Our legs were locked round each other’s, and the duvet, which Jake had brought from the bedroom, was wrapped round them, cold and refreshing next to the heat of our bodies. We were eating crisps and drinking gin because it was the only thing left in the cupboard. Jake snatched a look at his watch. ‘The update is coming on any minute,’ he told me. I didn’t want you to come crashing into my living room and intrude upon us. I didn’t want our little bubble of togetherness to be popped. But still, I was curious.
It was Nick Ross this time. He walked over to the makeshift Sussex police incident room where DCI Gunn and the petite woman detective I recognised from the day he showed me the CCTV were sitting. DCI Gunn’s hair had been stuck down and I could make out a faint line of orange on his collar, his frown lines smoothed over with the make-up girl’s brush. He looked stiff, sweating under the studio lights.
Nick Ross: ‘Now on to the disappearance of the Brighton artist Clara O’Connor. Police have had a very encouraging response. Three calls in particular you are especially interested in, is that right?’
DCI Gunn: ‘Yes Nick that’s correct. We’ve had over fifty calls from members of the public who think they may have seen Clara in the early hours of Saturday morning. But in particular we have had three callers who mentioned the same name in connection with her disappearance. Two of those people have given their name, but one called anonymously. I want to appeal to that caller to get in touch again. Your call will be treated in the strictest confidence.’
DCI Gunn was just getting into his stride when Nick Ross said: ‘Well good luck with that, now over to Fiona with news on that armed robbery in Sheffield.’
Three callers. One name.
‘Maybe the net is closing in,’ Jake said but I couldn’t focus. If the police didn’t believe Jonny killed you now, what trail were they about to follow? Whose name had been mentioned?
I voiced some of these questions to Jake who told me he had a contact, an old mate who owed him a favour. He would ask him to find out.
In the end though we found out who it was much quicker than either of us anticipated: announced by two police officers knocking on my door at six in the morning.
Chapter Twenty
CONGRATULATIONS, CLARA, I was the woman suspected of killing you. How did that sound? Did you roll it round your mouth, try it out for size? Did it feel as good as you’d hoped?
I kept thinking things couldn’t get any worse and then bingo, this happened. Well, ten out of ten for imagination, for pure evil cunning. There I was getting my head round the fact you’d faked your own disappearance, you’d killed Jonny, not realising for one terrible moment that there was more to come. The icing on the fucking cake. I was it. Bound up so tightly in your lies it seemed no one would believe me.
I guess you must have loved me a lot to hate me this much.
As soon I was dressed I had been driven from London to Brighton police station where I was handed over to the custody sergeant. He was old and wheezing, bound to a desk because it was the only job he could do. Breathing his coffee fumes over me he explained that I was to be processed, like a slab of meat. I noticed him looking at me curiously. ‘You’re that woman off the telly aren’t you? Don’t you report on crime? Least you’ll know what you’re in for,’ he said, smirking, as if the thought tickled him.
My face coloured with shame. This can’t be happening. This happened to other people who took drugs and robbed and killed. It didn’t happen to young women, with successful careers and property and money. I started to cry, hot tears of anger and frustration. ‘There’s been an awful mistake, this has nothing to do with me,’ and the sergeant nodded as if he’d heard it all before.
After half an hour there was nothing left of me. The person with tasteful, expensive clothes and jewellery, the person I had taken years to construct, had vanished. My diamond earrings – a present from Jonny, my Tiffany chain, were all removed. My Mulberry bag, my BlackBerry, my wallet, the belt on my jeans, everything I had brought with me was recorded, bagged and labelled to be handed back to me when (if) I was released.
Next, I was marched to a room to have my photograph taken. The mug shot. My eyes were red from tiredness, puffy with tears. I imagined the photo finding its way into the pages of the newspapers, arranged next to a shot of me as I appeared on TV to show how far I’d fallen. Crime reporter accused of murder. How they would love that story. As Robbie would say, It has all the elements.
