I Know What I Saw

by S K Sharp

  Almost everyone.

  I try googling him but there isn’t anything about Arty Robbins on the Internet from when he was alive because he existed before all of that. No social media, no website, no Rightmove page for Robbins’ Properties, which long ago changed its name to something bland and forgettable. All I find, as I sit on the bus, is what I already know: human remains discovered by workmen demolishing the old Youth Centre in Wordsworth Park, confirmed as being Arthur Robbins, missing since June 1985; a murder inquiry launched and a man taken into custody.

  Declan.

  I suppose, in a way, the Internet has made my own gift available to everyone. You don’t need a perfect memory – facts, history, it’s all there if you want it, right up to a record of your whole life, kept in words and images and sounds on social media, without the baggage of feelings.

  Off the record, Ms Walker, he did do it. Detective Scott’s words circle like an angry shark in my head, refusing to let me go.

  On the Friday before the party at the Shelley, they finished digging the pit for the Parklands foundations. On the next Monday morning, they filled it with concrete. A hundred people saw Arty Robbins at the Shelley. It had to be that night then – whatever happened to him – between some time after ten-thirty and whatever time it was the next morning when the first workmen arrived to fill the hole. When Kat and I stopped to watch on the way to school, my thoughts were all over the place. Certainly not on what those workmen were doing. When I think of it now, it makes me shiver. They had no idea, of course, but still …

  At home, I sit on my bed with my cat, Chairman, purring on my lap, the two of us staring at the photograph of me and Declan and Kat, which Kat’s mum took that night at the Shelley. We’ll have some scritch-and-snuggle time and watch something trashy. I’ll probably cry a bit and spend tomorrow feeling sorry for myself. And then I’ll go back to life-as-usual and all of this will be more memories. I’ve done my part. I’ve given Declan his alibi. I’m glad I could help him. I owe him that. I owe myself that, but Declan and I separated twenty-four years, five months and one day ago – and, no, I’m not counting, I’m really not, I just can’t forget even if I wanted to; and now the same gift of memory that tore us apart is what’s dragging us back together.

  Maybe I’ll go away for a few days. Some bed-and-breakfast, a place to clear my head. Or maybe it’s time I started looking for a friend for Chairman. I know cats are supposed to be solitary animals, but Chairman is a Norwegian Forest cat, and Wegies like company.

  The words on the screen blur. I force myself to breathe. In and pause. Out and pause. I can probably expect a week of nightmares and flashbacks until I force the memories back into the musty cupboards where they belong. And then everything will go back to normal. Everything will go back to the way it was, as simple as that.

  Except it isn’t that simple.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and dive into the past, to the places that always save me: to standing in my window, looking across the street and seeing Declan looking back; to a lazy summer afternoon beside a river; to the rustle of his feet on the carpet and the smell of him: sweat and cigarette smoke and petrol; to feeling him climb into bed beside me, soothing me back to sleep.

  That. That’s what I threw away.

  I still love him. Love him and hate him and miss him, because I can’t forget and I can’t forgive. There’s no pretending otherwise, and nothing I can do to make the feelings go away. I’ve been trying for twenty-five years but he still haunts me.

  Will he call when they let him go? They have to let him go. He was with me. By the time I left, his dad was already missing.

  Off the record, Ms Walker, he did do it.

  I barely knew Arty Robbins. It’s none of my business what happened to him. Everyone else missed him, but I didn’t, and I don’t think Declan ever did, either.

  So here I am, thinking of the past, of the present and of the memories I carry inside me, the good and the bad.

  My phone rings. 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. I hesitate and almost don’t answer. When I do, it’s a woman’s voice, a stranger.

  ‘Hi. My name’s Angela Watson. I work for—’

  ‘I know who you are. You’re Declan’s solicitor.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sounds surprised. ‘Ms Walker, Mr Robbins has instructed me to … to pass on the news. I’m sorry, but it isn’t good, I’m afraid. The Crown Prosecution Service has decided the evidence merits prosecution. They’re charging Mr Robbins with the murder of his father.’

