I Know What I Saw

39 Friday

Although the judge is out of the courtroom, everyone else stays, like actors milling around waiting to perform. If they could, everyone would be lighting up; instead they chat. The woman in the gown is talking to the prosecutor about her holiday. The gaolers are talking to one another about some member of staff who has been fiddling with the rotas. And I am here in a well of light, behind glass, looking at my hands.

Jan finishes scribbling something and comes to speak to me between the gaps in the glass wall.

‘He’s just going to decide. Shouldn’t be too long. Did you catch the rest of it?’ she says.

‘No. What’s the rest?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll explain it all later but basically, whatever happens with bail, your case is being listed soon for pleas.’

I nod to indicate that I understand but I don’t really. When? Now? Tomorrow? What if I plead guilty, can I change my mind? I heave it all away somewhere in my head. At the moment, this isn’t information that I can process. All I have in my mind is bail. Every clean inch of thinking room is considering, calculating variations of the same data. If I don’t get bail I will be taken to a prison. But I don’t know for how long. I don’t know if I can I try again for bail in another day or two or if there are limits. And I don’t know how long can I survive behind high walls in a maze of ever-decreasing squares.

On the other side of the sanity equation, the fact is I have to be out. I need to be out so that I can find those dollars. I can’t tell the police about any of it. They are past believing me and there is no way that Nina will tell them the truth. She stole a quarter of a million dollars and did God knows what with them. And even if, in some circumstances, she might tell the truth, she wouldn’t do it to help me. She thinks I killed Grace, her best friend. What if the police get to her? What if they speak to Seb and he tells them about Nina and the money? When I think about it in this way, I am not sure where his loyalties lie.

But if there’s the slightest chance that I can trace the money, I have to try. I need to speak to Nina, before the police do.

Jan drifts back to her seat and sits scrolling through messages on her phone and I remain, wilting between extreme alternatives.

Fifteen minutes pass agonisingly by. People walk in and out of court. Bored, all of them, except for a small Indian man who is clutching a paper and worriedly looking for the right court. He alone seems at all moved by the significance of this awful, cheap, blanched room. When the judge comes back in, the man ducks back out again silently. The room falls quiet and everybody eases once again into character. My breath stops. I hold it so I can listen to what he is saying, but all I can hear is a pulsing sound in my ears. Fragments of his words find their way across the court and snake through the glass. Considered very carefully … balancing the interests of the defendant and the prosecution … seems to me … met by … imposition of …

He finishes speaking and there is no reaction from anybody that allows me to deduce his decision. The gaolers aren’t uncuffing me. The prosecution isn’t complaining. On the other hand, Jan isn’t either. She hasn’t leapt to her feet to remonstrate or shout ‘appeal’.

The lawyers spend some time mumbling to the judge who mumbles back at them individually. The minutes stretch. My breath catches as my body remembers it needs air. I gasp audibly but nobody reacts.

Finally, the judge turns to me and in a loud voice asks me to stand.

‘You understand that your application for bail is allowed on strict conditions? You will live and sleep each night at the address notified to the court. You will be required to report to the local police station each Monday and Thursday. You are not to apply for travel documents. And you are not to go within five hundred metres of 42B Farm Street. If you breach any of those conditions, or if you fail to turn up to your next hearing, you will be committing a separate offence. Do you understand?’

I nod. The judge rises. And I am so grateful, despite the murder charge that has now crystallised around me, that I want to cry. Until the gaoler stands up and leads me back down into the cells.

‘What’s going on?’ I say. ‘He released me. Didn’t he release me?’

She looks at me as if I have just materialised before her.

‘Okay. Just quiet down for a second,’ she says and leads me back into the cell and locks the door.

Blood wells up in my head and feels as if it is pooling behind my eyes. I don’t know what is happening but I have an urge to scream.

I start pacing the cell until the floor begins to contract.

‘I want to see my solicitor,’ I shout. The words simply rebound back into my face. This room is designed to withstand more than I can give it.

I drop to the floor and begin to rock. There is a tide beginning in my head that I need to contain. He said bail. Did he say it? Have I imagined that? I replay the conversation over and over again and the certainty I had minutes ago is beginning to dilute. He might not have said that. I couldn’t hear everything. I was straining to hear at points. So, what now?

Just as I unleash a scream, the door opens and a golden head looks in. It is a young woman. Pretty. Cheerful.

‘Flippin’ heck, what’s eating you, love?’ she says.

I leap to my feet and put my hands together. ‘He said bail. I’m sure he said bail. Can’t you go up and check?’ I say. ‘Please. I can’t go to prison.’

‘What? No, silly sausage. We’re just processing you. I’ve got your bail form here. See,’ she says, handing me a form that says ‘Bail’ on it. There are boxes ticked and others left blank.