After they had taken a swab of DNA I was finally shown to the interview room where the fun was ready to begin.
The room was grey and fridge-cold. I sat at the table with my solicitor, a woman a little older than me whose name was Kirstin Taylor. I say she was older than me on account of her clothes, which were middle-aged (Boden chic), and the strands of grey that threaded through her dark hair. I remember being strangely relieved to see she wasn’t a man. God knows why, I think I’d harboured some vain hope she would know instinctively that my arrest was an affront to justice. Perhaps I thought she would understand the mechanics of a close female friendship in a way a man never would. But if she did she kept it well hidden, nodding her head, taking notes and saying ‘hmmm’ with her finger over her mouth as if she was discussing a staff issue at work and not an accusation of murder.
I shifted in the chair, and pulled my winter coat around me to calm my chattering teeth. Underneath I was wearing only jeans and a thin cotton top, the first things I’d found to pull on when the police arrived. To make matters worse Jake had answered the door in his TV shirt and boxers. Such a cosy scene: girlfriend and boyfriend waking up together in their flat. Only it wasn’t Jake’s flat and my boyfriend had died less than two weeks before. It didn’t look good.
DCI Gunn came into the room with a woman and sat in the chair opposite. He didn’t acknowledge me, no simple hello, no smile thrown my way. He just sat down and looked through his notes. We were adversaries now, three years of lunches, banter and trust-building sucked out of the room along with the warm air. You see, being accused of murder is a great equaliser, no matter who you are in your outside life; in the interview room with the camera rolling and the eyes staring, you become the lowest common denominator.
‘The time of the interview is ten twenty a.m. Officers present are DCI Roger Gunn, and DS Susan Tomey,’ he said, still leafing through the notes in front of him, underlining a few sentences, scoring a few others out. I couldn’t read them; the print was too small, the table between us too big. It’s a file on me, I thought, all about me, and whatever was written inside it had led them to believe I killed you.
I hadn’t seen DS Tomey before and her face was something of a welcome diversion from DCI Gunn’s in so much as it transfixed me with its ugliness. The front teeth that jutted out, her freckle-covered face, the way her mouth twitched. Rodentesque, I thought. Her hair, tied back severely in a ponytail, was only a shade or two from mine. But I couldn’t detect any evidence of ginger solidarity in the room.
‘Can you tell us where you were on the night of Friday January the nineteenth 2007, Rachel?’ she said. Her voice was soft and southern. I guessed she was local.
‘I was in Brighton,’ I tried to say, but my words stuck to my mouth; no moisture in my throat for them to form properly. I took a sip from the cup of water in front of me. It didn’t help, a glue coated my tongue. ‘I went to Cantina Latina with friends, for a small school reunion, Clara was supposed to meet me there, but you already know that.’ I aimed that sentence in DCI Gunn’s direction, hoping it might spark a reaction, but I got nothing back. ‘I left about eleven and walked on to the pier.’
‘Why would you do that?’ she asked. DCI Gunn still hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t looking at me either. His nose twitched as he stared down at his pad.
‘I went to buy some chips. It’s what we always did.’
‘We?’
‘Clara and I.’ Your name caused a ripple in the room, as if we’d all somehow forgotten why I was there.
‘But you
had just been out for dinner.’
‘Well, dinner is stretching the description of the food served in Cantina Latina a little far. We’d shared a few bowls of soggy nachos early in the evening. I was hungry,’ I said, remembering how I had refused to share the nachos, claiming I’d already eaten. Everyone touching, fingering, spitting over the plates as they talked.
‘And how long were you there?’ DS Tomey was beginning to remind me of a terrier with a bit between her teeth. Still DCI Gunn was looking down at the notepad.
It is a strategy; soon he will make his presence felt.
