Ashley Dyer

A woman stands in the middle of Detective Chief Inspector Greg Carver’s sitting room. She is holding a 1911 Colt pistol in her hand. To all appearances, she is calm; there are things she needs to do. She pivots on the ball of her foot, turning full circle, taking in every detail of the scene. Nothing has been disturbed. An empty whisky bottle lies on its side on the floor. Greg Carver is slumped in an easy chair, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight out. Looking down at him she feels anger and contempt, but also regret. His eyes are open, blood oozes from a bullet wound in his chest. She shifts the weight of the gun in her gloved hand, flips the catch to safety. The place reeks of alcohol, gunsmoke and blood, and her stomach hitches, but she snuffs hard, purging her nostrils of the stench.

She carries the gun through to the kitchen; his laptop is propped open, his files spread out across the table. The floor, ankle-deep in balled-up paper, looks like the aftermath of a massive hailstorm. On a chair beside the table is a cardboard filing box. She drops two of the files into it, gingerly wraps the gun in clean paper and carefully lowers it on top of them…

© Corsair 2017