The Second Wife

by Rebecca Fleet

  After that it gathers pace with relentless speed and subtlety. She sees Dominic again several times, always at a distance, but he is not the only one. The network goes deeper, reaches further than she has thought. She starts to see the same strangers’ faces on the street again and again—background figures who peer at her as if through bulletproof glass, unapproachable. At first she thinks she is imagining it; seeing patterns where there are none, finding similarity in a host of anonymous faces. But deep down she’s aware that this isn’t true.

  Once, she tries looking back steadily—facing one of these men head-on and not letting her gaze drop, even though it brings her heart into her mouth. She tells herself that she will not look away first, but she can’t stick to it. It’s the gap in their knowledge that scares her: the realization from the expression in the man’s eyes that he knows all about her, and that she knows nothing about him. She lets her gaze drift across the street as if she is simply bored, but she knows he isn’t fooled. When she looks back, he’s gone.

  Strange notes appear on her doormat in the mornings; cryptic warnings and badly drawn symbols that she does not understand. She is being sent messages that she can’t interpret, being set up to fail. The first time, she rips the sheet up, tearing it into tiny shreds of paper as she kneels on the carpet by the front door. She thinks that she will feel better afterward, but this small act of defiance achieves nothing. If anything, she starts to panic that somehow they will know, and later that day she finds herself with her hands halfway down the kitchen bin, pressing the shreds of paper deep within the detritus to conceal them. She takes her hands out and stares at them, sees that they are covered with dirt and the slime of rotting food, and for a moment it’s as if she has risen out of her body and is looking down at herself and detachedly reaching the judgment that she must be going mad.

  And then there are the calls. Her phone often rings in the middle of the night, and when she picks it up, there is silence. Always silence, with one exception: an unfamiliar man’s voice, low and vicious. Do it, and you’re dead, it says. She has barely gathered breath to speak when the dialing tone buzzes in her ears.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE LOGS EACH INCIDENT meticulously and relays them to the police station, unsure of how much weight they are given or what picture they are gradually building. These men have never touched her or come near her—rarely even speak to her, save for the odd mumbled comment here and there as they pass by. They are simply letting her know they are there.

  She thinks that it will get easier—that she will grow to cope with this constant sense of surveillance, this continuous hair-trigger alertness that makes her turn around swiftly whenever she hears a sound she cannot place. Slowly, with increasing horror, she realizes that she was mistaken.

  Three weeks in. She shuts herself in the apartment as usual, double-locks the door, pushes a chair up against it. She has a strange sense of foreboding, nauseous and nebulous. Unplugging the landline, she switches her mobile to vibrate. In bed she wraps herself tightly in the duvet and concentrates on her breathing. She watches the numbers click forward through the hours on the digital clock by her bedside, until they blur in front of her eyes and she loses consciousness.

  When she wakes, the numbers say 08:44, and yet the room is completely dark, like the inside of a tomb. She lies there for a full ten minutes waiting for this darkness to lift, seized by a strange feeling of unreality. The apartment is silent, watchful.

  She rises slowly from her bed and walks out onto the landing, feels her way around the walls. It is pitch black in every room. Taking the mobile from the pocket of her dressing gown, she checks the time again, the numbers glowing greenly on the screen. Confusion rises queasily inside her, but something stops her from turning on the light.

  Instead she fumbles her way down to the front door, feels for the keys by instinct in the darkness, and turns them in the locks. The door swings open, and the winter sunlight pours in, hurting her eyes with its force. She steps out onto the pavement. Some realization is brewing inside her, but she does not fully understand until she takes a few steps away and looks back up at the building, and then, with a deepening shiver that passes inwards from her skin to her bones, she sees.

  Someone has been there, to her apartment in the night, while she is sleeping. They have painted every single one of the windows black.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE PROTECTION PROGRAM OFFICER, a woman named Deborah, is waiting for her in the little room. Karen is there, too, giving her a nod of greeting. Over the weeks they have developed something between them, Rachel and this sergeant with the dark wavy hair and the determined eyes. You couldn’t call it a friendship; you wouldn’t want to. But there’s some kind of understanding there.

  “So let’s sum up where we are,” Deborah says. She looks as if she is announcing a death. “We’ve completed the threat assessment, and your case has been classified as a Level 1 which means we believe the threat to your safety to be serious and immediate. The assistant chief constable has approved you to be admitted into the Program. This means we will be making arrangements for your temporary, and subsequently for your permanent relocation, but before we can do so, we need you to sign the Memorandum of Understanding.” She pushes the papers toward Rachel, fans them on the desk. “It’s important that you understand what this means.”

  Dimly, Rachel hears the voice continue, but the words zoom in and out, echoing as if down a long tunnel. She looks down at the papers, the bright white pages stamped by black ink. The words blur and separate, making it hard for her to read them. She catches the odd phrase or line . . . agree not to give or pass on any information which could lead to the disclosure of your new location to anyone, including all friends and family members . . . forbidden to enter within the boundaries of Greater London. Taking it in is impossible.

