by the wine.
“Do you think you said anything that could have…” Neil’s face is careful again.
My brow furrows. “Could have what?”
“Lisa clearly listened to you. Could you have said something that she took the wrong way?”
“No.”
“That might have pushed her over the edge.”
“No.”
“Cat.”
Neil’s eyes are on me, but I can’t look at him. The room suddenly feels smaller. I want to get out.
“People say things,” he continues. “And they’re sometimes unaware of the effect it has on others. It happens.”
Nausea crawls up my throat. I can taste the bitterness of the bile. Neil’s voice is soft now. “I can only help you if you tell me.”
It makes me wonder. Even if I knew for sure what I said that night, would I tell him? I say nothing, and so he takes a breath. “Do you remember where you were the night she called you?”
On my balcony, pissed out of my mind.
“Yes. I was home.”
I can picture the bottle of wine at my feet, the cigarettes on the table. Watching the day fade into night. And then I remember the incoming call.
“I was on my balcony when she called me.”
“And what did she say?”
I remember the cigarette smell on my fingers. The drone of the highway traffic in the distance. Like an accident in slow motion, the pieces start coming together.
I twist my face. “I don’t remember what she said. It’s all a bit fuzzy.”
He brings a finger to his temple. “Alright. Let’s take a break.” He starts to pack away the papers when something catches my eye. “What’s that?”
I point to a photo in the pile on the desk. Neil pulls it out. “These are shots of the house she stayed at,” he says. “The one down the road. With the fiancé.”
“Can I see them?” I ask.
He slides the pictures over. In them, the bedroom Lisa stayed in looks so sad. A suitcase on the floor. An unmade bed. An ancient dresser. And something else.
“Is this her phone?” I ask, pointing at a picture of an iPhone on the dresser.
“Yep.”
“Are you sure?”
Neil shrugs. A dumb question, no doubt. But my memory grabs hold of something and it solidifies.
“Lisa had a touch ID,” I say.
“What?”
“On the first call we had, Lisa had issues with her phone’s touch ID. And this—” I point to the phone in the photograph, “Is a newer model. It doesn’t have it. The touch ID.” I look at the phone on the photograph again, the clear screen devoid of a button.
Neil is staring at it too. He scratches his jaw. “Really?”
I nod. “She struggled to answer our call once because of it.”
Moments pass, and then Neil’s grunts, suddenly defensive. “The police only found this phone at the house.”
“Maybe she had two?” I offer. “Didn’t they find another phone on her? You know, when they… found her?”
Neil shakes his head. “There was no phone on her person when they discovered her body.”
“Isn’t that weird?” I ask. “I mean, if I was the last one she had a call with, and I’m telling you she had a different phone to the one the police found, wouldn’t that mean she had a second phone?”
Neil doesn’t look convinced. “I don’t know.”
His uncertainty sparks another question. “How did you find out Lisa was tied to InCheck? She used a fake name, so how did you know she had an account?”
“Monthly subscriptions on her credit card,” Neil says. “And her login details for InCheck on her laptop.”
“And the police didn’t find that interesting? Or worth looking into?”
He shrugs again. “They were looking elsewhere. At more prominent evidence.”
We’re quiet for a while. In a way, I understand that the reasonable thought is to consider suicide. It’s the easiest route to an open-and-shut case, but what if it’s more complicated than that? Not so black and white?
I take a breath. “I think the second phone is worth something.”
Neil says nothing. I thought he’d be happy. Finally, he has some evidence to work with. So why does he look so disappointed?
“Can’t you reach out to her family or friends?” I ask. “See if she had a different phone or number before?”
His eyes are far away. I can almost see his brain whirring. Then he’s back, fishing for his cigarette pack. “I’ll look into it.” He gets up and there’s a whiff of stale sweat as he walks towards the door. “In the meantime, try to remember that last call with her. We can’t choke on this final piece of the puzzle. We need all the facts straight.”
A click. Something comes together in my mind. I turn in my chair and look at Neil, who’s walking out of the room. “What did you just say?”
He turns. “About what?”
“That last part, about the call.”
“That we need to get all the facts straight.”
I shake my head. “No, the other thing. About the puzzle.”
His face is blank, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. “That we need that piece of the puzzle. The call with Lisa.”
“Yeah, but…” I trail off. He said a specific word. Choke.
“Never mind,” I tell him.
“Want one?” Neil says, offering the cigarette to me across the room. But I shake my head. I need him to leave so I can be alone. When he’s finally gone, I turn and put my hands on the desk in front of me.
Choke, choke, choke. As I whisper the words out loud, the memories come seeping back like strokes of watercolour on a canvas.
Neil wants me to remember what happened, and I think I just did.
For a moment, I wonder if I should race after him and tell him. But then I remember how upset he was when I spoke to Greg. It frustrated him how involved I got in the investigation. How close I got.
I stand up and pace the room, sifting through my thoughts. There’s not enough time for a proper plan. There’s not enough evidence to do anything concrete. But I need to act. It’s the only chance I have.
Because right now, the main suspect in this investigation is still me. That has to change. Today.