  7

  Sunday 2nd February 2020

  It’s a miserable afternoon. I didn’t sleep well last night. I’ve been going over in my head everything I told Detective Scott, wondering whether I’ve said the right thing. That’s what you do, isn’t it, when it’s too late to change anything? It’s what I do, anyway. Over and over because I remember it so perfectly. I didn’t tell him everything, of course. I suppose Detective Scott would say it was up to him to decide what was important, but you have to draw the line somewhere, don’t you?

  That’s my Sunday; that and searching the Internet for everything I can find about the body discovered in Wordsworth Park; and thinking endlessly about the years Declan and I were together, which is why I’m lying on my bed still in my dressing gown with Chairman curled up at my feet when my phone rings again.

  ‘Nicky?’

  ‘Kat!’

  ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. I was out when you called and then, well, you know how it is. I tried later, but—’

  ‘My phone was off.’ I don’t know why I feel I have to apologise.

  ‘You sounded … upset. Is everything OK?’

  Everything is very far from OK. ‘I don’t know where to start. I spent yesterday afternoon talking to the police. Kat, it’s—’

  ‘Oh my God, the police?’ I hear the hesitation as her best-friend radar kicks in. ‘What happened? God, are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘It’s … a bit of a long story. Actually, I wouldn’t mind some company.’

  Kat barks a laugh. ‘Come over! It’s just me and a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge at the moment. Gary won’t be home until seven.’

  ‘He’s working? On a Sunday?’

  I can positively hear her eye-roll. ‘It’s this deal he’s got in Docklands. “Massive and worth a fortune and, blah-blah, make us rich; sorry, Babe” – usual story.’

  I tell her I’ll be right over. All I’m doing at home is feeling sorry for myself, and I’ve been here enough times to know that wallowing is best done in company. I tug on a pair of jeans and root through my old collection of faded band T-shirts, stuff that belongs to a time before the different trajectories of our lives pulled Kat and me apart. I pick the white New Order shirt, thirty years old. One of Kat’s other cousins did some catering work for Peter Gabriel, back when I was eighteen; New Order came to visit, and she knew I was a fan, so she got them to sign a shirt for me. The whole band. I remember how it felt when she gave it to me, like she was the most awesome friend in the world.

  By the time I’m dressed, I already feel a little better. I head out like I’m nineteen again, ‘Blue Monday’ on my headphones. Unfamiliar streets roll past the window as I ride the bus to Kat’s East London flat, leaving me adrift in time. I’m nineteen and I’m twenty-five and I’m all the ages in between – those precious years with Declan when life was a joy and I was happy; so much better than fifty-one, with the weight of a lifetime and all its mistakes on my shoulders. I feel taller and more alive. I feel as though I could walk home after a night of drinks and clubbing and not be a cripple in the morning. I can’t, of course, but I enjoy the idea. I have the same thought as I always do when I’m meeting Kat: that we should do this more often, that she’s good for me.

  My hand doesn’t even touch the buzzer before the door flies open and Kat bursts out. S
he grabs me in a crushing hug.

  ‘Nicky, you look fantastic!’ She stares at my T-shirt. ‘Is that from when we went to see them at Wembley?’

  ‘Remember that bloke you were with?’

  ‘I do. Richard. Dick.’ She curls her tongue around the word. ‘Yes. He was a bit.’

  ‘I don’t think New Order was quite his thing.’

  Kat’s dressed the same – jeans and a T-shirt – although a modern fashionable one, not an old rag like mine. She steps back into the hallway and I follow. We were nineteen and Richard the Dick was thirty: one in a string of bad choices Kat made when she wasn’t dumping Gary or taking him back again. I’ll never understand why she stuck with him in the end, but she did. They finally married a year before I left for America, moved out of London while I was gone, bought a house somewhere in Kent and had three lovely kids. The kids grew up – the youngest is in her first year at university – and now Kat has her own flat in Stratford, built for the Olympics and almost brand-new, and that’s where she seems to live, even though they still have the house in Kent. I assumed, when she first told me, that she and Gary had separated, but apparently not. He’s still a jerk and yet they’re still together; and Kat seems happy, so I suppose it doesn’t matter that I don’t understand it. With Kat, sometimes it’s best not to ask.

