I Know What I Saw

15 Saturday

The light as it shines through the room, its angle, its intensity, tells me that it must still be early in the morning. If I am to make any use of the day, I need to get going.

After washing I dress quickly and creep downstairs as quietly as I can. There’s no sign of Seb, who must still be asleep or already at work. My, his, coat is on the newel post where I left it and I slip it on. It has already begun to mould itself to my contours so that it feels like my own thing. The velvet collar is soft against my skin. The shoes I don’t recall removing are there in the hallway. I put them on and leave quietly, pulling the front door softly shut behind me.

Outside the February weather is cold. Something in the air gives a memory from a long-forgotten Guy Fawkes night, even though we are months on from November. There is a hint of fog and the slightest trace of sulphur in the air. I walk to a bus stop and the reality of what happened at the police station on Thursday night marches along with me. A charge of wasting police time. All I had done was to report a crime, a murder, and yet they had referred my case to the CPS to charge me.

I still can’t understand how he managed to slip past them like that. I wipe a hand over my face and wait for the bus. When it comes I board it with Seb’s pass and find a seat at the back, wrapping my coat around me for comfort. Out of the window I see another bus draw alongside and momentarily I have the sensation of giddiness as our bus appears to slide into reverse. The narrow advertising strip on the side of the other bus pulls away with the bus. Ariel 3-in-1 pods. I shut my eyes against the memory but it invades anyway.

The day that I met him.

Grace wanted me to meet him. I think she thought it would make me feel better about him. It didn’t.

‘Ah, Xander, I’ve heard such a lot about you,’ he said to me when I walked into his yoga workshop. He sandwiched his hands around mine. They were warm and tanned. He was wearing white linen and floated about like a beatified ghost as I stood stiffly next to him in a black herringbone suit.

‘Ariel,’ I said, lifting my voice. I was there to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Mabel loves you,’ I said, my heart sinking immediately. ‘I mean the yoga.’

I switched my gaze to Grace and saw her cheeks flush.

‘Mabel?’ he said with a half-smile, looking at us both.

‘Oh,’ I say, irritated with myself. ‘Sorry – pet name.’

‘Pet name, eh? She’s an enigma, that one,’ he said smoothly then and stared into her eyes. A second too long.

I became conscious of my smile tightening. The air suspended around us and for a minute we all found ourselves looking at each other with fixed smiles.

‘So, Ariel. That’s an interesting name. Puts me in mind of—’ I said before he cut me off.

‘I know. I know. Ariel, the Lion of God,’ he said, dismissively waving his hands in the air. ‘I get that a lot but I prefer—’

‘Actually, I was going to say detergent,’ I said and then before he could answer, I stalked out of the hall. A second later Grace came marching behind me, whispering angrily at me.

‘Couldn’t you just for once—?’

‘What?’

‘Not be an idiot?’ Grace said, catching and then overtaking me on the street.

‘I came, didn’t I?’ I said, running behind her.

‘Well, if you were planning on sulking like this, you needn’t have bothered.’ She stopped in the road to hail a cab.

‘In my defence, I wasn’t planning on it, it just happened.’ I caught hold of her arm but she shrugged it off as a cab came squeaking to a halt beside us. As the taxi pulled away, she stared silently out of the window. For the whole journey she said nothing and all I could think was that we were heading in the same direction but that she was moving further and further away.

I press the bus bell and alight. The air here feels different, conditioned and cleaned, as if in Mayfair the very air is sanitised. I walk until South Street merges into Farm Street and within a minute I am standing there at number 42B. I stare at the glossy black door. Even now, in the bright morning light, the place gives me a chill. She must be in there somewhere.

I can get the police to believe in me if I get evidence. If I find more out about him.

But now I’m here, uncertainty bleeds into me. I cross the road so that I can see the house better. The master building is a large red-brick Victorian terrace with the door to 42B tucked away beside the main run of steps. I sweep my eyes upwards and see that the sash windows above the door are shut, curtains drawn against them all. I walk a few doors along on the opposite side until I am at my earlier watch-post.

There’s nothing out of place here.

There’s still no police presence.

No police tape.

No sign of anything ever having molested the peace of this road.

