as if to still the noise for me,
A last yearning for silence,
All at once.
I had investigated a few disappearances and suicides in my time. Never once had I seen a poem left as some kind of note by the victim. Scanning the small study again, my eyes landed on the array of bookshelves fitted into every wall. It was probably a poetry nut’s wet dream, each anthology and collection lined up on each shelf amazingly neatly. I didn’t need to take a book off to see the obvious care; no dog-eared pages or thick layers of dust to be seen. Someone who treated their books with such reverence wouldn’t be the type to rip a page out for a suicide note, surely? I picked up the torn extract again; it looked like someone had tried to be careful but, in the end, had given in to urgency, with obvious jagged edges and some paper residue surrounding the poem’s edges.
I called Vivian.
‘Where was he? I was wagering on the stairs,’ she said.
Most people normally said hello.
‘Actually, there’s no sign of him. The door was unlocked, house is in pristine condition, no sign of any kind of foul play. The only thing here of any kind of significance is a poem.’ I read it out to her, and I could hear a few moments of irritated silence on the other end of the line.
‘And…?’ she replied.
That woman was truly something else.
‘So, I’m thinking something’s clearly not right here. We need to get forensics in, see if there’s anything we can find, maybe put out a request to the search advisors and see what they find.’
‘Donoghue, the old man probably just dawdled off in a dementia-fuelled haze or decided to call it quits early. We’ll find his body washed up somewhere in a few days. I’ve seen plenty of these, hundreds. They’re all just the same.’
‘But it doesn’t make any kind of sense. I?—’
‘We, as a department, don’t have the resources to probe into some old man’s suicide,’ Vivian cut in callously. ‘And I, as a DI do not have the time for the paperwork to approve such a lengthy investigation.’ She paused briefly before adding, ‘I’m emailing you a revised draft of the Lock case for the CPS. Have a look at it tonight.’
She hung up.
I pushed the phone back into my pocket with an exasperated sigh. I couldn’t help but feel like the Lock case was being prioritised just for the significant amount of attention it was getting in the press. But something wasn’t right here.
I did one more scan around the house, this time careful not to disturb or touch anything. Three quarters of suicides took place at home, and the other twenty-five per cent were often done in public: high-traffic areas like bridges or train tracks. Very rarely did anyone try to hide their suicide, and if so, why?
Humans weren’t like cats, sauntering off to die. Elderly person suicide was more common than you’d expect, but usually, it was through overdoses or self-imposed starvation – not a vanishing act. With one gloved hand, I pulled open the fridge door in Mr O’Neill’s spotless kitchen and saw the spotlessness didn’t extend to his fridge. It was a mess in there: a half-drunk carton of milk, a selection of meats, and an array of fresh vegetables that hadn’t even begun to go off.
My first thought: why buy groceries if you’re planning to kill yourself?
My second thought: ginger, garlic, garam masala…
Mr O’Neill had all the ingredients for a tikka masala.
I heard the distinct, archaic mumble of Fran’s car engine pull up outside as I crouched down to set the oven to 180 degrees. Mep dawdled over, slinking around my knee as I scratched the back of his neck with my index finger. For the first time in weeks, Fran was starting to feel at home here. But how would she react if I told her something shady had gone on next door with our creepy neighbour? Would she want us to move back to the flat? The thing is, even though we were only a thirty-minute drive away from where we had been, our old shoebox apartment wouldn’t work with a baby, and I couldn’t face that awful motorway commute any more.
Deep down, I knew she would love to go back. While she was trying desperately to make the move work, I was terrified that this would be the thing that would tip her over the edge and have her bundling our things into suitcases.
‘I cooked!’ I shouted as I heard the key turn in the door. ‘Curry!’
‘You cooked?’ Fran yelled back as she jogged through the corridor and gave me a peck on the cheek. Mep greeted Fran in the usual way by making his signature meowing sound of an antique tank breaking down on a cobbled road.
‘Well, I wanted to cook, but then went out and bought a curry, but I did pop it in the oven, and I’m not using the microwavable rice this time. So, I didcook; I just missed quite a few of the steps along the way.’
Come on, I know what you were thinking: did this idiot really use ingredients from a missing person’s house, in the middle ofan active case, to make his and his wife’s dinner? No, I did not. However, did it give me a hankering for masala? Yes, it did.
‘So, go on, update me. Tell me about your day: sixty seconds counting down,’ I said as I turned to grab the bowls out of one of the moving boxes.
‘Walked that asshole dog in the morning, he – in due course – pooped on the car seat.’
‘No, he didn’t,’ I softly moaned, tilting my head back to curse the heavens. I had spent hours cleaning Fran’s car the other day in the pouring rain.
