A Suitable Lie

by Michael J Malone

  ‘Do you not watch TV? The husband is usually the first suspect. If you don’t take the initiative here you could look guilty.’

  I stared up at Shelia, my mouth hanging open as I chased this thought down to a horrifying conclusion.

  King Street Police Station is only a short walk from the bank. I ran. One phrase imposed its rhythm on the fall of my feet – I thought about it, I thought about it, I thought about it. I had actually considered murder as a way out of my predicament. Does that make me nearly as bad as the man who did do it? After all, there is only a short step from intent to action. A short step that only a sick and evil person could take, I reassured myself. Besides, my intent was never concrete, it was only the thought of a desperate man. Wasn’t it?

  Grey and Blond showed me into an interview room. It was stark in its simplicity. One table, four chairs and one double tape recorder. The regularly spaced holes in the soundproofed tiles were the rooms’ only decoration. It was a room that would encourage confession. Knowing that I was almost certainly the prime suspect did not aid my performance.

  ‘I was at my mother’s last night. All night,’ I asserted.

  ‘We will just put on this recorder, Mr Boyd,’ said Grey. Blond sat back in his chair, his arms crossed. His eyes staring, always staring.

  Grey pressed record and then announced who was present in the room.

  ‘Can you tell us for the record where you were between the hours of midnight last night and six a.m. this morning, Mr Boyd.’

  ‘Yes, I was staying at my mother’s.’

  ‘Was your mother there?’

  ‘Yes. She slept on the couch.’

  ‘Why were you not in the marital home?’ asked Grey.

  ‘Because the marriage is over.’

  ‘And how happy are you about that?’ asked Blond.

  ‘Things happen, people change, and they learn more about the other than they ever wanted.’

  ‘Interesting that you say “things happen”, Mr Boyd. Were you not, only several nights ago, forcibly removed from your home?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Did your now-deceased wife not complain about your violence towards her?’

  If I was worried before, I couldn’t begin to explain the state my mind was in then.

  ‘I would like to speak to a lawyer.’ I said. After all that’s what you heard people saying in the movies.

  ‘You can speak to a lawyer in due course, Mr Boyd. We just want to ask you a few questions,’ said Grey.

  ‘I want a lawyer. You guys are clever. You could try and trip me up,’ I said.

  ‘Is there something that you don’t want to say, Mr Boyd? You can only be tripped up if there is something at your feet. A dead body perhaps? A guilty conscience?’

  ‘No guilty conscience, no dead body at my feet, I just want a lawyer. Do you not have to let me speak to a lawyer when I ask for one?’

  ‘Not necessarily. If we believe that justice will not be served by the introduction of a lawyer then we don’t need to grant your request.’ Blond smiled. In my present state of paranoia, I was certain he was convinced of my culpability.

  ‘Let me reassure you, Mr Boyd. Think of this as an early questioning session,’ Grey said, his tone fatherly. I could read the intelligence in his eyes. He wouldn’t just go for the easy option.

  ‘Sorry.’ I breathed deep. ‘Ask me anything you want.’

  ‘Tell us about the night the police were called to your house at your wife’s insistence.’

  ‘We’ve had a difficult relationship over the years,’ I began. ‘But the violence … that was my wife.’ And so the sorry tale spilled from my lips, like milk soured by my tongue. I finished by telling them about Anna letting me have the boys last night. Just as I stopped speaking, someone knocked at the door.

  The two men rose and a hurried conference ensued in the corridor, out of my hearing. Grey and Blond came back in and sat resumed their seats.

  What the hell was that all about?

  ‘Mr Boyd, you were the last person to see your wife alive and you have a record of violence towards her. She was brutally murdered last night – stabbed thirty times.’

  I covered up my ears as if hearing the words would damage the fine mechanism within.

