Login   Sign Up 



 

The Archaeology of Murder, chapter 6

by mongoose 

Posted: 19 September 2012
Word Count: 2202
Summary: The police have been to the university and interviewed Professor Decker and learned more about the negative side of the victim. Now they are beginning to question some of the other characters. We see deeper into Carolinne's character


Font Size
 


Printable Version
Print Double spaced


Later that same evening Carolinne and David were in their office at the central police station in Reading. In the last hour uniformed police had been to the cramped terraced house in West Reading that Cassandra and Ruth shared with another girl from the university. The patrol car had promptly collected Jake from a similarly pokey but all-male student house two streets away and all three were now waiting in the brightly lit and slightly intimidating reception area of the station.

David looked at his watch, it was 8.07pm. He looked out of the window on the second floor of the building. The grey clouds that had seemed to hang oppressively over the town all day had finally released their contents and a fine rain was falling against the cold glass of the window. It was nearly dark already. The sound of the vehicles from the ring-road was dying down as the rush hour traffic thinned out. People hurried home to their houses to close down the working day and to wrap themselves in the comforting warmth of domesticity to counteract the chill of the cool and wet night.

Carolinne was sitting at her organised desk sorting through a pile of message slips, each one representing a call she needed to return or a task that she had yet to do. There were 24 un-opened emails marked in bold on her computer screen. She glanced over at David’s back as he looked out of the window, wondered briefly what he is thinking about and then picked up a faxed report from her in-tray and scanned through it. It was the preliminary autopsy report on the prostitute who had died in the past week due to heroin poisoning. Her eyes picked out the details of the findings. ‘Name: Karen Overton; Age: 24; Date of Death: Tuesday 7th September; Cause of death: heroin poisoning.’ She read down the page and noted the stark findings that marked the end of another young life. She saw that this victim was the same age as Peter Sacking.

“Did you get anything from the Intelligence Department about the squat where we found Peter?”

“They had nothing on it Ma’am,” said David as he turned his back on the night outside. “They knew that the wooded area behind the houses was sometimes used for drugs from the usual stuff; used needles and empty cans everywhere but they didn’t know that one of the houses was being used. It must have been a fairly recent break-in.”

“Had they got in via the back?”

“Yes, the lock on the back door had been broken but it was a clean job. You’d have to be right up close to the door to see that the lock was damaged. There’s a wall that separates the gardens of the properties from the wooded area. It’s probably why no one has noticed what has been happening.”

Carolinne thoughtfully tapped the end of a blue biro on her lower lip as she looked back down at the autopsy report on the dead prostitute. Her mind was roaming back and forth between the Sacking case and the drugs- related prostitute deaths.

“What about this contaminated heroin that’s coming in? Do they have anything on that?”

David sat down at his desk and opened up an email on his computer, his eyes scanning the bright screen.

“It’s the second batch in three years that has been contaminated and used in this area. They don’t know how it is imported but they believe that it’s possibly coming in from somewhere like Uzbekistan. They don’t know if it comes in straight to Berkshire or has come down from London or up from Southampton.”

“Do they have any samples of it?”

“Not yet Ma’am. There was nothing at the scenes of deaths of either of the prostitutes.”

He scrolled down further to the bottom of the email and let out a sigh.
“We either need someone to make contact with us from the street with a sample or wait for another death and hope that something is left on the scene. The thing is, if the body is found first by one of the street girls or their cohorts then they take anything valuable before we even get a chance to get there.”

Carolinne wondered again about how people get to the point of only seeing what is valuable to them at a scene of death. Was there never any concern for the victim? Or perhaps there was concern but it was suffocated under the more pressing forces of desperation and greed. She recognised her lapse into reflection for what it was; a sign that it had been a long day and that she was feeling worn down and tired. She stood up, picked up her mobile and the Sacking case file.

“Come on, let’s go and talk to the three amigos downstairs and see if we can make any progress on this case.”

