I drew myself together. So far they had nothing on me, though. Not really. Apart from the anger. And even if I was angry, there’s no law against anger, is there? Not if you don’t act on it. I sat for a while longer, sideways in my chair, feet on the table.
Then I took out my phone. They hadn’t asked me to hand it over, and they hadn’t told me not to use it. I checked that the voice recorder wasn’t recording; I had seen the detective turn it off, but I wanted to be sure. As far as I could tell it was off.
I dialled a number from memory. It rang twice before she rejected the call, as I knew she would. ‘I’m not here, I’m sorry to say.’
Her rock-crystal voice, the careless precision of her diction. ‘Leave me a message and of course I’ll call you back.’
I could only hope that she would listen to my message, that she wouldn’t simply press 3 and leave me to my fate.
‘Caroline,’ I said, ‘Alex. It’s Alex. And I’m sorry for this. I’m truly sorry. But if the police want to speak to you about me, I need to speak to you first. I can and will explain.’
After an hour Paul came in with a cup of coffee.
‘Am I free to go?’ I asked him.
‘You could …’ he said. ‘You’re not under arrest.’
‘I can?’
‘I wouldn’t, though.’
‘OK.’ I said. ‘Why not?’
He made a gesture that I couldn’t read, and left the room.
I was tired now, and irritable from the coffee. I hadn’t eaten in hours.
June came back in and I asked her if I could go.
‘Would you
like
to leave, Mr Mercer?’
Something in her manner suggested that leaving would be a very bad idea.
‘I’ll stay,’ I said.
‘All right,’ she said. She turned the recorder back on, and told the machine what time it was. ‘Mr Mercer, there’s a piece of information to which I’d like to know your reaction.’
‘Would it be possible to have a sandwich or something?’
‘This won’t take long.’
That raptor smile. Those searching eyes.
‘Mr Mercer, would it surprise you to know that we believe your neighbour Mr Bryce was murdered?’
‘Not really.’
‘That doesn’t surprise you?’
‘There’s been a lot of police activity in the neighbour’s house.’
‘You surmised that from our activity?’ Her head tilted gently from one side to the other, then back. The smile was gone. I met her gaze for a moment, then looked away.
‘Yes. And the style of your questions suggests you think something’s wrong. You asked me not to leave the country.’
‘I see.’ Some change in her, as if I had revealed a piece of myself that I should have kept hidden. She sat for a moment, consulted her papers. Then she seemed to reach a decision.
‘Mr Mercer, do you know why we think your neighbour was murdered?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Only that you think he was.’
Breathe.
‘I see.’
She produced a colour print. A standard British three-pin plug, dismantled. She spoke an evidence number into the recorder.
‘Mr Mercer is now studying the photograph. Mr Mercer, do you notice anything about this that you wish to comment on?’
‘It’s correctly wired.’
‘It is indeed correctly wired.’
‘Someone has replaced the fuse with a piece of metal.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘
some
one has.’
Her eyes blazed. Her smile was back.
‘Mr Mercer, you will notice the cord which is attached to the plug.’
‘It’s from an iron, or a heater, or something.’
‘Yes. It is in fact from the iron that was found in the bath beside Mr Bryce. The iron that caused Mr Bryce’s death by electrocution.’
Was she accusing me? She was still smiling, and there was something more human about the smile now, a warmth, as if she were inviting me to share a confidence.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I suppose if you wanted to kill yourself you would modify your iron in this way.’
‘If indeed you owned an iron.’
‘He didn’t own an iron?’
‘A man of expensive tastes.’
I thought of the dry-cleaning bags on his kitchen table.
‘Mr Mercer, can you account for your movements in the three hours before your discovery of the body of Mr Bryce?’
‘I was working. Viewing for an edit.’
‘Would that be something you were doing from home?’
‘Yes,’ I said, defensively.
‘Can anyone verify that?’
‘Max, maybe.’
She stood up, made a point of looking at her watch. She was still smiling that warm, encouraging smile.
‘Useful to know.’
She reached out her hand, and I shook it. ‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Mercer. One of my colleagues will drive you home.’
