by Pip Drysdale
The police station – brown brick, blue plastic – was waiting for me in the distance to my left. And directly across from it stood a high cream tower with a clockface at the top: 2.55pm. I swallowed and walked towards it.
My hands were trembling by the time I got to the station. And I thought I might not be able to go in. But I forced myself to move up those stairs, one by one. To push through the big glass doors. I tried to unclench my jaw, tried to act the way an innocent person might. But guilt oozed out of every pore.
The young policeman with the glasses, the same one from a few days before, was sitting at the front desk. He looked at me, concerned. And I knew why: I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the bus window and my eyes were still red and puffy.
‘Are you okay, Miss?’ he asked.
I nodded in response, then said, ‘I’m here to see Detective Rouhani.’ My nails bit into my palms as I tried to relax my jaw.
He smiled kindly, motioned towards the row of grey plastic chairs that lined the large front window, and said: ‘She won’t be long, take a seat.’
I sat on the one in the corner near the water cooler, calmed my breath, and looked out the window at some evergreen shrubbery and a collection of mottled-yellow cigarette stubs.
My pulse sped up – I must have sensed her coming – and when I swivelled my head there she was, walking towards me. Holding a notepad. Long dark hair draped over one shoulder, dark unblemished skin and the bright and cunning eyes of a fox.
‘Thank you for coming in, Taylor,’ she said. ‘I’m Detective Rouhani.’
She extended her hand towards me, and when I stood up and took it, she motioned for me to follow her towards the hallway. ‘Do you mind if we take a couple of swabs?’ She was talking to me over her shoulder. ‘It’s just protocol.’
‘Okay,’ I said. If they think it’s suicide, why are they checking DNA?
It was the second time I’d had that brown carpet under my feet in a week. I’d preferred the first time. Detective Rouhani led me into a small room, where I was greeted by another woman. She was older: a splash of silver-grey hair and a set of deep lines etched into her forehead; she looked like she had been surprised often in her lifetime. She sat me down on some kind of massage table – it was covered in paper towel – then put a cotton swab into my mouth, rubbed it in a circular motion across the inside of my left cheek and then slid it into a small glass bottle.
I watched as she fastened a yellow lid onto it and wrote out a label with a fat black pen before repeating the process once more.
‘Great, all done,’ she said with a smile. I couldn’t be bothered smiling back but I forced it, my lip quivering a little.
Rouhani led me back out of the room and we walked into her office.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked me from across her oak desk. My silent tears had started up again. I could feel them dripping down my cheek.
She passed a business card across the table. The shiny black type was embossed and it read: Kate Stapleton, Family Liaison Officer. There was a phone number underneath the name.
‘We have services to help with the shock,’ Detective Rouhani said. ‘Sometimes the best thing to do is just talk.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, forcing a smile.
‘Take your time,’ she said, handing me a box of tissues.
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking a handful and forcing myself to look her straight in the eye. ‘What happened?’
‘Like I said on the phone, it looks like suicide. We’ve been putting out feelers, asking neighbours what they saw, but so far nobody has come forward. Aside from a couple of people walking past when he fell.’
My eyes cast down, my cheeks hot with tears. How did I get here?
‘We’d just broken up,’ I said, looking up at her. ‘I feel like this is all my fault.’
The tears kept coming, but I wasn’t acting. I was buckling.
‘We found cocaine in his briefcase – heavy drug use does tend to lead to these sorts of things. There were also opiate painkillers in his bathroom. Did you know about the drugs?’ she asked.
‘I knew about the cocaine. Not the pills,’ I said. ‘But he was in the program, had a sponsor and everything.’
‘There were other things we found in his briefcase which are confusing,’ she continued. ‘How well do you know his neighbour –’ She read from her notepad: ‘Felicia Jones?’
‘I don’t really know her at all,’ I replied. ‘I mean, I know who she is but I don’t know-know her. Why?’
