I was taken aside – over to the kitchen area – and quizzed by one of the uniforms. He took my name, address, phone number and asked me where I worked and

how I knew the deceased. As I answered his questions, I watched Vernon being examined and photographed and tagged. I also watched two plainclothes guys

hunkering down beside the antique bureau, which was still on its side, and sifting through the papers on the floor all around it. They passed documents and letters and

envelopes to each other, and made comments that I couldn’t hear. Another uniform stood by the window talking into his radio, and another one again was in the kitchen

looking through the cupboards and the drawers.

There was a dream-like quality to the way the whole process unfolded. It had a choreographed rhythm of its own, and even though I was in it, standing there

answering questions, I didn’t really feel a part of it – and especially not when they zipped Vernon up in a black bag and wheeled him out of the room on a gurney.

A few moments after this happened, one of the plainclothes detectives came over, introduced himself to me and dismissed the uniformed officer. His name was

Foley. He was medium height, wore a dark suit and a raincoat. He was balding and overweight. He fired some questions at me, stuff about when and how I’d found the

body, which I answered. I told him everything, except the part about the MDT. As evidence to back up what I’d been saying, I pointed at the dry-cleaned suit and the

brown paper bag.

The suit was laid out flat on the couch and was just up from where Vernon’s body had been. It was wrapped in plastic film, and looked eerie and spectral, like an

after-image of Vernon himself, a visual echo, a tracer. Foley looked at the suit for a moment, too, but didn’t react – clearly not seeing it the way I saw it. Then he went

over to the glass table and picked up the brown paper bag. He opened it and took out the items inside – the two coffees, the muffin, the Canadian bacon, the

condiments – and laid them out along the table in a line, like the fragments of a skeleton displayed in a forensics laboratory.

‘So, how well did you know this … Vernon Gant?’ he asked.

‘I saw him yesterday for the first time in ten years. Bumped into him in the street.’

‘Bumped into him in the street,’ he said, nodding his head and staring at me.

‘And what line of work was he in?’

‘I don’t know. He used to collect and deal furniture when I knew him.’

‘Oh,’ Foley said, ‘so he was a dealer?’

‘I—’

‘What were you doing up here in the first place?’

‘Well …’ I cleared my throat at this point, ‘… like I said, I ran into him yesterday and we decided to meet up – you know, chew over old times.’

Foley looked around. ‘Chew over old times,’ he said, ‘chew over old times.’ He obviously had the habit of repeating lines like this, under his breath, half to himself,

as though he were mulling them over, but it was clear that his real intention was to question their credibility, and to undermine the confidence of whoever he was

speaking to at the time.

‘Yes,’ I said, letting my irritation show, ‘chew over old times. Anything wrong with that?’

Foley shrugged his shoulders.

I had the uneasy feeling that he was going to circle around me for a while, pick holes in my story, and then try to extract a confession of some kind. But as he spoke,

and fired more questions at me, I noticed that he’d begun eyeing the coffee and the wrapped-up muffin on the table, as though all he wanted or cared about in the world

was to sit down and have some breakfast, and maybe read the funny papers.

‘What about family, next of kin?’ he said, ‘you have anything on that?’

I told him about Melissa, and how I’d phoned and left a message on her answering machine.

He paused and looked at me. ‘You left a message?’

‘Yes.’

He actually did mull this one over for a moment and then said, ‘The sensitive type, huh?’

I didn’t respond, although I certainly wanted to – wanted to hit him. But at the same time I could see his point. Even from the remove of a mere thirty or forty

minutes, what I’d done by leaving that message now seemed truly awful. I shook my head and turned away towards the window. The news itself was bad enough,

obviously – but how much worse was it going to be for her hearing it from me, and on an answering machine? I sighed in frustration, and noticed that I was still shaking

a little.

I eventually looked back at Foley, expecting some more questions, but there weren’t any. He had taken the plastic lid from the regular coffee and was opening the

foil wrapper on the toasted English muffin. He shrugged his shoulders again and threw me a look that said, What can I tell you? I’m hungry.

*

After another twenty minutes or so, I was led out of the apartment and taken in a car to the local precinct to make an official statement. No one spoke to me on the

way, and with different thoughts vying for space in my mind, I paid very little attention to my immediate surroundings. When I next had to speak I was in a large, busy

office, sitting across a desk from another overweight detective with an Irish name.

Brogan.

He went over the same ground as Foley had, asked the same questions and showed about as much interest in the answers. I then had to sit on a wooden bench for

about half an hour while the statement was being typed up and printed out. There was a lot of activity in the room, all sorts of people coming and going, and I found it

hard to think.