The Evidence Against You

by Gillian McAllister

  Chris frowns. ‘What?’ he says. ‘What do you think … we’re all going to go out to dinner together?’

  ‘I just wondered what your dad really thought he was going to do. He could … I don’t know. He could help him.’

  ‘He’s done your dad enough favours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Chris’s forehead has turned red. He draws a deliberate circle on the answer sheet, not looking at her.

  ‘What favours has he done?’

  Chris shakes his head just slightly, infinitesimally. ‘Izzy.’

  ‘But what … I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Alright,’ he says, putting the pen down. ‘He said last night that he considered testifying for the prosecution and then didn’t.’

  ‘What? Why?’ It feels as though the blood in Izzy’s veins has slowed down. The pub seems silent around them. All she can hear and see is Chris.

  He taps the pen on the edge of the table.

  ‘What?’ Izzy says again. It comes out shrilly, and Chris moves his head away from hers, rubbing at his ear irritably.

  ‘Izzy, it’s … Jesus, I don’t know what the evidence was: I didn’t ask. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it. He’s still … he’s still massively hurt by it all. I don’t know why you’re … going on. You never usually want to discuss it. We’ve tried so many times with you and –’

  ‘That’s fair, isn’t it?’ she says. Her voice is raised and he’s wincing, but she doesn’t care. She tries to calm herself down. Temper, Izzy. Don’t get angry. You’ll only worry about it later. ‘That I wouldn’t want to discuss it?’ she adds, more quietly this time.

  ‘But why do you want to now?’ he says.

  She can’t answer that. Not without revealing herself.

  ‘Izzy, I mean … it was nearly twenty years ago. God. Let’s just – can we please just let sleeping dogs lie?’

  The quiz announcer says, ‘What was the name of the actress who played Erica in Friends, who gave birth to Monica and Chandler’s twins?’

  ‘Well?’ Chris says. ‘You’re the Friends fanatic.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says tightly. How can he treat her so callously? Just drop that information into conversation, and refuse to elaborate? Is it just because it’s history? She tries to look at it from her perspective, and then from his. He doesn’t know she’s seen Gabe. He doesn’t know about her doubt. How adamant her father is. How convincing. How persistent he was with his daily letters, sent until she gave in. Chris is still where she was: ostensibly fully recovered from a long-ago tragedy. It has no part in his life now.

  Chris is staring at her. His phone lights up, on the table, but his gaze doesn’t stray.

  ‘Anna Faris,’ Izzy says. Then, ‘Did you say it was for the prosecution? Not the defence?’

  ‘Let’s just do the quiz,’ Chris says. She has annoyed him, which hardly ever happens. ‘This is a twenty-year-old argument you’re having with the wrong person,’ he says, but not nastily. He says it gently, factually. And then he unlocks his phone, and begins scrolling anew, despite the signs up saying that phones aren’t allowed at the quiz. Conversation over.

  Izzy watches him, trying not to look like she’s reeling. Wondering what her uncle’s evidence was. Wondering how she will find out. And wondering why Chris is so bothered, so closed, so determined to shut the conversation down and move on. A blush stains his cheeks, above his beard. It takes several minutes to drain away.

  She calls Nick once she’s in her car. It’s after eleven thirty. She often picks him up on the way home on Mondays if he’s on lates. He answers immediately, on the first ring. ‘Shall I come?’ she says.

  ‘Sure. Be done in half an hour.’

  She opens her mouth to say something about Chris, but what can she say? Nothing Nick will understand. Not unless she tells him everything.

  She drives along the coast. The Shanklin beach huts catch the moonlight and she opens the window to let in the warm, soft air. A hotel stands tall against the sea, bright white, lit with old-fashioned lanterns. Several of its windows are illuminated already. Here they come: the tourists. Ready to invade the beaches and the shops and Alexandra’s.

  Izzy gets to the police station at quarter to midnight. The conversation with Chris is swirling around in her mind. She wants to be closer to it all, somehow. Closer to the evidence. Closer to the authorities. She wants to call up his probation officer. Find each and every member of the jury. Go in and look at the police, doing their jobs diligently, day and night, and hope they got it right.

