Clear My Name

by Paula Daly

  Nobody comes. And Gillian is simultaneously trying to protect herself from Carrie and blocking Carrie’s path.

  ‘I can’t go in there.’ Carrie’s breath is coming out in raggedy gasps. She looks at the open doorway to cell number six and again a surge of deep panic runs through her. ‘Mia,’ she says to herself. ‘Mia … I can’t leave Mia.’

  ‘TERRY!’ Gillian screams. ‘Where the hell are you?’

  Carrie hears footsteps. She looks to her right. A uniformed officer is running towards her with the custody sergeant close behind.

  The blood rushes in Carrie’s ears. ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touch me!’

  ‘Where were you?’ Gillian is saying but her question goes unanswered. ‘She got to the cell and panicked. Careful with her. Careful.’

  Carrie is now being dragged, her feet scrabbling beneath her, by the two male officers. ‘I didn’t do this!’ she’s shouting and she starts to vomit. She vomits down the front of her T-shirt and down the trouser leg of the custody sergeant.

  ‘Jesus,’ she hears someone say.

  ‘I didn’t do this,’ she’s whimpering, but she’s gagging and heaving and still bringing up the contents of her stomach. They put her on the floor and step backwards away from her.

  Carrie wipes at her mouth with her hand and dips her head. She’s aware of the sounds of disgust, aware of the officers’ heavy breathing.

  ‘I’ll be back with a towel for you,’ Gillian Frain says, and then the door closes. There’s a metallic thud as the bolt is thrown across.

  Now

  TESS AND AVRIL are travelling to Edinburgh by train. It’s faster than going by car. Under normal circumstances, Tess wouldn’t make this journey at all; she would get the information she required over the telephone. But Tom has instructed Tess to take Avril along to meet their various advisors in the flesh; he thinks it’s important she gets a flavour of what they do, and he believes any real working relationship should begin in this way.

  ‘I’ve never been to Scotland,’ Avril says wistfully.

  Tess raises her eyebrows. ‘You only live two hours from the border.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve never had call to go. Do they really drink a lot of Irn-Bru?’

  ‘They really do.’

  The train stops at Oxenholme Station – ‘The Gateway to the Lake District’, the sign says – and a number of Chinese tourists get on. They stand in a huddle by the doors, chattering quietly. They are looking at their tickets and Tess thinks it can’t be easy: trying to navigate the rail network when neither signage nor tickets carry one familiar symbol. Really, she should help. She should point them in the right direction for their seats, but just as she’s about to shift across to the aisle, they decide to move, en masse, into the adjoining carriage.

  Tess goes back to examining the CCTV stills of what the prosecution claims is Carrie’s car again. She could easily enlarge the digital images on her laptop, but enlarging a low-quality blurry CCTV image simply gives a larger low-quality blurry image. You can almost see less than if you were to hold it at arm’s length. Tess won’t find anything that hasn’t already been found on these images, she knows that, but it doesn’t stop her from having a go. It’s all part of the fun. All part of the puzzle.

  Avril unpacks her lunch and lays it out carefully on the table between them. She has two boiled eggs, a homemade salad (which she’s housed in an old Flora margarine container), a sachet of salad cream, an orange Club biscuit and a carton of Ribena. With the exception of the Ribena – which Tess’s mother refused to buy, claiming every single one of her teeth would fall out – this could be Tess’s packed lunch from a school trip in 1983. Avril catches Tess eyeing her haul and says, quietly, ‘I wasn’t sure what the food would be like in Scotland,’ and calls to mind those stories of Ringo Starr going to India with a suitcase full of Heinz baked beans, and the actor Sean Bean travelling with box upon box of Fray Bentos pies.

  ‘Would you like an egg?’ Avril asks as she begins peeling away the shell.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Tess glances behind her and sees the compartment is now full. The passengers won’t thank Avril for the hit of hydrogen sulphide they’re about to experience, particularly if the tilting action of the Pendolino carriage has already got them feeling queasy. It’s not as if they can open a window. ‘Are you sure?’ Avril asks, and Tess nods. ‘Suit yourself,’ she says, just as the Chinese tourists return and begin making their way in the opposite direction. The carriage they’d gone into was first class.

