Catcher Told Me I Was Rotten

>Prologue: The Prime Suspect

This kid was infuriating. To make matters more taxing, his lawyer was worse.

Detective Inspector Liam Collins sat down in front of the pair for what seemed like the twelfth time that day. He was tired, and this was obvious -- by the dark circles under his eyes, the stink of the stale, bog-standard Tesco coffee he'd been drinking since seven that morning, the slump in his shoulders. He loved his young daughter, but she was teething, and Marianne had rejected all proposals of letting the baby room out in the shed, just so he could a decent night's sleep, for God's sake.

There were so many discrepancies between them; Liam's size medium polyester blue shirt did nothing for his skin tone and itched like all hell, while the lawyer -- he caught his name as 'Mallory' -- was wearing an obviously custom made suit, reflecting the subtlest of peach tones in his pallid face, making him seem more approachable. He was pressed, fresh; he obviously didn't work two jobs, wasn't up all night patting some toothless child on the back while she cried out into his ear. Liam envied him. He'd always had a strong sense of justice; always wanted to go into law, to help people. He'd chosen the less glamorous side, and he didn't mind it all that much until they'd had to start tightening belts. Now, he was beginning to get a little green-eyed. But that wouldn't affect his police work. No. He was a good officer. One of the best.

"Alright. Augustus--"

"August," the lawyer corrected, and Liam bristled; what, he could correct his own damn name himself? "He prefers August."

The twenty-something sat there silent, up straight, arms folded resolutely across a broad chest. He'd been part of the rowing team. More than capable of holding a young woman down. Liam was certainly liking him less and less as a person, and more and more as a suspect.

"August." Liam picked the pages up and examined the incident report form in front of them. They were supposed to file one of those things every time they interviewed somebody. He'd be all night in the station at this rate with that thing. "If you're honest with me, I can help you. There were clear signs of a sexual assault, and when we swabbed underneath her fingernails, we found your skin cells."

Augustus smiled without humour, the kind of smile that didn't reach his eyes. "She liked it... rough, shall we say."

"You don't have to answer any of these questions, Mr. Beauchamp." Oh. Why was the lawyer allowed to call him what he liked? By the small curl of distaste on Augustus' upper lip, Liam knew that it didn't please him. But then again, this was the man who was bargaining for your freedom. He could probably call you whatever the hell he wanted.

A broken fluorescent light flickered overhead. He could feel an ache starting to come on in his temples from lack of rest, aggravated by the harsh and unforgiving flaw in the electrics in particular. There wouldn't be any time to have someone come in to fix it before the next suspect came in. Kids. All of them, just kids, really. It was insane -- within a day or two, the media would swarm over this case, flies on a rotting, stinking carcass, and they'd lose all sense of privacy for years. Ah, the perks of being infamous. You might stab your boyfriend, garrotte your girlfriend, and all you get is a suspended sentence for your troubles because you're simply too promising to lock up for a year, because Justice lines its pockets with dirty money. However would the world deal with one less murderer running around?

"August," Liam pressed again, leaning forward -- it was getting late. Very late. he just wanted a confession from someone, god damn it, and then, he wanted to go home and sleep. That was all. Maybe it'd do the kid good, a night in the lock up. He didn't even seem ruffled by this experience. His hair was still soft, pitch curls falling over his forehead as though each individual strand had been arranged by a florist. No darkness around his eyes -- he hadn't lost any of his own rest over this, anyway. And of course, his clothing was immaculate; probably new, out of the tailor's or wherever the ridiculously wealthy got their stuff. He happened to be playing with a coin between his forefinger and thumb, making it spin on the table. Liam was surprised that he even knew what a coin was. He'd probably never had cause to spend one in his life.

"Look. These things happen. Understandable." Liam had to face it. Lying was a part of his job. "What happened between you and her... it made you feel things you've never felt before. I'll bet that confuses you, frightens you. I get it -- coming from the family you come from, there's a lot of pressure to pick the right woman, to present a good public image --'

"I didn't kill her," Augustus interrupted, and Mallory exhaled heavily -- it seemed as though he were thinking, 'this little shit is going to make my job a whole lot harder.'

"You know why I don't believe that." Liam leaned forward, to look at him in the eye. His stare was a flat, deep green, unwavering. Not once did he blink. How sure of the statement he was.

"I didn't kill her. She had those photos, but I didn't kill her."

"She was going to give you up, wasn't she? To campus security. You would have been expelled."

"I never touched her."

"Your entire family went to Cambridge -- I can't imagine what it would have been like to be the first expelled, son. Your parents would probably be... furious. Not to mention the newspapers. You'd never have a job anywhere with a reputation like that going around."

Mallory cut across Liam this time around, causing the inspector to recoil unpleasantly. Well, the sleazy attorney was just as ill-mannered as his client; what could you expect from the rich, after all? "Mr. Collins, you're coercing my client --"

"I didn't," Augustus leaned forward himself, still focused on Liam, "Kill her. She was one of the people who I didn't absolutely loathe. She just had some rather unfortunate information."

Liam was beginning to lose his patience. "If you didn't, then who did?"

"Ah." A smile suddenly split across his face; sly and white, his teeth grazing along his lower lip. If any of the other occupants in the room were female and/or hadn't reached the age for menopause recently, they would have felt their insides quiver in that instant. The Enright smile. "I'm delighted that you're finally asking me something interesting, Detective."