Chapter 2: Interrogation

He woke to the shrill buzz of his alarm and a dull migraine that had planted itself behind one temple. The couch had claimed him again: a thinner mattress by default, a blanket twisted around his legs like a concession. He blinked his way upright and glanced around the room. Clothes lay in small, rumpled piles, music posters curled at their corners, a mug with dried coffee at the lip. His bed sat ignored behind a scatter of books and open drawers. Irene used to keep this place tidy, he thought — the memory of her nails tapping against a ruler, her small laughter when she straightened his bedside table — but that was a long time ago, before he had traded evenings for evidence logs and consolation drinks.

His phone was a small rectangle of good and bad news. A message from the forensic scientist he’d met at the scene. Another from Salako: terse, practical, the kind of message a man sends when he wants to be ready. And then the files he’d asked for — forensics results — waiting in a folder on the departmental server. He allowed himself a grin despite the throb in his head. There was nothing like a folder of facts to quiet the little, persistent noise of speculation.

In the bathroom the mirror offered back a face he’d come to know under fluorescence: hollowed at the temples, stubborn stubble, the stubborn set of a mouth that had learned to keep thoughts to itself. Cold water slapped his cheeks awake. Toothpaste, the metallic tang of coffee from last night, the faint scent of cigarette smoke that refused to be shaken off. He kept his routine short. Routine held him — it was a shelf on which he kept himself from tipping into guesswork. Three years on the job had taught him that speculation was dangerous. Intuition had its uses, but only after facts had been gathered and catalogued. That discipline had kept him alive.

He took the wheel on an almost empty city, streets still wet from the night’s rain. Headlights pooled on the asphalt like small moons that had fallen from the sky. He turned the radio up and sang under his breath to drown the part of his mind that wanted to piece together motives before the evidence arrived — a private ceremony to distract him from making assumptions. Midway down one long, sleepy avenue his phone buzzed again. He glanced at the screen: a message from his supervising officer, clipped and formal. There had been another person in the building when the commissioner had been killed. The woman could not be announced publicly — she had been engaged by the commissioner for the evening; she’d been picked up from the roadside.

The phrase sat in him like a pebble in the shoe. “Engaged by the commissioner for the evening” — a careful, civilized phrasing that tried to keep judgment at bay. The message continued: she would need to be interviewed privately. Karim felt the familiar unease that stretched beneath his ribs when he thought about witnesses found in the orbit of a powerful man. If the wrong conclusion was drawn, if the narrative was allowed to coagulate around convenient blame, she would be the one who paid the price. In cases with superiors breathing down your neck, he knew how easy it was for the convenient version of events to be stamped into police reports and into the public thread.

At the precinct, the smell of coffee and paper greeted him like an old friend. The rain had stopped, but damp clung to the tiles by the entrance, and the air had that pressed, recycled quality of places that never truly sleep. He nodded by rote to familiar faces — two constables swapping football gossip, a clerk shredding a pile of old receipts — and smiled at a junior officer who straightened when he walked past. News chatter from the reception television filled the background: the commissioner’s picture this time, a clean, official portrait staring back from a loop of packages and panels. His face occupied the screen in varying crops — official shot, CCTV stills, an old photograph at the retirement ceremony — each replayed under the tinny anchor voice. The public appetite for faces and facts was a hungry thing.

Salako met him by the locker room with a pad of paper and a face that had been insulated from surprise by too many bad mornings. “Forensics sent you the files?” he asked, already flipping through notes.

“On my desk,” Karim said. “You been briefed?”

“Partial,” Salako answered. “We’ll need to strip in and out of this one. Forensics says there’s DNA mixed in the commissioner’s study and an unidentified trace on the handle. Nothing conclusive yet. The witness is held in Interview Three. She’s been crying, they say.”

Karim nodded. The word “crying” was a small diplomatic bandage for something more blunt. He thought of the woman at the side of the road, of how many times a body of evidence begins and ends with a woman whose life was transactional in the eyes of others. He filed the feeling away and let professionalism take its place. There were boxes to check, statements to take, a witness to protect. They had found her beside the dead body, screaming her head off. She claimed to have passed out from a spiked drink or something.  

