Chapter Two

Sandra had seen police interrogations on the TV before. She knew damn well that TV and the real world were two very distinctly different places, but she’d always assumed there was at least some basis of reality.

It didn’t feel right. It rapidly went from a questioning to an interrogation since, as was repeatedly pointed out, her recollection of events was vague at best. She put that down to a combination of the night before and shock, but it became quite clear the authorities were suggesting otherwise. Her interview could have gone better though if she had had time to prepare. Which she had to admit, was kinda the point.

“How did you know the deceased?”

“Um.. I don’t know.” Shit.

“You don’t know.”

“Yeah really.  I don’t.” Shit. Shit.

“Can you tell me what you were doing in his apartment?”

“No  I can’t.” Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Can’t? Or won’t? “

“I’m sorry, I really can’t. I don’t know what I was doing there, I woke up there, I don’t remember meeting him or anything.”

“Okay, it’s okay Ms Walker, just stay calm.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Now, can you at least tell us what you were looking for.”

“Looking for?”

“Yes. His kitchen had been ransacked. What exactly were you looking for?”

“Um. .. coffee?” Shit.

Although she had left the police station free of any charge, and within a reasonable amount of time, she didn’t feel as if she’d been given reasonable doubt.

 The problem was she also doubted herself.

She knew she hadn’t killed him. It wasn’t that she knew she could never be a killer – hell, the list of people she wanted to take out was long and detailed. Sure, given the chance, given the actual opportunity she’d probably chicken out, circumstances of war notwithstanding.  Oh, and that pretentious arsehat at the second hand bookshop. She’d happily take him out too. Jam a copy of Twilight down his fat well-read name-dropping constant reference-making arrogant toad-like gob. Judgemental prick.

But this was different. She had no idea who this guy was. The police had given her a name, a name which she really wished she had remembered but was panicked and forgotten it a second later. They’d never used it when she was being questioned. Always referred to him as ‘The Deceased’ as if to labour a point. She knew he was dead. She’d found him after all.

“So, you found the body, went to the toilet, then went next door and called the.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us the first thing you noticed when you saw The Deceased.”

“The first thing?”

“Yes.”

“His bum actually. He had no hair on his bum. It was weird.”

“That was the first thing you noticed.”

“Yes.”

“You understand we’re trying to establish a chain of events here.”

“I know, but that’s the truth.  That’s what I saw. What grown man has no bum hair? Does he wax? He’d have to. Who waxes their bum?”

“Is there anything else that you noticed? Like, blood perhaps?”

“Yeah, but you know, dead body, throat slashed, of course there’s going to be lots of blood. But this guy had like really hairy feet, hobbit feet, you could see them poking over the edge of the bath. What’s with the hairy feet and the bald arse?”

“How did you know his throat was slashed?”

“Cause. there was a lot of blood. I guess?” Shit.

The interview had not gone well at all.

She should have known better than to share her theories with the police. But the problem was she read a lot, she watched a lot of TV, God knows it was impossible to turn on the TV and not stumble on a murder mystery. So the first thing she did was try to figure out what had happened. She told herself it was a defence mechanism, a way of dealing with the shock of seeing a dead body, but in truth that was not really the case. In truth, when she later admitted it to herself, she was disturbingly unaffected by the presence of The Deceased.

Instead of freaking out, instead of shaking, crying, vomiting even, she stood over the scene and tried to analyse what happened, step by step. The blood flowing at first suggested it hadn’t happened that long ago. But the amount of blood, the grey pallor, the sense – that strange sense of cold – suggested otherwise - that he was well and truly gone. She stood over the body and considered both of these things – the blood hadn’t congealed on the edges of the bath yet; there was a trickle still, and spread about the bath but not splattered, just gently flowing.

And the position of the body suggested that he’d been dropped into the bath face first. The blood was only in the bath, not on the walls or anywhere else, and he lay in an unnatural, almost crippling position. His legs were bent oddly which led to the hairy foot poking over the edge of the bath.

“See, I reckon he was drugged.”

“Drugged, Ms Walker?”

“Yeah, drugged. I reckon he was drugged, and they dragged him into the bathroom, dropped him face first into the bath and then cut his throat.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I don’t think they cut it properly. I think they didn’t do it right and that’s why it was still flowing down the drain after he’d gone all cold.”

“Did you touch the body Ms Walker?”

“No. God no. No. It just.. seemed cold, you know?”

“That’s an interesting theory.”

“And I’m sure your lab boys will confirm it when you get the toxicology report.”

“Do you watch a lot of TV?”

“Um. Yeah? What of it?”

They’d taken a sample of her spit to clear her of handling the body – in more ways than one, no doubt. They’d requested an ‘internal’ examination, but as she was officially neither suspect nor victim she’d declined their polite offer and saved her dignity for her next pap smear instead. Now that she’d recovered her faculties she was supremely confident they’d not had sex at all. In fact she was slowly building a theory that whoever this guy was, she’d probably never even met him before.

