takes my hand and leads me back out into the hall where Reza and Nunes are waiting. We follow them outside, past Sebastian, and then down the stairs and into the car they came in. It’s not a police car but a normal car and Rob and I sit in the back, holding hands, not speaking.
I can’t speak. My mind is a dense fog I can’t fight my way through. Nothing makes sense. How can Kate be dead? It’s not possible. It can’t be her. Kate knows how to swim. She can’t have drowned. They must have made a mistake. I’ll walk in and see a stranger lying on a slab. Someone who looks like her but isn’t her.
Before I know it we’ve stopped and Reza and Nunes are getting out of the car. I look out the window. We’re on a nondescript side street, parked in front of a grey building with no visible windows, a bit like a prison. Rob helps me out the car and steers me towards the building’s door, which Reza is holding open for us.
Everything passes in a blur as we’re led down a corridor and through more doors, the kind you get in hospitals. The only thing I really register is the smell, part bleach and part rust and part something else that I can only identify as decay. My head swims and I think I might faint. Reza tells us she’s going to find someone and will be back in a moment. Nunes stays with us and I glance at him, noticing his hand is resting on the gun strapped to his waist. It feels like he’s guarding us. I collapse down into a plastic chair.
I try to focus on small details to stop from thinking about what comes next – the colour of the walls, avocado green; the sign in Portuguese alongside an icon of a camera with a slash through it, and another one telling people not to smoke. Who would want to take photographs in here? I wonder. And then I think, Damn, I need a cigarette. I can feel the need for it as an itch inside my lungs. I sit on my hands to stop them fidgeting, not wanting Nunes to look at me with any more suspicion.
After what feels an eternity Reza returns, and with her is a middle-aged man in green scrubs and white plastic clogs. He’s thin and pale, as though working here has sucked the life out of him. I stand up to greet him.
‘This is Doctor Correia,’ Reza says. ‘He’s doing the autopsy.’
He shakes my hand and I feel shocked by the warmth of it, having expected it to feel cold as marble. He smiles kindly at me then pulls a clipboard from under his arm. ‘I’m going to show you a photograph,’ he says.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You just need to tell us if it is your friend or not.’
‘A photograph?’ I say, feeling a huge rush of relief that I don’t have to see an actual dead body.
He winces. ‘I’m afraid there’s been some decomposition. We’re lucky the water was cold and so it’s not as bad as it might have been.’
I place a hand to my mouth to hold back the vomit as black dots dance in front of my eyes.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ the doctor suggests.
I sink back into the plastic chair.
‘Can I make the identification?’ Rob asks, heroically stepping up. ‘I knew her too.’
‘No,’ I interject. ‘No. I need to do it.’ I don’t know why I’ve said it. I don’t want to look at any photograph, am terrified of what I might see and never be able to unsee, but I also know I need to do it. If I don’t make the identification, how will I ever believe it, either way?
Before I can allow second thoughts to stop me, I stand up again and reach for the clipboard. Rob stands with me, at my side, arm around me. The doctor hands it over, turning it around so I can see the large photograph tacked to the front. I gasp and hear Rob do the same. The photo shows a woman from the neck up. Her eyes are closed and her skin is grey, tinged slightly green. Her eyes are closed, the eyelids bruised blue, and her lips, bloodless and pale, are slightly parted giving a glimpse of swampy blackness inside the mouth. Her face is puffy and bloated and her hair is bedraggled and wet, sticking