Prologue
The story’s like this…
An elderly couple walks to the shore of a lake. They fill their pockets with rocks. They drown. In the water, and with low temperatures like those recorded at this time of year, decay can take seven, eight to twelve days. Not much longer. Then, the body will emerge. The way the couple’s bodies did. And after that, it wasn’t until three days later that both were found. Their hands so intertwined that they never left each other’s side.
Something almost romantic if you ask me.
“Heelshire.” I whisper against my fist. “I didn’t know they’ve been identified yet.”
Emerson crosses his arms, shrugging his shoulders up as his long figure leans back against the edge of his metal desk. The image of London shines brightly through the large windows behind his back, casting light on the framed shots of all the most successful front pages of The Times hanging on either side of the office walls, and a rather promising new one resting on the short table in front of my eyes.
“Just this morning. Not an easy job for sure.” He assures me. “You know, with their faces just as bloated as a puffer fish.” He shakes his head, as if pushing the picture from his mind, forcing him to adjust his rectangular glasses on the bridge of his nose. “But the fingerprints were the key.”
“I suppose the story is already written?”
“Being printed at this very moment.”
My eyes scan the photographs of the couple. A woman with curly white hair, a refined and serious face like her husband’s, a man almost bald and tired looking. A completely normal couple as far as one can see. But the photograph of their bodies floating face down in the water is not.
“What about the police? Have they said anything?”
“I’ve already spoken to Jack. Apparently, there’s nothing to investigate. A simple suicide.”
“Family to contact?” I insist.
“None. The only son they had died.”
My journalist spirit flares up. “Recently?”
“Many years ago. As a child. There’s no other information about it.”
“Pity.” A smile decorates my lips. “Don’t you think it’s strange? An old couple taking their lives just like that?”
“After losing a child? No.”
“You said it. Years ago. Why now and not before?”
“I don’t know, maybe they couldn’t take the pain anymore?”
It doesn’t seem to be just that. And Emerson can see my skepticism as if written on my features in fluorescent ink.
“You smell a story here.”
“Like a bloodhound.”
“Come on, Emily. Not every story put in front of you is worthy of making the front page.”
“You know that’s not true. How many times have I given you stories this worthy? How many of those stories are hanging here in your office?” He looks around, where several of his hits have my name at the top of the article. The look he gives me is all I need to know that he thinks the same as I do. “When I get these hunches, I’m never wrong, Emerson.”
He gives a sigh, definitely defeated. “And that’s why you’re my best journalist.”
We share a knowing smile, and I watch as he eats up the little distance between his desk and the black armchairs that end up forming a square around the table, where all the information we possess on the Heelshires seems to throb for attention. Once he takes a seat in the chair opposite me and crosses his legs, I can see his curiosity emerging. His eyes flick over the photographs and his fingers drum on the glass that holds them, postponing a decision I’m sure he’s already made.
“All right,” he says at last. “I believe in you, Emily.”
He leans back in his chair, but his fingers keep drumming against the glass table. His gaze flickers over the photographs again, lingering just a second too long on the one of the Heelshires’ bodies in the water. Something unreadable flashes across his face—just for a moment—before he shakes his head and exhales sharply.
“Don’t disappoint me.”
“When have I ever?” I smile at him.