David, slightly taken aback but his Senior’s uncharacteristic slip into humour, smiled and picked up his personal case notes.

Cassandra, Jake and Ruth were sitting in the brightly lit reception area of the police station. The dull coloured painted walls were covered in anti-crime leaflets and posters like an urban patchwork quilt. The students were not talking to each other and were trying to not make eye contact with a drunk man who was sitting in the corner and occasionally voicing his opinions about the local police force.

David opened the door into the reception area and asked the three students to follow him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He held the door to the corridor open for them. “It’s been a busy day. If you could just come this way please and we’ll go to one of the rooms along here.”

His shoes squeaked and sounded unnaturally loud on the waxed plastic floor covering of the corridor. He stopped in front of an open door and ushered the three into the room where Carolinne was already waiting at a central table. She stood up as they entered and saw the three wary pairs of eyes look at her, collectively scan the room and then settle uncertainly again on her face.

“Thank you for coming here so late in the evening. Sit down please.” She indicated three chairs on the other side of the table. David sat down next to his senior officer.

“I expect you are wondering what this is all about.” She smiled comfortingly at them.

“I’m afraid I have some upsetting news for you. A fellow student of yours, Peter Sacking, was found dead earlier today.”

The exclamations of disbelief and shock were all voiced at the same time. Of the three, Cassandra seemed outwardly to be the most composed. Her long ash-blond hair was pulled back from her face and fell in heavy waves down her back. A few of the fine strands of hair in her fringe trembled against the tips of her eyelashes slightly as she blinked rapidly and quietly said,

“Dead? Where? What happened to him?”

Carolinne noted that her face looked drained of blood and had a greenish tinge as if she was coming down with the flu. Ruth had her left hand in her lap and the fingers of her right hand were covering her trembling lips. Jake’s grey eyes were looking from Carolinne to David and then back again.

“I’m sorry, it’s too early to be sure exactly what happened at this stage but we are treating his death as suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” said Ruth through her fingers, “what does that mean?” She was starting to shake. Cassandra put her left hand on Ruth’s right knee.

“I’m afraid it means that his death wasn’t an accident.”

Ruth let out a sound that reminded Carolinne of an injured animal. The student looked down into her lap and began to sob unreservedly. Jake glanced at Ruth and then said,

“What do you need us to do? I mean, what can we do to help? I can’t believe this has happened, we only saw his yesterday. He was supposed to come to the presentation.”

Carolinne was struck again by the way that learning of a sudden death could produce such varied reactions in different people. In Cassandra she saw grief but concern for a friend; in Ruth she saw shock and something like fear and Jake she saw disbelief but an eagerness to know what he had to do.

“We need you all to give us an idea of what you know about Peter and when was the last time you all saw him. At this stage it is important that we get as much information as we can. We need to know what sort of life he led and we know that you were his friends so we hope that you can help us. We’ll need to see you all separately as it will make it easier to write down the important facts that you may be able to tell us. You can all wait for each other and we can drive you back home in a police car if that’s what you would like.”

Jake looked at the girls and said on behalf of the group that they would all travel home together.

**NOTE TO SELF - If you have three witnesses/ people who can give you info but you don’t know if they could or couldn’t be implicated in the murder, would you let them all wait together whilst you were interviewing one or would you put them in separate rooms?**

After the interviews had been completed and David had gone home, Catherine shut down her computer in the office, picked up her bag and coat and made her way to the underground car park. She had passed a couple of colleagues on the stairs and forced herself to smile briefly at them on the way out of the building. She reproached herself for not being more friendly but the day had been long and she was tired.

As the car door shut next to her she put her hands on the cold steering wheel and stared through the windscreen. She was always her own companion in solitude. Going mechanically back through the day in her head, she was questioning herself about all the things she had done. Had she done everything she need to? Had she made sure her colleagues were following up all the necessary leads? Had she set all of the required wheels in motion? She knew that some people had a mental checklist that they went through before sleeping: turning off the gas, unplugging the TV or emptying the kettle. Carolinne could never drive out of the car park without reassuring herself that she had done all of the things that she needed to do and then she allowed herself to go home.

