by Karen Perry
‘Why do you think he recorded this exchange?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘And why would he send it to your boss –?’
Helen interjects, ‘She can hardly be expected to account for the deceased’s actions or intentions.’
‘Well, she can speculate, can’t she?’ he says, then looks back at me.
‘He was doing it to try and hurt me.’
‘That’s one explanation,’ he acknowledges, then adds, ‘or perhaps it was an insurance policy.’
‘Against what?’ I snap the words at him.
‘When did this encounter take place?’ he asks, unfazed, and instantly all hope I have of an imminent release seems to vaporize.
‘A few weeks ago,’ I admit, quietly, my eyes not meeting his. I slump in my chair, arms folded like a recalcitrant teenager – the polar opposite to DC Kirby’s school prefect efficiency.
‘When you were asked in an earlier interview to describe your relationship with Mr Doherty,’ she tells me, ‘you said that you were friends.’
She waits for me to answer, but I’m tired and defenceless, swamped by the futility of it all.
‘It is clear from this recording that your relationship was in fact of a sexual nature,’ she tells me sharply.
‘It wasn’t like that. Not really.’
‘Then tell us – what was it like?’ she asks brightly, sitting forward, all ears and eyes and antennae.
‘What I said was true – we had been friends. But then, he began agitating for something more. A couple of times, I slipped.’
‘You slipped.’ Her tone drips with disdain.
‘We saw each other – in that way – a few times over the course of a month, and then I ended it.’
‘You ended it,’ she says, to clarify.
‘Yes, I ended it.’
‘How did Mr Doherty take it when you ended the relationship?’ DC Lewis asks in a speculative tone.
‘He didn’t take it well. That’s when the messages became nasty.’
‘The text messages.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the photo to your work colleagues –’
‘Yes –’
‘And the audio recording of the two of you in an intimate post-coital conversation sent to your boss.’
I feel a rising panic inside. The narrative he is constructing – it’s like he’s putting together a motive for me to have killed Finn. All along I have been so sure that I am the victim in this thing between me and Finn, but now – and this is what really frightens me – past events are being twisted to fit into a case against me.
‘This man was clearly harassing you.’
‘Yes,’ I acknowledge quietly.
‘So why didn’t you report it? Why didn’t you come to us?’
‘I didn’t want the police involved. I didn’t want anyone involved. I was hoping that we could sort it out ourselves without involving any third parties.’
‘So you arranged to meet him on the … the ninth,’ he says, checking his own notes for the date. ‘You met him outside Topshop on Regent Street. You asked him to cease this harassment.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And did he?’
‘No.’ I stare at him. He already knows the answer to this.
‘Then he sends the audio tape to your boss. You’re angry, humiliated. You decide to call around to his house to confront him and then when you get there …’
‘He was already dead,’ I say, obligingly finishing the sentence.
‘Convenient, wasn’t it?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Well, it puts an end to the harassment,’ Lewis counters.
‘I suppose –’
‘And you don’t have to worry about a paternity suit now. Not now he’s dead.’
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t alter his expression in any way but I can feel him alert to any changes in mine. He looks long enough to capture the fleeting astonishment that crosses my face. Then he picks up his phone again, swipes it until he finds the scanned image of a document and holds it out for me to see. It’s a copy of the legal letter I was sent by Finn’s solicitors. DC Lewis continues to hold the phone out patiently while Helen takes down details, and I have to suppress the urge to snatch the bloody thing from his hand and fling it at the wall.
‘Not the first time you slipped, was it?’ DC Kirkby asks, almost sweetly.
The pitying look she’s giving me, like I’m some recidivist who can’t be saved.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ I say quietly but firmly. It’s the first time I’ve stated it out loud – the first time those words have been uttered since I entered this room.
‘Then who did?’ Kirkby asks.
‘Don’t answer that,’ Helen instructs.
I shake my head, tired of the games now.
‘There must be any number of people Finn’s pissed off over the years –’
‘And yet you’re the only one he instructed a solicitor against,’ Lewis cuts me off coldly. ‘So far as we can see, you’re the only person he had an active and serious grievance with. You say you didn’t kill him. That he was already dead when you arrived on the scene. But tell me this, Cara,’ and he leans forward, eyeing me with undisguised distrust that sends a cold shiver through me, ‘seeing as how you have real and pressing motive, seeing as how you have lied to us already, why on earth would we believe you?’
22.
Cara
The pathologist saves me. From the police, at least.
Once the report comes back establishing the time of death as between midnight and 4 a.m., they have to let me go. I was at home during those hours. My movements for the rest of the day have been corroborated by various sources. I think of Victor and my other colleagues and how they must have reacted when questioned by the police about my whereabouts. I think of Heather handing over that USB stick. And I wonder how I will ever face them again.
A small scrum of reporters and photographers are gathered on the steps as we leave the police station, and I am appalled to find that already I am tabloid fodder. They turn en masse as we push through the double doors and hurry past, one hand up to shield my face from the intrusive glare of the lens, as Helen and I hurry to the car where Jeff is waiting behind the wheel. We tumble inside and the car roars away, out into the morning traffic.
