TWELVE

I cleared my big living room table but there still wasn’t enough space. After Cameron had got rid of Lynne, it took him three trips to bring in the files from his car. There were two bulging cases and two cardboard boxes. He unloaded the red, blue, and beige files onto the tabletop and, when there was no more room, onto the carpet as well. When he had finished, he was panting, his face pale and slimy with sweat. His skin had a tired gray deadness.

“Is that all?” I asked ironically as the final pile was dumped at my feet.

“No,” he said.

“I said I wanted everything.”

“You’d need a small van for everything,” he said. “These are the active files from the office, and the others that I’ve got direct access to. Anyway, I don’t know what good you think this will do you. You’ll find most of it incomprehensible.” He sat in the uncomfortable wicker chair in the corner. “You’ve got two hours with this. And if you mention to anybody that you’ve seen any of this at all, then that’s my job.”

“Hush,” I said, picking up files at random. “How are these arranged?”

“Don’t get them out of order,” he said. “Mostly the gray files are for statements. The blue files are our own reports and documents. The red files are forensic and crime scene. It’s not completely consistent. Anyway it’s all written on the outside.”

“Are there photographs?”

“There are pictures of the crime scenes in the albums on the floor by your feet.”

I looked down. It seemed strange that police would put pictures of murders into the same sort of album that people use for their holiday snaps. I felt cold suddenly. Was this a good idea?

“Maybe in a minute. I just wanted to see what they looked like.”

Cameron came forward and started rummaging on the table, muttering to himself.

“Here,” he said. “And here.”

As I reached for it he took my hand.

“Sorry,” he said.

I pulled away from him. I was in a hurry.

“Go away,” I said. “Go into the garden. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

“Or what?” he said wearily. “Or you’ll ring my wife?”

“I can’t read with you here.”

He paused. “It doesn’t make nice reading, Nadia.”

“Leave me.”

Slowly and reluctantly, he left the room.

I had a moment’s hesitation in opening the first file, in even touching it, as if there were an electric current protecting it. I was going to open a door and go into a room and somehow things would always be different. I would be different.

I opened the file and there she was. A snapshot was pinned to a piece of paper. Zoe Haratounian. Born February 11, 1976. I looked closely at the picture. She must have been on holiday. She was half sitting on a low wall with an intensely blue sky behind her. The fierce sunlight was making her squint slightly (she was holding a pair of sunglasses in her hand) and she was also laughing, saying something to whoever was taking the photograph. She was wearing a green vest and floppy black shorts. She had blond hair that came down to her shoulders. Was she lovely looking? I think so, but it was difficult to tell. Certainly she looked nice. It was a happy picture, the sort that should have been pinned on a cork notice board in the kitchen next to the shopping list and the card of the local taxi firm.

Also in the file were some typed notes. This was what I’d been looking for. Boyfriend, friends, employer, references to other files, contact numbers, addresses. I had a notebook ready for this. I jotted down some names and numbers, looking round to check that Cameron couldn’t see me. I flicked through the files. There was another photograph, a black-and-white portrait that looked as if it had been taken for some kind of identification. Yes, she was lovely. I’d seen in the previous picture that she was slim but there was a slight roundness to her face. She looked very young. Although she had a basically serious expression, there was a glint of something in her eyes as if, the very moment that the picture had been taken, she was going to break out into a naughty smile. I wondered what her voice had sounded like. Her name sounded foreign but she had been born somewhere near Nottingham.

I closed the file and put it carefully to one side. Now for the second. Jennifer Charlotte Hintlesham, born 1961, looked completely different from Zoe. Admittedly, it was a more formal photograph, taken in a studio. I could imagine it standing on a dressing table in a silver frame. She was more striking-looking than Zoe. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was a woman who would catch your attention. She had large dark eyes and prominent cheekbones that were made more prominent by her long, thin face. There was something old-fashioned about her: She was wearing a round-necked sweater with a necklace of small pearls. Her dark brown hair was brushed so that it shone. She reminded me of one of those minor British movie stars of the fifties who were a bit left behind when the sixties started.

I had felt that Zoe was much younger than me; Jennifer Hintlesham seemed a generation older. It wasn’t that she had an older-looking face than me. The only faces that look more haggard than mine, especially first thing in the morning, have been dug out of a peat bog after two thousand years of mummification. She just seemed grown-up. I felt I’d like to have met Zoe. I wasn’t sure I’d have been Jennifer’s type. I looked at the file again. Husband and three children, names and ages. Fuck. I wrote down details.

Something occurred to me. I looked in the pile of files where these two had come from. As I thought, there was a file with my name on it. I opened it and was looking at a picture of myself. Nadia Elizabeth Blake, b. 1971. I shivered. Maybe in a few weeks this file would be fatter and another would have been opened.

I looked at my watch. What on earth next? And what was the point of this, apart from curiosity? When I was eleven years old there was a five-meter board at our local swimming pool. I never dared jump from it until one day I just climbed the steps as if I happened to be climbing a ladder for no reason and stepped over the edge of the board without thinking and I’d done it. I did this now.

I reached down for the first album of pictures, bound in gaudy red plastic. It should have contained pictures of little girls blowing out candles and people kicking balls along the beach. I opened it and mechanically turned the pages one after another. Not that much to see, really. I turned back to the beginning to check. Yes, this was the scene of the murder of Zoe Haratounian. Her own flat. And then there she was. She was lying facedown on a carpet. She wasn’t naked or anything like that. She was wearing knickers and a T-shirt. And she didn’t look dead. She could have been asleep. There was a ribbon or tie or something pulled tight around her neck and there were photographs showing it from various angles. I just kept looking at the knickers and the shirt. It was the thought of her putting on those clothes that morning and not knowing that she’d never take them off. It’s the sort of stupid thought you can’t get out of your mind.

I put it down and picked up the second book. The crime scene at Jennifer Hintlesham’s house. I began to flick dutifully through it as I had the previous one, but then I stopped. This looked completely different. It was a single photograph, it was a single scene, but I saw it in fragments: staring open eyes, wire around the neck, clothes ripped or slashed off, legs splayed, and something like a metal bar pushed into her, I couldn’t see into what bit of her. I threw the book down and ran to the sink. I got there just in time, vomit spluttering out of my mouth. My stomach heaved and heaved, painfully emptying itself. I looked down and it was almost funny. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Even dirtier dishes.