I Know What I Saw

31 Tuesday

I am back in the police cell. There, in the hot space of the interview room, with everything collapsing around me, I managed to do just one thing right: I asked for a solicitor. And so here I am, waiting for them.

The idea that the killing happened so long ago is sitting in my head, immiscible, like oil on water. I can’t absorb the information. I do know one thing, however. The problem – all problems – are mathematical in nature. The solutions are there in the analysis and I have been through the possibilities.

1 The police were lying to me in the interview to get me to confess to something. I’ve ruled this out. To make it work there would have to be illegality, not to mention effort on a monolithic scale, and I don’t think Conway is capable of either.

2 The police are telling the truth and there was a murder thirty years ago, but not the one that I saw. That means there were two murders. But it’s highly unlikely that there were two murders of two young women in one place. There’s a probability factor here that I have tried to calculate on too little data, but whichever way I unpack it and whatever the variables are, the probabilities are too remote. Then there is the simple fact of the picture – that was me, without a doubt.

And that picture of Grace, Michelle Grace Mackintosh. Ma belle. My Michelle. Our joke. That name she hated. Common. And now to see her, to see us, in that Polaroid from all that time ago, it feels like a heavy piece of machinery inside me has slipped its gearings and is shuddering to a halt. I can’t work out what she has to do with it. It can’t be her who was killed. It’s not possible. And yet from the list of what seems possible, it suddenly has shifted from possibility to likelihood. I have to accept that my memory of what I saw isn’t true.

I slide to the floor. Looking around this cell, I know that I have to get out. I need to shed some of this debris that has gathered around me and get out into the air and walk. The concrete is cold against my legs. I lean back into the wall and then begin to rock. With every point of contact, flesh against stone, a tiny fraction of this buzz is earthed into the ground. It can’t be her. I tell myself this over and over. I’d have known it. Surely, I’d have known it. Known her anywhere. But then what was it about that night that I remembered if not the name? Didn’t I have a sense of knowing? Could Conway be right? Could I have supressed the memory?

And then the realisation punches home: Grace is dead.

When the door opens I am not certain how much time has passed. I look up from my place on the floor and meet the hazel eyes of a young woman. She looks down at me and nods at the officer who leaves.

She comes and sits next to me. Her suit seems used to these conditions and hangs from her slight frame. It’s the same solicitor from before. Her hair, pulled off her face with clips, shines bronze in this light.

‘Feeling okay?’ she says – the vowels are long – ohkay. Northern. I look at her face. A sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose makes her look young.

‘Yes. I just have to ground myself. You came back?’

She nods. There is a breeze of something fresh coming her clothes. Lemon?

‘Look, I have just had a look at your disclosure. And I had a word with custody already.’

‘And?’

‘And it seems that you’re not …’ she says, and points a finger at her temple and makes small circles. ‘You’ve been tested apparently.’

‘Nice,’ I say, mustering a small smile.

‘The bad news is that you are an idiot. The good news, however,’ she says, getting to her feet and helping me up, ‘is that there’s not enough evidence here to hold you.’

Standing, I turn to face her. ‘What? But I was there.’

‘Were you, though?’ Hazel eyes blink at me.

‘Yes. I described the whole place to them. They know I was there.’

‘I’ve had a listen to your interview. You weren’t there in 1989. You were there last week.’

‘But – it was her. That’s the same woman I saw being killed. And it turns out I knew her. Grace was my girlfriend.’

She digs around in a small brown leather bag for a pen. ‘Don’t know about no Grace. Michelle Mackintosh is who they have. Anyway, if they had enough evidence they’d have charged you by now. They’ve got nothing.’

‘It’s the same woman, Miss —’

‘Janine. Jan.’

‘Jan. It’s the same person. She just called herself Grace. It was her middle name. I knew her.’

‘It weren’t her middle name, though. I’ve seen the birth certificate. There is no middle name. Anyway, we go back in, you go “no comment”. We get out of here and talk properly later. Understood?’

I take her forearm in my hand so that she faces me when I speak to her. I have to make her understand. ‘It’s her. I’m telling you. I’m not mad. I’m not stupid. It was her.’

‘Look. We are about to go into a police interview. Unless you are in the mood to confess to a murder, I suggest you take my advice. No comment. Got it?’

‘But—’

‘Okay. Let me ask you. Did you kill her? This Grace or Michelle or whatever her name is?’

‘No!’

‘Okay then,’ she says, staring straight at me. ‘No comment.’

We are back in the interview room and Conway has now got a sheet of what look like questions in front of him. Blake is next to him and is corralling papers from a file. They look like they are going into battle.

Conway cautions me again and then introduces my solicitor Janine Cullen, ‘for the tape’.

‘I have advised my client to answer “no comment” to all questions asked,’ she says, as soon as her name is mentioned.

‘Well, Mr Shute, that is your prerogative. But we can still ask the questions. And it is your choice at the end of the day whether to answer any questions. It’s just advice. You’re the one that has to explain in court why you didn’t answer questions.’

‘I understand,’ I say, and immediately Jan gives me a look. ‘No comment.’

‘Mr Shute, would you agree that you reported a murder to us on the 13th of February this year?’

Janine jumps in immediately. ‘That evidence is not admissible. He wasn’t cautioned before he made those comments.’

