All i said was true, p.22
All I Said Was True, page 22
Russell never brought paperwork home. Occasionally I printed reports or witness statements on paper because I found them easier to amend. But Russell always worked digitally. There had been nothing in his pockets or drawers. We didn’t have a shredder. I checked the recycling bin.
But it contained just a few empty food cartons that I’d put in there myself. Then I remembered how he’d emptied the bins before he left. Outside the blue one was empty. It must have been collected already. In the dawning light I peered into it. There were a few stray cardboard sleeves and some plastic film along with the remnants of some torn envelopes. And then, stuck to the side, I saw two pieces of photocopy paper. I leaned in and pulled them out. The first read:
THE INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS APPLICATIONS (LICENCE APPEAL PROVISIONS) (REVOCATION) (NO. 2 ORDER) (2013) 2013 NO. 1192
Underneath there were numbered paragraphs dealing with ‘Legislative Context’, ‘Territorial Extent and Application’ and then a paragraph headed ‘Matters of Special Interest to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments’. The rest had been torn off. The second piece had a partial graph showing ‘behaviour over time’ and nothing more. I put the pieces in my pocket and headed inside.
I had to go to bed. Exhaustion had descended. I slept as soon as I hit my pillow. The alcohol, the pills and everything else thrown together, sent me into a deep sleep.
When I woke it was past midday and the room was flooded with cloudy light. I tested my head, and found the pain had gone. I thought back to the night – the pills – Michael, and I wondered whether he had been there. It didn’t seem plausible that he’d found me on a beach by chance. He’d either followed me, or I’d called him and later deleted the call. Even as I was wondering what was happening to me, I felt as though some enormous tidal wave was pulling me deep into a sunless ocean.
It was Monday, but I called in sick again. Nothing was right. Wherever I looked something was out of place and needed to be tidied or disposed of. But then when I picked up the object, whatever it was, I couldn’t think what to do with it. In the kitchen for instance, I saw the invoice and the gloves and went to do something with them but then stalled because there was nowhere for them to go. I remembered the pieces of paper and pulled them from the pocket of my jeans and looked at them again but I couldn’t make anything of them.
I called Kate but her phone went to voicemail. I then rang Mum but ended the call before she picked up.
When we last spoke she’d told me Dad was alive but I wasn’t sure whether I trusted these new truths of hers. I wasn’t even sure of my own. The idea of it made my mind scatter like marbles on a floor.
I cast my mind back to him and whether he occupied air in the same way as a fleshed person. I willed my brain to help me resolve it. He was there, but barely, exactly like a ghost might be. The fact he was alive didn’t mean that I had seen him. That thought began to eat away at me until I began to wish I’d taken a picture of him. I could still smell his warmed skin but a memory wasn’t proof. Memories stretched across aeons unfixed by time.
An hour later I was in an Uber travelling across London. When I got out I was standing in front of the Savoy, staring at the Art Deco building. The door was guarded by a liveried doorman and even before I had revolved through the doors, I felt inadequate. The chessboard floor moved beneath my feet. I squeaked my way to the front desk and gave my father’s name.
‘Which room, madam?’
‘I’m not sure, but could you tell him his daughter is here.’
She muttered something in French to her counterpart before turning back to me. ‘I’m sorry, madam, but we cannot confirm whether any guest in particular is staying.’
I found myself sighing. ‘I’m not asking for confirmation. Just ring his room, please, and tell him his daughter is here. I’ll wait for him in the bar.’ The idea that I might be asking for someone who might have been dead for decades or if alive had never been here made the floor slide from under my feet. I held on to the desk edge.
She made a note with a pencil. ‘The American Bar?’
I had no idea. ‘Yes please,’ I said and then turned uncertainly towards the doors through which I’d entered.
‘To your right, madam,’ she said, smiling lightly.
The American Bar was carpeted in dark rust with swirls of pale yellow that made patterns like slices of brain. Ahead a thousand spirit bottles stood arranged on mirrored shelves behind a curved bar. Jazz piano played somewhere deeper in the room. I was shown to a small table by a white-jacketed man who skirted elegantly around the few tourists nestled in pockets here and there.
