Reza steps aside to let Rob and I pass. I hear Rob telling her we’ll just be a minute to get our things. He guides me back to the bedroom. There, away from the others, he turns to me and says something, but I’m still floating overhead, and I can’t make out what he’s saying. With effort, I drop back into my body and tune in.
‘Where did you put your bag?’ he’s asking me. He looks around the room and moves towards Kate’s Birkin.
‘That’s not mine,’ I say. ‘That’s Kate’s.’ I point at my own bag, lying on the floor by the bed. He picks that up and my coat too.
‘Ready?’ he asks.
I shake my head. No. I can’t do this. There’s no way I can identify a body.
Rob walks over to me and takes me by the top of the arms. He looks into my eyes. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there with you. We’ll do it together.’
He takes my hand and leads me back out into the hall where Reza and Nunes are waiting. We follow them outside, past Sebastian, and then down the stairs and into the car they came in. It’s not a police car but a normal car and Rob and I sit in the back, holding hands, not speaking.
I can’t speak. My mind is a dense fog I can’t fight my way through. Nothing makes sense. How can Kate be dead? It’s not possible. It can’t be her. Kate knows how to swim. She can’t have drowned. They must have made a mistake. I’ll walk in and see a stranger lying on a slab. Someone who looks like her but isn’t her.
Before I know it we’ve stopped and Reza and Nunes are getting out of the car. I look out the window. We’re on a nondescript side street, parked in front of a grey building with no visible windows, a bit like a prison. Rob helps me out the car and steers me towards the building’s door, which Reza is holding open for us.
Everything passes in a blur as we’re led down a corridor and through more doors, the kind you get in hospitals. The only thing I really register is the smell, part bleach and part rust and part something else that I can only identify as decay. My head swims and I think I might faint. Reza tells us she’s going to find someone and will be back in a moment. Nunes stays with us and I glance at him, noticing his hand is resting on the gun strapped to his waist. It feels like he’s guarding us. I collapse down into a plastic chair.
I try to focus on small details to stop from thinking about what comes next – the colour of the walls, avocado green; the sign in Portuguese alongside an icon of a camera with a slash through it, and another one telling people not to smoke. Who would want to take photographs in here? I wonder. And then I think, Damn, I need a cigarette. I can feel the need for it as an itch inside my lungs. I sit on my hands to stop them fidgeting, not wanting Nunes to look at me with any more suspicion.
After what feels an eternity Reza returns, and with her is a middle-aged man in green scrubs and white plastic clogs. He’s thin and pale, as though working here has sucked the life out of him. I stand up to greet him.
‘This is Doctor Correia,’ Reza says. ‘He’s doing the autopsy.’
He shakes my hand and I feel shocked by the warmth of it, having expected it to feel cold as marble. He smiles kindly at me then pulls a clipboard from under his arm. ‘I’m going to show you a photograph,’ he says.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You just need to tell us if it is your friend or not.’
‘A photograph?’ I say, feeling a huge rush of relief that I don’t have to see an actual dead body.
He winces. ‘I’m afraid there’s been some decomposition. We’re lucky the water was cold and so it’s not as bad as it might have been.’
I place a hand to my mouth to hold back the vomit as black dots dance in front of my eyes.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ the doctor suggests.
I sink back into the plastic chair.
‘Can I make the identification?’ Rob asks, heroically stepping up. ‘I knew her too.’
‘No,’ I interject. ‘No. I need to do it.’ I don’t know why I’ve said it. I don’t want to look at any photograph, am terrified of what I might see and never be able to unsee, but I also know I need to do it. If I don’t make the identification, how will I ever believe it, either way?
Before I can allow second thoughts to stop me, I stand up again and reach for the clipboard. Rob stands with me, at my side, arm around me. The doctor hands it over, turning it around so I can see the large photograph tacked to the front. I gasp and hear Rob do the same. The photo shows a woman from the neck up. Her eyes are closed and her skin is grey, tinged slightly green. Her eyes are closed, the eyelids bruised blue, and her lips, bloodless and pale, are slightly parted giving a glimpse of swampy blackness inside the mouth. Her face is puffy and bloated and her hair is bedraggled and wet, sticking in slime-like tendrils to her neck and the side of her face.
