I Know What I Saw

9 Wednesday

When he was fourteen, Rory won a prize – a real one. It was the equivalent of a child’s Nobel prize for science. I remember seeing him walk on to the stage of a university lecture hall, a small huddled figure in that vast space. He smiled coyly as he shook the Dean’s hand and I looked on, slowly warming through with jealousy until I was glowing white. It was a prize I was too old for. People clapped. A man spoke about the ‘completely innovative’ approach to one of the world’s most complex theoretical physics questions. The maths in it was difficult but the truth was that he was so bright that he could slice straight into the physics while the others were still stuck on the numbers. But that wasn’t the only reason he’d won. It had been my solution, from one of Dad’s monthly debates. And though I’d harvested it from some other physicists I’d been researching in answer to the debate, Rory didn’t know that. As far as he knew he’d just stolen my answer.

I was made to go along to the presentation. Afterwards, Dad had promised us, him, a steak at a new South American steakhouse. Later, once the steak had been eaten and he’d been slapped on the shoulder by Dad – later, once we were back at home watching Dad drink whisky and Mum wine – later, once the trophy had been nudged into centre spot on the mantel, Rory, to whom I’d said nothing all evening, walked up to the fireplace and picked up the trophy and placed it at my feet.

‘This is yours,’ he said, avoiding my eye. ‘Dad,’ he said then, still looking at the floor. ‘This is his. It was his answer.’

Dad nodded and took a sip of whisky. ‘It belongs to you both. Not for the science – but because you improve each other.’

I tried to rationalise what he’d done. He was younger. He was allowed to make mistakes like this. I might have done the same in his position. In fact I never reminded myself that I’d cheated him. Or that he’d have won anyway. Instead I sat with the trophy at my feet, ashamed of it and me and him all at once. Hours later, Dad was sleeping in his chair, snoring, his glass balanced on his chest. Mum, watching Dad closely, put down her glass and came to me. She took my face in her hands and then turned to do the same to Rory. Her hair was greying, I noticed, and she had started wearing her glasses permanently then.

‘I won’t leave you,’ she said. ‘Not ever.’

I opened my mouth to say something but the words wouldn’t form.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ she said, smiling sadly.

‘… but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

I’m here again with a jolt. I nod. I wrap my arms around my body and huddle. If I create enough warmth, it might help with the pain.

‘For the tape,’ he says.

I haven’t seen this officer before. There is something in his eyes that telegraphs dullness. He blinks slowly as if the wheels are moving through sludge. But there’s also something else there, humanity maybe? Suppressed, but there, blistering the skin, waiting to break free but being held back by stupidity. I wait, expecting the bubble to burst so I can be honest with him. But I don’t know if I can just say to him that I did not attack her. That I only watched. That yes, I failed to act, but I did nothing. That that was my crime and I’m prepared to suffer the consequences of that inaction.

‘You have to say it out loud, for the tape.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I understand the caution.’

‘Do you know why you have been arrested?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

The officer looks unsurprised by this. Maybe everybody who is arrested knows why they have been taken.

‘Tell me then. Why do you think you’ve been arrested?’ he says, then looks across at his partner.

I have barely registered her presence. She sits at his side, hair pulled back from her face. I’m not sure what her official title is but it feels as if she is in deference to him, this man who she must know can’t keep up with her. The intelligence in her eyes shows the advantage she has over him.

‘The murder. Or the attempt, however you want to define it. But I didn’t do it,’ I say, looking at my hands. I shrug in my clothes and suddenly, in this confined space, I feel the urge to run. The room is too small for three of us really. It’s tiny, just enough space for the table and chairs. There’s certainly no room to spread.

‘Okay, well, we are here to listen. We aren’t making any judgements, are we, Rochelle? Just tell us what happened from your point of view.’

Rochelle? I wonder. Might that have been her name too? The name brings a rush of familiarity. Perhaps I heard it, that night. Was that the name he had been calling out? Over and over.

‘I didn’t do it. But I was there. I saw it happen,’ I say.

‘You saw what happen?’ she asks. Her eyes narrow and I can see they are processing something I am not included in.

