The Evidence Against You

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘But it is relevant.’

  ‘It’s not to me. Because I’m not a murderer.’

  She looks across at Thea’s garden. Her kitchen windows are open and she can hear the chink of cutlery. The sound of footsteps on wooden floors.

  ‘It was just me and crazy Babs. Being teenagers.’

  It makes sense to Izzy. His explanation feels authentic. Exactly how she would be if she were accused: defensive, trying to hide things that seemed relevant, but weren’t. She can feel her mind coming around to his version of events, like the slowly turning Isle of Wight tides: she is starting to believe him.

  ‘Would you say you have a quick temper?’ she says.

  ‘No. But I do think everyone has a limit. And nobody’s perfect.’

  Izzy is glad he says that. She is glad he isn’t delusional.

  ‘So whose fault was it?’

  ‘It was both of our faults.’

  ‘That’s called victim blaming in today’s parlance.’

  ‘Well, it was what it was.’

  Izzy doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she looks up at the sky and wonders who has the answers for her, and if she will ever find them. Her mother, her father … and God, she supposes. Gabe’s God.

  ‘We split up, afterwards. Which was just as well,’ he adds.

  ‘Pip and I split up, too,’ she says, though she is still thinking about breaking points and tempers.

  ‘What happened?’ he asks. He’s asked before.

  He keeps asking, and she wishes he wouldn’t.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, sitting down on the bench in her garden.

  She and Pip used to discuss babies. It seems immature now. But she felt so sure they would make it. ‘I like the name Gigi,’ she’d said once. ‘No. Pole dancer’s name,’ Pip had said, which had made her laugh.

  She and Nick never discuss it. Izzy knows her own reasons: how could she be a mother? She has no idea how families work. The idea of giving birth to, and then leaving hospital with, a life she is entirely responsible for fills her with horror. But what about Nick? Sometimes, she thinks he merely can’t be bothered to have the conversation, and that thought fills her with sadness.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ she says again. ‘Just the usual.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Iz. I liked him. First loves, hey? I guess it was too much – with his brother and everything?’

  ‘I guess so. Where are you?’ she asks quietly.

  ‘In the hostel. Hey, I’m on cooking duty tomorrow.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’ve swapped shifts.’ He says nothing but, somehow, she can tell that he is smiling too, down the telephone line to her.

  The next night, at Alexandra’s, as she dices an onion which makes her cry, she doesn’t think of his hostel, or that he has to perform chores in order to have a bed. She thinks only of him chopping an onion, eyes watering too, along with hers.

  37

  Three days later, Izzy is on a ferry to Portsmouth. She’s moved her shifts again. Work seems to matter much less than Gabriel.

  She doesn’t leave the island often; the ferry will forever remind her of that trip to Belmarsh. The sea is calm and flat, like a freshly made bed. She stares at the neat line of the horizon.

  Her father’s parents eventually settled in London. She wasn’t permitted to see them when she lived with her mother’s parents and, after she moved out, it seemed, somehow, to be too late. Things were easier left. Life went on, she told herself, as a way to compartmentalize, to avoid, to bury.

  She is struck once again by how little she knows about where she has come from. It is as though she sprang into being with no context for what came before her: her parents’ marriage, their history, their lives before her. Now, she wants to know it all, absolutely all of it. It is the bedrock upon which the crime is founded. There is an answer somewhere, deep in the past; she can feel it. It’s not hidden in the police evidence – missed by some negligent copper, as Gabe fantasizes – but in the personalities of her parents. Who were they? Why did they do the things they did? And how did that lead to one of them being murdered? The answer’s here, on this ostensibly happy, sunny island with its seedy underbelly. She can feel it. The pieces are coming together.

  The train has no air conditioning, and the air outside is still, with barely a breeze. She eases the train window open a crack. The air here smells different; she likes the scent of it, especially in this freakish summer-in-spring. Hot city air. The smell of cigarettes and takeaways and stale beers and street food.

  A car sits outside her grandmother’s drive in Tooting. It’s a green Nissan Micra, old. A postman is just leaving, the gate clanging behind him, and he nods to her. It’s so strange to think she’s never been here: her grandmother’s house.