It was dark by the she left the police station. She still couldn’t get in touch with Liz but that didn’t bother her as much as it should. She’d tried the number a couple of times from the police station, and left a number of messages, including:

“I’ve been arrested for murder you bitch why the fuck aren’t you answering your phone?”

It was after this that the interview changed definition and perhaps leant a little more towards interrogation.

“Perhaps you should look at it from our perspective Ms Walker”

“What’s that then?”

“Well, we get an emergency call from a very calm young lady who has no ID, no phone, nothing to her name to tell us that she has found a dead body in the bathroom of an apartment and she doesn’t know who lives there.”

“Seriously. I was looking. For. Coffee.”

“So why didn’t you find it.”

“There wasn’t any.”

“There’s a large container of coffee, a plunger and a kettle in the cupboard underneath the kitchen island.”

“How do you know that?”

“We did an inventory. We looked. After you said you were looking for coffee and couldn’t find any.”

“Well, shit, I don’t know. I looked. It wasn’t there, I swear.”

“Did you look under the island?”


“No, why would I look there? Who keeps coffee there? Nobody keeps coffee there.”

“You make a lot of assumptions about people’s behaviour.”

“Look, why would I have killed him?”

“You tell us.”

“I don’t know him.”

“So you tell us.”

“Well what do you want from me? You want me to tell you I went home with him, drugged him, dragged him to the bathroom, dropped him in the shower, cut his throat and then ransacked the kitchen for coffee? Oh wait, except he’s too heavy to drag isn’t he? So maybe I drugged him and then took him to the shower for some naughtiness waiting for the drugs to kick in, but luckily they did before I had to do anything so he passes out, whack, falls into the bath, then I cut his throat and then I ransack the place for coffee. Is that what you think happened?”

“That’s a very precise scenario.”

“Really.”

“Sounds feasible.”

“Right. Well what about my motive? Or what about theft? What if it’s a burglary gone wrong?”

“What would they be stealing?”

“I don’t know. He looked like he had money. There was a lot of money in his bedside drawer.”

“And you know this how?”

“I.. took some.”

“You took some?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Shit.

“How much?”

“About fifteen bucks” Shit. Shit.

“And you were going to tell us this when?”

“Uh…”

“Why did you take the money Sandra?”

“I wanted bacon. And coffee. Coffee and bacon. And aspirin. Do you have any?” Fuck it.

There was no good way out of this. For the next hour Sandra tried desperately to explain that despite how it looked, she was completely innocent, as they explained to her that, because of how it looked, she probably wasn’t. They let her go after they’d worn donuts in the floor from going in circles, but in the absence of any actual evidence they had nothing to go on. But she knew that they would be keeping a very close eye on her. That they had made abundantly clear.

She tried to turn her brain off on the way home but there was too much to process. They’d taken the money off her in the end, and she’d been left to walk home, so having something to think about served as a satisfying distraction. She set about a plan to retrace her steps from the night before. Which began at the photocopier at work. God, the photocopier. God, work. If she even had a job. Of course she still had a job – she was fairly confident that, despite the archaic working practices of her office, being arrested for murder was a legitimate reason for not turning up. All she needed was a phone; except with no landline in the house and no housemates that was harder than it should have been.

How much does a phone call from a phone booth cost these days? Hang on – do they still have phone booths? Is it 40 cents? 50 cents?

She laid out a plan. Step one – shower. Step two – google herself, google mysterious death in apartments, anything in the news. Step three – find the change jar. Step four – find a phone. Step five – ring Liz. Step six – go to her house because she won’t answer the damn phone. Step seven – retrace steps. Step eight – make some sense of the last 24 hours.

It wasn’t the most grand of plans, but it cleared her head. She felt better about the bizarre situation she’d landed in by having a sense of purpose. Her tired feet slapped up to her street with relief, the last 100 metres or so to the distinct yellow render that singled out her house from the others seemed the most painful of all. She waved to the crazy old Greek lady next door who always sat on her veranda day and night, waving to passes by. Through the gate, attached to the fence that was probably only held up by the overgrown creeper, up the short path to the front door. It was so nicely familiar and comfortable, having lived in the same house for 18 months, a new record. Remove the chunk of yellow render that hid the spare key, stand, go to insert key in front door and watch it creak open instead.

Odd.

She stepped inside. Her room was the first room, with the window that allowed no light but plenty of street noise through. She gingerly pushed the door open, and the first thing she saw was a pile of clothes on the floor. Perfectly normal. She sighed a foolish sigh of relief, and stepped inside. Then she saw the scattered books, which was not normal on this scale, her records, coathangers, drawers, papers... everything. Her room had been totally ransacked.

She sat down on the floor, stunned. What the hell was going on? And as she looked up she saw, on her bedside table, in plain view, her purse.

Well. I guess that explains where that went. There had to be 40 cents in there.