Falling Off Air

by Catherine Sampson

  “If it's not here …” I shake my head at the contents of my bag. “Sometimes I leave the key in the ignition when my arms are full. Usually I realize when I get to the front door, and I have to go back, but this evening I had my house keys, so I might not have noticed … Has my car been stolen?”

  “Where were you this evening, Robin?” Mann asks. She and I had struck up a fledgling friendship the night Paula Carmichael died. She is wearing brown trousers that cling to her thighs, and a volcanic orange sweater that drapes over a figure honed in the gym, but I can feel the hard professionalism under the informality. The earth underneath us has shifted and I cannot find my footing.

  “I was here,” I say, “all evening. Hannah and William are asleep upstairs.”

  Mann glances at Finney and he gives her a small nod. She turns and leaves the room and I stare at him as I hear her run lightly up the stairs, pause outside the children's room, push open the door, step inside.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I demand, approaching Finney. Our eyes meet, and I learn from what I see there that something awful has happened. I wait in shocked silence, and in a moment Mann reappears and nods at Finney. She is relieved. He is reassured.

  “What was that all about?” I ask again, but she ignores my question and waves me to sit down. I continue to stand and she perches on the arm of the sofa to continue her interrogation.

  “You didn't go out even briefly?” she insists, glancing at Finney. “You didn't nip out to the corner shop or anything?”

  “I told you,” I say, my voice rising, “I've been here with the children. They've been asleep since eight o'clock. I couldn't have gone out even if I'd wanted to.”

  “Well what did you do all evening?” she asks, her voice taking on a chatty tone.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  I know at once that “nothing” is not enough. I waited, was what I should have said, I waited for Adam. I should have come clean then, but it is none of their business, and I cling to the mistaken belief that if I am stubborn they will just back off.

  “Did you watch television, Robin?” Mann persists.

  Finney squats down at my feet and picks up the pile of photographs. He looks up at me and our eyes meet.

  “Do you mind?” he asks softly.

  “Do I have a choice?” I snap back.

  He stands then and walks over to the light, his back to me.

  “No,” I say, my eyes glued to Finney, knowing that if I lie I will be caught out, “I didn't watch television.”

  He takes a photograph from the top of the pile, replaces it at the bottom, works his way through the pictures, pausing now and again, head bowed.

  “Did you eat dinner, Robin? You must have eaten something.” Mann is losing patience. “You can't have just sat here all evening doing nothing.”

  I shake my head. There is a tight feeling in my chest, and what has been an amorphous sense of unease is turning into downright panic.

  “What's this all about?”

  Finney sighs, hands Mann the pile of photographs.

  “Where did you park your car?” he asks wearily.

  I shake my head.

  “It's up the road,” I say. “I couldn't get a parking space.”

  “When did you last drive it?”

  “This afternoon, I told you. Look, I refuse,” I say as calmly as I am able, “to answer any more questions until you tell me what this is about.”

  Finney regards me with disdain, and this frightens me as much as anything else. He and I were as good as playing footsy twenty-four hours ago. What has happened?

  “There's been an accident,” he says, his voice low and relentless, his eyes like a hawk. No, I want to correct him, that was days ago. Paula Carmichael fell out the window days ago, what's taken you so long? But his voice is already taking me beyond that, his words like a wrecking ball, demolishing my life.

  “Adam Wills has been killed by a speeding car, just up the road,” he says. “The car was a red 1990 BMW, registered to you.”

  I stare at him, past caring what he sees in my eyes. Then my knees give way and I slump onto the sofa. My stomach seems to fold over itself.

  “What am I supposed to think?” he defends himself, as though I have challenged him. “You own a car, it killed a man. I've seen his body. The deceased is the man you told me you were going to see this evening. And what the fuck am I supposed to make of these?” He snatches the photographs from Mann and brandishes them at me. Several fall to the floor.

  D.C. Mann reels. “Sir?” she says uncertainly.