Tonight, however, she sat motionless in the cold car. Something needed to change in her; she felt it. She had begun to feel isolated. No, more than that. She had realised that she had begun to feel lonely. Why did she have to force herself to smile at her colleagues just now? Why hadn’t it come naturally to her? Why did conversations become stilled when she entered a room? For so long she had been proud of her success in the force. Proud of her promotions and case records. But pride didn’t keep you company. It didn’t congratulate you when you did well or put things into perspective when you made a mistake. It didn’t comfort you. She tried to think of the last time that she felt comforted in the presence of another person. Five, six years ago? But with that pleasant memory came a sharp and stinging one. It was like having a double-edged sword; after the comfort came the loss. And out of the loss came isolation and out of the isolation came loneliness.

The memory was painful to her and she roughly turned the key in the ignition and manoeuvred the car out of the dimness of the car park into the orange glow of the street lights. The car glided into the traffic on the ring road and on into the night. Soon the sky ahead began to seem darker as she drove away from the light pollution of the town and on towards the village in which she lived in South Oxfordshire. Parking her car on her drive, she barely noted the sound of her footsteps on the gravel path to her front door. She usually relished the sound of scrunching gravel underfoot. It made her think of country houses and expensive rural properties, the latter of which she herself now owned. But tonight it did not please her and as she stood in the glow of the lamp-light in her own hallway she looked into her own future and saw nothing but a bleak and uninhabited stretch of nothingness. She had no map and didn’t know how to cross it but every journey had to start somewhere. Pulling on that unknown source of strength from within her that she had from childhood, she pushed the front door shut and locked it against the night.






Favourite this work Favourite This Author


Comments by other Members



AlanH at 08:56 on 21 September 2012  Report this post
Hi Mongoose,

I'll try my best with this passage, but I will be viewing it in isolation from what came before. The first two paras, I feel, encapsulate my general thoughts: i.e although the writing is easy and uncomplicated, it is quite analytical in a 'telling' way (does this suit the genre?) and contains material I don't think I need to know. There seems a lot of repetition when you state things that are rather obvious. This slows down the pace.

Examples:

in their office at the central police station in Reading


Do we already know the location of their office? And it's central? And it's Police?

uniformed police


Need this adjective?

a similarly pokey but all-male student house two streets away


Is pokey necessary? Is two streets away significant?

brightly lit and slightly intimidating reception area


Could you show this rather than telling? Probably all readers are familiar with this type of interior, so you're not saying anything original. I feel I want to know something else - some interesting detail that paints a picture for me.

People hurried home to their houses to close down the working day and to wrap themselves in the comforting warmth of domesticity to counteract the chill of the cool and wet night.


I think this is nicely evocative in itself, but is it relevant to this story? I feel it could be inserted into any novel set in a modern city.

There were 24 un-opened emails marked in bold on her computer screen.


Is this precise for a reason? Do you need 'bold'? and 'computer screen'? Again, I feel I am reading unnecessary information. I believe unopened does not have the hyphen.

Her eyes picked out the details of the findings.


Can you not just say 'She picked out the details'?

Regarding the dialogue that follows, I didn't really get a sense of real people speaking. Could you use more clipped speech, contractions, shorter sentences, exclamations etc?
Also, could you give the two characters more individuality?

Carolinne thoughtfully tapped the end of a blue biro on her lower lip as she looked back down at the autopsy report on the dead prostitute. Her mind was roaming back and forth between the Sacking case and the drugs- related prostitute deaths.


I think you could cut a third, or maybe more, of this para. The result would be tighter, pacier, and more engaging for the reader.



David sat down at his desk and opened up an email on his computer, his eyes scanning the bright screen.

May I humbly suggest: David sat at his desk and opened an email.

