by Karen Perry
A uniformed officer is putting up police tape. He raises his hands and, in response to their queries, asks the bystanders to be patient and keep their distance. An unmarked car draws up – a maroon-coloured estate – and two men get out, dressed in smart suits: one grey, one biscuit-coloured. They duck under the tape and proceed to the crime scene.
Crime scene. Those words echo in my head, provoke something inside me, push me forward.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the uniform.
He gives me a patient look that seems practised, well-worn, but before he can launch into his patter I cut him off.
‘I need to speak to someone,’ I tell him, and my voice, to my ears, sounds remarkably calm, given the tumult inside. ‘I have information,’ I continue, ‘about the person who lives here.’ And then I catch myself and add, ‘The person who lived here.’
The patient look leaks away, curiosity or suspicion creeping in.
And then I stand and wait for what comes next, knowing I can’t stop it now.
When I left the house earlier that evening, fleeing the scene of the crime, my flight instinct in full force, I left the front door wide open. In my haste to get away, I had not considered closing it carefully behind me, restoring the key to its hiding place. In fact, the key is still in my pocket when I arrive at the police station. I take it out and place it on the table in the interview room, staring at it with as much surprise as the detectives sitting opposite me.
The open door caught the attention of a neighbour across the street, I am told. She saw it from her bedroom window, and then alerted her husband who was outside in the garden. He had crossed the road to the house, rang the doorbell a few times, and when there was no response, he’d ventured inside to investigate. The police and the ambulance had arrived on the scene only moments before I returned.
All this I learn in the police station. The biscuit-coloured detective provides the information after he’s brought a cup of tea into the interview room for me – plus a biscuit for the shock. It’s a slightly stale custard cream. It adheres to my molars when I chew it. His name is Detective Constable Andrew Lewis. He introduces me to the female detective who’s sitting to his right but her name flies past me. I’m surprised he needs to be flanked by this colleague. In my head, it should just be the two of us sitting down to talk – not exactly for an informal chat, but not this level of seriousness either. It is partly the reason why I decline a solicitor – I don’t feel I need one. I am still, I suppose, at that point where I think all of this can somehow be contained. That I can come forward with my information, tell them what I know, and leave.
‘Let’s go through it again,’ DC Lewis says, leaning his forearms on the table. ‘What you told me back at the house.’
‘Alright,’ I say. ‘I called to see Finn earlier – I think it must have been about half past four. I rang the doorbell and there was no answer. When I tried the brass knocker and there was still no response, I let myself in.’
‘You had a key?’ Lewis asks.
‘No. But I knew where there was one hidden.’
That’s when I remember the key is still in my pocket. I lean back to insert fingers into the tight jeans pocket and draw it out.
‘Why did you take it with you?’ Lewis asks.
‘I don’t know. I was shocked –’
‘So you let yourself in, and then what?’ the female officer prompts. Her hair is drawn off her face and held by a lozenge-shaped clip at the nape of her neck. She is young but there’s a drabness to her appearance, and a sharpness in her eye that speaks of ambition. She offers me a thin smile.
I say, ‘I checked the rooms downstairs. When there was no sign of him, I went up.’
‘You went upstairs to the bedroom,’ she clarifies.
‘Yes. I saw him lying there on the bed. From where I was standing, I could see he was dead.’ Then, steeling myself, I go on in a more forthright tone. ‘I moved towards him – the pillow was covering his head, but I could already see his wounds, the blood on the sheets. I took the pillow away and saw his face was lifeless, and that’s when I ran. I was shocked and panicked,’ I say by way of explanation.
But DC Lewis isn’t interested in that right now. ‘Did Mr Doherty know you were calling to see him?’
‘No. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
‘Did you often turn up at his house unannounced?’
‘No. Not often.’
‘How would you describe the nature of your relationship with the deceased?’ This from the thin-smiling female detective.
‘We were friends.’
‘Good friends, I assume – if you know where he keeps his key hidden.’
‘Look, it’s no secret that we were once in a relationship. I knew where the key was because I lived with him there a few years ago.’
‘And you remained on good terms after your relationship ended?’
‘Yes. Good enough.’ But the words have a hollow ring to them, and all I can think of is the rage I felt upon leaving Heather’s office – was that really earlier today? – the wound of the solicitor’s letter still fresh.
‘So why were you calling to see him this afternoon?’
‘I wanted to talk to him.’
‘About what?’
She’s still smiling, but it’s so thin her lips have almost disappeared into a narrow line. DC Lewis has his hands clasped in front of him, patiently waiting, while I scrabble around my thoughts for an answer. I know that I should just tell them the truth about the paternity test, about our recent affair, but I’m also thinking that if I tell them the real reason, they might suspect some involvement on my part and begin poking around in things that don’t matter any more, not now Finn is dead. It seems pointless to send them down this cul-de-sac and waste their time, when it’s so obviously a suicide.
‘He had been troubled lately. He’d been sending me odd text messages and things.’
Thin Lips visibly straightens up. DC Lewis remains still.
‘What kind of text messages?’ she asks.
