A Dark Matter

by Doug Johnstone

In the kitchen, Indy was stirring a pot, Thomas sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar. He stood when Hannah came in.

  ‘How are you?’ he said.

  She thought about it. ‘I’m OK.’

  Hannah took a sip of wine. Her mum drank way more than her, a generational thing. For Jenny alcohol was rebellion, her drug to annoy the generation before, or just to get high. But Hannah’s generation had found other addictions – fitness, social media, gaming, moving away from the crutches of Generation X, but crutches all the same. Maybe we all need something to keep us distracted, to keep us going in the face of all the shit.

  ‘Want to tell me about Melanie’s room?’ Thomas said.

  Indy raised her eyebrows. She’d obviously told Thomas as much as she knew.

  ‘I found a receipt for her second phone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I fluttered my eyelashes at Kyle at Carphone Warehouse and he gave me the number. It’s dead, obviously, but you can get a list of calls, right?’

  Thomas nodded. ‘That’s good work, Hannah. But please let us do this stuff, OK?’

  Hannah shrugged. ‘I didn’t know how long you were going to take to get round here. I had to do something.’

  Thomas looked out the doorway. ‘I understand, but you might have compromised evidence in there.’

  ‘Sir?’ This was the forensic woman at the door. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Have you found something else?’ Hannah said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Thomas said, leaving with the woman.

  Indy turned from the curry pot. ‘You think Peter Longhorn will be on the list of calls?’

  Hannah thought about it. The naked pictures, the unborn baby, the phone number, it was all coming together. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What if he’s not?’

  ‘There’s DNA, the baby will match him.’

  Indy switched the gas off under the pots and stood for a moment. ‘This is all so unbelievable.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t handle it,’ Indy said.

  Hannah turned away as she felt tears in her eyes.

  ‘Hey.’ Indy put her arms around Hannah, squeezing her, the smell of her mingling with the spices and overwhelming Hannah.

  Eventually Hannah realised Indy was crying too, and squeezed her tighter. They stood like that for a long time, then pulled away from each other.

  ‘You don’t have to be strong for my sake,’ Hannah said.

  ‘It’s not like that. We’re here for each other, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  Indy got two plates from a cupboard and began dishing up the food.

  Hannah felt ashamed. Mel’s disappearance and death had brought out her selfishness, making it all about her. There were so many other people affected by this, Indy, Mel’s other coursemates, her poor mum and dad, Vic, all her family and friends, huge ripples of grief spreading out across the world.

  Hannah’s mind went to Mel’s room, the phone, the pictures, then the unborn child, a grandkid her parents would never take to the park or push on the swings.

  But it was still Hannah’s grief too. Hannah would never be a favourite aunt to that unborn baby, sneaking her sweets and making her laugh with stories of her mum at university.

  She thought about her studies, whether she would be able to go back to learning about forces and particles, the rules that brought the universe together, the subatomic to the galactic, in the wake of all this. She had a tremor of a feeling that if she could just grasp the next thing, the next level of understanding, then all the pieces of the universe would fall into place, the equations would balance, the theories would match data perfectly and the whole cosmos would be aligned. But that wasn’t realistic. There was no grand unified theory, at least not one available to human minds. We were just monkeys scrabbling in the dirt, scratching at the surface of understanding, hopelessly outflanked by the realities of the universe, crippled by the foibles and flaws of human nature. We’ve barely evolved from savages, still carrying millions of years of evolutionary baggage, capable of extreme cruelty, torture, rape, murder, leaving a young woman’s body in the bushes at a golf course with your own unborn baby dead inside her belly as her flesh rotted away and her memories and spirit disappeared.

  She stared out of the window at a magpie harassing two blackbirds in a tree. A tiny conflict in the scheme of things, but life or death to them.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Thomas said in the doorway.

  Both women turned.

  ‘What is it?’ Hannah said.

  Outside, the blackbirds had chased the magpie away. But it would be back looking for eggs, now that it knew there was something there.