‘The attack. I saw her being attacked. I was in the room.’ I look up then at the faces of the two officers in front of me. They look at one another. Disbelief? No, not that, something else. Confusion.

‘Her? Did you say her?’ she asks, her eyebrows contracting.

I nod. ‘The woman. In the house. I saw her being strangled. By her boyfriend.’

They look at one another again. The silence grows, expanding until it fills every speck of space. He is confused and irritated with himself and with me, because of something he hasn’t understood.

‘This interview is being terminated. The time is 22:22 by my watch,’ he says and presses a button on the machine.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask. They look at one another ominously.

‘We are just going to get the custody sergeant to speak to you again. You might need an appropriate adult,’ the woman says and pushes off from her seat. I have forgotten her name already.

‘An appropriate adult? I’m not a child. Wait. I’m not mad either. I might look odd,’ I say, ‘but there is nothing wrong in here.’ I point to my right temple.

‘It won’t take a moment but it’s best if you don’t speak until he’s seen you.’ She holds the door open and motions for me to leave.

I am ushered back to my cell and left to wait. They are concerned for my mental health. Out there it happens every day. Even as people walk past, covering their mouths and noses, the eyes are there communicating pity, and disgust. But here, I have the power of speech. I have the opportunity to speak and be heard. They have to hear me. When you hear me, you don’t leave thinking I’m crazy I promise you.

I hear the door to my cell clang open.

‘Mr Shute, I’m the custody sergeant.’ I look up and see the officer from before. I stand to speak to him so I won’t be at a disadvantage sitting.

‘Just a few questions,’ he says, rubbing his white stubble self-consciously. I wait for him to run through them and answer them all. No tricks in these questions at all. ‘Are you currently or have you ever had treatment for any mental illness?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever been sectioned under the Mental Health Act?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever attempted suicide or are you feeling suicidal at the moment?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. I don’t think you need an assessing psychiatrist at this time.’

Now I am back in the interview room and this time I listen to their names: Rachel Blake, not Rochelle. And Simon Conway, detective inspectors, both of them. The interview starts again from the top. The initial statements are all the same, as if I am caught in a system glitch: introductions, caution, the right to a solicitor, all explained meticulously once again. I avoid their eyes through it all, concentrating my gaze on my fingers.

‘Just before the break,’ says Rachel Blake, ‘you were telling us about witnessing an attack. On a woman.’

‘Yes,’ I say. I am still puzzled about why they’d decided that I was mentally unwell. Nothing that the custody sergeant asked me gave me any hint.

‘Well, I’m going to be asking you about that later. For now, I want to talk to you about the attack on a gentleman by the name of Kenneth Squire. Does that name sound familiar to you?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. This is plainly a mistake. ‘Who is he?’

‘He is a person, like you, shall we say, of no fixed abode. If I may show you a photograph? The suspect is now being shown exhibit RB/1, a photograph of the victim. Do you recognise this man?’

I stare at the picture and my blood freezes. It is unmistakeable – it’s the man from the park, the drunk. A shot of his face, with his eyes closed. There’s a long surgical scar running along his throat. But it is him.

‘Er, yes. I. Well. No, I don’t know him as such but I do recognise him,’ I say slowly.

‘From where?’ Blake asks, her voice flat.

‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Just from around.’

She continues. ‘Mr Squire was found earlier this morning in Hyde Park. He was stabbed in the neck and would have died if he hadn’t been spotted by a runner. Do you have any idea how he might have received that injury?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘That cut on your eye, Mr Shute. How did you get it?’

I put my fingers to it. The stitches lie proud of the surface but I resist the urge to scratch them.

‘I fell,’ I say. They know more than they are saying, but at this moment I cannot fathom what they know or how they know it.

‘Fell where?’ Blake says, her voice even and steady.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘People like me fall. We fall and we get up and we fall again. East Dulwich? Camberwell, maybe. Who can say?’

‘You, Xander, you can say. In fact, you did say – to the police who took you to the hospital – that you fell in Hyde Park.’

My memory of the detail of that conversation is patchy. I could have said that to the officer, I probably did, but I can’t remember.

‘That’s it then,’ I say, hiding my fists beneath the desk.