And so, I start explaining it – how a couple of months ago, these anonymous texts began appearing in my inbox, signed YCF.
‘Your Closest Friend,’ I say in answer to the eyebrows raised in enquiry.
‘There were other things too,’ I go on, ‘notes sent to work – all innocuous at first. But then they started getting nasty.’
Liar. Cheat. Bitch.
They listen without interruption.
When I tell them about the photo sent to my work colleagues, remembering the vicious manner in which he used my image, not to mention the violation of my trust, my voice begins to wobble.
‘Take your time,’ Lewis tells me.
I steady myself enough to relate the incident that took place this morning in Heather’s office, the recording he had sent. Thin Lips takes down the details, asking for Heather’s name and how she can be contacted. They will need to hear the recording and to see the picture. I take a sip of my tea. A cloudy film has formed on the surface – it breaks apart and smears the sides of the cup when my lips come into contact.
Just as it dawns on me only now how deeply they intend to delve into my personal life, so it occurs to me that I have not cried over Finn’s death and that perhaps I should. Outwardly, I am calm and composed – apart from that one wobble, and that was prompted by the memory of my own violation, not a reaction to his suicide.
Suicide. The word looms in my imagination. It pulses with its own dark energy.
‘These messages,’ Lewis asks, ‘when did you realize they were from Mr Doherty?’
I think carefully before answering:
‘I must have guessed it early enough. It’s the type of thing he would do. He loves practical jokes, winding people up. He often orchestrates fairly elaborate hoaxes.’
I’m still talking about Finn in the present tense. That part of my brain hasn’t quite caught up with the cold reality.
‘Do you have any proof that he was sending these me
ssages?’
‘Well, not exactly. But he admitted it to me –’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. On the street, the other day. We met …’ I am momentarily flummoxed, trying to rein in these words as they unspool from me. ‘Thursday. It was Thursday, I think.’
‘Why were you meeting?’
‘Because of the messages. He had just sent that picture of me to my colleagues –’
‘You wanted to warn him?’ Thin Lips interjects.
‘I wanted it to stop.’
‘Were you angry?’
‘I was upset, obviously. I was hurt.’
‘How did he react? Did he apologize?’
‘No. He …’
They wait for me to go on. This room is small, windowless. The plastic seat of my chair feels hot beneath me, making the backs of my legs sweat. What had he said? I remember the confusion on his face, the snap of indignation in his denial, and it occurs to me with a watery feeling in my bowels, that that was the last time I saw him alive.
‘He denied sending it. He admitted to the texts, but denied sending the photograph.’
‘Could we see these texts?’ Thin Lips asks.
‘I deleted them.’
She frowns, jots something down on the notebook in front of her. The scratch of her pen on the page unsettles me.
‘So, when you went over there this afternoon, you were going to confront Mr Doherty,’ Lewis surmises.
‘I wanted to sort it out between us,’ I try, ‘amicably.’
‘You must have been pretty angry though. Under the circumstances.’
‘Look,’ I say, reasonably, trying to break up the tension and introduce some perspective. ‘However I felt about his behaviour, I wouldn’t want him to kill himself. I’m telling you all this because it points towards his deteriorating mental health. I see that now. I couldn’t at the time because I was too close to it all. But now, don’t you see? It all points one way. It explains his suicide.’
They stare impassively back.
‘If it is suicide,’ DC Lewis says.
For the first time since entering this room, I feel my chest constrict with fear.
‘What do you mean?’
He shoots a look at his colleague, then shuffles his paperwork on the table.
‘We’ll have to wait for the pathology report and the inquest before we can deem it a suicide.’
‘How long do you think this is going to take?’ I ask. ‘My husband will be worried. I should have been home by now.’
While not exactly exchanging glances, they seem to shift their bodies in a synchronized readjustment that suggests boredom or irritation.
‘I’d like to call my husband, please,’ I say, my voice tight now, genuinely worried that they won’t allow it. The absurd fear creeps over me that they’re going to hold me indefinitely – even though I have come of my own free will – and no one will know I’m here.
It comes to me now, as DC Thin Lips caps her pen, that I’m one of those people mentioned in the papers and in the news – a person of interest. Someone who’s helping the police with their enquiries. How has this happened? How have I allowed my life to stray so far into the grey?
‘Call your husband,’ Lewis says, picking up his own phone as he gets to his feet. ‘Tell him you’ll be here for a while.’
My solicitor’s name is Helen Molloy. She comes from ‘a huge Irish family in Liverpool’, she tells me when we meet, which makes me feel some affinity with her. Her accent is fairly neutral with only a faint flavour of that city in it. A friend of Jeff’s colleague, Ingrid, she is a brisk, no-nonsense sort of person, in her belted suit and with her sharp, interrogative gaze – I feel better having her by my side, more secure in myself.