  ‘There’s been a development,’ Thomas said. ‘You should check the news.’

  ‘What?’ Hannah took out her phone and opened the news app, read the breaking alert:

  ACADEMIC FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL

  Peter Longhorn, a physics lecturer at Edinburgh University, has been found dead near his home in the Inverleith area of the city. Police say they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the death. Longhorn had been questioned by police as part of the ongoing investigation into the murder of student Melanie Cheng. It’s believed that Longhorn was discovered in a hotel room sometime this afternoon.

  41

  DOROTHY

  Her lower back throbbed as she shuffled round the kit to an old Yo La Tengo record. The band was indie but their songs were about feel, almost soporific, and when Georgia Hubley was singing as well as drumming, there was something resonant about them. The headphones were making Dorothy’s ears warm as she opened onto the ride cymbal for the chorus, shifting her weight and feeling her back groan. She hadn’t been on the yoga mat since Jim’s funeral, the longest she’d gone without in years, and her body was letting her know. It was stupid to have stayed away, the practice was all about connection, feeling your body and mind in balance, but she couldn’t bring herself. Maybe grief was turning to depression. Maybe there was no difference between the two. Maybe she would die of heartbreak, like you heard about with elderly couples. But her heartbreak was tempered by the possibility her husband was a murderer and liar. She was hitting the drums too hard now, drowning out the melody, and she pulled back, closed her eyes, tried to sit behind the beat until the end of the song.

  When the tune finished and she opened her eyes, Abi was in the doorway waiting for her lesson. Dorothy smiled and gave up the drum stool.

  The lesson passed in a blur. Dorothy tried to give the girl her attention but her mind drifted. She’d put Wilco on to stretch her, and the girl was rising to the challenge, but all Dorothy could think about was the list of funerals she had downstairs, the ceremonies Jim had performed in the days after Simon Lawrence was reported missing. It was a surprisingly quiet time for the business, there was one burial three days after Simon went missing, then a gap of almost a week, then a handful of cremations in a row. Of course, maybe Jim kept the body in the fridge for weeks, got rid of it much later. But that would’ve been risky. If he put the body into one of the cremated coffins, that was the end of the trail. You wouldn’t be able to tell anything from cremated remains, no DNA, and the amount of ashes varied hugely, depending on all sorts of factors. So she had to focus on the burial, that was all she had.

  Abi had a sheen of sweat on her forehead, where a spread of adolescent spots had broken out recently. Her hair was greasy at the scalp too, and Dorothy remembered Jenny at that age, similarly out of sorts, unprepared for the world but also not giving a flying shit, so energising. Mothers were supposed to want their daughters all pulled together and sorted for facing the world but Dorothy had always loved Jenny’s makeshift energy, the sense of subcultural disaffection. It reminded her of the Californian counter-cultural stuff that had been blossoming around her when she upped sticks and came to Scotland.

  The song finished and Abi looked up, grinning and sweaty. Dorothy smiled encouragingly and went
to put another song on the iPod.

  ‘That was great,’ she said. ‘But don’t overthink it, go with your instincts.’

  Abi nodded seriously, taking it in. She was a great kid, would do well in the world whatever she decided to do.

  Dorothy tried not to overthink things, but that grave out there loomed in her mind, casting a shadow over everything.

  Archie was doing facial cosmetics on an elderly lady on the slab. Dorothy watched him apply foundation to her cheeks, forehead and neck, careful and tender, like he was putting the finishing touches to an elaborate model of a human being.

  ‘I’ve made a decision,’ Dorothy said, staying in the doorway.

  Archie jumped and looked up.

  The smell of the make-up came to Dorothy, on top of something like rotting flowers. Cool air swept around the room but she felt her cheeks flush.

  ‘About what?’ Archie said.

  ‘I need to find out for certain.’

  Archie shook his head, foundation brush in his hand. Tiny flakes of powder fell from the brush like pollen onto the back of his fingers.

  ‘Speak to the police,’ Archie said. ‘This is a matter for them.’

