‘Two uniformed police officers attended the address on the night that you reported the murder and confirmed that there were no traces of a struggle or any assault, let alone any fatalities.’
‘Yes. You told me that last time,’ I say. ‘And you spoke to the guy that lives there. Ebadi? He had an alibi. I know that. But I have more information about that – information that changes things,’ I add.
To my surprise they ignore what I say and continue with their questions as if I haven’t spoken. ‘Showing the suspect exhibit PJW/2. Mr Shute, would you look at this footage please?’
Blake has opened her laptop and is playing what looks like CCTV film.
‘What’s that?’ I say. ‘CCTV?’
Without looking up, she says, ‘No. It’s the footage from the body-worn camera by the searching officers.’ She spins the laptop round so that we can both see it.
‘As you can see that is him approaching number 42B. Do you recognise the door?’
‘Yes. That’s it,’ I say.
‘Okay and in a minute, you’ll see the gentleman opening the door. Mr Ebadi.’
I watch, transfixed. This was almost the scene from this morning. I think of the neighbour, Mrs Wilbert, her hand poised over the doorbell. I shake my head and focus again on the screen. The door opens and I see a face. I recognise him from the still they showed me last time. I look carefully. He looks different now that I see him in motion. Different from the man I saw in the half-light strangling the woman.
The officer wearing the camera and this Ebadi speak for a few seconds. Ebadi is smiling at first, and then there is a look of concern, confusion even. He nods after a moment and waves the police in without hesitation. But I know why that is. He doesn’t care about the police coming in because the body has been moved. He will have cleaned the place up so confidently that twenty-four hours later, the police are being ushered in without pause. Either he knows that the police will not find anything, or he’s calculated that his chances are better if he lets them in now, so he won’t have to see them return with warrants flashing.
The footage runs on until Conway presses pause, and I, too, freeze. My mouth drops. I stop breathing.
This cannot be.
The feeling I have now is of the world coming to a halt on its axis. It seems like the Universe is crashing past me at speed. And I am just standing there, motionless.
It’s not the same feeling as the one I had after Rory. That was disbelief. Reality had been exposed simply as mist.
I feel myself mentally leave the room under the pressure of the moment.
Rory.
Pulling at me again.
We didn’t really recover from our teenage fighting. We tried, as adults, to relegate the past into insignificance, but instead it began to invade all our spaces and push us apart whenever we tried to draw near. It didn’t matter whether it was neutral ground or not, it seemed like neither of us could cross the bridge to reach the other. I wonder now whether I could have tried harder, but when I put myself in that space, I remember that I did try. I went to his new flat soon after he bought it. He never came to me. But I did go to him.
I arrived at his building in Ludgate Circus, bringing with me the heat from the street. It was one of those buildings that had been ‘reinvented’. Traces of a former glass-warehouse or coffee-vault or some kind of faded glory were there deep in the brick. And now, crowding and rocketing land prices had polished the rust away and called it new.
An old lift clanked into place and I remember the smell of it as I pulled the concertina gate across and waited as it lurched between floors. My pulse quickened as it always did when I was in a confined space. Then finally, after those slowly ground-out minutes, the doors opened.
For some reason I had expected there to be a party, in full flow. Girls in gold dresses and spiked heels, men with rolled sleeves gesticulating in the air. I expected the balcony looking out on to the street below to be crammed with laughing and smoking. I expected it to live up to my vision of his life as a high-flying hedge fund guy. Instead I walked in to this vale of silence perforated only by muted jazz weeping from a pair of Wharfedale Diamonds.
‘Rory,’ I said and hugged him awkwardly, a bottle of champagne in one hand. ‘Congratulations on the new place.’
‘Thanks, Xand,’ he said, and waved me in. ‘No Grace?’
‘Oh, you know Grace, she wanted to come, but double-booked herself as usual. Some Ayurvedic thing.’
‘Drink?’ he said, slipping away into an open-plan kitchen.
‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘It’s still cold.’ I held out the bottle.
The flat was just as it should have been for Rory. Polished parquet ran the length and breadth of the place. Rugs were laid artfully here and there. A few had even climbed on to the walls. The windows were impressive: floor to ceiling, with views across London. I stood at one and slid it open.
‘I like the windows,’ I said. ‘Beginning to wish that we’d got something like this. All this light.’
‘Yes,’ he said, emerging from a glass wall. ‘The light’s good.’
The champagne he passed me tasted sharp and fresh.
‘So, seen much of Dad?’ he asked, taking a hand through his copper hair.
‘No. Busy house-hunting,’ I said and leaned out into the view below.
He nodded and breathed it in with me.
‘If you get a chance, you should. He’d like to see you,’ he said, turning his face away.
There was an edge to the comment, or I felt one.
‘It’s you he likes to see,’ I said.
The air was warm, summery. Up at this height all the heat and moisture had gone from it, so the breeze when it came, came with a cool undertow.
‘Look, Xander, whatever you think about him, now is not the time to hang on to it. He’s fading. It won’t be that long now.’
I looked across at him and saw the same childhood face. Eyes like smudges. Hair tousled as if fresh from sleep.
‘I’ll go and see him next week. Take a bottle of that Macallan that he likes,’ I said at last.
When I turned I saw that Rory had walked back inside. The atmosphere began slowly to fizz in a familiar but unsettling way. I went in and saw Rory’s silhouette behind the glass wall of the open kitchen.
‘What?’ I said, rounding the partition.
‘I didn’t say anything.’ He busied himself with some dishes that didn’t need the attention.
‘No, but you meant something,’ I said, staring at him.
‘Look, if you’re pissed off about the drinking, don’t take him a bottle. You don’t have to be an arse about it.’
I didn’t know whether I was still pissed off about the drinking, or something else. They both drank. Mum and Dad. But the words come loose from nowhere.
‘You didn’t have to put up with him when he was drunk,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ he said, looking up at me.
‘You didn’t have him, reeking of—’ and then I stopped, letting the words founder. In the silence that followed, I saw the realisation dawning.
‘What are you saying, Xander?’ he said after a minute.
‘Forget it.’ I headed towards the front door.
‘No, Xander. This is important,’ he said, coming after me. ‘If you’ve got something to say—’
‘See you, Rory. I have to go,’ I said, harassing the locks to work the latch.
He stood, arms folded, behind me. ‘Well? Have you got anything to say?’
‘Mr Shute? Have you got anything to say?’
The screen blinks at me, strobing between the paused frames. I am back in the police station. The video plays on in my head. The number 42B, in brass against the black door. My brain is whirring, making and unmaking connections when they don’t fit. I am familiar with this process. It is, even in the teeth of this madness, comforting having my mind untangling the puzzle.