Graphics by SeraSki, chapter gist by 8WorldsWithWords. You're both brilliant.
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-Emily-
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"We've got all day, Ms Schott."
The detective leans forwards across the table, resting on the worn elbows of his nylon blazer. There seems to be a planned uniformity about the detectives of Bronzefield: they all have cheap jackets and ill-fitting shirts, yellowed nails, shaving cuts – and they all walk with the same, weary determination, smelling of the pine-shaped air fresheners hanging from car mirrors. I turn my attention to the ceiling and begin inspecting the cracked plaster in a poor imitation of indifference; in reality, I crave these daily interrogation sessions and attempt to draw them out for as long as possible. Here, I'm safe from my memories – dark, persistent things that pick the toughened sinew from the carcass of my mind like coffin flies.
"I'll stay here all night if I have to. Compliance is in your best interest, so I'll ask you again," he says, straightening up. "Where can we find Ivan Yakovich?"
I run my tongue over the cracks in my lips, and I continue inspecting the ceiling.
This room is bleak in its entirety; I sit on a grey chair fixed to the concrete by heavy bolts, opposite this bland detective, separated by a low, white table. Both hands are fastened to the chair by handcuffs. The starched cotton of my prison jumpsuit pricks my ankles and bunches beneath my arms – it's too big around the chest, too tight at the hips, stained from previous inmates and fraying a little at the cuffs: efficiency at best, humiliation at worst. I continue breaking down the contents of the room into their components. It's another tactic of mine; a numbing agent. Better senseless than sensitive.
"We know you were with him in Moscow."
"Good."
"And we know you engaged in frequent fraud under his name."
"Yes."
"What else happened in Moscow?"
I say nothing.
"You knew of his psychosis?"
"No."
"Did you talk often?"
I close my eyes. The detective sighs, heavily, and reaches for his lukewarm coffee.
We go round in circles: he asks me a question, I shut him out, he tries a different approach, I give him a monosyllabic response, he attempts to build on it, I shut him out, he asks the same question again. One hour becomes two, and two becomes five. Eventually, I wear down the remnants of his patience – he stands and leaves, his coffee cold on the table, and I am left alone and at the mercy of my mind.
I've been in this establishment for five weeks. It was inevitable: I was hauled into custody after my discovery on the night of Millie's rape, kept there because no-one would consider bailing me out, and then presented for the world to see in a heavily-publicised trial. With a handful of confiscated pocket change to my name, a defence lawyer was out of the question – not that it would have made a difference.
My fate was sealed the moment I stepped into the police station; once my name was registered and the investigations took place, the facts began to resurface. Dark details. Brutal truths. My mother sold my story for millions – I saw it on the front page – and I was branded a terrorist, an Islamist, a fanatic. Then came the hacking. The accusations stacked up; my laptop was found in the house and dissected like a human heart, and on it they found ample evidence of unscrupulous cyber activity. People started coming forward with stories: Amy Walksin's Norwegian half-sister told of her sibling's murder, some of Carver's men contacted the media with accounts of his death and Lucy Gold's untimely demise. I had a homicide count of twenty-three – and was, consequentially, labelled a 'serial killer'. The papers loved that. The murderess and the necrophile. Till death do us part.
The trial itself took a matter of minutes.
I had no choice but to plead guilty. The jury agreed with me – I was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole: the judge struck her wooden hammer, the court murmured approvingly, and within two hours I had been escorted to the all-female, maximum security HM Prison Bronzefield.
I've fallen into a routine, now: every morning I wake up to a cold cell and a sour-faced woman on the opposite bunkbed – Jeanette Winton, fifty-three, poisoned her sister-in-law – and every morning I am led from my cell to a dining hall, where I sit and I eat my tray of bland food and drink my cup of tap water. We then return to our cells. I count the minutes until the door is unlocked and I am picked up for my daily questioning.
In the distance, I hear the bell ringing. I sit up and frown – the detective has been gone for a full hour. He normally leaves for a cigarette and returns to my cell within ten minutes to continue his futile interrogation.
This is very strange.
