The Politeness of Predators

“Danger rarely shouts. It smiles, offers you a drink, and waits for you to thank it.”

Gladys appeared cautiously in the doorway, hovering on the threshold like she wasn't sure she was welcome—or perhaps wasn't sure what she'd find inside. Her body language was tentative, one hand still gripping the doorframe as though anchoring herself before committing to entry.

Her gaze swept across the room in a slow pan—taking in the overturned bags with their contents spilled across carpet like entrails, the broken glass glittering under fluorescent light like scattered stars, the scattered debris that transformed a pristine bedroom into a crime scene—and finally landed on me.

I was still slumped against the wall where I'd fallen, my legs sprawled awkwardly in front of me like a discarded doll, one hand clutched tightly around the other to stem the slow but steady trickle of blood. The sleeve I'd wrapped around my palm was already soaked through, dark crimson spreading through grey fabric in an expanding stain that looked worse than it probably was.

Probably.

Her eyes widened slightly at the sight—not horror exactly, not the sharp intake of breath that came from witnessing genuine emergency. More... restrained surprise. The expression of someone who'd walked into a dinner party gone sideways and wasn't quite sure who to blame or how to respond appropriately.

Social awkwardness rather than alarm.

"Are you okay?" Gladys asked, her voice soft, the edges lined with concern that seemed genuine enough in the moment—but I couldn't be sure anymore. Couldn't trust my own read on people when my head was still ringing from impact and my hand was screaming protest around embedded glass.

Everything felt unreliable—perceptions, judgements, the ability to distinguish performance from authenticity.

In her hand, she still held the wine glass. That same ornate, oversized goblet she'd poured for herself earlier—crystal catching light, dark wine nearly at the brim. Without hesitation or preamble, she extended it towards me like a peace offering. Or a bribe. Or a distraction designed to shift focus from questions I should be asking.

I couldn't tell which. Possibly all three simultaneously.

I hesitated, my mind caught in the painful fog of too many questions and too much adrenaline still flooding my system. My thoughts moved sluggishly, like trying to think through treacle, each mental process requiring conscious effort that should have been automatic.

But then my fingers moved almost of their own accord—muscle memory or instinct or simple human need for comfort overriding rational caution. I took the glass with my uninjured hand, gripping it perhaps too tightly, feeling the cool crystal against my palm.

The rim was cold against my lips when I lifted it. The wine was smooth, dry, slightly peppery—good quality, not the cheap stuff from the bottle shop. It slid across my tongue with the kind of complexity that spoke of decent vineyard selection and proper storage. Momentarily numbing in the way alcohol always was, dulling the sharp edges of pain and confusion.

I closed my eyes for a beat and let the warmth of it unfurl in my chest, spreading outward from my core with artificial comfort.

"I think I'll have that glass of wine now," I said when I opened my eyes again, my voice coming out a little raw, roughened by the scream I'd released earlier or the impact to my ribs or both. I was trying to gather what remained of my composure, to reassemble the professional façade that had shattered along with the window.

I held the glass out to her again after that single sip, the gesture part joke, part olive branch, part reflexive politeness despite everything that had just happened.

"Sure. I'll go and get it for you," Gladys replied quickly, perhaps too quickly, a small smile blooming across her face like relief. She seemed grateful for the task, for permission to step out of the room and away from everything unravelling inside it. "Oh, and I'll meet you in the bathroom. It's just off the hall down there," she added, pointing casually down the corridor with the kind of offhand direction you'd give to a houseguest.

As if this was a perfectly normal situation. As if I hadn't just been assaulted by my partner in her bedroom. As if we weren't standing amongst torn rubbish bags and broken glass whilst I bled onto her carpet.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again just yet. My head throbbed with each movement—dull, insistent pain radiating from the point where skull had met wall. My hand burned around the glass shard still partially embedded in flesh, sending sharp signals up my arm with every heartbeat.

And my trust—what little of it remained intact after Karl's inexplicable breakdown—was frayed beyond comfort, worn thin by too many lies and evasions and inexplicable behaviours.

I pressed my uninjured palm against the wall and pushed myself upright, my body aching with the effort of standing. Every muscle protested the movement, stiff from tension and impact and the adrenaline crash that was beginning. The room swam slightly as I rose, vision greying at the edges before clearing again.