  Ninety minutes later they pull into Edinburgh. They pour out of Waverley Station with the rest of the passengers and head south. The trees are clinging on to the very last of their leaves and the sky is a pewter grey, but the air is mild. Jed Acton’s lab is a fifteen-minute walk, on the edge of the university campus, and Tess told Avril to wear comfortable flats. Tess likes to stretch her legs after being cooped up rather than take a cab, but as they set off down the street, after only a few steps it’s evident that Avril is not much of a walker. She looks at Tess, horrified by her pace, and Tess has to slow considerably to accommodate her. ‘What’s the great rush?’ Avril says breathlessly, intimating Tess is some kind of uptight woman on a mission. Which Tess supposes she probably is.

  They reach Jed’s without getting wet – a small miracle in Edinburgh in mid-November – and wait outside as he finishes up with a student. Avril keeps shifting in her seat. She’s excited. Tess now knows Avril well enough to tell the difference between nervousness and excitement. Avril’s also still a little out of breath, even though they’ve been here for at least five minutes, something which Tess is trying not to judge her for.

  The door opens and a young woman in her late teens wearing a white lab coat walks out. Her whole life ahead of her, Tess thinks idly, and then she finds she’s thinking of herself at that age. Would she make the same choices, given her time again? Same professional, same personal decisions? If she got to the fork in the road would she still choose left instead of right? Considering this makes Tess finger the letter that’s deep inside her handbag, still unopened. If she hadn’t run away from that life, what would her life look like now? She probably wouldn’t be alive, she supposes, and she tries to shake the thought. Still, she had no choice. She had no choice and yet—

  ‘Tess!’ Jed Acton has a big, booming Brian Blessed-type voice, except there’s a faint trace of a Highland lilt. He’s not unlike Brian in stature too. He stands in the doorway of the lab, his arms thrown wide, waiting for Tess to approach so he can pull her in and hug her fiercely. Never has Tess known a man so overtly tactile and yet so utterly benign. ‘How are you, my dear?’ he says into her hair, not letting her go.

  ‘Good to see you, Jed.’ Tess tries to pull away. ‘Meet Avril, my colleague. I’m training Avril to do my job, so we can cover more ground.’

  Jed releases Tess and steps forward, hand extended. ‘Avril,’ he says warmly. ‘Learning from the best, are you?’ and Tess can see Avril is utterly charmed.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ she says.

  He ushers them into the lab, which is in semi-darkness, and asks the technician, Yun – a small, neat Korean lady, whom Tess has tried to engage in conversation many times before and failed – if she’ll bring them all some tea. ‘I keep trying to get her to bring me alcohol but she’s very much against it,’ he says.

  This is clearly untrue as Tess has not once visited Jed without him sipping whisky from a tumbler. He’s one of those functioning alcoholics that seemed to populate Tess’s youth but that you don’t see so much of any more.

  They settle in front of a screen. Yun brings the tea. Jed moves the mouse around until he has the stills of the CCTV that Tess was looking at on the train. ‘So pleased you didn’t want to do this over the phone,’ Jed says. ‘You know me. Never can resist a visit from such pretty girls. Don’t tell Yun though,’ he says as Yun pours from the teapot, ‘she gets terribly jealous.’ Yun pauses, looks at him pointedly, before co
ntinuing. ‘See,’ he mouths silently to Avril.

  Tess knows Jed won’t talk about the CCTV until Yun is in her technician’s room, safely out of earshot, so she fills the air with some small talk. ‘Been busy, Jed?’

  ‘Aye. Either that or I’m getting slower. Can’t tell which.’

  ‘How’s Veronica? It’s Newcastle she’s at …?’

  ‘Durham … She reckons she’s learned all she needs to know now and we’re wasting our hard-earned money paying for university.’

  Tess smiles. Yun adds milk to each cup without asking their preferences, and then disappears. Tess gestures to the screen. ‘What d’you reckon?’

  Jed sighs. ‘What are you hoping for here, Tess?’

