Pinned Down to a Moment

Round the corner, round the back, he’s looking, searching, hunting it down. It’s there, at the edge of memory, waiting for the right word, the right symbol, to trick it out of hiding.

Unimaginable complexities with this one. If he’d known, he would never have started out. He chews the hard skin at the side of his thumbnail, thinking, wondering. Two lines crease the skin between his eyebrows; a frown line that’s getting deeper.

She’s there in the photograph, and she’s laughing. The sun shines on her, making her hair seem aflame. It’s dark hair, but the way the light catches it brings out something of the blaze in it. You can’t see her face properly. He rephrases. You can see her face, it isn’t hidden, she’s facing the camera full on, laughing, alive, full of enjoyment (these are the assumptions he makes from the image in front of him, not having been there himself, never having met her). But you can’t see all of it. There’s a fringe of hair covering her forehead. There are sunglasses, so you can’t see her eyes, whether the laughter is in them too. Her hair is long, it forms a frame, you can’t see everything.

He stares at the picture, and his boss comes and stands behind him.

“You getting obsessed, Gary, lad?”

“No, guv. Just trying to work it out.”

His boss takes the print from his fingers and holds it closer to his face.

“Pretty girl,” he says. “Fucking shame.”

He hands the photograph back. His finger prints have marked it. He didn’t hold it by the edges like you should. It should be in a sleeve, although it isn’t really evidence, it doesn’t matter if they handle it. It’s just there, telling them what she looked like on a particular day when she seemed to be happy. He wants to treat it with respect, though. He was raised that way.

The friends have all been useless. Not that she had many. Or not that many came forward. There are two in the picture with her. One of them has been interviewed. Nobody knows where the other one is. Some of them think he’s dead, some that he just moved away and hasn’t been heard from since.

Questions like ‘when did he move away?’ are met with shrugs or blank looks. They don’t remember. But it can’t have been that long ago. This picture was only taken last summer. Less than a year has passed, and the man she’s standing with has disappeared. He has a name for him. He makes a note to carry out the usual checks – registered deaths, hospital records, their own files.

She looks back at him from the picture, and he feels like he knows her. As though he was at school with her, or met her at a party. He doesn’t think it’s work-related, this familiarity.

He looks again at the other two. The woman, he’s interviewed. No recognition there. She was just a woman with a life and the standard air of slight guilt mixed with fear and then the indignation that this was cutting into her time. The man, the mysterious disappearing man. Neither boyfriend, nor close friend, by all accounts. And yet, he’s standing proprietorially next to her, his arm around her shoulders. He isn’t smiling. He’s posing. He’s not relaxed, not enjoying himself. He’s there on sufferance, being made to exist in this photograph, being captured and recorded, pinned down to a moment. He’s wearing sunglasses too. It was a sunny day.

That arm around her. The hand resting on the curve of her shoulder, just slightly too much tension in its grip.

He shakes his head, puts the photograph down. He’s reading too much into this, he knows he is. It’s just a photograph of three friends who, according the the accounts given by one in the image and by others who knew them, weren’t all that close. Worked together. Drank together. Lived near each other.

He thinks about going home. His wife will be there already. He’s worked late, inadvertently, for the second night running. Sitting here, staring at that photograph. His wife never asks what case he’s working on. She knows better than that. And what would he tell her if she did ask? That he’s becoming obsessed with a face in a photograph? That he feels like he knows this woman staring out at him, but he knows he probably hasn’t met her.

It’s probably now. Just a few minutes ago it was definite. He didn’t know her; hadn’t met her. And now he thinks he might have.

Just, something. There, round the corner, round the back. Nagging at the edges of his mind.

He puts the photograph into a document sleeve, folds the edges round it, and slips it into his pocket. He switches everything off at his desk and goes home.

His wife’s eating when he gets in.

“Sorry I’m late, love.” He kisses her on the top of her head, takes the fork from her hand, puts the food on it into his own mouth. “Mmm. That’s good. Is there some for me?”

“In the pan, on the stove. Gerroff!” She snatches the fork back from him, laughing.