In the back seat, Helen turns to me and instructs me as to what will happen next.
‘The police have yet to come out definitively with a cause of death,’ she says. ‘But you are still a material witness, and until death by suicide is firmly established, the police will likely seek further information from you.’
I glance at the back of Jeff’s head, try to catch his eye in the rear-view mirror, but he is focused on the traffic he is carefully negotiating. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since this kicked off, and so far, he has not said one word beyond confirming to Helen that he will drop her back to her office. I suspect that he can feel me looking and is studiously ignoring my gaze.
Helen advises me not to leave the country without informing the police first, and to contact her immediately if and when I’m hauled in for more questioning.
‘Is there anything you want to ask me? Anything you’re unsure about?’
‘Can they change their minds? I mean, if it turns out not to be suicide. Decide I’m a viable suspect after all?’
She makes a face. ‘Highly unlikely. The time of death is pretty definitive. The report from Forensics should put you in the clear too.’
Her words should reassure me, but I can’t stop thinking that perhaps it wasn’t suicide. All that time I spent in police custody, I’d been so focused on defending myself and getting my story straight that it’s only now the thought catches up with me that this might really be murder. Someone out there might have inflicted that violence upon Finn. But who?
‘Listen,’ she says kindly, as Jeff pulls the car up outside her offices, ‘you’ve had a rough night. Go home
, have a nice hot bath and a cup of tea, then get yourself into bed. Hmm?’
She squeezes my arm and I manage a smile.
I watch Helen in her high heels and pencil skirt clattering up the granite steps to the glossy black door, and I think of the question that I have not put to her:
Should I be afraid?
I haven’t asked her because I know she will feel that the question has already been answered. The pathologist’s report, my corroborated alibi for the time of death – as far as my solicitor is concerned I am safe from any charge. But that is not what I mean.
I know I didn’t kill Finn. I know that I was not the one to wield that knife and draw it across his wrists. And even though I have no idea who did it, or why, I can’t help thinking that just by happening upon that scene, I have somehow endangered myself too. It’s not the fear of prosecution or prison that I was referring to – although those things scare me too – it’s the fear of the knife, of the unknown assailant. The creeping feeling that the same violence might find its way to me.
We don’t speak for the rest of the journey. I can sense that Jeff doesn’t want to. And so I sit in the back of the car like it’s a taxi, sightlessly staring out the window at the passing streets of south London until we reach our flat. Home is quiet, with a stillness that feels foreign, and when Jeff closes the door behind us, I turn to him and speak.
‘I know we need to talk. You deserve an explanation but –’
‘That’s okay,’ he cuts me off. ‘You should do what Helen suggested. Have a bath, sleep …’
He speaks quietly and I can hear all the anxiety and fatigue in his tone as he stands by the front door, his hands in his pockets, making no attempt to take his coat off. His eyes are trained on the hall rug. Since this happened, he hasn’t once looked at me. I feel the pain of that, a peculiar punishment.
‘Besides,’ he continues, moving to the door now, ‘I have to go out. There are things I need to do.’
I don’t ask him what those things are. I don’t ask him anything. But just before he closes the door behind him, I say his name, and this time, he raises his eyes to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say softly.
He opens his mouth to say something, but then he drops his head, silently backing away, the door clicking shut.
We do talk, but not until much later.
In the immediate aftermath, I run a hot bath and empty half a bottle of bath oil into it, then spend a good half-hour wallowing. I cry a little, hot sobs of self-pity but also tears for Finn. Despite having seen his corpse, I still can’t fully fathom the fact that he is dead, and that I will never see him again. Even in the years we were apart, he has been a constant in my life, in some shape or form. I try to imagine his last moments, the terror he must have felt, the pain, and find myself flinching at the memory of his body. All that blood. The pastiness of his skin. When I feel the guilty nudge of relief – relief that he can no longer bother me, relief that he is dead and I am not – I slide down in the bath so that my head is fully immersed under water, as if that can somehow cleanse me of these shameful thoughts.
In my bathrobe, my head wrapped in a towel, I boil the kettle to make tea. As I wait for it to come to the boil, my mind turns to that Hallowe’en day when Jeff and I took Mabel with us to view the house in Dulwich. I think of those moments in the garden with Mabel happily singing to herself as she skipped along the broken path, Jeff back inside the house making enquiries, a joyful hope blossoming in my chest at the thought that it might become our new home, a place where we could be happy. I think of those moments in the garden just before the text from Your Closest Friend, and it seems to me that was the last time I felt truly happy. If only there was some way I could burrow back in time, try to find that feeling once more.
My stomach is empty and growling, but I can’t face more than a slice of buttered toast. I go through the motions of eating, and tidying the crockery away, but in my head thoughts twist and tangle, unseating any calm achieved by bathing. The slashes across his limbs, the drenched sheets. Whoever did this must have had their reasons, must have crept in during the night. Some shadowy, watchful figure. And if they were watching Finn, then do they know about his affair? Do they know me?
