‘Hi,’ she said, just as what I assumed was her hand closed around my arm. I turned towards the source of her voice and found a woman with a smile unnaturally fixed to her face, the sort of smile that influencers use when they’re trying to sell you their diarrhoea tea.
‘Ruth, hi,’ she said again, clearly clocking that I still hadn’t recognised her. ‘It’s Tasha.’
It was Tasha? As in the Tasha I used to work with back at the paper? That Tasha? She looked different somehow. It took me a moment to place it, the dullness in her eyes, the lost lustre in her skin. She looked diminished, though I swallowed that thought back before I could verbalise it. I lingered there, frozen in the lane as the cold morning wrapped around me, before realising I should probably speak.
‘Tasha, oh?’ I said, startled. ‘Wow. How are you?’
‘I’m good, thanks. How are you?’ she replied, not so subtly angling her body in front of mine in a way that suggested this conversation wasn’t going to be brief or succinct in the slightest, an ever-so-subtle conversational trap.
I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years. She had been wonderfully supportive when Greta first died, but I suppose fourteen days was her limit on compassion, then she had work to get to.
‘I’m well, Ruth, I’m well. Look, while I’ve got you, I wanted to start by saying I’m sorry. About everything that happened when you left the paper. I’ve thought about reaching out a few times but… What they did to you was really, really shitty. It wasn’t fair, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Eh, it happens,’ I replied with a dismissive wave. I had no interest in dredging up those particular humiliations again; I’d watched that reel enough times in the private screening room of my head.
‘Fancy seeing you here, though,’ she continued. ‘How have you been? I heard you’re working at a funeral directors now, is that right? How’s that going?’
I wanted to point out to her that I was about fifty feet away from my workplace when the penny dropped with a very loud clang. How naïve of me to think this might be a genuine, serendipitous run-in with an old friend. Clearly, she was the first harbinger of the press storm that was about to descend upon Camborne and Sons.
From here, I could make out two police cars parked outside the office, both in their signature reflective Battenberg blue and yellow, alongside what I recognised as Detective Carlota’s vehicle. Of course. Tasha had been waiting for me, realised that she had aninwith one of the staff already that she could manipulate. Oh, Tasha, you’re so much better than this.
‘You want to know about the incident yesterday, don’t you?’ I asked, cutting straight to it. Journalists hated preamble. Deadlines didn’t wait for anyone.
‘I mean…’ she hesitated, the fake niceties slipping fast, ‘if you could give me any details, that would be great. This is the TellTale Killer back again; anything you can tell me, anything at all…’
Tasha had changed since I’d known her. She used to be more laid-back and quite happy with delivering the bare minimum. Nowshe was clearly ambitious, chasing a scoop. I was sure if old golden boy, Jago Jones, still worked at the paper, she was itching to steal his crown. Probably dreaming of media traffic stats and those glitzy, douchebag awards they handed out at the end of the year along with a trip to Barbados.
I realised that if everything with Greta hadn’t happened, I’d probably have been like this too: hungry, restless, my neurones constantly firing, thinking of ways to make my big break. It was strange, in that moment, to feel as though I were looking at a past version of myself.
‘Sure, sure,’ I said brightly. ‘Okay, do you have a pen or something handy?’
In response, she keenly yanked out her phone and held it between us, I couldn’t help but notice it had been recording for at least thirty seconds already. Snake.
‘Ready when you are?’ she said eagerly.
‘Okay, get ready, because I’m only going to say this once, so listen carefully,’ I said purposefully.
‘Absolutely,’ she replied, her eye contact unbreaking with mine. Her mouth practically frothing and bubbling at what I was about to say.
And then, without another word, I snatched her phone and hurled it into the creek. I heard it land with a very satisfying plop.
‘Piss off,’ I murmured as I barged past her as she clambered into the ditch to snatch her phone from the watery depths.
‘It’s the latest model!’ she yelled at me.
‘Pens tend to work better,’ I said.
TWENTY
Do you ever see people – whether walking past them on the street or sitting next to them at work – and think,I wonder what your face looks like when you orgasm?Perhaps it’s just me. But as the stern, stoic police officer – his wedding band glinting faintly – finally wrapped up his questioning, I couldn’t help but imagine what he’d look like at the climax of coitus. His expression was so rigid, so unreadable, that I genuinely wondered if, even in moments of joy or grief, it ever actually changed.
When I was finally allowed back onto the floor, I clocked that there were four other police officers milling around the office, talking to the various staff members who were in today, and taking statements, while forensic technicians walked purposefully in and out of the morgue, taking photos with their cameras and grabbing almost everything they could lay their hands on, slipping it into an array of plastic bags. Amidst the flurry of activity, Uncle Phil sat in his office, slumped behind his desk, sipping on yet another of his Capri-Suns as he browsed the sub-reddit for funeral directors (yes, it exists). He was drinking again, not a good sign. I half expected him to leap out of his chair the moment I walked in, telling me the whole business was about to implode, but instead, he barelyacknowledged my arrival, clearly all of his nervous energy had been completely exhausted at this point.
I excused myself past another burly police officer taking a statement from the clearly nervous Sophie, to enter Uncle Phil’s office.
‘So… this is a lot,’ I said, gesturing vaguely at the scene of organised chaos unfolding around the funeral directors. It was normally ever so quiet here, that it was bewildering to see more than five people on the floor at once.
‘Did you see my texts from yesterday?’ he asked, his voice resigned.
