I shouldn’t put all of the clothes in one bin, anyway. I should spread them out.
I’ll take them somewhere else.
It is the first time in my entire life that I am being meticulous. That I am thinking and planning and going over things. And it is to get away with murder.
It would surprise everyone. This attention to detail I’m exhibiting. Everyone except Reuben. He wouldn’t be surprised at all.
‘That brain,’ he had once said, almost sadly, to me, at Wagamama’s for lunch when I seamlessly ordered eight dishes for everyone from memory.
Wilf was looking at me carefully.
‘Joanna’s brain?’ Mum had said. ‘Silly Joanna?’
Silly Joanna has its roots in a phrase Mum, Dad and – sometimes – Wilf used to say, while laughing. They would laugh when I admitted I didn’t know whether Germany had a coastline or confessed that I wouldn’t know how to start a fire. Joanna could never survive on a desert island, they would say, while laughing at the very thought of it.
Reuben’s expression had darkened at that. In the car, on the way home, he had said, ‘Do they always do that?’
‘Do what?’ I’d said.
‘Drag you down.’
‘They’re only joking,’ I had said meekly, and he’d looked at me, aghast.
I smile faintly at the memory now. He’d be proud of me, if it weren’t for the subject matter.
I am facing Sainsbury’s, away from the man, still holding my bag of things, not really looking, when my eyes land on it.
On the side of the building. Like a webcam. White, with one black eye. A CCTV camera, it must be. My eyes trail across it. There’s another. And another on the far corner. I crane my neck, leaning out of the car window. I see them, different shapes – some rectangular, some like domes, some shabby and rusted – stuck to the buildings on the other side of the street. A café. A deli. A card and gift shop. It’s like the whole world is opening up in front of me. I’ve never noticed before. CCTV. CCTV. CCTV. It’s everywhere. Like ants in a nest, the more I look, the more I see. It’s everywhere. It’s absolutely fucking everywhere.
It is only a matter of time before they find me.
People do not get away with murder. And this is one of the reasons why.
I see my attack framed in the lenses of a hundred cameras, a kaleidoscope of Joannas and Imrans. My back to the camera, as I push him. A side view of my hand lifting up, striking his. A view from down the canal, Imran tumbling down the steps. My mind skitters into irrationality. A view, close-up, of Imran’s face as he dies, as he breathes in the water. A view from inside as he struggles for breath. From inside his cells as they die. From inside those cells’ nuclei as the lights go out. From inside his brain as his memories die and become nothing at all.
It’s remarkable that here I am, a killer, and I am still outside Sainsbury’s. That Sainsbury’s even exists.
I go inside, just in case anybody’s keeping an eye on me. I’ll buy something. Anything. So as not to arouse suspicion.
I pay at the kiosk, holding a pint of milk, trying not to think. The handle cools my fingers.
A paper catches my eye as I queue. I almost rub my eyes in astonishment.
CANAL-SIDE RACE HATE
Race hate? Race hate?
I shift closer to the paper, trying not to draw attention to myself. I can’t buy it, of course. I can’t even reach and touch it – there’s probably a bloody camera right behind me – but if I shift a bit, I can read the front page.
I scan it quickly. They think it was racially aggravated. Because he was Pakistani, Muslim, I think dully. That area of London had been rife with racial unrest.
I stand, staring at the paper, holding my milk, and thinking of Reuben. He is always my first thought. Poor Reuben, and the work he does for his charity.
I pay for my milk in cash. 45p.
How can they decide it was racially aggravated when it wasn’t? How can they unilaterally tell their side of the story? What about mine?
But then, I think, as the automatic doors open for me, why wouldn’t they? This is the price I pay for anonymity. I have no right of reply. No right to even ask them why they think that. A man is dead, because of me, and living with people’s assumptions about my motivations is surely part of my punishment. I can’t believe I’m even thinking it. I have no rights in this situation, and nor should I. None at all.
I get in my car again and stare at my mobile like it is a snake about to attack me. I could call now: 999. Or google the number for the nearest police station. Drive there, and end it all.
