Chapter 39
CARTER
“She says she saw you,” DCI Bird informs me after sending Diana Harris away.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I reply, wiping my mouth with an embroidered hanky from my pocket. I can’t believe I was sick, I’m so embarrassed. I’ve seen dead bodies before, but not like this—with their faces bashed in—and never someone I might know.
“She said you were running away from the scene.”
“Then I’m guessing she saw me running back to the village, with your dog, having got a call from dispatch about a body being found.
They didn’t know which beach when they first called me and there’s more than one near Hope Falls.
Diana dialed 999. It goes through to a switchboard at Devon and Cornwall Police HQ, and I guess whoever took the call doesn’t know one Cornish beach from the next. ”
“She said she called after you, when she saw you earlier.”
“Well, I didn’t hear her. If I called your name from a distance right now with the sea and the wind I doubt you’d hear me either. I didn’t see her. I didn’t see the body. But I did see someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A man.”
“What man?”
“I chased him but he vanished.”
“Vanished where?” Bird looks around at the vast sandy beach, the rocks, and the cliffs.
She looks at me as though she doesn’t believe me, as though she suspects me of something, and I hate her for it.
I wish we’d never met. It’s my fault she’s here.
My fault she applied for what should have been my job. My fault she’s ruining my—
“How are you feeling?” she asks then, with a tiny dose of something like compassion.
“I’ve been better.”
“This can’t be the first dead body you’ve seen?”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“Do you?” she asks but I just shake my head. “You must have an opinion, you met the woman.”
“She still had a face when I met her.”
“What does your gut say?”
“My gut says I’m going to throw up again.”
Her face darkens, any trace of patience gone. “There’s the reason you didn’t get promoted. You’re not ready to do my job, you don’t have what it takes. You need to show some initiative. Trust your instincts. Follow your gut.”
“It could be a coincidence.”
“There is no such thing. Is. It. Her?”
Her words sting so much I’m scared I might cry.
“It’s possible,” I say. “Sorry, I think I might be sick again—”
“For fuck’s sake. It’s just a body.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because that’s the only way to survive this job.
To unsee what we have to see. A body is brilliant but weak.
A miracle but also a failure in waiting.
A body is a walking, talking, life support machine that will inevitably fail you, and when it stops working you will stop living.
Eventually, dictated by your popularity, you will be forgotten.
In most cases, so devastatingly forgotten it will be as though you never were.
A body is the prison that gives you a life sentence and determines your death. That’s all a body is.”
“Were you always this cheerful?”
“I’m going to head back to the village, talk to the husband again before someone else tells him about this. Do you think you can manage to stay with the body and keep the seagulls away? And can you call HQ and get a team out here?”
I should tell her that I think I saw Harrison on the beach just before the body was found. But I don’t. Instead, all I say is, “Yes, boss.”
“Thanks. As first days go, I’ll be honest, it’s not been great,” she replies, already walking away.
She keeps behaving as though all of this is my fault.
But I can’t really complain about that because it is.
Eden Fox came to the police station a few days ago to tell me she was scared, that she thought someone had been watching her.
She was trembling when she told me. I feel so guilty because, looking back now, I think it was a cry for help.
But I had other things on my mind. There was a bottle of whiskey at the station, a gift I’d never opened, but I opened it then and poured some into a mug—just a little something to calm her nerves—then poured myself some too.
I tried to reassure her that Hope Falls was a safe place, where people could be trusted, but I guess that was a lie.
Because before I even knew what I was doing, I kissed her.
Now she’s dead.