Just then I see the door to the main house, 42, open, and my heart falters. This is it. A middle-aged woman appears in the doorway, steps out and turns back to lock the door. I watch as she picks her way carefully down the stone steps. Before she has managed the last step, I have crossed the street and reached her. She looks up at me as I near, her face fielding a half-smile. She is used to a world that treats her with care and kindness and she isn’t afraid of me. Because nothing in her life was ever allowed to frighten her.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. I am instinctively self-conscious but her smile reassures me as she takes me in. I am in Seb’s clothes and I am neat enough to slot into her reference so that she knows me by archetype.

‘Yes?’ she says to me, her pale eyes are those of a husky. She is older than I had thought, perhaps seventy rather than fifty.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you …’ I say. The words are forming before I have even evaluated them. I don’t know how the sentence is going to end.

‘Yes?’ I notice that she tenses her glossy cream handbag closer in to herself. I have made her anxious now.

‘I’m here to meet a friend of mine from 42B, only I can’t seem to get an answer at the door.’

‘Oh, you mean Mr Ebadi?’ she says, her voice glass.

‘Erm, yes,’ I say. ‘That’s the chap. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is?’

She looks at me blankly.

‘At his girlfriend’s perhaps?’ I offer.

‘Oh,’ she says then, frowning. ‘I wasn’t aware he had a girlfriend.’

‘Ah,’ I say, my heart dropping but my mind racing forwards.

‘And you say you’ve tried his bell?’ she says, cocking her head.

I nod in assent.

‘Well, you see it can be a bit what I would call sticky. There is a trick to it. If one sort of wiggles the button. Come on, I will show it to you. We used to own that flat too, you see.’

At this I panic. I cannot have her ring the bell but at the same time I can’t think of a way to stop her.

‘There must be a loose connection,’ she says as she bustles over to 42B. My heart beats as I scramble about trying to think of a way out of this. It feels like a ludicrously small thing to panic over but I can’t have her ring that bell. Her hand quivers over the button and just as she is about to press it, I take her wrist.

She turns to me in alarm.

‘Sorry!’ I say, my voice softening in a way that I hope reassures her. ‘I just. You see the thing is I don’t really know the chap. The truth is, I’m an FI,’ I say, scraping at memories from my banking days.

‘An FI?’

‘Oh. Financial Investigator. I’m just conducting some routine due diligence. It’s a tax thing. Look do you mind, Mrs—?’

‘Wilbert,’ she says clearly.

‘Mrs Wilbert. Would you mind if I were to ask you a couple of questions?’

‘Oh,’ she says, frowning. ‘Only’ – she inclines her head conspiratorially – ‘the police were here just yesterday.’

I feign surprise. ‘Really? What about?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she says, walking back towards the pavement. ‘I only caught a glimpse of them as they were leaving. None of those flashing lights or what have you. I didn’t think anything of it.’

I walk in step with her as she goes back in the direction I came from.

‘Mrs Wilbert, is Mr Ebadi in the habit of entertaining late-night guests?’ I say, twisting my language around her upper-class settings.

‘Oh,’ she says, stopping. ‘Let me see. I don’t sleep so well these days. You know they always told me that I’d go deaf with age but it hasn’t happened yet, unfortunately. And these walls let in all the sound, you see, from down below. Yes, I think it was Tuesday night. I heard a lot of banging about. And definitely voices.’

My heart skips at this. ‘Did you hear a woman’s voice?’

She stops mid-step and looks in the air as if searching in it for something.

‘I couldn’t say, my dear, to be perfectly honest. There’s always noise coming from there. If it’s not a party it’s the television set.’

‘What about the next day? Did you see him then, Ebadi?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve tried to get the environmental people on to it but they don’t seem to be interested enough to do anything about it.’

‘Okay,’ I say, disappointed a little. She doesn’t catch my eye but is still groping around in the air for something more.

‘Wait. Now you say it, I think I did notice something in the morning. It was very early, mind you, around six or so. I heard some voices outside, and a van. That was what woke me, you see. So I looked out of the window, but it was just some men moving some belongings out of the flat. People have no consideration for others. Fancy. Six in the morning!’

I can’t pull my eyes off her as I digest what I have just heard. He came back. With help.

He must have had her body moved. That’s why the police didn’t find anything.

‘Did you see him?’ I say.

‘I don’t think I did. Just the removal men. I don’t believe that he’s the kind to get his hands dirty. Young men don’t these days, I find. Now my husband, he used happily to—’

Before she can finish the sentence, I have thanked her and run off down the road with this news expanding in my head.