Neil White - LAST RITES

‘Sometimes alcohol is the answer,’ she said.

‘What's wrong?’ I asked.

Laura folded her arms and looked down. I didn't think she was going to say anything, but then she blurted out, ‘I went to the murder team and told them what you were doing.’

‘And how did it go?’

She looked up at me and scoffed. ‘Oh, just fine, once they'd stopped laughing at me.’

‘Why would they laugh?’

‘Because they're pricks,’ Laura snarled. ‘I'm just the skirt who spends her life processing other people's arrests. They put them in a cell and go home, and then leave me to sort out the mess. I'm the one who works late when we need more evidence, not the person who brought them in.’

‘It's not for much longer,’ I said, cajoling. ‘The Court Welfare Officer is coming round the day after tomorrow, you know that, and then the hearing is after that. Once we have it formalised that Bobby stays with us, you can go back to a normal police job.’

‘I want my career to amount to something, Jack, but it seems like I'm the only one making sacrifices,’ she said, her voice getting angrier. ‘Geoff's job hasn't changed, and he doesn't have the day-to-day stuff like I do.’

‘Like we do,’ I corrected her. ‘It's both of us, not just you.’

Laura stopped for a moment, and then she sighed. She stepped forward and put her arms around me. She put her head into my chest, and as I kissed her hair I could smell the cells, the scent of stale bodies and stress. I put my hands on her cheeks and lifted her head up. There were tears brimming onto her lashes.

‘Just be patient,’ I said softly. ‘We're nearly there.’

She wiped her eyes. ‘Sometimes I just wonder at how much I want it, how there must be an easier way to live my life.’

‘What, go back to London?’ I queried, and then regretted voicing it, putting it out there for discussion. I felt my throat go dry as soon as the words came out.

‘Would you want me to?’ she asked.

I pulled her closer, put her head tight into my chest. ‘You'll need to improve your interview technique if you're going to get on,’ I whispered, ‘because you can't ask stupid questions like that.’

We stayed like that for a few minutes. When Laura pulled away from me, wiping her eyes, she asked, ‘How was your day? Is the story getting any better?’

‘It's getting interesting,’ I replied. ‘I spoke to Katie again, Sarah's lodger.’

Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘You're getting keen. She'll think you're a stalker. Good looking, I presume.’

I shrugged noncommittally There was no answer that would be the right one.

Laura turned away, about to go back to Bobby, when I said, ‘Can I ask you something about the Sarah Goode case?’

Laura stopped, and then turned back slowly. ‘Probably pointless. If I know the answer, I won't tell you anyway.’

‘Nothing about letters sent by Sarah Goode, after she went missing?’ I queried.

Laura paused at that. ‘What kind of letters?’

‘Are there different types?’ I said. ‘Just normal letters. I've been looking at the newspapers and there is no mention of them, but Katie mentioned them.’

‘What if they are so significant that the rest of the press have agreed not to say anything about them?’

‘That's what Katie said to me,’ I said, ‘and that's why I'm interested.’

Before Laura could respond I heard a ping from my laptop. It was an email arriving. I walked through, expecting an offer of fake Viagra, but what I saw made me gasp.

Laura must have heard my reaction. ‘What is it?’

‘It's Sarah Goode,’ I said. ‘I guessed she would be on Facebook, and I found her. I sent a friend request, just so I could write up that there was no response.’

‘And?’ asked Laura, coming close.

I clicked on the link in the email, just to make sure, and then I stood up and grinned.

‘She's accepted the request,’ I replied, pointing at the screen. ‘Now that makes an interesting angle.’

Laura leaned forward, curious.

‘She looks happy,’ said Laura, looking at the profile picture.

I clicked on Sarah's pictures, and there was a succession of family photos and ones of Sarah at play: at a party, a bottle of beer raised for the camera; on a fun run, her arm around some friends, their faces flushed. It was fun-loving young woman stuff, the story of a life she used to have that would never be the same again. She didn't update her page very often; perhaps she had joined on a whim – there were few friends in her profile. I noticed that she listed her status as single.

‘This means one thing,’ said Laura, ‘that she must be near a computer. I wonder if we can get the Facebook people to tell us where she is posting from.’

I printed off the page and clicked the events section, where people listed their diary.

‘Shit!’ I exclaimed.

Laura tapped me on the arm, pointing at Bobby. I held up my hand in apology and then tapped at the screen. From Laura's gasp, I realised that she had read it too.

In the events section of Sarah's Facebook profile, for 31st October, were the words, ‘ I die .’

I gave a slow whistle. ‘That's four days away,’ I said.

Laura looked grim-faced. ‘It looks like I'm going to have to go to the murder squad again.’

Morning already. Sarah guessed it from the way it seemed a little warmer, although not much. She reckoned it had been eight days now, but it was hard to mark time when days and nights seemed almost the same: the constant spotlights, the relentless, steady noise of thumping heartbeats.

Sarah had shivered through the night so that every minute crawled by, her arms wrapped around her chest, no bed, no bedding, no clothes. She had paced around the room to generate heat, twelve paces in an oval pattern before she was back where she started, so she did twelve more, and then twelve more after that, the dirt getting stuck between her toes. She rolled in the mud on the floor, cold at first, but it was like an extra layer of skin once it set hard onto her body.

Maybe the mud had saved her. The early hours were torture, but she knew time was the only cure, that soon the air would become warmer, just. She waited for the sounds of movement.

But as she got warmer, Luke came back into her thoughts. Had they really killed him, or was that all part of the game? Maybe he was still alive and in a room just a few feet away? If she could get to him, maybe they could work together.

She paced faster, but the view never changed. Just a stone wall, and then another after that, broken only by her shadow cast by the spotlights, shifting as she walked faster, more heat, more sound, her feet moving in time with the pulsing coming from the speakers.

She had taken to chanting. As she paced, and then as she jumped on the spot, Sarah would say, ‘Keep strong, keep strong’, like saying it would make it come true.

But it was easier to be strong when she was on her own. There was no one to hurt her, just her own thoughts and dark despair.

Just then, the speakers went silent. Sarah heard someone outside the room. She froze, felt her stomach lurch. What was coming now?

Her strength disappeared when she heard the lock turn in the door.

Laura looked down at the arrest handover package in front of her. It was an A3 piece of paper, folded over, holding a print-out of the incident log and custody record, the former telling her how the job had been called in, the latter telling her what had happened to the prisoner since his arrival.

Pete buzzed around her desk, trying to see what she had.

‘A scrapper,’ she said, her voice struggling to hide her contempt.