All i said was true, p.3
All I Said Was True, page 3
I checked my watch. I was ten minutes earlier than yesterday. The logical and pragmatic part of my head began to scrutinise everything I was doing. He wasn’t a commuter – I’d have seen him before. And if he did turn up, then what? Was I going to ask him whether he was a boy from my childhood and expect him to remember me? I’d have been invisible to him when I was thirteen.
I stood glued to the pavement as the crowd cushioning me swept across the bridge. There were no familiar faces. I twisted to look behind me but again nobody stuck out. Within a few seconds more commuters appeared, replacing the ones who’d just crossed. I waited, scanning the men for one with the right build, the right shade of chestnut falling across his eyes.
I persuaded myself to wait until the next tranche of pedestrians and then I’d leave. I could hardly believe that I was waiting in a sea of pedestrians just to satisfy a curiosity. Was I supposed to thank him for the unnerving way he’d held me back? He’d barged into me and assaulted me away from the kerb. And now I replay it – it hadn’t been exactly when the car had come. It was seconds before. He was taking credit for nothing more than chance.
So why was I still here?
I waited through two more changes of lights and then crossed. Just before I reached the pavement on the other side, I took a final look behind me. And that was when I saw him waiting to cross.
He was searching faces at the lights in exactly the way I had done. I stopped and turned to cross back over the road. A wave of commuters came now towards me and for packets of time, he faded out of view. By the time I had finally banked, I’d lost sight of him completely. I twisted back again, towards where I’d just come from, but I couldn’t see him. It were as if he had misted away.
I opened the front door and dropped my bag at the foot of the stairs. Russell wasn’t home. In the kitchen I poured out a glass of wine and took it to the small sofa under the window and sat back. I closed my eyes and packed the day away neatly into boxes, until the only things left were me and where I was.
I called at the puck on the countertop to play me some music and a second later Allegri was pouring out of the speakers, filling the spaces in the corners with ‘Miserere Mei’.
A baited hour passed slowly until the front door scraped in the hallway. Russell, bringing a weighted mood with him.
‘You’re late,’ I said with more edge than I’d intended. ‘Is everything okay?’ I added then to smooth the tone.
He dumped his bag at the kitchen door and raised his hands. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s been crazy at work.’ He went to the fridge, passing me as he did. I caught a note of vanilla. With his beer open, he perched at the marble countertop and ran his hands through his longish blond hair.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said and checked my phone again for any errant messages from him – sent but not delivered. ‘What’s been going on?’
He laughed a little. ‘Just the usual. Central government peering over our shoulders all the time,’ he said, taking a gulp of beer. He shut his eyes and from nowhere I began to wonder whether he did it so he didn’t have to look at me.
I chased the thought away. We sat bathed in a tense silence. He’d wanted me to ask about his job once but I’d never been interested enough in his work then. Now it felt too late to catch up.
‘If it helps, I was given an oral warning about missing a deadline,’ I said, watching him for a reaction but it never came. He sat like that for some time, drinking, studiously avoiding any connection. ‘Russ?’
He shook himself free from whatever was bothering him. His hair standing in places. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and smiled. ‘Long day. Over now. So. Oral warning? Naughty girl. Or serious?’
Allegri had long been replaced by a muted Liam Gallagher. The music shifted the atmosphere in the room, giving it a nostalgic tone. Not the joy of the past, but sadness at the loss of it.
‘Quite serious.’ Then to change the mood I added, ‘What shall we do for supper?’ I got up to root around in the vegetable cupboard.
‘I’m not really hungry,’ he said to my back. ‘I’m going to catch up on emails.’
I watched him leave, taking my appetite with him. At the counter I stared at the veins in the white granite, tracing them to their eventual ends. The surface was glassy and comforting to touch. We’d argued about this countertop. Russell insisted on the prohibitively expensive marble: It’s a natural product, he’d said, parroting the salesman. And I’d agreed, despite the cost. Because it was Russell and Russell had the kind of charm that left its traces on you long after he’d left the room. As I ran my finger now along the pattern, it caught almost imperceptibly on what felt like a protruding grain of rock. It couldn’t have been more than the thickness of a split match and although I couldn’t see it, my skin snagged on it. I tried to scratch it away as if it might have been a bit of dried food but it resisted. Defiantly, not food.
Around midnight, he came down to make a snack. His face had the burned look of someone who had stared at too much light.
‘Is everything okay, Russell?’ I said. I hated having to ask it. I’d done this once before, with us. I’d scratched away at something or nothing, and at first it was just the lightest dusting of powder but before long it had crumbled like old plaster.
He stared back, red-eyed, for a while. His hair though long at the top was cut in a way that made him look like a boy still. He narrowed his eyes at me as if composing something but then took a breath and changed his mind.
‘What is it?’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Lay, I’m okay,’ he said.
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes,’ he said. And then not unkindly, ‘Despite what you did to me.’
That was three years ago, I thought, but didn’t say. How long would I have to pay for it?
7
Now
‘Tell us more about this man, Michael, then.’
I don’t know what Detective Omer is ready to believe. Metcalf maybe, but Omer – I can’t just spring this on him out of the blue and expect him just to go along with it. He waits, serene.
‘Do you know anything about her, Amy, the woman who was killed?’ I ask him to deflect the question.
‘We know enough,’ he says, I guess masking how little that is. ‘We know she was murdered on the rooftop of your husband’s building. We know that her two children are six and eight. They’re in a terrible state right now.’
When he says that, it’s a hammer in my chest. I look down as he continues.
‘We know when police arrived, Amy was lying in your arms, a knife in her chest. Dead. Is there more?’
He looks up again at the red light. It is blinking. Still recording. He levels his gaze at me. Metcalf tries to join him in apparent patience, but I can see, simmering under his skin, that need to burst into rage.
I am trapped between two glaciers. I must remind myself there is danger both in saying too much and in not saying enough. There are things I need to deal with so I know how far I can go, but I can’t do it from here. I need to get out. ‘I can say “no comment” whenever I like, can’t I?’
Omer catches himself short. ‘That’s your right, but –’
‘But what? You don’t seem very interested in hearing what I want to say. You seem to be fascinated by your own theory about what happened and honestly, I don’t need to hear it. I was there, remember.’
He scribbles a note and turns the sheet over and slides it over to Metcalf. ‘What did you want to say?’
‘Amy Blahn. Do you know what she did for a living? What in fact do you know about her?’
Omer scouts around on the floor for his bag and pulls out a buff folder filled with documents. He riffles the pages until he finds one that he likes. ‘IC1 female. Born in ’79. She worked for – e-Vinculum Limited.’ He puts the folder down. ‘But that doesn’t tell you who she was. That the person who shared a desk with her at work also shared her biscuits with her. Or that she and her husband, James, used to go rock climbing in the summer. Or that Amy did bath time with the kids and their dad read the bedtime stories. Or that she kept a banana on her bedside table in case she woke up hungry in the middle of the night. We know what we think we need to know about her. What do you think we need to know about Amy?’
Hearing her name repeated in this way makes me feel sick. However small a life looks, it cuts swathes of devastation when it ends like hers did. My stomach churns. I heave myself back into the room. The truth is that I don’t know if what I know about her is real. I don’t know if Michael lied about that too. I don’t know who she really was. But the police could find out more than me – if I can push the right button.
‘Do you know anything about e-Vinc?’
Omer touches the file on the desk. ‘e-Vinculum. Not really. The usual – but no more than that.’
‘Then I strongly recommend that you find out.’
His hackles are up, not surprisingly. But he knows there is a limit to what they can do in this interview without my cooperation. They can’t make me talk. I have the right to silence. It was right there in the caution that was read out at the start.
‘Look, Layla. If there’s something you want me to know, then tell me. You can say anything you want and if it’s important we will follow it up and investigate further.’
‘Investigate further? Detective, I don’t see what investigations you’ve even started. Have you found Michael? Or even tried? I’ll take that as a no. Well, until you do that, I’m no comment. So, you can stop the interview and do some work or listen to me shutting down your questions one after the next. Up. To. You.’
He stares at me and in that extended moment my heart is one sickening beat after another. I think I might have overplayed my hand.
8
Then
Standing at the zebra crossing, I gazed at the sandwich shop and the growing line. It wasn’t even 1 p.m. and the queue was spilling onto the street. I waited for the traffic to stop before stepping onto the pavement edge. The road smelled like boiled tar. But as I was about to move forward, someone was at my side. I turned, anxious.
It was him. He’d swept his hair away from his face but everything else was still the same; the blue of his eyes was malignant. He smiled and I froze, welded to the spot.
If there was an obvious thing to say, I couldn’t find it. My mind was a wheel of blank tape. I stood and stared at him as the world ground to a halt. But then through the pounding in my chest, I saw that he couldn’t be the boy from the market. This man’s eyes were too strong, intense. His cheekbones too sharp.
Still I stared, mute.
He raised an eyebrow, composed. Happy, even.
But in my veins, adrenaline began to course so that I felt the push of flight. I stepped away from him, my leather sandals teetering on the pavement edge – concrete under my heels but air under the balls of my feet. I tried in the stretched seconds to make sense of how I felt. I’d been searching for him and now here he was. But he was someone else, not a young boy selling his dad’s toys. This man gave me the feeling of being plugged into an electric current. I felt sick.
He smiled at me, waiting for me to comment or do something. The longer I waited the greater the chasm yawning before me.
I blocked him out as a flatbed lorry lumbered towards us. I jittered, waiting impatiently for it to pass. I had been looking for him – I’d been desperate to speak to him – but now he was here in flesh and blood, I was in a racing panic. The road was clear. I took a step, when he leaned in.
‘I think we need to talk.’
I quickly looked the other way for another break in the traffic and then leapt away from him and onto the road. As I crossed I looked back and saw that he was retreating along Fleet Street towards Ludgate Circus. This area was flooded with lawyers. Barristers in Middle and Inner Temple just behind Fleet Street. The Old Bailey at one end and the Royal Courts of Justice on the other. Was he a lawyer of some sort? What would a lawyer want with me? Perhaps I was being headhunted? I thought about the grey and lifeless personal injury department I’d been languishing in these last few years and doubted it immediately.
Once safely over the road, I waited for the hammering in my ears to subside. It was him. We need to talk? What did he mean by that?
Initially curiosity and irritation magnetised me into following him as he walked. Him on one side, me on the other, wading through a river of lunchers. But then as I drew parallel something else drove me on. Anger.
I hooked my eyes into the blazing white of his shirt and let it trawl me through crowds. He passed Middle Temple Lane before ducking behind some large black doors that led into what was known as the Temple. I crossed back over as soon as I could find a gap in the traffic and followed him. It had been a few months since I’d ventured into the Temple. It was beautiful but there was something about the place that always made me feel as if I was trespassing.
Once I’d reached into the cobbled courtyards, the sounds from the street became muffled. I stood by Temple Church, and watched him sauntering through the cloisters as if heading in the direction of the river. A stripe of sun heated the stones on the ground before me, giving them a sweet smell.
If I was quick I could catch him.
A few barristers and perhaps their clerks passed and I weaved between them and the columns to reach a shallow set of stone steps leading down into the well of an ornamental garden. Beyond it to the right a path led to a small arch and in it now stood the man from the bridge, as if waiting for someone. He raised an arm to check his watch and then leaned lazily against the wall.
I picked up my pace and then before me, the Rubicon. If I went a step further he’d see me. There was still time to turn back but not much. He rolled his sleeves, facing a quarter-turn away from me. I took the step. Crossed the threshold. He moved and then saw me.
And smiled.
‘Right on time,’ he said, looking at his watch.
9
Now
I am in a peach-coloured waiting room where the only sound that reaches me is the humming of the electric lights. I make small circles and with each step try to shed as much of the toxicity from the interview as I can. Within a few seconds the calm begins to lay claim to my senses and then to my body.
The overwhelming sense in this room is smell. Some rooms have eyes. Some rooms see you. You can sometimes catch them quietly observing you. Others hear. The worst ones (in my experience) touch. This one smells you. It decodes you from your scent, like an insect or an owl or some other hiding creature. It can tell when you are afraid, for instance. This room likes me, I think, and then two things happen simultaneously to ruin the silence. First, the door bursts open. And second, it propels a large red-faced man into the room.
‘Layla?’
‘Peter,’ I say, recovering my heartbeat. ‘You came.’ He looks at me and for a second the last three years vanish. The air tingles. He takes half a step and then pauses before washing over me like a wave.
‘Of course I fucking came,’ he says and wraps me in a bear hug. Tobacco and coffee mixed with limes.
We were once at the same firm, a small generalist high-street firm with an even smaller criminal department. It was always losing money. Peter left before they finally mothballed it. I bumped into him three years ago in a bar in Soho. He’d moved to a smart corporate outfit with wealthier clients – footballers and bankers – and he was happier. We drank until the hours became small. I never saw him after that.
‘So, to get to it. What the fuck were you thinking?’
‘I was thinking that I didn’t need a lawyer.’
‘Layla, it’s a pissing murder case. And you’re a suspect. The suspect. You need a lawyer. For fuck’s sake. You are a lawyer. You should know better.’ He hasn’t aged well. The odd streak of silver he had when I knew him has become a cloud.
‘Well, Peter, it is what it –’
‘Do not finish that fucking sentence. It is not what it is. Because right now what it is, is a fucking disaster.’ He goes to slap his hand against the wall before changing his mind and folding it into his pocket.
‘Why are you so stressed? I’m the one in here.’
He turns his bloodshot eyes at me and slowly raises his eyebrows. ‘Are you kidding me? This is not a game, Lay. They’re going to life you off.’
‘But it wasn’t me.’
‘I’ve seen the disclosure. You were arrested on a roof with a dead woman in your lap. And a pissing Rambo knife in her chest. And. And listen to this bit very carefully, Layla. There was nobody else there. Nobody.’
When he speaks to me it is like metal on bone. And now he looks at me as if I am lying to him. ‘It was a fishing knife,’ I say.
‘When it’s in a fucking fish, you can call it a fishing knife. Until then it’s a murder weapon.’
I feel my cheeks burn. It isn’t being spoken to like a child that displaces me. It’s the familiarity. He knows me.
‘You know me, Peter. I couldn’t kill a fly let alone a – person.’
‘They think you could.’
‘I know they do!’ I say. ‘That’s why I called you. They don’t believe me even though all I said to them was true.’ The words come out, squeezed and compressed from my chest. I need him to believe me. I can’t do it alone any more.
‘Peter, how long can they hold me without charging me?’
‘Initially, twenty-four hours. But they can get a senior officer to extend it for another twelve.’
‘That long?’ I say, shocked.
He takes a breath. ‘Sit down. Tell me what happened. Everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘We can worry about privilege later. For now, I need the lot.’
10