‘But …’ I looked at the recording machine. She reached over and turned it off.
‘It’s been a long day for you. I’m sure you’ll be glad to spend time with your wife and your son.’
While you still can, I thought. She means while you still can.
I sat in a plastic seat in the public area of the station, waiting for someone to drive me home. The desk sergeant sat reading a newspaper. Why had I agreed to be driven? I could easily walk.
They had nothing on me – I was certain of that. And yet the more I thought about the conversation with the detective, the more I admired her. She had made no threats. She had made no accusation. She had kept me waiting, but not long enough that I had reason to complain. She had seen to it that her colleagues had behaved impeccably towards me. She had the measure of people like me. She had completely done me over.
It was a brilliant piece of staging. My stomach was cramping up from the bad coffee and the lack of food. I was on edge, and desperately wanted a cigarette. But she had my measure. She had known I wouldn’t get up and leave.
This wasn’t about the recording. I had said nothing that would incriminate me on a transcript. I was certain of that.
No, it was all about timing, about making sure I was vulnerable, about making certain that I felt alone. It was about demonstrating her lack of empathy towards me, about timing the moment her empathy returned. It was about that one piece of information. She was working a hunch.
She wanted to know what I thought. What I felt.
‘If indeed you owned an iron.’
Her eyes on my face.
Confess.
‘Alex.’
A form, all arms and shoulders and summer prints. A voice I knew. Bracelets sighing metallic on her slender arm.
‘What?’ I was staring at the floor.
‘Alex, are you OK?’
I looked up. Rose. Pretty, etiolated Rose. Rose who didn’t know her own strength.
The answer was no, of course I wasn’t anything like OK, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I looked at her, and wanted Millicent. Millicent would know what to do. Millicent always knew.
‘Hi,’ I said. I drew myself up, sat as casually as I could, tried to project
OK
. I risked a smile. She smiled back.
‘I’m waiting for a lift. This place gives me the creeps.’
‘I’m waiting for a lift too.’
She nodded. She really was very pretty, in that delicate English way of hers. What did she want from me?
I picked up a newspaper. We sat there next to each other pretending to read, while the duty sergeant pretended to be busy with paperwork.
‘Alex,’ she said after a time, ‘Alex, do you have to go straight home?’
At the Sacred Cock I bought two double whiskies. We sat at a table near the bar, said very little, stared into our drinks. Millicent thought I was still at the police station. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Rose and I shared a secret, although I didn’t yet know what that secret was. I was shaken by the interview at the police station; Rose seemed shaken too. Perhaps that was all it was. Perhaps that was why I was here with her, and not at home with Millicent and Max.
‘Rose,’ I said.
She spoke my name just as I spoke hers.
‘Jinx,’ she said. ‘Almost.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘almost.’
I had to ask her first. ‘What were you doing there?’ I needed time to decide how to explain myself to her.
‘That was my question to you, Alex.’
‘You first.’
She smiled. She liked me, and I didn’t want to throw that away.
‘They wanted to know why I walked through their crime scene. Isn’t there supposed to be tape? Alex, did you know the house was a crime scene?’
‘You broke their lock, Rose. Did you really not wonder?’
‘Grief,’ she said. She picked up a whisky and drank it down. ‘Does weird things to you. I don’t know what I thought that lock was doing there. They didn’t like that as an answer, obviously. Though it’s the truth. Cheers, by the way.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Alex, did they ask you about me? About whether you heard me opening drawers in the kitchen?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, they didn’t ask me that.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘somehow they knew. You would have told them if they’d asked you, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘They were really interested in why I was opening drawers in the kitchen. I mean,
really
interested. And you really didn’t tell them you heard me?’
‘You have my word on that.’
‘Thanks, Alex.’
‘Welcome.’
Perhaps this was good. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to tell her much about why I had been at the police station.
‘I was trying to make a cup of tea. I was looking for tea. I kept telling them that. And they asked me all these questions. And it’s all so polite and so by-the-book that it takes you a while to realise they’re accusing you of murdering your brother and stealing his money. And looking for tea in his drawers is some kind of evidence of that. Although they never quite say any of that, of course. You’re meant to draw the inference.’