‘Madam?’ the waiter said, placing a menu card down.
‘Martini,’ I said, glancing at it.
‘Vodka martini? Olives?’
I nodded and he hurried away and reappeared with it moments later.
I sat sipping my martini in a daze. An hour ago, I was on the sofa at home and now I was in a place once frequented by Ava Gardner and Oscar Wilde. I stared at the angry red line of the scar across the back of my hand.
I didn’t know if he was alive. Mum’s dementia wasn’t the kind that had clean lines of lucidity and forgetfulness. There were textures of reality in her life. Some darkly shaded parts had beams of light scattered through it. But the light and dark sometimes mixed so that what she was left with was neither memory nor invention but a blend of both.
If she’d discovered he was alive when she said she did, I’d have been around twenty. By then most of the pain had been done. It hadn’t healed, but the pain itself – the pain of living through the days – had gone. Those mornings at school where I’d huddled under a tree overcome by tears. The misery of Sundays which held nothing for me but my mother, caught under the weight of her depression. I remember walking in on her once and seeing her on her knees, sobbing as if the world had burned up everything. We’d lived those days of my mum and I pulling each other through endless summer weeks. The pain had been done. So maybe she was right. By the time I was twenty, there was nothing to be gained by the truth. It didn’t have the power to save either of us. All it would have done was make me feel that the effort of all that pain had been wasted.
Or perhaps it was just more texture from Mum’s mind. Maybe he had died all those years ago in Pakistan. Or died recently. And I was seeing ghosts.
I took an olive from my drink and wondered whether things would ever get back to normal. It didn’t seem possible. Pieces of my life were floating away like ashes from burned paper. Too small to hold on to. Too fragile.
A different waiter oozed into view and gently placed the bill on a silver plate. I left it there for a while untouched. ‘It’s a message, madam.’
I picked up the note.
Mr Khawaja says he will be there in a minute. Please stay until he arrives.
The name sent an unexpected spike of electricity through me. That name of his. I’d never been allowed to use it as a child – it drew too much attention. I’d always had to use Mum’s name. With my light colouring, I could just pass.
Khawaja. I rolled the name around in my mouth. My father was alive. Had been alive all this time.
Even before the plate was spirited away, I saw him entering the bar. He was dressed in a dark green sports jacket, white shirt and navy tie. He scanned the room until he caught sight of me, and he waved as he came in.
‘Layla,’ he said and kissed me on both cheeks. He beamed as he sat. ‘I’m so glad to see you. I wasn’t sure whether you’d come.’ His face was the same one I’d seen at Temple a week ago. Lightly drawn. Faded.
‘I thought I was seeing ghosts.’
He extended a hand towards me but I leaned away from it. ‘Well, as you can see. I’m firmly not a ghost. I’m in London to meet some hospital managers about taking their old wheelchairs and so on off their hands. We can really use them in –’
‘Dad, I thought you were dead,’ I said and watched his face fall.
‘You have to believe me, Layla. When I found out that she had told you I had died, I was furious.’
‘She told me that your family called her to say you had died. She didn’t know you were alive.’ A swell of anger rushed in.
He reached out again for my arm. ‘Layla, I spoke to your mother regularly. I made it very clear to her that I would leave it in her hands and your hands. Whether you wanted to have any contact with me. I didn’t want to force it.’
I took a mouthful of my drink and studied his reaction. There was never any booze in the house when we were growing up. He noticed but said nothing.
‘Have you got time to take some food?’ he asked.
‘No.’ I gathered my things and stood up. ‘I don’t know why I came. I just wanted to know if I was going mad.’
He stood too and stretched out a hand to my arm again. ‘Layla.’
‘Why did you leave, Da—?’ I stopped short. I didn’t want to call him that but didn’t want call him by his name either. ‘Why did you leave us?’ There were tears coming and I wiped them but as fast I did, more came in their place. I sat down again and dried my face. When I looked up he was still standing.
‘It was complicated, Layla.’
‘It’s not complicated. I was your daughter. You left me with her knowing what it would do to her.’
He sat back down in his seat and stared at the patterns in the carpet. The piano changed from jazz to something bluesy.
‘How could you leave me, Dad? I was thirteen.’
He called a waiter over as if he were in a cheap restaurant, hands flailing, and asked for a whisky ‘on the rocks’. The waiter returned with the menu. It seemed to baffle him. ‘Black Label,’ he said. When the waiter had gone he spoke. ‘I never meant to leave but – it was my mother’s funeral. I had to. And then you know your mother and I had been having problems. And the UK never felt like home. But being there felt like home. I called your mother so many times asking her to come for a visit. To come for a few weeks and see what the life was like.’ His eyes lit up as he spoke. ‘There was sun. There were gardens around our house as large as the local park here. And fruit trees. So many trees with oranges this big.’
A waiter came with his drink and set it carefully on the small table.
‘I wanted you both to come. We could start again.’
The bar was beginning to fill for the pre-lunch crowd. ‘What was so bad about here that you had to leave your own daughter? I can’t –’ Tears threatened again.
‘It wasn’t you, Layla. I never wanted to leave you. This country didn’t want me. Whatever I tried it would just spit me out. I didn’t blame it for that. That was its nature. Then at least. It’s changed a lot since,’ he added. He took a sip and grimaced and I wondered whether he’d ever had any alcohol. ‘But I knew that since I had left that I couldn’t dictate terms. It was up to your mother whether she wanted you to come.’
A waiter hovered nearby and took my glass when the silence made space for him. He asked quietly if I wanted another and hastened away to get it.
‘But you know I grew up. I became an adult – what, twenty years ago? It wasn’t her business after that. You could have called me.’
‘I could have. Yes. But I didn’t have your number, Layla, and whenever I called your mum, she said you didn’t want to talk to me. Wouldn’t give me your number. And then she became ill. Well, you know that.’
My head was reeling from all this information. I got up to leave. ‘I have to go.’
‘I also came to see you. I found you on the Web, and your law firm. I left a message for you. I needed to see you. Before it was too late.’
The alcohol was making me feel warm and hazy now. The room moved a little under my feet. ‘It is too late,’ I said. ‘Dad.’
56
Now
‘Ms Mahoney, we want to go back to the knife and the fact that no prints were found on it.’ Omer has the kind of energy that slow releases throughout the day so that there’s never a dip. He seems the same as he first walked in. Nothing tires him out. Metcalf though – and Peter – are fraying at the edges. ‘Do you recall that your answer about that to us was that the assailant – Michael – was wearing gloves?’
‘She said he might have been wearing gloves,’ Peter says immediately.
‘Yes,’ Omer continues. ‘Because that was your only explanation for there being no traces of a single print. But we do have some good news. The crime scene investigators found some gloves at the scene. They were thrown over the terrace by the murderer.’
‘How can you be sure they belong to the murderer?’ Peter again.
‘They are covered in the victim’s blood. There’s no other reasonable explanation.’ Peter nods and Omer continues but now he is looking intently at a report. ‘I’m showing you photographs of the gloves. Exhibit NM/8 for the tape.’
‘Okay,’ I say. He shows me some bloodstained gloves that have been balled up and then opened up picture by picture.
‘Did you see him wearing these? They’re a kind of latex glove.’
‘I can’t be sure whether those were the exact gloves but, yes, similar. The blood gives it away though. I guess.’
Omer nods. ‘Yes. Only –’ he says and stops while he finds his place on the page. ‘We have had preliminary results back that tell us there is some DNA on the outside of the gloves. Could any of that be yours?’
There is only one answer I can give at this point. ‘No.’
‘The more puzzling thing is that there is no trace of any person’s DNA on the inside of the gloves. Can you explain that?’
Peter interjects. ‘Does she need to? Because from here it looks like she’s told you the killer wore gloves and you found some gloves worn by the killer. And what you seem to be saying is that there is none of my client’s DNA on the gloves. Doesn’t that rather blow your case out?’
‘Not exactly. The killer wore those gloves. That seems certain. But she can’t prove without some other forensic link to the gloves that it wasn’t her wearing them. She can’t rule herself out, can she? Can you, Ms Mahoney?’
‘She doesn’t need to rule herself out. That’s called the burden of proof, Detective. It’s your job to prove she was wearing them, not the other way around.’
Omer looks at Metcalf and then back at me. ‘Well, you see, Ms Mahoney, we think we can prove that you were wearing the gloves.’
Peter sits up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, these gloves weren’t just examined to determine the blood match. They were also tested to see what make they were.’
‘Why?’ Peter asks, but I know what he doesn’t.
‘Because of the gloves we found at your client’s address.’
‘What?’ Peter says, looking to them and then to me for confirmation.
‘Yes. There was a box of latex gloves found in the kitchen, in the cutlery drawer.’ Omer blinks benignly.
Peter looks at me and I nod. ‘So, what? How do you know it’s the same brand?’
‘Because of the thickness of the latex – not latex strictly – but nitrile. The ones in Ms Mahoney’s house and the bloodstained ones at the scene have an unusual spec in that they are 5.75 mills thick. It’s quite rare apparently.’
‘Rare? As in the guys who made the box that you say was in my client’s house – what, did they make just the one box?’
Metcalf coughs. ‘No, but they sell a limited quantity of that type. In fact, that particular thickness they don’t even make any more. They stopped making it a year ago.’
‘That doesn’t mean that they’re rare,’ Peter presses.
‘Why have you got nitrile gloves in your house, Ms Mahoney?’
‘They were left by the man who fixed my kitchen countertop.’
‘And just to be clear. You don’t carry these with you for any reason? For work or anything else?’
‘No.’
Omer makes a note. ‘So, if you had them with you on the roof, that would have to be, shall we say, premeditated?’
‘I didn’t have them with me on the roof.’
‘And you didn’t wear them when you were killing Amy?’
‘No.’ There is an edge to my answer. ‘And if I had been wearing gloves, surely my DNA would be on there. You don’t have an answer to that one, do you?’
‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘But we’re working on it.’
57
Then
I spent the rest of the day after seeing Dad at home. I didn’t want to move from the sofa. I just sat and stared at my hands. I had missed it all. All that suffering that Mum had held tight to herself. Or maybe she hadn’t held it that tightly. Perhaps she’d left it out for me to see, but I’d been too self-absorbed to notice anyone but myself.
That would be the start of another undoing, because that’s how I had to be seen now. Selfish, self-obsessed.
In the middle of the night, I woke on the sofa and went to the bathroom and threw up. My stomach was a knot. The whole space in which I existed was toxic. I had to get away from my head somehow and be free of the poison. I took myself off to bed and allowed the feelings to consume me a little more, hoping that eventually I’d disappear.
In the morning I felt both too unwell to go to work and too unwell not to. Staying home seemed the more dangerous option, so I dragged myself in.
When I got there, Alice looked up but then turned away. I began a smile for her but then allowed it to die on my lips.
I was relieved when the working day was over and it was time to go. Before I left I wanted to call Russell. He’d said that he’d be away for a week but had been vague about exactly when he was coming back. I didn’t know which day of the weekend he meant. And now the more I thought about it the angrier I became. He’d transformed me into this creature that only cared about licking its own skin.
Last night I’d had a dream that I was being dangled out of a window a hundred stories up. That was how I felt.
I couldn’t live like Mum had been living all these years: in a wilderness without any clue about what had led her there. Whenever I had asked her why she and Dad split up, she always said it was Dad’s decision and that he never really explained why. He wouldn’t be drawn on it. And now Dad himself was saying only a little more than nothing. He had a sense of not belonging but everyone had that. Nobody belonged anywhere. That was why everyone complained endlessly about their own pain and turned it into currency.