It is almost nine o’clock now, and I’ve had nothing to eat save the BLT that Helen thought to bring me. I’m tired and a little hollowed out by the grim monotone surroundings of the police station. Mostly I just want this all to be over so that I can go home and have a hot bath, scour away all traces of this dreadful day from my body, then swallow my one remaining temazepam – to hell with my dental work, I’ll brave it unsedated – and fall way down into the deepest of sleeps. And it is to this end that I sit down to face DC Lewis and DC Kirkby (I have found out her name), prepared to answer their questions.
‘Take us through what happened after you discovered the body,’ DC Kirkby says.
She has her notebook in front of her, pen uncapped and in hand like an eager schoolgirl.
‘I was shocked,’ I begin. ‘I just panicked. I realize that I should have stayed where I was, that I should have called the emergency services, but I was scared and I just wanted to erase what I had seen, so I ran out of there.’
‘Where did you go?’ Lewis asks.
‘I went to the nearest Tube station: Parsons Green. I took the District Line as far as Earl’s Court.’
‘Why Earl’s Court?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. It’s like my brain was just closing down and I was all instinct.’
He walks me through what I did next – the high street, Boots, my reversal and subsequent journey back to Parsons Green, but there’s something distracted about the way he’s listening – like this isn’t the part that interests him.
‘Why did you panic?’ he asks when I’ve finished.
‘I told you. I was in shock. What I saw in that bedroom – it was so violent.’
‘Leonard Parkes was in shock too but he didn’t run.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Parkes. The elderly gentleman who discovered the body,’ DC Kirkby says, adding pointedly, ‘after you did, of course.’
I feel pinned by her unspoken accusations – her judgement.
‘We all have our own reactions,’ I say, a little flint entering my voice to match hers. ‘That’s hardly a crime.’
‘In many jurisdictions, it’s against the law to leave the scene of a crime. In France, it’s a criminal offence not to come to the aid of someone in mortal danger –’
‘This isn’t France, Detective,’ Helen interjects. ‘Nor, might I add, was Mr Doherty in mortal danger. He was dead when my client came upon him.’
‘We only have her word for that,’ Kirkby retorts snidely.
‘Ignore that,’ Helen instructs.
We lose the first battle. They keep me there overnight. The seriousness of the incident, coupled with the blanks in my statement, the searing error of failing to report my discovery of the body, all add up to them holding me until morning when the questioning begins again.
I’ve slept badly. Intimidated by my surroundings, my thoughts crowded with the overwhelming events of the day, the struggle to find a comfortable position, imagining all the others who have slept here before me, the bodies that have tried to find comfort on this thin mattress, the eyes that have scoured these walls. How many of them were guilty? I wonder. And how many had felt the angry thump of indignation in their hearts at the injustice of their treatment – their incarceration? And at the back of all of this is the whisper: Finn is dead. I feel the words hissing in the ancient pipes, echoing around the old walls. And in the hours before dawn, my thoughts fixate on the slide my life has taken since the night of the Shoreditch attack. Amy flickers briefly in my mind, and I wonder where she is right now, whether she’s still in London – or has she left the city for good?
They’ve taken away my phone, so I can’t contact Jeff. I have no idea how he has reacted to this news, and part of me shrinks from imagining.
‘He’s fine,’ Helen tells me in her brisk tone when I ask the next morning. ‘Worried, naturally, but looking forward to seeing you later today.’
‘Do you think they’ll release me soon?’ I ask.
‘I expect so,’ she answers, with a brief, sharp smile.
Something of my hope fades a little. I would have preferred something less speculative, more definitive. I miss my little girl – ache to feel her warm littl
e body in my arms again. I have no idea how Jeff has explained my absence to her, and I cannot bear to think of spending another night away from her.
DC Kirkby has let her hair down today. It hangs loosely to her shoulders, and despite the hard line of the parting, it makes her look softer. Her colleague is wearing a dark-blue suit, and he carries the tangy odour of some citrusy bodywash into the room with him. Both of them look fresh, well rested, which only serves as a reminder of how worn and wrung-out with sleeplessness I am.
‘I want to play something back for you,’ DC Lewis tells me after the interview has formally resumed.
He fiddles with his phone for a moment – a large, clunky-looking BlackBerry – and then puts it down on the centre of the table. I think it’s going to be part of yesterday’s interview. Both Helen and I lean in to listen.
What are you thinking about?
It’s disconcerting, hearing Finn’s voice, now that he is dead. It makes me sit back suddenly, as if struck. Even when the sound of my own voice follows – I’m thinking of a party we went to once – still I don’t lean forward to listen. Unease starts up inside me, knowing what is coming.
DC Lewis plays it in its entirety and when it gets to the part where Finn says: I asked you to push me. Didn’t I? I close my eyes, feeling myself tipping into danger.
DC Kirkby is staring at me when I open my eyes, her face solemn and unrevealing. But there’s no escaping the voices on tape, Finn asking if I was tempted to push him, my weak denial. A beat of excitement in the air, or trepidation. In the seat beside me, I can feel Helen tense.
Of course you were, he says, and it feels like judgement. He’s damning me from beyond the grave.
DC Lewis swipes the audio off, then puts the phone back on the table, returning his hands to their default clasped position. I stare at the nest of his fingers.