‘Is it her?’ the doctor asks gently.
I stare at the photograph, trying to find something in it that will prove me wrong. Rob squeezes my hand so hard the bones crunch but I don’t feel it. I shake my head, trying to blot the hideous image of death away but knowing too that I will see it for the rest of my life every time I close my eyes.
‘Orla? Do you recognise this woman?’ Reza asks.
I force myself to look away from the photograph. The sob erupts out of me as I sink to the ground. ‘Yes. That’s her. That’s Kate.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
There are voices but it’s as if they’re on the other side of a metal door – echoey and indistinct, and there are hands, pulling and prodding at me, though I barely notice them. I’ve retreated into some small, terrifying dark cave inside my head, but even in here the knowledge that Kate is dead roars around me like a hurricane.
That photograph. I will never be able to unsee it. Her face – bloodless as stone, swollen to almost splitting. My brain tries furiously to black it out, erase it from my mind, but it’s going nowhere. It has staked a claim. I try to picture her alive instead, cheeks flushed, eyes sparking, a witty retort flying off her tongue, but no matter how hard I try I can’t see it. The image of her dead is now superimposed over every memory I have of her.
There’s an alarm going off – an odd keening sound, and I wonder for a split second if it’s a fire alarm until I realise the sound is coming from me. I clamp my fist to my mouth, trying to block it, but there’s no way of stopping it. It’s a gut-wrenching, agonising pain that’s being dredged from the deepest part of my being. A howl like an animal caught in a gin trap, serrated teeth gnawing through bone. I’m only vaguely aware of Rob pulling me to my feet and wrapping his arms around me.
‘It’s OK,’ he whispers into my ear, his voice filled with shock. ‘I’ve got you.’
I cling to him like he’s a life raft. I bury my head against his chest and my howl burrows into him. He absorbs it and when my shoulders start to shake with sobs he pulls me closer, rocking me.
After a few minutes the shock of it starts to ebb. Rob pulls away slightly, pale and still reeling from the shock, and I draw my hands across my face, pressing my palms hard against my eyes. That image of Kate is burned into my retinas. Not even pressing until I see stars makes it vanish.
‘Orla, if you could please sign here.’
I turn my head to find the pathologist is there, waiting, still holding the clipboard. I shrink backwards, afraid he’s about to show me the photograph again, but when he hands me the clipboard I see he’s removed the photo and it’s just a form. He offers me a pen. ‘It confirms that it’s Kate,’ he says, indicating where I should sign.
I scrawl my name on the dotted line.
‘What happens now?’ Rob asks him, and I see that he too has been crying.
‘We’ll carry out the autopsy and confirm how she died,’ the pathologist says. His English is excellent but his accent is so thick it takes me a while to understand. What does he mean that they need to confirm how she died?
‘I thought she drowned,’ I say.
‘Yes, but the body shows signs of trauma to the skull.’
‘What?
’ I ask confused. ‘Someone hit her?’
‘Or she banged her head as she fell. It’s difficult to say. We’ll know more after the autopsy. Because of the nature of her death we’ll be prioritising it. We should have the results fairly quickly.’
I look at Rob who is frowning too. Like me, when we heard Kate had drowned, he must have assumed it was an accident.
‘You’re saying that maybe it wasn’t an accident?’ Rob presses.
Reza interrupts. ‘We don’t know. Let’s not make any assumptions.’
‘Maybe she kill herself. She could have jumped, then hit her head on something when she was in the water.’
I spin around to see Nunes is speaking. Reza glares a warning at him to shut his mouth.
‘It wasn’t suicide,’ I tell him, outraged at the suggestion. How dare he? I turn back to the doctor. ‘She didn’t kill herself,’ I insist.
‘Was she depressed?’ he asks. ‘Taking any medication?’