  He looked at Mrs Murdoch’s face.

  ‘You know they won’t take me seriously,’ Dorothy said.

  ‘Thomas will.’

  ‘Even he can’t swing this. Exhuming a grave on a hunch? A bereaved family from a decade ago needlessly upset over something that’s likely nothing?’

  Archie looked up. ‘That’s just it, it’s nothing, you’ve got no evidence.’

  ‘That’s why I need to get into that grave.’

  Archie swallowed. ‘I won’t be a part of this.’

  Dorothy felt the wood of the doorframe under her finger. ‘You owe me.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Archie said. ‘I think you’re having a breakdown.’

  ‘I’ve never been clearer in my mind.’

  ‘You need to speak to someone.’

  ‘I’m speaking to you.’

  Archie put the foundation brush down, wiped his hands. ‘You’re talking about desecrating someone’s grave. It’s illegal. You’ll get caught.’

  Dorothy straightened her back. ‘Not if you help me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dorothy, I won’t do this.’

  Dorothy held onto the doorframe, squeezed the wood, hoping for a splinter to pierce her skin. ‘Then I’ll do it myself.’

  42

  HANNAH

  She drifted through the day of lectures and labs like she was dark matter, undetectable by humanity, just an ominous lack of substance, a hole in the calculations of the universe. She’d studied dark matter in her first-year particle physics class, how the observable universe was only five percent of the story, the other ninety-five was mysterious, unseen. But we know it’s there because of the effects it has on what we can see, without it, galaxies would fly apart. Dark matter is the glue of the universe. She felt dark energy permeating the James Clerk Maxwell Building too, a sense that everyone knew what Peter Longhorn had done, and that Hannah was responsible. But all she’d done was look for the truth, try to solve the mystery of her friend, and if that started a chain reaction that led to other consequences, that wasn’t her fault.

  She saw Bradley Barker in the canteen, and he rose and left when he caught sight of her. She looked around for Xander but he was missing from class. Some of the other members of the Quantum Club were there, but they all looked away when she tried to make eye contact. She was repellent, driving everyone away with her actions.

  She bunked off her last tutorial and walked up the road towards Greenhill Gardens. She needed to see Indy, be told she’d done the right thing.

  It was half an hour’s walk through Blackford and The Grange into Greenhill, passing some of the biggest houses in the city, Edinburgh old money for generations, lots of Skelf funeral customers over the years. She wondered what possessed Grandpa to start up the private investigator’s. Was it to do with the missing employee? It was impossible to think of him as a murderer, but everything had changed in the last week.

  She presumed Longhorn had done it out of guilt. The baby was his, Mel had told him, threatened to tell his wife, he’d panicked and strangled her, left her in the bushes. When it all came out and his wife knew, he couldn’t take it.

  Emilia Longhorn had backed him on the doorstep, claimed he was the victim of a stalker, but she changed her tune later. Maybe her confidence in him was blown out of the water by Mel’s body turning up, or the news of the pregnancy. Hannah was getting ahead of herself, they hadn’t confirmed the baby was Peter’s. She tried phoning Thomas at the station but he wasn’t there. She needed to know the baby was Peter’s. If it wasn’t, that was more dark matter and dark energy lurking in the shadows.

  She reached the house and stood at the front gate staring at the address. ‘0 Greenhill Gardens’ was so weird, like the house didn’t exist, more dark matter. She wondered if there was another world somewhere in the multiverse where all the house numbers were negative, where the sun sucked energy from the purple skies, and where Mel was still alive, in her room right now studying for exams, staring out of the window and wishing she was out in the Meadows at a barbecue.

  Hannah could hear drumming from the top floor of the house, a syncopated beat floating through the tree branches across Bruntsfield Links. She imagined Gran up there, hunched over, drumsticks a blur, eyes closed as she leaned in to the rhythm. Drumming was both maths and magic at the same time.