I shift in my seat, the handcuffs sharp against my wrists. I wonder if this is a new method of information extraction; leave me here overnight, drain me of my determination, deny me my human rights. This doesn't alarm me. I've become somewhat desensitised to pain – I'm bitter, numb, unsmiling and unflinching in the face of my personal injustice. I settle back against the hard edge of my chair with every intention of forcing sleep–
The memories start, then.
They come without warning; angry, stinging, screaming things of no substance that curl around my throat and pin me down and open me up and leave me sobbing, or shaking, or whimpering like an injured animal. On arriving at Bronzefield, I made a conscious effort to package up the events of the last four months and lock them away, encase them in a cerebral prison of my own – it works for the majority of the time, but the side effect of such confinement is excruciating: the memories have a habit of rupturing, of becoming immune to my self-imposed restraints and tearing into the soft flesh of my control with savage, unforgiving ferocity.
It's the dance in Moscow.
Ivan's laugh echoes strangely; it's sonorous, amplified by recollection, as if he's standing in a glass room. His outline is a little blurred, a little bright, but I recognise it like I would recognise my own – he smiles, his teeth whiter in memory, and takes my hand, pulling me into a crowd of shapeless people and colours and silent music. I shake my head violently and try to lift my hands to knock the scene from my skull, but the handcuffs keep me locked in place; the next memory launches its attack, taking advantage of my current vulnerability. This is the worst one. I know it, because I've seen this kitchen before – his kitchen, one of many, all white marble and slate and engraved whiskey glasses – and I know what's about to happen.
He's cooking, wielding his kitchen knife with an ease that should, in hindsight, have raised alarms, and I'm sitting on the counter making teasing comments about his dietary choices. I hear that echoing laugh – low, layered beneath the higher octaves of my voice – and see him reach for a blurred packet. Flour dusts the recollection. I see myself through new eyes, leaning over and pressing a white handprint to his cheek. Ivan says something muted in Russian and lifts a closed fist, beckoning me over, waiting until I've sidled up and my lips are treacherously close to his own – and then he opens his fist and blows sharply and I'm covered in white powder and laughing, that agonising laughter, and we're pelting each other with fistfuls of flour in slowed time; he shields his face with his forearm, I duck beneath the counter, and together we torture the Emily Schott watching from the other side of the glass.
The door closes with a harsh clang. I sit up, panting, aware that I look insane, feeling insane, my forehead slick with sweat and eyes feverishly bright. I look around wildly. I can't see anyone. I don't trust my mind, anymore.
The room is empty.
I let myself unwind and take a few, shallow breaths. It's over. The worst is over. I've won the grapple; the memories are back in their paper cage and I have regained control–
"Look at you, Ms Schott."
My head snaps back up with a force that jars the vertebrae in my spine.
He stands by the wall, softened by dust and lost to the contours of shadow. This is a hallucination, I tell myself – it's not the first time it's happened, and the spectacle I am witnessing is so impossible to comprehend it must be a false reality. His edges are blurred. His skin is too white, the contrast too dark. This isn't real.
Jim observes me with his head to one side.
The hallucination is flawed. He's still dressed impeccably, sharp in a black suit and silver tie, but he doesn't look polished. His face is thinner, particularly around the jaw. He hasn't shaved in days. The resultant stubble is unfamiliar to me; it makes his face harsher, more monochrome. The shadows under his eyes resemble bruises – purple prints cut deep beneath the curves of his eye sockets. He smiles, a predatory smile that's lost its conviction, and takes a step out into the light.
"I saw the headlines. Till death do us part." He rocks on the balls of his feet. "Catchy."
I make a noise that is somewhere between a groan and a sob. His empty smile grows.
"Still sore, is it? Not to worry. I hear prison life does wonders for the psyche. You'll get over it – or you won't, and you'll tumble head-first into lunacy." He walks over to the table. "I'm an advocate for the latter, personally. You suit madness."
"How are you here?"
My voice catches him off guard. It takes him a second to process, but the smile is back before I have time to doubt the truth in this hallucination.
"It wasn't hard. A little paperwork here, a little blackmail there. A bullet for Mr Detective Inspector." Jim pulls out the chair opposite me and sits down. "I think the question is why. Not how. Why am I here. Go on. Ask me."