  I am overwhelmed by nausea. A deep chill has seized me by the shoulders and is shaking me with huge racking tremors. My stomach is a fiery ball, leeching heat from my body. What energy I can harness I use to shake my head over and over again. Mann comes over to kneel next to me in concern. She puts her hand on my arm.

  “The children are his,” I say to her. How can they think I would kill my children's father?

  “What?” Finney has not heard.

  Mann stays where she is, her hand clutching my arm, but she turns her head toward him.

  “She says the children are his.”

  It comes as no surprise to him, not after the photographs. He nods grimly.

  “Hey presto, a motive,” he mutters, sarcastic as ever.

  I look up at him and our eyes lock. I cannot begin to fathom the disappointment I see there. Here is a man who makes me distrust myself, who weakens me. But I cannot afford to be weak, not with my children upstairs.

  “I want a lawyer,” I say.

  When my lawyer comes, her skin is still soft from bed, her hair hangs loose around her shoulders and her eyes are wide with anxiety and love. She, my mother, encloses me in her arms where I still sit on the sofa, but I am numb. The blood is departing from my limbs in order to keep my vital functions going. I am cold, shivering. As if at a great distance I see my mother's face fall as Finney talks to her. She seems to be arguing with him, but he shakes his head and talks in a low voice to her. They both turn to me and I hear words that inform me that the house is to be searched. Ma tells me that she has given my permission for the search and has told Finney that a warrant is not necessary. Her eyes seek mine out and I understand that she wants to confirm that she is doing the right thing by volunteering cooperation, but I am not capable of involvement in their negotiations. I force myself upright and to the door. I climb the stairs, their eyes on me. I open the door to the room where, I now understand, Mann went to check that I had not murdered my children in their beds. There is no space for a chair in there, so I seat myself cross-legged at the foot of their cribs and wait for the men to come and tear our home apart around us.

  Chapter 13

  THE search of my house the night before did not, as far as I was aware, uncover anything more sinister than dust and grime, great clumps of which emerged from hiding behind the sofa and underneath the fridge. The police did not trash the place, but things were not as they were. I found the cutlery upended into the kitchen sink, clothes off hangers and papers sorted and resorted until they were in no order at all. My peacock feathers were trampled into the dirt and one of the mirrors I'd painted had sweaty fingerprints all over it. I tossed the feathers and the mirror into the bin and for good measure followed them with the mobiles I had made. Everything felt grubby to me now.

  All that they had taken away were the photographs of Adam and me, and some letters and documents belonging to Adam that had got mixed up with my things, and that I had retained only because I had not been aware that I had them. I signed a receipt for these items and thought nothing of it. They couldn't be incriminating because I had committed no crime. I was in no hurry to get them back.

  I half expected to be arrested on suspicion of murder, but after Finney had talked again to my mother, they let me stay in my own house. As I pulled the curtains I saw a patrol car sitting in the road outside. I doubt it was for my protection.

  When Finney had gone, I went to bed. I closed my
eyes and in my head I opened the car door and looked inside. There were the keys, in the ignition. There, with a foot on the accelerator, sat an ill-defined shape, a figure not male not female, silent, anonymous, a figment of my imagination were it not for the fact that Adam was dead.

  I hardly slept and then somewhere around five in the morning I fell into a sleep as deep as death. I awoke at dawn to a cry from William. My son's father was dead. The knowledge paralyzed me. I could not get out of bed to go and get William. I could scarcely breathe and my chest seemed bound in iron. I lay there, every muscle clenched. I heard my mother go and fetch the children from their cribs, shushing them in case they disturbed me. I gazed at the ceiling, moved my eyes slowly to the curtained windows and then to the pile of clothes on the chair by my bed. Even the familiar room seemed strange to me, as though I had stepped through some portal into another world. All this time I had thought Adam was not with me, but he'd been part of everything all along. The children wouldn't even know he'd gone. They would grow up with their father not just absent but dead, nowhere to be found. Tears welled, then worked their way down my cheeks and down, soaking the pillow. I curled into a fetal position. I closed my eyes. I slept again. This time, when I awoke, I was ready for the wave of loss that washed over me. I sat on the edge of the bed, jaw set. I weathered it. I got up.

