CHAPTER 6 #2
‘At the Airbnb. Fin du Monde. It looks like he checked in, wrote the note and then decided to die by suicide.’
‘Or not,’ chipped in Pat.
‘Do you want to see it?’
‘The note?’ She tried to mute her excitement. ‘If it’s not too much of a bother.’
‘DS Stevens is out to lunch. She won’t be back for a while. She takes the full hour allocated, as is her right, and sometimes even longer. We should be fine. Pop back to the station with me. No one will be any the wiser.’
Back over the road, Pat followed PC Barry Footer through the peeling pistachio hallway into the empty office, where they both elicited the most cursory of disinterested nods from the PCs with their feet up, still reading the sport and looking at TikTok.
PC Footer pointed at what looked like an interview room.
‘If you wait in there,’ he suggested, ‘I’ll bring you the file.’
The interview room was small and airless, with pale beige walls and matching carpet tiles.
Up against one wall was a table and four chairs, two on either side.
On the table was an elderly-looking tape recorder with large buttons.
On another of the walls was a large mirror.
Pat walked slowly up to it, wondering if someone else was standing on the other side, watching her.
The door swung open. She stepped back, and in walked PC Footer.
‘Is that …?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder.
‘A two-way mirror? Yup,’ he nodded, pulling out a chair. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added. ‘Everyone’s still at lunch.’
Pat was acutely aware of the mirror behind her. The idea that someone could be watching, listening, made her uneasy.
‘Sit,’ said Barry, pointing to a seat opposite.
He was oddly commanding all of a sudden; in his natural habitat he’d taken on an unexpected air of authority, almost as if he knew what he was doing.
‘So, here’s the file.’ He opened a beige cardboard envelope.
It looked disappointingly thin. ‘And here’s the note.
’ He carefully took out a square piece of paper covered in a transparent plastic sheath and laid it on the table.
They both stared at the large capital letters written in red felt pen or marker.
I WANT TO END IT ALL
HENRY
‘Is that it?’ Pat asked, sitting back in the blue plastic chair, a heavy frown on her face.
Henry was educated, loquacious, verbose even.
It didn’t feel like something he would write.
And in red marker pen, in capital letters.
It didn’t feel like Henry Clayton at all.
‘Did it come with anything else? An envelope? Addressed to someone? His mother, for example?’
‘Just that,’ said PC Footer, staring down at the page.
‘It doesn’t feel very much like a suicide note.’
‘I suspect you’ve seen a lot of them.’
‘Normally my job is to prevent such a thing,’ replied Pat, with a long, thoughtful breath.
‘I don’t think he wrote this. I really don’t.
I’ve seen his handwriting, it’s elegant and fluid.
This scrawl is completely different. Do you mind if I take a photograph and then I can compare it to my sample when I get back to the office? ’
‘The shepherd’s hut?’ PC Footer glanced up at the two-way mirror behind her.
Pat spun around. Had he heard something?
They both sat stock still, staring at their reflections in the glass.
Pat didn’t dare breathe. She strained her ears, but all she could hear was her own heart pounding.
‘If you want,’ he said eventually, pushing the page and the file towards her.
As he did so, a photograph slid out from the confines of the envelope.
Pat looked down and immediately felt a wave of nausea flood over her, followed rapidly by a bolt of adrenaline.
What was that? The bloated white face, the mop of dark hair, the deep brownish cuts and blows to the face, the puffy pale blue lips like a carp.
One eye was half open, the lid pulled back a little.
It stared, unfocused, filmed, grey-sheened, off into the distance.
What was it looking at? What had it seen?
She covered her open mouth with both hands.
To stifle a scream? A cry of horror? A sob?
It was hard to know which. Her blood ran cold.
‘Henry,’ she whispered. ‘Poor Henry.’ She stared up at PC Footer over her cold hands, which she slowly lowered. ‘Is this how you found him?’
‘Yes,’ he replied flatly. ‘You weren’t supposed to see that.
’ He swiftly opened the file and pushed the large photograph back in.
However, in doing so he flashed another full-length shot of Henry lying on his back on the beach, surrounded by pebbles, his feet in the sea.
It was just as DS Stevens had described when sitting at the table in Pat’s kitchen, except the detective had omitted one vital piece of information.
‘How extraordinary,’ declared Pat, as she leant in for a closer look.
‘He’s wearing his best suit – I’ve seen it before – and a tie; he looks like he’s dressed up to go out.
’ For drinks, or maybe dinner, she thought to herself.
She stood up and put her hands on her hips.
‘Who on earth goes to commit suicide in an Armani suit?’
‘It’s die by suicide,’ echoed a cold female voice over the intercom system, and both PC Footer and Pat turned to stare at the mirror and the disembodied voice.
With a click of a switch, the mirrored glass disappeared, and they could both see DS Stevens staring back at them.
Her face looked stark and harsh in the downward spot lighting.
‘I’m not sure what you’re doing here, Dr Phillips, but I think you should leave.
We have tolerated your interference long enough.
I could charge you with numerous crimes just by finding you here going through sensitive files – contaminating evidence in the process.
We could start off with wasting police time. ’
‘But I don’t think I am wasting your time,’ retorted Pat.
‘What you think has nothing to do with it, Dr Phillips. We deal with facts here in the police force, cold, hard facts. And the fact is, Henry Clayton was being treated for mental health issues, he was depressed, and he died by suicide. How many more times do I need to tell you? The case is closed.’
‘PC Footer?’ Pat turned to look at Barry in the hope of some sort of support. Instead, he put his palms in the air. His sugary hands were tied.
‘Well …’ She paused. ‘If you won’t find out who killed Henry Clayton, I most certainly will.’
She marched out of the interview room, hoping the door might slam behind her to dramatic effect. Instead, it closed achingly slowly due to health and safety concerns, leaving her with little option but to stomp loudly down the corridor.