by Ali Knight
‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’
‘She’s the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the UK—’
‘I know that!’
‘This news doesn’t make you very happy, does it, Kate?’
‘He never bloody mentioned it before!’
‘Does Paul keep a lot of secrets from you, do you think? Does he keep other women from you? As his wife of more than – what is it, eight years? – does that make you angry, Kate? Does it make you mad?’ O’Shea breaks her gaze. ‘Did his affair with Melody make you really mad? Jealous enough to kill her?’ I make a scoffing noise and jump as Samuels bangs his hand down sharply on the table.
‘You’re wasting our time here! He wasn’t just fucking her, he was going to leave you for her, wasn’t he? He found music with Melody, didn’t he, Kate? They were going to make more than just telly together!’ I sit on my hands and pinch the back of my thighs. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Kate, what one person does less work than a wealthy TV executive and enjoys themselves more? Answer: his wife! You stood to lose your money and your status to a younger model and you killed her for that.’
‘I didn’t kill anybody!’
‘Why did you break into your husband’s offices?’ O’Shea asks.
The solicitor comes alive and does what he’s paid to do. ‘As far as I am aware that is not what actually happened that night. Mrs Forman used her husband’s key to enter the premises.’
O’Shea rephrases. ‘What were you looking for in the middle of the night? What was so important that it couldn’t wait until the morning?’
‘I was looking for evidence to back up or destroy my suspicions. Don’t you think I was desperate for it all not to be true! And I did find things! I’ve got evidence that proves misconduct on Lex’s part that would potentially bar him from receiving his final payout from the sale; the financial arrangements with Melody for her ideas are not clear-cut at all. In fact it’s a mess, and that’s suspicious to me.’
O’Shea waves her hand as if drying nail polish. ‘We know all about the finances of Forwood and Melody’s contribution to it. It sounds thin to me.’
Samuels tries to pace the room, but it’s so small that after two steps he has to turn. ‘This is a pointless distraction. You need to start talking, Kate. You need to give us something, or you’re going down for murder. They’ll be making an Inside-Out about you in twenty-five years, but your daughter won’t be watching! How old is she? Four? She won’t remember you. She’ll have to look at a photo to know who you are, presuming he lets her keep any. She’ll have a new mother, probably new brothers and sisters, because a man like Paul won’t be single for long, will he?’
‘Stop it.’
‘You thought you felt jealous about Melody, but imagine living your life knowing he’s with another woman and your children!’
‘Just stop it!’ It’s come out as a scream as the depth of the pit that I’m in begins to become clear.
‘I think my client needs a break, this is all quite intense,’ the solicitor says.
Samuels leans across O’Shea and looms over me, his large hand on the table. ‘Remember, Kate, when you go back to that cell, when you look at those four walls, if you really didn’t kill her, then he’s stitched you up good and proper. So think, Kate.’ Samuels taps the side of his head with his forefinger as he moves in close to me. ‘Think hard,’ he whispers.
‘It’s important that we take a break now,’ my solicitor says.
O’Shea stacks her folders in a pile and aligns the edges. I get the feeling she’s not entirely convinced of Samuels’s interview techniques. ‘Don’t think that it’s a you-or-him fight,’ she adds, her chair scraping back across the lino. ‘I might find that you’re both in it together.’ She turns towards the tape machine. ‘The time is twelve-twenty-two, this interview is terminated.’ She leans forward to push the off button and stands.
‘Just tell me one thing,’ I’m pleading with her. ‘Did you find any of her blood in the sink?’
O’Shea looks back at me as she opens the door. ‘No, but we don’t need any of her blood to be in the sink. We’ve got enough to charge you already.’
The tension of not knowing has finally been broken: he did it. He did it. He. Did. It. The blood on that scarf was hers. The evidence, cold, hard evidence, points to Paul. I wave away the institutional slop, chew my fingers to replace my cigarette craving. I play back in my mind every step from finding him in the kitchen on that fateful night. I can see Paul grinning disarmingly in my mind right now. He is so good at creating atmospheres, at getting people to do what he wants, at manipulating the crowd, the police. Portia would agree to providing an alibi, of course. This nightmare has produced more free publicity and notoriety for Inside-Out and raised the profile of Forwood TV to an unprecedented level. Who with ambition could resist a bit of I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine? A little lie here, a big fat lie there, can create new alliances more powerful than I can guess. It’s all a game if you’re on the winning side, just like Wink Murder. Never mind those that are trampled on along the boulevard to victory. He planned it all so perfectly. Maybe I’ve found my first master criminal. He’s played me, Lex and Portia perfectly. He’s left no flank exposed, no end untied.
