We found the hand on the cliff-path at four
o clock in the morning. We’d been up all night looking for Abe. The sky had
turned from black to blue. Stars had melted, taking with them the night
shadows. The sun had risen - and there it was.
We knew it was Abe’s because of the ring.
Julia had the other half. They
were, in all senses, the perfect pair.
We found Abe’s other hand on the beach, and a foot on the shoreline as
if thrown out to sea but washed back in.
Other bits appeared. We even found blood. You don’t expect to encounter blood on a beach as beautiful
as that one, the sea a strip of silver, not a sound but breaking waves.
As in all detective fiction, there were
coincidences. Huw happened to be a forensic scientist, able to date Abe’s death
from fingernails and gums [yes, we found his head]. Pete was a retired
detective inspector. Bluntly he
announced what we all knew – that the evidence pointed to one of us.
This beach was private, he said, impossible
to access except by boat. The entrance
through rocks was known only to the beach’s owner, and his special friends.
Well, it couldn’t have been Pete. He was
the one who’d raised the alarm. Besides, policemen are upholders of the law -
and you can’t dismember your own brother without breaking the law.
But it couldn’t have been Huw. Noble Huw, whose life was built around
the truth - the dedicated scientist people trusted to a fault. Life was his
subject. He’d too much respect to ever take it away [though according to rumour he had a thing for Julia].
And that brings us to the gorgeous Julia. It
couldn’t have been . Not Abe’s
wife. His right hand gal, he always called her, and she’d always mock-sigh and answer, ‘Yup, that’s me.’
So that leaves yours truly. Could it have been me? Stalking through
the night, cleaver in hand, chopping up and disposing of my best friend? We’d
been through school together, everything. He knew my secrets and I knew
his. Could I once have sworn to
get him, and now I had?
As it turned out, police work solved the
crime in record time. The murderer
was a man of foreign accent discovered
sleeping rough down the beach. He protested
his innocence, but Huw said forensic evidence pointed to him, Pete said that murderers always gave themselves away and Julia said she’d disturbed him shortly before the first hand. There’d been a moment when their eyes had met. ‘I
thought then that he was crazy,’ she said.
And what do I say? What do I care? Abe was
a beast. We three know that. One of us killed him. One of us lied – and to expect murder to be solved in just five hundred words makes this author crazy
too. The truth lies unrevealed,
and I've just hit five-one-two. Which means it’s over to you.
Copyright © Pauline Fisk 2013
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