“We either need someone to make contact with us from the street with a sample or wait for another death and hope that something is left on the scene. The thing is, if the body is found first by one of the street girls or their cohorts then they take anything valuable before we even get a chance to get there.”


I don't know about David, but if this is typical, he is quite bland / unemotional. I would have thought he would have been more agitated about this? It seems descriptive and exact - rather robotic, IMO.

Cassandra, Jake and Ruth were sitting in the brightly lit reception area of the police station. The dull coloured painted walls were covered in anti-crime leaflets and posters like an urban patchwork quilt. The students were not talking to each other and were trying to not make eye contact with a drunk man who was sitting in the corner and occasionally voicing his opinions about the local police force.


You've already said it was brightly lit.
I know it's the Police station.
What dull colour? Why not say, without being too literal. (Inconsistency because you've alread told us about the blue biro, which I didn't need to know.)
Anti-crime leaflets are expected. I want to be entertained by something unusual / quirky.
Trying to not make eye contact - could you show this?
Occasionally voicing? This is diluting a potentially dramatic scene. Why? Drunken people voice opinions about anything and everything. Why be predictable in talking about the Police?
I feel you are avoiding drama here.

His shoes squeaked and sounded unnaturally loud on the waxed plastic floor covering of the corridor. He stopped in front of an open door and ushered the three into the room where Carolinne was already waiting at a central table. She stood up as they entered and saw the three wary pairs of eyes look at her, collectively scan the room and then settle uncertainly again on her face.

“Thank you for coming here so late in the evening. Sit down please.” She indicated three chairs on the other side of the table. David sat down next to his senior officer.


Again, I think you are using unnecessary adjectives. Also, in these two paras, you mention 'three' three times. I already know there are three of them. I also know Carolinne is David's S/O.
I am no authority, but I do wonder about the politeness of David and Carolinne towards the students. Is this natural? I don't know.

Ruth let out a sound that reminded Carolinne of an injured animal. The student looked down into her lap and began to sob unreservedly. Jake glanced at Ruth and then said


What animal? I think the adverb 'unreservedly' is weak here. Could you use 'howl' or some such verb instead of 'sob unreservedly'?

With the last three paras, my level of interest perked up, because I felt more involved with the character of Carolinne, and I could empathise with her condition. I enjoyed reading these paras. They had a nice flow.
I notice 'cold' used twice (steering wheel and car)

Throughout, I was aware of the number of 'hads'. Without doing rereads and a closer scrutiny, which I'm not qualified to do, I can only wonder if they were all needed?

I was struck by the absence of spelling mistakes and typos. I only noticed one or two.
Had she done everything she need to?


Please don't be put out by my comments. I'm seeing your passage from an opposite viewpoint, because I tend to put in too many details and quirky asides that ultimately confuse the reader. I know I need to be more disciplined.

I do hope something I've said is useful.







AlanH at 12:17 on 24 September 2012  Report this post
There's an immensely useful post in Emma Darwin's blog: itch of writing.
It's an analysis of a paragraph by Elizabeth Bowen that Emma admires.
The point she makes is that we need to pay attention to descriptive nouns and verbs, rather than relying on adjectives and adverbs.

I found it unclear at first, but that doesn't matter so much. What is important is getting the overall gist. It's certainly influenced me, and in my current edit I'm substituting tired old nouns and verbs with vigorous new ones. And eliminating adjs and advs.

Hope this helps.



mongoose at 16:22 on 24 September 2012  Report this post
Hi Alan, I'm not ignoring your comments, I am waiting for another couple of crits and then I print all the comments off and go through them

Midnight at 12:53 on 25 September 2012  Report this post
Hi, I've printed this out and hope to get the chance to have a look at it in the next few days.

mongoose at 18:07 on 25 September 2012  Report this post
Thanks Midnight

Bald Man at 16:20 on 26 September 2012  Report this post
Hi Anita.

As an ex-policeman, albeit a while ago now, I was interested in your chapter. I liked the realistic portrait of Carolinne in the penultimate paragraph; this gave her emotional depth and realism.