‘Is there a reason that you didn’t remember? I mean, after all, it only happened today,’ says Conway.

‘Concussion?’ I venture.

‘Concussion?’ says Blake. ‘Not amnesia?’

‘I forgot. What can I tell you? I hurt my head. I was taken to hospital. How am I supposed to remember all these details you’re throwing at me?’ I say.

Conway shifts in his seat. ‘If we were to examine your clothes, would we find any blood belonging to the victim?’

‘No,’ I say and then repeat the answer with more confidence. There can’t be any of his blood on me. ‘No. You won’t. So, do your tests and let me go now please.’

Blake seems relieved by my answer and nods meaningfully at Conway.

‘Okay, so before we terminate the interview, you were saying something about witnessing a murder,’ he says. Whatever fight he had seems to have burned away like morning mist.

My brain is telling me to say nothing because I will end up incriminating myself. All I would do is build their case from nothing. They’ve got nothing. They don’t even know about this woman. They can’t put me at the scene. And then it occurs to me: I assumed they were arresting me for what happened to her. That simple, stupid fact has led me wildly into error. I’ve assumed that she was still alive because they didn’t arrest me for murder. But she could be dead.

If her body is found, then what? What if someone saw me? What if I left a print somewhere? They’ve now got my prints from the arrest and my blood will be everywhere at the scene from this wound – the bleeder – the cut above my eye. They are going to nail me to the wall. I know how this works. I have to say something. Besides, I am committed now. I started my interview telling them about seeing a woman being attacked and I can’t now undo that.

‘Yes,’ I say. And then before I know it, I’m telling them about the murder. I tell them about the Victorian-tiled hall and the Tiffany shades. The silk rug that I lay on. How the couple came in, she with her voice tinkling like glass. How I hid while they drank and then argued. How she looked, afterwards, broken on the carpet. How he ran. How I ran.

‘Murder?’ says Conway at one point. ‘You didn’t say it was murder at the start of the interview.’

‘No. I. I thought this was why I was here. For her. And you said grievous bodily harm and I assumed she was alive still,’ I say, stumbling over every word. ‘I’m still not certain. She could be alive, you have to check.’

‘So, she was dead? Then alive and then dead and now alive again?’ Conway says, looking sceptically at Blake.

‘No. I don’t know. When I left she looked dead, but she could be alive. You have to send an ambulance. Do something.’

‘She looked dead?’ he says.

I glare at him.

‘The address you gave, Farm Street? In Mayfair?’ Blake asks, cutting in.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘42B. Black door.’

It’s only when they have stopped the tape that I realise I am crying. The tears have been silently streaming down my face and ponding on the table, drop by drop – cohesion and adhesion. Suddenly the exhaustion overtakes me and I collapse into the grief. Blake and Conway say nothing for a beat and then finally I hear the scrape of a chair as Conway gets up.

‘Okay, Mr Shute, we are going to continue our investigations into this assault. We’ll be following up some of what you have told us about your whereabouts at the time of Mr Squire’s stabbing and I’m authorising the sending of your items for forensic testing. Till then you’ll be released on police bail. We need a bail address.’

I look at Conway. ‘Bail address?’

‘We could always hold you here in police custody if you’d prefer, sir.’ The eyes have lost whatever kindness I thought I had detected in him.

Blake gives him a look and then softens her eyes for me.

‘Is there anyone at all you could stay with? Temporarily?’ she asks.

I think for a moment, but there’s no one.

‘No,’ I say. I am led quietly back to my cell. As the door shuts I call out to Blake, ‘How long are you going to keep me here?’

The hatch opens with a clunk. ‘Mr Shute. We need an address. If you can’t give us one, we have no way of making sure you’ll turn up when we need you to come in again.’

My heart begins to race. ‘You can’t keep me here,’ I say.

‘No. Not indefinitely. But without an address we might have to hold you and let the magistrates decide bail. And to be honest, Mr Shute, without an address I don’t fancy your chances.’

‘Wait,’ I say, desperate now. ‘If I just don’t have an address, I don’t know what you expect me to do.’

‘Without an address I don’t know what you expect me to do,’ she says, and closes the hatch.