Time of Death

What is this? Who left this here?

She grabbed the envelope and flipped it over as if there would be a sender’s address. Anything to delay reading what was in front of her. She eventually put the title page to one side and started to read:

Patient B, Special Agent Ren Bryce, first presented to me in 2007, having spent the previous nine years under the care of three different psychiatrists for bipolar disorder. During that time, she spent periods on and off medication, but declined psychotherapy until a month into her treatment with me.

OK…that’s OK.

Ren continued to read.

Ren Bryce has expressed overpowering feelings of guilt following a serious transgression during her time as an undercover agent with the Val Pando crime organization in 1998/9. Agent Bryce concealed vital information from her contact agent and still appears to be distressed by this. This was a period of high stress in Agent Bryce’s career and leaves me with concerns as to her capacity, then and now, to perform as an agent.

In 2008, Agent Bryce carried on a sexual relationship with a confidential informant during a homicide investigation in which he was a suspect. In the course of this, she experienced delusional thoughts and repeatedly engaged in risky behavior.

During this time, Agent Bryce has consistently refused medication and after a recent period of psychosis, failed to fill her prescription for the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa.

Following a careful analysis of Agent Bryce’s mental state, my recommendation is that she should be withdrawn from service as an FBI agent, pending further notice.

It is my considered opinion that Agent Bryce is a danger both to herself and to her colleagues.

Ren sat motionless on the stairs. She stared at Helen’s signature at the bottom of the page. And she knew one thing: this could not have been written by Helen Wheeler.

Could it?

30

Billy Waites was sitting at a table in the corner of the Hotel Teatro bar, where he and Ren had once spent the night. He had traveled from Breckenridge and had made it in the hour-and-a-half he had promised when she made the emergency call.

When she saw him, something shot through Ren that she couldn’t file; love, lust, sadness, pain. Billy looked up – nothing else moved, just those pale eyes.

Lust, sadness and pain. Love? There were too many months of burying the break-up to work that out.

Billy Waites had that tattooed thing. Ren hated the idea of tattoos, had talked friends out of getting tattoos, had talked herself out of getting a tattoo. But the right kind of man with a tattoo? It was a beautiful kind of dirty. And to contrast with the worked-out body and the ink, Billy Waites had a smile like a child on his birthday. Heart-melting. Ren smiled back.

Here we are again.

Billy pushed his big parka up along the leather seat to make room, but Ren sat opposite him.

‘Hello, mister,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said Billy. ‘Not even a peck?’

‘I’m too nervous. Look at my hands. What’s wrong with me?’

‘Aw,’ said Billy, and squeezed them between his.

‘Thanks. You look…’ amazing ‘…great.’

‘So do you.’

‘Ugh,’ said Ren. ‘I can not thank you enough for meeting me. I’m a mess.’

‘How are you doing?’ said Billy. ‘What’s up?’

‘Oh, Billy. Lots of things.’

‘Well, it is you, after all.’

‘I know.’ Ren paused. ‘It’s so great to see you.’ And already it’s killing me.

Billy was two feet away, across the table. How strange life is. A body you knew so well, but you no longer had the right to touch the same way. That strange physical space between two people that they spend their first encounters trying to close. Then, bam, it’s over and you bounce back to where you were in the first place as if it had never happened.

The arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I don’t know what it is about your arms.’ They fuck with my head.

Billy glanced down at them. ‘And I’m not even flexing.’ He flexed.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Ren. ‘I’m not in this for your personality.’

He laughed. ‘In what?’

‘Ooh,’ she said, ‘you’re quick.’ Quicker than me, clearly. She let her head fall to the table. He rubbed it gently. She looked up at him. ‘You’re like a bottle of champagne that I don’t want to pop the cork on.’

‘So you’re saying I don’t exist?’

Ren laughed. ‘Just – if I open the bottle…’

‘It’ll spray everywhere?’ said Billy. He raised his eyebrows.

‘Why did I say champagne?’ said Ren. ‘In fact, why did I come out with a Danielle Steele-style analogy in the first place?’

‘Yes. I think your relationship with champagne is more clear-cut than ours ever was…’

‘That’s kind of mean,’ said Ren. ‘And true.’

‘At least champagne never makes you feel bad.’

‘Hey, neither do you.’

‘But caring about me did.’

‘Big fat no to the therapy,’ said Ren. ‘I’m currently of the opinion that dwelling on my problems is making me feel worse.’

‘So, what’s up?’

Ren looked around. ‘Maybe we should go somewhere quieter. I’m not comfortable talking here. Why don’t you come to the house I’m sitting? It’s not far.’

‘Sure.’

He locked eyes with Ren; beautiful nervous eyes. A muscle on his bicep twitched. Ren’s gaze was drawn towards it.

She looked at him again. Billy Waites smiled.

No. More. Men: Rewind. Pause.

Ren and Billy sat side by side on Annie’s deeply uncomfortable sofa.

‘OK. Billy, I’m in trouble.’

His eyes immediately filled with concern. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She looked around. ‘OK…a file arrived on my doorstep tonight – a file whose contents I was familiar with. I’m talking about a personal file that no one should have had access to, but they did. Someone has doctored the file. Very well. Elements of truth and then total bullshit. But I’m the only one who can tell the difference. The person who was supposed to have written the file is dead. And I have no idea if anyone else has