Shining Lights by Barry Litherland

Author:Barry Litherland [Litherland, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bleaknorth Publishing
Published: 2022-09-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

I find Nina at eight o’clock the next morning, just a couple of hours before I’m due to meet Major Meacham. I don’t know why I haven’t tried to open the door earlier. Maybe I just imagine she’s tucked up in bed or, more likely, has slipped out early. However, this morning, after I beat on the door several times without success, I finally do the obvious thing and try the door handle, and the door slips silently open.

I can’t explain why or how, but I know at once that there’s something wrong. I step into the lounge, which lies undisturbed except for a half-eaten pizza on the table and an open bottle of sparkling wine beside an empty glass. Then I check the kitchen and the bedroom.

It’s there that I find her. She lies still under the covers, on her side, her knees tucked towards her chest, and only her head and shoulder showing. Her skin is bloodless, like yellow wax, her eyes closed with a mere slit where the last flicker of life departed.

I stand for a moment, barely able to comprehend what has happened, scarcely capable of bringing my mind or my emotions to focus on the awful tragedy lying before me. I’m shocked. And I’m numb. I can’t take it in. It’s like some ghastly joke. Silence deepens and thickens around me. It spreads out until it fills the room, the flat, the entire block. It fills everything, everywhere.

Futility and emptiness. Dead stars in a dead sky.

There’s nothing emptier and colder than a dead body. It’s an appalling sight, so utterly bereft of anything that resembles the person you knew. Just death, in all its awful truth.

I drag myself back to the reality of what has occurred. There are no obvious signs of foul play; just a sixty-year-old woman dead in her sleep, her hand exposed at the side of the bed and, below it, on the floor, her phone. It tells the story of her last moments. Perhaps, realising how ill she was, she made one last desperate attempt to call for help before her life slipped away. Maybe she tried to call her daughter or, more prosaically, the emergency services. Somehow, I imagine Nina’s priority would be towards the former, where her heart lay.

I feel voyeuristic, standing there beside her body, so I call an ambulance and describe how I found her. The woman at the end of the phone, her manner brusque and professional, asks several questions. Most of them I can’t answer.

‘I’ve only just found her,’ I answer lamely.

‘Someone will be with you in a few minutes,’ she says finally, her tick-list completed.

My head is in a blur. I can barely take in what she is saying. I remember, however, that she tells me to stay precisely where I am. She emphasises that.

‘Don’t move from where you are. The task force will be with you within a few minutes.’

Yes, I’m sure she used those words. The task force will be with you.

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