‘Hi, Vivian, how are…things?’ I asked, grabbing my tea from the holder and nervously taking a sip – a coping mechanism, I was sure.
‘Darren tells me you booked out Questioning Room A for nearly two hours today. It had better have been for one of the cases I assigned you.’
I had an answer prepared for this, but also,I thought:snitches get stitches – right, Darren?
‘Yep. Spoke to the Lock family this morning to keep them in the loop, forensics sent me the results, files are on your desk. Thought it would save adding any unnecessary weight to your inbox.’
I could hear her pause, a little stunned – and hopefully a little impressed – but I knew that feeling wouldn’t last long.
‘Why did you book out Questioning Room A for two hours, Gareth?’ she asked, barely missing a beat.
I took a glance at my diary, which lay open on the passenger seat. The page I had allocated for Sofia was scribbled with notes and question marks in my signature red ink. Red ink meant ‘unconfirmed’, black meant the opposite. As you might have guessed, there was a copious amount of red ink sprawling across the page, so much I couldn’t seem to make sense of. No matter how much I wanted to, I just couldn’t ignore Mr O’Neill’s case.
‘Look, I know you said not to investigate, but I had some spare time, and I just wanted to see?—’
‘Gareth. No. You went against orders on this one. I told you not to investigate this, and you did anyway. You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?’
‘No, you told me to focus on the Lock case, and I did. The results are on your desk. But a man is missing. When his daughter calls, worried sick that her dad isn’t responding, what are you going to say? Will you tell her that a police detective noticed he was missing and you did nothing, or will this become yet another tabloid story?’
During the silence that followed, I realised that a less aggressive tone might have helped my chances to appease Vivian. I knew the tabloid comment would sting. I’d heard breakroom rumours that our station had featured in various escapades – putting it mildly – in the five years Vivian had been DI and she was under close watch from the commissioner for any more negative front-page publicity.
‘So, what exactly are you proposing?’ Vivian asked.
Now I was the one stunned. I didn’t think Vivian had ever asked me for actual input on a case for the whole time I had been here. Christmas had come remarkably early. This was my chance to not only find the killer who had presumably murderedmy next-door neighbour, but also to finally prove myself in the station.
‘Donoghue, are you there?’ she pressed when I didn’t answer right away.
‘I propose that we start investigating,’ I said, managing to string some words together in a somewhat articulate order. ‘Maybe we get a constable also working on the case, and if we can, get forensics to do a sweep of the house. There’s a killer here, I’m sure of it.’
There was a silence on the other end of the line, and I winced, hoping that it wasn’t all just one big play from her to then backhand me.
‘You know the relevant emails. I’ll get on the risk assessment paperwork. You let me know what else you need, okay?’
‘Thank you, Vivian, so much,’ I stuttered, still in a bit of disbelief.
You get more flies with honey than vinegar, that’s what I always said to Fran.
‘But if you cock this up and he turns up at home safe and sound tomorrow morning, I’ll have your head on a spike. And your dick on a kebab.’
Well, she had to go and ruin it, didn’t she?
FIVE
FRAN
Do you know how the pregnancy test was invented? In 1927, a perverse pair of German scientists discovered that injecting a pregnant woman’s urine into female mice would, in fact, make them ovulate. Part of me does wonder: how the hell did they discover that? Were they just horsing about in a laboratory one day, and decided it would be a hilarious idea to inject some pregnant woman’s urine into poor female mice?
‘Ja, Hans, do it, what asehrfunny idea!’
Did they stumble upon that by accident? I sometimes wonder if scientists are paid to think of the craziest and weirdest thing to do – if it yields some kind of useful result to society, then that’s just an added bonus. Bunch of sick puppies.
I balanced the stick on the side of the basin and perched on the loo facing away from it, just in case pregnancy tests suffered from any kind of performance anxiety. I waited for the standard three minutes, a frustratingly short period of time, but somehow also not long enough. Not enough time to run down and make a cup of tea, but not long enough just to sit there and do nothing. Instead, I plucked the packaging out of the bathroom bin and read the instructions on the back, this time looking at all the different languages, too. That led me to wonder whether,to the untrained ear, the instructions in French could potentially sound sexy?
Mettez l'embout absorbant directement sous le jet d'urine. Laissez sous le jet pendant au moins 7 à 10 secondes pour avoir un résultat correct.
God, I bet whispering that sensually into Gareth’s ears would send him berserk – provided he had no idea what I was actually saying.
I wasn’t certain about the test this time, but I was more certain than last time and definitely more certain than the first time, which reassured me a little. I glanced over at Mep, who had trotted into the bathroom like it was just another part of his empire. Since we had moved, he often wandered into our en suite and made himself very comfortable by the towel heater. It might seem a bit weird to go to the loo with your cat there. However, most who’d criticise probably hadn’t had a cat like Mep. By the time you’d have finally shooed him out just so you could relieve yourself, you might as well have driven to the local supermarket to use the facilities there. And for those thinking,Why not just close the door?– you try urinating while a cat makes a sound resembling metal being thrown into an industrial blender on the other side of the door. It’s hardly conducive to a relaxing wee.
