This Is How It Feels - An Investigation

"Hello and welcome to a Granada Upfront special. I'm Anthony H. Wilson -"
"- and I'm Lucy Meacock -"
"-and tonight, as police search for missing schoolgirl Marg Cornell and parents mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the Moors Murders, we ask, why does the Northwest have the highest rate of juvenile disappearances in the country?"
Sciliton leaned over and silenced the TV; It was bad enough spending all day mired in the case without having to hear Tony fucking Wilson waffle on about it all night a well. As if chucking enough of his fifty pence words at the subject would solve anything; By that logic, they'd do best to ask Stanley Unwin for his searing insight - At least he was a fully accredited Professor...
He picked up one of the manilla folders which littered the coffee table and began to leaf idly through the contents, the illusion of work temporarily distracting him from the fact that the case was going nowhere. Four weeks since anyone had seen Marg, and they were no closer to finding her than they had been on day one. Worse, every possible avenue that had been open back then had gradually closed off. Sightings in Liverpool and Manchester had turned out to be mistakes, the last two people known to have spoken to her could barely even agree on what she'd been wearing and her mother had proven to be a complete basket case. The TV appeal had been a fiasco, the brass were talking about bringing in some outside firm who were supposed to have "specialist expertise in these matters," whatever that meant, and now half a dozen semi-drunks were discussing his failings with a glorified weather girl and a pretentious night-club owner. Even Roger Cook was sniffing around the story, for fuck's sake!
He threw the folder back onto the table along with the flyers, photos, statements and other assorted ephemera, the crap and detritus thrown up in the wake of his trawl through Marg's brief fifteen years on Earth. All the love notes and doodles retrieved from her bedroom, the letters sent to the station by every fruitcake and Dennis Nilsen wannabe claiming some connection to the case, even the letters page from the local rag the week after the story broke; More than one killer had been caught out that way, bragging about their acts in some coded diatribe about dog-befouled pathways or the municipal parks system, but they'd run the selection in The World through the kind of codebreakers that made the Enigma machine look like a prehistoric calculator and come up with nothing. They had gathered every shred of information about Marg's life, the least little scrap of so-called evidence, and so far all it proved was that, yes, she had definitely existed once, but only up till August 7th. Nothing after that could be proven one way or the other. Like Schrodinger's cat, she was in an indeterminate state, hovering somewhere between living and dead, waiting for the active participation of a viewer to release her, either way.
Sciliton removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, frowning. He could always tell when he was too tired; He started to think about missing persons cases in terms of subatomic physics. Always a bad sign. He drained the dregs of his cold coffee cup, then headed into the bathroom to piss it straight back out again. His back ached, his legs throbbed from sitting in the same position for so long, his left foot had gone to sleep and his right arm felt numb, dead. When he switched on the bathroom strip light, the flickering tube hurt his eyes, the buzz set his teeth on edge and the overall impression of a gigantic bug zapper made him think of Gregor Samsa. Maybe this was a sign that they should start searching roach motels and flypaper strips for tiny, transmogrified iterations of Marg.
"Maybe I've just watched too much Twin Peaks." he suggested to his reflection in the mirror.