Interview Three was a small room with a single window high on one wall that refused to show anything but the ceiling of the corridor outside. A table, two chairs, a glass of water sweating in the fluorescent light. The woman sat hunched into herself, her hands wrapped around a cup as if the porcelain could anchor her. She was younger than he expected — that was the thing about crisis, it compresses years into minutes and yet leaves the unexpected in its wake. Her hair clung to the side of her face; her clothes were the kind that suggested the night had not been kind — a jacket damp at the hem, heels scuffed. Her eyes were red-rimmed but glassy, and when she looked up at him there was a time-bent plea there: help me, she seemed to ask, though her mouth didn’t form the words.

Karim introduced himself simply. “Detective Karim,” he said, hands open on the table. “I need to ask you a few questions about last night. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to listen. Take your time.”

She shook her head, a fragile, sudden movement. Tears spilled over in a rush, and the sound began small — a wet hiccup, an involuntary catch — then made its way into a keening that filled the room. Wailing, raw and jagged, the kind of sound that seemed to be formed from some place inside that had been hollowed out by fear. It took Karim a moment to find his own pulse under the old rhythm of police routine. He let the sound be for a short while, because sometimes the body must declare the injury before the mind can begin to shape words. The crying was not the theatrical sort used to manipulate; it was something primal, an animal sound.

He sat with it. He could have reached for something — paper, a gentle directive — but there was virtue in not rushing. After a long minute the woman’s sobs slowed to tremors. Karim handed her the glass of water. She drank like someone touching a distant shore. Her hands were cold, shaking, and she clutched the cup as if it might shatter.

“What’s your name?” he asked softly when her breathing steadied enough for speech.

“A— Aisha,” she managed. The name arrived as if it had been clawed out of something. It was a simple, ordinary name that steadied the room.

“Aisha, can you tell me what happened? Start where you want. Tell me in your own words.”

She closed her eyes as if the telling would reopen openings inside her. When she spoke the first syllables were hesitant, then faster as memory came flooding back. “I was walking… I— I was waiting by the junction. Money, you know. People stop there at night. He pulled up. A big car. Light. He asked if I’d come along. He said— he said he would pay more. I thought— I thought it was a good offer. I thought, maybe he was… generous.”

Her voice broke and she swallowed. Karim kept his face even, the practiced neutrality of a man who had watched confessions be offered and withheld a thousand times. He let her fill the silence.

“We went in,” she said. “He— he talked nice. He gave me the money first. He was… he was not like the others around. He was older, and he— he had manners. I stayed. We were in the sitting room at first. Then he asked me to go to the study. There was another lady— I didn’t see her face. She was already there. She wasn’t with me when he picked me. They were already… talking when I came back from the bathroom.”

Karim’s pen hovered. “When you say you didn’t see her face, what do you mean? Was it dark? Was the woman veiled? Did she keep apart?”

Aisha blinked. “It was dim. The lights were low. He liked music. They sat by the fireplace. The lady was at the far side. She— she wore strong perfume. I remember that, the smell. It was like flowers and something sweet. I… I was nervous. I drank something they offered and I— I don’t drink a lot. It made me dizzy. When I woke up — I think I had slept —the room was empty. I stepped out to the kitchen to get a drink. . I saw the commissioner in the chair. I screamed my head out. I sat there. I didn’t look at the lady’s face. I didn’t get a good look at anything. I only know the perfume, and the way she walked — like she was used to being noticed.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. The memory seemed to carve the space between words. Karim could feel the way the story wanted to break and rearrange itself. He kept pulling at it, gentle.

“Did you see anyone leave?”

“No,” she said. “I remember a shadow at the doorway. A shape. A silhouette. She left— I think she left through the study door. I couldn’t be sure.” Aisha’s eyes filled again. “I didn’t get a good look, I swear. I don’t want to be arrested. I don’t want to go to jail for this. I don’t—”

Her voice dwindled into pleading. Karim recognized the rhythm of fear; it had married his uniform a thousand times. He thought of the gossip that could run faster than truth. He thought of the way the world sometimes sought a face to fix its anger upon, and the vulnerable became convenient scapegoats.

“Aisha,” he said, leaning forward so the words were private, “we need what you can remember. But I want you to know this — being a witness is not the same as being charged. You’re not the accused. Right now you are the person who was there. We will record your statement. We will do what we can to keep you safe.”

