Sadler said, “Make it priority,” and the pathologist organized my body’s removal. A polythene body bag was brought in and I was carefully loaded into it. I admit, I turned away at that point, and I groaned with self-pity when the bag’s zipper was pulled up over my head so that my defiled carcass was completely hidden from view. The ratchet sound seemed so final. I only heard myself being carried from the bedroom because I refused to watch.
The police chief (I’d heard him referred to as SIO, which presumably means Senior Investigating Officer) conferred with his two detectives, then gave further instructions to the forensic team. Fibres from the bedroom’s carpet and the blood-soaked quilt were to be taken and a close inch-by-inch search of not just this room, but the lounge area and second bedroom, was to be undertaken. Of course blood samples would be used to ensure they all matched (the sick bastard who had even chopped off my genitals might have bled too if there had been a struggle, although the best guess was that my heart was pierced while I lay zonked out on the bed), and naturally everything was to be dusted for fingerprints (of which there would be many—mine, the maid’s, workmen’s, previous guests’… the list would be extensive). Apparently satisfied, Sadler departed from the crime scene and I wondered if he would go straight to my home with the awful news.
Oh, dear God, I thought. How will she take it? And how will she tell Primrose? They’d both be devastated. No, worse than that, much worse. This time I didn’t bawl: I wept. I wept quietly for my wife and daughter.
The tears fell until I finally ran out of them. I drifted through to the lounge and found a different corner to mourn in. Dropping to the floor I raised my knees, wrapped my arms around my shins, and rested my forehead on my kneecaps. I’ve no idea how much time went by,* but eventually I found myself alone. It wasn’t dark outside, but shadows were long and the streets below were filled with even more traffic and pedestrians. Obviously it was rush hour, which lasted a couple of hours, sometimes more as this was London.
*Time is a funny thing in this strange dimension I’d found myself inhabiting. There are kind of blank-outs, whole bits go missing, like in dreams; or like in movies, where every scene is usually relevant to the plot rather than following a natural linear, moment-by-moment progression. Maybe you sink so far down into your own psyche that you reach the subconscious level, which might preclude any tangible thoughts and images. I mean, even if you’re big on dreams, you never ever spend the whole night dreaming; there are long gaps from which you emerge into different scenarios once more.
I cursed myself. I should have left with the senior cop, followed him to my home, maybe even hitched a lift in his car so that I could be there when he broke the news. It was time to go home: I was desperate to be with my family.
I suppose I could have passed through the building’s thick outer wall and floated down to the busy street below, but for some reason that I couldn’t quite fathom, I opted to take the normal route. I kind of walked/drifted through the suite’s closed door and the blue-and-white exclusion tape strung across it, past the uniformed cop on guard duty, then along the high-ceiling hallway to the stairs. I could have taken the lift, but how would I have pressed the buttons? I passed one or two people along the way and did my best to avoid contact with them, just as if my body was solid.
There were a lot of journalists and photographers in the reception area, those by the lifts being held at bay by the frustrated under-manager and a surfer porter. I slunk by them all like a celeb trying to avoid paparazzi— irrational, I know, because I was perfectly aware that I could not be seen, but I was not as yet used to the condition.
Outside, the street was full of bustle: traffic, commuters hurrying by, pretty girls in short skirts, long skirts, or sexy trousers. Every one of them had a place to go and lived inside their own bodies. Me, I’d become a bodiless nomad. Rudely disinterred from my own host body. A mystery even to myself. Especially to myself.
On this fine autumn evening, imbibers from the pub across the road spilled out onto the pavement and tables were set outside a nearby cafe, with several occupied by customers who, no doubt, were familiar with the Continental practice, a custom that never worked well when one of our winters came along. Despite the chill in the air they all seemed happy enough, which seemed particularly cruel to me. Illogically, I wanted them to share my misery, needed them to empathize with my acute loneliness. I think really I just yearned for them to be aware of my plight. Or maybe I wanted to be among them in human form.