  The night before, Finney had looked like a wreck. This morning, at the station, he was clean shaven and he'd put on a new white shirt, but the bags under his eyes matched mine for volume. He nodded a hello and gestured at Mann to switch on the tape recorder. He glanced at me, then glanced again.

  “You look upset,” he said. It was a professional judgment, nothing more.

  I had soaked my eyes in icy water, but they were still red-rimmed and swollen from crying and from sleeplessness.

  “I am upset,” I agreed. I sat down opposite him.

  He looked away, avoiding my eyes, and Mann asked a question.

  “Is there any other way you would describe the way you feel this morning?” Her voice was kind, sympathetic, and it pierced holes in my defenses.

  I gazed at her.

  “I am …” I felt tears rise and then words burst out of me, “so sorry …”

  Finney's head snapped up. I struggled to regain control and felt the tension in their silence.

  “I'm so sorry he's not here, I mean that he's not anywhere,” I tried to explain, my voice still shaking. “And I'm so sorry my children will never meet him.”

  Finney's mouth twisted. Was he disappointed not to have a confession? He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of newsprint, folded. I knew what it was before he had spread it out on the table and pushed it across to me. He took care that his fingers did not touch mine.

  “I'd like to ask you again about your relations with Mr. Wills,” Finney said. “I'm assuming you know what's written here.”

  I pushed the Chronicle clip back toward him.

  “Don't believe everything you read.”

  Mann intervened.

  “Robin, do you want your lawyer present?”

  I shook my head. My mother was outside, last seen with her head bent over a newspaper. I had told her I did not want her to sit in on the interview. I wanted to make no admission of weakness and I wanted to rely on no one but myself. I was volunteering all the help I could. I'd given my fingerprints, I'd given blood. If only Finney would stop riling me, I would give him my cooperation too.

  “You were seen arguing in public last week,” Finney carried straight on, his voice distant. “Mr. Wills was begging you to let him see the children.”

  I made a couple of false starts, then settled on a way of explaining that I thought clarified matters.

  “It was the first time he'd ever asked to see them, I wasn't keeping him from them, he just left long before they were born. I can't see,” I added for good measure, “what gives him the right to see them.”

  Finney's eyebrows twitched upward again and for an instant that look of arrogance returned. It annoyed me.

  “Adam was pretty unconcerned about what became of his sperm,” I added wearily, “until he decided it would improve his reputation if he was a devoted father.”

  Something flashed through Finney's eyes and his jaw tightened. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it on its back legs, waiting for me to go on. Police and journalists, we all do it. Shut up and wait for someone to talk themselves into a trap.

  “Look,” I said, leaning toward him. My lips were quivering with exhaustion. “He rang me on Sunday night and we talked. We didn't have a row. I agreed that he would come around last night and we would talk things through. I didn't want him to see the children, but we would have come to some sort of an arrangement. I was sitting there all evening waiting for him to come …”

  There are times when your head goes AWOL, and at this point my brain decided without any encouragement from me to take a few moments out to consider where Adam had been while I was waiting. Until this point my mind's eye had refused to envisage an impact of metal on flesh, bones grating under pressure, blood leaking through mashed muscle and shredded skin. Now all this and more flashed before me, as immediate as if it was taking place in front of my eyes, but it was stylized, in slow motion. Adam's mouth gaping open with the shock, arms flung wide, body hitting the ground, bouncing upwards, settling. I cleared my throat. Adam's broken body lingered stubbornly in my head. His body lay crumpled like Paula Carmichael's, she fallen on pavement, he flung on the tarmac, both of them just yards from my home. Was this an end or a beginning to the symmetry?

  Finney was looking at me expectantly. I let the silence stretch. I was incapable of speech. The muscles around my jaw shuddered under the strain.

  “You left us in midsentence, Miss Ballantyne.” Finney's tone was razor sharp.