The three students would be kept apart if the police were not sure of their involvement in the incident. (I haven't read your previous chapters). The police would want to ask the same questions of each of the witnesses and then compare answers.

In relation to your text. I agree with Alan about trimming your sentences. For example:

"dying down...thinned out...close down". These are tautologies, and you could trim your writing by cutting the second word in each of these pairs.

"People hurried home to their houses to close down the working day and to wrap themselves in the comforting warmth of domesticity to counteract the chill of the cool and wet night." This felt overlong and, if I'm honest, a little clunky. You could cut, for example, 'to thir houses', and as you have already stated the hour you don't need to add about closing down the working day.

You could also cut 'about' from 'thinking about' and cut 'due to heroin poisoning' to simply 'of heroin poisoning'.

***

Punctuation issues:

"They knew that the wooded area behind the houses was sometimes used for drugs from the usual stuff; used needles and empty cans everywhere but they didn’t know that one of the houses was being used. It must have been a fairly recent break-in.” Suggest you could replace the semi-colon with a colon or a dash, and have a comma after 'everywhere'.

'...fear and Jake she saw disbelief but an eagerness...' Suggest a semi-colon after 'fear' and a comma after 'disbelief'.

***

Other things I noted:

'...Berkshire or has come down from London.' It sounds like your setting is in Berkshire. If so, it would be 'up from London', geographically speaking.

'..but his Senior’s I think you meant 'by his Senior's...'

'..you would like.' To make this sound more natural, you could contract 'you would' to 'you'd like'.

"She was always her own companion in solitude" You are always your own companion in solitude, so this was rather stating the obvious. In the context of other sentences, you are essentially saying that she relied on her own judgement.

***

Hope that helps. It sounds an interesting plot. If there are any other police procedural issues you would like to check, I'm happy to help.

Colin

mongoose at 17:41 on 26 September 2012  Report this post
Yes, I do need to sentence trim. I tend to put in extra words. I have a friend who is a detective in Thames Valley so He has helped with some procedural advice. If you get a chance, read 'the discovery of the first body' in my archive section. But the descriptions of all the murder scenes and the police-related characters all come from my imagination. I suppose some people would find that slightly alarming

I am aiming to keep the scenes as true to life as possible, without boring the reader..

Account Closed at 16:44 on 30 September 2012  Report this post
Hi Mongoose

I remember reading your first chapter and the story is moving forward. I agree with the points already made. Your writing is good, the story is interesting, but you use too much unnecessary detail. You recognise this and when you come to do your second draft you can deal with it then.

I won't go through the whole story, but I have been given the following advice - as I need to learn to edit - and you may find this useful too when analysing what you need to cut. The advice given to me is to look at your work and think:

Does this sentence move the (front) story forward?
Does this sentence tell me about a character?
Does this sentence describe a setting?

Even if a sentence does describe a setting, if it has been over-described and it not adding weight, then cut it. An example is here:

David looked at his watch, it was 8.07pm. He looked out of the window on the second floor of the building. The grey clouds that had seemed to hang oppressively over the town all day had finally released their contents and a fine rain was falling against the cold glass of the window. It was nearly dark already. The sound of the vehicles from the ring-road was dying down as the rush hour traffic thinned out. People hurried home to their houses to close down the working day and to wrap themselves in the comforting warmth of domesticity to counteract the chill of the cool and wet night.


The dark night was drawing in. 8.07pm according to David's watch. Now the rush hour traffic had thinned he could hear the pitter of rain against his second floor window. He turned away, wishing like every other bugger out there he was tucked up in his warm home but he was here, stuck in an office with Carolinne...

Now my version isn't perfect - far from it - but it offers a connection to the following para so the story flows and links between each para.

As mentioned in a previous crit, you tell alot of information, but think a bit more... whose POV are you in when you tell us they are waiting in the 'slightly intimidating reception area', and why use 'slightly'?

