Heart Stopper Read Free Page A

There’s kitchen towel there, don’t use my dishcloth!”
    ∞
     
    They sat in Michael’s living room, Priya swaddled in a quilt on his couch gripping a mug of coffee; Michael perched beside her on his Moroccan pouf. She knew the questions would need to be answered, but her head still hurt and she just wanted to close her eyes and sleep and wake up to another day, a day without dead bodies in it.
    Michael’s apartment was on the first floor of a medieval building converted into five apartments, each on its own floor. He had spent months decorating it, painting the walls with terracotta, he and Priya struggling with the over-sized brown leather couch and armchairs up the narrow twisty stairs. He had bought exquisite blue and green silk tapestries from India and red and black rugs from Turkey and had them shipped to Galway.
    “He didn’t have any wounds on him, nothing, no marks on him at all.” Her voice was low and muffled as she spoke from the depths of the quilt.
    The image of Daniel’s body, slumped against the bed, slammed into her mind. Daniel had always projected the right image for his setting, he had been the ultimate chameleon, smiled at the right times, said just the right things to the right people. He had worked out a lot, but his suits, made for him, covered his physique and he managed to look elegant in his clothes; he never looked out of place wherever he was. Many times, she had seen the shift of colors in him as he started to reflect his surroundings; leaving the routine of their research, the crumples disappearing to be replaced by softer folds as he charmed a patient, the smoothened edges for the funding agencies. He was constantly tugging at the stray cowlick on his head that refused to be tamed, the only part of his appearance he couldn’t control especially in death. She felt like reaching out and smoothing it down in her mental picture.
    “I need to ask you, why didn’t you just call for an ambulance and the cops?” Michael’s voice was a gentle intrusion and her hand jerked spilling coffee on the quilt.
    “I panicked! What would you do if you woke up in a strange apartment and found your boss lying dead? Ok, ok, don’t answer that, you’d never end up in that situation, would you? Just me, the screw-up.”
    She swiped at the small stain of coffee and Michael got up, talking as he went into the kitchen.
    “I’m not even going to dignify that... Do you want me to call the Guards now? We could say you panicked, or that you were still drunk. Are you sure he was dead? Could he have been passed out drunk or -” Michael walked back from the kitchen where he had retrieved the kitchen towel.
    “He was dead.” She raised her head from the mug. “Definitely.”
      He handed her a sheet of kitchen paper and sat down again.
    “There’s more to this, Priya. You’re keeping something from me. We could still extricate you at this stage, it’s risky, but possible. Why won’t you let me call the cops? The worst they could get you for is obstruction of justice but if you ran because you were scared for your life and you called them now, there shouldn’t be any problem.”
    “The eternal lawyer, nothing slips by, does it?” She shifted her position, shrinking further into the warm cave of the quilt.
    “Well...?”
    She gulped down her coffee and handed him the mug. He looked exasperated, but got up to get her more.
    The day outside was waking up and she could hear the street noises drift in through the open window, the aroma of the different coffee brands brewed in the cafes below mingling with her own freshly ground coffee. She enjoyed annoying Michael by getting him to make an espresso in his specialty machine that occupied pride of place in his kitchen and then dumping the espresso into a large misshapen mug she had made in an unsuccessful experiment with evening classes in pottery. She had given him the mug as a present, chuckling inside at his polite, but reserved enthusiasm.
    “He