The ache in my injured palm had settled into a steady, rhythmic pulse—a quiet metronome of pain that kept time with my heartbeat. Throb, throb, throb. Each pulse a reminder of what had just transpired, of the violence that had erupted without warning or comprehension.

Karl's outburst, his violence—it had changed something fundamental between us. Not a crack that might be mended with time and explanation. A fracture. Deep, structural, the kind that compromised integrity even after repair.

And that betrayal, that complete loss of control from someone I'd trusted implicitly with my safety, had left something exposed in me that I didn't often let anyone see. Something I'd learned to armour carefully through years of professional necessity.

Vulnerability.

I took one step forward, testing my balance, finding my centre of gravity. Then another. Breathing through the pain with each movement, cataloguing injuries with the clinical detachment that came from training—possible concussion, definitely bruised ribs, lacerated palm requiring proper medical attention.

Nothing life-threatening. But enough to hurt. Enough to slow me down. Enough to remind me with every breath that I'd been harmed by someone who should have protected me.

"Hey, Gladys?" I called out, my voice echoing slightly into the hallway, bouncing off hard surfaces with strange acoustic properties.

She paused at the doorway, one hand still on the frame, glancing back over her shoulder. Her posture tensed immediately—just a little, just enough to notice if you were watching closely. Like she was bracing for something, preparing for an accusation or question she didn't want to answer.

"Yes?" she replied, and I caught the faint thread of apprehension in her tone despite her attempt at casual inquiry.

"What happened to the window in here?" I asked, gesturing towards the shattered glass with my bandaged hand, drawing her attention to the damage I'd noted but not yet questioned.

She blinked, looked back toward the broken window as though seeing it for the first time, and then shrugged. It was a calculated shrug—half-performance attempting nonchalance, half genuine confusion that might or might not be authentic.

"I'm not really sure," Gladys said slowly, her brow furrowing like she was trying to remember a detail from someone else's life rather than her own recent experience. "It was like that when Luke and I arrived earlier today."

The words landed wrong immediately—off-key, discordant.

My stomach tightened with recognition even before my conscious mind processed why.

"You mean you and Jamie?" I asked, keeping my voice gentle and steady despite the spike of interest, watching her closely now for reaction.

Gladys froze for just a second—a beat too long, a pause that telegraphed significance. It was subtle. A hitch in her breathing. A glitch in her performance.

"Oh. Yes. I meant Jamie," she said, recovering quickly with visible effort. "Me and Jamie."

But the correction was rushed, delivered too fast, the words tumbling over each other. Unnatural. Her voice betrayed her even as she tried to smooth over the slip—too emphatic, protesting too much.

And it didn't ease the tension winding through me like wire pulled taut. If anything, it pulled it tighter, raised more questions than it answered.

I watched as she turned and disappeared into the hallway, her footsteps retreating down the polished floorboards with the soft percussion of bare feet or slippers on wood. The moment she was gone, leaving me alone with wreckage and questions, the silence returned—oppressive, thick with things unsaid and implications unexplored.

I stood there in the centre of the destroyed room, heart beating dully in my ears, hand wrapped tightly in blood-soaked sleeve, trying to assemble the pieces into a coherent picture.

The broken window. Karl's wild reaction to something only he could see or sense. The smell of rot emanating from rubbish bags. The way Gladys had slipped—Luke instead of Jamie, present tense when she should have used past.

Nothing in this house felt right. Nothing aligned with the stories I'd been told.

Nothing in this story added up to anything resembling truth.

The truth was here somewhere—I could feel it coiled just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. Hidden in plain sight perhaps, or buried deliberately under layers of misdirection and performance.

But whatever it was, it wasn't going to give itself up easily. Would require digging, persistence, the kind of relentless questioning that wore down resistance and exposed inconsistency.

Slowly, I made my way down the narrow hallway, my footsteps muffled against timber floorboards that gleamed with the kind of high polish that suggested either professional cleaning or obsessive maintenance. Each step was a negotiation—between the dull throb pulsing through my injured hand and the spiralling confusion in my mind that threatened to overwhelm practical concerns.