‘Her name and contact details were in his briefcase,’ she said. There was a flicker of movement outside her office window and she looked towards it.
‘Oh.’ I feigned confusion. ‘Maybe you should ask her? Maybe she was going away and wanted Angus to watch her flat or water her plants or something?’ I said, the way an innocent girl might.
She sighed. I watched her eyes move back from the window to her pad; they jumped a couple of lines, and I could feel her trying to choose between two options, one of which ran the risk of upsetting me further.
‘We did ask her,’ she started. She’d clearly chosen option B. ‘Look, I don’t want to upset you any further, but Felicia has been experiencing a level of harassment over the past couple of weeks. Unwanted gifts. Unwanted graphic text messages. Phone calls. We know now that it was Angus who was responsible.’
I looked at her with what I hoped was horror. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Angus barely knows her.’
She exhaled loudly and uncrossed her legs.
‘Yes, but the graphic messages came from his number,’ she said softly. ‘And there’s something else.’ She took a moment to inhale. ‘In his briefcase was a thumb drive. It contained a lot of information about a man named Nicolai Stepanovich.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Huh?’ I said. My forehead crinkled. I let my eyes wander. And I tried to look confused. ‘That’s weird,’ I said, eyes back to her.
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘Well, I know who Nicolai Stepanovich is. He runs Citexel. I was doing this work project – God, it’s so complicated – I was looking for an investment opportunity and suggested their new development down in Eastbourne. But then it all got leaked to the press and I almost got fired,’ I said.
‘Sorry, I don’t follow,’ she said. ‘What do you mean it got leaked to the press?’
‘Well, it turned out that Stepanovich had been laundering money. Through property schemes. It was all over the papers.’ My voice was small and feeble. It sounded like it belonged to someone else. A child. And I only became aware that my tears had started up again when she handed me a tissue box.
‘It’s the shock,’ she said.
‘But why would Angus have information on him?’ I asked, leading the witness. ‘Oh,’ I added, ‘maybe it’s because he was pitching for business from him a few months ago?’ I was trying to walk the delicate line between being helpful and too in-the-know. And her poker face made it hard to judge how I was doing.
‘Maybe. But the information on it was quite extensive,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we’ll be calling his office later.’
‘Talk to Candice Breen,’ I said. ‘She’s his secretary. Was his secretary.’ I hear my voice tremor.
She looked down at her pad again and scribbled Candice’s name. The pages were angled so that I could see its contents: a list, some things crossed off, and something of a mind map on the opposite page. Circles and lines. It seemed like a lot of information for an open-and-shut case.
She changed tack: ‘What can you tell me about Angus’s frame of mind before his death?’
‘God, I don’t know, same as usual I guess,’ I said. ‘A bit agitated, but normal-ish. He was always a bit high strung.’
‘So, you said you knew about the drugs …’ The expression on her face said: Please elaborate.
I sighed. ‘Yes, he had a bit of a coke habit. He was in NA but kept relapsing.’
‘NA? Narcotics Anonymous?’ she asked, noting it down.
; ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Like I said, he had a sponsor. Had a special phone for him and everything.’
She looked at me, surprised. Clearly they haven’t found that phone yet. But they will. It was waiting for them in the storage cupboard, if only they would look.
‘I have one other question,’ she said gently. ‘Do you think he might have been cheating on you?’
I tried to maintain eye contact but failed. ‘Yes. That’s why we broke up. I found a pair of dirty underwear under his bed that weren’t mine.’
‘Do you have any idea who he might have been cheating with? We just need to talk to anyone who might be able to shed light on Angus’s mindset.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I lied.
‘Okay,’ she said, glancing down at her pad then back up at me. ‘There is one final thing you should probably know about. We found some videos on his computer.’
I stared at her. Clearly upsetting me was no longer a mitigating factor in her line of questioning. Her human kindness had been vetoed by her desire for the truth.
‘Videos?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, watching me, waiting.
