Human Remains

to.

Colin
     
     
    I rang work early and told them I was taking the morning off, and then I went to the precinct as planned, to meet the new one. She was easier than I thought she would be – acquiescent, and ripe, changed greatly since I’d seen her in the supermarket on Tuesday evening. Bereavement, of course. Often it’s that. While I was waiting for her I called in at the Co-op, bought a copy of the paper and some milk.
    She was waiting for me outside the funeral director’s. I thought she’d said she had an appointment but if this was true she’d forgotten all about it. It was an annoyance because I’d been hoping for some time to myself to read the newspaper – but that would have to wait. She told me where she lived and I followed her there, leaving the groceries behind in the car. We talked for a while in her kitchen. The cat was outside, calling and scratching at the door, and for a moment I thought she was going to open it and let the infernal thing in. I told her that there was nothing but silence and peace. Nothing else to concern her. It seemed to do the trick because the cat was ignored. In the end I think it gave up, because when we went upstairs the noise stopped.
    I left her an hour or so later and came back home with the shopping. There will be more such conversations ahead of us both before she is ready, but they can wait for now.
    I’m shivering with excitement when I open the paper.
    There’s less information than I thought there would be. Yes, they’ve found Dana and Eileen, as I knew they would. Yes, they’ve very sensibly realised that there is more linking the people concerned than depression and a lack of neighbourly concern. But what are they doing about it? Very little, it seems.
    But would the
Briarstone Chronicle
be kept up to date with the details of the investigation? It is probably unlikely. I wonder if I’ve done a very foolish thing, by letting them in on my activities.
    By the time I get to work I’ve worked myself up into a spiral of nervous tension that I can barely contain. I sit at my desk and log on to the computer without speaking to anyone, hoping that spreadsheets and accounting software will gradually calm me down again.
    Across the other side of the office, Garth is breathing through his nose. When we moved into this office from the ground floor, a year ago in December, I ended up with the desk directly opposite Garth’s. He invariably smelt bad, musty, and he made constant noises: he couldn’t even breathe quietly. If he wasn’t breathing he was snorting or humming or chuckling to himself or muttering or tapping his front teeth with his pen or running his hand compulsively through his greasy, thinning hair or rasping his finger against the stubble on his cheek or licking his lips or clearing his throat, or leaning back in his chair so that his shirt would tug free of his belt and show me a small patch of hairy white belly.
    I lasted a day and a half. I went to see Martha and told her I needed to be near a window as I was claustrophobic. They couldn’t persuade Alan to swap desks, so they moved me to a tight space beside the photocopier which had a small window behind it, looking out over the car park. It suits me. I am away from all of them. And although I can still see them and listen to their mindless conversations, I can get on with my work in peace without the discordant percussion of Garth’s bodily functions.
    This is fine, whilst Garth is in rude good health. If he is unwell, though, as he is today, the noise levels increase to the extent that I can hear him again, across the whole office space separating us. And his odour crosses the room like mustard gas across the trenches. The noises: phlegm, mucus, nose-blowing, the excavation of his nose with his handkerchief; and then the sighs, the moans, the wheezing.
    I search through my bag for my iPod, which will at least muffle the sounds of Garth’s latest malady, but to my dismay find that I’ve left it at home.
    In the end, I resort to speaking to him. ‘Garth,’ I say.
    He doesn’t hear me, as at that very moment he takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose, a wet rumble like a pair of waders being thrown from the roof of a multi-storey car park.
    ‘Garth!’
    ‘What? Can’t hear very well,’ he calls across from the other side of the room. ‘My ears are all blocked up.’
    ‘Would you mind keeping the noise down?’ I say loudly, trying to keep the tone of my voice