I Know What I Saw

As I walk around in a large circle, my mind begins to unfold, tracking the past as I go. The murder happened. Then a phrase that I have liked and stored comes to me. Is it Occam’s razor? Sherlock Holmes? Whoever it is, I remember the principle. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Does that hold true? If it does, then the truth is that the murder took place, because I saw it with my own eyes. I watched the before and the after and I saw her lying on the floor. The red wine blooming across her chest. She had stopped breathing. She was dead. I saw him leave. The following morning, I was in hospital. That night I was interviewed by the police. The same night the police went to the address. It was definitely the right address – I saw the video.

So far, so good.

But then it begins to break down. The door was the same door. The building was the same one. But could I have got the address wrong? Could I? I think about this carefully. No. I couldn’t have. The exterior was the same one from my memory. And when I went, this morning and saw it in its flesh, it was that house.

In the footage the interior was the same, in a sense. The dimensions were all the same. The windows hadn’t moved. The fireplace was in the same location. The cornicing on the ceiling was the same. It was the same flat. That is now one of the facts. There was a murder. In that flat. I can’t distil that any further.

Then as I round the boundary of the police station again, I come to a sobering conclusion. However improbable it seems, someone redecorated the house in the space of one day. It was unlikely, more than that, it was improbable. But not impossible. With enough money what could a team of say ten men do in twenty-four hours?

Unlikely.

But not, I have to conclude again, impossible. I am sure I saw this once on television. A woman leaves her house for a day and returns to find it transformed. A TV crew, an unlimited budget and a team of workers changed the garden, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedrooms. In a day.

It was unlikely. But not impossible.

Ebadi is a dangerous man. He could arrange a disposal quickly and discreetly with the money he seems to have. A man with these connections, who could call on men in a van to remove a body, could surely make decorative changes to a house. Even make them discreetly, quietly. Although Mrs Wilbert the neighbour heard noises in the night.

I begin to race through the changes in the house. The mirror could be put up quickly enough. And the floor. A tiled Victorian floor couldn’t be pulled up and retiled that quickly. But a new floor could be tiled on top. Without any mess. The grout might not dry hard in a day, but unless you touched it, you’d never know. Each day that passed would put it more and more firmly in place. By now it would be setting hard.

The darkness begins to establish itself and I sense something behind me. My body freezes as a shrouded figure comes hurtling towards me. I tense and then relax as he passes. A jogger. I breathe again. I think about settling somewhere nearby for the night and then I think of Seb in his house. Is he wondering whether I’ll be coming back tonight? Should I return there to spend another night in the warmth, or should I stay out and allow my mind the space it needs to stop aching? I can’t afford to have my bones and skin become used to comfort after everything I have done to season them against the ravage of weather.

The smell. Wouldn’t the place smell of work? Damp tile adhesive? But then what do police do when they make what they think is a routine call? Would they feel like they could make comments about strange smells to Arab millionaires in their Mayfair homes because a tramp made a complaint? Or would they have noticed it at all? Would the house have been carefully doused in oud and frankincense to mask the smell?

A chill wind stings my ears as I am thinking this and before I know it, I have decided to make for Seb’s house. The beating in my head has dissipated. The thinking is done for the day and I know what I need to do: sleep. A good night’s sleep now can help me more than an unbridled mind. Insufficient sleep interferes with the neurons’ ability to encode information and translate sensory stimuli into conscious thought. Without sleep the brain’s cells can’t communicate with each other. If don’t get more sleep, the memory lapses will continue to worsen, I am sure.

I take my bearings and head south, tight-roping through the Green Zones.

Although I know what has to be done, I also know there’s a limited window in which I can do it. There will be no help from Conway or Blake. I can’t see either of them helping me to expose Ebadi. They already feel as if I am dissembling. Lying. They have charged me with this: Perverting the Course of Justice – criminal lying. I have to do this by myself.

18 Saturday