I Know What I Saw

by S K Sharp

  ‘Mum, can you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course, love.’

  ‘Can you do it right now?’

  ‘Nicola, what’s going on?’

  ‘The photographs. They’re really important. Can you pop next door and ask Mrs Clarke if I could borrow them? I made a second set but they … they’ve gone missing.’

  Mum sounds less than impressed but agrees that yes, she can. I ask her to call me and then gnaw on my sandwich, too distracted to taste what I’m eating. The fear is sloughing off, transforming to anger.

  Gary. It has to be Gary! Who else? Gary, and he’s made me scared of my own home.

  No. Think, Nicky Walker! He’s the one who’s scared. He’s scared of those photographs.

  I scan faces as people pass the café window, feeling paranoid in case he’s there, in case he’s following me. Maybe this is a mistake, but this is about me, about something I’ll remember.

  My phone rings, Mum’s name flashing up. ‘Nicola?’

  ‘Mum,’ I breathe, ‘did you find the—’

  ‘I’m sitting with Chloe. She wants me to say thank—’

  ‘The photographs,’ I snap. ‘Have you got the photographs?’

  ‘Yes, love. They’re right in front of me.’

  ‘Mum, I need you to do me another favour. I need you to meet me in town, and I need you to bring them.’

  ‘But, love, they’re not mine. I—’

  ‘Mum! Someone broke into my flat this morning. They were after those pictures. They took them. There’s something in them about who killed Arty Robbins.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Tell Mrs Clarke that it might be dangerous to keep them.’ It’s only as I say it that I realise it might even be true.

  ‘Oh, love … does it have to be today?’

  That’s all Mum has to say? No How are you or Oh my God, how terrible or even What did they take? I don’t think she’s even absorbed what I said. She sounds bewildered.

  ‘Would it be OK if I stay over tonight?’ I ask.

  ‘Tonight?’ She makes it sound like I’m asking her to sacrifice her firstborn. ‘Dave and I are going out.’

  ‘I don’t want to be on my own, OK?’

  Mum grudgingly agrees to leave right away. I choose a pub I know, with a quiet basement. We’ll go through the photos together. I’ll find what Gary Barclay is trying to hide and then I’ll take it to Detective Scott and it’ll all be over.

  Back on the High Street, I can’t shake the idea that Gary is somewhere near, following me. It’s ridiculous, because he’d have to have been following me all morning, ever since I got home, and why on earth would he bother when he already has what he came for? And yet the feeling haunts me, and then another thought comes: what if he’s on his way up to Wordsworth Park right now to get the other set of photographs from Mrs Clarke? What if she really is in danger?

  I dive into another coffee shop. I know where he works, so I do an Internet search for his office and get a number. I call the switchboard and ask for Gary Barclay. They put me through to some secretary, who tells me that Mr Barclay is with clients at the moment.

  ‘But he’s in the office, yes?’

  ‘He’s this moment gone into a meeting. He should be free in fifteen minutes or so. Can I take a name and a number so he can call you back?’

  I should hang up. I’ve got what I want. Gary’s gone back to the office, probably so that he can pretend he never left. He must have just got there, but that’s OK because it means he’s not following me and he’s not on his way to Wordsworth Park, so I know I’m safe, and so are Mum and Mrs Clarke … but I’m scared, and I’m boiling with anger.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Tell him Nicola Walker called. He’s got my number.’

  Stupid. Stupid! I know I’ve made a mistake as soon as it’s out.

  As I reach the station, I see three waiting taxis and slip inside the first. A taxi feels safer. Enclosed. I tell the driver to take me to Princess Street. As we pull away, my phone rings and I almost jump out of my skin.

  ‘Ms Walker?’

  My heart skips a beat. The voice is Dec’s solicitor. ‘Do you know where Declan is?’

  ‘Ah. I was rather hoping to ask you the same. He’s due in court.’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘If he doesn’t show up, there’s really not much I can do. Do you have any means of contacting him?’

  ‘Only his mobile number.’ Which she already has and which is still going straight to voicemail.

