As Maya began to get ready for work, she found herself reliving the scene and recalled the feeling that they had missed something. She now regretted not saying anything to Chris at the time, but it was too late now. She tried to convince herself that nothing was wrong, and it was all in her mind. Perhaps it was the secret she was keeping which led to her unease. But still the feeling lingered. Was Karl Gorman’s untimely death really non-suspicious?
Time.
When I think of time, I think of the hourglass sand timer in The Wizard of Oz. You know the one the Wicked Witch of the West uses, so that Dorothy knows how long she has left until the witch kills her. I also think of the impatient staccato of the chess clock, and the soporific ticking of my parents’ gold carriage clock that used to keep pride of place on the mantelpiece. Isn’t it curious that the gold clock is given as a symbol of retirement?
I always think it’s like giving the retiree a sand timer, so they can measure how much longer they have before they die; now they’re no longer employed as a functioning member of society. Mind you, old age doesn’t bother me anymore, people should be grateful to make it to sixty-five. Not everyone does.
Nobody ever realises how precious time is until it is too late. Until the moment it is about to run out – until there is no more time. Take youth, for example. The saying goes that it is wasted on the young and how very true that is. Young people don’t appreciate the value of education, the beauty of their young bodies or what it is to have a life free of responsibility, until it is too late.
It’s only when you’re middle-aged and overweight, carrying a crippling mortgage and fighting to stay at the top of your game that you can look back and appreciate that you once had it all. It’s only then you realise how easily you frittered it away due to the ignorance and arrogance of youth.
Not long after Louisa and I first started dating, she bought me a mug which had a picture of a cartoon dog on it, lazing in a hammock. It wore a large, floppy sun hat and had a beer in one paw and a cigar in the other. The caption read ‘a moment enjoyed is never wasted’. It’s only now, so many years later, that I realise how very true that saying is. It makes me think about all those wasted moments that could have been spent elsewhere. Those precious moments that should have been spent with someone else, anywhere else, doing anything else.
This leads to regret and the thing with regret is that it grows like a cancer. It festers and expands until it becomes all encompassing. It weighs heavy like a dirty secret; it is a gnawing, ceaseless, gripe. I think that regret is the cancer of the soul – it’s enough to drive you quite mad!
I don’t think Karl Gorman realised his time was up. He slipped away quite peacefully. Too peacefully. A huge part of me wished I could have watched him writhing and screaming in agony. I would have loved to have witnessed the terror in his eyes as he realised that it was all over for him. But he didn’t die like that. It was quick and painless.
I wonder, if Karl Gorman had known that he was about to die, would he have begged and pleaded to save his pathetic waste of a life? I like to think that he would have done. I love to imagine him doing it.
I would still have killed him anyway.
4
Beech Field police station was a modern building of three storeys. The sandstone-coloured brick and blue window frames and doors were typical of a Carillion police building. The SOCO office was situated at the back on the first floor, adjacent to the CID offices and above the cells. The bubble of conversation and ringing phones accompanied Maya down the corporate blue corridor.
Her footsteps mirrored the rhythmic pounding against metal from an unhappy prisoner in the cells. Her curiosity was piqued as she wondered who had been arrested and what for. One of the things she loved about the job was not knowing what each day had in store for her. Gales of laughter and the sound of a familiar voice stopped Maya in her tracks at the office door.
‘Honestly. I shit you not. She’d been talking to him through the kitchen door. The top panel of glass was all speckled, so it obscured the view. When she realised it wasn’t Doctor Granger, she was so flustered she just kept saying how he was dead – definitely, definitely dead. I’d have pissed myself laughing there and then if I hadn’t felt so sorry for her.’ Chris laughed raucously.
There was more laughter as Maya braced herself and walked into the office with a sheepish grin on her face and hands held up in supplication. The laughter turned to mocking cheers as Chris stepped forward and gave her an avuncular pat on the back.
‘Ladies and gentlemen! May I present, SOCO Maya Barton, who not only sees dead people, but talks to them too.’ Chris bowed and waved