  And maybe, by chance, see Nick’s boss, who arrested her father nineteen years ago.

  12

  Nick emerges in the foyer with Baljinder, his boss, like she knew he would. They’re close, even though Baljinder is a police officer and Nick is an analyst. Baljinder likes Nick’s good memory and Nick likes that Bal brings cakes in most days.

  ‘Let me know, though, soon as?’ Bal says to Nick.

  Nick nods, running a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sure he’s a garden variety lunatic.’

  It’s a typical thing for Nick to say. Izzy loves that about him. He is so sure of himself. She can become absorbed in that, too: if she is partnered up with somebody sure about life, then she is safe.

  They stop walking when they see Izzy.

  ‘I thought I’d wait inside,’ she says feebly, looking from Bal to Nick and then back again.

  ‘Here she is, your lady in waiting,’ Bal says. ‘How’re you doing?’ He looks at her warmly. He always seems genuinely interested in her.

  ‘Let me get my bag,’ Nick says, touching her briefly on her shoulder and disappearing down a different corridor. The dark wood door bangs behind him.

  ‘Alright, thank you,’ she says to Bal. The foyer smells of canteen food and sweat.

  ‘Big week,’ he says.

  She likes that he just says it. That he doesn’t avoid the topic, as others might have. She looks up at him. He’s thickset, stout. Nothing like lanky Gabe.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve had better weeks,’ she says, wondering what would happen if she just told him. Just said it, right here in the foyer. I’ve seen him. He says he’s innocent. Why would he do that? Why would he bother still defending it after eighteen years, after time served?

  ‘I think Nick’s pretty worried,’ Bal says, checking his watch. ‘He’d never say – you know him – but I can tell.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. Weird situation, isn’t it?’ Bal takes a packet of chewing gum out of his pocket and offers her one.

  She shakes her head. ‘You interviewed him, didn’t you?’ she says softly. ‘All those years ago.’

  He nods, not flinching, and she is glad of that. They only have a few minutes.

  ‘I sat in on it. I was twenty-two. Green around the gills.’

  ‘How did he … you know?’

  Bal understands subtext better than almost anybody. He looks at her closely, his expression settling into something approaching earnestness. He puts a hand to his chin, his thumb moving rhythmically along his jawline. ‘I was living with my dad, at the time,’ he says. ‘So it seemed … I don’t know. Close to home, I guess. I felt for you.’ He puts the packet back in his pocket and chews thoughtfully.

  Izzy feels her eyes burn with envy as she looks at Bal. Imagine not having something so grisly in your past? How light you’d feel … sometimes, she mistakenly thinks that everybody has such a secret, such a thorny historical event, and remembers with a start that that isn’t true. Not everybody has something that their mind returns to, even during happy moments. It is always waiting for her, like a cruel safety net. Without it, she would be so free. She’d have two children. Two girls, she thinks. Redheads. And she’d never have to worry about them.

  ‘He was … evasive, I suppose,’ Bal says thoughtfully. ‘It was a very easy case, though. Open and shut. So we weren’t worried.’

  Izzy feels her stomach clench. ‘I see,’ she says, th
ough it isn’t what she means. She doesn’t see. She ought to know, but doesn’t, not really. Not beyond the basics. ‘Evasive in what way?’

  ‘Maybe evasive is the wrong word,’ Bal says. ‘Callous, I suppose. Removed.’

  ‘Callous.’

  ‘So, for example –’ he stops, putting his hand out just slightly towards her in a placating gesture. His wedding ring glints under the fluorescent lights. ‘You sure you want to talk about this?’

  ‘It was ages ago,’ she says. ‘I just … I guess with this week, I’ve been thinking about it more. But yes,’ she says, straightening up and nodding. She can see a figure looming in the dim corridor that Nick disappeared down, and she wills Bal to hurry up.