His money?
I reached across and rubbed her shoulder. A gesture of support. An innocent gesture
.
But she leaned back into me, took my other hand in hers.
‘He didn’t have any money,’ she said, angry suddenly. ‘Or nothing to speak of. Couldn’t get a deposit together. The architect without a house.’
‘He was an architect?’
‘In name only. Never made a building. Just worked on other architects’ buildings. Managed their projects. It’s almost funny.’
‘That’s still an architect, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s an architectural project manager.’ She looked around at me. I smiled awkwardly. She smiled back. ‘Why are you being so kind to me, Alex?’
I thought of Millicent walking into the pub at that moment, and I patted Rose on the back and drew gently away from her.
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m not being kind.’
‘You are,’ she said. She squeezed my hand. I must have made some small gesture of rejection. ‘I really wasn’t presuming,’ she said. ‘This is not a pass. Obviously.’ She sighed. ‘You know, they started pressing me to account for my movements.’
Before I could answer she was at the bar. I texted Millicent, said I would be home in an hour or so.
‘Alex.’ The pencil moustache and the brilliantined hair. It was strange to see him in t-shirt and jeans. Wrong, somehow.
‘Mr Sharpe. Quick drink on the way home.’ Had he seen Rose? And what if he had?
‘How’s Max?’ he said.
‘I wanted to ask you the same question, Mr Sharpe.’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’
A text message from Millicent. My phone was lying on the table. Mr Sharpe’s eyes flicked from the phone to the bag that Rose had left on her seat. I saw him register the bag, and the two empty glasses. Rose would be back in a moment.
‘A friend,’ I said. ‘Sister of our dead neighbour.’ Easier to explain now. Less embarrassing.
‘A difficult time for all of you,’ he said.
Rose came back with two more whiskies. I looked at Rose. I looked at Mr Sharpe.
‘Good to see you, Alex.’ He nodded at Rose and left us alone.
‘Trebles,’ said Rose. ‘Sorry.’
‘Nothing to apologise for.’
I picked up my phone. Millicent still thought I was at the police station. ‘Courage, honey,’ she had texted back. ‘You have the strength.’ What was I doing here?
I saw Mr Sharpe sitting at a table with a very beautiful woman in a yellow satin dress. They were looking directly at Rose, and at me. Then they looked at each other and exchanged words. Don’t judge me, I thought. This is not what you think.
I drank down my whisky, then told Rose I had to go. She stood up with me, held on to my hand, and for a moment I wanted to sit down beside her again.
‘Before today it would never have occurred to me that I might say this,’ she said. ‘I’m
embarrassed
to be saying it, but after today I slightly feel I have to.’ She was holding my hand tightly now.
‘I didn’t kill my brother, Alex.’
‘I know.’
‘Surely those are words I shouldn’t feel I have to say. My own brother.’ She gave a bitter little laugh.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’
Millicent was reading to Max. She was lying on her back on the sofa, book in hand. Max was stretched out on the floor, a pillow under his head. He turned gently as I came in.
‘Mum said I could stay up till you came.’
My wife; my son: waiting for me to walk through the door. Love coursed through me like a feeling forgotten.
Look at that.
Love unexpected. Love intense. Love unconditional.
Look at that.
‘Hey,’ said Millicent.
‘Hi,’ I said.
Max stood, and as I walked towards him he wrapped his arms very tightly around me. ‘Oh, Max,’ I said, ‘oh, my little boy.’
Flesh of my flesh.
I lifted him high. Spun him around.
‘You can put me down now,’ he said. I lowered him to the floor. Millicent was at my side, and we clung to each other, all three of us. The mighty Alexander, weary from battle, returns to his woman and his child. Look at that, I wanted to say, to shout, to scream: look at that and tell me it’s not real.
There was something in Millicent’s expression, though.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What, Millicent?’
‘Mum
said
they wouldn’t arrest you.
And
they didn’t find anything.’
‘What?’
‘The police were here, honey.’
‘Mum let them in. They didn’t find anything though.’