He pulls a plate from the cupboard, dishes up some food for himself, sits with her at the table. He toys with the food for a bit, thinking. Then he puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out the photograph. He puts it down on the table, to the left of her plate.

She stops eating, picks it up.

“What’s this?” she says, looking at it.

“Case I’m working on. Woman in the middle. She was found half burned, out on the playing fields, couple of weeks ago, a month, something like that. Almost unrecognisable. But we’ve got that picture and a name.”

“Hannah McBride,” is all she says.

“You knew her?” He puts his fork down and stares at his wife.

“I was at school with her.” She looks up at him. “Don’t you remember? You came with me to that reunion last year. It might be then that this was taken, actually. It looks like our old school in the background. Hannah McBride.” She puts the picture down, but keeps looking at it. “And she’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you bring this picture home?”

“I don’t know. I was looking at it and something was nagging. I felt like I knew her, but the name meant nothing.”

She looks at the picture again, then carries on eating. He does the same. They eat in silence until they are both finished. He started after her, but he still finishes first. Habit. Eating on the run. He needs to slow down, he knows.

His wife gets up from the table and clears the dishes. The picture sits on, where she left it, next to where her plate used to be.

“Do you know who the bloke is?” he asks her.

“Steve Hepworth,” she says, and her voice is dull. Flat.

“Were you at school with him, too?” He begins to wonder whether he might need to bring his wife in for questioning. That would be a novelty.

“No. He was older than us.” Still that dull, flat tone to her voice. Something stirs within him. Copper's instinct.

“But you knew him?” His voice goes cold. This isn’t a husband and wife conversation any more. This is a formal police interview, being conducted in his own kitchen.

She’s filling the dishwasher, taking her time, rinsing things off, stacking them neatly. He can wait. He’ll get there in the end. He sits back in his chair, his back to her, her back to him. She stays silent for ages. He waits.

“Do you want a brew?” she asks him.

“I’d rather have a beer,” he says.

She goes to the fridge and gets one out for him, opens it, hands it to him. He drinks some. He doesn’t speak.

“They had a funny relationship,” she says, eventually, while the kettle is boiling. He’s still got his back to her, but he knows how she’s standing. Leaning against the work unit, arms folded, one leg crossed in front of the other. She’s gazing off to one side, remembering.

“What do you mean, funny?” he says, gentler this time, no longer interrogating.

“I don’t know, exactly. Just something not right. I think he was a bully. Didn’t like other people much.” The kettle clicks off and he hears her sigh, hears her turn round and pour water out onto the teabag in the mug. “I never knew what she saw in him.”

It feels strange, to be sitting here in the kitchen with her, trying to reconstruct someone’s life.

“What was she like?” he asks. He leans forward and pulls the photograph towards him, looking at her laughing face. He really wants to know, as well. This isn’t a professional question.

“She was a laugh. A bit dark. Great when she was in the mood, but if she didn’t want to know, you left her alone. There was a streak in her. Steely.”

She comes and sits at the table, looks at him looking at the picture. She doesn’t comment. She blows on her tea, tries to cool it, takes a sip. Too hot.

“That’s what made her and him so odd. That she could be so steely, and he walked over her.”

He knows she’s looking at him, but he doesn’t look up. He wants to look at this steely woman, hiding her eyes behind sunglasses, and laughing too hard in a photograph taken at some school reunion. He doesn’t think he did walk over her. He thinks that’s what did for her in the end. That she wouldn’t let him, and he snapped. He’s making assumptions again. He’s probably wrong, but a hunch is a hunch.

“Do you think he killed her?” she asks. He looks up then. She’s staring at him, and her expression is unreadable.

“Yes,” he says. “I do.”

He’ll have to find proof, but he’ll get there. He’ll go through all the statements again, call people back in, wear them down. He’ll get to the bottom of this.

He looks up at his wife. She’s crying. The photograph is still in his hands. He knows it’s wrong, but she’s more important than comforting his wife. He doesn’t move, and eventually his wife leaves the room. He sits on, looking at Hannah McBride. Looking at the girl in the picture, pinned down to a moment, and gone.

© J R Hargreaves 2006