‘I thought you might be interested to know. We sent an officer round to Pike and Woodhead to check your alibi. Unfortunately they didn’t have the receipt.’
He stopped and looked at me, his expression still and unyielding, as if waiting for some justification.
‘I’m sorry about the waste of time,’ I said. ‘I remember signing for it but they must have thrown it away.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ said Ramsay. ‘But someone had collected it and taken it away before we got there.’
‘Who?’
‘You.’
For a moment, my vision went dark, dark with little golden speckles, like it does when you’ve looked at the sun by mistake. I had to sit down. I couldn’t speak. When I did, it took an immense effort. ‘Why do you say it was me?’
‘Are you serious?’ said Ramsay. He took out his notebook. ‘Our officer talked to an office manager at the firm. A Mr Hatch. He checked the file, found the piece of paper was missing, but there was a note saying it had been taken by a Ms Falkner. By you.’
For a vertiginous moment I let myself wonder whether it was possible that I really had gone over to the office, collected the docket and suppressed the memory of it. Perhaps this was what being mad was like. It might explain everything. Part of my mind had known about Greg’s infidelity, had been responsible for other terrible things and had hidden them behind a mental wall. Hadn’t I heard about that? About people who had suffered traumas and buried them so they wouldn’t have to confront the implications? People who had committed crimes, forgotten them and truly believed they were innocent? It would almost have been a relief to yield to that, but I didn’t.
‘Where is it?’ said Ramsay.
‘I don’t have it,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Stop,’ said Ramsay. He held up his right hand, the tips of his first finger and thumb almost touching, as if he was holding an invisible match. ‘I’m this close – this close – to arresting you now. Ms Falkner, I don’t think you realize the trouble you’re in. Perverting the course of justice is not like crossing the road when the little red man is showing. Judges don’t like it. They see it as a kind of treason and they send people to prison for a surprisingly long time. Do you understand?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ I said.
‘Of course it was you.’
‘It doesn’t make sense in any possible way,’ I said. ‘If it was me, why would I tell you about the company, give you the address and then take away the evidence before you got there?’
‘Because it didn’t say what you said it said.’
I stopped for a moment, confused. ‘But getting rid of the evidence doesn’t help. It just makes it worse. Why would I do that? And give my name while I was at it?’
Ramsay gave a snort that was almost a laugh but then his expression turned serious and when he spoke it was quietly and deliberately. ‘If a jury was informed of everything else you’ve been up to, I don’t think they’d have difficulty swallowing one extra piece of insanity.’
There was more before the two of them left and none of it was very pleasant. Ramsay said that in the near future I would be interviewed under caution, which meant there was the possibility of an imminent criminal charge, and that I ought to have a lawyer present. He also muttered about having a psychological evaluation and that it might be my best hope. As they were about to leave he regarded me with a mixture of bafflement and pity. ‘I felt sorry for you,’ he said, ‘but you don’t make it easy. I don’t understand what you’re up to. But we’re on your case. Don’t piss us around.’
As soon as they were gone, as soon as the car had pulled away, I changed into more businesslike clothes. Half an hour later I was at the office of Pike and Woodhead, whose entrance was in a small road, almost an alley, just off Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A middle-aged woman was sitting at a desk just inside the door. I asked her if a Mr Hatch was in.
‘Darren? Yes, he’s around somewhere.’
I asked if I could see him and a few minutes later he appeared, not, as I had expected, in a pin-striped suit but in jeans and a Fred Perry T-shirt. I hadn’t met him when I had delivered the chair. I had left it at Reception, signed a piece of paper, taken a copy and left.
‘You deal with deliveries?’ I said.
‘You got one?’
‘Not today. My name’s Eleanor Falkner. I delivered a chair here a few weeks ago.’
His face became suspicious. ‘A policeman was here about that this morning.’
‘I wanted to check up on it.’
‘What for?’
‘When I delivered the chair, I signed a receipt. They said I collected it from you. But I didn’t.’
He walked over to a filing cabinet against the wall and pulled open the top drawer. He took out a file and flicked through it. ‘We have a slip for everything that’s collected or delivered. Here we are. It’s just a note saying, “Docket retrieved for Ms Falkner”.’
‘When?’
‘That would be yesterday.’
‘I don’t understand. Who wrote it?’
He examined it more closely. ‘Looks like my writing.’
‘So was it me who collected the docket?’
‘That’s what it says here.’
‘But can’t you remember the woman who collected it?’
‘What I mainly do is sort out deliveries. Twenty, thirty, forty a day. That’s why I need the pieces of paper.’
‘But why did you let someone take a piece of paper away just like that?’
‘Because it wasn’t important. The receipts for documents go upstairs and we keep those. This is just office stuff, you know, pens, photocopying fluid. Every couple of months we chuck it out.’
‘So anyone could have walked in off the street, asked for the docket and you would have given it to them?’
He looked back down at the file. ‘It says Ms Falkner here.’
‘Yes, but…’ I stopped. I’d realized the futility of pushing it any further.
Eight hours later, or thereabouts, I was drunk. In the afternoon I had phoned Gwen and Mary, left messages and assumed they were busy, out of town or understandably sick of hearing from me. Of hearing about me. Of even knowing I existed. But later in the afternoon, Gwen rang and said that the two of them were taking me out. I had that infallible sixth sense when you know that people have been talking about you and making arrangements for you without your knowledge. I told her it was very kind of her but it was a Monday night and they had lives to lead. Gwen said that was nonsense. I had to put a dress on and they would pick me up at eight.
They took me to a new Spanish bar in Camden Town where we ate tapas with little glasses of dry sherry, then had more tapas and more sherry, and then we got into a discussion about what our favourite drink was. Someone said a dry martini and Mary said it should be served with a twist of lemon peel and Gwen said it should be with an olive. So we had one with the lemon followed by one with the olive. I was given the casting vote as to which was the winner, so I chose the lemon peel and we had to have another of those to celebrate.
It was at that point, as I was taking a delicate sip of my third dry martini, that Gwen asked how I was. Even in my alcoholic stupor, I realized that this was what the whole evening had been leading up to. My messages on their mobiles must have sounded terrifyingly abject and they had clearly decided something needed to be done.
‘I’m all right,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mary. ‘This is us.’
I thought for a moment and I – or perhaps it was the gin on my behalf – saw things with a new clarity.