lips luffing. I hadn’t talked work with Robbie except to tell him I’d found Karen’s body and that, though the police were treating her death as suspicious, there was every chance it had been the result of an accident or natural causes. Robbie sensed, I think, that I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t shake the image of Karen propped up against the end of the bed, her legs stuck out in front, ankles crossed, hands beseeching. Nor could I erase the image of Sunny throwing her shoes away and running barefoot down the wharf. Being the one to have told Sunny her mother was dead weighed heavily on me. It shouldn’t have been me, I knew that, but at the time I felt I had no choice.
It might have been my distraction that drove Robbie from my bed. He claimed to have a game of social rugby to get to anyway. Cops have these friendly events all the time. The police are a closed society not entirely of their own making. People fall into two camps when it comes to socialising with cops. They either fawn, or feel compelled to complain about a parking ticket some arsehole cop gave them five years ago. Having lived with one for a number of years I understood why it was easier for cops to just hang out with other cops. Sunday morning rugby games were popular with the single cops. Single male cops, that is. There would be few women brave enough to insist on being included in that male bastion. I didn’t ask Robbie if he was playing rugby with Sean and he didn’t offer information one way or the other, which was a relief. Why do men think it’s okay to buddy up with their girlfriend’s ex-husband? We women know it is just so wrong.
We kissed goodbye. It was a good kiss. Then he said a loving farewell to Wolf who nudged him coquettishly, dipping his big skull between Robbie’s knees to better facilitate the ear rub. His tail wagged out of control. I would have to have words with him about his unseemly display of affection — Wolf, that is.
I spent the next hour moping through the personal records Karen had given me the first time we met. In theory, Karen’s death terminated our contract. In theory, I should parcel everything up and send it back to her, but that seemed rather pointless, her being dead and all. I decided I might as well hang on to it all until the investigation was complete. Presumably, Sunny would be the beneficiary of Karen’s will and the parcel of childhood memorabilia would go to her. Karen’s carefully kept record of her daughter’s childhood milestones seemed even more poignant now. I was in no doubt Karen had been keenly looking forward to seeing her daughter. I wished for Sunny’s sake she had been given the chance to meet Karen but whether she would ever have been able to forgive her mother was another matter entirely. It might have helped if she could understand her mother’s attempt to kill her was an aberration, a terrible mistake brought on by her drug habit. I tipped an embossed card from a pocket-sized envelope into my palm. Inside was a lock of fine hair. Sunny’s first haircut was written on the envelope in backward sloping script. A beep alerted me to a phone text. It was Jason Baker, reminding me that today was my first open home and requesting I vacate the premises before one o’clock. As I stared malevolently at the phone I remembered it held a set of photos that needed downloading. Crime scene photos no less.
There were a dozen in all. Six made up the panorama I’d taken standing in the middle of the room next to Karen’s body. The photos looked as if they belonged in a game of Cluedo. Mrs Peacock in the drawing room with the knife. Maybe it was the light from the bay window heightening the colours that made the images seem lurid. More likely it was the dead body in the middle of the room. I downloaded them all to my laptop and used Photoshop to study each one in detail. I had no idea what I was looking for; maybe a clue to what happened? Who was I kidding? But there was one shot I stalled over. I couldn’t figure out what it was that made me return to it again and again. Something