  ‘So, for example, when the evidence was put to him, I remember very clearly, he said: “Oh, so it was me, then?”’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Like, he was being sarcastic,’ Bal says. He takes off his glasses and begins rubbing them on his shirt. ‘But I wouldn’t usually observe that sort of detachment from an innocent person. Usually they’re shocked and scared. Bewildered, really. He was … I don’t know. Not shocked. Like he already knew. And I guess sort of belligerent.’

  Izzy’s polite smile is frozen on her face. She nods.

  ‘Nothing like you,’ Bal adds nicely. ‘He was – I don’t know.’

  ‘Like he’s got a personality disorder,’ she says faintly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Bal says, like she has scored the right answer on a test.

  ‘I know,’ she whispers.

  ‘It’s not evidence, is it?’ Bal says.

  Nick is walking down the corridor. She can see the outline of his tall form.

  ‘And you can’t go to court on it,’ Bal continues, holding a hand up. ‘But it’s instinct. And it’s very powerful. Once you’ve been in the job a while – arresting people, seeing them convicted or acquitted, hearing their stories and the other witnesses’ stories, for years, every single day – well, you get the instinct. I can’t explain it, but you develop it. I had it, and so did my super. You know when somebody’s guilty.’

  ‘And you thought he was?’ Izzy says, trying to decide how she feels about this: reassured or suspicious. Were people – suspects – interviewed fairly when gut instincts played such a role? But weren’t instincts also part of the job, an important part?

  ‘As sin,’ Bal says softly, still looking at her.

  For a second – just a second – she thinks she detects his eyes misting over, but then he blinks, and they look normal behind his glasses again.

  She tries to remember the afternoon of her father’s arrest herself. The news. The phone call to say he’d been formally charged. Her grandparents’ faces. The rest is blank. Shock, she figures. She wonders if her father can remember his own belligerence. If maybe that was a form of shock, or something else.

  ‘I see,’ she whispers.

  Bal’s eyes flash and he looks at her more closely. Suddenly, she thinks she’s gone too far. He knows, doesn’t he? He knows she’s doubting it all.

  ‘If you ever want to talk more,’ he says softly, as Nick emerges back into the foyer, whistling ‘All About That Bass’ under his breath, ‘you can always call me.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I might.’

  ‘Why has he been released?’ Izzy says on the way home. They stop at a zebra crossing. A woman carries a sleeping baby in a sling, pyjama-footed legs swinging in the warm air. Izzy stares in fascination at the late-night moving tableau in front of them, at the dangling baby’s arm. At the expression on the mother’s face. To think Izzy, too, once had a linchpin with which to anchor her to the world. She wishes she could remember her mother more clearly. That she could separate her from herself. A mass of red hair and pale skin, the both of them. And she wishes, too, that she could cross a road with her mother, now. Going anywhere. Shopping – her mother loved to shop. To see a film. Just walking and talking.

  ‘He would have been considered for parole, and they decided to give it to him,’ Nick says. His eyes are closed. He crosses his legs, stretching them out in the passenger seat.

  ‘Will he have conditions attached to his release?’

  ‘Yeah. He can’t re-offend. If he does anything, even the smallest crime – a bit of weed, whatever – he’ll go back to prison for the rest of his life.’

  ‘What if he approaches me?’ Izzy says. An oncoming car’s headlights dazzle her as she turns on to the country track that leads to their cottage.

  ‘You’ll tell me if he does, and we’ll deal with it.’ Izzy says nothing, and Nick adds, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, staring at the dark road ahead of them, finding it incredible that he can’t tell. Her husband.

  Nick’s phone pings and lights up. ‘Robyn’s birthday in September,’ he says. ‘We going?’

  Izzy shrugs. ‘Yes, please,’ she says, the heavy feeling in her stomach lightening momentarily at the thought of a birthday party.

  September seems impossibly far away. More than a whole season. Still, the date will be marked on their calendar in red, and Izzy will look forward to it, that rarest of things: a family event. She’ll buy a special outfit.

  ‘But how did he come to be released?’ she asks. She keeps thinking of Baljinder’s words. Callous. ‘Don’t they test prisoners before they release them, these days? To make sure they are … safe?’