In the last hour uniformed police had been to the cramped terraced house in West Reading that Cassandra and Ruth shared with another girl from the university. The patrol car had promptly collected Jake from a similarly pokey but all-male student house two streets away and all three were now waiting in the brightly lit and slightly intimidating reception area of the station.


Also, instead of telling us that the patrol cars had picked the people up, you could show us David watching through the window as they were brought in - how did they look to him?

You jump from POV to POV. Is this purposeful? I prefer to stick with one POV or move gracefully between them, rather than jumping around. However, I note this is a preference and Jenny Tomlin can get away with head-hopping (not very well in my opinion) but, perhaps, it might be better to stick with one POV per scene.

Carolinne wondered again about how people get to the point of only seeing what is valuable to them at a scene of death. Was there never any concern for the victim? Or perhaps there was concern but it was suffocated under the more pressing forces of desperation and greed. She recognised her lapse into reflection for what it was; a sign that it had been a long day and that she was feeling worn down and tired. She stood up, picked up her mobile and the Sacking case file.

“Come on, let’s go and talk to the three amigos downstairs and see if we can make any progress on this case.”

David, slightly taken aback but his Senior’s uncharacteristic slip into humour, smiled and picked up his personal case notes.


Just to add - does the 'slightly' add anything, or does it take some effect away from the writing? I feel the latter.

In terms of editing, if we are in Carolinne's POV then you don't need Carolinne noted, as that is a given: 'Her face drained of blood, with a greenish tinge like she was coming down with flu.'


Carolinne noted that her face looked drained of blood and had a greenish tinge as if she was coming down with the flu.


And 'Ruth let out a sound like an injured animal' or 'Ruth cried out like an injured animal'.

Ruth let out a sound that reminded Carolinne of an injured animal.



And less so, but another way of looking at it: 'She was struck again by the way that learning of a sudden death could produce such varied reactions in different people or 'How strange that learning of a death produced such varied reactions'.

Carolinne was struck again by the way that learning of a sudden death could produce such varied reactions in different people.


Offering one more piece of advice, it is to get closer into the heads of your characters so we feel more for them/feel we are with them. I guess this will come about by showing more and telling less. Alan mentioned Emma Darwin's Itch of Writing website and her post on Psychic Distance is a useful one.

But, above all, remember you can write. That's great! Learning to edit is the next step and learning what to cut and what to keep is a lesson I have yet to master but I hope to get there. Good luck getting there too.




mongoose at 20:47 on 30 September 2012  Report this post
Hi all, thanks for the advice and pointers, they are really helpful. Sharley - the 3 questions to ask myself when editing are really useful. I will write them on a post-it note and stick it on my writing desk!

As I'm new to novel writing, I am still trying to find my way but I find that I need to get the story down onto paper and then work on trimming and shaping it until it feels right. I think the forum is really helpful as it helps me to step back from the work and see it differently and then that makes the editing much easier and enjoyable!

I have faith in my story and know that I'll be very proud when all of my errant bits of punctuation have shuffled themselves into their rightful place, ready to take a bow on the last page. Hurrah!

Midnight at 20:21 on 02 October 2012  Report this post
Hi Mongoose,
This has taken me longer to get to than I planned, that seems to be the story of my life these days. Anyway, better late than never. I haven't read the other crits so if I repeat anyone, sorry. Little hooks dragged the reader along, although at the pace was slowed by extra words in sentences. Interesting details and enjoyable to read. Everything I say is just one persons opinion. Anyhoo, onto the comments and nit picks.

Later that same evening Carolinne and David were in their office at the central police station in Reading
This sentence didn't grab me for a first sentence in a new chapter. I think there are two reasons for this. First I think it is because the word same isn't needed. It just slows the pace with extra words. 'Later that evening' has exactly the same meaning as 'Later that same evening'. Also was a reader when I getting dragged deep into a scene I don't need to be told the extra details of the police station being in Reading as in the next line we are told they were in a house in West Reading so it would be assumed by the reader that they were local police working locally to West Reading.