‘I can’t tell you that exactly, I mean ten, fifteen minutes. Long enough to buy chips, eat them and lose the feeling in my fingers from the cold.’ DS Tomey raised her eyebrows, which infuriated me. ‘Obviously if I had known you were going to accuse me of murdering Clara, I would have made a note of the exact timings, but you know, I didn’t go out to bump off my friend that night. I was actually looking forward to seeing her, pretty pissed off in fact when she didn’t turn up and switched off her phone. But not so pissed off I was ready to kill her. I like to think my anger management skills are better than that.’
Kirstin gently rested her hand on my lap. Enough, it said, you are not helping.
I watched, breathing deep, trying to recover my composure as DS Tomey retied her ponytail, tighter this time, so you could see it pull on her scalp, the way Niamh used to do mine when she was trying to be a Good Mum and all day long at school I’d have a headache.
‘I walked to The Old Ship hotel and booked myself a room.’
‘Along the promenade?’ she asked, sounding too pleased with herself for stating what was the obvious.
‘That is the general route you take from the pier to the Old Ship hotel.’ Anger bubbled on my skin, my stomach clenched. Keep calm, keep calm.
‘But you didn’t mention you were on the promenade before.’ She sang the words, as if she’d scored a point against me, as if there was a direct correlation between such an omission and my guilt. It felt like something was creeping up on me, a net closing in. My shoulders stiffened; I rolled my neck to loosen the tension.
‘I have been very clear about what I did on the night Clara disappeared. If you are trying to suggest I deliberately kept something from you then I would say you are clutching at straws. It’s a fairly obvious route, in fact the only one – to get from the pier you HAVE to walk on the promenade, unless you can fly. And I can’t. But I left the bar before Clara. I didn’t see her or Jonny on my way to the hotel. If I had seen her and Jonny I think that’s the kind of thing I would have remembered.’
‘Unless you were trying to cover something up,’ she said. I looked to DCI Gunn with eyes that said you have to do better than this, and he looked back this time but there was nothing, no glimpse of emotion, no smile to say, ‘I’m just humouring her, she is having a laugh.’ And part of me was expecting someone to jump out with TV cameras and tell me it was all a joke. A joke in very poor taste. DS Tomey’s line of questioning was a potent combination; totally ridiculous and utterly terrifying. I felt myself being spirited into some nightmarish parallel universe where innocent actions are twisted into something sinister and words become heavy with a meaning they were never meant to carry. I thought about all the days I had spent at court covering cases, listening to defendants protest their innocence and barristers telling them they had sounded too calm in a 999 call, acted too rationally when they found a body. How the truth is not an absolute, but subjective. How all our truths are different. And now it was happening to me. I wanted to stop talking. To end the nonsense. And my eyes glazed over because I was trying to block her out but my mind turned to you, Clara. My oldest friend, so clever, so conniving, who would have thought it? Not me. The frustration of knowing you had strung me up was one thing, but knowing no one would believe my version of events, the truth, floored me.
So you are saying, Miss Walsh, that your friend has faked her own disappearance to set you up? And what evidence do you have for this?
The humiliation of not being able to prove a thing would have been too much.
It came at me with force once more, the fire in my head and in my stomach a tightening fury. It had been bottled and buried deep inside me long ago but you had released it again.
When DS Tomey finally fell silent my gaze snapped back to DCI Gunn, pulling a piece of A4 paper from his file. He handed it to DS Tomey who laid the paper flat on the table so I could see it. It was another image, a CCTV image which I presumed was the one of you and Jonny. Then I heard her say:
‘You say you didn’t see Clara that night. But she obviously saw you.’
She pushed the photograph across the table. ‘This was taken on the promenade,’ she said, smiling in triumph. I looked at the image. Your hand raised in the air as if you were waving. Ahead of you, at the edge of the frame, was another figure but I struggled to absorb the information my brain was sending me. DS Tomey placed another picture on top of the one I was looking at. It was grainier, a close-up of the person at the edge of the frame, about 150 metres ahead of you. ‘Just in case you’re in any doubt,’ DS Tomey said.
It was me.
So close to you, so very close.
