Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

She did not sleep. Usually, whenever she said she had not slept, she would know that actually she had, in starts, for an hour, perhaps two hours, at a time. But that night, the night following the memorial service, she did not sleep. She lay on sheets that scratched, uncovered but for a corner of a blanket she clutched only because she needed something to clutch, her head perspiring on pillows that felt recently vacated even on their underside. She tried to convince herself that no one in London was sleeping, that the country was awake and uncomfortable and as worn out as she was. She tried but she convinced herself only that she would never sleep again, whereas everyone else, the ones who in the morning would say, no, I didn’t sleep a wink, not a wink all night, were in fact sleeping in starts, for an hour, perhaps two hours, at a time.

At the station the next day no one looked as though they had not slept. Her colleagues appeared no more weary, no more dishevelled than usual. Lucia, on the other hand, saw the image reflected by her monitor, by the glass partition of Cole’s office, by the mirror in the ladies’ toilets as a forgery, painted with mascara and foundation on a canvas that was worn and cracked. She drank coffee though she knew she was drinking too much. She was hot and she was edgy and the coffee made her hotter, more on edge.

And the clouds lingered.

She tried to not think about Szajkowski. She tried to not think about the school, about Travis. She cleared her desk and filed her files. She emptied her inbox and deleted documents from her desktop. But she saw Walter, she heard his guffaw, she smelt his failing deodorant, and the sight, sound, smell of him was more than enough to remind her. She sent Cole an email. She wanted to make sure that the report – the bastardised report, Walter’s report – had not been filed in her name. From the moment it occurred to her that it might have been, she became determined to make sure that it was not. She knew it was unimportant but she became determined nonetheless. She blamed the coffee and took another sip.

Cole did not reply and Lucia grew tired of waiting. For the first time since she had joined the police force, she lamented the lack of paperwork awaiting her attention. She craved menial tasks but she had none. When he had first handed her the Szajkowski case, Cole had absolved her of responsibility for anything else. Now Cole had snatched the Szajkowski case back and for the moment Lucia had nothing.

She tried to look busy. It was hard to look busy and at the same time to watch Walter, to listen to his conversations, to angle herself in such a way that she might catch a glimpse of Cole in his office, to walk past the doorway and to linger without seeming to. What she most wanted to do was march in. What she most wanted was to ask and be told what was happening with her case, what the superintendent had said, the commissioner, the home secretary. What she most wanted, seeing as she was playing this game, was to rewind twenty-four hours, forty-eight, and write the report again, write it better, present it again, present it better. Present it later so Cole would not have time to do anything other than accept it.

She pulled out her files again and she read. She read the statements and the more she read the more she felt vindicated, righteous, wronged. She found a highlighter in her drawer, a yellow one, and stole a green one from Harry’s desk. As she read she annotated: yellow for the prosecution, green for the defence. She marked yellow, yellow, nothing for a while, then yellow again, more yellow. She drank coffee. Every so often she would pull the lid off the green pen with her teeth and highlight a sentence, a paragraph, not because she felt she really needed to, more to assure herself that she was being fair.

At lunch she bought a sandwich and ate one half of it. She drank water to flush out the coffee but filled her mug as soon as she returned to the office.

The yellow highlighter was running low. She felt like brandishing it at Cole, saying, here, look, do you see now? I was right and you were wrong. But it did not run out. She willed it to. She double underlined and scrawled extravagant asterisks in the margins but still it did not run dry. Whenever she was forced to pick up the green pen she left the cap off the yellow. She knew she was breaking the rules she had set but the contest had already become a rout.

Until she reached the end of one statement and realised she had marked it only in green. She read it again with her yellow highlighter poised but found only another section that should probably also have been green. The same thing happened with the next statement, then with a third. And though it was the yellow pen that lay bare on her desk, it was the green one that gave out first. Lucia cursed. She blamed Harry for buying cheap, decided the highlighter must already have been running out, dismissed the game she was playing as void. She gathered the statements in a ragged pile and dropped them into a drawer. She looked for Cole. She looked for Walter.

‘Looking for me, sweetheart?’

He was behind her. He was at her shoulder and she had not noticed.

‘You wish,’ she said. Then, hating herself even before she spoke: ‘Walter, wait a minute. What’s happening? Do you know what’s happening with the case?’ She had meant to sound earnest and professional. Her voice was needy and weak. She heard it and Walter heard it. His smile unfurled in stages: first the left corner, then the right, then the hoisting of his upper lip. His mouth parted and his tongue poked through. It twitched and curled upwards, caressing the yellowed enamel of his teeth.

‘Never mind,’ Lucia said. ‘Forget it, never mind.’

She made to spin her chair but Walter stuck out his hand and caught it before she could turn away.

‘Lulu, Lulu. Don’t be embarrassed. I’ll tell you what you want to know.’

‘I said forget it, Walter. Forget I mentioned it.’

‘I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ Walter said, ‘but first I need you to answer me one question.’

Walter had let go of her chair. She could have turned away but she did not. She folded her arms. She raised her eyebrows.

‘Tell me,’ Walter said. ‘What is it about beards?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Beards. What is it about them? It’s the way they tickle, am I right? You like the way beards tickle. Down there.’

‘I haven’t got time for this, Walter.’

‘Because I can grow one. If you’d like me to. If a beard would turn you on.’

Lucia rolled her eyes and twisted away. She clicked her way to her inbox and found it empty. She selected a folder, opened an email at random. She studied it.

‘It’s the only thing I can think of.’ He was addressing the room now. Lucia closed the email and opened another. Without registering who had sent it, she hit reply and started typing. ‘The beard, I mean. I can’t think of any other reason why you’d have a thing for this Szajkowski.’

‘I don’t have a thing for him, Walter. Don’t be absurd.’ She spoke to her screen.

‘So what is it, Lulu? If you don’t have a thing for him, what’s got your knickers up your crack? Why are you so desperate to defend him? To pick on the school instead?’ He took hold of her chair again and forced her round. ‘Come on, admit it. It’s the beard isn’t it? Charlie. Hey Charlie! You’re in luck my son. Lulu here has a thing for facial pubes.’

Charlie grinned. He licked a finger and ran saliva across his moustache.

‘Walter, I’m busy. Let go of my chair.’

‘You don’t look busy, Lulu. You haven’t looked busy all day.’ He tightened his grip, leant in close. ‘I’ve seen you watching me. I’ve seen that hunger in your eyes.’