Tuesday 08:45
Seeing Anna winds me, not that I plan on telling anyone the truth about that. I replay the encounter in my mind, until it becomes an irritating rerun I could quote line-for-line, and take my frustration out on everyone around me. I wish I had handled it better, but I’m already having the mother of bad days, and she shouldn’t be here. There is a brand-new shirt inside my wardrobe that I could have worn today, had I known I was going to see her. It’s been hanging there for months, but still has the creases from the packet it came in. I don’t know what I’m saving it for – it isn’t as though I ever go anywhere since I moved down here – and now she’s seen me looking like this, with crumpled clothes and a jacket older than some of my colleagues. I pretend not to care, but I do.
The place is swarming with satellite trucks, cameramen, and reporters. I have no idea how the press got hold of the details so soon, including her. It makes no sense. Even if they knew about a body being found, there are several entrances to these woods, which stretch for miles across the valley and surrounding hills – half of which I don’t even know – and there are more than a handful of car parks. So I don’t understand how they knew to come to this one. And Anna was pretty much the first to arrive.
I spot her talking to Priya away from the rest of the press, and resist the urge to march over and interrupt. She’s always known how to make friends out of enemies. I just hope DS Patel isn’t naïve enough to trust a journalist, or say something she shouldn’t, on or off the record. She hands Anna something. The two women smile and I have to strain to see what it is: blue plastic shoe covers. Anna leans on a tree trunk as she pulls them over her high heels. She looks over in my direction and waves, so I pretend not to see and turn away. She must have asked to borrow a pair from the forensics team, so as not to get her pretty reporting shoes dirty in the mud. Unbelievable.
‘I think I know who she is,’ says Priya, appearing by my side and interrupting my internal monologue.
At least, I hope it was internal.
I am aware that I’ve started to actually talk to myself out loud recently. I’ve caught people staring at me in the street when it happens. It mostly seems to occur when I’m overly tired or stressed, and as a middle-aged detective, living with a perpetually unhappy woman and a two-year-old child, I’m pretty much always both. I try to remember if anyone on the team smokes – perhaps I could just ponce one, calm myself down.
Priya is staring at me as though waiting for some kind of response, and I have to rewind my mind to remember what she said.
‘She’s a TV news presenter, that’s probably why you recognise her.’
My words are in too much of a hurry to leave my mouth and trip over themselves. I sound even more ill-tempered than I feel. Priya – who rides my mood swings as though they are her favourite thing in the playground – won’t let the conversation slide.
‘I meant the victim, boss. Not Anna Andrews.’ Hearing someone say her name out loud winds me a second time. I’ve no idea what face I am pulling, but Priya seems to feel the need to defend herself from it. ‘I do watch the news,’ she says, doing that strange thing again, where she sticks out her chin.
‘Good to know.’
‘In terms of the victim, I don’t know her name, yet, but I have seen her around town. Haven’t you?’
Seen her, smelled her, fucked her…
Thankfully Priya doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer.
‘She’s hard to miss, don’t you think? Or was, with the blonde hair and fancy clothes. I’m sure I’ve seen her walking along the high street with a yoga mat. Listening to the rest of the local team, it sounds like she was from here, born and raised in Blackdown. They seem to think she still lived here too, but that she worked in London. For a homeless charity. Nobody seems to remember her name.’
Rachel.
She didn’t just work for a homeless charity, she ran it, but I don’t correct Priya, or tell her that I already know almost everything there is to know about the victim. Yoga was something else that Rachel turned to after her husband turned to someone else. She became a bit obsessed with it, going four or five times a week, not that I minded. That particular hobby had benefits for us both. Apart from meeting me in car parks or the occasional hotel – we never visited each other’s homes or met in public – she didn’t seem to do a lot of socialising unless it was for work. She posted pictures of herself on Instagram with alarming regularity – which I enjoyed looking at when I was alone and thinking of her – but for someone with thousands of so-called friends online, she had surprisingly few in real life.
Maybe because she was always too busy working.
Or perhaps because other people were jealous of her perceived success.
Then again, it might have been because below the beautiful exterior, she had an ugly streak. One that I chose to ignore but couldn’t fail to see.
We’ve established a wide cordon around this particular pocket of the woods now, but it’s as though we’ve put up fly tape, the way the press insists on buzzing around, trying to get a better view. I’ve been told by higher-up-the-food-chain that I should give a statement on camera, and have received a torrent of phone calls and emails – from people I’ve never heard of at HQ – wanting me to approve a line of copy for a police social media account. I don’t do social media, except to spy on women I’m sleeping with, but lately it feels as though the powers that be think it is more important than the job. The next of kin haven’t even been informed yet, but apparently, I’m the one who needs to work on my priorities. My stomach rumbles so loudly I’m sure the whole team hears it. They all seem to be staring at me.