I can’t believe it. They’re not listening to me. ‘She didn’t kill herself,’ I repeat angrily. Kate’s been on and off antidepressants for decades but she’s never been suicidal.
‘We’ll do a toxicology report,’ the doctor reassures me.
Oh shit, I think in alarm. What about all the other drugs she took that night? Those will all show up on the toxicology report. Another thought strikes me that until now hadn’t occurred: it’s possible Kate had some kind of adverse reaction to the drugs she took. I’ve heard stories of people on coke and other drugs thinking they could fly and throwing themselves off roofs and balconies trying to prove it. It’s a possibility, and certainly no more out there than the other ones I’ve come up with so far.
‘Let’s let the doctor do his post mortem,’ Reza says, gently. ‘I have officers looking at the cameras all along the riverfront, trying to establish where she fell in the water.’
The doctor shakes our hands, takes his leave and walks off.
‘What do we do?’ Rob asks Reza. ‘How long will it take? How do we arrange for the body to be flown home?’
‘The public prosecutor will open an inquiry,’ she says.
‘Prosecutor? I don’t understand,’ I stammer.
‘It is standard for suspicious deaths.’
‘Right,’ I answer, nodding and frowning at the same time.
‘In Portugal, once the body is released to the family, it must be cremated or buried within seventy-two hours,’ Reza explains. ‘After the autopsy we can help you arrange this. Or your embassy can.’
How can we be talking about cremations and burials? How is any of this real? It’s a nightmare and I need someone to pinch me awake.
‘OK,’ Rob says, taking charge. He seems as stunned as me but luckily is holding it together better than I am. I’m so grateful that he’s here. I don’t think I could do any of this alone.
‘You should call her family and friends,’ Reza says to us, ‘and let them know before the media starts to report it. We’ll release her name to the public in a few hours’ time.’
A shudder racks me. How in God’s name will I tell her mum?
‘And you need to stay in the country until we’ve finished the inquiry.’ Nunes’s eyes flash to me as he says it, and maybe I’m imagining it but there’s a hard look in them, as though he suspects me of pushing Kate in the river or something.
‘How long will that be?’ Rob asks.
‘Possibly a day, maybe longer,’ he answers. ‘We can’t say for sure.’
‘But we have a baby at home,’ I interject. ‘We can’t stay.’
‘You can leave,’ Nunes says to Rob. ‘She needs to stay.’ He jerks her head in my direction and it feels sharp as a nettle sting.
‘But why?’ Rob protests on my behalf. ‘It’s not like Orla had anything to do with it.’
Reza interrupts. ‘It is just the way we do things here.’
‘Fine,’ Rob says wearily. He turns to me. ‘Let’s go. Can we go?’ he checks with Reza.
She nods and steps aside to let us by. I’m a few steps past her when I stop and turn back around. ‘The men – Joaquim and Emanuel – did you find them yet? Did you speak to them?’
She shakes her head and I let Rob guide me to the exit and outside into the warm night-time air.
We don’t speak. I just lean against Rob, folded into him, my fingers clutching his shirt. The howl is still there, trapped in my chest, a typhoon of grief just waiting to be unleashed.
‘What do we do?’ I finally manage to whisper.
‘Let’s get a drink,’ he answers.
I nod. We start to walk without any sense of direction but it doesn’t take long before we find a bar, signalling us with its glowing sign. My gut lurches at the sight of it. It reminds me of the Blue Speakeasy sign. Kate’s voice calls suddenly in my head. Her laughter rings around me so loud I think for a moment she’s there and I turn to look for her but of course she isn’t. She isn’t anywhere.
Now we’re away from that awful mortuary place I can’t help but wonder if it was all a hideous mistake. What if it wasn’t her? What if I got it wrong and identified the wrong person, someone who looks like her but isn’t her? But Rob agreed. It was her.
As we stumble inside the bar like battle-weary soldiers and collapse at a small table, I catch myself thinking how not even an hour ago Rob and I were discussing whether or not Kate was capable of faking her own disappearance. Now I wish to God she was.