  As a little kid, Hannah loved watching Dorothy play, eyes wide from the noise, amazed at the skill involved. When she’d tried it herself, it was clear some things weren’t passed down through the generations. She was scared to hit the drums, even more so the cymbals, unwilling to give herself up to this bigger thing. She thought now maybe that was a mistake, maybe giving yourself over to bigger things than yourself was the way to live. Was that what Mel did, dared to get out there and connect with the universe in a more direct way? Or was she just caught up in the dragnet of everyday lust and desire, the messiness of people and their emotions? Was she trying to set herself free from society’s bullshit?

  Hannah felt exhausted by the grief and sadness, there seemed to be no release from it. She spotted Schrödinger eyeing up some sparrows on a bird feeder hanging from a pine branch. He was motionless in the shadows, eyes following the flutter of wings. She walked to the house close to the birds so that they flapped into the high branches away from the cat.

  Indy was on her hands and knees in front of the desk, fiddling with cables, skirt stretched tight across her bum.

  ‘That’s a nice welcome,’ Hannah said, touching that skirt and running her hand up Indy’s back. Maybe this was the release she needed.

  Indy extricated herself from the mess and stood up.

  ‘That’s sexual assault.’

  ‘Sue me.’ Hannah pulled her close and kissed her. Dorothy was still playing drums in the studio, had moved into a soft shuffle, and Hannah shifted her hips in time, Indy following suit.

  Indy smiled. ‘I would if you had any money.’

  Hannah felt the dark matter of her atoms transforming into light, the electrons vibrating more in their orbits, the neutrons and protons hugging each other a little tighter in the nucleus.

  The front door swung open and banged against the wall.

  ‘You fucking bitch.’

  Emilia Longhorn stood in the doorway, her baby in a buggy a few feet behind her, sucking on a bottle and wiggling her toes. With the sunshine behind her, Emilia looked like an avenging angel. Hannah pushed Indy aside and held out her hands to stop whatever was coming. Emilia strode forwards, lips pressed together, then launched herself at Hannah, grabbing her throat and pushing her to the ground, falling on top of her then raising a fist and punching Hannah in the eye. She grabbed Hannah’s hair with her other hand and punched again, this time connecting with the cheek bone, and Hannah felt Emilia’s ring slice the skin, warm blood flowing from he
r cheek. Hannah kicked and thrashed but Emilia didn’t budge from on top of her. Hannah smelled her perfume, citrus and coconut, heard her breathing and then the baby crying outside, Dorothy’s drumming still thumping upstairs, echoing through the bones of the house as Emilia lifted her fist again. She connected with Hannah’s ear and Hannah heard ringing as she tried to grip Emilia’s wrist and stop the blows. But Emilia ripped her hand free and was swinging her arm down when she was bulldozed by Indy in a rugby tackle, the pair of them tumbling into a display of roses and tulips, scattering blossoms and foliage over the carpet, rolling with a thud into the bottom of the banister.

  Hannah put a hand to her cheek and it came away bloody. She propped herself up on her elbows and saw Indy staggering to her feet and throwing a foot into Emilia’s ribs, which made Hannah wince and Emilia cower into a ball, gripping her chest and struggling to breathe.

  Indy pushed hair from her face as she stood over the woman. She looked from Emilia to the baby, who had dropped her bottle on the gravel and was scrambling like a landed guppy to get it back, pudgy arms and legs flapping, plaintive cries from her mouth.

  Hannah stared at the baby, helpless and now fatherless.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Indy said between breaths.

  Emilia got to her hands and knees, then slowly stood up.

  Hannah stood up too, her face pounding with pain, her body aching.

  Emilia pointed at Hannah. ‘You killed my husband.’

  ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘Because of you.’

  Hannah wiped blood from her cheek. ‘Because of what he did. You threw him out of the house because of what he did. This is not on me.’

  The baby was gurning now, her cry piercing. Emilia ignored her for a long moment, tears in her eyes. Eventually she turned.

  ‘It’s OK, honey, Mummy’s here.’

  She turned back to Hannah, her fists at her sides as she began to walk towards the door.

  ‘You haven’t heard the last of this.’