I Know What I Saw

44 Tuesday

When I manage sleep, the memories begin to gather. They are liquid, like blood, pooling in places, coagulating in others. There is a kind of repair going on where the gaping patches are slowly, haphazardly, being stitched together. Since all of this began, I’ve started waking up sometimes with my fingers at the edge of something important, delicate. There are, for instance, cold ponds of recollection: long nights in squats. Fights over sleeping bags or sticky, collapsed mattresses. Fights over drugs. I couldn’t function there in that world. The rules had all to be relearned. Hierarchies I had known were no longer recognisable.

And then the memories jolt forwards and backwards years at a time. But through it, that song is there like a shard in my brain.

And after meeting Nasreen, I know why. That record connects me to her life and death and I can’t let it go. The image jabs, again and again. A broken record. The bench. There in the museum grounds. We sat on it together, Grace and I. Our bench. But when the images of those days collide, it’s not the sunshine that filters through, it’s the mud. I am clawing away at the wet earth, sinking my fingers deep into the mud, and I am desperate. There is an urgency in the memory or the dream, whichever it is. I am on all fours, digging, digging as if trying to uncover a dead body. And in my dream I pull the body out, wrapped in paper, only to discover it’s not Grace. Or it is her, but a fractured version of her.

I haven’t roamed as freely as I used to. Back then I’d go from night to night, shedding all the excess that I was carrying; now, instead, it just builds. Whatever is in here, in my head, feels like it has the time at last to multiply and colonise. It is as if I am the host for a disease. But I am tired of being in my head. I have to climb out. I bring myself to my surroundings and am relieved to find that I am in Seb’s house, in ‘my’ room. The key he gave me sits on the bedside table. I leave it there when I go down to the kitchen so that it doesn’t feel as if I’ve taken ownership of it.

I make a pot of coffee and take an extra mug into the living room for when Seb wakes up. As I walk in I hear a grunt and look to see Seb there, slouching on the sofa and staring into the ceiling. He flinches when I walk in but otherwise doesn’t react. He’s dressed for work but there’s growth across his cheeks.

‘You’re up,’ I say and pour him a steaming cup. He gets up to take the coffee.

‘Yeah, well, couldn’t sleep,’ he says.

I sit in the matching chair and put the cafetière at my feet.

‘Listen, Seb,’ I say. ‘I need to ask you something.’ My heart is beating but I don’t think the tremor reaches my voice.

He sits up so that he can better look at me.

‘Ariel didn’t take the money, did he?’ I say.

He half-smiles at the question before he realises that I’m serious. ‘I have no idea, Xand. That was your theory, wasn’t it?’

‘It was to begin with. Until—’

‘Until what?’

‘Until I spoke to you.’

‘I’m not following,’ he says. There is irritation leaking into his voice.

‘He didn’t break into your house and steal the money.’

‘Right … So what’s your new theory?’

I notice him swallow hard, staring at me too firmly. Agitation in the way he seems to concentrate on stilling himself.

‘There was no sign of a break-in,’ I say steadily.

‘Well, there’s the window.’ He looks down briefly before looking up again. ‘You remember how it rattled – it was that rotten.’

I am embarrassed for him – for us both – that I have to ask these questions.

‘But he wouldn’t have known that,’ I say, watching him carefully. There is colour climbing up his neck.

‘Then he could have done it at the wake. I told you he was hanging around upstairs a lot,’ Seb says, shifting in his seat.

‘And then what? Did he climb into your loft and carry out bags full of cash?’

‘Maybe.’

‘How did he know where it would be?’

‘I don’t know, maybe Nina told Grace, and she told him,’ he says, reddening further.

‘But Nina said she was sure he didn’t come to the wake. She seemed annoyed at him for missing it – as well as the funeral.’

He cocks his head at me, waiting for what is next.

‘You invented that earring, didn’t you?’ I say. ‘I didn’t see an earring up there by the box.’

‘What? I was trying to get her to confess,’ he says. ‘We know she took it. You said it yourself.’

‘You’re not working, are you, Seb?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, every time I knock on the door, you’re here to answer it. Whatever the time of day. You were even here when the police came. To arrest me. How are you always at home? Even now. Why aren’t you getting ready for work?’

‘I’ve had some days off. What are you getting at?’

He stands now and I do too, but I have two inches on him, and these bones. ‘Days off from where?’ I say.

‘What?’

‘Where do you work?’ I press.

‘You know where – Deutsche.’