  ‘Oh God, let’s not …’ Nick says, closing his eyes again as if to seal the matter. ‘It’s not good for you.’

  ‘But I want to know,’ Izzy says, glancing across at him. She is overcome with the eerie feeling that her husband might find her dysfunction – her avoidance, her denial – convenient.

  ‘He will have had to present to a parole board to get out. He served eighteen years and six months,’ Nick says, all in an irritated rush.

  ‘What will he have had to show?’

  ‘Lots of things … Adjustment. Willingness to engage with the community.’ Nick reaches over, still with his eyes closed, and squeezes her hand as she changes up a gear.

  See? Izzy says to herself. He is on her side. He is willing to explain things to her, to help.

  ‘Are there set criteria?’

  ‘Yes. Eight.’ Nick rattles them off easily. ‘Behaviour in prison, plans on release, danger to the public, why you were in prison, previous offences, the judge’s statements at trial, the victim statement, and medical and psychological evidence.’

  ‘What does the psychological evidence include?’

  Please say it includes an assessment as to safety. Please say that.

  Nick says nothing. She looks across at him again. He’s frowning. She pulls on to their driveway. He’s reluctant. It’s obvious. And she knows why: it’s tricky. It’s emotional. She is not usually high maintenance in this way, and it is one of the reasons he loves her. Sadly, she finds herself thinking.

  ‘A lot of it is about remorse,’ he says, an edge to his voice.

  ‘Remorse?’

  ‘Less than it used to be,’ he adds quickly, regretfully. ‘But they still do take that into account.’ He looks apologetic as he says it now, the annoyance gone.

  ‘But he has always, always maintained his innocence.’

  ‘Not in the parole hearing,’ Nick says. ‘I doubt.’

  It is like an arrow has speared right though Izzy’s chest. She feels winded. She says nothing after that, while she parks the car.

  ‘I looked through some boxes,’ she says, angling for a kind of hybrid of the truth. ‘Did you know they were in lots of debt? That was his defence. That they rowed because of debt.’

  ‘They were in debt?’

  ‘Yes. She was. She took on loads of debt, then got him into debt herself.’

  Izzy exhales softly. It’s cathartic to discuss it, however obliquely, with somebody. She feels the muscles in her shoulders and back soften as the tension leaves them. Maybe she could tell him everything. Maybe he would help her look. The responsibility would be shared, halved. She’d
have an ally. The feeling is new to her. She always deals with this stuff alone. No, she doesn’t deal with it. She simply represses it.

  Nick pauses, staring at her now, thinking, sucking his bottom lip in and out. ‘Hmm. Did her life insurance ever pay out?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so, anyway. We got no money.’

  Nick frowns again, sitting in the car as she switches the engine off. ‘Usually it would pay out, but skip the perpetrator. So you would’ve got it. In substitution, instead of your dad.’

  ‘Oh. I never did.’

  Nick clasps his hands across his body. ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘The presence of debt makes it worse, does it not?’ he says softly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Somebody in the insurance company obviously thought it was an inside job. That he killed her so he could use the insurance money to pay off the debts. It voided the policy.’

  It’s as though somebody has thrown cold water over her, right there in the car. ‘What?’ she says. But she knows what. God, how could she have been so stupid? Her father was rowing with her mother. That was bad enough. And now this: the debt isn’t evidence of his innocence. It’s evidence of his guilt. It goes to motive. And, worse, premeditation.

  Nick’s eyes look mournful, his brow lowered. ‘That’s what I would conclude. If it were my case.’

  ‘I see,’ she whispers.

  They get out of the car and walk towards their house. The air smells of cut grass and manure. It’s still warm, T-shirt weather. It feels eerie that outside is warmer than in, like the world has been inverted.

  Nick slams the passenger door loudly in the quiet night. Apart from their row of cottages, there are no other houses around for miles. Izzy suddenly longs for a train, a crowded bus stop, a metropolis. Homeless people, commuters, witnesses.

  Something shifts as they approach the house. She blinks, staring hard, keys in hand. A tree moves again, its branches passing in front of her window. She continues to look, but nothing else moves. Just that. It must just have been that.