“Will you put it in the statement?” she whispered. “That I didn’t— that I didn’t do anything to him? They’ll say I was paid. They’ll say it was my fault.”

Karim’s throat was dry. He felt a sudden, sharp kinship that came not from shared life but from knowing how the world could bend to a simpler narrative. “I’ll note everything you’ve told me. The fact that you were engaged to be with him will be on record — it’s a fact. But it does not equal guilt. We will check CCTV, the entries, who visited that night. We will follow the traces. We need you to tell us everything you remember: the time, the way the woman moved, the perfume, any words you heard. Even small things matter.”

She pressed trembling fingers together. “There was a ring,” she said suddenly. “On the other woman’s hand. A big ring with a red stone. I remember the flash when she put her hand on the mantelpiece. I remember the way she laughed — high, like a bell. She said something about new beginnings. I remember her saying it to the commissioner.”

Karim wrote “red stone ring” in neat capitals, the handwriting of a man who trusted detail. The ring could be nothing, or it could be a thread that led somewhere. “Anything else? A car? A name? A voice?”

“She called him ‘chief’ once,” Aisha said. The word dropped like a small, heavy thing. “She called him ‘chief’ when she laughed. I thought it was a joke. The voice was different, smoother. Not like his. She had a way of moving like— like someone who doesn’t mind taking what she wants.”

Karim bit his lip. He wrote “voice, smooth, called him ‘chief’, red-stone ring, perfume — floral-sweet.” He asked for the rough time. Aisha fumbled with the edges of memory, pinning her best guess on the sequence of songs that had been playing on the radio, the chime of a clock, a sudden silence before the shout. He recorded it. He asked if she had any contact details, a phone number, a taxi receipt, anything that could place her after the night. She dug in a small pocket and found a cigarette pack with an old receipt inside — a shop on a side street, stamped with time. It was not much, but it was a place to begin.

Karim finished the formalities gently, letting her know what he was writing and asking if there were omissions. He watched as the confession gave way to a pragmatism that came from being heard. Aisha’s sobs came less often now; they were punctuations rather than the whole language. He asked her about her fears, about anyone she trusted who could provide a reference. She had no one who could help, she said. Her family was far off, in another state. She worried about being blamed. Karim felt a hot, odd anger at the thought of a case collapsing into moral judgment instead of investigation. He pushed it down and replaced it with an offer of small things: we can get you a lawyer to advise you on the process, he suggested; there might be a witness protection avenue if there were threats. He could not promise grand things — the precinct moved by procedure and politics — but he could promise the truth would be looked for.

“You’re scared,” he said finally. It was not an accusation, only a note of fact.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I am scared.” Then, quieter: “He had… he had given me money. Enough to pay rent for a month. I thought— I thought maybe things would change. I was tired.”

Karim made a note: motive of convenience, vulnerability. He tried not to let sympathy make the wrong decision; sympathy was not a replacement for facts. Yet at the same time he knew that empathy could pry open windows that suspicion kept boarded shut. He filed the human detail along with the forensic: the red-stone ring, the perfume, the voice that called him “chief,” the shadow at the doorway. Each detail, no matter how small, was a path.

When Aisha’s statement had been recorded and sworn to — the legal language wrapped around the rawness like a bandage — he asked if she could come down to the station on another day to expand on anything else she might remember. She nodded. She wanted assurances. Karim made himself practical. He called Salako and asked for a discreet place for her to wait, some transport arranged to take her back to a temporary shelter, a note to sergeants on duty about her status. He placed a call to the forensic scientist to highlight the trace on the handle and asked for priority on matching fibers and DNA. The day’s work arranged itself into compartments: witness protection, scene re-examination, forensic follow-through.

Outside the small room, routine hummed. The TV in reception replayed the commissioner’s portrait and a legal analyst speculated on legacy and scandal. Karim felt the prick of the public eye. Cases like this immediately gathered headlines like flies around light. People wanted a story delivered in tidy arcs — motive, villain, resolution — and the presence of a woman with a transactional relationship to the victim would feed a thousand quick judgments. He made a mental list of people who needed to be controlled: the press office, the supervising officer, whoever in the higher echelons liked things wrapped. He would have to push, to hold the line on simple truths and complicated possibilities.