  Deborah is still talking, her voice loud and steady. “If you sign now, we can go ahead with all preparations for your relocation, and the formation of your new identity,” she says. “If you do not wish to sign, the responsibility for your protection will continue to rest with your investigation team. I would strongly advise . . .”

  The voice fades out again. Rachel looks down at her hands, white and still, the fingernails painted pale pink. The polish is chipping, worn entirely away in patches to reveal the pearly, translucent covering beneath. She cannot remember when she last painted her nails. Slowly, her left hand reaches for the pen. There is a roaring in her head, a pressure that builds and builds. She thinks of Sadie, of all the years of effort and anxiety that finally came to a head on the night that Melanie died. If she went back to that night, she’d feel the same way again. Sitting in the interview room, she’d do the same again.

  She presses down on the paper and writes her name. The handwriting looks shaky and erratic, the writing of a pensioner or a madwoman. Throwing the pen down, she pushes the paper away.

  They come for her at dawn the next morning to take her to the safe house, in a dark blue car with tinted windows. She answers the door to a thickset man, and for a moment, despite his uniform, she finds herself searching his face, wondering if he is on her side She feels her heartbeat quickening and she starts to close the door against him, but as she does so she catches sight of Deborah, peering out of the car behind him, and her body relaxes.

  She leaves the apartment without looking back. The previous night she wandered from room to room, trying to find something she would miss, but it was never really her home in any case. The windows are still darkly streaked with paint, shafts of light worming through in places where she has tried to scratch it away. As the car pulls out of the street, she searches for a word for what she is feeling, and nothing comes. There is only a sense of something breaking off, a string cut somewhere inside her, leaving her strangely weightless and free.

  * * *

  • • •

 
MARCH 7TH. She wakes early, gets dressed and lies there waiting for the taxi to arrive, trying to keep her mind empty. She stares unseeingly through the window all the way across London, letting it flow through her like water. It’s only when they pull up at the rear entrance to the court that she allows herself to focus. The building is boxy and stern, pale brickwork and brushed metal, an industrial parking lot. Low trees are planted at the side walls, rising from compacted soil. She does not know what she has expected, but it is not this modern monstrosity. Slowly, she gets out of the taxi, smoothing down her skirt.

  A rush of blood runs to her head. She blinks, looks up. Long, rectangular windows, flanked by white stone; the imprint of a coat of arms stamped into the brickwork above. She barely has time to register all this, the brief snap of a camera lens freezing it into her brain, before she is inside.

  A man is coming toward her, extending his hand. “Mark Devlin. I’m a representative from the Crown Prosecution Service. We’ll get you through security and sign you in, and then I’ll take you to the private waiting room.” She has been reassured about this countless times. We’ll keep you away from him and his associates, Rachel. You’ll be able to wait in a room on your own before the trial. The first time you see him again will be in court. As if this should make her feel better. She hands her letter to the woman behind the reception desk, who scans it briefly.

  “Name of the principal defendant, please,” she says.

  “Kaspar Kashani.” She says it automatically, closing off from the thought of him. The woman nods and glances at Mark, still standing behind her. “Room five,” she says.

  Deborah is waiting in the private room, dressed in a dark navy suit with her hair pulled back from her face, showing the wrinkles around her temples. She smiles with what looks like relief. “Got here all right?” she asks, ushering Rachel into a seat. On the table in front of her Rachel registers a pile of magazines—bright, gossipy covers, candid celebrity snaps. Deborah sees her gaze, and smiles again. “Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long,” she says, “but it could be an hour or two. This is the CPS’s idea of entertainment, isn’t that right, Mark?” She raises her eyebrows at the man, and he makes some good-natured sound of agreement.

  Rachel looks at the magazines. She can feel the shaking starting deep down inside her, ricocheting through her bones. Her head is swirling. “Thanks,” she says automatically. The lurid colored headlines are starting to jar against her brain. She looks up at the bare wall opposite. Flat, pale yellow, the color of faded buttercups.

  “Try not to worry too much,” she hears Deborah say next to her. “You’re still feeling all right about giving evidence publicly? Just remember . . .” She launches into a familiar spiel, one Rachel has heard several times before. They offered her the possibility, at first, of giving evidence behind a screen, or by video linkup, but it was soon clear that this was not the desired approach. Remember, Rachel, they already know who you are. These measures are often used by witnesses who have come forward secretly, or who don’t want to directly confront the defendant. But Kashani is well aware that you will be giving evidence, so you have little to gain by not being present in the witness box. And then the clincher, delivered in intense monotone. You’re more likely to convince the jury if you’re there in person. They’re more likely to believe you, because it’s harder to tell a lie to someone’s face.

  “Yes,” she says, forcing the word out from the back of her throat, and finding it dry. She reaches for the jug of water and pours herself a glass, draining it in three gulps. “I’m fine.”

  When the call comes, she can see from the clock that almost an hour and a half has passed, but it seems as if the time has been dramatically compressed, folded into a few hot minutes of fear. She stands up. The door swings open ahead, and she steps out into the cool, gray corridor, hearing the sharp knock of her heels against the gleaming floor. She walks slowly up to the courtroom, counting each step. It reminds her of the corridors in an airport terminal; the same antiseptic bareness. She is becoming someone else, someone stronger and calmer, playing the part that will get her through this. The voice inside the court is saying her name. She puts the flat of her hand on to the door and pushes it open.