I don't have the energy to play games.
"Why are you here?"
"I wanted to see you for myself. I wonder how long it will take until you're as far gone as your poor husband. Maybe it's already started. Tell me, Emily, have you had any cravings for the lifeless? Any inexplicable desires for the dead?" He tailors his native lilt in a mimicry of the American drawl. "Crush on a corpse?"
The hatred is sour on my tongue.
"You knew."
He waves off my accusation. "Of course I knew. I knew when I first met the man. I have an aptitude for spotting the criminally insane, you see. We have an energy about us – and Mr Yakovich, oh, Mr Yakovich, he hummed with it. I'm surprised you didn't pick up on it sooner. You're as mad as me. You should have seen it." Jim's expression darkens. "Why didn't you see it?"
"You knew," I say again, "and you didn't tell me."
"You were blind."
"You let me want him."
Jim visibly twitches, but his tone doesn't change. "Never trust a pretty face."
"No," I say, and I hear my voice rise. "You knew, and you didn't tell me–"
"I sent the flowers."
I falter. "The flowers?"
"Oh? You didn't get them? Tut, tut, Mr Yakovich. He must have taken your wedding gift for himself." Jim looks up at me through dark lashes. "Irises, they were. White irises. I sent a message with it too, tied around the stems – check the cellar, it said. Shame you never received it. They were awfully expensive. Perhaps he added them to his collection."
"Stop it."
"What a mess he's made," continues Jim, leaning back in his chair. "Little white Iris wanted it all, little white Iris made a bad call, all the good doctors and all the smart men, couldn't put Millie together again–"
I move without thinking – a furious attempt at choking the smile off his face – and succeed in scraping a thin layer of skin from my bound wrists. Jim watches me, amused by my helplessness – although there is something altogether darker in his expression that continues long after I've slumped back into the chair, defeated.
"Does it haunt you?"
I snarl something incoherent.
"Does it haunt you when you think of the times he smiled at you, when he laughed with you," he says. He presses his fingers to my jaw. "When he touched you. Does it haunt you to know that, when he smiled and laughed and touched, he wasn't thinking of you? That in that handsome little head, you were Ms Shon? His Millie for the night. Does it hurt you when you think of what he'd like to have done to you when you didn't fulfil his fantasies and reverted back to Emily Schott, the furious delinquent, the violent criminal, the over-glorified hacker?"
Unable to move, I content myself with a spat profanity. Jim tuts, softly. I listen to him sigh.
"We could have watched the world burn, you and I."
If I didn't know better, I'd have thought he was hurting too.
"You're lying," I say.
He reaches into his pocket.
"You'd know a thing or two about lying, wouldn't you, Ms Schott?"
I watch Jim Moriarty lift a silver pistol onto the table. He lets it lie there for a moment, lets me understand its significance, then picks it up, testing its weight in his grip.
"New. Never used."
"Too showy for me," I say, hoarsely.
He laughs, then – slowly, as if savouring the anticipation – leans over the table. He stops in front of me. I feel the heat of his mouth millimetres from mine. I feel the cold barrel of the gun press a circular groove into my temple.
His breath brushes the jut of my bottom lip.
"Would you like me to make the memories go away?"
It is a loaded question, and one that carries such an appeal I can't help but nod my head. The concept of white, untapped space makes me sigh in yearning; the crack of a bullet is my melody, the pain a small price to pay for an eternity of uninterrupted silence. I feel him smile.
The trigger clicks.
The empty cartridge rattles.
Jim lowers the gun, but doesn't move himself. His voice is very soft.
"What makes you think I'd grant you that luxury?"
He pulls away then, and I watch through flat eyes as he stands and pockets his cruel pistol. The false joviality is back in place. He checks his wristwatch.
"I'd begin filing for a divorce, if I were you," he says, stepping away from the table. "Otherwise it'll get caught in the traffic. Dead slow." He moves towards the door. "No pun intended."
Jim pauses with one hand on the woodwork, then looks at me over his shoulder. I hold his gaze.
He turns away first.
"Until next time, Mrs Yakovich."
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