by Owen Sheers
But now he felt only suspicion. How did Slater know Michael was at his lesson when Lucy fell? Had she checked with his instructor? Had he been seen walking there across the Heath? Josh had wanted to find the card she’d left him and call her and ask her. But he knew he couldn’t. The way she’d questioned him, the manner in which they’d all treated him. He knew she suspected him, sensed his lies at the edges of his story. So he couldn’t provoke her to look any closer than she already had.
No, if Josh wanted to corroborate Michael’s story, then he would have to do so himself. If it was true, then he could let go of his suspicion. But if it was not, then—then he didn’t know what he would do. But at least he would know. At least he’d be able to extinguish the agonies of his uncertainty, defuse some of the unforgiving questions that still haunted him about what had happened to his daughter.
After that evening they’d spoken over the hedge, Josh, whenever he could, began watching Michael. He wanted to understand him, to discover what he wanted. Was it Samantha? Is that why he was spending so much time with her? Was she what this was all about? Josh couldn’t be sure, not without knowing more about Michael. So he watched him. He became familiar with the times his bathroom light came on in the morning, and his study light turned off at night. He followed him, at a distance, to his favourite cafés, or to the archives of the local museum. Just the other week he’d watched from up the street as Michael had helped Samantha carry her prints from the framer’s, loading them into the back of his old Volvo. And he’d watched, too, as Michael had walked to his fencing club on a Thursday, then taken the same route across the Heath for his lessons on a Saturday. Which is when Josh had first seen the Heath’s conservation team unloading tools from a storage shed at the school.
It was a shed they shared, it seemed, with the school’s caretaker, in whose office they also took their breaks when working on the Highgate side of the Heath. On that same afternoon Josh had seen them at the school he’d also noticed the security camera angled above the entrance to its sports hall. Had Slater viewed the tape from this camera on the day Lucy fell? Had she seen, for sure, Michael enter the building? But, more important, Josh had wanted to know as he’d walked back across the Heath to his flat, how might he find a way to see the tape himself? How might he witness, with his own eyes but without raising the suspicions of Slater, the truth of Michael’s story?
Josh had told Samantha it was Nathan, the gardener at Willow Road, who’d put him forward for the job with the Hampstead Heath team. But that had been a lie. Instead, he’d applied directly, using Nathan as a reference and an old City connection on the corporation’s board to push it through. Josh began working with them the following month, but he’d known he’d have to be patient, that there were no guarantees. He was acting purely on speculation. But then wasn’t that what he’d always done, and what he’d always been so good at with Lehman’s? Speculating, betting on outcomes, playing a waiting game, then striking when the opportunity came.
In time, his patience won out. It was early in April when Josh and his team were sent to cut back the rhododendrons on the Highgate side of the Heath. The area they were working edged the grounds of the school, and as Josh had seen the year before, to save themselves the daily trip across the Heath, they borrowed one of the school caretaker’s storage sheds while they were there.
Jim, the caretaker, was a widower in his early sixties, talkative and sociable. As well as caretaking the school, he performed groundsman duties for the leisure centre. It was the Easter holidays, and the school was empty. So Jim was more than pleased to offer the team the use of his office again. To make teas and coffees, get out of the rain, or just to take the weight off their feet for a few minutes in one of his broken-down armchairs.
―
Josh was sitting in one of these armchairs, slung back in its spongy springs, when he’d first seen the videocassette. Once he had, he’d been unable to take his eyes off it. He’d assumed, having first got to know Jim, he’d then have had to find a way to steer him onto the subject of the school’s security cameras, and then again on to where their footage might be kept. Beyond that he’d had no other plan about how to get hold of the footage for himself. So to see a tape above him, written with that date, it almost seemed like a bait, as if someone was setting him a trap.
He looked around the rest of the room, on the other shelves, for other cassettes. But there were none. Just this crooked pile on the shelf above him, each spine written with a date. While Jim talked on—about his time as a semi-pro footballer, his grandkids—that top tape seemed to gather a luminescence at the edges of Josh’s vision, its black numbers burning into his mind.
As Josh and his colleagues finished up, the three of them putting their mugs in the sink, Josh nodded at the shelf. “Those tapes,” he’d asked Jim. “What are they?”
Jim looked up at the shelf, squinting, as if he hadn’t considered that part of his office for a while. Josh swallowed. He was nervous. He felt he should have given some kind of explanation for his question. The other members of his team had already left the room. “The date on that top one,” he’d said, taking off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. “Seventh of June. It’s my daughter’s birthday.”