  There must have been sirens of course, but there were always sirens. It wasn't that I had not heard them. I must have heard them and ignored them.

  “I'm not angry at him anymore,” I said, realizing this to be the case as I said it.

  “I'm delighted to hear it,” Finney said, his voice heavy with sarcasm and bringing his chair back to earth. I looked at him, frowning. I expected better of him than this. We had liked each other, I thought, at least in a combative sort of way. Now he seemed to hate me. Finney dropped his gaze and reached for the newspaper clip, putting it back in his pocket. He changed the subject.

  “You saw Mr. Wills leave Paula Carmichael's funeral yesterday,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I'm going to ask you again whether you know why he walked out.”

  I shook my head and then added as an afterthought, “Suzette said he had a headache.”

  “You think he made a scene at a funeral because he had a headache?” Finney repeated the words with scorn.

  “He gets migraines.” It sounded weak and even as I was saying it I realized that, in all the time I'd been waiting for Adam the night before, it had not once crossed my mind that he was not well.

  Finney let another silence stretch, but I ignored it and eventually he spoke again, this time in a more persuasive voice.

  “Miss Ballantyne, I want to take you back over the past few months.” He leaned toward me, his elbows on the desk between us. “I understand what you've told me about your relationship with Mr. Wills. No one would deny that you've been through a hard time. There's been ill feeling and you think Mr. Wills has neglected his duties.”

  I caught my breath and I gave Finney a look I thought was guaranteed to shut him up, but he looked at me blankly and plowed right on.

  “So please be assured that if you answer these next questions honestly, people are going to understand. Miss Ballantyne, have you made phone calls to Adam Wills in the last two months?”

  I frowned, remembering a series of questions like this about Paula Carmichael, and again the two deaths merged in my mind and I found that part of my brain was coolly working on the problem and had already decided that the two mu
st be linked. That they knew each other was indisputable, that I was known to both of them and involved even indirectly in the death of each was also clear. That they should meet violent deaths within days of each other was surely too much of a coincidence.

  “I didn't phone Adam,” I was speaking slowly, trying to be accurate. “Not apart from the call I told you about on Sunday, and then it was he who rang me.”

  “Maybe you've sometimes just dialed his number, then hung up when he answered?” he suggested.

  “Why would I do that?”

  Finney glanced down, and I saw that he had placed a small notebook on his desk at his elbow.

  “Did you ever go and wait outside his flat, perhaps hoping to bump into him?”

  “No.” I was beginning to get angry.

  “Or send anyone with a message on your behalf?”

  “What is this, you think I'm a stalker?”

  I looked at Finney's face, then at Mann's. They had averted their eyes, and that told me everything I needed to know. My brain started to creak back into action.

  “Adam had a stalker?” I asked, incredulous.

  Finney closed his eyes for a moment and Mann stepped into the breach.

  “Miss Ballantyne, I think it would be helpful if you didn't try to second-guess us. Helpful to you, as well as to us.”

  I ignored her. I was already working on this new information.

  “Did he report it? He must have reported it.”

  Finney let Mann do the cool denial, but I was sure I was on to something, and I warmed to the interview.

  “Okay. What do you want to know?” I challenged, sitting back in my chair for the first time. Perhaps I could learn more.

  Finney gazed at me and puffed out his cheeks, Mann put her head on one side and regarded me like a naughty child. We sat without speaking for a minute, the battle lines redrawn. Outside the interview room, men were talking in loud voices in the corridor. One of the men swore, then he was hushed, and a herd of footsteps receded. I knew, now, why the police had not simply thrown me in a cell the night before. There was another suspect, a stalker, and while they might like to believe the stalker was me, it was looking more likely to them that we were two people. The information filled me not only with profound relief but with the zeal of the wrongly accused. With information like this I could fight an offensive game, not hang around waiting for Finney to take a potshot. Finney had read my mind, and I could see him trying to decide on a strategy. He didn't want to give me information, but every question he could ask would tell me something.