The Evidence Against You

by Gillian McAllister

  None of these things are significant, and yet she remembers them all. How is she to trust that she would remember something sinister, especially if it was hidden, concealed from her by her father – or her mother?

  ‘How was Mum around this man? How did she seem?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Izzy says now.

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Her father’s tone is irritated.

  Maybe it’s just that, she finds herself thinking. The oldest explanation in the book. An affair. A lover. A violent man, perhaps. Unsuitable. No drugs. Not then. He was arrested three years after her mother’s death, after all.

  Or perhaps her father knows all this, and killed her himself, another voice inside her speaks up. Her mother’s mobile phone was never recovered. Perhaps her father discovered something on it. Perhaps he found the cash.

  She sighs. No matter how much she decides to trust him: there it is. The doubt. Never reasonable, never proportionate, but always there. He has almost convinced her. Only a speck of doubt remains, like a stain that’s been washed and washed and only the wearer can still see the outline of where it once was. His guilt is fading, fading, fading fast …

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘About forty,’ she says. ‘Not old. Really not old.’

  ‘Hmm. Nothing else?’ he says.

  ‘He wasn’t even charged. I think you’re right that it could be nothing.’

  ‘I know. And the police can get the wrong man … it was just an arrest,’ her father says, like being arrested is quotidian. And she supposes it is, to him, on the other side of a life sentence. ‘But the money.’

  ‘Yes. What if she got caught up in … something. Something really dark?’

  ‘I know,’ he says softly.

  Izzy wonders at what point her mother knew. At what point she realized who her attacker was, and at what point she realized she was going to die. Or perhaps she never had? Perhaps it had happened too quickly. She tries to imagine herself as her mother, the rough feel of the rope around her neck, the feeling of her body going slack, numb, the buzzing in her head as she struggled for air. She’d read about asphyxiation on an ill-advised Google search late one night. Apparently, it felt like your lungs were burning, and then like you were falling asleep. That was all.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispers to her father. ‘We’ve got almost nothing, haven’t we?’

  ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘I know. But will you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘One thing I learnt in prison was the power of the mind. To idle. I spent almost all of the first year in my Category A prison in solitary – voluntarily. And I thought about all sorts. That’s when God came to me.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Next time you’re … whatever. Dancing. In the shower, or reading in bed …’

  ‘I don’t dance any more,’ she says.

  ‘What, not even …? I thought you’d always dance. Tendus by the kettle,’ he says with a smile in his voice.

  She feels her heart twist in pleasure. That’s right. He had learnt all of the ballet lingo when she had been learning. ‘Fondu, to melt,’ he had said proudly one evening when she got in. ‘Frappé, to strike.’

  ‘When the kettle boils, while you’re driving, cooking, will you just think about this man?’ he says. ‘In those quiet moments. You might find you remember something about him.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  ‘Trust me. Your mind will start to throw things at you. Anyway, is that everything the computer said?’

  Izzy looks out across the fields. The landscape is completely different. Where previously it was green, it’s now yellow, like a desert. The grass is crunchy and parched underneath her flip-flops.

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Can you find more – like, why they didn’t charge him?’

  ‘I don’t know, I only had two minutes. I mean, it’s Nick’s –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ her father says, not dismissively, but sincerely.

  He has no connection to Nick. They have never met. Not shared a Sunday dinner together or played a game of tennis, toasted each other at Christmas … all of the things Izzy has done with her own in-laws, and missed seeing the inverse of with Nick. It is another thing she doesn’t have, she supposes. Will never have, probably.

  ‘I don’t know his password, otherwise I could look when he’s out. I can only use it if he’s in and leaves it unlocked.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Maybe we could speak to Marcus, instead,’ she says.

  ‘Are you serious?’ her father says immediately. ‘He’ll be rough as houses.’

  ‘He might know something.’

  ‘Who do you think the threats are from?’ her father shoots back, quick as a flash.

  Of course. The texts aren’t from her father, or someone warning her off her father. They might be from Marcus himself. Whether or not he murdered her mother, he knows something about it: he knows who did. He might be threatening her. Goosebumps appear over her bare legs and she turns around, looking at the deserted field. It’s like a wasteland. Blond grasses, pale blue skies. Nobody around.

  Marcus wants her to stop.

  And he’s a criminal.

  His politeness and his well-cut suits take on a sinister tone in her mind. What was her mother involved with? She was in too deep, in whatever it was, and … she didn’t survive.

  Somebody had been in Izzy’s kitchen. Busted the lock. Threatened her by text.

  What next?

  60

  Memories, unknown time frame

  Izzy

  A blond man ordered a lasagne from Izzy in the restaurant. She was waitressing that night. She was sixteen, seventeen maybe. Her skirt was tight across her stomach. She was worried about weight gain. Hoped it was just muscle.

  He ordered a lasagne. ‘And don’t put the tomato on the top,’ he added.

  ‘Not a fan?’ she said wryly, finding a strange thrill in transacting with an adult in this way. That was right: she wasn’t yet with Pip. It must have been 1998 at the latest.