  ‘So … how’s things?’ We head up the stairs. ‘Gary found this great flat near Canary Wharf. It’s enormous! He wants us to sell the house and move there. He won’t tell me how much it costs but it must be an absolute bomb. Apparently, we can get it for a song if this Docklands thing of his goes through. I’d have to give up this place, though.’ She pouts.

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘Probably. If it’s big enough.’ We flop into the lounge. The Chardonnay is already out and I’ve barely sat down before Kat presses a glass into my hand. ‘I’ll let him tell you about it. He’s quite annoyed with you, actually.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Turns out we were supposed to be going out to dinner tonight. But it’s OK, I’ll make it up to him.’ She winks and moves to sit beside me, legs folded beneath her, and clinks her glass against mine. ‘So … the police. What happened? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I’m not so sure that I am, and I know Kat can see it, but it’s the line I’m sticking to. My voice cracks a little. ‘It wasn’t about me.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Did you know the police arrested your cousin?’

  Kat sits a little more upright. ‘Declan?’

  We’ve been close since we were teenagers. She’s my best friend and I’ve lost count of the times we’ve talked about my memory, what it means to me and what it’s done to me across my life – and I know she’s always tried to understand, but I’m not sure you can, not unless you’ve lived inside my head.

  ‘But, Nicky … Oh my God! Dec? What did he do?’

  ‘I thought … actually, I thought maybe you already knew.’ Kat and Dec were never close, even if they were cousins, and Kat stayed my friend after Declan and I divorced. But still, news travels in families, and last I heard, Gary and Declan still go out for drinks now and then.

  ‘I’ve hardly spoken to him for years. I thought he wasn’t talking to you any more.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘So how?’

  ‘He needed me, Kat. For the first time in twenty-five years, he …’ I have to stop for a moment to swallow the sudden lump in my throat. ‘Do you remember right at the end of O-levels? When Declan’s dad disappeared?’

  ‘Uncle Arty?’ Kat squints as if peering at something really hard. ‘God, how could you forget? He walked out on them, just like his brother walked out on Mum. Only difference was he waited eighteen years to do it. Yes, I remember all right. Mum talked about it for months.’ She shakes her head. ‘God, what a family!’

  ‘The police found his body. A few weeks ago.’

  There’s something else then – some other look that ghosts across Kat’s face. And that’s exactly it: like she’s actually seen a ghost; like all the memories I already have of that night, of that summer, have suddenly sprung to life inside her. When she speaks, her voice is oddly flat.

  ‘So Arty’s dead?’

  A part of me is sitting with her nearly thirty years ago. This is how it feels, sometimes, like I’m living in both the past and present at once. In the past, I’m in a different flat, smaller and cheaper. I’m holding Kat’s hand. She’s crying because, after years of searching, she’s found the father who abandoned her before she was even born, who somehow ended up in Scotland; only he’s been dead for three years and there are no answers to be had. It was 1991, but I remember it as clearly as I see her sitting beside me now.

  ‘There’s more,’ I say, as gently as I can. ‘They found him in Wordsworth Park. He was right there, under our noses all that time. Kat, that night at the Shelley, his fiftieth birthday party – the police think that’s when it happened. They think somebody murdered Arty Robbins that same night.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Kat’s eyes are like saucers. ‘What … they think someone killed him? And they think it was … Declan? Jesus! But why?’

  ‘Declan had them call me. Twenty years since the divorce, ten since I’ve even spoken to him, and there he was, on the end of the phone. He told them I’d be able to remember exactly where he was that night – every detail. I’m his alibi.’ I don’t need to say any more. Kat knows exactly where I was that night.

  ‘Wait. They think someone killed Uncle Arty back in ’85? The same night he disappeared?’