Another stray thought: where was Jeff when that text was sent to my phone? I know he wasn’t in the garden with me and Mabel. I turn the memory over in my head: do I imagine it, or can I recall him coming out into the garden, tucking his phone into his pocket?
I’m careful not to turn the radio on, or the TV. Before I go upstairs to bed, I check the front door twice to make sure it is locked.
I sleep for hours. Pulled way down deep into a dreamless depth. When I finally emerge from it, the sky has darkened, the bedroom is full of shadows. I have that fug of confusion that comes from waking after a deep sleep during daytime hours. It’s compounded by the fact that I’ve left my phone – which I rely on for the time as well as communication – downstairs, so I roll over to Jeff’s side and check the little clock he keeps on his nightstand. I’m surprised to find it’s almost nine o’clock. The entire day has passed without my noticing.
The flat feels quiet as I pull my dressing gown on over my pyjamas and pad downstairs, the quality of the air suggesting emptiness. I go to the tap and run water into a pint glass, then drink deeply. I am parched. That dry-mouthed feeling I’ve had since finding Finn’s body has eased off but not gone away. I refill my glass, and hold it to my chest as I cross the floor to Mabel’s bedroom and look inside. Her neatly made bed is empty, the lights turned off. A spill of Lego on the floor by her toy box is the only evidence of recent activity. I look at her empty bed again and feel a pang of loneliness. Jeff must have taken her away, perhaps to his sister’s, and I’ve no doubt that he’s done it with the best of intentions. But I need my daughter right now. After all I’ve endured over the past forty-eight hours, I have a strong and urgent desire to hold her in my arms, to smell her skin, her hair, feel the density of her flesh and the warm trickle of her laughter.
I back out of her room, closing the door, and turning to look for my bag in the hall, thinking I’ll retrieve my phone and call Jeff, I stop suddenly, momentarily shocked. Jeff is sitting in one of the leather club chairs by the fireplace. A glass is balanced on one arm of the chair; it contains an amber-coloured liquid which I’m guessing is whiskey – it’s a large enough measure. He seems calm and still but I can tell from the grim-faced look he is giving me that he is very angry. For a moment, I just stand there holding his gaze. The lamp on the shelf behind him is lit, but apart from that the room is in shadow. The greyish light in here makes him look old, a gauntness about his cheeks that I haven’t noticed before, a watery cast to his eyes. I’m tempted to pour myself a drink to match his, but I need my wits about me, and so I take my glass of water and come forward, sitting in the chair opposite his.
‘Where is Mabel?’ I ask him gently, after a moment.
‘She’s at Laura’s. I thought it best.’
‘What did you tell Laura?’ I can’t help asking.
He says wearily, ‘I told her the truth, Cara. She reads the papers, like everybody else.’
I picture his sister’s horrified reaction. The scandal.
‘And Mabel –?’
‘She doesn’t know anything,’ he says curtly. ‘She thinks you’re away with work.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
I say this sincerely but he gives a little huff of impatience, then snatches his drink from the arm of the chair and takes a swig of it.
Jeff isn’t the sort to get angry. He simmers and sulks, conveys his fury through silence and stillness – an immeasurable calm. That is why it’s so strange to see him physically agitated. The whiskey, the shifting in his chair: there’s something caged about him, like at any moment he might spring forward.
‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,’ I tell him.
‘What were you doing there?’ he asks, ignoring my statement, his voice rising. ‘At five o�
��clock on a Monday afternoon, you just call around to your ex’s house? Why?’
‘I wanted to talk to him.’
‘About what?’
All this time, I’ve been trying to find the right moment to tell him – waiting for an opening to appear. But now that it’s upon me, I feel reluctant and unready.
‘Were you having an affair with him?’
His words cut through the air between us. There is a challenge in his stare, and despite his outward composure, I can tell his temper is ready to flare.
‘Not any more,’ I answer quietly.
A little burst of air escapes his lips. ‘I knew it,’ he intones.
‘It only lasted a few weeks. It meant nothing –’
‘Spare me the platitudes, will you?’
‘Sorry, I just – it was a stupid thing that I did. An inexcusable thing. I kept wanting to tell you about it –’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because I was afraid.’
‘Of what I’d say? Of what I’d think?’
‘Afraid you’d leave me.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m still afraid you might.’
Something occurs to me during this exchange: his lack of shock. He hardly seems surprised at all. Perhaps it’s because he’s had time to process the information – no doubt since my phone call from the police station yesterday evening, he’s been turning different possibilities over in his mind. Still, a suspicion has been aroused within me.
‘How long have you known?’ I ask.
He peers down at his glass, considers this for a moment, then says, ‘I’ve had my suspicions for a while,’ before sipping from his drink.
I wait for him to go on, and when he meets my gaze, there’s a challenge in his eyes.
‘It was Amy, if you must know,’ he states.
I feel a lurch inside – a push of betrayal.
‘Amy?’
‘Yes, albeit unwittingly. I was in my study one afternoon and she knocked on the door. She’d been down in the basement, doing some laundry, and a slip of paper had fallen out from the clothes. It had a phone number on it. She didn’t want to throw it out, in case it was of importance to either you or me. I took it from her and called it.’
