I Know What I Saw

35 Thursday

I need a fire. I jump back over the wall and follow a routine I once knew well. I stoop to the pavement, scrabble around for cigarette ends. When I’ve collected a dozen or so butts, I put aside the largest one and deposit the remainder in my pocket. Now I need paper. Newspaper is best but now with smartphones you can only find them stacked in metal bins outside tube stations. Eventually I find a discarded half by a bus stop. The edges are damp with something but the main body is still dry. Next, fuel. Wood is really the only thing you can use. Paper or cardboard burns too quickly and smokes heavily. I climb back over the wall again and hunt around for dead branches and twigs. After about an hour of foraging, I have the makings of a decent fire. I drop them in a small heap behind a hedgerow that carves out space for the rose garden. Here at least the orange glow won’t be visible to passers-by or to passing traffic.

I light it with the lighter in my pocket and soon it becomes a fire that crackles, taking hold and settling in. The ashes from the paper blow away finally and then I relax. I sit on the ground and warm my hands against the icy night.

The flames make me feel as I always feel when looking into flames. I’m a child after a bath on a cold November night, sitting on a towel being dried by my father. Rory is next to me. The smell of hot coals is in the air. The nostalgia here – at this precise spot in the historical reel – is safe. Mum is nearby making notes for an academic paper. Dad hasn’t begun to mutate yet. I’m not old enough yet to poke those fires in him. I lie back and listen to the snap of burning twigs. The randomised patterns settle me. My eyes flicker open and shut.

Then I am in that room, lying behind the sofa. The flames are sending their shadows high up the walls. There’s music playing. The argument begins. She has darted to the other end of the room; the man follows, trailing his voice behind him.

If you sorted out your issues, she says. With your dad.

My heart thuds like dropped iron.

Her hair isn’t the same as Grace’s honeyed blonde. But now that I know it is her – must be her – it is so simple. She has coloured it, as people do. People change themselves. And then there is the song that is playing. Have I remembered it faithfully or has my memory been reverse engineered? I drop into a slippery sleep. Then the gloaming.

Morning arrives and I sit up to see that the fire has completely burned out. There are only ashes left. I stand and rub my arms down for warmth and then kick away the fire-dust. The night seems to have swept my head clean and now I am purposeful once again. I hurry over the wall and start walking steadily down the road towards the bus stop. I need to cross the river again and head for Mayfair. The bus comes and within moments I am sitting in its manufactured warmth, grinding across the city.

There are commuters heading in rivulets to stations and bus stops, faces muffled against the cold. One is wearing shoes with red soles and for a second, I’m reminded of Ebadi and I think about how only a day or so ago, I was in a cemetery convinced that he had buried the girl there. Mishal. A part of me remains convinced of this even though it now cannot be true. Thirty years ago she died. Grace. Michelle.

I reach the library and find that it is just opening up. I make my way over to the computer terminals and fight off the sense of bafflement that creeps over me. I push a button or two to try and get the Google going but I am doing something wrong. There are laminated instructions and I try to follow them but they too are confusing. I’m wary of being seen to be floundering before these screens. I don’t want to feel like a child, not now.

I prod around at the machine for the next twenty minutes, coaxing it without luck. I am about to get up and just find a person to ask.

‘Xander.’

I see a face I know.

‘Amit?’ Then I remember something with a feeling like dread.

‘Hazel called. I asked her to call me when you come,’ he says, but keeps his distance. He is hesitant around me, wary after our last exchange. His tie is loose for a change and with his long hair, it has the effect of making him look rebellious.

‘Hey, look. About last time. I was worried about you. And, well – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have behaved like that.’

‘It’s fine,’ he says, looking down.

‘Here.’ I hand him the Proust that is still in my pocket. ‘To make up for the one I took from you.’

He looks uncertainly at it, but then takes it.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I didn’t go back there in the end. You were right, it was dangerous.’ He smiles at me but there is sadness in it. ‘So, how are you?’ he says, brightening.

