Pseudology

FIVE: dirt

Vinna stood in front of the mirror. Her frizzy hair was damp from the shower, and her clothes hung off her a little at the waist and hips- stress had done this. Stress had wrecked her. 

She pushed her hair behind her ears and tried to smile. There were ugly bags under her eyes and her lips were cracked, but at least she was clean. She felt it, anyway. Her skin had a tinge of the grey to it and her stomach was tied in knots: Vinna knew why she was like this. 

She’d been dumped in a pool of rejection. 

Since childhood, Vinna hadn’t faced much rejection: admittedly, aged seventeen she’d been rejected from the University of Bristol to study Forensics, and ended up going to Queen Mary, University of London a year later. Also, she supposed that she’d been rejected by her second boyfriend, Dan, but really she’d done the rejecting. But in her mid-twenties, Vinna hadn’t felt the same sting in a long while. Her fingers shook when she placed her badge inside her coat pocket, feeling the cool metal underneath the skin of her fingers.  She slung the coat over her shoulders: rejection from the case was difficult. Unfair. 

But what had truly been bothering her was the fact that the case file had gone missing. Inside that file locked the key to her career- a flaming, bright star in the otherwise dark murkiness of the London police. It included taped interview manuscripts and typescripts, key witness details, photos of the murder… everything. She’d been browsing- grim, she admitted it- over the case for an hour before she’d left it on the desk. It’d been a curious case, and a notorious one at that: everyone at the station, new or old, knew of the case, duly dubbed The Red Case, because of the brutal way in which a boy of seven and a woman of thirty two were murdered in the garden of their grand family home. It’d been all over the news. 

 ‘a terrible tragedy’ 

‘truly awful’ 

‘ugly deaths’

‘poor boys’

Vinna had been fourteen at the time, curious of the gruesomeness which plastered the papers around the country. It was partly the reason why she joined the police- it had inspired her to be vigilant and to want to do good in the world, which was horrendously cliche but true. She’d once watched her younger brother pick at the hairs over a caterpillar until it surrendered its life, skin mutated and body limp. It repelled her- not because of the gore but because of the injustice- and yet captivated her. Hurt her, even. She’d found the case- undeniably grotesque and bitterly documented for over a year- utterly irresistible, even after nearly a decade. It was like an addictive story which ends mid-sentence: she, like a dedicated reader, needed a proper, fitting ending. And yet for the wrecked family, for the unknown killer… there was no end. 

The file had only been on her desk- so who had taken it? Vinna shut the front door of her flat behind her and headed out onto the wet pavement as she mulled over what had happened. 

II 

Morton was fitful with dreams. Ensnared in his bedsheets, hands clasped at his bedding, he muttered over and over as images dripped across his eyes like a leaking tap, each memory merging together. 

They'd lived in a big house when they were young. A charming, eighteenth century Palladian style house, though not a mansion, with rambling rooms of high ceilings and ornate wallpaper. There were stone pillars which framed the front doors which were supporting an ornate collection of stone cupids and deers which sat on top of a porch. Either side of the house in a symmetrical manner were towering glass windows which overlooked the expansive front gardens, which were separated by a sweeping, romantic drive crowded each side with tall, shading furs. The stone of the building was weathered, the colour of a storm: ivy crept up the sides of the house and spread over to the east side, the splattered green often punctured with purple and pink in the spring. Beautiful walled gardens, added in the Victorian period, were around the back of the house, crawling with exotic plants, their feet covered with bushes and shrubs.