I Know What I Saw

45 Friday

It’s been almost two weeks since my phone call with Jan and I have heard nothing more. I just wait, continuously flattened by the walls in Seb’s house. I want desperately to leave but I can’t. I have to train myself to withstand the weight of confinement.

Seb continues to pretend to go to work.

‘You know I read once about those Japanese salarymen who lose their jobs but still get up every morning, get dressed and go to “work”. They just go to the park. Rows and rows of them on benches. The article said that they pretended because they were ashamed of losing their jobs, but I don’t think it’s just shame. I think it’s that pretending is the next best thing to doing.’

‘You could get another job,’ I say to him.

He nods sadly and straightens his tie. ‘You could too,’ he says.

When the day of my hearing comes, it is grey and flat. I wash thoroughly and dress in a suit Seb has lent me. The trousers are loose around the hips and the jacket is short in the sleeve, but I wear it gratefully. As I walk up the long path to Southwark Crown Court, I suddenly realise that it is familiar. I came out of it after my bail hearing, but I didn’t see it then. Now I look and recognise it as a building I have seen before in the papers. Today there is no press, only shallow puddles and misty, driven rain. As I walk I see myself reflected in the huge windows lining the route. I am indistinct, a ghost almost.

Jan and Nasreen take me to a small room. There is enough space for a table and three chairs with their guts spilling out into the open. Nasreen, in her wig and gown, catches me looking at the furniture.

‘Classy, isn’t it?’ she says, removing her wig.

‘I’ve seen worse,’ I say.

She smiles and spreads her diamond fingers at me.

‘Okay. Remember your plea. Not guilty. You might hear me make a fuss about one or two bits of disclosure but apart from that it should be a fairly swift hearing. You will hear some dates, called stage dates; this is just a timetable for the service of papers, that kind of thing. The only date that you really have to worry about is the one at the end – the trial date. Okay?’

I nod. Jan updates me a little on the progress of the record, telling me that the prosecution haven’t found the rest.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Shit, we’re being called on. Let’s go, Nasreen will explain it in court,’ she says, and we follow Nasreen as she slips her wig back on to her head and walks towards the courtroom.

This court gives me a sense of déjà vu. It is like a magnified version of the courtroom I was in before. This one is vast, and the judge so far away that when he finally comes in, I can barely see him. He is in red robes and smiles benignly at everyone. I am shown into a dock with glass walls and asked my name and nationality and then told to sit down.

‘Ready for arraignment, Ms Khan?’ the judge says.

‘Yes, please, My Lord.’

‘Very well. Mr Clerk, please would you put the indictment,’ he says to his clerk.

‘Alexander Shute you are charged on this indictment with one count of murder. It is said that on the 30th day of December 1989 you murdered Michelle Mackintosh. To this charge how do you plead?’

The court falls into silence and it is as if the world has stopped moving. They all wait, and a part of me waits too.

‘Not guilty,’ I say.

The remainder of the hearing goes exactly as I have been told before Nasreen gets to her feet.

‘My Lord, we were surprised last week to be informed that one of the exhibits from the locus in quo has vanished.’

‘Vanished?’ the judge says. ‘Is it a critical exhibit?’

‘As far as we are concerned, My Lord, it is. It is our case that the defendant witnessed rather than committed this murder. My instructions are that he saw the murderer shortly before the act take a record off a record player and throw it across the room, where it broke in two. That record may, we say, in the circumstances and mechanism of the throwing, have captured the murderer’s fingerprints.’

‘Yes. And what’s your point, Ms Khan?’

‘My point, My Lord, is that although the Crown have been able to test one of the two pieces, without result as it happens, the police appear to have mislaid the other piece.’

‘I see.’

‘And we would like to put the Crown on notice here and now that there is likely in the circumstances to be an application to stay this case for abuse of process.’

‘Yes. Mr Douglas-Jones? What do you say?’

‘We are making enquiries, My Lord. The indications at the time were of an accident, and for that reason, the exhibits weren’t treated exactly the way they might have been in a murder case. In a nutshell, My Lord, we have what we have. Frankly, we are surprised that there was any fragment of the record available for testing at all.’

‘I see. Well, Ms Khan, you’ll take your own course, but I will need some persuading to stay these proceedings on that ground alone.’

I am dismissed shortly after and find myself in the corridor being debriefed by Nasreen.

‘Remember your bail conditions. Jan will be in touch. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, you must tell us sooner rather than later.’

I nod and then watch them both leave and turn towards the main road.

The adrenaline of being in court begins to subside and within moments of being in the open air, I feel flat. I turn the opposite way to get my bearings when I see a face that I know. My heart drops.

‘You?’ I say.

‘Xander,’ says Blake. I am close to her and for the first time I see her in the glare of daylight. She is younger in this light, and more attractive. But the pallor of her face betrays long hours under electric lights.