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll go against what the expert for the prosecution said and tell me that these are two different cars. One Honda going towards Ella’s house and another Honda coming back. We have a time frame now that’s workable, a time frame which would make it hard for Carrie Kamara to carry out murder within it, but it would be a real coup if you could tell me these are two different cars altogether, Jed. It would be a huge step towards exonerating Carrie.’

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid,’ Jed says and points to the screen. ‘You see the way this spoiler here is reflecting the light? It’s chrome. Which means the vehicle’s a limited edition.’

  Tess leans in. ‘OK.’

  ‘They’re a lot less common than the average Honda CR-V,’ he says, ‘and in a town the size of Morecambe, chances are there’s maybe one, perhaps two at the most. I’d say it’s almost certain that this is the same car. And’ – he pauses and looks at Tess sadly – ‘the car Carrie Kamara drove wasn’t an ordinary CR-V, Tess. It was a limited edition.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘Wish I had better news for you, my dear.’

  Tess nods. A point for the prosecution.

  Now

  BRIGHT AND EARLY the following day, Tess and Avril are outside ‘P. J. Kamara Estate Agents, Sales & Lettings’. It’s a single-storey, flat-roofed, felt-topped oddity of a building. Tess vaguely remembers it being a hairdresser’s when she was a kid, and then, later on, an Indian takeaway.

  ‘So, you’re still thinking it’s definitely Carrie’s car in both those CCTV stills?’ Avril asks.

  On the train on the way home yesterday, they’d mulled over Jed’s verdict. And yes, until they had the actual number of limited-edition white Honda CR-Vs in the Morecambe Bay area at the time of Ella’s death, they couldn’t say for certain whether it was Carrie’s car or not. But if she had to call it, Tess thinks it’s unlikely they’re going to find more than one. Which is a blow. A real blow. Because up until now, she’s found no reason to doubt Carrie’s version of events. Everything she’s said adds up and is provable.

  So now there is uncertainty. And Tess doesn’t like uncertainty. Even though she reminds herself that every case she’s ever worked on was uncertain. The truth is never clear-cut. Stuff happens. An innocent man is in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly his life is turned upside down and he finds himself in prison.

  But Carrie is adamant she never left her house that evening. And she’s also adamant no one broke into her house and took her car. Carrie said she knows this for a fact because she liked to read in the small second lounge at the front of the house in the evening, the lounge without a TV, the lounge that Pete never frequented because there was no TV, so it was considered Carrie’s space, a space away from blaring football matches, the depressing local news, the stupid survival programmes that Pete liked to watch, a space that looked out over the front garden, and over her car. And she says it never moved.

  ‘I think it’s possible that the Honda in those pictures is Carrie’s car,’ Tess says in answer to Avril’s question.

  ‘But what about the time frame?’ Avril asks. ‘We measured the time it took to get from the camera to Ella’s, and it was impossible.’

  ‘Not totally impossible. We showed there could be an alternate version of events to what the prosecution claimed was fact, that’s all.’

  Avril is put out. ‘So, now you think she did do it? You think she went around there that night and killed Ella?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But I think she could be lying to us about using her car. People lie, Avril. And prisoners lie a lot.’

  ‘But she seems so genuine.’

  ‘She does,’ replies Tess.

  ‘So I really don’t see how she could be lying.’

  Tess cuts the radio. She turns in her seat to face Avril. ‘OK, here’s something you need to know about people who commit premeditated murder … They’re cold-blooded individuals who do not operate like the rest of us. Except you already know that. Of course you know that. But … do you think those individuals are capable of elaborate lies to cover up their crimes? Do you think they’re willing to pretend to be devastated about what’s happened to them? Do you think they’re able to hoodwink well-meaning individuals such as yourself?’

  Avril doesn’t answer.

  ‘Really think about it,’ continues Tess. ‘Consider what it would take for you to go around to Ella Muir’s house and plunge a knife into her. Consider the state of mind you’d have to be in to do that. Could you do it?’

  ‘You know I couldn’t.’

  ‘But someone did. And is that person capable of delivering a slew of lies to try to prove their innocence?’

