The policewoman looked at Carrie disapprovingly.
It was the kind of look that could make a heatwave freeze. She wasn’t used to being on the back foot. Here, in Tony’s house, covered in the consequences of casual sex, no one knew her rank, importance or status. None of that mattered when the coppers marched into the house and sniffed around, like dogs chasing down street rats. She still had the remnants of cocaine on her breasts, where Tony had snorted it off, in between gulps of Pol Roger Champagne. Now, she was sobering up. She felt like death.
The doorbell had rung and rung, until Tony had finally checked the intercom and seen that the police were at his door.
‘Shit!’ he’d said in panic. They’d been upstairs, for some reason, Tony insisting they romp in his marital bed. She regretted it now and felt the heat of shame burning her semi-naked skin. They’d tried to clear up the coke, and the evidence of their lusty frolicking, but it didn’t look good. She was still in her bikini, which was damp with evidence.
Carrie’s five years of sobriety lay smashed before her. She felt like an imposter on the precipice of being caught out and exposed as a forgery. Every drop of self-loathing that she thought she’d had under control came back and assaulted her, fresher and stronger than it had ever been before.
Tony’s wife was dead and her body had been found dumped near a tributary of the river Cam, by a field. As Carrie had been happily performing fellatio on her quarry, Monika lay bloated and abused, cold and lifeless. Murdered.
The police had called an extra squad car in to search the property upon witnessing the state of the victim’s husband, and what he was up to during his period of intense worry over his missing – now dead – wife. Coppers had entered Tony’s house armed with a hasty warrant, after it had been confirmed that the owner, the man they wanted to interview in relation to his wife’s death, was suspected of being under the influence of illegal substances. The fact that it was also obvious that he’d been fucking about with another woman made Tony look like the most callous and heartless of suspects.
Carrie sat on a breakfast stool in the kitchen nursing her humiliation while the police searched the property, and she felt their eyes on her every time they passed through the room. She burned with scandal and absorbed the judgemental gazes of smug superiority.
She’d been allowed to throw on some dry clothes as Tony tidied up, but her wet bikini was soaking through them as she sat watching the police cast glances at her, and throw about their silent verdicts of a cheap bit on the side who’d been fooling around with a dead woman’s husband. She’d already phoned her lawyer and the only reason that she hadn’t walked out straight away was because she’d been breathalysed and was well over the limit, so she had to wait for a bloody taxi. She faced the further indignity of leaving her car here overnight. The police had tried to stop her arrangements to leave, of course, but she’d dealt with them before and knew her rights.
‘Am I under arrest?’ she’d asked them.
‘No,’ came the answer.
‘I’m leaving then. Tony, I suggest you get a lawyer here before you say a word,’ she’d said to him. But the cocaine was still working its magic on him and he’d giggled like a kid, babbling some shit to a female police officer about joining their party.
‘Come on, you look like you know how to have a good time,’ he’d said to the small bird-like officer. A burly six-foot male colleague had stepped in and warned Tony to behave himself, but had stopped short of cautioning him.
‘Is he under arrest?’ she asked.
‘No, but—’
‘But nothing, Tony, don’t say a word.’ He looked at her oddly and began to laugh again. He was knee deep in trouble and the stupid fucker couldn’t see it.
The heightened sensory stimulation that she’d been enjoying had come crashing down around her and now she felt like a complete fool. However, ego aside, she had to think, and decide what to do. And that’s what she’d been doing for the last hour. Only action could dispel the crushing sensation of inaction. Every feeling in the human body had to come and then go, otherwise it would be pent up forever and wreak untold damage. She breathed deeply and tried to rationalise her position.
She had to make this situation right, and the first logical step was getting legal representation for both herself and the man who was the prime suspect in a murder case. The police hadn’t said as much, but Carrie knew that’s what they were all thinking. That’s what they did.