  ‘I see. Well, thank you. Ms Walker, if Mr Robbins does happen to get in touch, please ask him to call me. It would really be very helpful if he could make himself known. I can stall, but not for long.’

  I promise to call her back if Dec gets in touch, not that I think he will. Where is he?

  Almost as soon as I hang up, the phone rings again. This number I recognise. Work. I shunt it to voicemail. I don’t want to hear bloody Emily from HR tell me how they’re very sorry but they’ve had to start a disciplinary process. I don’t need that – not today.

  The taxi isn’t making much progress through the traffic. From the window, all I see are red lights and cars and milling people.

  ‘Has there been some sort of accident?’

  The driver laughs. ‘This is normal.’ He flashes a grin into the mirror. ‘You in a hurry?’

  ‘A little.’

  He shakes his head. My phone rings for a third time.

  ‘Nicky?’

  I freeze.

  ‘Hello?’

  It’s Gary. I almost hang up. Calling him seems so stupid now. But if I hang up …

  ‘Look, Kat told me you had a break-in. And about Dec. I’m sorry, Nicky. If there’s anything we can do.’ He pauses. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I know it was you, Gary. I’ve already talked to the police.’ Christ, what am I doing?

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Tension cracks the edge of his voice. Good! Now he knows how it feels.

  ‘You killed him, Gary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You killed Arty Robbins.’

  ‘What the fuck? Why the hell would I kill Declan’s dad? I didn’t even know the guy!’ I hear the ugliness in his voice, the brutal edge I remember from thirty-five years ago, before he started trying to hide what he really was behind that veneer of refinement.

  ‘Because you knew Arty Robbins was the boyfriend Kat was trying to keep a secret, that’s why! Because you knew he was shagging her.’

  There’s a long silence, then, ‘Jesus, Nicola. You’re sick, you know that?’

  The line goes dead. The taxi driver is watching through the rear-view mirror. I catch his eye and he looks away. I’m gasping, panting like I’ve run halfway across London. What have I done?

  18

  Wednesday 12th February 2020, 11.30 p.m.

  Two months after Kat came to see me in America, she called me. She was distraught in a way I’d never heard before. Between the sobs, she told me she was in hospital. She’d had a late miscarriage. What should have been her second son had been born twenty-two weeks early, a stillbirth. I was the first person she told, even before Gary. I was still wrestling with how I felt about being divorced – I suppose I’m still wrestling with it now. I listened to her without really listening, without truly hearing the pain she was in, and then asked what I could do. Nothing, she said. I was in America, after all. It would be silly for me to come all the way back simply for her. She had her mum and Gary, and Gary’s family. She just needed to tell me, that was all. I said the right things, held her hand as best I could down a phone from five thousand miles away. At least, I think I did. I tried to, wrapped up as I was in my own misery. I can’t help thinking, though, that if it had been the other way round, Kat would have been on the next plane. She would have dropped everything to come to me, and she would have stayed until she knew I was going to be OK.

  She was always there for me. I wish I could say the same. And now I’ve told her secret, probably to th
e one person she most wanted not to know. I told it to save a man who, until recently, I hadn’t even spoken to in ten years.

  I reach the pub on Princess Street in time to see Mum go inside. I expect to navigate through the lunchtime rush, but the place is almost empty. I order two coffees and go down to the basement, hoping we’ll have the place to ourselves, but two men are there ahead of us, poring over a script and reading aloud. The language sounds like Shakespeare but I don’t recognise the play.

  Mum goes very still when she sees me. The colour drains out of her like she’s seen a ghost. She gets to her feet. ‘Oh … oh, Nicola, I’m so sorry.’ One hand moves to her half-open mouth as she comes out from behind her table and hugs me for a very long time. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says again. ‘It’s just … When you told me on the phone, it didn’t register. Have you been to the police?’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum.’ It’s not. It’s very far from OK. He came into my flat. He has a key, which means he could come back, and I’ve told Gary I think he’s a murderer.

