Human Remains

through my nostrils as though some peculiar psychic process is taking place.
    ‘Your last answer wasn’t quite true,’ I say at last. ‘Although I think the lie was quite nicely buried. You did get home at about a quarter past six, so you probably did stop off somewhere. You did stop off at the Co-op, but whatever it was you bought, it wasn’t sausages and potatoes. Am I right?’
    He’s shaking his head and for a moment I wonder if I’ve got it wrong, or if he is going to try and fudge his way out of it.
    ‘A bottle of Zinfandel and a toffee yoghurt,’ he says softly.
    ‘Another pint of John Smith’s,’ I reply.
     
     
    After I get home I stay up far too late again: too much whisky again, useless porn again, a fruitless wank in the end. Too much whisky, as I said. When I got back from my visit earlier, I started off reading something improving – forensic biology in this case, a topic of endless fascination – then moved on to reading something improving but possibly not in the way the original writers intended it to be, and then something that’s unlikely to improve anything other than the bank balance of some seedy porn producer in Eastern Europe. Not that I pay for it, of course.
    I’m still feeling rather pleased with myself. Vaughn was so impressed with my display of brilliance that he demanded to know how I’d done it. I explained about non-verbal clues, how to watch a person’s eyes to establish visual construct as opposed to recollection, how to spot signs of discomfort, and how each of the little clues adds up to form an indisputable picture. I pointed out that, when he’d considered the last question, his eyes had flickered up to the right, a sure sign of visual construct, followed by a look up to the left, indicating that there were going to be some elements of recollection in what he said, too. This told me that he was planning to frame his lie around some elements of truth. Added to this, the discomfort he showed when I prepared to ask the last question, the tensing of his shoulders, the shifting in his seat – slightly away from me, I noticed – and his breathing, told me that he’d clearly told the truth in answer to the first two questions and knew that this one was going to have to contain an untruth. When he told me about his shopping, the sausages and the – what else was it? – potatoes, that was it – bangers and mash, how utterly appropriate – he moistened his lips swiftly with the tip of his tongue and then rubbed his fingers across his mouth. A natural gesture, of course, and in any other context it might have been simply an itch, a sniffle, a crumb. But it confirmed the lie.
    I told him all that, and of course gave him some ideas of things to look out for the next time he and Audrey are discussing indelicate matters. I try hard not to picture Audrey because, as soon as I do, I find myself imagining her naked and from then on it’s a short hop to seeing Vaughn naked too, and the pair of them fucking away, a happy missionary pairing if ever there was one. Despite my best efforts, I still end up thinking about it all the way to Vaughn suddenly tensing and crying out, shouting in a way I’ve never heard him shout in the office, or the pub either, for that matter.
    Feel rather grubby after that little lapse in concentration and have to get up out of bed at 02:45 to have another shower.
     
     
    Martha asked me once about my parents. I must have been feeling communicative on that particular occasion, or else it could have been one of those situations where to refuse to answer might have appeared rude; in any case, I told her how my father died when I was eleven.
    ‘You poor boy,’ she said. I wondered if I should be offended, but then understood she was addressing my younger self. ‘It must have been incredibly traumatic to lose your father at such a difficult age.’
    I did not understand what she meant by a difficult age, nor what she meant, really, by traumatic. ‘Life goes on,’ I said with a shrug.
    ‘Yes, but still – such a shame.’
    ‘The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species at that.’
    ‘That sounds like a quote, Colin. Who said that?’
    ‘I did. Well, to be fair, I’m paraphrasing Nietzsche. I’m assuming you would prefer to hear it in English rather than the original German.’
    She thinks I’m weird; they all do. This was at the beginning, when I first started working for the council – they were all very