And yet. And yet . . . I used to make a living asking questions to get unexpected results. Ask a different question and you get a different answer. What about the dog? The dog doesn’t fit. And a master criminal makes sure everything fits. What have you overlooked, Paul? What can I exploit to save myself?
My solicitor comes to see me at my request. He’s a thin man with glasses and long sideburns which rasp when he scratches them. The police offered him to me and I accepted with the enthusiasm of a wedding guest deciding between chicken or salmon. John came to represent me, but I sent him away. He’s contaminated with Paul, aligned with his brother. So it’s Theo with the raspy face and me against the world. ‘Do they have enough to charge me?’
‘Yes, but they’ll be keen to make the case stronger. Connecting the evidence to you is not as clear-cut as they would like. Your DNA is not on the knife, and the scarf could have been worn by you or your husband. They’re checking your car but if they don’t have anything by now I think it’s going to come back clean.’
‘Surely this sudden alibi of Paul’s looks suspicious?’
Theo rocks back on worn black shoes. ‘My job here is to represent you, Mrs Forman. I don’t think it helps for me to speculate on other issues.’
‘My name’s Kate. Stop calling me Forman.’
Theo nods and blows air into his ginger cheeks. ‘I did overhear a conversation in the corridor just now.’ He pauses while I look up from the floor. ‘Seems that there’s a split in the ranks. O’Shea’s not a hundred per cent convinced they’ve got the real story—’
‘She hasn’t!’
‘– but she’s a lone voice. The pressure will be building to charge you and have done.’
‘Where does she see the gaps?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know. They’ve applied to keep you in overnight as O’Shea has been called away. I’ll see you in the morning.’ I sink down on to the cell bed’s plastic covering. I don’t want to see Theo first thing, I want to see my children.
‘Can you get me a cup of tea and a Snickers bar?’ Theo pauses and scratches. ‘Come on, I saw the machine in the corridor.’ He nods and a few minutes later I get my request.
I don’t sleep at all. I stare at the arrow pointing to Mecca on the ceiling. On my interrogation course I learned that the first thing a police interviewer has to do is stop the suspect repeating that he’s innocent. The more he says it, the more convinced he is of it and the harder it is to get a confession. I repeat it so often to myself it becomes a mantra. I keep repeating it just in case I start to waver, because the evidence is building against me like snow crystals on a mountain overhang and I’m about to be sunk by an avalanche. Portia gave Paul an alibi. Paul, you set it all up. I remember you said som
ething to me once. ‘It takes as much effort to work on something small as it does on something big. So always aim big.’
You’ve aimed as high as possible. I think of the picture of me in the scarf. You must have planned this a long, long time ago. I touch the breeze-block wall, trace the grainy roughness under my palm. ‘Fuck’, someone’s scrawled on it. I couldn’t put it better myself. I don’t understand why Paul would set me up. Extra money isn’t enough of a motive, I know him well enough to know that, but I can’t see what I’m missing. I need to talk to Lex. I’ve got to ask the right questions to get the right answers. I have to get out of here. I wipe my hands down my nose and drop them off my chin. If I ever get out, it’s you or me, Paul; me or you.
36
It must be the morning because O’Shea is standing outside the cell as it’s unlocked. ‘Come on Kate, round two.’ I follow her and Samuels along a corridor, eager to be out.
She offers me a cup of tea, which I gratefully accept. She’s wearing a pale pink blouse with a rounded collar. She takes her jacket off and hangs it neatly over the back of her chair. The iron creases down her sleeves could cut you. I approve. Theo arrives looking crumpled. I can see that O’Shea doesn’t approve.
‘Tell me about your marriage, Kate.’
‘We had a very successful marriage.’
‘Had? What changed?’
‘I found him with blood on his hands, raving . . . that’s what changed!’
