I Know What I Saw

8 Wednesday

In the car on the way to the police station, I go over the events, scrabbling for details. A woman dead. Not dead though now, but alive. But harmed. Grievously. I try and think, late twenties, was she? Thirty? Dark hair, in curls. She was wearing a pink skirt, I remember now how it twisted around her waist. And that white shirt, the spilled wine, making maps on her body. A broken record. But the man who was there is more important right now. I’ll need to give a description of him with clear details so that when I deny it, it has the ring of truth – or if not truth, then plausibility. Plausibility: so much more important than simple, ordinary, mundane truth. Especially for a person like me.

I cast my mind back to him. It was difficult to judge from my vantage point on the floor, but I guess him to be about five feet eleven? Six feet? Trousers. He had trousers, of course, he had trousers but what were they like? Suit trousers I think, dark grey maybe. But what else? The details elude me and I screw my eyes hard in remembrance, but his face is lost to me.

‘You okay there, sir?’ the officer in the passenger seat says – the younger one.

I nod but keep my eyes shut. If there is memory to squeeze out, I must do it now. The police will be setting traps. They will roll out barbed questions and watch as my words catch on their sharp points. The car turns a corner, sending me rocking against the fabric seats.

What did he look like?

By the time we pull to a halt, I have gathered no more than a few wisps of memory. I remember her hair, the curls and how they were arranged across her face, covering part of it. The rooms too, the quality of light in them, the precise texture of that silk carpet. This is uselessly committed to memory, but him? Thirties maybe, early thirties, late twenties? Brown hair? Possibly, but who could tell in that light? I was on the floor for most of it. He was obscured by the edge of my sofa.

At Paddington Green Police Station, I am processed in a way that seems casual: my fingerprints rolled lazily on to sticky film, photographs taken without ceremony or flash. The contents of my pockets: lighter – one, cigarette ends – four, pound coins – three, belt – one, laces – two, key – one, placed into a brown paper bag with a window at the top and then locked into a cupboard. Then I am introduced to the custody sergeant and shown to my cell. It happens, all of this, in a smear.

Minutes or hours pass – in a room without windows, it is impossible to tell. It is deliberate, it seems to me, this sensory deprivation. There’s only hardness in here, and smoothness. Concrete floors and walls and this concrete bench for a bed. Steel lavatory. Iron door. Me. The feeling it creates is one of separation from reality. Nothing in nature, out there in the world, is so hard to the touch and so devoid of texture.

It is disorientating to be in a room alone. Since I left home in favour of solitude and freedom, I haven’t had walls. Whatever safety they once provided is a memory. There’s no safety here, there’s only the rationing of space.

I hear a rattling at the door and I jump to my feet. Two officers enter the cell, carrying bags and a roll of paper. One sets the paper on the ground as the other begins to open a plastic bag with the word ‘EVIDENCE’ written in blue across it.

‘We are seizing your clothes as evidence.’

I watch as the officer with the bags holds one open.

‘Coat,’ says the other and mumbles a number which he writes into a record book.

I stare at him in disbelief but he is not putting up with any nonsense. He just shakes the bag at me impatiently until I take my coat off and roll it into the open sack. Before long all of my clothes are arranged in plastic sacks on the floor. I stare at my arms. I’m not used to seeing my uncovered flesh. It’s bright in patches and then suddenly dark with dirt. The smell drifting off my skin is so strong that one of the men covers his mouth with his hand.

‘What am I supposed to wear?’ I say.

The one with the bags hands me a pair of grey jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt along with a pair of black plimsolls.

‘Am I supposed to go out into the world like this? Without a coat?’

They say nothing. They simply gather up my clothes and give me a sheet of paper explaining the circumstances in which I might get them back. They leave.

I sit staring and willing the door to open. I have to leave here soon, the pressure is building. Then minutes pass and an officer’s voice leans in to ask me about a meal and a hot drink. More time drifts by until another officer comes by to advise me about my rights to a solicitor.

‘Have you had a chance to read that leaflet? Do you want to take up the offer of free legal advice?’

‘Yes,’ I say to him.

‘Anyone in particular?’ he says, plunging his meaty arms into his pockets.

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll get the duty,’ he says and leaves on soft-soled shoes.

I remember how I did nothing, just stood by, watching, when she died. Even if they believe me, I’m guilty of that. They won’t take any account of the fact that I was afraid of what I could have done to him, if I had let go of myself. Whatever condition she might now be in from the delay – from the hours wastefully passing, while I was running – that was me. I caused it.

Another bang of metal brings me back to myself. The door swings open to present what must be the duty solicitor. She is slight, with dark auburn hair tied back in a high ponytail. She mutters something about an interview and although I haven’t fully absorbed what she is saying, I nod. She has bitten nails. Something about them, those nails, bleeds away any confidence I might have had in her. That and the faded suit.

‘I don’t want you!’ I say at her.

‘Sorry?’ she says. The northern vowels make her sound slow and even as I am thinking that, I know that it’s unfair. She looks at me again, confused.

‘I don’t want you,’ I repeat.

‘Sorry? What?’

‘I don’t want you. I don’t want you. I. DON’T. WANT. YOU!’

She stands back, a little shocked.

‘Fine,’ she says and bangs on the door until it is opened. ‘Good luck then,’ she says to me, not unkindly. Then as she is let out, she says to the officer, ‘He’s on his own.’

I stare at the door that has just closed. A scratched PIG on the blue paint makes me suddenly laugh.

Moments later, an officer opens the door and nods at me.

‘Interview,’ he says.

My heart starts beating again. I haven’t been able to distil the events into any order. What am I supposed to tell them, that I lay cringing in a corner? If I come clean about being there, what does that say about me? That I am a man who is not above breaking in and being somewhere uninvited? That I violated someone’s home and lurked in its dark corners? What kind of man will I become by admitting that?

What kind of man am I if I don’t admit that?