I Know What I Saw

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I Know What I Saw Page 1

by S K Sharp




  S. K. Sharp

  * * *

  I KNOW WHAT I SAW

  Contents

  1 Saturday 1st February 2020

  2 Saturday 8th June 1985

  3 Sunday 9th June 1985

  4 Saturday 1st February 2020

  5 Monday 10th June 1985

  6 Saturday 1st February 2020

  7 Sunday 2nd February 2020

  8 Monday 3rd to Wednesday 5th February 2020

  9 Sunday 9th June 1985, 10.15 p.m.

  10 Thursday 6th February 2020

  11 Friday 7th February 2020

  12 Saturday 8th February 2020

  13 Monday 10th June 1985

  14 Saturday 8th February 2020

  15 Saturday 8th to Tuesday 11th February 2020

  16 Tuesday 11th February 2020

  17 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 9.10 a.m.

  18 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 11.30 p.m.

  19 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 2.30 p.m.

  20 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 8.00 p.m.

  21 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 9.30 p.m.

  22 Wednesday 12th February 2020, 9.40 p.m.

  23 Friday 14th February 2020

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  S. K. Sharp is the pseudonym for Stephen Deas. Stephen is the author of over twenty works of sci-fi and fantasy. He lives in the South East of England with his wife and two children.

  For all the people we can’t forget

  Imagine a heart ready to burst with joy. Christmas mornings as a child, passing your final exams, the thrill of a first kiss – all that and more. Imagine being able to reach and find those glorious moments whenever you want, the feelings fresh and intense, undiminished by time. Imagine sinking into them when the world grows heavy, always there whenever you call. If I describe my perfect memory to you like this, does it sound like a gift? Something precious, even something to envy?

  I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. As a child, blissfully ignorant that I was different from anyone else, steadily more aware through my teens of how it made me special. It did feel like a gift back then, the way I could summon any moment of my life and live it again, fresh and bright and with nothing faded. Tests and exams were easy. I could remember – can remember, even now – everything my teachers said in the classroom.

  And then boys. The day I first saw Declan. The look in his eye, the first words he ever spoke to me, the first time we kissed; that first summer when we discovered each other, the sense of a love that went far beyond anything I’ll find again. Even now, after a bad day, I can lie awake and relive those memories and it’s all as vivid as ever: the colour and the joy, the anticipation, the love that brings tears to my eyes. My mind is wired differently from yours. The doctors have a name for it and there are only a handful of people in the world who live their lives as I do.

  But a blessing?

  Imagine the moments that broke your heart and crushed you flat. A loss, a humiliation, a betrayal. Imagine every slight, every rejection, every disappointment, all kept polished for safe keeping in a little chest inside you. Imagine the things you did and wish you hadn’t; every word spoken or received in anger; every regret as fresh as the moment it was made. Imagine every mistake and all the words never said that might have changed your life. Imagine them forever lurking, never knowing when they might steal out and take you.

  A gift?

  They say that time heals, but for me it festers. Where your scars fade, mine stay raw. On good days, my memory will take me to places that others can only dream of finding. On bad days, it rips the soul from my chest and shreds it in front of me.

  Right now …?

  Right now, the phone is ringing. My hand hovers over the receiver. Whatever happens next, I will remember its every detail for the rest of my life.

  I close my eyes and force myself to breathe.

  It’s been a long, long day and I have a sense that something terrible is coming.

  1

  Saturday 1st February 2020

  I suppose it’s a cliché for someone with a perfect memory that I work in the British Library archives, but there’s a truth in that, too: most archivists do have good memories. I’ve worked here for ten years, ever since I came back from America. I like it because it’s a quiet place where everyone does their own thing and keeps to themselves. Today being a Saturday, I have the office to myself and so I have the radio on, tuned to Absolute 80s, the music of my youth.

  It’s 3.17 in the afternoon and I’m humming to ‘Eye of the Tiger’ when the phone rings. I pick it up, expecting to hear Joy from reception asking if I want to go out for a drink after work; but the voice on the other end is deep and male.

  ‘Mrs Nicola Robbins?’

  Robbins? I roll the name around my tongue, wondering what to do with it. No one’s called me Robbins for two decades.

  ‘Walker,’ I say at last. ‘Nicola Walker. Mr Robbins and I separated twenty-five years ago.’ This is probably some telemarketing nonsense, so why do I feel the need to explain myself? Yet I do.

  ‘Mrs … sorry, Walker. I’m Detective Sergeant Jason Scott. I’m with the London Metropolitan Police, Wordsworth Park.’

  Another jolt from the past. Wordsworth Park is where I grew up. Where Mum still lives with that arsehole Dave Crane who used to be Dad’s best friend. It’s just another suburb of London now, stuck at the end of the Metropolitan Line between Harrow and Pinner, but when I was young it was the sort of place where everyone still knew their neighbours.

  My thoughts race ahead: Has something happened? Is Mum in hospital?

  The question catches in my throat. All that comes out is silence.

  Dave? The next thought is gleeful. Could it be Dave?

  ‘I’m sorry to have to ask this, Mrs Walker, but … is it correct that you were previously married to a Mr Declan Robbins?’