The house pressed in around me as I moved deeper into its interior, heavy with silence that felt deliberate rather than accidental. It wasn't the comfortable kind of quiet you might welcome in a peaceful home at day's end—the contented stillness of a space at rest.

It was the kind that made your skin prickle with unease, that whispered behind closed doors and hung too heavily in the air like humidity before storms. The kind that suggested things hidden, secrets kept, truths actively suppressed rather than simply unspoken.

I reached the bathroom and eased myself down onto the edge of the bathtub, exhaling as I settled onto cold porcelain. The chill was grounding, shocking against the backs of my thighs even through trousers, pulling me back into physical reality from the drift of speculation and shock.

I cradled my injured hand carefully in my lap, examining the damage properly for the first time—a deep laceration across the palm, still bleeding sluggishly through improvised bandaging, edges ragged from glass rather than clean like a knife would produce.

My gaze drifted over the unfamiliar room whilst I waited for Gladys—gleaming white tiles that reflected light in ways that made the space feel clinical, fixtures so clean they might be brand new. Like the rest of the house, it felt curated rather than lived in. Staged for photographs rather than daily use.

Not a single water spot on the mirror. No toothbrush visible beside the sink. No half-used bottles of product cluttering the shower. Nothing that suggested this bathroom served any function beyond looking pristine.

Moments later, Gladys appeared in the doorway. She flicked the switch, flooding the bathroom in sharp, sterile light—no dimmer here, no soft glow option. Just stark, unrelenting brightness that seemed to magnify every flaw and bruise and smear of blood on my person.

In her hand was a fresh glass of deep red wine, liquid dark as arterial blood. She extended it toward me with grace, movements fluid and unhurried.

"Here," she said, her voice even—almost too calm given the circumstances, as though offering wine to bleeding police officers was a routine occurrence.

"Sorry about the blood," I murmured, taking the glass in my good hand with an awkward grip. My fingers were less steady than I'd like, a slight tremor betraying the shock still working through my system.

I took a sip immediately, needing the warmth, the numbing effect, the small comfort of familiar ritual. Feeling the alcohol bloom in my chest with artificial heat.

That was when I noticed it properly—the trail of blood I'd left along the hallway behind me. Thin smears on pale walls where my hand had brushed for balance, darker spots on skirting boards where drops had fallen, like the ghost of fingers reaching out behind me in a macabre breadcrumb trail.

A grim signature on an otherwise pristine house. Evidence of my passage through space, marking territory with bodily fluids like some wounded animal.

"That's okay," Gladys replied, sipping from her own glass with the casual ease of someone entirely comfortable despite the circumstances. Her tone carried sympathy that hovered somewhere above the surface, not quite sinking in to genuine concern. "It wasn't your fault."

The absolution felt strange—unearned, premature, offered without full understanding of what had happened or why.

She turned away, setting her wine glass down on the vanity with care before crouching to rummage through drawers and cupboards beneath the sink. The gentle clatter of bottles and boxes and bandages filled the space with oddly domestic sounds—normal, mundane, completely at odds with the violence that had preceded this moment.

I watched her over the rim of my glass, one eyebrow slightly raised, trying to read meaning in her movements and finding nothing conclusive.

There was something surreal about the entire exchange. About her specifically.

It wasn't just that Gladys was hard to read—many people were, particularly those with things to hide or reasons to maintain careful control over their presentation. It was that she didn't seem to want to be read, actively worked to remain opaque in ways that went beyond normal social boundaries.

Her movements were too measured, each gesture considered and deliberate. Her reactions always a second too late or a fraction too polished, like she was performing responses rather than experiencing them genuinely. Affect that looked right on surface but felt wrong when examined.

I couldn't decide if she was in control of something—orchestrating events according to a plan only she understood—or simply detached from everything happening around her. Dissociated. Disconnected in ways that suggested either pathology or very good acting.

A puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle.

I lifted the wine to my lips again, taking a more substantial swallow. The shiraz was bold and dark, slightly peppery with tannins that dried my mouth, fruit-forward in ways that suggested Barossa or McLaren Vale. Good wine. Expensive wine.

It sat heavily on my tongue, coating my palate with complexity.