‘So, you pleaded not guilty?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Good.’ She turns to walk away, then stops. ‘I know this is a strange thing to say, but if I can help you with anything …’

‘Thanks,’ I say. I am touched that she believes me. No, more than that, I feel seen, and because of that it feels a little as if I could even find a path back to myself.

She smiles a half-smile and walks towards a parked police car.

Halfway across London Bridge I stop to look down into the water. There’s nothing about the river that conjures any warmth or romance. The views either side of the bridge are impressive, but the waterway itself is a trail of slurry. There are no blues or greens in its spectrum. There is no emotion, no invitation to anything joyful. It’s impassive and friendless.

My final walk will be here or somewhere nearby. When I dive into its cold bed, neither it nor I will weep for any lost time. Small waves will swill over me casually and stones in my pockets will pull me through its depths. I can do it. I’ve never doubted that for a second. If I have to. I can’t stay another day in a cell.

I’m no longer as calmed by the thought of leaving nothing behind as I once was. To arrive with nothing and to leave nothing behind has a poetry to it, but now that I’m here at the threshold of an exit, I’m no longer sure about poetry.

It’s not until I step on to south London earth that I feel the security of home. For nearly thirty years I travelled without borders and I managed to get only as far as here. We came here, Grace and I, just to feel separated from London and now I wonder whether you can be separated from London. Because the city is not under your feet but on your skin.

It’s still before midday and I don’t need to be back at Seb’s for any reason that I can think of. I wander past the road that leads there and press on up Lordship Lane. Within a few minutes I am back at the Horniman grounds. Grace pulls me here again, but today I pull along in the same direction.

I need to find it.

When I walk through the gate, I do it as a person. For once I am not in hiding or exile. I can walk in with the other people and blend in with them. At first, I am self-conscious about my beard but then I realise that there are more bearded than clean-shaven faces around me. Fashion seems to be in a curious phase – suits without ties, and beards everywhere.

In this new disguise, in Seb’s suit, I discover a thing. People smile at me. I want to smile back but the joy is trapped somewhere underneath, like an air bubble.

I pick my way around the perimeter of the grounds, skirt the edge of a sunken ornamental pool and walk uphill. When I reach the top, there is a view of London that stretches out for miles: the Shard, the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie. London has changed so that there are now pinnacles of glass at every turn. All these buildings with names fit for children have sprung up as if from a giant pop-up book. Grace might have loved this change. Or hated it. Or accepted it, grudgingly. Instead she missed it.

There are a few people by a bandstand, taking in the view, as I crest the slope and walk round the edge. And then I see what I am looking for.

Still here, after all these years. I touch the edge and feel the grain under my fingertips. Our bench. The warm burnt-umber tones have given way to weathered silver, but it is unmistakeably the bench. The plaque is still here:

The memory of her warm body comes crashing back. From here the world is as it was, a pocket in time, she and I together, our nerves exposed and sensitive to the touch. The rush of memory paralyses me. I realise finally that she and everything she was, and all that she was promised to be, is gone.

And I sink.

Sitting on the bench, I feel a knot in my stomach being stretched taut. Here she is, next to me, warm and real, against all of this cold everywhere. Before I can control it, I am crying. And it’s as if I’m being pulled across every second of my life and being burned by it.

When the tears finally peter out, I find myself sitting on the grass and leaning against the seat. I press my hands into the ground to lever myself upright, but the sensation of the damp soil between my fingers triggers something. In the memory I have, I am digging. Clawing into the earth with my fingers. There, just behind the bench. I know it is here. Whatever it is.

And so now I move behind the seat and crouch. There are walkers nearby but they look away, afraid, as if I am about to do something unthinkable. I plunge my hand into the ground and dig. I scrape away a handful of wet, hard soil. Then, before I know what is happening I am digging desperately. One after another clumps of soil are hooked out of the ground. I dig as though beneath this foot of grass, there is a treasure or a life or some precious thing that needs air. I claw again and again but I don’t quite understand why.

Through the damp soil my hands touch plastic and I stop. The corner of something smooth and plastic is poking through the ground but it’s too far below ground to see. I tug at it and it slides out before catching in the mud. Another pull dislodges more earth and finally it comes free, cascading damp earth as it does.

I lay it on the ground and stare at it, as if a dream has suddenly taken on form. I remember this thing. A clear plastic sack. Thick. Inside there is something that has been carefully wrapped in newspaper. Something that I have carefully wrapped in newspaper. At the very outer threshold of my mind I remember this. It comes now in an avalanche. I remember wrapping these things. I recall the nervousness I’d felt as I did it. This has to do with Grace.

The mouth of the bag falls open and I put my hand in. I take a corner of the newspaper wrapping and tear it off. I read the date across the top: