All i said was true, p.6
All I Said Was True, page 6
Russell stiffened but softened quickly. ‘You know you could have asked me.’
I felt heat gathering under my cheeks. I didn’t want to ask him these questions. ‘So, where were you?’
He looked from her to me. ‘I was working late at the office.’
Nikki nodded. ‘Remind me what you do.’
‘I work for the Environment Agency. Something came in late. I had to deal with it. That’s all there is to it. What could I do?’
I wanted to leave it there, with this explanation I could work with. One that I didn’t have turn over and over in my head. But the absence of detail would become corrosive later. ‘You could have called. Sent a message,’ I said.
‘I had no signal. The meeting rooms don’t all get a phone signal,’ he said to Nikki.
She sat back and indicated me. ‘Say it to Layla,’ she said and I vibrated as he said it all again.
‘Good. So now we have an honesty space,’ she said, without pausing to see whether I believed him enough to justify naming the space.
He did complain about the shitty reception in various civil service buildings. But there were still landlines.
‘I found a hair,’ I said and immediately wished I hadn’t.
I left the room just as Nikki was explaining she was giving us homework for the next session. Russell stayed dutifully and caught up with me at the car. He shook his head at me as he got in. The drive back was heavy and miserable. Neither of us spoke the whole way home. We pulled up just as clouds began to collect overhead.
‘What?’ I said, when I noticed him staring.
‘What was all that “I found a hair” nonsense?’
‘I did find a hair.’
‘Whatever,’ he said, kicking off his loafers in the hallway.
‘No,’ I said and marched upstairs to the bedroom to get the hair from the pocket in my pyjama top. But when I looked, it had gone. I checked under the pillow where I put my pyjamas, but there was nothing there either. I went back down to find him in the living room flicking through the channels.
‘What did you do with it?’ I asked him.
He turned. ‘With what?’
‘The hair?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know what to say to that.’
I stood in the centre of the room not knowing where to turn, suddenly feeling adrift in my own home. He stared at me waiting for me to speak.
‘You always do this. You raise the subject and then you run away from it. It’s not a grenade. Just say what you want to say for once.’
I slammed the door and went to the kitchen to find a drink. But when the bottle was in my hand, the stereotype was so grating that I put it back down and made some coffee instead. I sat at the nub on the counter and rubbed it until I could bear it no longer and went to the cutlery drawer to find a knife. Then I remembered that Russell had a proper knife, his grandfather’s old fishing knife that he kept in a tackle box under the sink. After a little rummaging, I found the mother-of-pearl-handled knife, pulled open the blade and locked it into place. I placed it flat against the granite and sliced at the nub. It slid straight over and I tried again in shorter passes. After five minutes I gave up but with a mild horror saw that the stone was scratched where I had run the knife across it. I threw the knife across the counter and watched it skitter onto the tiled floor.
As I went to pick it up I noticed something on the limestone tile. I licked my finger to pick it up and put it up to the spotlight. A blonde hair – the same golden shade as the other one I had found. And just like that one, this too, was arrow-straight.
Was this another hair that fallen off Russell’s clothes? Or worse – had she been here, in this house?
15
Now
In the consultation room Peter is hunched over the back of a chair, staring down at me. He has always carried the risk of violence, I think. Hauled it around with him like a wolverine down the front of his shirt.
‘We really have to deal with the knife thing now, Lay. We can’t really no comment it.’
‘But you told me to no comment it.’
‘I also told you tell me everything and you haven’t.’ He wipes away the frustration that is obviously building. ‘Look. No comment can buy us some time but it won’t make it go away. It’s key.’
Details of the room flow through my consciousness. I am aware of the chipped wood on the armchair I am in. And the Van Gogh on the wall, blazing yellow against the painted plaster. But I know it’s just my mind tempering the tension with banality. I want to ask him why it’s key but I know he’s going to tell me whether I ask or not. He likes to supply answers, does Peter.
‘The knife is everything. If your prints are on it and you haven’t explained it in advance, whatever you say later will sound made up. If the prints aren’t on it – even worse. The jury’s going to wonder why you didn’t deny it straight off. They will think that you wiped them off. So,’ he says, straightening. ‘What’s it to be?’
I don’t hesitate. ‘Yes. The knife would have my prints. It’s Russell’s fishing knife. I’d used it, I don’t know, a week before? Ten days? It was in the house. I used it. They don’t need to test it.’
He spins around quickly so that I don’t catch the expression on his face. ‘Why did you have it on you at the scene?’ he says, aiming his gaze at the floor.
‘I did not have it on me. It wasn’t me! Haven’t you been listening?’
‘Listening? Yes, I’ve been listening. Understanding? No. I hear you saying that this was all some guy called Michael. I don’t know who he is or how you know him. I don’t know why he is there on the roof with you and Amy Blahn. And now to add to all those I don’t knows – I don’t know why he has Russell’s bloody fishing knife on him. But most of all, Layla, I don’t know how the hell he’s managed to vanish off the face of all CCTVs in the building and then off the face of the Earth.’
The colour, such as there was, has drained out of Peter’s face. He is worried. Terrified. When I think about it all from here in this room, I can’t make sense of it.
‘Michael,’ I say. ‘When Michael found me, he wanted to warn me about Russell. I left before he could finish telling me what he wanted to say.’
‘Why?’
‘Because . . . because I thought he was telling me about Russell having an affair. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all.’
‘Then what?’ he says, coming near me now. He is holding his breath and so, I see, am I.
‘I didn’t know it then. But something much worse. He was telling me Amy was involved in the licencing of a really fucking dangerous chemical. And that Russell was involved.’
16
Then
I said nothing to Russell about the hair but wrapped it in some kitchen roll and placed that carefully into the pocket of a denim jacket I had hanging on a hook in the hall. It couldn’t go missing from there.
Russell was downstairs watching TV. Since the following day was Sunday he wouldn’t be upstairs till late. I lay in bed trying to untangle it all. The strange coincidence of Michael on the bridge pulling me back from an accident and then seeing him in Temple.
I opened my Mac and thought about searching for him but I had nothing to go on. A name – Michael – and that was it. But he seemed to know I had a husband. Maybe he knew Russell. Perhaps he worked with him. I did a search of the people in the department of the EA that Russell worked in – operations – but I couldn’t find any Michaels. It might not even be his real name. I closed my computer and tried to sleep. Entangled. He said we were linked somehow. Maybe it wasn’t Russell but me that was the connection.
The following day I studied him as he made lunch. He took a pizza from the freezer and slid it into the hot oven before quickly tossing a salad together with olive oil. He was there just an arm’s length away – real. The skin on his arms and face still burnished from the summer.
On the ceiling there was a dark spot that I’d never cleaned. Every time I saw it I meant to get the stepladder and wipe it away. But I’d forget and move on to something else. Except I didn’t forget – I’d left it as a souvenir and an amulet. I rewound the weeks and months and years to the moment immediately before. Russell had been cooking something complex for a dinner party we had planned for his line manager and his partner. I had been on the sidelines, rushing supplies over to him from the cupboard and beers from the fridge. It was one of those sauces that he’d read about in a Michelin book and it had taken hours of painstaking measuring out of strands of saffron and grams of truffle to get it to this stage.
I sat at the table, eating crisps and Maltesers, watching him, loving the way he moved.
‘Pass me one then, you greedy sod,’ he said when the sauce was shining in the pot.
I reached into the packet and lobbed a Malteser at him. He caught it with a flourish and ate it.
‘Another,’ he said, opening his mouth.
I tossed another one at him, and he caught it again before pirouetting back towards the saucepot.
‘Give me them,’ he said. ‘I’ll throw you one.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Your hands are greasy. I’ll throw two – we both catch.’ I stood next to him and threw two in the air but as I did the whole packet in my other hand went up too. He caught the chocolate meant for him in his mouth, just as a dozen others went straight from my packet into the complicated sauce. We both froze. He stared at the pot.
But a second later we were laughing until there were tears in our eyes.
I looked across now at him. I didn’t have to step out of this reality in front of my eyes if I didn’t want to. My husband here, making lunch, being himself, kind and easy company. It could remain as simple as that.
And then his phone flashed on the countertop behind him and he went rigid. He quickly swiped it off the top and dropped it into the pocket of his linen shorts. He turned then towards the oven so that I couldn’t see what his face betrayed.
On Monday, I went to work as usual, alighting at Waterloo Bridge and walking across. Sunday night had been too dank and far too deep to dredge up now so I concentrated on the light instead. Summer had begun to give way to autumn. The weather was still warm but the character of the light was changing – bright white was giving way to gold and copper.
And Russell. He was still who he was. The cloak of suspicion that I’d thrown over him didn’t change that. I had no reason to doubt him. He’d never given me a reason to, which was more than he could say about me.
At work I spent the morning reading new files and then at lunchtime I went to the canteen and picked up an apple and two packets of crisps. Once I’d eaten the apple I went back up and dropped one of the crisp packets on Alice’s desk. She nodded her thanks and ate them semi-silently as she took a phone call. When she’d finished, she hummed to herself, interspersing the tune with falsetto squeaks, and took another call. I remembered the car I owed her. I’d give it back as soon she was off her call. But as I was thinking about this, one of the senior partners, Julianne, phoned through.
‘Can you pop in to the large conference room? Now please.’
‘Sure, what about?’ I said.
‘I’ll explain when you get there,’ she said coolly.
The conference room was at the other end of the office. When I got there, I saw Julianne, papers fanned out before her. Fry was next to her, looking serious.
‘Have a seat.’ No pleasantries at all. ‘We wanted to notify you that a complaint has been lodged against you by a client.’
I sat, stunned. ‘Complaint? From an insurer client?’ I asked and then noticed that I was picking at the dried blood on my fingernail. I stopped.
‘Not an insurer, thank God,’ she said. I relaxed. Insurer clients meant half a million pounds a year in business. Client clients, lay clients, individually, meant almost nothing since their costs were always paid by the insurers.
‘What do you need?’ I asked, happy to smooth over whatever needed smoothing.
Fry peered at me over his glasses. A deep breath followed. ‘This one isn’t going away. He’s an OBE and says he’s lost his reputation by losing his case.’
I laughed. ‘But even you know that ninety per cent of cases win or lose themselves.’
Julianne studied the documents in front of her. ‘He said that you told him to be “flexible” about certain parts of his statement and that he was caught out in cross-examination.’
‘Flexible,’ I said. ‘Flexible how?’ I felt my colour rise.
‘You told him,’ Fry said, cutting across, ‘that he might be better off not remembering that he swore at the other driver.’
I said nothing.
‘Well?’ Julianne said.
‘Well what? Was he supposed to admit it? Seriously?’
Fry again. ‘Yes. That’s the honest thing to do.’
No lawyer would have written up a witness statement in which their client admitted swearing at the other driver. ‘It couldn’t have made any difference. There’d be no way of proving that he did or didn’t swear,’ I said. ‘And if you ever went to court you’d know that judges don’t care about it at all.’
There was a pause during which they exchanged glances. ‘She, the defendant, had a dashcam,’ Fry said finally. ‘They played it at the hearing. Last-minute disclosure.’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit is right, Layla. We’re initiating a disciplinary,’ Fry said steadily. ‘This is your formal notice. Interview in two weeks.’
I looked at Julianne but she had already begun to write up her minutes of the meeting.
17
Then
I left the office dead on 5 p.m. The evening crowds were as swollen as the morning’s but there was no optimism there. There was more evidence of the gathering autumn: a slight chill in the air and a ponderous darkness blooming overhead. Instead of the usual route, I circled around the back of Aldwych to give myself a short extra walk. I waited to cross at the pelican when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked around and saw that face again. It was him. My body tensed and I felt an electric spike of fear.
‘That place does good coffee. Good place to talk,’ he said, pointing his chin at a grand coffee shop with gold lettering stencilled on the windows.
His face in this light glowed, giving it an unreal feel. My heart became percussive. My throat closed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We need to talk.’
I swallowed. I should run. But at the same time, I needed to know what he knew about Russell. I looked around and saw a thousand people within arms’ reach. There was probably nowhere safer to be than here, cosseted by strangers. I got my phone out and shared my location with Kate. She called a second later but I didn’t answer. Instead I texted her quickly to tell her it was a mistake. I was fine.
The Delaunay belonged in a Viennese courtyard. We were shown to a table in the corner and presented with an Afternoon Tea Menu on stiff white card. Having him this close – the heat rising off his clothes – was surreal.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
I sat and waited for him to speak.
‘I wasn’t following you. You should know that.’ When he said it, there was something like defeat in his tone.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
He shut his eyes for a moment. ‘But it’s important that you do.’
‘Why?’
‘Because until you believe that, you won’t believe the rest of what I need to tell you.’
My fists had balled so that white was showing at the knuckles. But there were people here, it was safe, I reminded myself. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. Just say what you need to and we can get on with our lives.’
He sighed. ‘I’m a mathematician specialising in number and probability theory,’ he said as the coffee he’d ordered arrived. ‘I’m now in private industry.’
I stared at him. If he was deranged it didn’t seem complete: the language, the tone and pace were – normal. But there was so little connection between what he was saying and what he should have been saying that I began to shift in my seat.
‘Sorry. Back to the issue. The bottom line is,’ he drew in a long breath. ‘Our paths cross. They keep crossing. And they will keep crossing. It’s not a coincidence, it’s something else. Mathematically – it doesn’t add up. I know. I’ve done the numbers.’
I folded my arms. This was definitely unstable. I’d seen this in Mum. The swings in logic. The changes of subject.
‘You’ve done the numbers? On two meetings?’ I said, checking the route to the doorway again.
‘It’s been more than two. Or three if you count this one. There have been dozens.’
A wave of something cold washed over me. Goosebumps appeared on my arms and my heart began to beat hard. ‘What do you mean dozens?’
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen you dozens of times. You didn’t notice. But I did. It’s the kind of thing I take note of. Our paths keep intersecting. It’s becoming more and more frequent now. This is why you feel like you recognise me. It’s because –’
I snapped out of my seat, unable to stay down any longer.
‘Wait,’ he said, holding out a hand. He pulled a small notebook out of his jacket and read off a page that was already opened. ‘February this year. The nineteenth. You were on a train to Liverpool. I was on the same train. I noticed you because I’d seen you the month before wearing the same red coat – in Angel – at a bagel shop. Then in May I saw you again, this time at Greenwich. You were at the market. Then three more sightings in June. And July – six sightings. And now, they’re happening so frequently that we’ve had to meet.’
My breathing had become rapid and I made an effort to slow it down before I lost control over it. I held the back of his chair, breathing. ‘Because you’re following me!’
‘I swear, Layla, I’m not following you.’