Gratitude warred with suspicion in the back of my mind. The wine soothed, brought comfort and warmth and slight fuzzing of sharp edges. But it didn't soften the questions still pressing in, didn't dull the instinct that said nothing here was what it appeared.

What was Gladys's role in all this? What was her relationship to Jamie and Luke beyond "close friends"? Why was she driving Jamie's car? Why had she slipped and said Luke's name when she meant Jamie's? What did she know that she wasn't saying?

I rose carefully from the tub's edge, the motion pulling at the tightness in my ribs—definitely bruised, possibly cracked, would need X-rays to confirm. Crossed to the vanity in two steps and set the wine down beside Gladys's glass with soft clink of crystal on ceramic.

Turned the taps with my uninjured hand, watching water pour from the spout in clear stream. The sound of it gushing filled the silence with something familiar—something real and uncomplicated. Basic physics, predictable cause and effect.

I let it run until it warmed, steam beginning to rise from the basin, then tentatively dipped my injured fingers beneath the stream.

The pain was immediate and intense—a sharp sting that travelled up my arm like an electrical current, making me gasp despite preparation. Hot water on an open wound, diluting blood and carrying it away in pink swirls down the drain.

I hissed through my teeth but kept my hand under the flow, watching the improvised bandaging—my sleeve—turn sodden and useless, peeling away from flesh to reveal the full extent of damage. The laceration was deeper than I'd thought, edges gaping slightly, glass still embedded in one section.

The sting gave way gradually to a dull ache, the kind that told you nerve endings were functioning properly, that you were still alive and feeling and processing sensation despite trauma.

Pain as confirmation of existence.

I'd almost forgotten Gladys was still in the room when I finally turned, hand still outstretched and dripping, water running down my wrist to soak my sleeve further.

Gladys stepped close again, returning from her rummaging with a small first aid kit—proper medical supplies rather than the improvised treatment I'd been managing. She dabbed my palm with a clean cloth, her touch surprisingly gentle for someone I couldn't quite trust.

She moved with a kind of competence that spoke of experience—not rushed, not clumsy, not squeamish about blood or injury. She applied butterfly bandages, smoothing them into place across the laceration with fingers that knew exactly what they were doing, closing the wound's edges together with professional precision.

"Thanks," I said when she'd finished, nodding acknowledgement. The word came out quiet, more sincere than I'd intended.

I couldn't help it—despite everything, despite all the inconsistencies and evasions and questions surrounding her, there was something disarming about Gladys in this moment. An understated warmth in her ministrations, a genuine care in how she'd tended my injury.

Or maybe just very good acting designed to lower my guard and make me more receptive to whatever story she wanted to tell.

Or maybe the wine was softening me already, blurring the sharper lines of mistrust, making me more charitable in my assessments than circumstances warranted.

I took another sip from my glass and let the room spin gently for just a moment, closing my eyes against the overhead brightness. The scent of antiseptic from the first aid supplies mingled with the aroma of shiraz and something else underneath—something faint, earthy, almost metallic that I couldn't quite identify.

My gaze drifted to the mirror above the sink when I opened my eyes again. My reflection stared back with bruising honesty: pale beneath the fluorescent glare, hair dishevelled, small scrape along my jaw I hadn't noticed acquiring, eyes too wide and slightly glassy from shock and alcohol.

Still standing though. Still conscious and functional.

Just.

In that moment, looking at my battered reflection whilst Gladys packed away medical supplies with meticulous care, I wasn't sure what I believed about Gladys Cramer.

But I was sure of one thing: I wasn't leaving this house until I had more answers than I'd arrived with.

Whatever was happening here—whatever truth was being hidden beneath layers of performance and misdirection—I intended to uncover it before I left.

Gladys gestured lightly for me to follow her back into the living room, a casual wave that suggested social invitation rather than return to the scene of recent violence. I rose slowly from the tub's edge, feeling every ache settle into a dull throb throughout my body as I moved—hand, head, ribs all protesting in different registers.

My injured hand, now carefully bandaged with proper medical supplies, still pulsed beneath the gauze with a quiet rhythm. Throb, throb, throb. A metronome keeping time with damage.

Wine glass in my good hand—because apparently we were doing this now, drinking whilst on duty, crossing lines I'd never crossed before—I trailed her through the dim hallway. The overhead light flickered as we passed beneath it, once and then again, casting odd and shifting shadows along walls that seemed to lean inward.

The effect was disorienting, made the corridor feel longer than it should, made distances difficult to judge accurately.

We emerged into the living room and sank into opposite ends of the sleek black leather couch—her at one end, sitting with posture that was poised but not quite relaxed, spine straight and shoulders back; me at the other, settling carefully against cushions to avoid jarring my ribs.

The surface was cold beneath me even through clothing, the room maintaining its sterile perfection despite everything that had just transpired elsewhere in the house. The chaos of earlier—the yelling, the violence, the breaking glass, the blood—now felt like it had been scrubbed out of the space entirely. Erased. Made to have never happened.

But not out of my mind. Not out of my body, which continued cataloguing injuries with each breath and movement.

"So..." I began, choosing my tone with deliberate care, keeping it conversational but focused, friendly but purposeful. The interviewer's voice—casual enough not to seem like interrogation, serious enough to demand actual answers. "What do you know about Jamie and Karl?"

"Karl? Nothing," Gladys replied almost instantly.

Her words were blunt, definitive—a little too sharp, like a door being shut just slightly too hard to be polite. She shifted in her seat immediately after speaking, adjusting herself with small movements that suggested discomfort, as if repositioning might help her balance the question better.

Her posture was open enough on surface to suggest ease—legs uncrossed, arms not folded defensively. But there was tension in her shoulders that contradicted the relaxed presentation. Controlled, deliberate. Guarded beneath the friendly façade.

"But Jamie and I have been close friends for many years," she added after that brief pause, her voice softer this time, offering information to fill the space her denial had created.

"Really? Karl seemed like he knew rather a lot about Louise yesterday," I offered casually, watching her face for the smallest signs—an eye twitch, a breath held a beat too long, colour rising in cheeks, any tell that might reveal more than words.

"Jamie's sister, Louise?" Gladys asked, eyebrows lifting with surprise that seemed measured but not entirely concealed. Genuine reaction or performed interest, impossible to determine with certainty.

"Yes," I confirmed, my eyes holding hers across the couch's expanse, maintaining eye contact to gauge response. "She came into the station to report Jamie as a missing person. She reckons she hasn't seen Jamie or her son Kain for several days."

I let the silence that followed stretch deliberately, heavy and probing. Using the weight of unspoken implications to pressure a response, to see how she'd fill the void.

Gladys's expression didn't flinch overtly—no dramatic reaction, no obvious tells. But there was a stillness to her then that went beyond simple attention. A subtle pause in breathing, a slight shift in her gaze, like a thought had stalled mid-step in her mind whilst she processed implications and formulated a response.

"Well, that's a bit odd. I haven't seen Kain recently, but Jamie is definitely safe and well," she said finally, her voice maintaining remarkable calm throughout.

Too calm, perhaps. A veneer of certainty that didn't quite match the facts as I understood them, that raised more questions than it answered.

I turned her words over in my head, examining them from multiple angles like evidence in dim light. She didn't say I've seen Jamie today, or even this week. Just that he was "safe and well"—present tense but abstract. Non-committal. No specific timeframe, no concrete details that could be verified or contradicted.

The kind of careful phrasing people used when they wanted to technically tell truth whilst obscuring actual facts.

I noted the choice of language as carefully as I would document blood spatter patterns—every word potentially significant, every omission meaningful.

"And Luke?" I ventured, keeping my voice quiet and almost offhand—but every nerve in me braced for response.

I felt my toes curl instinctively inside my boots, a ripple of tension travelling up my spine like electricity along wire. Some primal warning system activating without conscious permission.

I stole a glance down at my hands—one clutching the wine glass with white-knuckled grip, the other resting bandaged and raw in my lap like a wounded bird.

Shit.

A shiver flicked up the back of my neck despite the room's ambient warmth. The temperature seemed to drop a degree, or maybe it was just me, my body responding to stress and shock and the accumulated strangeness of everything that had happened.

