Human Remains

been full of people for much of Saturday. The forensics van parked outside my house, and, although I’d spoken to the first patrol that turned up, I waited around all day to be interviewed properly.
    My emotional state had been fragile, spinning from nausea and shock at what I’d seen and done, to annoyance that they were taking so long about it all, and guilt that I hadn’t rung them straight away, instead of breaking in like some lumbering real-life Jessica Fletcher.
    After I’d found the body, I’d gone back home and shut the door. Then I’d opened the door again and thrown the cat out and shut the door behind her. In putting my hand under her belly I had felt, instead of soft fur, cold, wet, slimy muck all over her.
    The smell of it, on my hands, on my tights, my skirt. Black and green and brown, the colours you get when you mix together all the colours in the paintbox, combined with the odour of putrefaction. I took my clothes off, right there in the kitchen, and put them in the washing machine. I turned the temperature up to sixty degrees and was about to turn it on when I suddenly realised that I shouldn’t. Maybe it was evidence.
    Of what?
    I washed my hands with antibacterial handwash that had a strong perfume, but even when I rinsed it off my hands still smelt bad. I got some kitchen roll and dampened it, then squirted some of the blue soap on it and rubbed at my legs, in case the substance had come through my tights on to my skin.
    And all the time, I was struggling not to vomit. Every so often I’d catch the smell at the back of my throat and cough, and gag.
    When I finally felt clean, I called the police.
    ‘Kent Police, how can I help?’
    ‘I just found a body in the house next door. It’s badly decomposed.’
    ‘Right,’ said the female voice on the other end. I could hear her rattling away at her keyboard already, entering the opening code 240B for ‘suspected body’. ‘Can I take your name?’
    ‘Annabel Hayer.’
    I went through all the responses – address, phone number, all the details of what I’d seen (the light on) and heard (nothing) and smelt (putrescence) and seen (a body in the armchair) – until I’d convinced myself in my head that I’d imagined the whole thing.
    ‘We’re very busy tonight,’ she said, ‘but a patrol will come out to you as soon as one is free.’
    I went upstairs, had a shower and washed my hair, and dressed in clean clothes, yet I could still smell it, fainter now but nevertheless there. I looked outside but there was still no sign of the patrol.
    The cat cried to be let in, and I shut the kitchen door and ran her a makeshift bath in the kitchen sink. I’d tried to bathe cats before and this was every bit as traumatic as all my previous experiences. She scratched my arms to shreds as I sponged her back and undersides down with my best organic pH-neutral additive-free shampoo and warm water. I got most of it off. She’d been licking herself too, her fur sticking up in spikes. The thought of it, and the smell of her, even when she’d been washed and rinsed and dried off with a teatowel, was enough to make me heave. As soon as she struggled free of the towel she started hurtling about the kitchen in a panic, knocking things flying. Fearing for my crockery, I opened the back door and she shot straight out.
    The patrol had arrived by then, and, having gone next door, and called in that there was indeed a body and could they please have someone else to deal with it, they had agreed that I could go off to bed.
    In the cold light of day on Saturday morning, everything had looked very different. The cat was sitting on the back step, looking exceptionally pissed off. She came in when I opened the door and immediately turned her back on me, sitting in the corner of the kitchen and only moving when I filled her bowl with cat biscuits. The fur on her back and belly stood out in sticky spikes, but at least the smell had faded.
    I’d never met the Major Crime DC who eventually interviewed me, and, although he showed me his warrant card when I let him in, I instantly forgot his name. He told me he’d worked at Briarstone police station for the past year, and, when he said that, I recognised him from the canteen.
    ‘How are you?’ he asked me at last, coming into the living room. ‘Must have been quite a shock.’
    It was late afternoon, and I’d not eaten all day. Every time I thought about it, I remembered the horrible inflated shape of the body,