  I’ll carry the memory with me for the rest of my life. Now and then, when I least expect it, I’ll find myself sprawled on the floor with a dressing gown wrapped around my face, helpless and struggling to breathe, not knowing whether there’s someone standing right over me, about to do something much, much worse.

  ‘I’m not hurt. Just … shaken up,’ I say.

  We sit down and stare at each other. ‘And you didn’t see—’

  ‘No. I didn’t see his face.’

  Mum reaches across the table to take my hand in hers. ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m going to see them later. I wanted to see the photographs first, though. It’s why he was there – to get them.’

  ‘Love, half the people here are dead!’ Mum puts three envelopes on the table. ‘You should really let this go. Let the police do their job.’

  Three envelopes? But there were four sets of negatives.

  She pushes them across the table.

  ‘Is that all of them?’

  ‘Yes, love.’

  I open the picture wallets. Three sets, each wallet in the order they were taken. The first pictures I look at are obviously from before any guests arrived. There’s the Shelley, almost empty, with bunting hanging inside and the tables pushed together in the saloon bar, loaded with plates and cutlery for the evening. There’s a picture of Vincent standing beside the Fifty Years banner, holding up a pint and grinning for all he’s worth; then one of him and Madge, then one of Kat’s mum, then one of Dave, then one of Mum and Mrs Clarke together, all of them in their Mary Shelley aprons. They look happy. Excited, even.

  Except Mum. All I see there is tension.

  I skim forward. The pictures are of the party guests as they arrive, posing by the Mary Shelley sign, the pub steadily filling up. I recognise faces even if I can’t put names to them. People I used to see in Byron Road or Tennyson Way, or in the park now and then. By the time I reach the end of the first wallet, the guests are still arriving. I haven’t seen any of me or Dad or Arty Robbins.

  Mum watches with a curious interest as I start on the next wallet. It’s the second film, because the pictures are still of people beside the Shelley sign. I find Gary in his long, dark coat and his quiff, trying to look sultry, and feel a stab of fear and guilt.

  ‘Nicky?’

  I’m shaking.

  ‘Nicky? What is it?’

  ‘I’m OK.’ Breathe!

  I used to think he was a bit of a joke but now I wonder: a spate of burglaries a few months after the party; cars that went missing every month or so. There was a mugging one night, not long after Dec moved to Nottingham. It made the news because the victim ended up in hospital and nearly died; Gary was with Kat when it happened, but he knew the men who did it. That was the first time Kat broke up with him. I remember how upset she was, shocked and shaken. He’s not like that, she used to say.

  Isn’t he?

  My phone rings. An unknown number. I send it to voicemail and move on. I find Dad in his leather jacket outside the Shelley. The next picture is of Mum and Dad together. Dad’s smiling, happy, Mum’s stiff and wooden …

  The one after is of Dad and Dave, arms round each other’s shoulders, both of them grinning like they could take on the world. I stop and stare at it, looking at Dad, but if he had any idea that something was going on between Mum and Dave, there’s no sign of it here. The photo after that is of Dad and Dave again, this time with Mum in the middle. It reminds me of the picture of me and Dec and Kat, which must be in here, too. The Three Musketeers. Mum looks brittle enough to shatter.

  I put the picture carefully down, side by side with the first. Mum sits on the chair beside me and squeezes my knee.

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ I say, still looking at the picture of Mum and Dad. ‘Mum, I think it was Gary Barclay who broke into my flat.’

  ‘Kat’s husband?’

  ‘They have a spare key. He’s been to my flat before.’

  ‘Nicky …’

  ‘I think he knew about Kat and Arty Robbins. I know you did. And Dad. I overheard you on the night before the party. You said that some things couldn’t go on. Some things you couldn’t brush under the carpet. You were really angry …’ My eyes are watery as I look at her. ‘I spent the whole of that summer thinking you and Dad were about to get divorced, did you know that? I thought that was what you were arguing about, but it wasn’t. You were arguing over what to do because you’d found out Arty Robbins was abusing my best friend.’

  Mum looks at me for a long time without saying anything. ‘I didn’t know you knew,’ she says at last.