  It’s a normal residential street. Dropped kerbs. Pebble-dashed houses. Porches with white uPVC doors. Funny how, even though they travelled all over, living so differently to others, they ended up here. In London suburbia. They had no choice, she guesses. Once Gabe was convicted, they fled to anonymity. A kebab house is opposite, and a tube sign is nearby, but otherwise, it could be any city in Britain.

  Her grandmother answers the door, and Izzy should be struck by her appearance – stooped, her hair dyed a sort of pearlescent white, age spots across her tanned cheeks – but she is too busy studying her grandmother’s reaction. There is an emotion present that she can’t read. It’s the same emotion she heard on the telephone when she arranged to come, but she can’t quite grasp it. It might be sadness.

  Yes, maybe.

  There is nothing of her other grandparents’ fusty tradition in this house. Nor does it reflect their own travelling past. It’s clean and modern. White walls, blue carpets.

  Her grandmother steps aside and lets Izzy enter the living room first. She presents her with a mug of green tea without asking and Izzy cradles it in her lap.

  ‘You look so much like her,’ her grandmother says. She has the same soft Irish accent as her son, but her voice is weaker now. She is old, unable to project quite as much, and the effect is a reedy, watery sound. ‘You don’t look at all like Gabriel.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry it’s been so long, I –’

  ‘So you’ve seen him,’ her grandmother says, waving away the apology.

  ‘He’s back on the island.’

  ‘Yes …’

  Her grandmother surprises her by taking the seat next to Izzy on the pale fabric sofa. Her eyes – even into her eighties – are alert, scrutinizing her. They’re the exact same colour as her sage-green trousers. She doesn’t look much like Gabe, save for their darker complexions.

  ‘… he can’t leave it, now,’ she says. ‘He can’t visit us. Terms of his licence.’

  So he’s stuck there, on the island, the sea a moat around him.

  ‘He tells me he’s innocent,’ Izzy says.

  ‘He tells that to everybody,’ her grandmother says. ‘Because he is. I’m seeing him soon. I need to get over to him.’

  Izzy places her tea on the coaster sitting on the largest of a nest of tables. Izzy can hear paws skittering on the floor. A dog, maybe, shut in the kitchen. She can’t help but imagine a parallel life running alongside hers. One where she’s here all the time, with Gabe and her mother. She knows the dog’s name. Life has an infrastructure of grannies and granddads and birthday visits and holidays to France on which they all bicker. Trivial Pursuit. Barbecues. Mothers and fathers and grandkids.

  This grandmother thinks the exact opposite of the other. How can two women – two mothers – hold such different views? They have taken opposite sides of the same case, but one of them must be wrong.

  ‘But he’s very charming,’ Izzy adds. ‘I like … I like seeing him.’

  ‘Yes, he did always have the gift of the gab.’

  ‘But I don’t know what to think. What he says … it … I don’t know. It makes sense to me. Sometimes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I … I think I could believe
him. I think I –’

  Her grandmother holds a hand up. Her teacup rattles on its saucer. ‘You want to believe him,’ she says quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ Izzy says, her eyes budding with tears. She nods. ‘Yes.’

  It’s exactly the same sentiment that Nick expressed, but it is kind, and not harsh. There’s no judgement. It’s fair enough that she should want to believe her father, her grandmother is implying. Nick did the opposite. Something rises up through her; a slideshow of all of the worst parts of their relationship. His refusal to understand where she’s coming from. His avoidance of all things tricky or difficult. Sometimes, she thinks nastily, sadly, he just wants a companion. Somebody with whom to have sex and dinner and nothing more than that. Anything deeper is hard work, to Nick. No. She forces the thoughts down. They aren’t true. They can’t be true, not these disastrous thoughts about her marriage.

  She tries to think of the good things about him, but her mind draws a blank. He’s a safe man, she finds herself thinking.

  ‘We wanted to believe, too,’ her grandmother says simply. She places her cup down on the table with a clatter. ‘So we did.’

  ‘Was it that easy?’ Izzy asks.

  ‘Yes, and no.’

