Witch(24)

“There’s a picture of me?” I gasped, snatching the paper from him and thumbing through the pages.

“Yeah, it’s not a very good one,” he said, slurping at his tea again. “Makes you look fat.”

I glared at him over the top of the newspaper.

“I’m not saying you’re fat,” he said, as if realising his mistake. “What I meant to say was that they could have chosen a better picture, that’s all...”

“Vincent,” I hissed at him.

“Huh?” he said, looking vacantly at me.

“Do yourself a favour and shut up!” I snapped.

“Sure,” he said, taking a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. He saw me glare down at them. Silently, he put them away again. “Sorry, I forgot,” he whispered back at me.

I looked down at the paper, and there on page six was a picture of me. It had been lifted from a group photo of me and the other recruits I had passed through training school with. And I didn’t look fat. Local cop in traffic accident – four dead! The headline read in thick, black letters. The article was short, and described pretty much how my father had spun the facts. In fact, one part of the article read: “...if it hadn’t of been for the quick thinking of Officer Sydney Hart, then she too could have ended up dead. The driver of the horse and cart was only partially sighted and drove him and his family into the path of the officer’s car while she was en route to assist colleagues...” police spokesman Sergeant Richard Hart was reported to have said.

Was this a suicide by cop? The reporter had asked.

I don’t know about that, Sergeant Hart, the police spokesman said, but to have been driving with such poor eyesight, the driver must have had a death wish.

There was little else to the article which I didn’t already know. The fact that the evidence had now been passed to the local coroner’s office, pending an inquest was how the report ended. Just like my father had said, a few lines and it would all be forgotten about. The world would move on.

I closed the paper, folded it, and placed it back on the sofa.

“Are you okay?” Vincent asked, looking at me. “You look really...really tired...worn out.”

“And fat?” I glanced at him. “You really know how to flatter a lady.”

“Sorry,” he said again with a shrug. “It couldn’t have been easy – you know, being caught up in an accident like that.”

Wanting to change the subject, and heeding my father’s warning, I said, “So how are you finding being a cop?”

“Not as exciting as I thought it would be,” Vincent said with a frustrated sigh.

“Well if it’s excitement and action you want, you’ve come to the wrong place,” I said.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Vincent groaned. “This is where force headquarters posted me.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “What has my father got you doing?”

“Cleaning out the property store and the filing room,” Vincent said.

“Wow, that is exciting,” I smiled back at him.

“It’s okay, I guess,” Vincent said, placing his empty cup to one side. “Some of those old files are quite interesting.”

“How come?” I asked. “I didn’t think any exciting crimes ever happened in Cliff View.”

“I’ve come across one file which seems pretty interesting,” he said, scratching his chin.

“Oh yeah?” I said, trying to sound interested, but half of me just wanted to be on my own again. I turned to my iPod in its dock and thumbed through the tracks. I selected Set Fire To The Rain by Adele.

“There was this girl who died about ten years ago,” Vincent said as the music started. “She fell down a well and died.”

The mention of the word well brought a sudden flashback of the nightmare I’d had. I saw myself trapped at the bottom of that well again and screaming for help. I turned to look at Vincent, who was now checking out some of the books on the shelf attached to the living room wall. “Black Hill Farm,” he said thumbing through one of the books. “I’ve not read that one.”

Taking it from him and placing it back onto the shelf, I looked at Vincent and said, “So how did this girl end up in the bottom of a well?”

“Some say she was being chased and she fell in,” he said, fingering another book on the shelf.

I gripped his wrist before he had a chance to remove another one. “Who was chasing her?” I breathed.

“Dunno,” he shrugged. “A lot of the paperwork is missing from the file. I guess that’s why your father has asked me to tidy up. That file room is a right mess, I can tell you.” Then, as if noticing the serious look on my face, Vincent added, “Is there something wrong?”