Carolinne was sitting at her
was sitting is the same as sat, but with less words.

Carolinne was sitting at her organised desk sorting through a pile of message slips, each one representing a call she needed to return or a task that she had yet to do.
How was it organised?

She glanced over at David’s back as he looked out of the window, wondered briefly what he is thinking about and then picked up a faxed report from her in-tray and scanned through it.
We are in Carolinnes POV here, so if she's looking at Davids back she can't possibly see where his eyes are looking.

She read down the page and noted the stark findings that marked the end of another young life. She saw that
Both sentences start with 'She'.

“Had they got in via the back?”
Via? Would she actually use this word?

“Yes, the lock on the back door had been broken but it was a clean job. You’d have to be right up close to the door to see that the lock was damaged. There’s a wall that separates the gardens of the properties from the wooded area. It’s probably why no one has noticed what has been happening.”
I know he is talking to a superior officer but this reads very formal for speech to me.


Carolinne thoughtfully tapped the end of a blue biro on her lower lip as she looked back down at the autopsy report on the dead prostitute
I think you could end this sentence after the word report as the read already knows that the report is about the dead prostitute. It would tighten the pace a little.

David sat down at his desk and opened up an email on his computer, his eyes scanning the bright screen.
We change onto David POV here (unless she can clearly see his eyes)and then very quickly after we jump back to Carolinnes POV here
Carolinne wondered again about how people get to the point of only seeing what is valuable to them at a scene of death.
Swapping POV so quickly can pull a reader out of your wonderful imagination when as writers we want to keep them firmly in the story so that they don't want to put the book down.

David, slightly taken aback but his Senior’s uncharacteristic slip into humour, smiled and picked up his personal case notes.
Then back into David's POV, because Carolinne can't possibly know that he was taken aback. It could seem to her that he was. But she can't know.

She smiled comfortingly at them.
How does she know that the smile was comfortingly? She can hope.

quietly said,

“Dead? Where? What happened to him?”
I believe this should be on the same line as said.

Carolinne noted that her face looked drained of blood and had a greenish tinge as if she was coming down with the flu.
Visual. Nice

I don't know if you want my opinion on the note that you made to yourself in this piece, but I'll give it in the hope that it may help you. I think the police would keep them separated.

After the interviews had been completed and David had gone home, Catherine shut down her computer in the office, picked up her bag and coat and made her way to the underground car park.
'had' is used twice here you could get rid of one very easily by changing the first 'had been' to a 'were'. 'and' is also used twice the second one could be a 'then'. Also 'in the office' is redundant because that is where the reader will presume that she is since she is shutting down the computer so that could be cut from the sentence.

As the car door shut
'As' is a distancing word. Do we need to be distanced at this point.

light pollution
I love the way you have used this in the sentence. Lovely.

Pulling on that unknown source of strength from within her that she had from childhood, she pushed the front door shut and locked it against the night.
Could have a sound as well.

The chapter is nice. It held my interest and I did want to know more. I'm a little unsure about Carolinne as a reader at this point, but I think I'm supposed to be. He mind seems to drift at slightly times and she doesn't seemed as focused as I would expect for someone in her position. It needs a little tightening, but you have something that can grab interest. Well done and thank you for sharing your imagination.

Diane




mongoose at 20:33 on 04 October 2012  Report this post
Hi, thanks Diane. Yes, POV is something that I need to work on. I am not sure how to write a whole chapter from one POV yet get across the intricacies of the other characters in the scene.

I think you are supposed to be a little unclear about Carolinne at this point as I think she is a little uncertain of her self and that is something that develops through the novel.

Funnily enough, I was actually in Reading police station today (for work) and was sat in the very reception area that I described above. The hilarious bit for me was that there really was a drunk man sitting in the corner! Unlike in my chapter, this drunk man didn't actually say anything and looked like he was about to pass out


To post comments you need to become a member. If you are already a member, please log in .