  ‘Horrible, wet things,’ he said.

  That was all. The memory of taking him the lasagne, once it was cooked, must surely exist, somewhere in her mind, but she can’t access it; can’t grasp it.

  They had a singer in the restaurant. She lasted two nights. Nobody liked it; people couldn’t hear conversation over it, and the microphone kept squeaking. It was amateur-sounding, Izzy told her mother coldly. She can’t remember why she was in a bad mood that evening, but she was. Her father had said nobody would like it, but her mother hadn’t listened, booking her anyway, talking about needing to diversify.

  ‘Pretty loud,’ Marcus said to her mother.

  She heard him in a break in the music. Her mother nodded, looking tense.

  Marcus was the only person left in the restaurant.

  ‘Go on home,’ her mother had said, waving Izzy away, even though the tables needed wiping, the dishes washing.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, mopping up around Marcus.

  He was a tidy sort of person. His clothes were precise: a suit with neat creases down the front like they’d been freshly pinched into place, immaculate, shiny shoes. He had, too, a neat way of sitting, with his feet looped behind the step of the stool, his wallet exactly square on the bar.

  ‘Your mum says you do ballet,’ Marcus said to her, and she’d nodded.

  Her mother had reiterated it, then. ‘Really, Iz, go, you’re up early,’ she’d said.

  ‘I want to keep busy,’ Izzy had said.

  It wasn’t long after Oliver had died. That’s right. She remembers.

  ‘Her boyfriend’s brother died,’ her mother said quietly to Marcus.

  ‘His name was Oliver,’ Izzy said.

  ‘Oliver what?’ Marcus had asked, and she had liked that: that Oliver was a full, rounded person to him.

  ‘Eason,’ she said. ‘His
name was Oliver Eason.’

  Izzy had left then. She doesn’t remember where she was going. The context surrounding the memory disappears like smoke.

  ‘These are great,’ her father says to her on the phone a few days later. ‘Keep thinking.’

  ‘They’re meaningless.’

  ‘Keep thinking. Drugs rings never operate in isolation. There’s always a chain. Think who he spoke to.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  Later, in the shower, she closes her eyes and tries to think, but no more memories will come.

  61

  Nick issues an invitation to the cinema by text the following Saturday. Tomorrow? he writes. Your pick.

  A second later: And your pic ’n’ mix x

  Izzy flushes with pleasure as she scrapes a leftover roast dinner into the bin. ‘Flirting with the old ball and chain?’ Chris says wryly, looking over her shoulder.

  Love to, she responds to Nick, ignoring Chris, and appreciating the normality of it all the same in the chaos that is investigating her mother’s murder, and not yet knowing if her father is innocent.

  The next day, she spends all afternoon getting ready, just like she used to, in the early days of their relationship. She takes a long, oily bath which smells of lavender. She blowdries her hair properly, so it’s bouncy and straight. Yes, this is right, she thinks, as she applies her mascara in their bedroom. She has missed this. A date with her husband. Banter with her cousin. Just mundane, ordinary things. Looking forward to wearing a black, well-cut blazer, dark eyeliner. Looking forward to pic ’n’ mix and holding hands in the dark.

  ‘Two secs,’ Nick says when she arrives downstairs holding a glittery bag. ‘Hot stuff,’ he says, glancing briefly at her, then opens his laptop.

  He types his password in front of her. She catches the first six digits:

  IS@BEL

  ‘Right, just …’ Nick says, navigating to something and typing. He looks at her. ‘Done,’ he says. He closes the laptop.

  The words leap out of Izzy’s mouth before she can really consider them. No, not the words: the lies. ‘That didn’t send,’ she says. ‘You logged off before the sent bar finished.’

  ‘Did I?’ Nick opens the laptop again, and types.

  She watches carefully, afraid to even blink.

  IS@BELLEENGL1SH^

  There’s a mother in the movie that they watch. She is exactly Izzy’s type: reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. An artfully draped, expensive-looking top. She spends the film making roast dinners for other people and worrying about them.

  As Izzy watches her, she thinks of the mother she misses. Not her own mother, exactly, but some maternal emblem. Somebody to tell about house purchases and arguments with Nick. Not everybody has this, she reminds herself. She is just fine. Fine, she thinks, as she tries not to wipe her eyes, so that Nick won’t notice.

  How could her mother get involved with drugs? How could she risk everything – risk leaving Izzy – for that? Her mother was capable, firm, in charge. So sometimes she expected too much. She worked too long hours at the restaurant. But she was good. Wasn’t she?

  But then perhaps her mother was trying to solve a problem. A problem she had caused: debt. She wanted to give Izzy the things that she deserved. The cash in the envelope for the ballet audition. Not saved up, as Izzy had presumed, but dirty money, passed to her. Her mother had good intentions, maybe.

  Izzy remembers her happy, softer mother now. When life parted just enough to let her in. She’d cook Izzy steaks, home-made chips salted with garlic, tenderstem broccoli. She’d ask her about her ballet class and about Pip. ‘Finish it all,’ she’d say, nodding to the steak. ‘I made it specially.’