‘So until just over a fortnight ago it was idyllic in the Forman marriage?’
Is it really such a short time? Has all this happened in only sixteen days? It’s not possible.
O’Shea turns to Samuels, who hands her a copy of the Daily Mail. ‘Is this what you call success?’ She opens the paper to a double-page spread which contains at its centre a photo of Marcus hugging me tight by the canal as my children look on. It’s taken that day he rowed us across. ‘Inside-Out creator’s wife accused of Melody murder’ screams the headline.
In what reads like a plot from a TV drama that her husband could have made, Kate Forman, wife of Inside-Out creator Paul Forman, has been arrested for the murder of TV researcher Melody Graham, 26. Rumours of an affair between one of British television’s most successful and high-profile producers and Melody have produced a potent motive for this latest arrest and, as this dramatic picture shows, all is not as it seems in the TV power-broker’s marriage. Marcus Dutoit, 22, a tree surgeon, lives on a narrowboat moored in the back garden of the couple’s luxury London home. This unconventional arrangement raised eyebrows among the Forwoods’ neighbours and at Forwood TV . . .
I can’t keep reading in a linear way and jump to a photo of Astrid, bigger even than the one of Melody. I see she’s quoted further down the article. ‘Kate seemed such a nice lady, a bit like a favourite aunt, but her relationship with Marcus struck me as inappropriate for someone of her standing . . .’ She’s described herself as ‘Paul’s executive assistant’.
‘This is appalling . . .’ I trail off, hopelessness overwhelming me. Poor Marcus, a small act of kindness misconstrued, a private life splattered in newsprint. ‘That has an entirely innocent explanation, and I know you know it.’
O’Shea folds the paper away. ‘The problem here, Kate, is that so much of this story is supposed to be innocent. But the scarf, the knife in the canal, come on! From where I’m sitting it’s very clear. It’s you, him, or both of you.’
‘Everyone knew about that canal! Forwood used the boat as an office for a while, a lot of people at work knew how to get to it. You didn’t figure that, did you!’ I take bitter satisfaction from seeing O’Shea and Samuels exchange looks. ‘They used to house the accounts department in there, it was before they moved to the new premises and they were desperately short on space. So anyone could have dumped the knife there.’
‘You’re clutching at straws, Kate.’
‘Yes I am! Because the innocent don’t have all the answers! I don’t have the answers, but I know I didn’t kill her! I’m not saying anything else.’ And after half an hour of futile attempts to get me to open up, admit, confess or crack, they lead me back to a cell where I spend the next three hours listening to the raving drunk next door shout profanities and chant.
Two hours after that, when the drunk’s cried himself out and has keeled over on his floor, Theo comes in. ‘I’ve got some surprising news. They’re going to let you go.’
‘What the—’
‘She’s got cojones, this DI,’ he adds, shaking his head. ‘It’s not a popular decision. They might be tailing you, see where you go.’
‘I thought the evidence was overwhelming?’
‘They can’t be sure it’s not your husband. His alibi still leaves just enough time to have killed her. It’s very tight, but still possible.’
‘I suppose I should be glad, but knowing that if I’m out he must be in feels like a lose-lose to me.’ Theo scratches his sideburns by way of an answer.
37
A uniformed policeman opens the door to the custody suite and I follow him through to the foyer of the station, where an elderly couple are waiting on chairs. I hesitate to walk out the front door but Theo reassures me the press don’t know which station I’m being held at. We emerge, blinking into the late afternoon, and no one gives us a backwards glance. Theo hands me his card. He’s interested in representing me in court. I know he thinks it’ll come to that unless I get a lot smarter at finding something that gets me off the hook.
I need to talk to Lex. He was there that night in the pub, he met Melody before she died. He wanted to talk to me earlier and now he’s gone to ground and I’m going to find out why. His phone goes straight to voicemail. I phone Sarah and have a quick talk with Josh and Ava, swallowing down my tears. Sarah comes back on the line and breezily reassures me they’re fine. I force them from my mind as I hail a cab and turn my thoughts to Lex. I’m going to damn well wait outside his flat until he comes home, they always do in the end. But after two hours I’m cold and bored. Paul sends me a message saying he’s picked the children up from Sarah. He urges me to come home, but I have to get some answers first.