‘Of me?’ I asked in a small voice.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
I let my head dangle forward, my eyes dropped and I felt my face flush. I was embarrassed. For real. And for the first time in my life I was deeply grateful for my blush reflex.
‘I know about that video. He uploaded that to the internet a couple of weeks ago, but he took it down.’ I looked up and met her eyes.
She was frowning at me. ‘You say it as though there was only one?’
‘There is only one,’ I said. Lies. Lies. Lies.
And her eyes changed.
‘Taylor, there were a few on his computer,’ she said. ‘He tried to delete them but they were still there on the hard drive … and on his phone.’ She was watching me, waiting for a reaction. ‘And you weren’t the only one he’d taped.’
I flinched. My eyes welled and I could feel my cheeks grow red.
It was clearly the reaction she wanted.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is all a big shock. Go home, rest, call the number on that card, and take care of yourself. We’ll be in touch if anything else comes up.’
‘Okay,’ I said. But I made no move to leave.
‘Do you have somewhere you can go, people you can be with?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I’m staying with friends,’ I said. ‘I’ve been staying with them since the break-up. It’s better to be with people.’
She stood up and I followed her lead. And a few moments later I walked out the door.
Meat was frying in the kitchen and a Doors record filled the silence that I couldn’t. Ben was making tacos, and Charlotte and I were sitting around the small table by the living-room window, a yellow-and-brown light shade hanging above us. It was dark outside, and the lights shining out from the apartment windows in the distance looked like little yellow stars. There was a bowl of ripening bananas in the middle of the table – I could smell their sweetness just above the meat – and beside them sat a bottle of wine. Charlotte had been peeling off its label for the past ten minutes, and the scraps of paper were gathering in a pile at the base of the bottle.
‘God, I never pegged Angus for the suicidal type. Just goes to show, you never really know,’ she said, taking a sip from her glass.
And I was silent. I had to be: I knew that if I spoke right then, I would tell her everything. Because it’s hard to keep a secret. And lonely. It grows like a protected flame inside of you, burning your insides, killing you from the inside out. I knew that already and it was only day one.
Maybe Angus will win after all.
‘I know,’ I replied, licking what remained of the red-inked Rouhani on my palm and trying to wipe it off on my jeans.
‘Are you sure you don’t want some wine?’ The kindness in her eyes made me wince. I am an awful person.
‘No, I feel weird,’ I said. Which was true. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, but that wasn’t why I was sipping water instead of wine. I had to keep a clear head, and a strong hold over my tongue. Confessing felt like it would be a relief, but I sensed it wouldn’t.
My phone had been buzzing in my pocket since I turned it back on, but every time I looked at the screen I was stabbed anew: Angus’s mother had called three times already. I knew I had to call her back eventually, but how could I face her? I pulled it from my pocket and glanced through squinted eyes at the screen. But it wasn’t his mother, it was a missed call from David. I’d forgotten to cancel him. I’ll call him tomorrow …
‘Five minutes,’ came Ben’s voice from the kitchen door. He was all wild-haired and holding a spatula.
‘Lots of cheese!’ called back Charlotte with a smile as ‘Riders on the Storm’ with its thunder and lightning and electric keys filled the air.
saturday
Master Sun said: ‘Be ready for the unexpected.’
25 FEBRUARY
Chiara was next to me, purring and clawing at my legs as I sat between the brightly coloured cushions of my sofa. I’d run out of clean underwear at Charlotte’s place so had gone home to replenish. Well, that’s what I’d told her. But the real reason I had to go home was the same thing that had kept me up all night, tossing and turning on her sofa bed, tangling myself in damp sheets: there was evidence I needed to destroy, and I couldn’t do it at her place.
My handbag was resting on the floor beside the coffee table – and in it lay my purple notebook and the gun. The latter was still loaded and wrapped in my lilac bra.