  Izzy waits patiently. She’s good at waiting.

  ‘The first few years were rough.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The accusation of domestic violence. Those text messages … his temper. Her injuries.’

  ‘And Babs,’ Izzy says softly.

  ‘Babs was a problem,’ her grandmother admits. ‘She was my first thought when your father was arrested: again? But, it was … Two things occurring together do not mean escalation, Izzy. I had to … to broaden my mind. Look.’

  She stands up, hands on her slim legs, and brings down a photograph from the shelf. It’s in colour, her parents standing in front of Alexandra’s on its opening night. Gabe’s arm is around her mother’s slim waist. Her hair is up, a green hairband contrasting with its redness. Her head is thrown back, laughing at Gabe. Tucked into his chest is her hand, clutching her phone, a black pebble in the palm of her hand. Yes, that’s right, her mother had spent the entire day in the run-up to the opening on the phone, and moaning about it.

  ‘Look,’ her grandmother says, still holding the photograph out with shaking hands.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Love.’

  ‘I went to live with Granny and Granddad,’ Izzy says, taking the photograph in her hands.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, they –’

  ‘I know. They wouldn’t let us see you, either,’ her grandmother says.

  Izzy nods. ‘It was … it is all black and white to them. But now I see …’ Izzy looks at the photograph again. ‘Now everything is muddy,’ she finishes lamely.

  ‘Sometimes, somehow …’ her grandmother says. Her eyes become damp.

  Izzy wonders what the tears are for. Time served by an innocent man? Or the never-quite-knowing situation they find themselves in? Never a hundred per cent; only as close as they can get. Eighty. Ninety. Ninety-nine. Do they feel fully safe, themselves, around Gabriel? If he makes a sudden movement? If he raises his voice? He’s like a dog that’s bitten once, maybe. Izzy never feels completely sure or safe.

  ‘You find you don’t really need to know. You just believe,’ her grandmother finishes.

  ‘I’m not there yet,’ Izzy says.

  ‘Well,’ her grandmother says, ‘it’s different for you. You’ve more at stake, I know.’

  ‘Did you ever think, if it wasn’t him, who else it might have been?’

  ‘Yes. Often.’

  ‘But you’ve no idea?’

  ‘No. We never figured it out. Nobody ever got to the bottom of it. The reality is, only he knows for sure that he didn’t do it. So only he really wants to know.’

  There is a scratching at the door.

  ‘You like dogs?’ her grandmother says.

  ‘Sure,’ Izzy says.

  She rises unsteadily to her feet, knees barely straightening, and two Schnauzers rush in. The larger one licks Izzy’s hand. His tongue is surprisingly soft.

  ‘Would you have said they were happy? My mum and dad?’ Izzy says.

  Her grandmother’s face forms a strange, unsure expression, her bottom lip pulled downwards. ‘You know, they ought not to have been, but they were.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think, having had decades to think about it, I think they were just very different people. Your mother thought the stuff of life was hard work. Gabe thinks – well, Gabe just wants to have fun. But it worked. It shouldn’t have, on paper, but it did, in real life. They liked each other so very much.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It comes down to two things, anyway, doesn’t it?’ her grandmother says. ‘Whether Gabe did it, which nobody knows. Not the judge,’ she says, as the smaller dog jumps up at her, ‘not the jury. Not us. Not your mother’s parents. And secondly: if not him, then who? Both are mysteries. But you can, in a way, choose to solve the first one. You can decide, yourself, what you think about it. And, really, only that matters. Your thoughts are all it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Izzy says.

  Her grandmother makes it sound simple. But is it? A life was lost. But if her father is innocent, what happened to him is almost as bad as what happened to her mother. Two lives lost needlessly.

  ‘But I do know one thing. Although the evidence against him is …’

  Izzy waits patiently as her grandmother chooses the right word. She knows what the evidence is, but she doesn’t know what it means. She could never serve on a jury, she thinks, gazing into the clear green tea. She would believe everybody.

  ‘… compelling,’ her grandma says.

  Izzy’s heart-sinking reaction tells her all she needs to know.