I reach over and hold the phone in my hand. It’s weighty. One call, and I would likely go to prison for life. Life. It’s said so casually on the news. But – life. One call, and I could explain, to those dear to me, how it happened. That I was frightened. That it wasn’t about his race. That I didn’t leave because I didn’t think … because I didn’t think that his Pakistani life mattered.
There are a million reasons to call, of course. To do the right thing. To make amends. So the family can finally know what’s happened. To trust in the justice system that it won’t punish a good person for making a bad mistake, and let it decide my fate for me. So I can stop lying to Reuben. So I can stop living with it; stop waiting for the police to knock the door. All those pros, listed out in my mind. All those pros, and then just one con, but with a weight as dense as mercury: I would more than likely go to prison. Jail. Inside. Just one con, but it matters more than any of the others.
I turn the car’s ignition on, the bag of soiled clothes with – no doubt – Imran’s DNA on them sitting next to me like a bomb.
That afternoon, I think, I’ll put them out. For charity. I’ll go through the donation bags left over in our kitchen, and then the incriminating items will be gone, jumbled up with everybody else’s, like unidentifiable faces in a crowd.
I’ll say I was having a clear-out, if anybody asks. Only those close to me will know how unlikely that is. I’ll tell them I read an article recently about minimalism. And even if they don’t believe me, confusing my loved ones is the best option I have now.
It’s better than the alternative: keeping the clothes, hanging, like spectres in the back of my wardrobe.
Reuben’s father sends me a text. He texts me often. He started tentatively, when he got a mobile, but texts in earnest now. It’s always overly formal, and almost always signed off with a ‘P’, but I like them.
I don’t open the message now. Can’t look.
It’s already after two in the afternoon, and I am rifling in our kitchen drawer for four charity bags that I will distribute evenly along our road, each containing a contaminated, criminal piece of clothing. I should be at work, of course. No doctor’s appointment takes this long. Much longer, and they’ll request a note, but it’s hard to care.
The gloves in one. Cancer Research. The scarf in another. Barnardo’s. Laundering my possessions through a charitable system. I disgust myself.
I pause over the shoes and the coat.
The shoes. Ordered Before. An emblem of my life as it once was. An ASOS order I knew would irritate my husband. Frivolous shoes before a much-anticipated night out. My only problems the credit card bills and the pinching sensation the shoes produced in my toes.
The coat. Filled with duck feathers. A present from Reuben, for my thirtieth. I have no idea how much it cost. I expect hundreds. But I was always shivering, on the way to work, in a stupid trench coat, the skin on my arms cold to the touch when I arrived. I didn’t think he’d noticed. And then, in August, the day I turned thirty, he placed a squishy, large package on the bed. It was the coat. ‘Ready for the winter,’ Reuben said. I have worn it every day. It’s like a duvet. Wrapping me up, reminding me of him as I walk to work.
I ball it up, bringing it to myself like it’s a baby, squeezing it tight. The feathers inside it crinkle underneath my arms. I bury my head in it as though it is his and he is long gone. Just like the man in Sainsbury�
�s did. Only, I am saying goodbye to myself. To the Joanna whose husband bought her thoughtful birthday presents.
I shove it in the last bag. Macmillan.
I put the bags in my car. I’ll deposit them along another road, next to bins and by doorsteps.
But first: the shoes. They are too distinctive. I can’t risk it with those.
I drive to the tip on a whim, the shoes sitting on the passenger seat next to me. I look at them as we sit at traffic lights and at junctions. Right outside the recycling centre, I see the sign.
This waste disposal centre is monitored with 24/7 CCTV: Smile – you’re on camera.
I loop back around, driving past the sign, pretending I was never going in. My lower back is sweating against the seat. My legs tremble so much my feet slide off the pedals. There are cameras everywhere. It would only take one, to see me acting suspiciously, disposing of evidence, for them to know. I can’t go to the tip, and I can’t put the bags out, either.
I return home with the bags and the shoes and shove them in the back of my wardrobe.
