its state.
‘Please,’ I press. ‘I want to say goodbye. She was my best friend.’
He nods, grudgingly, and twenty minutes later we arrive back at the building we visited last night. In daylight it looks no less blank and horrifying. The smell of the place bombards me as soon as we walk through the door, making my eyes water.
An orderly in green scrubs meets us, not the doctor from last night, and Nunes speaks to him in Portuguese – I assume explaining to him why we’re there. He disappears for five minutes before coming back and leading me into a large tiled room with a drain set in the centre of the floor. My stomach heaves at the sight of a metal table and a tray of instruments beside it, lying pristine and shiny, ready to work their dark business on a body. It’s so cold I have to wrap my arms around myself.
The orderly offers me something – a Vaseline-like salve that smells of menthol – and demonstrates to swipe it beneath my nose. I do, then the orderly points over my shoulder and I turn and see behind me there’s another metal table, this one with a body on it, covered by a stiff, green surgical sheet. When I walked in I hadn’t noticed it, my attention drawn immediately to the tools.
Sweat breaks out all over my body and I think for a second that I might faint. I take a deep breath through my mouth, trying to avoid the smell, which is thickly pungent and stomach-heaving, despite the salve doing its best to block it.
The orderly walks to the table and stops beside it. I step towards him, aware of Nunes waiting by the door, giving me space to say goodbye, or perhaps he isn’t used to death either and doesn’t want to see the body up close.
I’m not here to say goodbye. I don’t want to see Kate this way or remember her like this. It’s bad enough I saw the photograph, but I do need to see her in the flesh. My hand slides into my bag and grasps her phone.
The orderly peels back the sheet from Kate’s face and I gasp, almost gagging. It’s Kate but not Kate. It’s a sick, horrific version of her, more like a special effects latex mask, something used in a horror film. Struggling to hold it together and to keep my stomach from heaving, I turn to the orderly. ‘Could I have a minute alone with her?’ I croak.
He steps respectfully away and I glance over my shoulder at Nunes, who appears to be fighting his own wave of nausea, swiping another dollop of the menthol salve beneath his nose and looking anywhere but at the body.
This is my moment. Shaking and fighting back terror I reach for Kate’s hand beneath the sheet. I almost let out a cry at how cold and heavy it feels, like frozen rubber. I fumble a little with the phone, almost dropping it before I manage to align her thumb with the home button. I glance down at the screen, glad that my back is to Nunes and the orderly, which is buying me some extra cover.
I don’t know if what I’m doing is explicitly wrong, though the fact I’m being so secretive is telling me it probably is. I should hand Kate’s phone over to the police as it might contain important evidence, but I don’t want to do that before I know what the evidence is. What if there’s a clue on the phone that the police won’t understand? Or private photos she wouldn’t want them to see? If they’re looking at me as a suspect it’s important I gather as much information as I can before it’s too late.
The screen miraculously unlocks. I’m startled, not having fully expected my idea to work. I can’t let it lock again so I frantically access the phone settings, hit the display button and change the auto-lock setting to never. Praying it works, I slip the phone carefully into my pocket. I practised on my own phone on the way here and the key is to make sure I don’t hit any of the buttons that might switch the screen off. I can only circumvent the fingerprint once and I can’t change the passcode as I don’t know it.
Nunes clears his throat. I spin around. He’s standing with the door open, obviously keen to go.
I look back at Kate. It doesn’t look like her