I Know What I Saw

I left it with Seb. But that was years ago. I have no idea whether he still has it. He might have given it back to Grace, I think, and then the reality of it hits again. She has been dead for thirty years.

‘It’s not often money can buy your freedom, Mr Shute. But when it can, you take the chance. The money or your life.’

32 Tuesday

Can Grace be dead? How could I have seen it and not remembered – not remembered that it was her? My Grace. Who I loved. Love.

I know that people do repress painful and traumatic memories. But this doesn’t feel like a repression. For instance, I know that I have suppressed what happened with Dad. I have buried it deep into the folds of my past. It is there, still. I sense it all the time, as a kind of grotesque in a room that I walk around every morning and evening. It’s always there, but there are days when it’s so well camouflaged that I can pretend it doesn’t exist. I know that it does and I know that if I could steel myself I could face it down if I had to.

But this isn’t like that. I haven’t buried Grace. I haven’t erased the memory or airbrushed it out of existence. I have a memory of that night – a clear one.

It’s her with me in that Polaroid. It is. I remember her as she was. But the dead woman, when I see her, is older, and less vibrant. The side of her face was flatter – it didn’t reflect the light like Grace’s did. And the hair was a different colour. But when I saw the picture of her in the interview, I was less sure. In that police picture, with her face captured from the side, as if in sleep, it could be her. I can’t be sure that it’s not.

I am back at Seb’s house. The sight of the old house gives me a warm feeling. It takes me to a time that was more – binary. I need to speak to him and tell him everything. I also need the money, it seems. Murder in jealousy or murder for money: the oldest and most hackneyed of motives. I’m sure Seb will have it still. Or maybe he banked it, or I don’t know what. I can’t know exactly but there will be a trail, at least, that he can verify. I bring to mind the look on his face when I turned up with the money and how we had packed it into a trunk in his loft with other things that I couldn’t bear to throw out – letters, photographs, trinkets.

I knock on the door, bathed in street-light. I hadn’t realised how long I had been in the police station. They keep you there, deprived of light and any sense of the day. They strip out all the day’s signposts so that when you are released you have the sensation of being in a time-slip.

Seb opens the door with a look that I haven’t seen before. Is he worried or annoyed? He is in pyjamas but he hasn’t been to sleep – his hair’s still in place. I walk through to the kitchen. Every drawer has been taken out and laid either on the floor or some other surface.

‘What’s going on?’ I say uncertainly.

He looks at me briefly before turning away again.

‘What is it, Seb?’

He remains with his back to me for a minute before simply throwing his hands up. ‘Police, Xander. After they took you, some more turned up with a warrant for a search.’

‘To do with me?’ I say, puzzled.

‘Yes, to do with you.’

I walk up to him and touch him lightly on the arm.

‘But, I mean – you told them I don’t live here?’

He faces me and I can see the effort he is making to control his emotions.

‘I managed to send them away eventually, when I pointed out that the warrant was to do with your premises, not mine, but they’d already started searching through everything. I explained that the house wasn’t yours, but they’ll be back. I think it’s time you told me what’s going on, Xander.’

I nod. I don’t think I can put this off any longer. ‘Maybe we should sit,’ I say and take a seat at the breakfast table.

As I tell him about it all, he sits worrying the edges of a wicker place mat and says nothing. Once I have finished telling him about Squire, the drunk in the park, he gets up and finds two glass beakers, silently pouring an inch of expensive cognac into each. He hands me one, and still he says nothing. Then I tell him about number 42B. I describe it all in detail to him. I tell him about what I saw, about the woman being strangled, how I froze and then how I ran. How I told the police it all and how now it seems as though the place has transformed in just a few days.

And then I slow down, hesitant. I am coming to a precipice in the story and I feel the vertigo of it pulling us into a chasm.

‘Then they tell me there was a murder there after all. But it happened thirty years ago.’

‘What?’ he says finally. ‘You lost time?’

I stare at him in shock. ‘No. I didn’t lose time.’

‘Is it so surprising?’ He puts the place mat down. ‘You were in a pretty bad way back then, Xander. I remember the first time I saw you, after, you know, you disappeared. What was it, a year later? You were a mess. God knows what had happened to you.’