‘We can let the courts decide admissibility. I’m still going to ask the questions. You reported a murder to us and you gave an address of number 42B Farm Street in Mayfair. Yes?’

‘No comment.’

‘And you described in what I would say is a fair amount of detail the inside of that property. Do you agree?’

‘No comment.’

‘Were you telling the truth when you were describing the property?’

‘No comment.’

‘You described the property right down to the tiles on the floor.’

‘Is that a question?’ says Janine, coming alive.

‘Do you agree you described the tiles in the hallway?’

‘No comment.’

‘In fact, you described it to us on two separate occasions. Do you agree that these police photographs of number 42B Farm Street exactly match your description? For the tape the suspect is being shown exhibit RG/2.’

‘No comment.’

‘The question we have to ask is how you managed to describe the location of a murder from almost thirty years ago?’

‘No comment.’

‘Because if there is an innocent explanation, we’d like to hear it. Do you have one?’

‘No comment.’

‘Do you think you might have, say, read a news story about the murder?’

‘No comment.’

The questions, each of them, make me cringe. But I expect them – all of them. I am a fish in a barrel being machine-gunned.

They continue like this for almost an hour. I can’t look at Blake. It is as if I have disappointed her.

Eventually the questions lose their power. The repetition becomes bland. I begin to fade in and out of concentration. No comment I say to everything. It becomes so much of a rhythm that I almost miss it when it happens.

‘This photograph of the deceased. For the tape exhibit RG/5. Is that you in the picture?’

‘No comment.’

‘Is there an innocent explanation for you being in a picture with the deceased?’

I want to scream the answer. We were lovers! I look at Jan for permission but she doesn’t give it. The questions grind on.

Were you in a relationship with Michelle? Did you live together? Did you two split up? What was the reason for that if you did? Did she find someone else? Or did you? Did you have any reason to feel jealous about her?

‘We believe that you were both in a relationship before she died. We also believe that you disappeared soon after her death. What was the reason for you disappearing?’

‘That’s not a proper suggestion, Officer. There is no evidence that Mr Shute disappeared,’ Jan snaps, cutting in again briskly.

‘Well, if you didn’t disappear, where did you go?’ Conway continues.

‘Again, Officer, there is no evidence that he went anywhere.’

‘Well, that is for you to answer, Mr Shute. Where did you go? There’s no record of you on any electoral roll.’

‘No comment.’

‘We did some digging into the file and we found that Michelle had a number of bank accounts. Were you aware that she was earning a considerable salary at the time of her murder?’

‘No comment.’ I say the words but alarms are going off in my head.

‘We found some bank account statements in the file. There is this one statement for a dollar account that we found. And we found something quite interesting. And I think you know what that is, Mr Shute.’

Jan looks appalled. Her expression changes as if she is making a decision of some kind.

‘This bank statement, exhibit RG/6 for the tape, shows a dollar account in the name of Mackintosh and Shute. Is the Shute on that account you, Mr Shute?’

The room begins to press in on me. I look to Jan but her face has set hard. Whatever she is deciding has begun to take shape.

‘No comment,’ I say in a whisper.

‘There’s an interesting entry there on that sheet, Mr Shute. It shows that you cleared the entire account, in cash, just a matter of weeks before her murder. Is that the reason she was killed, Mr Shute? That’s a sizeable sum. Just over a quarter of a million dollars. Where is the money?’

‘We are ending this interview now, Officer. This is outrageous. I haven’t been given any disclosure about this. It’s unethical and you know it.’ Jan stands up. ‘Are you charging him or not?’

‘Actually, those are all the questions we have for you at the moment, Mr Shute. We are terminating this interview. The time by my watch is 21:17.’ He switches the tapes off, and turns his attention to Jan.

‘We are still at an early stage with regards to investigating the offence. Obviously, this a serious charge. It’ll be for the custody sergeant now to deal with bail.’

‘But you’re the OIC,’ Jan says. ‘You know he’s going to do what you want him to.’

Blake gets up from her seat and puts her file together. ‘I’m the officer in the case actually. And since we haven’t charged him yet and since he seems to turn up here wanted or not, I’m taking the view that he’s going to surrender. I’m recommending bail to return in four weeks. That’s the 19th of March,’ she says, looking into her phone. ‘Make sure you come back. It’s a long wait in custody for a murder trial.’

Jan looks shocked but manages a curt thank you.

Twenty minutes later I am standing on the pavement, shaking Jan’s hand. She doesn’t react or flinch at having to touch my skin. I can hardly believe they have released me after all those questions. All that insinuation.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘Don’t thank me. It’s that OIC. She’s got the hots for you,’ she says, looking up at me. There is a foot in height between us.

I take a deep breath and screw my eyes shut. Did that just happen? ‘What now?’ I say.

‘Now? You make an appointment to see me on Thursday,’ she says, picking up her case from the ground. ‘And when you do, you need a better explanation for what happened to the money than you gave me in the cells after the interview.’

‘But I told you, I don’t know where it is.’

I left it with Seb. But that was years ago. I have no idea whether he still has it. He might have given it back to Grace, I think, and then the reality of it hits again. She has been dead for thirty years.

‘It’s not often money can buy your freedom, Mr Shute. But when it can, you take the chance. The money or your life.’