Goose bumps crept over my body. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. I felt my blood freezing and winced, ice pumped through my veins. I heard Kirstin say something but I couldn’t catch it. My eyes were fixed on the tape recorder right in front of me, the red record button on. And up above the camera, recording my every move and gesture from a twitch in my eye to the flush on my face. These were the interview pictures the police released to the press at the end of trials, guilty verdict secured. I’d seen so many before; murderers being questioned, saying no comment too many times, sweating to give away their guilt or just too blasé. There was no way to win. A wave of nausea hit me; bile rose up in my throat. And ahead, stretching out in front of me in terrifying, high-definition colour, was an image of what would happen if my words didn’t matter, if my version of events was not accepted. It wasn’t a life, Clara, it was a sentence, that extended from here far into the future.
I’ve said it before. Truth is subjective. It is not an absolute. My truth and theirs. Two against one.
His voice cut into the silence, distorted, booming. This time he didn’t avoid my eyes; I couldn’t escape his stare.
‘You were that close to her, Rachel, and yet you never saw her. And she is waving. Who would she be waving at? Her best friend, who has just seen her with her boyfriend. Is that why she looks so worried? She’s calling you back, to explain. And you heard her, didn’t you? You saw them together. The man you loved and the best friend who was taking it all away from you. How did that make you feel, Rachel? What did you do, Rachel? What did you do to her?’
Have you ever dreamt, Clara, that you’re speaking but nothing comes out? And then you try screaming but still there is nothing. You are in danger. You need your voice, you need your cry to be heard and you’re straining every vocal cord, but all you produce is silence. Terrifying, isolating silence. You might be surrounded by people but really you are alone, you are drowning, sinking, disappearing. You’re being attacked and no one comes to your rescue. You might as well not exist. That’s how it was. The same questions asked over and over again. What did I do to you? Where had we gone after seeing each other on the promenade? Why did I kill you?
‘I told you I walked to The Old Ship hotel. I didn’t see Clara. I didn’t see Jonny. I didn’t see anyone,’ I said in a stranger’s voice. The pitch, the tone, not mine. But I knew once I’d started talking I couldn’t stop; if I paused they would take control again and the barrage of questions would resume. ‘The CCTV doesn’t show me waving. I don’t acknowledge them, do I? Have you thought that maybe that’s because I didn’t know they were there? Isn’t that the most logical explanation?’
‘You really expect us to believe your best friend is fifty metres from you, waving to you, and you don’t see her, you just carry on walking
?’
Kirstin Taylor, who hadn’t said anything useful up until this point, suddenly found her voice: ‘Presumably we can see the CCTV from the other cameras, so we can see Rachel before she appears here?’ She was cool, to the point. She gave nothing away on her face. I waited, heart jumping, and then I caught something on DCI Gunn’s that gave me a chink of hope. He turned to DS Tomey and it was barely noticeable but I saw it, the slightest shake of her head.
‘We don’t have it,’ she said, this time without the accompanying sing-song in her voice. A moment before her chest had been puffed out, so pleased with herself, now it was deflating. I sat motionless, concentrating on the rhythm of my breath, not as quick now.
‘The camera was out of order.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Kirstin Taylor. ‘So this,’ she tapped on the paper with her Parker pen, ‘this is the only image you have of Rachel and Clara?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And it doesn’t show anything apart from them being in the same vicinity.’
‘Being within fifty metres of each other,’ DCI Gunn said. ‘What time did you arrive at The Old Ship hotel?’
He won’t give up, I thought, he’ll find a way of pinning this on me.
‘About half one though I can’t be sure.’
‘One seventeen according to the hotel’s records.’ I flinched. I had been the focus of their attention for days without knowing it. ‘The time also coincides with you appearing on their security camera in the lobby. So if you left Cantina Latina at, say, eleven o’clock and then bought chips on the pier and walked along the promenade, the camera picking you up at eleven forty-one, are you telling us it took almost two hours to check to see if Clara was at home and get back to the hotel? Or were you doing something else in that time?’
Precious Thing Page 18
