The Girls Beneath. Ross Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ pulls them out from under the scarf. She looks at me tersely, then back at them.

      Did you know that photo paper is mostly made from gelatine? Our images are preserved forever, burned onto crushed animal matter. You need the thickening agent of the gelatine from cow’s bones to hold the glossy silver halide crystals together.

      She holds them for Emre Bartu to see and then quickly draws them away. I don’t like surprises. I didn’t want to see a young girl’s naked body. There are twenty or thirty pictures.

      ‘Do you think she took these herself, Ms Fraser?’ Emre Bartu says.

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she has a Polaroid.’

      ‘Maybe a friend has one,’ Bartu says.

      ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m sorry.’

      I could say, ‘I think there’s an awful lot you don’t know’ at this point, but I manage not to. She’s looking at me differently now. Grudgingly pleased we’ve shown a bit more fervour than the last two did. I don’t want to spoil this emerging good will.

      ‘Should I be worried about this?’ she says.

      ‘Depends what sort of friend took them,’ Emre says. Careful, Bartu.

      ‘Yeah, it does,’ she says, staring at them. She offers them back to me, unsure what the protocol dictates. Her hand shakes a little as she pushes them it towards me.

      ‘No! No. Put them back where we found them, I think,’ I say, glancing at Emre.

      We can’t bring evidence back with us. We’ll have to do this without analysing anything, officially anyway. We need to leave everything as we found it, like night thieves covering their tracks. That way it will be longer until we’re found out.

      ‘Thanks for your time. We should go,’ he says again.

      ‘Please, take my number, in case you need anything,’ I say, handing her one of my pre-prepared cards. Emre tenses up again as I do so.

      ‘Thank you,’ she says. She’s grateful. A profound sensation of joy comes over me. We head downstairs, I think about the blue smell as we reach her door, the smell that would feel like mahogany, and sound like an ‘F’ note.

      ‘Who wears the aftershave?’ I say.

      ‘No one, we haven’t had a man in this house for five years.’

      My olfactory sense is good but not that good.

      ‘Tanya’s dad?’

      ‘Is in Canada. They’ve never met. And they don’t need to.’

      ‘And five years ago?’ Emre says.

      ‘A boyfriend I was seeing, but I’m through with all that.’

      We nod and I work through the possibilities. A man has been there and not so long ago. That’s what it smells like to me.

      ‘It’s probably my perfume you can smell. Is it important?’

      I take in the oddness of the structure of this sentence. They both take in the oddness of me.

      ‘No, not important. Yes, it’s probably the perfume,’ I lie.

      Then I notice a Siberian cat with canary-coloured eyes creep up to the front door and pry in. It looks up at me, I return the favour and we understand each other somehow.

      ‘Monkey,’ she says. ‘Come on in.’ She picks him up and gives me a look. Bartu is as amazed as he should be by this partial confirmation of my previous deduction. But I don’t even smile, I just revel in it. Then ponder…

      Monkey? What sort of name is that for a cat? You can call it any stupid name you want, but don’t call it the name of another existing animal. Language is tough enough without that kind of nonsense. That really annoys me for a second. I resolve to remember to name my cat, but be a lot more careful than she’s been about it.

      I nod to her and turn to leave abruptly. Emre follows, saying ‘Bye then’. By the time she says it in return I’m ten feet away and walking back to the station.

      I notice it’s getting dark as Emre appears alongside me. I think about what sort of man would’ve worn that aftershave. I think about the colour blue. I think about why she’s lying to me.

9

       ‘My body is tired, tired, tired

       But my brain is wired, wired, in the night

       My liver is fired, like a fire alight in the cold

       Think we’ll keep the thing alive before we get too old’

      ‘We’re not done in there,’ I warn him in the locker room.

      ‘Tom. We’re extremely done in there. We’re not going anywhere near her or this ever again,’ he says, sotto voce.

      ‘Come on. You know that’s not true. We’re just getting started,’ I bark back.

      There’s no one around. The others told us on the radio that they were back on time and were heading home. Emre is extra annoyed because he had to tell Levine that we’re late in because ‘someone thought there might have been a break in at the library, but it turned out to be nothing’.

      Liar. That was his first lie. I try not to tell lies. He probably does, too, but he got backed into a corner and didn’t want to get into trouble.

      In reality, the only other thing we had to do on our shift was to go and get a description of some shoplifters from John’s Food and Wine. Shoplifters always get me down for some reason. That and the school visit wouldn’t have taken up our whole time, even it was a half shift. So he needed to create another event to explain us coming back twenty minutes late.

      He could’ve said we lost track of time.

      He could have told the truth and put it all on me.

      But he didn’t.

      He told a lie, a white one but a lie all the same. Now he’s with me, we’re bound together, because I know about the lie and I know he’s the sort of person who isn’t averse to deception. It’ll be tough for him to get away from me and my plans, but he doesn’t know that yet. I can only wait for his reticence to wither and then drop off.

      ‘We can’t do this anymore,’ Bartu says as we step outside in our civvies.

      ‘It sounds like you’re breaking up with me. It’s only our first date.’

      ‘I’ll lose my job. I need it. I’ve got aspirations.’

      ‘Yes, me too, I’ve got aspirations, Emre Bartu.’

      ‘I don’t think they’re the same aspirations.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