Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

He can’t see the five unwashed noodle bowls in the sink.

I shake my head. They obviously have no news on Francina’s whereabouts.

“Look,” says Sello, holding his hand at his stomach and leaning back in his chair as if he has just finished a good dinner. “New evidence has come to light.”

He has been watching too many episodes of Law and Order .

I think of that stupid Chuck Norris joke, when he introduces his legs individually as Law and Order.

“Really?” I say, “Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?”

Madinga looks at Sello. Both are expressionless.

“Maybe not for you,” he says.

My intestines squirm and I swallow hard.

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.

There is a Latin proverb that says that when one’s life path is steep, try to keep one’s mind even. I am way past that and just an even voice will do for now.

“What would you like to talk about first, Mister Harris? Perhaps about your last appointment with your doctor and what was discussed there? Or maybe the library titles you have borrowed? Or the fingerprints we found all over Miss Shaw’s apartment?”

So they have been watching me. But before Eve’s body was found? Not necessarily. They could have discovered it all afterwards. I swallow again.

“Perhaps the fingerprints are the most compelling,” I say.

“We found at least six areas in Miss Shaw’s flat with your fingerprints,” says Madinga, “and some of your hair.”

“So what?” I say, knowing I sound guilty. “We were friends. I spent time there. I was over there just the other day having lunch.”

“Do you have anyone who can confirm your story?” Sello says.

I bridle at his use of the word ‘story’: it implies fiction.

I shake my head, more in annoyance at them than at the question.

“If that is your strongest lead I suggest you keep looking for who really killed Eve, instead of wasting your time with me.”

The men take their time in replying.

Sello steeples his fingers and leans towards me so that our faces are close. “You know what the most interesting thing about the fingerprints is, Mister Harris?”

“What?” I ask, with a touch of belligerence.

“The fact that we didn’t have to call you in to take yours, to make the match.”

“So you have my fingerprints on file. That’s hardly interesting. We are practically living in 1984 , aren’t we? If anyone should know, it should be you.”

“1984?” says Madinga.

“Orwell,” I say.

He blinks a few times and then writes it down.

“Never mind,” I say and slump on the table.

“We have your prints on file because you have a criminal record,” says Sello, “which you conveniently forgot to tell us about the last time we were here.”

I harrumph.

“Why on earth would I tell you?”

“Because it may pertain to the case.”

“Bullshit, pertain to the case! This case has nothing to do with me! And it certainly has nothing to do with my so-called ‘criminal record’, of which crime I was acquitted.”

“Doesn’t mean you weren’t guilty,” says Sello.

“It was a misunderstanding. Thai authorities aren’t spectacularly fluent in English.”

I wonder if they can see I’m lying.

“Moving on,” says Sello, “your doctor informed us that you asked him about the technicalities of stabbing someone.”

“Well,” I say, “I did.”

That singing bastard! So much for patient privilege. And since when did cops interview your goddamned doctor? Something feels off here. I think back to the split-second they flashed me their ID cards, not giving me enough time to study them, see if they were authentic. I squint at them, trying to work out if they really are cops.

They stare back at me with their overworked eyes.

“I’m writing a book and was doing research.”

Sello leans back again.

“A book? What kind of book?”

“A novel. I am a novelist, you know.”

“I meant, what is it about?”

I scratch my nose, still tender.

“It’s about… someone who gets… stabbed.”

“Ha!” says Sello. Or maybe I imagine that part.

“Like Miss Shaw?” Madinga asks.

“Miss Shaw wasn’t stabbed,” I say, “You said you found her drowned, in the river.”

Ha! I think.

“We said we found her in the river. We never said drowned.”

I know that, but I am trying to avoid falling for one of their Law & Order traps.

“What are you saying? That she was stabbed?”

Madinga opens up the file he brought in with him. He lays eight 12 x 9 glossy photos on the table.

I feel rising acid in my mouth and throat. Eve’s blue-ivory limbs are spread before me. Her blonde hair is slicked back, brown with water and dirt. Her eyes open and milky.

One photo shows a deep slit in her chest. I blanch. I remind myself to keep breathing. I want to trace the cut with my finger. The pictures are beautiful in a raw, eerie way. They wouldn’t be out of place in an avant-garde art exhibition. The whiteness of her water-bleached skin against the oily coffee grounds of the sandbank. The chalky lips. The vulnerability of her bare breasts, small nipples, protruding ribs. The dark ribbon of red over her heart.

I feel like I am falling away from this moment, as though I am in danger of disconnecting with reality. Becoming unhinged.

So not only did someone kill Eve, but they seem to have followed my plan to the letter. It’s impossible, I know it is. Some kind of crazy coincidence. And yet there she is in the photos, cold, bloodless marble. As I had pictured her.

Exactly as I had pictured her.

I am lying on my couch and an hour has passed. I don’t remember much. There are strangers here and they are searching through everything. They are wearing strange uniforms. It is as if a UFO has descended and the aliens in hazmats are taking their information-collection duties particularly seriously. They have their scary space tools and little extraterrestrial cooler boxes and they speak in their Martian dialect. They are emptying drawers and sweeping cupboards and scraping DNA samples off everything in sight. They empty the ashes from the BraaiMaster 1000 into a plastic packet. Madinga dangles something silvershiny in front of Sello: Eve’s spare keys. They are promptly confiscated. I look at my hands: my fingertips are black. Inky. How apt.

I don’t remember them taking the prints, and don’t understand why they would do so after saying they had them on file.

The house is a fog of white noise: I can’t hear anything. I wonder what they are hoping to find, and what they will find. I don’t think that anything in my house will tie me to Eve’s murder but it is clear that stranger things have happened. If the person who has done this meant to frame me, then I’m damn sure there will be some evidence planted somewhere in the house that is just out of my reach.

The men swarm out in the same manner they arrived and Madinga says something to me but I don’t hear him. I watch his lips move and then he is also gone, leaving the warrant on the Flokati rug next to me. The sun goes down and I am still on the couch. The darkness is comforting.

The doorbell goes again. It is really dark now and I have to feel my way to the light switch. I think it must be the aliens to take me away but then I hear her voice and I am relieved in a detached kind of way. I let Denise in and she sits on the couch with me.

“You poor baby,” she says, climbs on my lap and straddles me, as if she knows just by looking at me what I have been through today. She slowly kisses my starless fingertips, my forehead, temples, cheekbones. She wraps her arms around me so that our chests are one. She feels weightless apart from where our upper bodies are joined. She pushes my face into her shoulder and strokes the back of my neck.