Carrie knew that for the police to reach such a speedy conclusion of homicide, Tony’s wife’s body must be in a hell of a state. It made her see Tony in a different light, for sure, but she had to believe he didn’t do it. She’d known him for fifteen years. But the police wouldn’t see it like that. She was caught red-handed, in his house, high and half naked. She was an unreliable witness from the get-go, and maybe even an accessory.
What if he did do it? Terrifying thoughts circled inside her head. Why did he invite her here tonight? Was it because he knew his wife lay dead in a field and he was creating some kind of alibi? She felt sick.
She’d refused when the police asked to search her bag. She knew that they were not able to do so without permission because she wasn’t under arrest, even though they had a warrant to search the property. She also knew that if they found any drugs – which they surely would soon – then they would have a right to search her. She held on to her bag so tightly that the straps dug into her skin, protecting the last piece of privacy she felt she had in this dire situation. Her hair was quickly drying and she knew it was turning frizzy. Her make-up was no doubt smudged, and she was beginning to get a migraine. Tony kept talking.
‘Shut up!’ she breathed quietly, but he hadn’t yet grasped the seriousness of his predicament. Her mobile rang and it was her taxi driver. She got up and was stopped by a young police officer.
‘Let me go, you have no right to hold me,’ she said.
The officer was a rookie and spoke into her radio. Carrie went to leave Tony to his fate. The next twenty-four hours would be crucial to get her story straight: she needed an alibi for every single hour before she’d driven here tonight. What a mistake that was. Tony was on his own, and there was nothing she could do for him. He had to sober up and get his own legal advice. Maybe she’d call him tomorrow or talk to him when she came to collect her car. She reached the front door and opened it, and was faced by another damn police officer who questioned her again. He was in plain clothes and she knew from instinct that this was the detective turning up. The man facing her was her true enemy.
‘I’m not being held on any charges and it is my right to leave,’ she told him.
‘You’re not going to stay and support your pal?’ he asked sarcastically. She watched him. He wore a cheap suit, like they all did. Their morals were their Gucci. Condescending bastards. He had bad skin and a wolf-like smile. He stank of judgement. He looked her up and down.
Memories from decades ago flooded her brain. When the cops finally arrested her father for beating her to a pulp when she was nineteen, it had been the last straw of a litany of pain and abuse lasting more than a decade. The copper then had looked her in the eye and told her: ‘I’ve got kids, it’s tough, everyone argues. It’ll be almost impossible to press charges against your dad, he’s a respected member of the town council.’ It had been 1989, when dads were the cocks of the family and the police were an all-white male institution, intent on protecting their own, because they drank pints together on a Saturday night. They’d had no choice but to arrest her father, because he’d struggled when they pulled him off her, but she was told he’d be released after he sobered up in the cells.
Sure enough, he was out in twenty-four hours, and after she was released from hospital it was Carrie who was charged with actual bodily harm for fighting back against a fifteen-stone monster. She’d hitched a ride to London, disappeared, and lived on the streets for five years. Being so close to the uniformed tribe now made her shiver.
Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands and she was reminded of the work she’d done with Doctor Alex, who’d got her to expel her rage by hitting pillows, holding her breath under water, and taking long walks in the woods, carrying an axe with her to belt the shit out of a tree stump. But it was no substitute for hurting a real human being: one on the side of the law who had betrayed her.
She turned to leave.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ shouted the detective, who was barely out of nappies. She reckoned he was in his early thirties, though his hair was thinning already and she assessed that men like him only worked such a thankless job for one reason: power.
But she wasn’t scared of him.
‘Detective Inspector Paul Hunt,’ he shouted at her back, by way of introduction.
Hunt. She branded the name on her brain.
Her feet crunched on the gravel driveway, creating quite a different effect to the one earlier in the evening.
Hunt was an easy name to remember, and it probably rhymed with his character.
Whatever Tony’s explanation was for his role in Monika’s murder – innocent or guilty – she knew by the look of the detective that he had a battle on his hands, and she wanted no part of it.