  ‘Declan? Yes. And it’s Ms Walker.’

  ‘Sorry. Ms Walker.’

  ‘What was your name again?’ I don’t need to ask, not really. It’s right there in my head, every word of the conversation between us. I’m just stalling.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Jason Scott, Ms Walker.’

  I knew a Jason at primary school. He was nice enough, kept himself to himself and didn’t bother people; had a handful of friends but not a crowd. He was quiet and gentle. Jason Scott? I worked with a David Scott a few years ago. Brisk, business-like, kept things going, always moving but with a warmth to him. Someone you could talk to.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you at work, but Mr Robbins has asked to speak with you. Is that OK?’

  Twenty-five years apart and Declan’s name still sends a chill through me. A surge of longing and regret and a dull stab of bitterness. That’s the thing: all it takes is a name or a sound and I’m spiralling back to some stupid moment that anybody else would have forgotten decades ago.

  ‘Yes …’ The truth is: I don’t know. I haven’t talked to Declan for—

  ‘Nix?’ And there he is: Declan, sounding exactly as I remember him. ‘Nix? Are you there?’

  Nix? How long since anyone called me Nix? Declan went back to calling me Nicola after the divorce, always with an edge of ice that tried, and failed, to hide the hurt.

  Anger bristles. As if it was my fault that he was seeing another woman …

  ‘Hello, Declan. What do you want?’ The last time we spoke was a decade ago and now here he is, stirring everything up, rattling the bones of memories kept closeted for twenty-five years.

  ‘Bloody hell, Nix. How long has it been?’

  I could tell him it’s been nine years, three months and seventeen days since we last spoke. I was drunk and morose. I’d just come b
ack from America. I was wearing my charcoal cardigan, the one with the crocheted belt. It was three days after I’d had my hair cut, an inch too short, and the hairdresser had given me a discount after I insisted on speaking to her manager, a lady named Grace. All these details are as vivid as yesterday. That night, I called Declan and tried to tell him I was sorry. I’m not entirely sure exactly what I said – as I found out when I was seventeen, drinking too much affects my memory like it does anyone else – but I do remember his reply, cold and bitter. Go to hell, Nicola. Don’t call me again.

  ‘A long time,’ I say.

  ‘I … I need your help.’ He doesn’t sound bitter or cold today, only scared.

  ‘My help?’ I’m an archivist. The only people who ever need my help are academics and journalists writing local-history pieces.

  ‘I’ve been arrested.’

  All I can think is that he’s been caught speeding or something like that. The idea of Declan doing anything serious makes me want to laugh.

  ‘Nix, it’s …’ There’s a long pause, then: ‘Did you see the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Wordsworth Park. Nix, they found my dad.’

  For the second time in as many minutes, I don’t know what to say. Arthur Robbins vanished on Sunday 9th June 1985, on the night of his fiftieth birthday party in the Mary Shelley. The police search went on for weeks. You don’t need a special memory to remember that, not if you grew up there. It was the talk of the neighbourhood for months.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You remember? The night we—’

  ‘Declan, what’s going on?’ I remember the police were at my house when I got home that night, already looking for Arthur. Good riddance to bad rubbish was Dad’s judgement, which I would have thought odd right up until that night, because everybody loved Arty Robbins, pillar of the community.

  Not me, though. I was glad when he disappeared.

  ‘Nix, they think I did it.’

  Declan’s words have a terrible finality about them.

  ‘Declan?’

  ‘They’re going to charge me with murder. With murdering my own dad.’ I hear the fear in him now, naked and strong. Then his words start frothing and coming apart. ‘But you know I couldn’t have done that. You know …’

  I feel the lump in my throat. He’s right: the Declan I remember couldn’t hurt a fly.

  ‘They’ve got something.’

  I hear my own breath hiss down the line. ‘What does that mean? What something? What are you—’

  ‘Nix, I need you to—’

  ‘No, Declan,’ I snap. ‘What you need is a solicitor. You can’t just—’

  There’s a click. An instant later, Declan’s voice changes back into Detective Sergeant Jason Scott.

  ‘Mrs Robbins?’

  ‘Still Walker,’ I correct him. ‘Ms Walker.’ It buys me time to shake away the memories. The monsters in my head haven’t had a chance to get their bearings, but they’ll come. Tonight’s going to be hell.

  ‘Ms Walker, your ex-husband is currently helping us with our enquiries. We’re attempting to establish who was at the Mary Shelley public house on the evening of 9th June 1985. Mr Robbins claims you can vouch for his movements that evening until around midnight. Would that be correct?’ He sounds amused.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I can.’

  ‘And you’re sure of that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ms Walker, thirty-five years is—’

  ‘I remember it clearly,’ I say.

  A long sigh crackles down the phone. Then: ‘In that case, you’d better come in and give a statement.’ Now he sounds bored and irritated, like this is all some prank at his expense. I wonder how old he is, this Detective Sergeant Jason Scott. I’d like to tell him how I can remember what the weather was like on the day he was born, or something like that. I probably can, too.

  ‘Ms Walker?’

