Free Escaping Life by Michelle Muckley Page A

found a body.  That there was
nothing there.  Or nothing left, thought Jack Fraser.
    He was polite
as he listened to the details and was sincere when he promised to check it out
the next day with the local police.  As he put down the receiver, his gaze
returned to the blonde woman in the photographs before him, dressed in unusual
clothing and with too many unexplained peculiarities at the scene for his
liking in a simple suicide case.  As he had pulled up at the scene, early on
that Sunday morning just one week ago, he had thought how peaceful it was; the
gentle sound of the waves as they became one with the rolling pebbles; the
early morning sky still hanging low, the colours of which merged into the ocean
before it had been woken by the sun.  He had seen the body, lying there supine
and quiet, the waves breaking against the two bare feet like two big rocks sat
amongst thousands of tiny pebbles.  It was like no other crime scene he had attended;
it was serene, and peaceful.  He thought that it could have been the perfect
place to die.
    He pulled the
heavy door of the old Explorer truck closed, shutting himself in the cabin.  He
quickly wound down the windows, letting the late evening summer breeze drift in through the windows, releasing the
heat of the stuffy oven-like interior.  It felt claustrophobic and humid, as if
the sky might suddenly give way to the pressure and let out an almighty crash
as the belly of the clouds buckled open.  He had a headache, and he wished the
storm would just come to clear the air.  It had been a long week staring at the
once pretty blonde woman lying peacefully on the shore of a local isolated
beach.  As he sat there in the car park, the thoughts of the clothes, the
carefully placed shoes, cigarettes that were no longer in circulation, photographs
and a key to an unknown lock, he knew that he had passed an entire week and was
no further forward in finding out who this woman was.  He didn’t think that the
woman on the phone late this Sunday evening could help him.  She had given him the name of the
officer down in Wellbeck, and he decided that he would call him in the morning
just to clear up the lead. 
    As he drove
home through the dark streets, the city was quiet, the residents sleeping in
preparation for the week ahead.  He smoked his last cigarette, before pulling
up outside the rundown apartment block.  It was an old warehouse, and he liked
the unfinished look of it all.  Kate refused to live here, in this run down
part of the city, so he would be spending the night alone.  She wasn’t
interested in moving from her up market tiny apartment into the old rambling
factory that only loosely housed six apartments.  She didn’t want to sacrifice
her telephone entry security system for a door that you had to slide open, and which
always had new graffiti on it.  She didn’t want to give up her mirrored
elevator for the old open-walled freight elevator with its pull-shut red metal
fretwork gate.  His unfinished home, with no separating walls - except for the
toilet - was no place to raise a family.  She had also informed him that it was
no place to leave your girlfriend at all hours when he was still out working,
protecting the city. 
    As he yanked
open the metal door, he threw his jacket onto the leather chair.  He grabbed
himself a beer from the fridge, and threw a frozen pasta meal for one into the
microwave.  He picked up the file that he had brought home the night before and
leafed through the contents before carefully arranging the photographs on the
floor in front of him.  He placed the close-up picture of the dead woman in the
centre, her empty eyes staring past him into the apartment behind him.  Her
pale blue skin was like silk, soft and delicate when he touched it, and it blended
in with the sky.  Around her, he placed the other photographs:  the neatly
placed shoes; the packet of cigarettes; the photographs and the key, clutched
into a tight hand.  Who