North Star

Chapter 16: The Interview

The rest of the day is a blurry daze. Heloise says that after I passed out at the breakfast table, everyone crowded around me trying to help. I was only unconscious for a few minutes, but in that short space of time my friends had already explained to Katriane the reason for my fainting spell - I’d been at the library moments before Mirabelle was killed, and was possibly the last person to have seen her alive.

And so I spent the rest of the morning at the police station in Luxembourg’s City’s business district, accompanied by Katriane and Heloise. 

The police officer interviewing me - Inspector Bettel - was an older man, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, with greying hair and a gaunt, sharp face, which emphasised the piercing stare of his greyish blue eyes. 

He explained that he was leading the investigation into what had happened. I was to recount the events of the evening as clearly as I could, and in as much detail as possible, in the interrogation room while being recorded. He was quick to explain that I wasn’t a suspect, but rather, a crucial witness.

And so over a cup of luke-warm tea, he took my statement, asking me a million questions about what time I’d arrived at the library; what time I left; how well did I know the victim; how had she seemed “emotionally” yesterday evening; did I notice anything suspicious or unusual and so forth. 

I told him everything I could think of, but he seemed strangely dismissive when I mentioned that I thought I might have possibly seen someone in the shadowy woods outside the library. I said that I’d caught a momentary glimpse of a fair-haired person, but I wasn’t certain that it wasn’t just my over active imagination and a trick of the light - whereupon he immediately agreed with me and said I likely imagined it. He didn’t bother to ask anything further about the person I might have seen - like how tall the person was, or their gender, or their age - not that I could have told him that anyway, but still, it seemed odd that the officer so quickly assumed I’d been mistaken about seeing someone.

Even when I told him how I’d heard a branch or a twig breaking in the forest just feet away from me on the walk home, which had promoted me to run, he brushed it off, saying that there are plenty of wild foxes and noisy hares roaming the campus grounds.

Then he started asking more pointed questions about Mirabelle. 

What was she like as a person? Did she have a boyfriend, or even maybe, multiple boyfriends? 

(I told him I wasn’t sure if she was seeing anyone). 

Was she into drugs? Did she like to party? Did she ever mention money issues? Was she depressed? Has she ever mentioned wanting to hurt herself, or wanting to “end it all”?

At that point I asked him if he was suggesting that Mirabelle had killed herself, and he just shrugged nonchalantly, saying that they couldn’t rule anything out at this stage.

But people don’t just drag themselves out into the forest and slit their own throats. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s impossible.

Once he was done interviewing me, Inspector Bettel thanked me for my time, and asked me to contact him should I remember anything else.

A few hours have passed since then. I spent an hour this afternoon in the student counsellor’s office, talking through my shock. She told me that there are five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance. In the Denial stage, which is what I’m supposedly in at the moment, the shock is so sudden and overwhelming that your mind activates this desperate defence mechanism, fooling you into the idea that maybe it’s all just some big dream, or even a mistake. You convince yourself that it’s all just this big misunderstanding and the person can’t possibly be dead - everything will turn out fine. It’s a coping mechanism… your subconscious trying to numb the shock of a tragedy by giving your conscious mind time to absorb the news, to understand it, to process it, and to come to terms with the new reality. 

Even though Mirabelle and I weren’t exactly close - we only knew each other for just under two weeks, after all - we were definitely on track to becoming close friends. I still can’t quite believe that I’d seen her just a few hours before she was found dead.

How is it possible for someone to be alive one moment, and just gone the next?

The second stage, which the counsellor warned me I’d be heading towards at some point in the near future as soon as the shock faded, is Anger. It’s another coping mechanism, but one that masks the emotions of sorrow and grief that are too painful to bear, and allows the pain to be redirected.

The third stage is Bargaining, in which you obsess about the “what if”, and you try desperately to regain some control in a world that now seems sad, cruel and chaotic. But like all the other stages, it’s nothing more than a stalling tactic, an attempt to postpone the inevitable fourth stage - Depression. The reality of the loss finally sinks in, along with the realisation that all the Anger, and the Bargaining, did nothing. Eventually, most people will come through the depression stage, and enter the final stage of grieving. Acceptance. 

I left the student counsellor’s office feeling even more dazed and bewildered than I’d felt going in.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the residence hall room that Heloise and I share, going over and over my recollections of the night before, racking my brain for any memory or clue that could help. I don’t feel ready to leave the room just yet - I need some time alone to think. Heloise has been wonderful - she bought me a box of tissues in case I needed to cry, and then retreated to the other side of the room, working on a Drama essay at her desk, giving me time and space to just think. 

At suppertime, she didn’t even need to ask what I’d prefer - she just seemed to intuitively know that I wouldn’t be able to face the prying eyes and curious questions of the other students in the dining hall, after my fainting spell in the morning. And so instead of going to the dining hall and leaving me alone, she ordered an extra large pepperoni and basil pizza from a local pizzeria that does deliveries, and we ate together in the room in a companionable silence. 

That was hours ago now. Heloise has gone to sleep, and I’m lying in bed with my laptop on my lap. It’s almost midnight - twenty four hours since I left the library, and made the stupid decision not to look for Mirabelle when she wasn’t at her usual spot at the reception desk. Twenty four hours since the decision that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. Twenty four hours since I saw the fair-haired person in the woods, watching me outside the library - a person that the police (or just Inspector Bettel, as least) seem to want me to forget having seen.

There’s only one thing I can do at this point. 

I’m ready to go online.

I flip open my laptop, and begin my search for answers.