‘What, so, I can go?’ I ask.

‘Yes. Just give us, what, ten minutes and once we’ve done your paperwork, you’ll be released.’

I sit on the bench and let the tears run free, until finally the door opens and I too am freed.

I walk through the iron door and into the court lobby and am met by Jan. I want to hug her but my condition, the state of my body, stops me.

‘You waited,’ I say.

‘Yes, I waited. That’s what I was telling you as you were being taken down to be processed. So now can we get the hell out of Dodge?’ She indicates the front entrance with a tilt of her head.

I follow her on to a street lit by a bright, early spring sky. I have been away from the embrace of the outdoors for less than a day and already it feels like a homecoming. In the dust of the traffic, the memories flood back to me, remaking connections to the world and binding me once again to it.

‘Not sure how we did that,’ Jan says, walking briskly and scanning the road as she does. ‘Good judge, shit prosecutor. Anyway, well done. You’re out. Right, we have a brilliant QC lined up for you. You’ll meet her next week, on Monday. She wants to see you in her Chambers as soon as possible.’

‘That’s quick,’ I think it as I say it. I had the impression of cases grinding slowly through the legal system at Jarndycian speed.

‘Well, as you heard, this case will next be up in two weeks and before then you’ll need to be advised properly about your plea. It has to be quick and you’re lucky that this Silk is free, to be honest.’

Two weeks seems so fast that I become unsteady just thinking about it. By March, I will be back in court entering a plea. I nod vaguely as I follow along behind her, struggling to keep up.

‘Monday, 2 p.m. at 5 Pump Walk Chambers. I’ll drop you a letter with details. Nasreen Khan QC,’ she says, sticking her arm out. A taxi screams to a halt and almost before I can mutter my thanks, she has jumped in. She leaves the door open for a moment to speak to me.

‘You need to find that money, Xander. It’s going to be key.’

I nod and put my hand up to wave at her as she heaves the door shut.

‘See you Monday,’ she mouths through the window as the cab rumbles off.

Once the taxi fades into the distance, I turn and walk the other way. Seb’s. I have to go there. That is my bail address now. He doesn’t know yet that I have to live with him. He’s too polite to object. But it can’t be how he was hoping his life would turn out. And I have no way of making it up to him.

The ground is comforting underfoot. I need something firm and permanent as everything else around me seems to be washing away. I try to gather my scattered thoughts as I walk. The last thing I remember is Nina. The things she said. As I remember them again my pulse begins to quicken. All you ever loved was a version of her that you had created.

There was hate or something like it – spite, maybe – in her voice as she said it. This disturbs me most of all. That she would hurt me for no other reason than to inflict pain. But now as I consider her, I can’t quite see her in those colours. Not truly. There was something else in her voice. More than grief. Some other quality. I play through the conversation I now have to have with her. I run it over and over across the roads and the roundabouts, along the wide pavements and congested bridges.

I have to get her to talk.

Seb’s house. The late afternoon light catches it in a way that makes it feel like a memory. I knock on the door. Seb should be at work, I think, but a few seconds later the door opens and he is there. He looks terrible. He is wearing jeans and a blue-checked shirt that looks slept in.

I hold up a hand to stop whatever he might say. ‘I’ve been charged with Grace’s murder,’ I say. ‘They kept me overnight. I’ve just come from court. And I have to stay here. Court bail. I’m sorry. Really sorry, Seb.’

His face runs pale.

‘You’ve been charged? But how?’ he says, plainly shocked.

‘They think I killed her, Seb.’ Without warning, my eyes begin to redden.

‘I’ve been trying to find out what happened to you all night, but those guys, the police, they can be real arseholes,’ he says, and then holds me in a hug.

He leads me inside and to the kitchen. For a second, we look at one another saying nothing. Suddenly I feel exhausted and dirty. I fight the idea of a bath but I need one, my skin is itching hot in place. There’s a part of me that thinks of this dirt on my skin as an amulet. Had it protected me until I had my first bath in years, just upstairs? There’s so much I want to say, but my social skills, always uncertain, feel blown after a night in the cells.

‘Come,’ Seb says. ‘I’ve got coffee brewed.’

‘Look, if it’s okay I’d just as soon go upstairs and—’ I begin but he places a cup in my hand and sits.

‘They charged you with the murder?’ he says again.

I nod, gulping the strong coffee.

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Not much. I went mainly “no comment”.’

‘But you told them you didn’t do it?’ he says, looking into my eyes.

‘I don’t think I did tell them that. Not really,’ I say, running over it in my head.

He visibly recoils as if he’s been hit. ‘What? Why not, Xand? I can’t believe it. This is serious.’

‘Because,’ I say, and then catch myself in a thought. And then it solidifies. I look to catch my fingers trembling. And then my voice:

‘Because I’m not sure I didn’t.’