‘I’ve been better.’

He stands in the pause, his arms at his sides, not knowing what to do. I don’t know what to do either so we hang there awkwardly until I say, ‘Can you help me with this?’ I indicate the terminal.

He smiles and sits at the screen, completely at home. His fingers dance across the keys with no effort.

‘I need to send an email to my solicitors, but I don’t know where to start.’

‘Solicitors? What happened?’ he says, turning his head round to face me in concern.

‘Long story,’ I say in a way that shuts off any more questions.

He pauses. ‘What’s the name of the company?’

‘I’m not sure – I know her name – Janine Cullen,’ I say, without much hope.

He taps around for a second or two before looking meaningfully at the screen again. Every now and then he hmms and nods to himself, absorbed in what he is doing.

‘Okay, got it. Here, you can send her an email from my account. Or I can do it.’

I’m dazzled by the speed at which he navigates this world. ‘Can you just say that I’m coming in to see her? Today? Like maybe now?’

He gives me a look of amusement. ‘I’m not sure that’s exactly how it works but okay – sent,’ he says.

‘Thanks, Amit,’ I say.

‘It’s fine.’

As I get up to leave he calls after me, holding up the Proust in one hand, ‘Hope it all works out.’

Her office is a twenty- or thirty-minute walk from the library, up near Paddington Green Police Station. I push open the doors and see the receptionist stiffen as I do. My hands go up to signal peace.

‘It’s okay,’ I say to calm her nerves, ‘I have an appointment.’

I recognise that my voice and appearance are a clash. Seb’s clothes haven’t survived the night very well and when I look down, I notice for the first time that there are smears of ash down my front and charcoal under my nails and over my hands. I wonder if I’ve touched my face so that I now look camouflaged and ready for battle. I brush my clothes down self-consciously but when I do, debris drops from my back on to the carpet. Twigs, grass and other clinging things.

‘With?’ The woman folds her arms.

‘Janine,’ I say. ‘Cullen.’

At this she checks her computer, then becomes a little less tense. ‘She’ll be in in a few minutes. Take a seat, Mr —?’

‘Shute,’ I say. ‘More like the slide than the gun.’

She looks at me unimpressed and then indicates a row of battered chairs covered in blue cloth, spilling stuffing from their corners. ‘You can sit.’

There are magazines stacked in a neat pile on a coffee table. I sit and flick through them. Solicitors Journal. Law Society Gazette. The Lawyer. Counsel magazine. Legal Action Group. There is nothing here that I can imagine any visitor wanting to read. I flick through some back issues of the Gazette and start reading an article written by a barrister complaining about legal aid fees. Half a Shirt Anyone? is the strapline and it is the most interesting thing about it.

Twenty minutes pass in slow motion before Jan appears at the door.

‘Xander. I didn’t think you were going to come, if I’m honest,’ she says, dragging a wheelie case in behind her with one hand and some carrier bags stuffed with files in the other. Her hair is in a short bronzed plait. The freckles are still a surprise in her face.

‘Neither did I,’ I reply. I stand to shake her hand before remembering that mine is grubby. Her own are occupied and this thankfully goes unnoticed.

‘Come through,’ she says, and leads the way behind the reception desk through a glazed door. The lights come on automatically as we walk through. I think about helping her with the bags she is struggling with but I’m not sure what the etiquette is any more. The office is remarkable only for its clutter. There are files of papers everywhere, on the floor, on shelves, on the two desks at either end of the room.

‘Take a seat if you can find an empty one.’

I sit and wait for her to do the same.

‘So that copper, Conway, is it? He’s got a right hard-on for you, hasn’t he? What did you ever do to him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I get on better with Blake.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, your upcoming interview. They’ve given us a bit more disclosure so this time we might have to actually go full-comment on this one, depending, obviously.’

‘Depending on what?’ I say, puzzled.

‘On what your version is.’