  I nod.

  ‘But you’ve got to be joking! I mean, they can’t be serious. They think Dec killed his own dad? I’m sorry. I mean, that’s horrible but … It’s just … Dec? Presumably you told them how daft that is?’

  ‘It didn’t make any difference. I thought they believed me.’ Oh Christ, I have to pause again before I burst into tears, and I’m not even sure why. ‘I told them he was with me and that the police were already looking for Arty before I went home, so it couldn’t have been Declan and … and it didn’t matter. They’ve gone and charged him anyway! They really think he did it.’

  Kat puts a hand on my shaking arm. ‘You’re taking this pretty hard, aren’t you?’

  I sniff back a sob. ‘I don’t even know why. It’s not like … It’s not fair! I know it’s all in the past, but I know Declan. I know he can’t have done this. I know where he was and I thought I could help him but … If I can’t – if no one even believes me – then what’s the point? I thought that for once it might actually help someone, being able to remember everything whether I want to or not, but no. I just … What’s the point?’

  For a time, we sit in silence. Sometimes Kat opens her mouth as if she might say something, only to think better of it.

  ‘Did they tell you where they found the body?’

  ‘It was on the news. Right there in the park.’

  ‘What? No! So he’s been lying there all this time?’

  ‘You remember they built Parklands that summer? You remember they dug a great big hole in the ground and …’ It’s like I’m there again, the two of us sitting on the swings in the park and kicking our heels. ‘Parklands is all a building site again. They’re knocking it down to build a new leisure centre. It’s in the papers. They found him when they dug up the old foundations. You don’t remember, do you? The pit? They filled it with concrete on the morning after the party. We watched them do it on the way to school.’

  Kat has a far-away look on her face now, a look of wonder, reaching back through the years. ‘Uncle Arty. I remember the police looking for him for weeks. People still talked about it, years after, wondering where he’d gone. And he was dead all that time?’

  I know that look. She’s reaching for something in her head, but she won’t find it; or if she does, it won’t be clear. A connection to some old question in her head that’s never had an answer.

  ‘Uncle Arty,’ she says again, then shakes herself, as if shaking off something s
our.

  I show her the news report I found. ‘He must have been down there when they poured the foundations. You’d think they’d bother to look first, wouldn’t you?’

  Kat looks distracted. ‘I suppose someone covered him up.’

  A flash of light in my head. That’s why the police don’t think it was an accident! Someone buried him, or at least covered him. They had to. Kat’s right, otherwise how did the workmen not see him?

  ‘You don’t suppose he was still alive, do you? When they covered him in concrete?’

  ‘Kat!’

  ‘Sorry.’ She grins, then looks distant again. ‘Nicky, I promise I’m only going to ask this once but … Declan – you don’t think—’

  I cut her off before she can finish that thought. ‘Jesus, Kat! He’s your cousin!’

  ‘I know. But—’

  ‘Kat! No! He couldn’t have. He was with me until past midnight. Then he went back to the party, and I went home and there was a policeman talking to Dad. They were already looking for Arty Robbins.’ I give Kat a side-eye, wondering if she has any memory of the stories we told the next morning.

  ‘Wait! Wasn’t that the night when you and Dec—’

  ‘Yes!’

  A broad smile spreads over her face. ‘God, yes. Mum went mental. I mean, not that she had any reason to because we were all in the park together, right? You, me and Declan, watching the stars or something. That’s what we told her, wasn’t it? Something like that?’

  ‘I don’t think we fooled her for a second.’

  ‘No.’ Kat twiddles her thumbs and whistles and lets her eyes wander across the ceiling. ‘No, she knew all right.’

  At first, I think she’s talking about me and Declan, but no, this is something more personal. And, come to think of it, Kat never did tell me what she and Gary Barclay got up to that night after Declan and I left the party …

  ‘Gary!’ I stare at her. ‘You were going out with him!’

  Kat makes a guilty face and grins.

  ‘You told me you weren’t.’