Chapter 31 Carter
CARTER
I just don’t know what to make of any of this.
“You’re unusually quiet,” DCI Bird says when we get back to the station. As if she knows me. As though she cares.
“Am I?”
“Yes, it’s nice. Easier to think.”
“Glad to be of assistance. Why did you take the hairbrush?”
“In case we need it for a DNA match at some point. I think Harrison Woolf is the kind of shifty bastard who might get rid of evidence so I thought, best to get it now. I don’t trust that fucker.
I’m sure he’s hiding something. You mentioned that there was some CCTV footage of the woman claiming to be the real Eden Fox. Can I see it?”
“It’s not great quality—there’s only one camera in the village—but I’ll load it up,” I say, sitting down at my desk as she stands behind me.
Too close as always. So close I can smell her.
The computer is painfully slow, and the silence while we wait feels uncomfortable, but she seems to prefer it when I say nothing at all and I’m starting to think it might be best, for both of us, if I keep schtum.
Twenty-four hours ago everything about my life was exactly how I wanted it to be.
Routine. Quiet. Content. Since the call came in last night about a random woman trespassing at Spyglass, everything feels wrong.
A former one-night stand coming back to haunt me six months later and declaring she’s my new boss is the final straw.
I am not in the habit of having one-night stands.
I rarely leave Hope Falls, and it’s not the sort of thing you do in a place like this where everybody knows you and everything about you.
Especially when you’re the local policeman.
People here trust me. They respect me. They don’t think I’m that kind of guy, and I’m not. Unless a stranger comes to town.
Me sleeping with someone I shouldn’t has caused no end of problems.
“I looked you up,” I tell Bird, unsure whether it is the right thing to say.
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to see who they chose over me, so I looked you up and I get why you got the job. You joined the force when you were twenty, moved up the ranks pretty fast. You’ve had the highest number of arrests and convictions in London every year for the past five years and you turned down the George Medal. ”
“Nobody should get a medal just for doing their job.”
“I couldn’t find anything about your personal life. No social media accounts. I couldn’t even find a photo of you online.”
“Your point?”
“It’s just a little strange in this day and age. As is you being here. Why would you take this job?”
“Gosh, let me try to answer the barrage of questions in order. There is nothing personal about me online because I’m not an idiot.
I value my privacy, as should any sane individual.
I’m here because I want to be, I fancied a change.
Any other queries or could we perhaps focus on the job?
You sound like a stalker, by the way, looking me up like that,” she says as a grainy image appears on the screen.
It eventually shows an eerie shape of a woman walking along the main lane in the village.
“Is that it?” Bird asks, clearly unimpressed.
“Afraid so.”
“I can’t tell shit from that. That could be anyone. It could be me.”
Strange thing for her to say.
“The husband was lying to us just now. He’s our best lead so far,” she adds.
If she can tell that he is lying can she tell that I am too?
“I’m going back to my office,” she says, heading for the door.
“The pub?” I ask, incredulous.
“I think better with company.”
“I could come with you—”
“I meant my dog. Did you talk to the art gallery owner?”
“Yes.”
“Great, send me a transcript, then join me. We’ll call it a working lunch,” she says then leaves the station, closing the door behind her.
Bird thinks she’s so clever, and she is, but she still doesn’t know how well I knew Eden Fox.
Nobody does, thank god. Eden came to visit me at the station a few weeks ago.
She told me someone had been outside Spyglass watching her and she thought she should report it.
That was the first time we met, but not the last.
I liked her. She had a lot of questions about the village, and seemed fascinated by the poster on the noticeboard advertising the annual Day of the Dead festival in Hope Falls.
She spotted it when putting up a poster about her exhibition, and I remember I laughed when our little festival seemed to shock her—I suppose it does sound a bit strange if you’re not from around here—but then I explained that it was a local tradition celebrated by all the towns and villages within Blackmoor National Park.
Every year, on the day after Halloween—the first of November—the villagers gather at The Smuggler’s Inn for a few drinks before a procession from the church cemetery through the village all the way to Blackwater Bay.
We call it the Day of the Dead, paint our faces like skeletons, and carry flaming torches through the streets.
It might sound strange to outsiders but it’s a lot of fun.
When I told Eden about it, she seemed like a lot of fun.
Said we could go together, because nobody would know it was us if we were wearing fancy dress.
She was flirting with me, despite being married, and I confess I might have flirted back.
I noticed how lonely Eden Fox was the first time we met.
She seemed starved of affection and I found myself wanting to give it to her.
She wore a polka-dot dress with buttons all the way down the front that day in the station, and her long blond hair shone in the light.
I liked the way she spoke, the way she smiled, the way she smelled.
Normally I couldn’t care less about art, but I sat and I listened to her talk about her paintings and I thought I’d probably like the way she tasted.
Then I saw the bruises on her arms.
I think he did that to her. The husband. How else could it have happened?
From the moment I met Eden Fox I imagined saving her.
From him and whatever else caused the sadness she tried to hide behind a smile.
That wasn’t all I fantasized about. I imagined her coming back to the station scared that someone was still watching her, sitting on my desk, undoing all those buttons down the front of her dress and opening her legs nice and wide.
Soft white flesh. Matching underwear. She was so lovely.
So lonely. So hungry for it. So grateful.
She wanted me inside her, right there and then, but it didn’t happen. It was just a fantasy. A daydream …
I dreamed of fucking Eden Fox.
And I dreamed of saving her.
Now she’s gone.