Guilt makes me bury my head in my hands, elbows resting on the tabletop. How could I have believed her capable of such a thing? While I was there contemplating it with Rob, her body was being pulled from the water, already puffy and bloated and … I scrunch my eyes shut trying to blot the image from my mind.
I try not to think about her disappearing beneath waves, unconscious, drifting to the bottom of the river. How dark and cold. What a horrible way to die. And there I was, asleep and oblivious to it all as it was happening. Though they didn’t say for sure when she fell in, did they?
‘How can she be dead?’ I ask Rob, lifting my head an inch from the tabletop.
‘What do you want to drink?’ he asks me in reply. He’s already standing, making for the bar, too impatient to wait for the incredibly slow waiter service that seems to be the rule of thumb in Lisbon.
I shake my head. I don’t know. He heads for the bar and comes back a minute later with two shot glasses filled to the brim with clear liquid. Without a word we knock the drinks back. It’s tequila and it burns the back of my throat before hitting my stomach like liquid flame. I shiver and become aware of how cold I am. The chill of the mortuary has seeped into my bones and numbed my flesh. My teeth start to chatter and Rob gets up and puts his coat around my shoulders. ‘It’s shock,’ he tells me.
As my body goes rigid, tensing against the cold that has wrapped its way around me like tendrils of steel, he heads to the bar and comes back with a Coke. ‘Drink this,’ he tells me. ‘The sugar will help.’
My hand shakes as I pick up the glass and it rattles against my teeth but a few minutes later I can feel the effect of the sugar rush. My body starts to relax, though the cold is still so bone-deep I wonder if I’ll ever feel warm again.
Rob has another couple of shot glasses lined up in front of us. I reach for one and empty it into my Coke glass. I feel the sudden, overwhelming urge to get drunk. It might be the only way to obliterate these images from my mind and to deal with the reality of the giant black hole that’s opened up in the world in the space that Kate once occupied.
How can she be dead? I feel like I’m never going to stop asking this question because I’m never going to get an answer to it that makes sense.
‘What do you think happened?’ Rob asks, staring into his drink.
‘I don’t know.’ So many thoughts and conjectures race through my mind. What was she doing by the water? Why did she lie to me about the call she was on earlier that night, and who was she talking to? Why did she hire escorts and why did she want me to believ
e I’d slept with one? There are so many questions and now I’ll never get answers.
‘Why was she out by the water?’ Rob asks, the same question bothering him.
‘Maybe she wanted to go clubbing,’ I suggest. ‘Or she went for a walk.’ I pause. A fragment of memory comes back. The glimmer of water under moonlight. Was I there? Or is this something I’m pulling from my imagination?
‘You don’t think that policeman was right do you, that she would kill herself?’ Rob asks.
‘No!’ I say loudly. ‘There’s no way Kate killed herself. She was talking about buying a house, having kids … she had all these plans for the future.’
‘We should really call her mum,’ says Rob, glancing at his watch.
Oh God. I take a huge gulp of my drink, feeling the head-giddiness of the alcohol start to kick in. I pull out my phone and scroll for Kate’s mum’s number. ‘What do I say?’ I ask Rob.
‘Do you want me to do it?’ he asks and I smile at him for the generosity of the offer.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It should be me.’
Before I can think too hard about it I knock back another shot and hit dial. My stomach knots with apprehension. It’s late, so I wonder if she’ll pick up but she surprises me by answering on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep.
‘Hi,’ I say, my own voice coming out as a squeak. ‘It’s Orla. Sorry to wake you.’ Sorry? Why am I saying sorry for waking her? What I’m really sorry for is that I’m about to shatter her world. I’m sorry that after this moment she’ll probably never sleep another night of peace in her life.
‘Is it Kate?’ she asks, sounding more alert. I picture her sitting up in bed, maybe reaching to turn on the light. ‘Did you find her?’
She knows. I can hear it in her tone, the edge of fear creeping into her voice, that she’s trying hard to disguise.
‘Yes,’ I say, forcing out the words. ‘I’m sorry.’
The Weekend Away Page 17
