Post Mortem by Kate London

water in the bathroom emitted from the plastic shower head in an irritating squirt that alternated between scalding and freezing. The smell of the drain was ineffectively masked by disinfectant.
    Shivering, she put on clean pants and a fresh T-shirt.
    The dining room was empty of other guests. Individual boxes of Rice Krispies and Alpen were lined up on the shiny paper tablecloth like cardboard soldiers on forlorn sentry duty. A glass bowl held segments of limp grapefruit in yellow fluid. A female teenager with spotty skin and chipped nail polish approached and asked if she would like a fried breakfast or porridge.
    Lizzie declined both and asked for fresh coffee. ‘Hot, please,’ she emphasized. ‘And strong.’
    Home. Most people would go home .
    The girl put a cafetière on the table in front of her and smiled. ‘I made it as strong as I could.’
    Lizzie could not look at her straight: she brought to mind her first sight of Farah, the figure in a dark hallway. She looked down. ‘Yes, thanks, thanks for that. Thanks a lot.’
    Through the smeary window she registered blindly the traffic queuing along the coast road.
    Number 7 Kenley Villas; the house next to Carrie Stewart’s. Hadley had insisted they park the police car round the corner, but Lizzie couldn’t see the point. They were both in uniform, after all, and so the Mehennis would know they were police. They would either open the door or they wouldn’t.
    She had knelt down and opened the letter box. She could still feel, as she had felt it then, the stone of the doorstep against her bony knees – hard and cold through her uniform trousers. Through the narrow and awkward aperture she could see the darkened empty hallway. Hadley, standing beside her, put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back a little.
    â€˜Never heard of the dog that didn’t bark?’
    She stood up and brushed down her knees. They exchanged glances. Lizzie imagined a bloody big dog banging its head against the door and giggled at the thought and at Hadley’s wilful misappropriation of the Sherlock Holmes quote. Hadley feigned ignorance with a suppressed smile.
    â€˜Well?’ he said. ‘What?’
    Lizzie pulled a straight face and knocked again. ‘Police. Anyone home?’
    The door opened a crack. Dark beady eyes, as alert as a mouse, peered at them. Lizzie craned round the half-closed door to see.The woman must have been about sixty years old. She had thin dark lips and olive skin. She wore a green cable cardigan and a pink and green patterned headscarf. Hadley stepped round Lizzie, pushing her gently aside. He put his shoe, a large black Doc Marten, on the threshold.
    â€˜Your son in?’ he said. ‘Younes?’
    The woman shook her head and started speaking a language Lizzie did not know but recognized as Arabic or one of its brother languages.
    â€˜May we come in?’
    â€˜Yes, yes,’ the woman replied, but it was not clear that she had understood the question.
    Hadley stepped swiftly sideways into the hallway. He was so large that the woman was virtually pressed against the wall by his bulk. Lizzie followed him into the dark, narrow corridor. Hadley had already pushed open the door on the side of the hall. He disappeared into the room, leaving her with the woman. She was small and wiry, wearing a dark skirt and pink slippers. She kept speaking, moving her hand in a patting motion as if smoothing something down. It was a reassuring movement that suggested she was used to trying to appease. Appease whom? Men? White people? Police officers?
    Younes Mehenni’s mother was bewildered but also strangely tenacious. Lizzie followed her as she turned and walked down the hallway into the kitchen. The woman was still talking but was also now dialling a number into her phone. Lizzie was uneasy. She looked around her. The house had a strangeness about it – it was the same basic layout as Carrie