Memento Mori: Mors Immatura

Chapter One

I knew that I shouldn't have looked. I should have kept cycling, kept my head down, and not been tempted by the group of rubber-neckers who gathered at the side of the canal to look at the bloated body that floated there.

A police officer, who had clearly lost the game of 'rock-paper-scissors' with his partner, was trying to reach the body with a broken tree branch. Any minute now, he was going to lose his balance, and fall into the basin.

The young woman, dressed in a hot pink tank top that was two sizes too small for her, and ripped denim shorts, stood out amongst the other watchers who were bundled up and dressed for the Scottish November weather. She ran amongst them, but they stood, oblivious to her obvious distress. She screamed and shouted, waving her hands before their eyes, but they gave no reaction.

She turned, sobbing, and made eye contact with me. I wasn't quick enough to look away, and she knew that I'd seen her.

"Hey! Hey you!" She called after me, as I tried to peddle faster. I shouldn't have looked. I shouldn't have gotten myself involved. "Help me! Please!"

The anguished wail stopped me; it was heartbreaking. I looked back, and she was slumped on the grass, howling in despair.

"You're okay," I lied, and knelt by her. I rested a hand on her shoulder. There was a splash, followed by a string of expletives; the policeman was now floating, like a massive fluorescent rubber duck, in the Maryhill Locks. The crowd cheered as any respectable Glaswegian would at seeing a police officer in unfortunate circumstances.

"Aw, fur fuck sake, ya dobber!" His partner held his face in his hands. "Yi've only goan and fucked the crime scene!"

"F-fuck you, Patterson!" The policeman grabbed hold of the corpse, and pushed it towards the crowd, and doggie-paddled after it. Patterson reached down, and pulled his colleague out of the water.

"That's pure manky!" One of the kids giggled at the sopping wet officer, as he stood, canal water cascading out of him.

"Gonnae call it in?" The officer sat on the edge of the canal, and pulled off his combat boots.

"Aye, aye, what did you think I was doing while you were off having a swim? Standing with my hauns up ma arse?"

"Help me get it out."

The two officers hoisted the corpse out of the water and onto the grassy embankment. The skin was mottled and grey, and bloat had started to set in. That's probably what brought her to the surface. The pink tank top and denim shorts were unmistakable. The officer who had fallen into the canal pulled off his jacket, and laid it over the corpse.

The wailing woman was now silent, and staring at what remained of her.

"I'm sorry," I helped her to her feet. "Come on. We'll go to the police station, and make a statement."

***

The desk sergeant looked at me over her half-moon glasses. Maryhill Police Station was as grim on the inside as it was on the outside. A dark brown, brick building, it loomed over the street, but still in the long shadows cast by the Wyndford High Rises.
The reception area was sparse; the off-white paint was beginning to flake and the milky-grey floor tiles needed more than a good scrub to get back to whatever colour they were supposed to be. A notice board with posters warning against drugs, loan sharks and domestic abuse were the only pops of colour in the room.

"Who is it you're wanting to speak to?" The sergeant's bright red nails clicked away on her keyboard, her voice muffled by the plexi-glass screen that shielded her from the general public .

"DCI Constance Samuels, please," I chewed my lip as I waited; a nervous habit that I'd picked up as a child, and had never been able to break.

"And who are you?"