  Later, Nick takes her to bed, just the way he used to.

  The password is almost forgotten by the time they are entwined together, their heads on her pillow, eyes closed. But, on the cusp of sleep, Izzy recites it again to herself, so that she doesn’t forget it.

  62

  Monday rolls around and Izzy pretends everything is normal, going to the quiz with Chris even though … even though what? Even though she and her father are on the brink of something, she supposes. Even though she is waiting to illegally log on to a police computer. Even though she doesn’t care about any of this stuff, except finding out the answers.

  Halfway through the music round, she says it. ‘I wanted to ask you something. About Dad.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  Britney Spears blares out over the sound system and, to her surprise, Chris puts his pen down and walks out, gesturing for her to join him.

  It’s warm, but the beer garden is empty. The early days of the heatwave, when everybody was barbecuing and drinking outside, are over. Now, it is just life, in all its inconvenience. People are irritated that they can’t water their gardens or run a bath. That strips of road are melting, causing roadworks. That trains don’t run on time and nobody can sleep during the warm nights. The promised rain still hasn’t come. It’s moving later and later, like a delayed train that will eventually be cancelled.

  She sits at a picnic table, under a Carling parasol, and looks in at the quizzers.

  ‘We’ll lose if you’re not quick,’ Chris says lightly, kicking the side of the bench. He stands, looking at her, hands on his hips. ‘What do you want to know?’

  She takes a deep breath. How can she explain it all to him? The whole journey? All of her digging in the bank statements? That they are – she just knows it – on the cusp of figuring it all out?

  She rolls up the sleeves of her denim jacket and lets the evening sun warm her wrists.

  ‘Come on, English. Left my Coke and my phone in there,’ he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  ‘Do you remember a man at the restaurant called Marcus? He was a regular.’

  ‘No … I don’t think so.’

  ‘He had white-blond hair.’

  ‘Oh, yeah – I do remember him!’

  ‘Well, he got arrested for dealing drugs.’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘And Mum was … Well, there’s evidence she was laundering money through the restaurant.’

  Something in Chris’s expression closes down. ‘Laundering.’

  ‘Yes. Some things inflated. Some people taken off the books – black salaries.’

  ‘Who’s told you this?’

  She looks up at Chris. The sun is behind him, his face is in shadow. He’s moving the gravel with the toe of his trainer, steadfastly not looking at her.

  ‘I’ve worked it out myself.’

  ‘Worked what out?’

  ‘Well … that. There was all this extra money in the business.’

  ‘She was working hard,’ Chris says shortly. ‘She extended the licence.’

  ‘No, but she …’

  ‘When was the drugs conviction?’

  ‘July 2002. But he wasn’t convicted.’

  ‘Right. Three years after. Hardly relevant, then.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Your father murdered her, Izzy,’ Chris says, sitting down gently next to her and taking her hand, which she withdraws. ‘I’m so sorry, but he did.’

  ‘He didn’t. I really think he didn’t. I think there’s been a miscarriage of justice.’

  Chris says nothing, shaking his head, almost to himself. Izzy thinks about the newspaper clipping and the threatening text, about the people she suspected: her grandparents, her uncle, her cousin. And all along it was somebody else. Somebody involved with a dark world Izzy hadn’t even considered. Drugs. Money laundering.

  ‘You need to forget this, Izzy,’ Chris says.

  ‘Why are you being so short with me?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Izzy thinks of Tony’s behaviour, coming into the restaurant in the night, and the wine rack having been moved. ‘Did your dad know about the money?’

  Chris’s next sentence tells Izzy everything she ne
eds to know. ‘No, he didn’t know about the money,’ he says. The emphasis is placed upon the word before he has consciously realized it.

  ‘He was in the basement, near the safe, acting … strangely,’ Izzy says.

  Chris says nothing, evidently weighing it up. ‘Okay,’ he says eventually. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay what?’

  ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with your mother’s murder.’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘Dad … he tried to get me to help him get into that safe.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Don’t freak out.’

  Izzy says nothing, making no promises.

  ‘Something happened between my dad and … and your mum.’

  The air seems to still around them. The noise inside the pub retreats stage left and all Izzy can hear are her own thoughts.

  ‘It was nothing to do with what happened … what happened to her. Though maybe it motivated your dad, I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean – what happened?’

  ‘They slept together.’

  A palm tree rustles in the distance. Her mother. Her fearless, outgoing, strong mother. Sleeping with her husband’s brother.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He told me. He’s been trying to get into the safe because …’ Chris puffs air into his cheeks. ‘She told him she kept a second phone in there. They’d been using it to communicate. And he knew you’d started to look into it. He panicked. He knew the police wouldn’t check behind the wine rack, but he thought you might. He checked it to make sure it was locked. No key.’

  ‘A second phone?’

  ‘I know. He doesn’t know why she had it. But he used it to – I think it was … I think it was a mistake, a one-off, but he used it to text her on. She kept it in the safe, and he was worried everyone would find out. And see his messages to her … which were, I think, a bit forceful.’