  ‘It was a frenzied attack, Mr Boyd.’ Blond’s voice was heavy with disgust. ‘Blood was everywhere. A man of your height was spotted running away.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Poor Anna, I thought, to die in such a way. My mind fought with both the idea of Anna pierced with tens of cuts and the insinuation in Blond’s statement.

  ‘Would you like something to drink, Mr Boyd? Some water?’ asked Grey.

  I could only manage a nod. My mind was full of an image of a blood-soaked Anna lying on the hall carpet.

  Once Grey fetched a drink the questions continued.

  ‘Tell us again about last night.’

  ‘Tell us about the fight you got into in Campbeltown.’

  ‘Tell us where you stayed the night you were evicted from your house.’

  ‘Tell us about your relationship with Sheila Hunter.’

  ‘Tell us about your relationship with your wife.’

  On and on the questions went. While one spoke the other watched and then shot in, questioning one of my answers, telling me that I had contradicted myself. The only thing that kept me going was knowledge of my innocence. An innocence stained by the intent I once shared with Anna’s eventual killer.

  19

  The next day at work, Roy Campbell was sitting behind my desk.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll ask you the same question, Roy.’

  ‘Your wife died, Andy. Shouldn’t you be at home grieving? Looking after the boys?’ Was that sympathy in his tone? Sympathy served up to disguise the question running through his mind: was I guilty?

  ‘I’ll go nuts if I stay at home,’ I replied and walked round the desk as if expecting him to vacate my seat. He stayed where he was.

  ‘Andy. Really,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  I came to a stop and towered over him. ‘Shift your arse.’

  He snorted. Stood and stepped to the side. If I hadn’t been suffering there was no way he’d have let that slip by without comment. ‘Have a serious think about it.’ He walked to the door. ‘Nobody will think any worse of you if you go home.’

  Roy left and I took my seat, feeling a little shame that I’d spoken so harshly to him.

  A knock at the door. It opened and Sheila stepped inside.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. Didn’t need to say anything more. That one syllable was somehow laden with unquestioning support.

  ‘Good to see a friendly face,’ I said and managed a half-smile.

  ‘Nobody thinks you did it,’ she said as she took a seat across the desk from me. ‘Not really.’

  ‘That means the staff are already talking about me.’

  ‘Of course they are, Andy.’ She shrugged. ‘Human nature.’

  I plucked my diary from the top drawer on the right of the desk. Opened it at today’s date. Shapes and letters filled the pages, none of which made any sense whatsoever. I rubbed at my eyes in an attempt to focus my sight. It made no difference.

  ‘For once, Roy has a point,’ said Sheila. ‘This is not the place for you today, Andy.’

  ‘You don’t think I did it, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Course I don’t,’ she replied and as she did so she leaned across the desk and took my hand. ‘I’ve spent enough time with evil to know when it’s absent.’

  I felt myself bristle at her touch and withdrew my hand. I didn’t deserve her sympathy. After all hadn’t I been a few moments away from killing her myself? I sat back in my chair. Crossed my arms. ‘I wanted to.’ My voice was just above a strangled whisper. ‘God help me but there were times I wanted her dead.’ I bit my top lip in an attempt to hold back the emotions that were only a heartbeat from spilling over.

  ‘Go home, Andy,’
Sheila repeated. ‘Be with your boys.’

  ‘I haven’t told them anything yet. I don’t know how to…’

  A loud knock came at my door and the detectives stepped in without being invited.

  ‘Detective Holton,’ said Grey.

  ‘Detective Bairden,’ said Blond. ‘Mind if we have a word?’

  ‘What?’ I asked from my cotton-wool mouth. I could barely hear myself speak; I was suddenly weak with fatigue.

  Sheila got to her feet and with a nod in my direction she left the room.

  I licked my lips. Forced moisture into my mouth. ‘What can I do for you, officers?’

  ‘We just want to go through a few things with you,’ said Bairden.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be inviting me along to King Street?’

  Holton looked around the office. ‘This is private enough.’