  Avril closes her eyes. ‘OK, I get your point.’

  ‘Prisoners are, by and large, liars,’ says Tess. ‘And it’s our job to figure out which ones are the exception.’

  Avril takes a boiled sweet from her handbag. She offers one to Tess. Tess declines. They make her teeth itch. Avril’s going to have to become a lot more sceptical if she’s going to make a go of this job; she’ll have to take what she thinks of as facts and pull them apart until she’s sure they’re not facts at all.

  ‘We’ve really no idea what’s going through Carrie Kamara’s head,’ Tess says. ‘She could have done it …’ She pauses, takes a breath. ‘… but then again, she could be telling the truth, and it could simply be that the CCTV camera itself is inaccurate.’ Avril looks at her wide-eyed. ‘Those things are hardly high-tech,’ Tess continues. ‘People purchase them cheaply, and it could very well be that Carrie’s car was recorded on that camera the night before the murder or even the night after.’

  ‘But how do you even prove something like that?’

  ‘You don’t. You move on and take apart the next piece of evidence until you find something that—’ Tess glances in her rear-view mirror. Did a green Subaru Forester just drive past? She snatches her head to the left.

  She’s imagining it, she thinks.

  Conjuring up images.

  She does this when her brain is working overtime. She needs to get more sleep.

  Just before 9 a.m., a Kia Picanto pulls up at the side of Tess and a woman with stiff hair and exceptionally thin legs gets out. She marches towards the entrance, holding a key out in front of her, ready to put it into the lock. They give her a moment and then follow her inside. The woman introduces herself as June. ‘The assistant to Peter Kamara,’ she says officiously. She is a sour-faced woman whose make-up comes to an abrupt halt halfway down her neck, giving the impression of her having swapped heads with another person. She is immediately suspicious of Tess and Avril.

  ‘You can wait there,’ she tells them, pointing to some chairs over in the corner of the room. In front of the chairs is a low table and on it is a stack of well-thumbed House Beautiful magazines. Tess picks one up and flicks through it idly. She is admiring a kitchen extension in Gloucestershire which the owner of the house declares to have been ‘a labour of love, but so absolutely worth it’, while surreptitiously watching Pete Kamara’s assistant set up her workspace. This is the woman who provided Pete’s alibi. ‘Never left the office until six fifteen,’ she said in her statement, which Pete’s pho
ne records supported as he made a phone call to a client just before that. Tess flicks over the page and lingers on some images of homemade Christmas wreaths, wondering if she’ll ever have the kind of life in which making one was a possibility, when she hears an engine revving loudly outside.

  The door opens and in steps Pete Kamara. Two minutes after that and assistant June is closing the door on Pete’s office, so Tess and Avril can talk to him without prospective house buyers listening in. Pete is in his late forties. His hair is dyed two shades too dark and his shirt’s straining slightly across his middle. But he’s still got it. Or at least he thinks he has anyway. He sits at his desk with his hands behind his head, enjoying Tess and Avril’s full attention.

  ‘How is the old witch, anyway?’ he asks, referring to Carrie. ‘I heard she’d got someone to fight her case for her. Well, I can tell you right now you’re wasting your time.’

  Tess takes out a notepad. ‘I’m curious, Mr Kamara,’ she says, ‘what is it that attracted you to Carrie in the first place? Because it’s clear there’s no love lost between the two of you now.’

  Pete looks up to the ceiling, as if casting his mind back. ‘Do you know what I mean by the phrase: Je ne sais quoi?’ he asks.

  ‘“I do not know what”,’ translates Tess.

  ‘Ah, well, let me define it for you … It means “a certain something”,’ Pete says, mansplaining magnificently. ‘It’s something you can’t put your finger on. Carrie, at least when she was younger, anyway, had that.’

  Tess glances at Avril and sees Avril is smiling broadly at Pete’s gaffe. Pete is unaware.

  ‘You didn’t support her when she was arrested, as I understand it?’ Tess says.

  ‘Because she murdered Ella.’

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t know that right away.’

  ‘Who else would it be?’