What a terrible shame.
I get into my private car before pulling out a pack of Marlboros from my breast pocket. Fact: I offer cigarettes to suspects to make them a bit chattier, although I had no reason to do so today.
Right now, I need a smoke myself. (Fact: While I once indulged in a brief, grief-fueled cigarette binge right after Liesl von Meier disappeared, I’ve stayed away from them since.) I light one before drawing hard on it. The instant rush of nicotine is soothing, though not as tranquilizing as I’d hoped. After a couple of long drags, I crush the cigarette and fish out my iDiary. The remaining tendril of smoke curls and disappears as I tap my way to the final section of the entry I wrote two nights ago, the one my eyes abandoned earlier this morning:
It was your fucking letter that sealed my fate, the blond woman yelled. The one you sent to my psychiatrists. Telling them I was nuts. They used it to back up their own flawed diagnosis before shipping me off to the Outer Hebrides.
I saw the woman launching her hand in my direction again. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did know that she was turning into something of a public hazard. I caught her right arm in midair and twisted it behind her back. She squealed. I dragged her a few feet backwards and pinned her against the back of the Fiat. She squirmed, attempting to free herself from my grasp. I instinctively pushed her back, trying to hold her down against the boot. But I must have caught her at the wrong angle, because she crumpled sideways with a yelp.
Fuck, she said.
Are you all right? I said.
That hurt, she groaned. That fucking hurt. How dare you attack me?
I was tempted to point out that she was the one who'd tried to slap me in the first place. But I may have overreacted.
You’ll be fine, I said.
Just fuck off, will you? She glared at me, wincing. You’ve caused me enough grief in the past, you son of a bitch.
You must be all right if you’re swearing so eloquently at me, I said. But don’t push it, madam. Because I’m on the verge of arresting you for attempted assault.
Her eyes widened as she took in my words, including the distinct possibility that she might end up spending the night at Parkside station.
Fine, she said, pulling herself up to her feet and stumbling away to the front of her car. Fine. I’ve much more urgent things to do this evening than to bother with shitty twats like you.
I resumed my jog, wishing that verbal insults could be easily prosecuted. Nevertheless, it was daft of me to engage in an altercation with the crazy woman in the first place. After all, she did not pull a gun or knife on me. She had merely tried to slap me. (NTS: Must refrain from attempting to restrain lunatics in the future unless absolutely necessary.)
What a rubbish day, by the way. I still can’t believe I did two daft things in a row.
I am tempted to edit—or even delete—my diary entry so that its contents will be less damning. But it’s too late now. I’ve already read and learned these facts. I can’t erase them now that I’ve committed them to mind. At any rate, the act of tinkering with my diary would be just as bad as what Claire Evans did. I’m not a coward, like that woman, although I understand why she did what she did. Cold hard facts, after all, are always more palatable when they are pleasant.
I turn my iDiary off and flip the ignition switch of my car. As I speed off in the direction of home, past the kebab shops and flashing neon signs of Mill Road, a little voice in my head pipes up again. It has been torturing me all day long, ever since I entered the Paradise nature reserve and studied the dead body extracted from the Cam, clad in soggy designer black.
The murmur in my mind is still going strong. In fact, it has become more persistent over the course of the evening, especially after I eavesdropped on the conversation between Mark and his wife. The voice is still telling me the same few things:
Isn’t she the woman you met two evenings ago? The one dressed from head to toe in black? As your diary says, you were stupid enough to tangle with her hours before her death.
You even hurt her.
Two points emerge in my head:
No one is going to read my diary unless I meet a sorry end, as Sophia Ayling did, and another investigating detective is empowered by warrant to scour its contents for clues. If so, the description of what happened in that pull-off area would make little sense to the person reading my diary. I’ll be long dead by then, anyway. You can damn a dead man, but you can’t charge him with manslaughter.
Unlike me, Mark Henry Evans is indeed guilty of a crime. The crime of killing another human being without malice aforethought. He threw Sophia Ayling into the Cam and caused her to drown. He deserves to go to jail for what he did to her. I’m going to ensure that he is convicted (I should write this down in my diary tonight). No one is going to know what happened before Sophia showed up in Mark’s study two evenings ago. Apart from me.
Yet I suppose I have to live with this persistent whisper in my head. And the dreadful little facts that the voice keeps repeating to me, twisting them like a dagger into my heart. Whether I like them or not. Claire Evans, too, must live with the factual knowledge that she killed her only daughter. So must Mark Henry Evans, after realizing that he caused his mistress to drown. But Claire and Mark can still decide whether the truth goes down in their diaries tonight.
We are all damned by the facts we’ve decided to learn. It doesn’t matter how much memory one has. It doesn’t matter whether one is a Mono or a Duo. Whether one has a single day’s worth of memory—or two enviably long days. Even nutcases who claim to have superpower heads full of “memories” are damned. You can wash blood off your hands. But you can’t wash facts from your mind. Not after you’ve made an effort to read them and learn them. Facts remain. They are inseparable from our conscience. This is why awful facts have a tendency to haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Like the fact that I was involved in a sequence of events that culminated in the death of Sophia Ayling.
The fact is killing me. I can no longer bear the thought of going home alone tonight only to be confronted by the remains of yesterday’s lasagna in my refrigerator and “Ten Things You Should Know About Getting Ahead in Your Job” on my bedside table. I’m tempted to chuck one of my principles out the window. After all, I found out earlier today that I was once a naive and pathetic constable. I’m tempted to be a careless chief inspector. Just for once, perhaps.
Chiefly, an inspector who cares less.
I hit my brakes, making an abrupt U-turn in a loud screech of wheels.
Claire Evans told the whole world this morning that she wanted a divorce. But by the evening, she had clearly changed her mind:
“I’m going to stick with you, Mark. I promise.”