Young Writers Society

“Just because I’m taking care of you doesn’t mean I’m doing it to get in your pants,” Noah corrected him. “Sometimes people are just nice.”

“Not to me.” Then he was asleep with a soft sigh. Noah stood there for a moment, watching him breath slowly, the blanket rising and falling with each breath he took. He knew Josh had told him not to feel bad for him, but he couldn’t help it. It must be terrible to be trapped in a job, not because you don’t like it but because the person who gave it to you could take it all away at a second's notice.

Josh moaned quietly in his sleep, and Noah placed a steady hand over his. He quieted instantly and Noah sat gently on the bed next to him.
He told himself he would just stay until he was sure that Josh wasn’t going to throw up on himself, but it was several hours before he finally left the apartment and began his journey home in the pink light of the morning sky.

Sunday was a much quieter affair. Noah spent most of the day at his desk, reading up on what the paper’s had to say about Toby Raymond’s death, and what kind of a man he had been. There was an expose on his wife and children, but all of it was very surface level stuff about how he and his wife had married young, and had a perfect daughter who was the spitting image of her father in his youth.

He trawled through social media accounts and found a tribute page to Toby with hundreds of comments from friends and family and everyone else all expressing their sympathies. A few more clicks and he had found Toby’s assistant Salir. His profile was very private, so Noah could only see the picture of what he assumed was Salir and his wife, and a link to the investment website.

The internet dropped out on him at this point, so whilst it reset, Noah went to make himself a cup of coffee and grab a second handful of aspirin. The headache he was woken up with was not painful, and he was thankful for the amount of water he had drunk the second he had returned home, but it was persistent and annoying and he wanted to be rid of it.

Noah’s brain moaned in protest. He didn’t do phone calls to people he didn’t know. He barely called people he did know, and even that was only when there was no other choice. It didn’t hep that he knew it was ridiculous. Astra had told him plenty of times that the person on the other end of the phone wasn’t judging his every word and logically he knew that was true. But logic didn’t stop him freezing up every time he had to make a phone call.

He took a deep breath and dialled the number on the website and held his phone in his hand, as if by winning some kind of staring contest it would make the call from him. Ten minutes passed. He pressed the little green button and then hung up before the phone could even ring. He tried again, but his finger hung up the phone before he could even process what was happening. And again. Same result.

Infuriated, he threw his phone at the wall and put his head in his hands.

“Ouch.”

Noah jumped, but only slightly. “What are you doing here?” he sighed.

“You don’t sound too happy to see me.”

“It’s been a few days,” said Noah tiredly. “I’d kind of hoped you’d found a way to, I don’t know, move on, without me solving your murder.”

“Good to have you back my dude!” He slapped Noah’s back with a laugh. “Mopey McGee over there wasn’t the same without you.”

“I was fine,” Josh frowned. “I just had a hangover.”

“A hangover that lasted four days?” Bernstein chuckled, but stopped immediately as Dr Parish entered the room. He coughed twice. “So as you guys know Dr Parish did a tox screen so we already know there wasn’t any high levels of alcohol in the victim’s body when he died, and there weren’t any drugs either.” He paused for dramatic effect and, when confident that they were all hooked on his every word, he continued.

“But when Dr Calderon was cleaning the remaining tissue from one of the bones-”

“Skip to the part you found please, Bernie,” said Emily, with a nervous glance at Noah. He wondered briefly what the problem was, then remembered his rather embarrassing illness the last time he had been down in the lab. His cheeks coloured a faint pink and he ducked his head, hoping nobody had noticed.

“Right, sure.” Bernstein breezed ahead, waving his hands flamboyantly. “So anyway, she found this weird powder on the inside of Mr Raymond’s jacket. Thought it was a bit weird so I ran it through the mass spec and the results just came back.” He beamed at them all. “It was cocaine.

Noah didn’t really mind. There was something satisfying about the forms that had to be filled in, and the strategic organisation of them all. It often involved long evenings in the office, but the two of them ordered food and spent most of the time talking, paperwork left forgotten on the desk to the side of the room.

“How long have you worked here?” he asked Josh one night, as they chewed their way through the packets of chinese takeaway that they’d ordered from Restaurant Name. It was better than Ralph’s they’d had the previous night but so far the Thai place, Cabbages and Condoms was winning out in their evaluation.

“Um,” Josh said through a mouthful of chow mein. “As a Detective, nearly four years. But I was here for a few years before that, as a glorified pencil pusher.”

At Noah’s quizzical look, he clarified. “I was basically a secretary. Don’t get me wrong, I have a load of respect for the people who do the job but that was not for me. I mean, I got dates confused and the filing system was insane and they all just seemed to know how to do it. I couldn’t keep up.”