I put my frozen hand on the fashionable grainy wood of his loft door. Three heavy top-of-the-range locks bar my entry. I want to get in there and hunt for motives and secrets, but I can’t exactly walk in. Then I have an idea.
It’s gone 7.30 p.m. by the time I get to Forwood’s offices. Repeated ringing on the doorbell brings a young girl in a cleaning-company uniform peering round the inner door. ‘Is Rosa there? Rosa, the cleaner?’ She understands the one word that matters and unlocks the door. Just as I suspected, the room is deserted. Rarely is anyone here beyond 7.00 p.m. I step around bulging bin bags towards a stout woman wearing Marigolds and pulling on a Hoover nozzle. ‘Rosa!’
She turns and switches the machine off, wiping her hands on autopilot down the checked apron uniform she wears. She takes a moment to register who I am. ‘Ah! Mrs Forman, very well?’ Her snaggle-toothed grin is mirrored in my own. My God, she doesn’t know. Every evening she upturns the wire waste baskets and crumples up the papers strewn over Forwood employees’ desks, but she never reads any of them, never watches the news. She takes none of it in. Most of the staff never speak to her, the majority have never registered her face, she’s just part of the army of workers who revolve around and sustain those important enough to have reached the centre of things. She has no idea of the maelstrom of scandal swirling through here, that I have become infamous, that she should avoid me. ‘Childrens? Good?’
I put my hand on her shoulder and nod. I open my bag and pull out my wallet. ‘Look, I have a new picture.’ This is one from about two months ago; we look a perfect, serene and loving family unit. Rosa beams. ‘Beautiful! You very lucky!’
‘Rosa, I need something important.’ I talk slowly because her English is bad. She nods carefully. ‘You have keys to Lex’s house?’ She frowns. ‘Do you have keys to his house?’ I mime turning keys in a lock.
I nod enthusiastically. John once told me that Lex puts every expense he can through the books to cut his tax liabilities, even his personal cleaning. Good old John. ‘I know. Can you give me the keys? It’s his birthday tomorrow, we are doing a surprise party in his house.’ Rosa looks blank. ‘A party. I’ll make cake, cook lots of food, then lights out and when Lex comes homes and opens the door, out we all jump – surprise!’ I mime like bad vaudeville. ‘Can I take your keys and bring them back to you later in the week?’
It takes a few moments before her mental translation is done and the smile breaks out. ‘Ah, Mrs Forman, good idea!’ She walks over to the stand where her bag and coat hang and searches through, pulling out a set of keys. They glint in my dry palm and I feel the first stirrings of the call to action.
Lex’s door opens silently, his brushed-steel hinges working much better than the swollen wood of my own front door that always catches after rain. I’ve never been here before. Lex doesn’t entertain at home, or his entertaining never includes me. As I climb the stairs and enter the loft space, I decide on the latter. The place is huge with low leather sofas, industrial lights, large, confusing pieces of modern art, a cowhide rug and an open-plan kitchen-cum-bar. There’s a bad smell from the kitchen bin, though; Rosa and her Marigolds need to visit.
I study his mosaic tiles and have a root through his bathroom cabinet. Nothing surprising in there, but in a small cupboard inset behind the toilet I find some denture fixative. Ah bless. Lex knows that a twenty-five-year-old would find that even more embarrassing than pile cream.
I’m beginning to luxuriate in my transgressions. I pop the top on a bottle of beer from the fridge and start rummaging through a desk strewn with jottings about his online campaign. I find the workings of Lex’s mind fascinating: his ideas are linked together with scratched lines, comments are written in margins, question marks truncate other thoughts that are not pursued. There’s a thick file with contracts inside, the buyout by CPTV, Post-its stuck to pages that mention accelerators, and pages and pages of subclauses and addenda. His pad of paper is full of writing and I am leafing through the pages when I spot something on a table they call consoles in interiors magazines. I pick up the Panasonic video camera, still in its brown delivery box, and turn it over in my hands. It’s top of the range, digital and wireless. There’s a packet of media cards in their skin of plastic. I discard all the wrapping and put the items in my bag. Lex won’t mind if I borrow them.