‘Almond?’ asks Priya, waving what looks like a packet of bird seed in my direction.
‘No. Thank you. What I want is a bacon sandwich or a—’
‘Cigarette?’
She produces a packet from her pocket, which is unexpected. Priya is one of those fancy vegetarians – a vegan – and I’ve never seen her pollute her body with anything more dangerous than a single slab of dark chocolate. She’s holding my old favourite brand of smokes in her small hand, and it’s like catching a nun reading an Ann Summers catalogue.
‘Why do you have those?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Emergencies.’
I dislike her a little less than I used to and take one.
I snap it in half – an old habit of mine that makes me think this little stick of cancer will only be half as bad for me – then I let her light it. She’s so small I have to bend down, and I choose to ignore the way her hands tremble as she holds a match in one, and shelters it from the wind with the other. I’ve met former smokers who say that the smell of cigarettes now makes them feel sick. I am not like them. The first cigarette to touch my lips for two years is nothing less than ecstasy. The temporary high causes my face to accidently smile.
‘Better?’ Priya asks.
I notice that she didn’t have one.
‘Yes. Much. Organise that presser. Let’s give the hacks what they want, and hope they all sod off afterwards.’
She smiles too, as though it is contagious.
‘Yes, boss.’
‘I’m not your… never mind.’
Twenty minutes later, minus my Harry Potter scarf, I’m standing in the car park in front of ten or more cameras. I haven’t had to do anything like this for a while, not since I left London. I feel out of practice, as well as out of shape, and unconsciously suck my stomach in before I start to speak. I try to silently reassure my anxious ego that nobody I know will see this. But I’m not as good at lying to myself as I am at lying to others, and the thought brings little comfort. I remember the crumpled clothes I’m wearing; I knew I should have at least shaved this morning.
I clear my throat and am about to speak when I see her, pushing her way to the front. The other journalists look disgruntled until they turn and recognise her face. Then they step aside and let her through, as though reporter royalty has arrived. I’ve experienced enough on-camera pressers and statements in my time to know that most on-screen talent gets treated the same as everybody else. But Anna exudes confidence, even though I know the person on the inside doesn’t match the version she presents to the rest of the world.
Everyone else here seems to be dressed in muted shades of black or brown or grey – as though they deliberately colour-coordinated their clothes with the murder scene – but not her. Anna is wearing a bright red coat and dress, and I wonder if they are new; I don’t recognise them. I avoid looking in her direction, it’s distracting. Nobody here would ever guess that we know each other, and it is in both our interests to keep it that way.
I wait until I have their full attention and the rabble is silent once more, then I deliver my pre-prepared and pre-approved statement. Detectives are no longer permitted to speak for themselves. At least, I’m not. Not after the last time.
‘Early this morning, police received a report of a body being found in Blackdown Woods just outside the village. Officers attended and the body of a woman was discovered not far from the main car park. The woman has not yet been formally identified, and the death is currently unexplained. The area is cordoned off while investigations continue. There will be no further statements from this location, and I will not be answering any questions at this time.’
I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is a crime scene, not an episode of whatever bullshit detective box set you’re watching on Netflix.
I don’t say the last line. At least I hope I didn’t. I start to turn away – we are deliberately not sharing very much with the press or public at this stage – but then I hear her. I’ve always loved listening to the way different people speak, it can tell you so much about them. I don’t just mean accents, I mean everything: the tone, the volume, the speed, as well as the language. The words they choose to use, and how and when and why they say them. The silences between the sentences, which can be just as loud. A person’s voice is like a wave – some just wash right over you, while others have the power to knock you down and drag you into an ocean of self-doubt. The sound of her speaking makes me feel like I’m drowning.
Anna clearly didn’t hear the part about no questions. Or, knowing her, just chose to ignore it.
‘Is it true that the victim was a local woman?’
I don’t even turn to face her.
‘No comment.’
‘You said that the death was currently being treated as unexplained, but can you confirm that this is a murder investigation?’
I’m aware that the cameras are still rolling, but start to walk away. Anna is not a woman who likes to be ignored. When she doesn’t get an answer to her last question, she asks another.
‘Is it true that the victim was found with a foreign object inside their mouth?’
Only now do I stop. I slowly turn to face her, a hundred questions colliding inside my mind as I take in the green eyes that appear to be smiling. The only two people who know about something being found inside the victim’s mouth are DS Patel and me. I deliberately haven’t told anyone else yet – it’s the sort of thing that will leak before I want it to – and Priya is as tight-lipped as a clam. Which leaves me with yet another question I can’t answer: How did Anna know?