I shake my head. He opens his mouth as if to speak but thinks better of it. ‘I checked. Or, at least, I got someone to look it up at the library. You don’t work there.’

He looks at me, his face red with anger. He makes a move towards me and then stops and holds up his palms.

‘How long has it been?’ I say. He considers the question and then sits back down with a sigh.

‘Three years and eight months,’ he says, deflated. Any fight he may have had in him has gone. ‘The pressure to make decent numbers year on year … But I don’t need to tell you about all that, do I?’ He pauses, as if on the edge of tears. ‘And you never came back. It was just there, burning a hole in my roof for twenty-five years.’

‘Seb …’

‘What would you have done?’ he asks, desperation cracking his voice.

‘Not that,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t have stolen.’

He stares at the carpet. I wait for him to finish accounting for himself.

‘It was just a few thousand at first. Enough to feed the mortgage, pay the bills. And then the months went by and nobody was hiring after the banking crisis.’ He shakes his head. ‘It made sense to pay the mortgage off. It made sense, Xander, you must see that. The money was just up there, getting devalued when the dollar fell. And some of it had even begun to rot.’

I sit down again.

‘Go on, ask what you want to ask me,’ he says.

‘No. I know it wasn’t you who killed her.’

‘Only just though, eh?’ he says.

‘You lied to me.’

‘I never lied to you,’ he says bleakly.

I let out an incredulous laugh.

‘I was embarrassed,’ he continued. ‘After all these years you came back and we were …’

‘What?’

‘The same,’ he says. ‘I thought – I thought I was better than you. But I wasn’t.’

The words ring and lie suspended in the air for some moments, and I have to look away. When I turn back I see dust motes colliding with invisible forces, molecules directing them this way and that in the dying light. Brownian motion, I think, as we look at one another in silence. Tossed around by invisible forces. I’m shocked by how much I failed to see. ‘Seb,’ I say then. ‘You should have—’

Then the telephone rings and the sound of it lunges between us, impatient. Seb waits for it to ring out but when it doesn’t he answers reluctantly. A few seconds later he offers me the handset.

‘It’s for you.’

‘Hello?’

‘Xander? Good. It’s me, Jan. Have you got five minutes? There’s news.’

Immediately my heart begins to quicken. ‘Go on.’

‘It turns out they have the record sleeve, after all. They tested it for prints … there’s a partial print which probably belongs to the deceased.’ She pauses. ‘Then there are four dabs which the forensic scientist says are a good-to-strong match for yours.’

I feel the breath stall in my chest as the words filter through.

‘They survived? All this time?’

‘Not exactly. They did a routine set of lifts at the time.’

My prints. I hadn’t expected that. I was expecting his prints. The murderer’s.

‘Were there others?’

‘Some partials,’ she says, ‘but not good enough for a comparison.’

There is an answer to this lurking somewhere in the eaves of my brain. Jan carries on explaining about partial prints but I’m trying to focus on finding this reply. How could my prints be on there? Suddenly, there is a glimmer of something and when I tease it out the answer is there. ‘Wait. My prints. Yes. Of course, there were my prints. The record. I bought the record for her.’

The line is dead for a second.

‘Okay,’ she says slowly.

‘The letter,’ I say. ‘It’s in there: thank you for the gift, she wrote. That was it – the record was the gift I’d bought her.’

‘That could be any gift—’

‘No, she says … You know how much I love Jack. She said it. Jack is the record – Jack T. And when I play it. It was the record,’ I say.

There is a pause. ‘We’d need to prove she was talking about that specific record.’

It is so obvious. But she sounds uncertain.

‘All we have for certain is your prints on the record,’ she says. ‘That’s the evidence.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not on the record – you said sleeve. What about the record itself? I saw him throw the record. It will have his fingerprints on it, the killer’s. It has to. That’s all records ever do, attract fingerprints.’

‘Unfortunately, they have some of the record. But they’ve lost some of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They only have a piece of it and that doesn’t have any prints on it.’

‘What?’ I say, my hopes crashing under the weight of the information. ‘How could they just lose it?’

‘It happens,’ she says. ‘Missing exhibits. Sometimes they don’t even seize everything. They didn’t think it was a murder, remember. It’s a minor miracle they had any of it.’

I consider this and exhale.

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘I’ve told Nasreen about all this, and I’ll tell her what you said about the record. Needed to confirm your explanation for the prints. Okay. Better go,’ she says, and hangs up.

I replace the handset and sit back down.

‘Everything okay?’ Seb says, concern written on his face.

I shake my head. ‘Not really.’