(2013) Looks Could Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

circumstantial.”
    “We could try fingerprinting her, but we’d probably have all hell to pay with the father.”
    “And I don’t think it’d help because the only set of fingerprints on the syringe was that of the deceased.”
    “Are we agreed then; case closed?”
    “Yes, agreed; one for the X-Files.” They laughed.
    It was a funny journey back home in the police car. Emma and her father didn’t say much but their silence spoke volumes; clearly he wasn’t sure what she’d got up to that afternoon but didn’t feel comfortable interrogating her further; Emma was quite sure that she hadn’t been directly involved in Miss Carlisle taking an overdose, but, like the police officers, was puzzled that the overdose had followed her visit.
     

March 1982
     
     
    Emma’s ‘A’ level years at school were highly structured, but this didn’t really prepare her for the amount of work that had to be squeezed into the three eight-week terms of the Oxford year. She thought she was coping reasonably well, but things came to a head at a biochemistry lecture when the lecturer asked her a question about a metabolic pathway called the tricarboxylic acid cycle.
    “Miss Jones, can you remind us about oxidative phosphorylation?” asked the lecturer.
    “I’m sorry, sir, my mind has gone blank,” said Emma, feeling uncomfortable and very exposed.
    “Perhaps you can tell us what ‘ATP’ stands for?” he asked.
    “Sorry, no idea,” said Emma, blushing.
    “Miss Jones; am I correct in thinking that you passed ‘A’ level biology?” asked the lecturer, with a barely disguised sneer.
    Emma ran out of the lecture theatre, crying, his sarcasm and laughter from fellow students ringing in her ears. She went back to St Helena’s where her next-door neighbour found her huddled against the door to her room. She noticed that there was some blood on her hands.
    “Emma, what’s wrong; have you hurt yourself?” asked Karen.
    “Christ, Karen, I thought I was over it,” said Emma.
    “What do you mean? Why’ve you got blood on your hands?”
    “I should have stood up to him, why did I have to run back here?”
    “Emma, come in to my room and have a coffee; you can tell me all about it.”
    And so Emma found herself in Karen’s room and it all came out: the stuff with her mother; the stuff with her father; and the stuff with her grandparents. She wasn’t a pretty sight by the end of it. Karen helped to bandage the cuts. Karen advised Emma that she needed to see someone. It turned out that Karen volunteered for The Samaritans and she gave Emma a card for someone who offered free counselling for students.
    Emma arrived at the rather drab front door on Cowley Road and knocked softly. She didn’t really want to be there. The door was opened by a surprisingly young man with scruffy, curly hair and wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket.
    “Emma? Come on in, I’m Robert.”
    And so she started six sessions of counselling. Robert was like a blank canvas that Emma was able to use to paint all her past memories and experiences. At the end of the sessions, he took a long breath and said he thought she’d benefit from long-term psychotherapy. Emma said that the six sessions had done a lot of good in getting stuff out into the open and that she didn’t think she’d self-harm again. She was also aware that she’d become rather too fond of seeing Robert and had even fantasised what they might do together if she wasn’t in counselling.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

April 1982
     
     
    Emma examined the penis in front of her and noted that it was five inches long and one-and-a-half inches in diameter and uncircumcised. There were a few rogue strands of pubic hair right on the foreskin, which seemed to Emma a strange place for hair to be. The penis had a rather leathery appearance and was a mottled brown colour. Formalin had achieved its purpose, but the organ had done rather better than the rest of the body in retaining some semblance of