I Know What I Saw

30 Tuesday

My head spins.

Thirty years.

The words land and keep landing around me in deep thuds. My palms begin to itch. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘There were two murders? In the same place?’

‘No, Xander – Mr Shute. Only one,’ Blake says flatly.

I’m lost. ‘What do you want from me?’ I have to pull my voice down from the ceiling, where it has risen.

Blake shuffles some pages in a file and then picks out a glossy image. ‘Do you recognise the person in this photograph?’ she says, sliding it over to me.

I stare at it. It is an enlarged picture of a woman with dark curls. I can make out the side of her face and the top half of her body. I look harder and as I do my breath begins to come in snatches. It’s her. It’s the woman from that night. The room comes then into my mind, cascading into place inch by inch. She’s lying down. Her face is turned, covered by hair spilled across her face.

‘When was this taken?’ I say, breathing hard.

She takes another photograph out and then another. They’re pictures of the room. Just as I remember it. The walls. That silk carpet. The chesterfields. The one I lay behind is there clear as day, in one photograph. The picture catches the light just as it was. It’s that room. Just as it was.

‘When were these taken?’ I am shouting now.

My heart drums, quickening with my breath.

‘December 1989,’ Blake says.

Everything stops.

Again, I look at the pictures. They do have the quality of pictures from the eighties: the colours are washed-out in places and over-bright in others. I can feel my brain filling with a rush of blood. I don’t know what has happened.

‘I …’ I shake my head at the table, confused, unable to piece the fragments of time together. ‘What? How?’

‘I began to dig into this case, Xander, after you came back. You seemed so certain. My superior officer recognised the address. He worked on the original case.’

‘Original case?’

Each new statement confounds me further. I am on the precipice of an abyss.

‘It’s kind of a cold case, Mr Shute,’ Conway says. ‘It was put down as an accidental death in 1989. Is this the woman you saw being murdered?’

I look again at the picture. It is unmistakeably her. I nod.

‘For the tape please,’ he says.

‘Yes, it’s her,’ I say, swallowing hard.

‘Who is she, Xander?’ Blake asks softly.

‘Who is she? How am I supposed to know who she is? You should know. That’s your job.’

‘We do, Mr Shute. But we were hoping you might tell us something more about her.’

‘I can’t tell you anything.’

I look at the photograph again. It’s her but I can’t understand how she can be in a photograph from thirty years ago. ‘This is all wrong,’ I say.

‘Wrong how?’

‘Wrong. Just wrong. This – this was days ago. Not thirty years.’

‘I assure you, Mr Shute, these photographs were taken from files that have been in storage for all this time. So, tell us how you saw her being killed a week ago when she’s been dead for nearly three decades?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Funny, Mr Shute. We were thinking that too. Doesn’t make sense, does it?’

I push the chair back from the table to stand up. The floor seems to be moving. ‘It was less than a week. Not years,’ I say.

‘Here’s what we think, Mr Shute. You did see that poor woman being strangled. As you tried to tell us. But you must have had some kind of breakdown and suppressed the memory. Did you have a breakdown, Mr Shute?’

‘Breakdown? No!’ I say, sitting back down.

‘I mean, we’ve been looking into you, Mr Shute. You used to have a very different life, didn’t you?’

‘So?’ I say.

‘So, Mr Shute. How does a respected, highly qualified computer scientist with a degree from a top university, with a highly paid job, become … you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, look at you. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re not exactly a well man, are you?’

‘Well? I am well. I’m well. Just because I have an alternative lifestyle doesn’t make me unwell.’

‘Alternative?’ He pauses. ‘What I think is that years of being out on the streets broke you.’

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ I say.

‘Actually, you do. So, tell us. What’s your version of this?’

‘I – I’ve told you. Again and again. I saw her being killed. Last week,’ I say and as I hear the words, the certainty I feel begins to drift and fall to my feet.

‘Okay, let me tell you what we think. We think that you killed her, Mr Shute.’

‘I killed her? What? Why would I kill her? I reported this to you!’

‘Yes, you did. And I, we, believe you thought you could distract us by reporting it. But it was you all along.’

‘What? This is ridiculous. Why would I have come to you?’

Blake hands another picture to Conway.

‘Who was she, Mr Shute?’ he says.

‘I don’t know. I told you. I don’t know her.’

‘Well, that’s not a clear picture, is it? Take a look at this one,’ he says and places a Polaroid flat on the table as if he is dealing a card. It snaps as he lays it down. ‘This one was taken when she was still alive.’

I look at Blake. There is a wash of emotion over her face that I can’t place. Something like regret or guilt. I push the picture back at Conway, without looking at it.

‘I said I don’t know who she is.’

‘Look at it, Xander. She was called Michelle. Who was Michelle, Xander?’ Blake asks.

The name. Just the utterance of it pricks a memory from somewhere. Then I remember. Mishal. Michelle? At the cemetery. The new headstone. And then I recall him in the room itself as he stood over her. He called her that. Didn’t he? Chelle. I try to unhook my mind from what I can see, from this room and these two police officers, and try to let my mind spring back to that day.

‘He might have called her Michelle, I think. But there’s mo—’

‘Michelle?’ Conway cuts me off, looking at Blake.

‘Who did?’ she asks.

‘The killer, Ebadi.’

‘Did he? You’re sure?’ Conway says.

‘Sure? No. Not sure. I was hiding behind a sofa. I’m not sure. But the name. I’ve seen it. But not Michelle, like you’re saying it. Mishal,’ I say, inflecting the word.

‘So, you don’t know Michelle, but Mishal rings a bell, you say? Tell me more about that,’ he says.

Mishal rings a bell. Something in that phrase he used sends a current through me. My eyes begin to water in the expectation of a realisation that is just there at the edges of my grasp.

‘I saw the name in a cemetery. Ebadi. I followed him. I think I know where he buried her,’ I say.

‘Actually, Mr Shute, we know exactly where she is and it isn’t buried. She was cremated. Scattered over a park.’

‘But, Mishal,’ I say. ‘It has to be her. Just – you have to look. Mishal. Acton cemetery. M. I. S. H. A. L.,’ I spell it out.

They ignore me, and then at a nudge from Blake, Conway flicks the photograph over to me once again. I look down at the picture, knowing that it is fruitless. And then my heart stops.

‘The name we have for her is Michelle Mackintosh. Not Mishal. We have identified her and that’s her,’ he says, placing a finger on her face. ‘And with her is a man you might recognise. The police investigating this case at the time haven’t made a record of who that man was. Isn’t even a great picture to be fair, but you know him, don’t you, Mr Shute?’

I look down at the man in the picture again and rub my eyes. I don’t understand.

‘Can you help us with who he is?’

I stare at the woman standing next to the man. She does ring a bell. Belle. Michelle. Ma Belle.

Ma Belle. Mabel.

The woman in the picture is Grace.

And that man beside her is me.