Looking back at him, Sciliton2 felt the same shock and revulsion he always experienced when faced with his physical form. Locked away behind his eyes, he always held an idealised version of his body in his mind, a barely glimpsed mixture of his teenage self, Bryan Ferry and Robert Redford; Smart, smooth, handsome and sexy, with that lithe, sinewy grace of a young athlete or a male ballet dancer with a well packed pouch. It always surprised him to be reminded of the truth of the matter; Leaning on the sink, staring back at him, was an average fourty-four year old man. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Total it all up and you would probably find more debits than credits. A couple of teeth that had been knocked out when he was on the beat, the replacements standing out a little more with every day as they yellowed at a slower rate than his own. His hair was greying at the sides and thinning on top and the longer he left it between haircuts, the worse both problems seemed, although that didn't prevent him from growing it as long as regs allowed. It didn't do him any favours, but his wife and a couple of girlfriends had commented on how well he suited long hair, so he tended to keep it that way even now, when his only regular female encounter was with the canteen lady who had spent five years trying to get his toast the way he liked it. She probably never would, so the chances of intimacy were somewhere south of none. Moving on, he came to the windows of his soul, which were a little bit squinty and bloodshot thanks to too many nights spent poring over files in the light of a single desk lamp in the sad hope that it would impart a little Chandleresque glamour to his sleuthing. His skin was losing its tautness, his pores were large and open, sharing the space on his cheeks, chin and forehead with the residual scarring of mild acne which suggested that his idealised teenage self had never been all that perfect to begin with. The whole smile/hair/eye/skin ensemble was perched precariously on the sort of body which spent most of its time sitting in one uncomfortable chair after another, with short spells in a car or a bed to break the monotony. Doughy flesh, wispy hairs clustered around his groin and armpits and nipples, flat feet from his street years and a burgeoning gut from the desk jobs which followed them. A couple of scars obtained in the line of duty, nothing really exciting or life threatening, just puckered purple reminders of how easy it is to open up a human form and let the inside out. Overall, nothing too bad, certainly nothing that couldn't be disguised by a well tailored suit, but his Man At C&A two piece wasn't quite up to the task,especially as he tended to wear each one untill the knees and elbows were shiny and almost worn through.
"What are you looking at?" Sciliton asked his reflection.
Sciliton2 remained silent, wondering the same thing. The answer came back again; A man. No more, no less. A tired man, frightened of failure, who knew that his motives were more about him than the little girl he was looking for. Still, finding Marg would be a concrete action, and surely they were worth more than any number of unspoken terrors and selfish drives.
"You might think that," offered Sciliton3 from somewhere around the Ajna Chakra, interrupting the unspoken dialogue between body and soul, "but I know what this is really all about. It's got nothing to do with pride in your work or doing your duty as a decent copper; Somewhere deep down inside here, you think that if you find her, she'll fall into your arms like a classic damsel in distress. You'll be the great conquering hero, come to rescue her from the darkness, all strength and virility. And even if she doesn't, other women will believe it, for a while at least. You're a little boy playing at Prince Charming, looking for praise and recognition. You want all the women to throw themselves at you, to cover you in glory, and the saddest fact is that if anyone comes anywhere near, you'll sabotage your chances before they even get a chance to say hello. And you know why, don't you?"
Sciliton gripped the sink tightly, staring back into the abyss. He knew the answer, and as Sciliton4 began to call for his mummy in his high, singsong voice, he closed his eyes and ground his teeth, fighting to regain temporary control of his heart and mind and inner child. These were the worst times, when he threatened to splinter into his component parts and run away from himself. Working by touch alone, he opened the bathroom cabinet and fumbled out a well-worn pill case, popped the lid and downed two of the tiny yellow tablets dry before he dared open his eyes again. When he did, he placed the pill case back on the shelf, closed the cabinet and stared at his silent, obedient reflection.
"I'm a policeman," he announced, confidently, expecting and receiving no challenge. "I'm not in bad shape, I take care of myself and I do a good job of anything I put my mind to. I'm not bad looking, just a little tired, and it's what's inside that counts anyway. I just haven't found what I'm looking for, that's all."
He waited a moment longer to be sure that every aspect of his self was in agreement, or at least in no mood to argue, then switched off the light and drifted back out into the lounge. The scattered files no longer bothered him and neither did the failure they represented. What did get to him was the silence, and he turned the TV back up to drown it out with the comforting noise of people who knew even less than he did. He dropped onto the sofa, put his feet up on the coffee table and settled down to ride out the rest of the evening as the talk show came to an inconclusive conclusion.
"So there you have it. As the poet Bob Dylan once said, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, and as Anthony H. Wilson once said, this one could run and run but sadly, that's all we've got time for tonight. Say goodnight Lucy."
"Goodnight Tony."
"Goodnight."