Free Night Train by Martin Amis

jackhammers on castors. And Miriam's aren't a whole lot better.
           'I used to say, let her for the rest of her life wonder where she got her figure from. Let her try to piece it together. Her figure and her face. The legs? From Rhiannon. From Tom's mother.'
           There was a silence. Which I lived intensely, with my cigarette. This was my moment of rest.
           'Mike. Mike, there's something we now know about Jennifer that we want you to know about too. You ready for this?'
           'I'm ready.'
           'You didn't see the toxicology report. Tom made it disappear. Mike, Jennifer was on 'lithium'.'
           Lithium... I absorbed it—this lithium. In our city, in Drugburg here, a police quickly gets to know her pharmaceuticals. Lithium is a light metal, with commercial applications in lubricants, alloys, chemical reagents. But lithium carbonate (I think it's a kind of salt) is a mood stabilizer. There goes our clear blue sky. Because lithium is used in the treatment of what I have heard described (with accuracy and justice) as the Mike Tyson of mental disorders: Manic depression.
           I said, 'You never knew she had any kind of problem like that?'
           'No.'
           'You talk to Trader?'
           'I didn't tell Trader. With Trader I kind of talked around it. But no. No! Jennifer? Who do you know as steady as her?'
           Yeah, but people do things without people knowing. People kill, bury, divorce, marry, change sex, go nuts, give birth, without people knowing. People have triplets in the bathroom without people knowing.
           'Mike, it's funny, you know? I'm not saying it's any better. But with this we turned some kind of corner.'
           'Colonel Tom?'
           'He's back. I thought we'd lost him there. But he's back.'
           Miriam swiveled. There he stood, her husband: The heavy underlip, the scored orbits. Like 'he' was on lithium now. His mood was stabilized. He was gazing, steadily, through the universal fog.
           'See, Mike, we were looking for a why. And I guess we found one. But suddenly we don't have a who. Who was she, Mike?'
           I waited.
           'Answer that, Mike. Do it. If not you, who? Henrik Overmars? Tony Silvera? Take the time. Tom'll push you some compassionate. Do it. It has to be you, Mike.'
           'Why?'
           'You're a woman.'
           And I said yes. I said yes. Knowing that what I'd find wouldn't be any kind of Hollywood ketchup or bullshit but something absolutely somber. Knowing that it would take me through my personal end-zone and all the way to the other side. Knowing too—because I think I did know, even then—that the death of Jennifer Rockwell was offering the planet a piece of new news: Something never seen before.
           I said, 'You're sure you want an answer?'
           'Tom wants an answer. He's a police. And I'm his wife. It's okay, Mike. You're a woman. But I think you're tough enough.'
           'Yeah,' I said, and my head dropped. I'm tough enough. And getting less proud of it every hour.
           She turned again toward the waiting figure of her husband, and slowly nodded. Before she moved to join him, and before I followed with my head still down, Miriam said, 'Who the hell was she, Mike?'
           I think we all have this image in our heads now, and the sounds. We have these frames of film. Tom and Miriam have them. I have them. In the small interrogation room I watched them form on the other side of Trader's eyes—these frames of film that show the death of Jennifer Rockwell.
           You wouldn't see her. You'd see the wall behind her head. Then the first detonation, and its awful flower. Then a beat, then a moan and a shudder. Then the second shot. Then a beat, a gulp, a sigh. Then the third.
           You wouldn't see her.
     
     
     
     
    Part Two
     
     
    F E L O  D E  S E
     
    THE