  The room is smaller than she expected. She has imagined the melodrama of American court shows, sweeping ceilings and huge banked benches, stone columns. This room is compact and hot, packed with props like a film set. She steps into the witness box. To the right of her she sees the judge, bewigged and gowned, his face set and serious. He must be almost seventy, with bushy white eyebrows furrowing his face, lines and wrinkles mapped out across his cheeks. For an insane moment, she wants to laugh. The lights are bright as she stands and looks ahead, out at the jury seated in the opposite bank. Men and women, some of them as young as she is, dressed in suits and jackets, hands folded and expectant. Above, the public gallery, scattered with faces, her vision blurring them into one messy splurge of color.

  She is asked to take the oath, and slowly, as if in a dream, she looks down at the printed card. She reads the words out loud, hearing her voice echo around the courtroom. The truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.

  She finishes and raises her head, looking straight ahead. She knows where Kas will be. Seated to the left, directly behind the lawyers for the prosecution and defense. She does not yet turn her head and look. She can feel him, feel his presence crackling on her skin like lethal electricity.

  Instead she looks at the prosecution lawyer as he stands and moves toward her. Leo Fenton—short and unassuming, with a pointed nose and chestnut-colored hair that covers his scalp smoothly like a polished skullcap. She has expected him to treat her kindly. After all, they are on the same side. But this man’s eyes are sharp and his mouth is set in an unsmiling line, and she’s reminded that in a way she’s on trial, too. There are expectations for her that she needs to meet.

  “Miss Castelle,” he begins, “I’d like you to tell me about how you first became aware of Kaspar Kashani.”

  She has been told that this is how it will begin: setting the scene, easing her in. She clears her throat and begins to speak. She tells him about that first meeting with her and Sadie on the street, the invitation to the club and their subsequent visit. “After that, she went almost every weekend,” she finishes. “I sometimes went with her, but mostly I just came to pick her up.”

  “How did you feel about going to the club?” Leo Fenton asks.

  “I didn’t enjoy it,” Rachel says. “I only ever went because Sadie asked me to.”

  The lawyer nods. “Can you explain why it was that you disliked visiting the club?”

  She pauses for a moment, thinking about this. In reality, there are many reasons; she has never really enjoyed clubbing, and in recent years she has never much enjoyed spending time with Sadie either. But she has sense enough to know that there is one reason that needs to dominate, and after all it isn’t a lie. “Because I disliked Kaspar Kashani,” she says. “I found him unpleasant and frightening, and I didn’t like the fact that my sister seemed so interested in him. I couldn’t really understand why.”

  She does look at Kas then; can’t help her eyes sliding in his direction for a brief instant. He’s staring straight at her, regal looking and exotic in his dark suit, his face unmoving. He looks intensely contemptuous, as if all his energy is being poured into the force of his scorn.

  “I’d like to understand what you observed on your visits to the club,” Leo Fenton says. “What impression you gained of Mr. Kashani and his—business,” he ends with faint distaste.

  She has been over this many times, and she isn’t sure, even now, how much is real and how much is imagined. When she thinks back, she thinks she remembers certain things; swift transactions in dark corners, conversations between Kas and other men who seemed to have intimidation as their currency. One thing she is sure of is that people are frightened of him. So it’s this o
n which she concentrates, describes the changes in their atmosphere and expressions whenever he appeared in the room.

  The lawyer is nodding encouragingly, and no sooner has she finished than he’s speaking again. “I think I understand,” he says. “Would it be fair to say that you always felt that this man had the capacity for serious wrongdoing? Perhaps even for murder?”

  “Objection,” the defense lawyer cuts in, rising to his feet. “The prosecution is leading the witness, Your Honor.”

  The judge glances at them both, then nods. “Please stick to the facts, Mr. Fenton,” he says mildly.

  Leo Fenton unfurls his hands elegantly in acceptance, but leaves a short pause, turning to look at the jury with raised eyebrows, as if asking them to consider what Rachel might have replied. “Very well,” he says. “Let’s talk about the events of twelfth January of this year. You were with your sister, Sadie, I believe, when Kaspar Kashani’s wife fell to her death at Camden Road station?”

  Rachel swallows. “Yes.” That night feels like forever ago now, and it has been so long since she has let it cross her mind except in her dreams.

  “I’d like you to tell me what happened in the immediate aftermath of that event,” Fenton says, and now his voice hardens, letting her know that this is crunch time. This is when she needs to step up to the mark.

  She holds her head up, keeps her voice steady. “My sister was very distressed, and she told me some things about Kaspar Kashani,” she says. “She told me that he had killed two people that she knew of. She called him a murderer.” The word falls harshly, and she sees the impact it has on the jury, the power of it, the way it makes them shift in their seats and glance at one another.

  “Did you believe her?” the lawyer asks.

  Rachel nods. “I was absolutely sure that she was telling the truth.”

  “And why is that?” he presses.