Free Escaping Life by Michelle Muckley

Green.  I am calling from Haven about the case of the body
found on the beach.”  He didn’t know where the hell Haven was, but she had his
attention.  This case had been the focus of his incident room all week, and he
still hadn’t got a clue of the name of the face, with the dead eyes and hollow
cheeks that he had been staring at for days on end with no possible lead to get
him out of the office.  He scrambled around for his note pad, the cigarette
still jiggling about in his teeth as he pulled a small leather bound notebook
from his inside pocket.  Pulling out the pencil from its little holder, he was
ready for her information.
    “OK, tell me
your name again.”  He nodded as he wrote out the words.  He circled her name
twice for confirmation.  “Tell me what information it is that you have.” 
    “Well, I am
certain that the woman is my sister, Officer,” she replied, so sure of herself
now that she had solved the first clue.  This was the path to discovering the
truth. 
    “Detective,” he
reminded her unnecessarily so, with a tinge of irritation in his otherwise
monotone voice.  “So what makes you believe it’s your sister?”
    “Well, she has
been missing for four years and she left me a …” he interrupted her before she
could finish.
    “Since when did
she go missing? Four years ago?”  He was throwing her off course.  She could
hear by the tone of his voice that he was already questioning her.  She felt
like a suspect in a case that until two minutes ago she didn’t even know
existed.  She wished he would just let her finish.
    “Yes, four
years ago, but she …”  He interrupted her again.
    “Hang on a
minute, Miss .......”  Now it was her turn to interrupt him.  She had formed an
instant dislike of this man.  She had to make him listen. 
    “It’s Mrs.
Green.  Four years ago there was a car accident.  We never found her.”   He sat
himself down on Gibb’s swivel chair, wrapping his feet around the silver legs,
as he pushed the chair under the desk with his toes.  There was a car
accident.  The words took him straight back to a time he had long since
tried to forget.  He never really had though, and every now and then, a snippet
of information like this would pick him up and transport him straight back to
that day.  That horrible day.   He grabbed the cigarette lighter on the
desk and lit the cigarette still in his mouth.  He inhaled deeply, the smoke
filling his lungs.  Taking the cigarette from his mouth at the base of his
fingers, he let out a plume of white smoke, soft and velvety, interrupted only
by the thicker wavering spiral of smoke coming directly from his cigarette;
wasted smoke rising to the yellow tinged ceiling.  He rested his forehead onto
the pads of his finger tips, carefully trying not to singe his once-blonde, but
now greying wavy hair.  It was his hair that girls had always found so
attractive when he was a young cocky cop, and he used to love to have Rose run
her fingers through it, but he had aged since that time and his hair had
receded to form two neat little bays on his forehead.  His hair now was just
another element of his appearance that reminded him that he was getting older.
    “Tell me where
this accident happened.”  As she re-lived the details;  the glossy wet roads,
the mist clinging to the trees, the smoke as it rose from the ravine below, she
could feel that night as if she was still stood at the side of the road,
sheltered by the large police umbrella looking down to the flaming pit beneath
her feet.  She described the bend in the road, covered with the height of the
pine trees.  She described how, even in the light of day, it was a dark and
dangerous corner.  She described how the barrier had been broken, and how the
car had rocketed off the road.  How, when she had got there, it had still been
burning so strongly, unhindered by the fire trucks or stream in which the
remains lay.  She described how they had never