I Know What I Saw

41 Friday

The need for new air in my lungs overrides my decision to make my way straight to Seb’s. Some part of me is still feeling the effects of the last day or so layering themselves over the events of the last ten days. I’m struggling with the information. I haven’t processed it yet.

The sun has set into the edges of the street and paints the houses in flame. But the beauty can’t penetrate my anxiety.

I have to find Ariel. I didn’t even go to her funeral. If I could remember where I might have been, that would be something. Perhaps there’d be something symbolic in what I had done that day if I could only put myself there. Did I think about her – specifically – that day? Or dream of her maybe that night? I wasn’t there, but he was at the house. With the money.

And now the money’s vanished. How am I going to get off this murder case? I described every detail of the house to the police, confessed to them I was there. It was as if I’d framed myself.

The idea of finding Ariel clamours in my head. Where do I even begin to look? What could I possibly say if I were to find him? I can’t just accuse him outright of stealing the money with nothing more than an overheard slip of the tongue. I was there – I must have been – and even I can’t be sure that it was him. And if it was, then it must also have been him that strangled her. The idea of that, and the possibility that it could have been him begins to flood my head with noise. Somehow, the notion that he killed her, while I stood by, is more horrific than if it had been a stranger. That I stood – lay – frozen in fear of him.

I make my way to the library as the daylight has all but leaked away, to seek out Amit’s help. He’ll know how to trace the history of a person with a name. He will be able to dive into that fathomless digital world and come up with pearls in his mouth.

The building is etched in the early evening and I surprise myself with the remembrance that I haven’t read a book in months. Books have always been there as joists in my life. They’ve been shelter as much as, no, more than anything else. I always had a book in my pocket. Now the need to pick up a book and read something is returning.

The warmth of the library hits me as soon as I walk in. The glow of low light and bright lights in places adds optimism to the warmth. I cast around in search of Amit but now am quietly pleased that he is not here. I can breathe before it all starts. I go immediately to the French Lit section and flick my eyes across the M’s – Maupassant, Mauriac, Molière – until I find him. And then there he is, my Proust.

I take up a volume and flip it open to a random page and am faced with his madeleine moment. He tastes a crumb of cake and suddenly old memories that were lost to him come unbidden. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest.

The smell and taste of things remain poised, but he failed to mention the sounds. At that moment, as I’m reading this passage, the memory comes rushing back: I’m sitting on a bench in a park with a low wall. No, not a park – the grounds of the Horniman Museum. The grounds my feet keep finding again and again.

But I am there and Grace is beside me. I have this book in my lap. This passage. I am reading, reciting, in fact, as she lies with her head in my lap.

‘It’s too wordy, Xander.’

‘Yes, but listen to what he’s saying,’ I said. ‘He’s saying that what any of us has to say is worthy.’

She laughed at that point and lifted her head. ‘Not worthy – wordy. Nobody can have that much to say.’

Now I laugh. She was right of course. And nobody ever had that much to say ever again: 4,215 pages.

But as I stare at these pages, something else comes back.

It’s there, in shadow, ready to trigger a memory. All it needs is a gentle pull and a deluge of these somethings stored will be waiting to consume me. I grasp around the edges in frustration. Something wants me. Not a smell. Not a taste. Something else is there tapping at my head. Or digging. Perhaps a sound.

‘Xander?’

I look up and see Amit’s face, in smooth innocence.

‘Do you never go home?’ I say, smiling.

He flushes momentarily at this and I remember that he has the librarian, Hazel, on standby to call him when I appear.

‘I prefer it here,’ he says, shrugging. ‘Anyway, I kind of come in to check on you. How did it go with the lawyers?’ His voice is low, not quite conspiratorial, but self-conscious – on my behalf.

‘Hard to say,’ I say, after thinking it through. ‘I’m afraid I need your help again, if it’s not too much trouble?’

He nods and without being asked, straightens his bag over his shoulder and makes a beeline for the computer terminals. I follow him in a way that makes me feel like a child. He sits, his face underlit by the glow of the screen. He tilts his head slightly.

‘I need to find a person. Not missing this time at least.’

‘Sure. Name?’

‘Ariel.’ I spell it out. He types it in and looks at me expectantly.

‘Surname?’ he says.

‘I don’t know it. But I thought since the name is quite unusual?’

He spins in his chair and gives me a deflated look. ‘It’s quite hard with a full name but with only the first name it’s impossible. Look,’ he says, pressing return, ‘262 million results.’

‘He’s a yoga teacher if that helps. Or he was, at any rate.’

He types in ‘yoga’ and sends the information into the machine. ‘Still 36 million. And if I put in London, it’s still 6.8 million.’

‘Well, you at least managed to narrow it down,’ I say.

He laughs for a second before becoming serious again.

‘I’m sorry. You really need a second name or a date of birth maybe.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ I say. I hesitate, not wanting to impose on his time longer than I have to. ‘You couldn’t do one more thing for me, could you? I promise it won’t take you long.’

He agrees and I tell him what I need. Within a minute he has given me the answer. ‘Thanks, Amit. I appreciate it.’

He gets up and shoulders his bag again. ‘No probs,’ he says, and then stops in his tracks. ‘Oh, just remembered.’

‘What?’ But he simply rummages in his bag.

After a moment he produces a book – the one I gave him. I am about to protest his returning it, but instead of handing it to me, he opens the covers and fishes out something from the pages.

‘Here,’ he says, ‘I found this.’ There’s a folded sheet of letter paper in his hand. ‘It was in the book. Thought you might want it back.’ He hands me the yin and yang patterned sheet. I open it and begin to read.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says sheepishly. ‘I read it. Wasn’t sure if you’d want it back.’

In a daze I walk to the door, expecting him to have followed me, but he has already sat himself down at a desk and started to arrange his books. I look across to say goodbye properly. And then as I stand on the threshold, half in, half out, I look down to read.

My heart is thumping.

I skip the next few paragraphs because what is in them makes me so desperate that I can’t read them without feeling tears in my eyes.

My eyes dart a little and I move to the end of the page.

I don’t remember this letter. Not really. It lights a flame somewhere in my mind. I must have read it at the time; after all, I kept it in my favourite book. I scour my head for some remembrance of this. Not long after that day in the café, the next day or the next week, she must have found me, and given me this letter. I must have kept it in the book, until frightened I would lose it, I put it with the other things I gave to Seb to look after.

I did read this letter. But only once or twice. It hurt – I’m sure of that.

And reading it back now makes sure about one other thing.

I have my appointment on Monday with the QC. This letter surely changes everything. Or it could. And all of a sudden, my gloom lifts slightly so that a future that I had settled in my head is given light and is changing into something new.