12
Reveal
Westminster Magistrates’ Court is not how I imagined. We are here for my bail hearing. This happens at the Magistrates’ Court. The trial happens at the Crown Court. Mine will be at the Old Bailey, Sarah tells me.
The Magistrates’ Court looks like a sixties office block, the grandeur only apparent if you get closer and can see the crest with the lions on it. Otherwise, it’s an unassuming building in central London where, inside, people’s lives are changed forever. If it wasn’t me, if it wasn’t my bail hearing, it would be so interesting. These people at the heart of the justice system, at the juncture between freedom and imprisonment. The lawyers in robes sweeping by. The divide: between the suits and the lay people who have wronged, or are unfortunate enough to know somebody who has.
I called in sick to work. It was the best I could do. Ed was nice about it, as he always is, and I was grateful for that.
Sarah is waiting in a meeting room for me. She’s wearing a black skirt suit and a white shirt. She keeps shifting within its confining fabric, while it remains stiff around her neck, uncomfortable. Her face is less made up than it was on Saturday, and her eyes look smaller and more tired.
She hands me a machine coffee. It tastes like burnt toast.
We haven’t told anybody yet, Reuben and I. It could be on the television or in the newspapers. I have no idea. But it’s like there’s no room for it in my head. I should have told Ed. My parents. Wilf. Laura. But I can’t. Not yet. Not when I could be imprisoned within the hour. Reuben will have to do it.
‘I’ve got all of your mitigation,’ Sarah says, indicating a pad.
She’s changed her nail colour. I wonder if she removed it last night, scrubbing frustratedly at it while talking to her other half, then slicked on a new shade while he made them liqueur coffees at a stainless-steel breakfast bar.
‘And you have no aggravating features,’ she adds, interrupting my chain of thought.
‘No,’ I say softly.
‘No previous. Good character. No flight risk.’ She is rattling off her checklist.
I can see Reuben, through the windowed panel in the door, standing confidently, assessing everybody. He comes to court a bit, for work. He looks at home here.
‘You must be wondering at the likelihood of bail,’ Sarah says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to know.’
I can’t be worrying about likelihoods of imprisonment. I don’t understand it: I am currently free to wander down the road and buy breakfast from Pret. If there is no risk now, what is the risk in a few hours’ time? But then, what is the risk at all? If I am bailed now, why put me in prison later? I raise my eyes to the marble carved ceiling and pretend for a second that I am merely in – where? Where looks like this? – the Natural History Museum, maybe, and Reuben is earnestly explaining the dinosaur exhibits to me.
What is the point in any of it? I have learnt my lesson, haven’t I? I am not going to do it again. I will never so much as touch another person again, I tell the universe.
We walk out. I’m listed fourth in Courtroom Two.
The foyer looks like it’s made of marble and glass, with rows of benches fixed into the ground, like in an airport. But it’s the people who sit at them; they’re the people I would like to talk to. Or maybe to write about. They are like personifications – is that the right word? – arrayed on those little benches. A man whose shoulders are back, gesticulating at his lawyer. Defiance. A man in a tracksuit, elbows resting above his head on the wall, forehead against the cement right next to the justice crest. Grief. Or maybe Penance, or Regret.
I have no idea what I’m doing here in my Boden blazer, my husband’s hand in mine. None at all.
We have a three-hour wait. I watch Reuben. Looking at him calms me down. He never fiddles. Never gets his phone out. I like to stare at his slow movements, his green eyes raising upwards as people approach; at how he slides his leg closer to mine, lays a hand in my lap just like he did on our wedding day.
But, eventually, we’re called; my name is announced on an electronic screen above the door to Courtroom Two, as if I am in the GP’s surgery or at the dentist (if I hadn’t avoided the dentist’s for the last ten years).
‘All rise,’ a clerk says.
I immediately think of the Blue song. I am still a silly, immature thirty-year-old who would like to snigger in court; my mind hasn’t caught up with the fact that I am the defendant, and it is me in the wooden dock fronted by the bullet-proof glass.