  ‘I found out a few days ago.’

  ‘She was his niece.’ Mum hisses the words, then wraps an awkward arm around me and gives me a little squeeze. ‘Oh, love. It’s so long ago. What does it matter now?’

  ‘I need to know the truth, Mum. If someone doesn’t do something, Dec’s going to go to prison for something he didn’t do, and I don’t think I can live with myself if that happens.’ Not to mention that the real killer just broke into my bloody flat.

  ‘You don’t owe that man anything!’

  ‘Maybe not, but I was married to him for several years and I know he’s not a murderer. And it’s not about what I owe him, Mum. It’s about what I owe myself. And I know you couldn’t stand Dec, and I know that started on the night Arty Robbins attacked you; and I don’t think I can really blame you for that – not after what Arty did, not after everything you knew. But Dec was never like his dad. He was never anything but kind to me. So will you please tell me?’

  Mum takes back her arm and draws in a deep breath. It hisses out between her teeth and then she slowly nods. ‘I saw Arty a couple of months before the party. I was upstairs and I saw him come out the back door of Chloe’s house. It was a bit odd, him coming out the back, but he was Kat’s uncle, and Chloe was working for his dad at the Shelley, so I didn’t think much of it until I saw him again a few weeks later.’ She sighs and shakes her head. ‘I knew there was something not right that time – the way he slipped out the back and down the alley. I thought Chloe was at the Shelley, but I wasn’t sure. Then I saw Arty again on the evening before the party. I knew Chloe was at the Shelley this time, and you were supposed to be next door with Katherine, too. I saw Arthur come out and take a few steps down the garden, and then he turned and … He was fiddling with his belt, still doing up the buckle, and I just had these … these horrible thoughts. So I ran out, and I was going to bang on the front door, but the curtains were open a crack and the lights were on. So I had a peek.’ Mum looks away. Whatever she saw, it’s still there. ‘I still see Katherine as though it was yesterday. She was obviously upset and … it was clear what had been going on. And she was fifteen. Fifteen!’

  Mum sighs. ‘I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t know what to do. I went back inside, and then you came sneaking in through the back door, claiming you’d been in the bloody park, and it was
such a relief I almost burst into tears. I suppose you were with Declan?’

  I nod.

  ‘I wanted to march over to the Shelley right there and then and tell Chloe but instead I waited for your dad to come home, and he talked me out of it. Not our business, he said. I told him that having a child-molester living across the road from my teenage daughter very much was our business, thank you kindly. I told him I was planning to go to the police. He blathered something about you and O-levels, and being sure about things before making wild accusations, and then he said something that actually made sense: Whatever you do, make sure the blame lands where it belongs, because if you’re right then it’s not her that’s in the wrong, it’s him; and don’t you dare make her suffer for it more than she already has. And that made me stop, because there wasn’t anything the police would be able to do without dragging Katherine into it; and her mum, too. And then everyone would know – and I couldn’t do that to them, not without talking to them first. Then your dad said that maybe he should have a quiet word with Arty, to tell him it had to stop, and that made me angry again, I’m afraid. A quiet word? Brush it under the carpet? No. So at the party, I told Arty Robbins exactly what I knew and what I thought of him. I kept Katherine’s name out of it but I told him in front of Anne and anyone else who happened to be listening, and I made sure they all knew enough to work out for themselves what he was doing.’ She puffs out her cheeks. ‘Maybe I should have waited for your dad to have his quiet word, but I’m not sure we wouldn’t all still be waiting even now, if I’d done that.’

  ‘Did anyone else know it was Kat?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not before … Dave did, after – well, you know.’

  ‘After Arty Robbins attacked you?’

  Mum nods and looks away. She looks older than her years right now, frail and ancient. I feel how the burden of that night is crushing her, but I have to do this. ‘Mum, what else happened that night? Were you and Dad really together for the rest of the evening?’

  She doesn’t answer. It’s hard not to shout and scream. I need her to tell me, and I can feel how close it is to coming out.