Before Aisha left, she looked at him with a look edged in a suspicion that felt like a child’s but not the child. “Will you… will you make sure they don’t—” she started.

“Make sure who don’t what?” he asked.

“Don’t make me the story. Don’t make me the headline. Don’t… don’t make me the one who did it.”

Karim let the silence sit a moment. There were practical things he could do — request anonymity in the media, suggest to the press office that details be withheld — but there were also political limits. He saw clearly, suddenly, how much of detective work was defense against the brutal simplicity of rumor. “I’ll write what you told me, Aisha,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to keep you from being treated as the accused. That’s my job. But you need to be honest with us and help us follow the threads. We need to know everything you remember — even the parts that make you afraid.”

She nodded, swallowing. A small, grateful movement. Then she rose slowly, and the world outside the interview room seemed colder for both of them. Karim watched her go with a professional detachment that felt like a coat he had been taught to wear; underneath it his chest ached in a way he would only later name as pity.

When the door clicked shut, Salako’s shoulders drooped and he rubbed at his eyes. “She cried like that?” he asked.

“Like a storm,” Karim said.

“You think she’s clean?” Salako, who had heard her sobs from outside the interrogation room asked — the shorthand for whether she was a suspect.

“I think she’s a witness,” Karim said. “But we have to verify everything. Her recollection gives us leads: perfume, ring, ‘chief’ as a nickname, and a silhouette. Forensics will need access to the commissioner’s study again. We need to track visitors and check CCTV on the road to see who visited that night. We need a timeline.”

Salako nodded, the gears turning. “I’ll push for the CCTV. I’ll get forensics to expedite the trace. We’ll do a sweep for the ring — jewelers might help. If the woman’s voice was distinctive, maybe somebody at the house remembers it.”

Outside, the day consolidated into work: witness statements to log, a coffee that tasted like bitter duty, a press officer being given a carefully neutral statement to feed the channels. Karim tapped his pen against the report, slowing his thoughts to the rhythm that kept him efficient. There was an irony to the neatness of police procedure in the face of lives that were messy and terrible. He felt the weight of a case that could shift, at any moment, from a murder investigation into a moral spectacle, and he took a small, stubborn comfort in the knowledge that evidence seldom yielded to spectacle when someone did the hard work of following the threads.

At his desk he let his mind wander, briefly, to a memory that sometimes surfaced in moments like this: a younger Karim, an orphan, sitting at a small wooden table with an uncle who would not speak softness but whose eyes held a kind of stubborn care. His uncle had taught him how to tie a knot in a broken strap, how to stand in a market and bargain without giving away the last of his pride. The memory was not pretty; it was a tool. It pushed him toward another impulse — not pity as a show but pity as a spur to action. He would not let Aisha become a scapegoat. If that required longer hours, friction with superiors, digging through receipts and calls until his nails were raw, he would do it.

There were images to be checked, names to be run, forensics to prod. He would go back to the commissioner’s house that afternoon, walk the rooms again, and look for the red flash of a ring or the ghost of perfume on a curtain. He would listen for small things — the way a door had creaked, a voice that might be remembered by someone who had been present. He would not make assumptions. He would gather.

And when the day carried on and the precinct hummed its habitual tune, Karim sat back and let the room’s light make a thin halo across his paperwork. The city outside had woken; cars threaded through puddled roads and life, indifferent, continued. He sat there holding the report like a map of both fact and human fragility. At the top of the page was the commissioner’s name, printed in bold — a man whose death would unravel people in ways they had not seen coming. At the bottom of the page, scrawled in a cleaner hand, were the details Aisha had offered: perfume, ring, a voice that called him “chief,” and a silhouette that could not be pinned.

Karim thought of the press, of bosses who liked stories tidy and untroubled, and of the woman who had come in shaking and sobbing. He thought of the countless small roads that had led her to that junction, the tiny decisions that ended in a greater violence. He closed the folder with a soft click, a sound of containment, and prepared himself for the work — for the interviews he would run, the footage he would examine, the list of names he would pull. The case would not be resolved by pity, but pity would keep him sharp, a quiet guardian against the hunger for easy answers.

Outside, somewhere in the city, a bell tolled a civic hour. Karim’s phone began to glow again with updates. He stood and went to meet them

#Nemesis