I reached for the notebook, pulled it out and in one jagged movement ripped a handful of pages out; I did it roughly. I wanted them gone. Then I tore them into little pieces, letting them collect in a pile on the coffee table.
I stared at them. I needed to make them unreadable – unsticktogetherable – so I did the only thing I could think of: I put a handful of them into my mouth and chewed. I could smell the paper, feel the hard edges getting soft. And when it was a soft pulpy ball in my mouth, rolled together by my tongue, I spat it out into my hand then placed it on the table. Then I chewed another handful. Soon I had three little balls of mushed-up paper in front of me. Nobody was piecing that together.
I moved through to the kitchen and threw them into the orange plastic bag suspended by a knob on a cabinet beneath the sink that I’d been using as a rubbish bin since I moved in. The stalks from the old, dying roses Angus gave me were still poking out the top, the sickly sweet smell of aging petals filling the room.
My phone was ringing: it was sitting on the table next to my bed, plugged into the charger, so I ran towards it. Mum was flashing up on the screen. I couldn’t talk to her. Not now.
The card for the Family Liaison Officer sat beside my phone. Kate Stapleton. I imagined Kate Stapleton all perfect and matching, pearls around her neck, nodding sympathetically at me while using my name five times in the first five minutes to establish trust. I definitely couldn’t risk talking to her.
And I kept imagining what he might have done to me if I hadn’t pushed him first. How he might have hurt me the way he hurt Sophie. And somehow the worse I made the scenario in my head, the better I felt about how things turned out – it was a sick, sick game, but I couldn’t stop playing. The image running through my mind at that moment was one of him having slit my throat, laughing as he watched me bleed out.
But no matter how hard I tried to push the alternate possibility aside, it always swung back: maybe he wouldn’t have done anything at all.
Maybe he would have just let me leave …
I squeezed my eyes shut to push out the thought, only to hear a low gentle tapping that sounded exactly like Angus knocking on my door, and for a moment I thought it might be him.
It took a full second before I realised that it couldn’t be. It never would be again. Which only left one other person: Charlotte. She would be checking on me.
I moved towards the door, Chiara purring
and circling my feet as I looked through the peephole.
Two police officers stood outside: Detective Rouhani and another one I’d never seen before.
My heart lurched up into my throat and I swallowed hard.
Fuck.
But I opened the door. Of course I opened the door.
‘Hi,’ I said. I was frowning. I could feel it. So I tried to relax my forehead. ‘What are you doing here?’
I was wearing a pair of dirty jeans and a white T-shirt turned grey from the wash.
‘Hi Taylor, this is Detective Stowe,’ Rouhani said, eyes to the man beside her. ‘Look, sorry to bother you on a Saturday, but we need to ask you a few more questions. Some new information has come to light.’
I swallowed again and felt my jaw tense up.
‘Can we come in?’ Detective Stowe asked.
‘Of course,’ I said, leading them inside. A dark leaden balloon began to inflate around me. They must know.
I gestured towards the sofa. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I asked.
‘Yes please,’ said Stowe.
‘Thanks,’ said Detective Rouhani.
‘How do you take it?’ I asked with a tight smile.
‘White and two,’ said Detective Stowe, ‘unless you have honey?’
‘Sure,’ I said and looked at Detective Rouhani.
‘White,’ she said, ‘thanks.’
I walked through to the kitchen and flicked on the kettle. Red light. Low hum. I tried to calm my wild mind, tell myself it would all be okay, but my hands were shaking as I opened the cupboard and pulled out three cups. My palms sweaty as I reached for the milk.
I took the tea back to the sofa – first theirs, then mine – then sat myself down with care. I needed to look unbothered. Like I wasn’t scared. But we were sitting in a triangular formation: them on the sofa, me on a chair. And I felt like I was already on trial.
‘So, what do you need to know?’ I asked.
Detective Stowe looked at Detective Rouhani as though asking permission, and then he spoke: ‘New evidence has come to light. We are no longer sure it was a suicide.’
