Truth or Die. Katerina Diamond

house had felt haunted since he lost Lucy, the girl he had fallen for, the girl he’d barely had enough time to get to know, the girl who had been killed to teach him a lesson. It seemed as though that haunted feeling was following him around though; maybe it wasn’t the house at all. Maybe it was him.

      Behind him, the door opened. Imogen walked into the room and slid under the covers. White T-shirt and bare legs. He turned and stretched his arm out for her to rest her head on. Neither one of them liked being alone and so this filled a need, and they could trust each other with it.

      Adrian was having one of those rare moments of simplicity. He wondered why they felt like they needed to keep this a secret, not just from the rest of the world, their friends and families – but from each other, from themselves. It was as though there was something wrong with this platonic intimacy, as though it were weird because they weren’t ripping each other’s clothes off. It almost made him feel dirty in a way that sex wouldn’t, more complicated, less understandable. Why would anyone want this? They never spoke about it; it was a silent agreement between the two of them. They had yet to acknowledge it even happened outside of this house. This was a moment, in context, that didn’t exist anywhere else. They drifted off together and in the morning one of them would go before the other awoke.

      Adrian’s phone rang at six thirty a.m., a whole hour before his alarm was due to wake him. He looked at the screen, it was Denise. The bed was empty.

      ‘Denise? Why are you calling me?’ Adrian said quietly before realising that Imogen wasn’t next to him and so he didn’t need to keep his voice down.

      ‘Good morning, sunshine.’

      ‘Get on with it,’ he snapped.

      ‘There’s been a murder up at the university.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘The call just came in. I thought you might want to get up there. I tried to call you before the new DI got up there, but DCI Kapoor called him and asked him to deal with it.’

      ‘So, he’s already there?’

      ‘Yeah, him and DS Grey.’

      ‘What?’ he said, managing to soften it a moment before it came out of his mouth.

      ‘She said she tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.’

      ‘I’m on my way.’ He hung up and jumped out of Imogen’s bed.

      Adrian pulled his jeans on and roughly pulled back the sheets, noticing the full mug of coffee on the side table. He picked it up and it was still warm; she hadn’t long left. This was her apology. He drank it and left it on the bedside table.

      At the university it didn’t take him long to find them, and as he walked through the halls of the humanities department, he could hear Imogen speaking before he saw her. He turned the corner to see her standing next to DI Matt Walsh, the newbie in CID. He must have been approaching fifty years old, with white-grey hair, but somehow still quite youthful in appearance. He wore jeans and a blazer, and his hair was thick and floppy, reminiscent of the nineties somewhat.

      As if sensing his presence, they both turned to look at him in unison. He noticed Imogen’s eyes dart away for a second before resuming her composure.

      DI Walsh held his hand out immediately. ‘Detective Miles, good to see you again.’

      ‘Detective Walsh. Please, call me Adrian.’

      ‘Likewise, call me Matt though, not Adrian.’

      Adrian half-smiled. ‘What’s happened?’

      ‘Professor of Philosophy found dead in his office.’

      ‘Dead how?’ Adrian asked, annoyed that he was out of the loop and the information was being drip-fed to him.

      ‘Murdered. Looks like he got his head bashed in with a large glass paperweight,’ Matt Walsh said.

      ‘This feels like an episode of Columbo already,’ Adrian said.

      ‘The techs are just in taking photos and logging evidence, but go ahead.’

      Adrian walked into the office, where three crime scene technicians were doing their business. He stayed in the corner and looked around the room. Being there in person was different to seeing photographs; in Adrian’s experience, memories of scenes could be powerful, things could get burned into the mind. Photographs just didn’t give you the same perspective. He had heard of cases in the military where they had to get in and out of a scene without touching it, so they would use special cameras to capture the scene, then use giant 3D printers to recreate it perfectly, just so they could get the perspective and walk through the scene as many times as they needed.

      The professor’s face was hardly a face at all; caved in from the force and weight of the instrument used to kill him, the attack seemed almost frenzied. There were signs of a struggle, with books and papers strewn across the floor. Blood was spattered all up the walls, across the desk, everywhere, and the resin ball lay on the ground near the body. A blue flower was trapped inside, striking against the red of the blood. Someone must have been very angry to commit this level of violence, there was something crazed about it. No effort to tidy up or hide anything either. Adrian couldn’t imagine it was opportunistic in motive at least.

      ‘Any fingerprints?’ he asked the crime scene technicians.

      ‘Hundreds. But it looks like our perp wore gloves, so I doubt we’re going to find any,’ the technician closest to him said.

      ‘Any ideas at all?’

      ‘I’d say with the force used that you’re definitely looking for a male. And the stamina suggests someone young. They mashed his head. It’s going to be nigh on impossible to recreate the skull; it’s in tiny pieces and totally smushed in with brain matter.’

      ‘Vivid, thanks,’ Adrian said.

      Adrian left the room; he’d seen and heard enough for now. Imogen and Matt Walsh were in the corridor, chatting about his previous placement.

      ‘Did you know DI Walsh used to work with DCI Kapoor?’ Imogen said.

      ‘I had heard that, yes,’ Adrian said, almost certain he had discussed it with Imogen before.

      ‘They used to be partners.’

      ‘Interesting,’ Adrian said, playing along with whatever Imogen was doing.

      ‘She’s one of the good ones. You guys got lucky getting her. I was happy to hear a placement opened up here so that I could apply,’ Matt said.

      ‘It’s not weird, working under your former partner?’ Imogen asked.

      Adrian knew she was talking about them – one of them was bound to get promoted one day and he didn’t know how that would work, if it even could work.

      ‘It’s pretty great knowing someone you can trust has your back, actually.’

      ‘Sounds like you’ve been burned before,’ she continued.

      ‘Haven’t we all?’

      ‘Were you two ever … together?’ Adrian asked.

      Imogen shot him a look.

      DI Matt Walsh let out a raucous laugh, completely inappropriate given the situation. It reverberated so much in the room that everyone turned to look at him. There was a momentary pause before normal crime scene hubbub returned.

      ‘Nice to know she hasn’t changed,’ Matt said.

      ‘What do you mean?’ asked Adrian.

      ‘She doesn’t exactly talk about herself much, does she?’

      ‘True,’ Imogen acknowledged.

      ‘Well, she’s not exactly into guys.’

      ‘Oh.’ Adrian was surprised.

      ‘I didn’t find out ’til