I hardly understand a word of the proceedings. The lawyers and the magistrates refer constantly to a big black book, which they all have open on the table in front of them. The magistrate puts her glasses on to look at it. Their words are a rainstorm of legal jargon: mitigating circumstances and aggravating features and flight risks and CPS sentencing guidelines and referrals to the Crown Court and provocation and reasonable force and premeditation and grievous bodily harm and mens rea.
I understand the facts, but the facts seem to be a backdrop, at best, to what is being discussed. They are not talking about how I was walking home alone. Or that he came up behind me. Or what I did. The push.
It’s other stuff. Logic and argument and theory.
I stare at the immaculate glass. It isn’t smeared. Why not? I wonder. There’s a security guard behind me, in a navy-blue uniform. He’s making sure I don’t move, bolt, make a run for it. Because, once again, I’m no longer free. Not for now. Not for these minutes.
My whole body is covered in sweat. I try to calm myself, try to imagine placing my hands against the panes. Perhaps I’m just at SeaWorld, or at the zoo – the penguin enclosure cool against my palms. We’ll get an ice cream and then drive home. I close my eyes with the ferocity of my desire. If only I had walked away. If only it had never happened.
‘Joanna Oliva, please stand again,’ the magistrate says.
Her voice was clear at the beginning of my bail hearing, but has become muffled and raspy-sounding, as though she can no longer be bothered, by twelve forty on a Monday afternoon. There are three of them, the magistrates, but only she speaks.
Oliva. I was so happy to have his name. To ditch my plain name, and take his interesting one. ‘No, it’s O-lee-vah,’ he’s always had to say, and now I do, too. I liked it. And the rest; his family name and all it stood for. That he was adopted, and they all loved each other, it seemed to me, without conditions. The Oliva pub, where he spent his teenage years getting a fantastic alcohol tolerance and a brilliant poker face and an education in all the classics. R. Oliva, occasionally quoted in the press on issues of social justice, London gangs. I loved all of it. Joined it readily. The Oliva clan. And now, here I am, tarnishing it.
I look up, my eyes trailing past the bench, past the justice crests, past the high, barred windows and beyond, up to the strip lights. They’re the same as in the police cell, and the panic washes over me again, less like a
wave and more as if I have jumped off a boat and sunk fifty fathoms deep.
I haven’t even been thinking about it. Haven’t been working it out. But my brain has, ticking over in the background like a radioactivity monitor nobody knows is working, totting up numbers all on its own.
There are five and a half thousand nights in fifteen years, a life sentence, I think suddenly to myself. And I did just one. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I want to break free of my enclosure, rip out the glass.
The magistrate is speaking. I don’t understand – can’t understand – the words she’s saying, but I like the tone. It reminds me of when Wilf and I would watch the football scores coming in, on our tummies in front of the television, and we would try to predict the results from the tone of the announcer’s voice. I can hear it. While this is serious … she’s saying. The rest is currently unsaid, but I understand what it’ll be. The State: nil, Joanna: one.
She is listing the things I haven’t done. I didn’t flee the scene. I have not attempted to conceal evidence. I have not ever committed an offence before. And then she says: The defendant sought immediate help. I ignore this, not letting my mind look at it, like trying to hold still a mechanical toy.
‘And so I am minded to think that, although this carries with it the risk of a very long prison sentence, I am not of the view that the defendant needs imprisoning pending trial.’
I look across at Sarah, wondering if what I’m hearing is correct. Her back is to me, her head bent, intently listening to the magistrate. I look at Reuben instead. He’s looking directly at me. He’s wearing a shirt and tie; he hates ties, always pulls them off at the earliest opportunity, always looks slightly scruffy, even when he’s trying hard not to.
The magistrate moves on to bail conditions. I don’t listen to them. I am daydreaming about how I am to be – temporarily – free. I don’t want to think about the tomorrows; the trial, the aftermath. I will think only of right now, I tell myself. The sky beyond those windows. The weather. Our tiny basement flat. Reuben. All mine for a few more months of borrowed time.
Anything You Do Say Page 10