The light overhead flickered again—once, then twice—casting slanted shadows across the floor that jumped and shuddered like living things before settling back into stillness.

"You better have an electrician look into that," I muttered, forcing myself to look away from the ceiling and back to Gladys, using the mundane observation to ground myself in normal concerns.

Gladys smiled at my comment—a warm expression, even pleasant. But it didn't touch her eyes, didn't reach past the surface performance into anything genuine. "Luke is definitely safe," she said with confidence that did more to unsettle than reassure.

Safe where? Safe with whom? Safe from what?

The questions multiplied faster than I could articulate them, each spawning variations and complications.

I narrowed my gaze just slightly, trying to hide the unease crawling under my skin like insects. Raised my glass with deliberate casualness. "Well, cheers to that," I said, leaning across the couch and holding it aloft in toast gesture.

"Cheers," Gladys replied, her glass meeting mine with a soft clink that rang a little too clearly in the tense silence, crystal on crystal producing a pure tone that lingered.

I drained the wine in three steady gulps, feeling it slide down my throat with a warming effect that spread through my chest. The rich taste lingered, mingling with the metallic flavour of adrenaline still caught in the back of my throat, combining into something unpleasant.

The alcohol brought a brief, deceptive warmth to my core, but it didn't reach the chill coiled low in my gut—the instinctive sense that something was profoundly wrong here, that I was sitting in the middle of something I didn't yet understand.

"I had better be off then," I announced, standing slowly and carefully, testing my balance, ensuring I wouldn't sway visibly. "I'm not supposed to be drinking whilst on duty."

The admission felt strange—acknowledging the breach of protocol aloud, making it real through confession. But Gladys had been there, had seen me drink, had in fact provided the alcohol. No point pretending otherwise.

"My lips are sealed," Gladys quipped, dragging her finger across her mouth in a pantomime of zipping it shut—a playful gesture that would have been charming under different circumstances.

I chuckled softly despite myself, despite everything, despite the absurdity of the entire situation. The sound surprised me—genuine amusement breaking through the tension.

The moment was strange—too light, too easy, completely incongruous. Like the script of a scene trying desperately to forget the violence of the act that had preceded it, trying to pretend we were just two women sharing wine rather than detective and witness to trauma.

As I made my way to the door, Gladys followed at a polite distance—seeing me out like a host after a dinner party rather than witness after an assault. The social niceties felt surreal, scripted, wrong.

I stepped outside, and the late afternoon air struck my face with welcome force—crisp and cooling, sharp against the heat of my thoughts and the flush the wine had brought to my skin. The temperature differential was shocking, clarifying, pulled me back into present moment.

The front door shut softly behind me, leaving the house—and whatever truths it held—sealed once more. The click of the latch engaging seemed final, definitive, separating me from answers that remained tantalisingly close but just beyond reach.

My footsteps felt heavy on the paved path, but my mind was alight—firing on all cylinders despite alcohol and injury, assembling observations into theories, cataloguing inconsistencies, building a narrative from fragments.

Gladys had played the part well. Too well, perhaps. Her performance walked the knife-edge between helpful witness and skilled deceiver. Friendly but evasive. Caring but concealing. Every answer raising more questions.

Her contradictions piled upon each other like an unstable tower—the slip of Luke's name, the careful non-answers about whereabouts, the ease with which she'd tended my injuries whilst deflecting substantive questions. The way she'd described people as "safe" without actually confirming she'd seen them.

None of it sat right. None of it aligned into a coherent picture I could trust.

Perhaps Gladys will be of some use, after all, I thought, glancing back at the house one last time before it disappeared from view.

But I wasn't done here. Not even close. This investigation had just become personal in ways that went beyond professional obligation.

Karl had attacked me—lost control so completely he'd struck his own partner. That alone demanded answers, explanations, consequences that couldn't be ignored regardless of what had triggered his breakdown.

And somewhere in this house or in Gladys's knowledge was the truth about Jamie and Luke and Kain and all the missing pieces that refused to assemble into sense.

The truth was still in there, hidden behind performance and evasion and careful words.

And I intended to pull it out, piece by piece—no matter how deep I had to dig, no matter what lines I had to cross, no matter whose trust I had to betray in the process.