Uhhh! Someone had walked straight through me. It was most definitely imaginary, but I thought I felt myself sucked along with the person for a brief moment, a sensation so slight, so subtle, that I wondered if it had really happened. I gave a little shiver and pushed away the memory of his sour visions; yet I experienced an unexpected regret at having left him. The man walked on, unaffected it seemed, save for the sudden familiar “someone- walking-over-my-grave” shudder he gave.
Pulling myself together, I moved away from the hotel steps and drifted along the pavement, catching a shoulder or arm now and again, passing through any body when it could not be avoided. But then I became aware of something new that was weird and a little worrying: I seemed to be tuning in to the collective consciousness. By that I mean I was beginning to experience the unspoken words of these rush-hour people, their intellections: their imaginings, notions, perceptions, cogitations, deliberations and reflections, together with their shared apprehensions, all their cerebral musing suddenly breaking through and coming at me like a great tidal wave of mass thought, so that I had to squat against a wall and cover my ears as if it was their noise tormenting me, piercing my mind, not their conjoined brain yammerings. Almost overwhelmed, I crouched against the brickwork, pressing my hands against my ears even harder and yelling at the top of my own soundless voice to mute their cacophony.
Dear God, my mind screamed, this is going to drive me crazy.
Then, within seconds, something in me started to take control. It was as if I had some inbuilt protection unit that could nullify the “sound”. This was my first lesson in asserting some governance over my new status—I think the mere wish to rebuff the assault, coupled with the “physical” act of blocking my ears and “yelling loudly” was the catalyst that exerted my own will and saved me from going loco. Ultimately, it was instinctive, just as many actions in real life are.
Eventually, I got to my feet and moved cautiously onwards. I realized it would probably take the best part of an hour to reach home at this rate (had it taken that long to get back to the hotel last night? I couldn’t remember) and I became impatient. Experimentally, I tried leaping into the air, arms and legs straight in superhero mode, and kicking off with my toes. I could have been a normal human being for all the good it did. I rose about ten inches before settling down on concrete again. Cursing, I tried once more and the result was the same. I thought of those floating dreams again, and as I did, I was back in the air, just a couple of feet for sure, but learning another lesson about myself.
On the pavement once more, I willed myself to float—no, I imagined myself floating—and that was when I rose anew. The earth still had some gravitational pull, because I sunk yet again, although I now had some idea of how it was done. Just as in the old dreams, I thought of myself in the air, launched myself, and there I was riding high.
Whooping with glee, despite the dull heaviness in my heart, I pushed—imagined—myself a little further this time, and further I went. In spite of my troubled mind, I gloried in this small achievement. In truth, it was exhilarating, a tiny oasis of delight in a wretched day. I was airborne, had risen above mere mortals—that sudden conceit caused me to think on. Was I truly lost to this world, then?
Traffic and people passed beneath me and I gazed down at both with wonderment and trepidation. I asked myself the same question, but in different ways: Was I really dead? I mean, do ghosts get excited?
“Couldn’t be dead,” I said to myself as I sank back to earth. I just didn’t feel dead, I kept reminding myself. But I’d stood over my own vandalized corpse, so I had to be dead. Then why was I here, gliding through the air, invisible to my fellow-men in human form, but aware of everything around me? I think, therefore I am, said Descartes, and he was a clever guy. Well, I thought, but did I exist?
I touched concrete without feeling a bump and immediately two young girls passed right through me. Just a frisson of alien incursion—a fleeting vision of a good-looking young guy, obviously the topic of the girls’ giggly conversation. Something more though, a covert, brooding envy underlying the pleasure. Within the blink of an eye, I understood that one of the hurrying girls had a date with a new boyfriend, while the other girl, who pretended to share her companion’s anticipation, secretly harboured a nasty streak of jealousy deep within her heart. The insight was quickly gone, but a sour memory lingered with me. I shivered, because the residue of bad will was slow to fade and tainted my own temporary lightness. I resolved to pay even more attention to oncoming strangers—these partial absorptions were way too unsettling. (Interestingly, the one with the new boyfriend was the plainer of the
