Human Remains

the colour of the skin and the puddle under the chair.
    ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘I think I was kind of expecting it, given the smell.’
    ‘Yes, it’s quite bad in there.’
    ‘You want a tea? Coffee?’
    ‘Coffee would be great, thanks. Two sugars. Alright if I use your loo?’
    I pointed him in the direction of the toilet and then I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, waiting for it to boil. On the windowsill of the kitchen was a little statue of an angel that I’d bought in a New Age shop in Bath. It was lit up by the sunshine, shining as though surrounded by a halo of glory.
    I brought the coffees through to the living room. He was already sitting there, his pocket notebook out on his lap, writing something, head bent over the task.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You work in Intel, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m the public protection analyst. And I’m also one of the divisional analysts.’
    ‘You’re doing two jobs?’
    ‘Pretty much. There were four of us and I just did public protection, and then two of the team were redeployed last year and now there’s just me and another analyst. We share the stuff for the division between us.’
    He wasn’t remotely interested in our job descriptions but I was always hopeful that someone would eventually take note of the injustice of having to do twice as much work for no extra money. I nearly added something about how Kate just did the analysis for the North Division,
and
I did that and the public protection work too. But, as always, I bit my lip and said nothing.
    ‘So,’ he said, ‘you went in through the back door, is that right?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There was a light on. I thought that was a bit odd because I didn’t think anyone was living there.’
    ‘There was a light on? Whereabouts?’
    ‘In the dining room. There was a lamp on the table.’
    He was writing. I waited for him to finish, tense. ‘Let’s go back a bit. You said on the phone that you broke a window?’
    ‘No,’ I said, ‘not on purpose, anyway. I pushed at the door and the pane of glass was loose and fell inside the kitchen and smashed on the floor. One of the panes at the bottom of the door was broken already.’
    ‘But the door was open?’
    ‘No. The key was inside. I unlocked it.’
    More writing.
    ‘And you said there was a light on…’
    ‘Yes. In the dining room.’
    ‘Was it still on when you left?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You didn’t turn it off?’
    I stared at him, baffled. Of course I hadn’t turned it off – why would I do that? Stumble back out in the dark? But then I hadn’t been thinking straight. Maybe I had turned it off after all.
    ‘I don’t think I turned it off,’ I said doubtfully.
    He made a noise that sounded like a ‘hmm’.
    ‘Am I going to get arrested for burglary dwelling?’ I asked, accompanying the question with a laugh that sounded forced even to me.
    ‘Not right now,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ve got enough to do.’
    Taking my statement seemed to take forever, even though it was less than an hour. He got me to read his scrawled handwriting and sign his notebook to say I agreed with what he’d put. He said he’d type it up and get me to sign the proper version some time at work on Monday. Then he went back to the house next door, and left me in peace.
    Not long after that, there was a knock at the front door. A man I didn’t recognise: an ill-fitting jacket and jeans, a full head of grey hair swept away from his face in what might once have been a quiff.
    ‘Hello. Sorry to trouble you,’ he said, and of course what I should have done was shut the door there and then. But foolishly, and because I was polite, I didn’t.
    ‘I’m a reporter with the
Briarstone Chronicle
,’ he said. ‘I’m here because of your next-door neighbour. I wondered if it was you who called the police?’
    I bit my lip. ‘I don’t know who called the police,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘They told me it was a neighbour. There isn’t a house on the other side, so I thought it must be you.’
    ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I said. ‘Now, I’m really busy – sorry.’
    ‘Right. Thanks for your time.’
    I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else. Shut the door firmly. A few hours later there was another knock. I looked out through the peephole this time, and saw another man I didn’t know, definitely not someone in uniform. Youngish, casually dressed, with dark hair that needed a cut, glasses. There was a