I Know What I Saw

29 Tuesday

My throat is tightening still, but I lid the panic by focusing on something concrete. I dredge up as much of the details of the allegation as I can as I sit in the police car. I breathe slowly and evenly. Details. I need to be prepared this time. But there’s so much dust on the memory now.

It’s no good. The heat is stifling and the breaths I take feel hot and laboured. I prod at the window buttons but I know already that they’re not going to work. Panic rises in my chest, and within moments I am wishing that Conway was back here to let me out. I look around and then see a police officer on the steps, in uniform, and I tap against the window uselessly. He lights a cigarette and smokes it unhurriedly. I am maddened by his slowness and insouciance.

‘Help!’ I shout at him but he doesn’t see me or hear me, trapped in this glass and metal padded box.

And then Conway appears at the front door. He saunters towards me. My breath quickens as he inches closer. Finally, he is at my door and opens it.

‘Thank God,’ I say, panting. ‘You can’t do that! I have a condition. I’m claustrophobic.’ My voice rises and I am suddenly embarrassed by the weakness in it.

‘It was two minutes,’ he says, and then nods at me to follow him into the station.

I am processed exactly as before. Rights carefully explained to me again and I am left to read the same forms. But this time I am taken to the interview room much more quickly. It’s as if time has suddenly sped up.

Conway and Blake are there. She looks much less fried than the last time I saw her. I shut my eyes through the caution and wait for the first questions. I am still, even now, debating whether I should tell them the truth or just go ‘no comment’ as they do on TV.

‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned anything you later rely on,’ Conway says.

It may harm your defence if you fail to mention. I don’t remember this from TV. It is new.

Their eyes flit between one another and me. They are telegraphing something to each other but I don’t know what. The tension gets too much and I find myself speaking before I can stop myself.

‘Okay then. Say it. He’s dead. I know what murder means.’

They look at me, their brows creased. They exchange looks once again.

‘So why am I here? Is there new evidence?’ I say, searching them both.

Blake looks at Conway with realisation. It’s just the slightest of looks. A millimetre by which she raises her green eyes at him. His face, weighed down by age and this no doubt, doesn’t move.

Blake is the one who speaks. ‘Xander. Mr Shute. About Mr Squire. We got the blood results back from the lab. It’s not his blood on the knife.’

‘What?’ I say. I don’t believe it.

‘We conducted a video ID procedure and he was unable to pick out his assailant. That’s not to say it wasn’t you. It’s just, well. We’re going to NFA it,’ Conway says.

‘NFA?’ I hear myself say, but I am flooded with relief.

‘It means “no further action”. But, as DI Conway has said, if further evidence comes to light, you could be rearrested for it,’ Blake says.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Then why am I here?’

‘Murder, Mr Shute.’

‘What?’ I say, confused. ‘I don’t understand. You said he’s fine.’ I look wildly between the two. ‘Unless. There’s another murd—’ The rest of the word catches in my throat. My heart begins to pound in my chest.

‘Mr Shute. Are you okay? You look a bit pale,’ Blake says.

Although I am shaking, I nod.

‘I’m going to remind you of your right to a solicitor,’ she says. I think of the solicitor from last time. The one I kicked out. What was her name? My heart races.

‘No. Don’t need a solicitor,’ I say.

‘Okay. Following investigations into the allegations you made—’

Allegations I made? I don’t understand what she means.

‘We have uncovered certain further evidence. And we have to hand it to you, Mr Shute.’

‘Hand what to me? And what allegations?’

‘Number 42B,’ Conway says, stabbing a pen in my direction. ‘The murder you told us about.’

My heart is banging. I am not sure what is happening but it is happening at a speed I cannot match.

‘You – found the body?’

‘Not exactly, Mr Shute. The body was never lost,’ Conway says. ‘It was recovered immediately after the murder.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Immediately? Where is it, then? What’s happening? And why haven’t you caught him? You know where he is. You know who he is.’

My voice is too loud but I cannot calm it or the convulsions in my head.

‘Xander, listen to me.’ Blake leans over and stares at me, somehow managing to slow the thudding in my chest. ‘We weren’t aware of a body when you came to report this to us.’ She pauses. ‘Xander … the person you described to us? The one who you said was killed in front of you seven days ago?’

I nod, desperate for her to continue.

‘That person has been dead for thirty years.’