  I take a deep breath. What I’m about to say is both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world. ‘I can head over right now, if you like.’ Because if I’m going to do this then I want it over quickly. I want to get back to my quiet, uneventful life.

  ‘Wordsworth Park High Street.’ Detective Scott sounds anything but enthused. ‘Turn right out of the station and—’

  ‘I know where it is, Detective Scott. I used to live there.’

  I’m supposed to be at work until five, but I leave early. It’s quiet and I don’t think anyone will notice. I reach Wordsworth Park an hour later – an easy walk to Euston Square and then nine stops on the Underground, just like it’s always been. Instinct makes me turn left out of the station, towards the park and what used to be home; straight away, a memory jumps me. I’m seven years old. We’re on our way back from the Science Museum, the first time I’ve been into London with Mum and Dad. My feet are sore and my legs are tired and my back hurts and I’m whining at Mum: Do we have to walk all the way home now? It’s barely ten minutes through the back of the park to Byron Road but I can literally feel the ache in my seven-year-old feet. The High Street ends in a wall of trees behind a wrought-iron fence and a gate, the entrance into the woods at the back of the park, a narrow track leading through …

  Only it doesn’t, not any more, because now I’m sixteen, walking home from school with my best friend, Kat. The trees have gone from one side of the gate, cut down to make way for the new Parklands Youth Centre. I feel a glow inside, hot butterflies in my stomach, the anticipation of seeing Dec somewhere we don’t have to pretend there’s nothing going on between us. It’s early April and we’ve just discovered each other and only Kat knows, and I want to see him again so much and—

  I stop, confused, jerked back to the present by a man who knocks into me, mutters a reluctant apology and walks on. In the here and now, Parklands has gone, a boarded-up building site in its place. The trees on the other side of the gate have become a car park. The gate has gone, too, and the railings, the muddy track transformed into a paved cycle path.

  The police station, when I reach it, has the same carved-stone facade that I remember, the familiar solid doors of age-blackened Victorian wood. I go inside and give my name to the sergeant behind the desk. A policewoman shows me to an interview room, offers me coffee and then leaves. When I look round the room, I see the cameras in the ceiling and a recorder on the wall. I feel a lurch in my stomach. I’ve never been in a room like this and yet it’s oddly familiar from all the police series I used to watch on TV: The Bill and Line of Duty, and so on. It’s a place where bad things happen.

  I could visit Mum after I’ve given my statement. She’s only ten minutes away, but as soon as I think it, I know that I won’t. It’s never been the same since Dad died and she shacked up with ‘Uncle’ Dave. It’s the pretence that gets me – the pretence that nothing was going on between them long before. I’ll never know what it cost Dad to keep on as though nothing had happened; but that was how he was, the sort of man who’d do anything for his family.

  A man in plain clothes enters, carrying two mugs of coffee. He looks me over with practised eyes, assessing me, my socio-economic status, my body language, trying to work out how to get whatever it is that he wants from me. I try to read him back and decide he’s annoyed and thinks this is a waste of his time. He’s thinking he should be at home with his wife and kids, because how can anyone remember anything useful from so long ago?

  ‘Detective Sergeant Scott?’ I get up before he has a chance to sit down. He puts the coffees on the table and we shake hands. His grip is firm.

  ‘Ms Walker?’

  I glance at the recorder. ‘Are you taping this?’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down, Ms Walker.’

  It’s almost a surprise when I realise that I’m here to defend Declan as much as I’m here to tell the story of that night. I’m not sure why, but I think Detective Scott sees it, too. He must know that Declan and I separated two decades ago, and that I was the one who walked out. Is he wondering wh
y I’m here, why I still care, what I’m trying to hide?

  What am I trying to hide? That I still loved him when I left him? But I already know that. If I’m honest with myself, I never stopped – not because I don’t want to but because I can’t; because every feeling I ever had for Declan is still as vivid inside me as the day it was made. I can’t forget what it was like to be in love with him and I can’t forget how it felt to be betrayed. Although maybe that is what I’m trying to hide, because I know I’ll never be able to explain it.

  ‘It’s a formality, really,’ says Detective Scott. ‘We’re trying to put together a picture of Mr Robbins’ movements on the night of 9th June 1985. Thank you for coming in so promptly, by the way. It’s always helpful if we can keep things moving along.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ I say.

  Detective Scott pointedly switches on the recorder. ‘Could you state your name for the record, please?’

  ‘Ms Nicola Walker.’

  ‘And your address?’

  I give him my address in Farringdon. It’s not a cheap place to live. I see a slight shift in his face as he recognises this.

  ‘Conducting this interview: Detective Sergeant Jason Scott. Ms Walker, can you confirm that you understand you’ve been asked here to give a witness statement concerning events in and around Wordsworth Park and the Mary Shelley public house on the night of Sunday 9th June 1985?’

  ‘Yes … if that’s what you want.’

  ‘And, Ms Walker, can you confirm that you’re here of your own volition?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I’m now informing you that this is a witness interview and that you’re not under police caution but that you nevertheless have a legal right to representation if you want it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And are you content to waive your right to representation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. Ms Walker, did you know Arthur Robbins?’

 

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