I Know What I Saw

‘Okay, let me tell you what we think. We think that you killed her, Mr Shute.’

‘I killed her? What? Why would I kill her? I reported this to you!’

‘Yes, you did. And I, we, believe you thought you could distract us by reporting it. But it was you all along.’

‘What? This is ridiculous. Why would I have come to you?’

Blake hands another picture to Conway.

‘Who was she, Mr Shute?’ he says.

‘I don’t know. I told you. I don’t know her.’

‘Well, that’s not a clear picture, is it? Take a look at this one,’ he says and places a Polaroid flat on the table as if he is dealing a card. It snaps as he lays it down. ‘This one was taken when she was still alive.’

I look at Blake. There is a wash of emotion over her face that I can’t place. Something like regret or guilt. I push the picture back at Conway, without looking at it.

‘I said I don’t know who she is.’

‘Look at it, Xander. She was called Michelle. Who was Michelle, Xander?’ Blake asks.

The name. Just the utterance of it pricks a memory from somewhere. Then I remember. Mishal. Michelle? At the cemetery. The new headstone. And then I recall him in the room itself as he stood over her. He called her that. Didn’t he? Chelle. I try to unhook my mind from what I can see, from this room and these two police officers, and try to let my mind spring back to that day.

‘He might have called her Michelle, I think. But there’s mo—’

‘Michelle?’ Conway cuts me off, looking at Blake.

‘Who did?’ she asks.

‘The killer, Ebadi.’

‘Did he? You’re sure?’ Conway says.

‘Sure? No. Not sure. I was hiding behind a sofa. I’m not sure. But the name. I’ve seen it. But not Michelle, like you’re saying it. Mishal,’ I say, inflecting the word.

‘So, you don’t know Michelle, but Mishal rings a bell, you say? Tell me more about that,’ he says.

Mishal rings a bell. Something in that phrase he used sends a current through me. My eyes begin to water in the expectation of a realisation that is just there at the edges of my grasp.

‘I saw the name in a cemetery. Ebadi. I followed him. I think I know where he buried her,’ I say.

‘Actually, Mr Shute, we know exactly where she is and it isn’t buried. She was cremated. Scattered over a park.’

‘But, Mishal,’ I say. ‘It has to be her. Just – you have to look. Mishal. Acton cemetery. M. I. S. H. A. L.,’ I spell it out.

They ignore me, and then at a nudge from Blake, Conway flicks the photograph over to me once again. I look down at the picture, knowing that it is fruitless. And then my heart stops.

‘The name we have for her is Michelle Mackintosh. Not Mishal. We have identified her and that’s her,’ he says, placing a finger on her face. ‘And with her is a man you might recognise. The police investigating this case at the time haven’t made a record of who that man was. Isn’t even a great picture to be fair, but you know him, don’t you, Mr Shute?’

I look down at the man in the picture again and rub my eyes. I don’t understand.

‘Can you help us with who he is?’

I stare at the woman standing next to the man. She does ring a bell. Belle. Michelle. Ma Belle.

Ma Belle. Mabel.

The woman in the picture is Grace.

And that man beside her is me.

31 Tuesday

I am back in the police cell. There, in the hot space of the interview room, with everything collapsing around me, I managed to do just one thing right: I asked for a solicitor. And so here I am, waiting for them.

The idea that the killing happened so long ago is sitting in my head, immiscible, like oil on water. I can’t absorb the information. I do know one thing, however. The problem – all problems – are mathematical in nature. The solutions are there in the analysis and I have been through the possibilities.

1    The police were lying to me in the interview to get me to confess to something. I’ve ruled this out. To make it work there would have to be illegality, not to mention effort on a monolithic scale, and I don’t think Conway is capable of either.

2    The police are telling the truth and there was a murder thirty years ago, but not the one that I saw. That means there were two murders. But it’s highly unlikely that there were two murders of two young women in one place. There’s a probability factor here that I have tried to calculate on too little data, but whichever way I unpack it and whatever the variables are, the probabilities are too remote. Then there is the simple fact of the picture – that was me, without a doubt.

And that picture of Grace, Michelle Grace Mackintosh. Ma belle. My Michelle. Our joke. That name she hated. Common. And now to see her, to see us, in that Polaroid from all that time ago, it feels like a heavy piece of machinery inside me has slipped its gearings and is shuddering to a halt. I can’t work out what she has to do with it. It can’t be her who was killed. It’s not possible. And yet from the list of what seems possible, it suddenly has shifted from possibility to likelihood. I have to accept that my memory of what I saw isn’t true.