Precious Thing (23 page)

‘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?’

I looked at DCI Gunn’s face. His square jaw jutting out at a right angle, the line of his nose, so sharp it could spear a fish, his grey skin, starved of sunlight, and those brown eyes, cold and seeking. Gone was the Poacher’s Choice Roger with the flushed face and the sparkle of gossip in his eyes. All the connections we build, the relationships we foster, they count for nothing in the end. Everyone is a stranger.

The questions kept coming at me, whirling around in the room. One after another, no pause to allow me to answer, no answers to give. I had enough time to kill you, they repeated over and over, I almost began to believe it myself. And did Jonny see what I did to you? Was that why he killed himself?

I was in the scenes of a detective drama, praying to hear the snap of a clapperboard announcing the end of the take. But it never came. It went on and on. Every minute longer in that room was torture, the grey walls closing in on me, the fear shrinking me.

I have no idea what time it was when the questions finally stopped. But I remember believing I might die if I didn’t sleep; shards of tiredness pierced deep into my brain, pain radiated from behind my eyeballs.

And the dirt crawled like lice on my skin. My mouth was dry, my breath rancid from fear and from talking too much, a layer of filth coated me, the kind of feeling that comes from spending too much time in airports, all canned air and body heat, only much much worse. I wanted to step out of the police station and run away and not stop until there were skies and oceans and land between me and you and them.

Finally DCI Gunn and DS Tomey left Kirstin and me in the room alone. She explained to me as if I was a child that the only evidence they had was circumstantial. ‘It doesn’t look good for them,’ she said in a way which made me think she believed I had done it but it was likely I would get away with it.
Fuck you with your
circumstantial evidence
. I’d seen juries convict on circumstantial evidence; it all boils down to who is the most convincing: the prosecution or the defendant.

I let out a groan of frustration and let my head slump in my hands. I stayed like that until I heard the door open again and looked up to see DCI Gunn and DS Tomey returning.

‘We’re releasing you on bail,’ DS Tomey said, spitting the words out, as if she resented saying them which undoubtedly she did.

‘What?’ I asked. I shook my head to clear it of any other thoughts so I could savour her words. But the smile was creeping over my face. I couldn’t contain it. I wanted to cry with relief.

‘You are being bailed, that’s all,’ she said, her frown cut through her make-up.

‘Thank you.’ I smiled at her.

The custody sergeant explained the conditions of my bail; I was to return to Brighton police station for questioning in four weeks’ time; if not a warrant would be issued for my arrest, and I was to stay at my flat every evening, which meant no escaping to Jake’s. Then with a smile on his face he handed me back my belongings. I thought he was being kind until he raised his arm and pointed beyond me to the car park.

‘Your audience awaits you,’ he said.

About fifteen metres from the automatic doors of the police station was a wall of photographers, reporters and camera crews. And when they saw me they raised their cameras like a salute, standing to attention, ready to snap their shot. Gathering my things, I patted my hair down (old habits die hard) and caught my reflection in the window. Some kind of ghoulish Halloween version of myself peered back at me. A youngish female producer in a blue fleece who I recognised from Global was lurking by the doors and when she saw me ready to make my move she shouted, ‘Here we go,’ to the crowd as if I was the entertainment, which I suppose I was.