  ‘Although it is compelling, I know him to be good. He is good,’ she finishes, looking straight at her granddaughter.

  Izzy drives off the ferry, metal ramps clunking under her wheels, and heads for home. She’s bone tired, as she often is when she leaves the island. The sunlight is low, and she has the windows open, enjoying the salted breeze in her hair.

  As she turns off the A-road, she catches sight of something in the rear-view mirror. A black car, close to her. She turns left at a roundabout, then right, then takes a side road. It drops back a few cars, but still tails her. As she turns on to her country track, it drives past her. A few seconds after she parks, and just as she is locking the car door, she sees it circle around again, driving slowly past her house. She stares at the windows, but they catch the sun at just the wrong moment, whitewashing her view of the driver.

  She stares and stares as the car retreats, trying to make out a form. The car turns left at the end of her track, and she sees him. A man. Older than middle-aged.

  It’s nothing, she tells herself.

  It’s nothing: what else could it possibly be?

  38

  Izzy sits at the desk in the back of the restaurant and opens Google. Earlier, she made a list of the names of the men who worked at the restaurant regularly.

  Tony, Chris, Marcus the regular, Geoffrey Adams, a waiter. She adds Daniel Godfrey, too, the waiter her mother sacked.

  If her mother had been having an affair, then maybe there is an explanation other than Gabe’s jealousy, Gabe’s debt, Gabe’s temper. The prosecution wanted the jury to believe that she meant nothing to him. That he was controlling, that she had got him into debt, and that he killed her in a temper. But what if one of these other men had killed her – or knew something about who might have?

  She gazes around the office. The walls know. The walls know who was in here with her. And her mother knew. And whoever was with her knew – if it was anybody, and not another one of Gabe’s lies. But nobody else. How can it be this way? Something happening, deep in the past, and leaving zero imprint, zero trace. It wouldn’t now, Izzy reasons. There’s CCTV in the corner, just up there. Her phone is probably recordi
ng everything she says and sending it to advertising companies.

  Last night, Izzy finished checking the 1999 statements. She still hasn’t found the extended licence or seen any evidence of it having been paid for. Why? Was her mother lying to Gabe about having applied for it? Or was she merely disorganized, and the application was lost somewhere in the swathes of paperwork?

  Izzy googles Marcus, Daniel and Geoffrey. There’s nothing of note. Charity JustGiving pages. LinkedIn profiles. That’s all.

  She looks them all up on Facebook. Marcus isn’t on there, but Daniel is. He’s still a jobbing actor. Was in a mobile phone advert a few months back. Geoffrey might be on there, but his profile is locked down, the profile picture a white figure on a grey background.

  Chris walks into her office and she closes the laptop guiltily. His eyes linger over it, but he says nothing, as is his way. ‘Charger needed,’ he says, waving his phone, then plugs it into the socket at the bottom of the wall, sitting on a spare chair and looking at her. ‘How’s the boss?’ he says.

  ‘The boss is tired,’ Izzy says, rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘You could never hack it,’ Chris says with a lopsided grin. ‘Sleepover wanker.’

  Izzy laughs. That’s what he used to call her when she’d fall asleep before midnight and he’d have to stay up watching horror alone. Sleepover wanker.

  ‘Nick brought these in for you,’ Chris says, producing a tiny bag of chocolate coins.

  Izzy takes them, not saying a word. Chocolate coins. She has always loved them. The cheap, plasticky chocolate. She only ever has them at Christmas. Here they are; a love note from him to her.

  39

  Izzy visits Gabe at his bail hostel the next day. He is insistent that they meet in private. Alone. It will be easier, he says. They will be undisturbed.

  ‘The humble abode,’ Gabe says as he opens the door to his bedroom and welcomes her inside.

  She looks around his room. Eight cans of beans are in the wardrobe next to the radio. She stares at the neat row of them, labels facing out. There’s a deck of cards on the bed, which he sits down next to. His bedroom at home was nothing like this. It wasn’t functional or plain. He was messy. He had old sports trophies on his bedside table which her mother used to tut at as she dusted. Paintings everywhere. Little pots he’d made. Canvas paintings air-drying.