I Know What I Saw

‘Thank you,’ I say, confused for a moment, and then I remember all at once. This is my library. I come here every week, for this magazine and for warmth and ordinary sanctuary. And she, Hazel?, has always been nice to me. My heart starts to thump suddenly. How have I forgotten this, even for a second? Is something happening to my brain? I rub my head as if I can massage my brain back to normal. That kick in the head from Squire. What did he do to me?

I stare at the magazine in my hands. ‘The Galaxy That is Missing All Its Dark Matter’.

‘It’s a good one this week.’

Looking up, I see that the boy is still there.

‘Thanks,’ I say, and fumble for more to say. ‘You a scientist?’

‘What?’ he says and he looks more confused than me.

‘Science. Do you like it?’

‘Not really. I prefer the arts,’ he says. He’s confident with me. He should be wary of me, an adult stranger. Don’t they teach kids that any more?

‘You knew that, Xander,’ he says, a little uncertain. I feel like a feral cat that he’s trying to stroke.

‘Have we met?’ I say, alarmed.

He looks at me with a frown, laughing a little. ‘Yes, Xander! It’s me, Amit. Are you okay?’

I look again at the computer and the blinking cursor. I am a computer expert and I have written hundreds of programs for mining and predicting data streams, but I can’t use this thing in front of me. I stand.

‘Sorry. I have to go,’ I say to the boy. When he turns his head and his hair flicks in his eyes, I suddenly remember him. Amit. I saw him at the gallery – he gave me oranges, and suddenly I feel a pressing need to remember what happened to them. As I ran from Squire, I left them behind. The thought that they are rotting under mulch makes me unaccountably sad.

‘Have you, erm, tightened the loose screws now?’ he says, pointing at his head and smiling. ‘Remember me?’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the oranges,’ I add as a convincer, and he smiles again.

I make for the exit. The librarian is there at the desk and opens her mouth to say something but whatever it was, I wave it back into her head. I have to go and get this straightened out in person. There should be police there. The man might be disposing of evidence this second. That could even be where he has gone.

Once off the bus I make quickly for Paddington Green Police Station. I walk in and the smell, a cloying tangle of disinfectant and boiled potatoes meets me.

‘I need to speak to Rachel,’ I say at the desk.

The desk sergeant looks at me. ‘Rachel?’

‘Or her colleague, DI Conway, I need to speak to one of them.’

He looks blankly at me as if I’m speaking in tongues, before languidly tapping on some buttons on a phone.

‘Name?’

‘Shute. Xander Shute.’

‘You want to be careful with a name like that,’ he says, enjoying his own humour. He mumbles into the handset before replacing it. ‘Coming now for you.’

Time drags its heels through the silence and I wait, sinking as I do.

‘Mr Shute?’ I spin around with surprise. I see both detectives.

‘Why haven’t you been?’ I say.

They exchange a look that confuses me.

‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ Blake says.

‘What for?’ I say, following them as they walk to the same room I was interviewed in before.

‘Come, we’ll speak in here,’ Blake says, opening the door for me. The walls, matt black, undulate, making me queasy.

‘The Farm Street crime you reported,’ she says seriously.

I cross my arms and nod. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I say. ‘Why haven’t you got police there?’

‘You’ve been to the address?’ Conway says, concerned. ‘You shouldn’t be going—’

‘You don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I saw him, the murderer, he’s still there walking around free as a bird. You need to go and arrest him, now.’

They look at one another again but say nothing. Blake opens the file and pulls out a photograph.

‘Is this the man you saw?’ she says, pushing the picture over to me.

The photograph is blurred like a still image from a video. I wonder whether there is CCTV somewhere that captured him. I look carefully at the face. It’s the man I saw earlier this evening, without a doubt.

‘That’s him,’ I say. They make tiny movements of their eyes towards one another.

‘Why haven’t you picked him up?’ I say. ‘Why is there no police presence there at all?’

And then I see the discomfort in their faces. Blake gives me a concerned smile. ‘Actually, Xander, he’s not a suspect.’

‘But the picture,’ I say, pointing at the image. ‘It’s him.’

‘It’s a still from the officer’s body-worn camera,’ Conway says.

‘So, you spoke to him. Someone spoke to him, surely? How did he explain the body? You must have had a team there. Forensics. You can’t have let him go. He killed her!’ My voice is climbing, no matter how hard I try to ground it.

‘Just calm down for a second, Mr Shute. Okay. Mr Ebadi. He’s a UAE national,’ Conway says, pointing to the image.

UAE? Did that make him Arabic? If he was Arabic I would have noticed. Wouldn’t I? But the context maybe confused me. He is light-skinned. I saw him in a Victorian house with a white woman and I just assumed – wrongly assumed. Even so, this is him.