  I looked beyond the door that he’d left open, spotted the harassed and worried face of Roy Campbell and understood what they were up to. This was two days in a row they’d spoken to me at my place of work. They were sending a big signal to everyone in the building.

  My wife had been murdered and they thought I was guilty.

  ‘When did you last see your wife?’ Bairden asked, again, in a repeat of the questions from the previous day.

  ‘I told you. When I picked up the boys.’

  ‘And that was the last time you were at the house?’ asked Holton, and I was aware of his scrutiny. Forced myself not to shift in my seat.

  ‘I picked up my boys and that was the last I saw of my wife.’ I couldn’t tell them I stood outside the house and stared up at her window in the dark.

  They continued with the questions, asking pretty much all the other questions they’d asked me the day before, obviously looking to see if I would keep to the same script. After about fifteen minutes of this, at some silent signal they both stood and walked to the door.

  ‘Oh, before we go,’ said Bairden. ‘Could you let us know where to find your brother, Jim? We need a word with him.’

  I gave them his work address, wondering what on earth they’d want with him. When they left, I dialled Sheila’s extension.

  ‘Know any good lawyers?’ I asked her.

  20

  On automatic, I headed straight home and went through the motions of pretending that everything was okay.

  As I tended to the boys and parried any questions about Anna, all I could think was, Anna is dead.

  Once the boys were settled and watching cartoons, I managed to grab a few minutes with Mum in the kitchen.

  ‘Dead?’ Mum’s face went grey and she all but collapsed onto a chair. ‘How?’

  I told her. The words scarcely managed to push out of my throat.

  She held my hand to hers. ‘Oh, my God.’ Her eyes bored into mine. ‘Do they know who did it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You went round there last night…’

  ‘Yeah. I stopped at the kerb. Realised you were right, that this would achieve nothing and got back into the car.’

  ‘You didn’t go in the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anybody see you?’

  ‘Not sure. Why?’

  Her face lengthened. ‘Estranged husband seen outside the house on the night of the wife’s murder?’

  ‘I didn’t do it, Mum.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said with just a little too much haste. Did she actually doubt me? ‘I just meant that if someone saw you and mentioned it to the police, it wouldn’t look good.’

  Mum and I fed, bathed and put the boys to bed in record time.

  ‘When do we tell them? How do we tell them?’ I asked Mum when we were safely out of earshot, back in the kitchen.

  She could only shrug. ‘Wee lambs.’ She held a hand to her mouth as a thought hit. ‘And Pat. That’s two mums he’s lost now.’ A tear slipped down her face.

  I moved to comfort her but stopped when I realised I had nothing to offer, my emotional well was completely dry. I had nothing to give.

  Karen McPherson had bags under her eyes that could have carried the laundry from a small hotel, but the laser focus and the friendly smile that flirted across her lips suggested that she was a lawyer I could work with.

  She leaned forward in her chair, pushed a filing cabinets’ worth of blue folders to the side of her desk and asked me to tell her everything.

  I talked for what felt like hours. She nodded as I talked and stopped me occasionally to elicit further understanding and to fill a new blue folder with copious notes.

  ‘And you say they asked you for your brother Jim’s address?’ she asked once I’d almost run out of words.

  I nodded.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘From what you just told me he isn’t an alibi.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Could he also be a suspect?’

  ‘No,’ I answered. But I said the word with a long, drawn-out note of contradiction – a thought had occurred.

  ‘What is it?’ Karen asked.

  ‘He told Mum that he went over there that night.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  I sat back in my chair as I remembered talking to him in Sheila’s kitchen. The anger in his face. His balled fist. ‘I told him about the abuse and how Anna threatened to keep me away from my boys. He didn’t react well. Said he’d go round there and put her straight.’

  ‘Hardly helpful,’ she said and for a second looked even more tired than when I walked in. ‘And what happened?’

  ‘He told Mum the house was in darkness. No one came to the door, so he left.’