I look at her, waiting to say more but she seems to be doing the same. Finally, she brushes a stray hair over an ear and unsheaths a Bic.

‘Well then?’

‘Well what?’ I say.

‘What’s your version?’

‘My version is that I didn’t do it.’

‘That’s a start,’ she says, looking up. ‘What’s the rest? Why were you in the house? When were you in the house? Are you still going with that whole last-week story or have we reflected a bit since last time?’

I am shocked by how direct she is, but I suppose she has to be. ‘I’m beginning to think it was when they’re saying. Thirty years ago,’ I say.

‘Okay. And are you saying you did see her being killed then?’

‘I think so.’

‘You think?’

‘Look, this isn’t easy for me. My memory isn’t – these last years haven’t exactly been what you might call ideal,’ I say, feeling my temper unravelling.

‘I understand that, I do, but still I need to know. Why are you telling me you think?’

‘Because I’m not sure if I imagined it. But then I remember the details so vividly. I saw her being killed. I am sure of it. I just don’t know if—’

‘But maybe you’d have seen some of the police pictures at the time, if you knew her that well?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know she was dead. Or at least I don’t remember knowing. Could it have been me?’

‘What?’ she says.

‘It might have been me.’

She puts the pen down and looks at me seriously.

‘If you’re saying that, then you’re saying “no comment”. Simple as. But, take it from me: with what they have now, it’s not going to look good if you go “no comment” again. We can get away with it once, play the disclosure card. But this is one of those cases where you are going to want to get your defence in now. Nice and early. So, let me ask you again. Are you certain that it was someone else?’

I think about this. What Seb said to me yesterday still rings true. I couldn’t have done that to her if I loved her, could I? Now, when my back is against the wall, I will fight, but back then I wasn’t a man of violence. I hated it. I had always believed that violence was a car swerving out of control: when you lose your temper, you’re just a passenger in your own body.

And yet my memory is dashed or repressed or whatever the word is for what has happened to it. It feels not exactly wiped-out, but collaged. Some parts are bright and daring, others dark and patchy. It’s the juxtaposition that is unsettling. The memories don’t flow from one to another; they lurch around like dreams.

‘I’m certain,’ I say.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Why were you in the house? Were you invited in by the deceased?’ The deceased. The word jars. She was a person.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, do you want to have a think?’ she says. ‘Why might you have been there?’

I do have an answer but I’m not sure how it’s going to sound.

‘I was living out at the time. It was cold – I needed a day or two to put myself together. And Grace had seen me on the streets and gave me her spare key. She was going away for a while. Said I could use her place to clean up. That must have been why I was there.’ I think of the key I had on me when I was arrested. I don’t know what’s happened to it.

Janine raises her eyebrows at me. ‘So, then what? Did she not go away in the end?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember it the way I’m telling it. In my head, it wasn’t her place, it was just an empty house that I used as a squat because I had nowhere to stay. I didn’t even expect it to be empty, it just was. I mean I think the door was unlocked.’

She had been taking down what I had said but now she has stopped. ‘I don’t know what to do with what you’re telling me, Xander. Did you have a key or was it unlocked?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I feel the blood gather into my cheeks, flushing.

She sighs. ‘Okay, Xander. My advice is that you go “no comment”. We might need to go down the psych route here. I know the police thought you were fit to be interviewed but this doesn’t feel right to me.’

‘Psych? You as well? I’m not mad. And I’m not seeing a psychiatrist.’

‘It’s up to you, but this is serious. They’re going to be charging you with murder. You can’t dick around here, you’re looking at life.’

‘Charging? They’re charging me?’ I say, shocked. ‘I thought they might decide there wasn’t enough to charge me.’

‘We have to be prepared for the possibility.’

‘But I thought you said they had nothing.’

‘That was before they searched Sebastian’s house. Now they’ve got something. And it’s not looking good.’

‘But Seb stopped them. He said that the warrant wasn’t right.’

‘Well, whatever time they had was all they needed.’