“This is Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Magical. shame about the dead body”
“Yeah, It does ruin it a bit to be honest”
“What do you think happened?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out”
The two detectives squinted at each other through the bright sunshine. The mangled corpse of a young woman lay motionless between them. The sea gently lapped the hot sand and a barely there breeze gently swayed the long grass behind them. Simon couldn’t imagine a more heavenly setting, except of course the aforementioned body. And the flies, they weren’t that great either.
“Shall we” Mike said, gesturing behind them towards the path that led to the top of the cliff.
“Yeah I suppose we should have a poke about up there”
“What do you think happened?” Mike asked, trying to gauge his colleagues’ reaction. It wasn’t that hard, they had been partners for several years now and had investigated many crime scenes, just like this one.
“Probably a jumper I’d say” Simon said, running his hand over the scruff of a day late shave.
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, it’s pretty remote, there’s no sign of self defence wounds, no sign of bruising around the wrists or arms or anywhere she’d have been grabbed. Of course, we’ll have to wait until we hear back from the autopsy… Also, I don’t know what we’ll find when we finally make our way all the way up there but there were no other footprints down in the sand until we arrived.”
Mike nodded but didn’t say anything, Simon was a good detective, no doubt about that, Mike just worried he knew more than he was letting on. That would be very bad indeed.
They struggled their way up steep muddy banks in unsuitable shoes huffing and puffing away. “This is it,” Simon huffed, “this is where she jumped from.”
Mike stopped and looked around, he pretended to be searching for clues, footprints and the like when in reality he knew exactly what he’d find up here, he had arrived much earlier than Simon this morning and everything had finally clicked into place.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that this is the third young woman who’s jumped from these cliffs in the past 2 months?”
Simon shrugged, “perhaps there’s something in the air?” He shrugged again and tried to look unbothered but Mike persisted.
“How did you know this was the exact spot she jumped from?”
“Well it’s obvious, it’s in the angles and stuff…” he glanced at the beach below him then back up into the bright sunshine. “That and I’m just a great detective,” Simon winked.
“You know, if you were in trouble Simon, I’d do anything I could… to help out… right?”
Simon’s expression dropped, his air of unflappable calm dropping like he’d taken off a jacket. “You know, don’t you?”
“Well, it doesn’t help that the first one was your highschool girlfriend, I know you thought I didn’t know that, I was willing to look away the once, you’re a good detective, a good friend and I had no proof, I couldn’t just come out and accuse you but then the second body appeared and I knew… I knew it had to stop but I still had no proof…”
“And you still don’t!” Simon interjected. “This is crazy, how could you…?”
“I followed you.”
Again Simon’s expression changed, this time to fury. “You did what?” He clenched his teeth, his brain was whirring, looking for a way out, a way to make this okay again. He knew he should have stopped at the one, he never actually meant to hurt her. She’d finally broken up with that loser she had left him for, he took her out, bought her a drink, thought she’d finally realised she was meant to be with him the whole time, so he took her up to make- out point, they got out, sat under the stars… He was so angry when she pushed him off her that he pushed her right back. He didn’t mean to push her over the edge… “does anyone else know?” he asked his partner.
“No, not yet, I was giving you a chance, I want to help you.”
Yes, the first girl was an accident but the second and third, they were completely on purpose, the rush he felt hearing their screams suddenly cut off as they landed… he wondered if his partner’s screams would feel the same. “It’s a bit slippery up here, isn’t it?”
Mike’s eyes widened as he realised his mistake, he should have told someone else, he shouldn’t have come alone, he just hoped the next person to figure it out didn’t make the same mistake as he did.
.
.
.
Thank you for reading, if you’d like to support me you could; Buy Me A Coffee
Sweeterthannothing 
Leave a Reply