  ‘Any idea what time?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘So, on the night your wife was killed both you and your brother went over there at different times?’

  I nodded. Crossed my arms. Didn’t tell her that I’d lied to the police about being there. Bit the inside of my mouth. It didn’t look good. If I was a detective, why would I want to look anywhere other than me and Jim for the killer? Will they hear about this and think we colluded?

  I felt a chill. Jim wasn’t capable of murder, was he? Could he have lied to Mum? He had a temper on him, but I was all but certain he wouldn’t hurt a woman. An image of Anna in full battle mode jumped into my head. If she came at him, would he defend himself? Retaliate?

  If I knew my brother that is exactly what he would do.

  ‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Karen ordered.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘He said he didn’t get an answer and left. I’ve no reason to call him a liar.’

  Karen drummed her pen against her desk. Stopped, and then twisted the barrel of her pen off and on. ‘If the police had enough evidence to put you in front of the Procurator Fiscal they would have done that already. So the visits to your office and sitting outside your house are fishing trips. They want to rattle your cage. See how you react.’ She twisted the pen so that the nib shot out of the end and took some more notes. Once she finished, she looked up at me. ‘We’ll lodge a complaint. Say you’re being harassed at your place of work.’

  ‘What will that do?’

  ‘Probably nothing, but it will make them think twice. Maybe rein them in a little. Meantime, let me know if it happens again.’ She smiled to signal that the meeting was over.

  I walked to the door. Hand on the handle, I turned to thank her for her time.

  ‘If Jim decides he needs legal advice, I can recommend some good people,’ she said and pulled a different file from the pile on her right.

  Mum was bug-eyed with worry. I’d barely got one foot in the door before she was tugging at my sleeve.

  ‘Those detectives were here,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ I replied, forcing calm into my voice and expression.

  ‘They asked about Jim. I had to tell them. I had to,’ she said as she twisted her fingers.

  ‘Ganny,’ Ryan chanted from the living room.

  ‘In a minute, son,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Be there in a minute.’
Then to me. ‘What have I done? Have I put them onto him? Do they think one or both of my sons are murderers?’

  ‘Mum.’ I took her by the elbow and led her to the kitchen. She sat at the table. ‘When did you speak to them?’

  ‘About eleven.’

  ‘They were in my office just after nine and they asked me how to get in touch with him, so they already had him on their radar before they spoke to you.’

  We both sat with that for a moment.

  ‘Do you think a neighbour might have seen him?’ she asked.

  ‘Who knows,’ I replied and thought of the Stewarts across the street. They had Neighbourhood Watch stickers on every window and their net curtains were on permanent twitch.

  ‘Phone him,’ I suggested.

  ‘I have,’ she replied. ‘No answer.’ She went back to twisting her fingers. ‘What is happening to my family?’ A solitary tear slipped from her right eye.

  I gripped her hands. ‘We’ll be fine.’ I offered a reassurance I didn’t feel.

  ‘You don’t think…’

  ‘What? No fucking way,’ I half-shouted. ‘Jim’s been in a few scraps in his time, but he would never hurt a woman.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ She pulled her hands from mine and held them to her throat. I could see the skin there, like pale-pink crepe-paper, and was reminded of her age. ‘It’s just that you hear stuff. People stare, make comments and you start to think. Start to doubt…’

  ‘Who’s saying what, Mum?’ I prayed she would give me a name. Then I’d have someone to focus my anger on.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Nobody.’

  ‘Who was it?’ I stood.

  ‘Och, it was just … I was in the supermarket. Saw Jean Campbell and she couldn’t wait to ask me about Anna. Said she’d heard that both of you were round there that night.’

  ‘Jesus fuck…’

  ‘Daddy said a bad word again,’ said Pat. He’d appeared at my side as we were talking. ‘What are you saying about Mum?’

  ‘Go back and sit with your brother,’ I said with more anger than I wanted to.