“Oh!” Jim nodded, seeing them. “Those. Yeah, they’re old security tapes. CCTV. The police had them for a while. Can’t remember why. We’d switched the whole system by the time they came back.” He looked back at Josh. “All digital now, see? More cameras, too. Isn’t a metre of this bloody place that isn’t covered.”
Josh nodded. “Right. Well, better safe than sorry, I guess.” He went towards the door. “Thanks for the tea, Jim,” he said as he left.
“How old is she?” Jim called from inside. Josh looked back into the room. “Your daughter,” Jim said. “How old is she?”
“Four,” Josh replied, his knuckles white on the door frame. “She’s four.”
“Lovely age,” Jim said, smiling from his desk. “Lovely age.”
―
Josh waited until their last day working alongside the school before he took the cassette. Jim wasn’t going anywhere, so he’d had to ask him about the settings on one of the mowers he had parked up outside to get him to leave. Once they were at the mower, Josh patted at his pockets. “Shit,” he said. “My phone. Won’t be a sec.”
Jogging back to the office, he’d pulled out Jim’s chair, stood on it, and reached up for the cassette, slipping it into the back of his shorts. Its spine, he saw, as he took it off the shelf, was thick with other dates, layered-on stickers reaching back through weeks and months.
Josh was back with Jim in less than a minute. As Jim talked him through the mower’s operation he’d tried to listen, but his mind was already rushing through possibilities. It could be nothing. There was no reason, other than the date, that the police hadn’t requested the tape for another investigation entirely. But then, he’d told himself, what were the chances of that? This was, after all, where Michael had said he’d been. That must be why they took it. But surely if there’d been anything in it, then wouldn’t Slater have noticed? Wouldn’t she have pulled Michael in? But still, Josh had been waiting for months, for something more than just a sense or a few crumbs of once-damp soil. So he had to see it. He had to know.
He bought the TV the following day, from a Cash Converters on the Finchley Road. It was an old silver portable with a VHS player embedded under the screen. “I’ve got loads of films for that, too,” the checkout clerk told him as he paid. “There’s some great eighties porn. Classic hairstyles.” Josh told him he was good, thanks. He just wanted the TV. That was all he needed.
The image quality was poor. Black-and-white, with the occasional jump and shiver in the image. But it was clear enough. An elevated view of the sliding doors at the entrance to the sports hall. At first Josh began viewing it in real time, watching as a shard of sunlight slid across the floor, stretching the shadows of the door’s lettering. But then, remembering the time of Michael�
�s lessons, he’d pressed fast-forward, sending the counter in the corner of the screen climbing through the hours of the day. In jerky speed, a cleaner mopped the tiles, a pigeon hopped in, got trapped, then flew out. Every hour or so Jim would appear, carrying a different tool each time. Then, for several accelerated hours, the view remained empty. Just the municipal floor, the edge of a notice board and the encroaching shadow of a branch beyond the glass doors.
As the counter reached three o’clock, then three-fifteen, Josh slowed the tape to real time again. He didn’t care how long it would take. He just didn’t want to miss anything. He wanted to be sure. Michael’s lesson had been at four o’clock. It always was. But if he didn’t arrive, or if he was late, then maybe, just maybe that would be enough. So with the TV propped on the coffee table, his elbows on his knees and his fists under his chin, Josh watched the empty entrance, glued to the filmed minutes in front of him. As the counter reached three-twenty he felt a stab of guilt. It must have been around then, in the world on the screen, that he’d left his house by the front door. He tried to focus, to forget, as the minutes continued their steady climb, the moment he’d abandoned his daughter, and what else had followed.
All through the next half-hour, there was nothing. Three-fifty-nine. Four o’clock. The view remained unchanged, empty except for than the shadow of the branch edging closer to the door. Josh could feel his pulse quickening. With every second of Michael’s absence from the screen the prospect of proof was closer to hand. Perhaps Slater had taken the tapes but then never watched them. Perhaps, once the DCI had declared there was no case, they’d just sat in a storage cupboard for months before eventually being returned to the school.
But then, at the edge of the frame, another shadow began encroaching fast upon the shadow of the branch. Within a few seconds it had happened. The doors slid open and Michael, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his fencing bag slung over his shoulder, entered the building and walked across the screen, clearing its frame in just four strides.
Josh paused the tape, Michael’s exiting right foot still frozen on the far left of the screen. He pressed the rewind button, sending him back across the entrance and out the doors. Then he pressed play again, watching as closely as he could. Michael repeated his entrance. Josh’s breath was shortening. Once Michael had cleared the frame he immediately rewound the tape and pressed play again, but this time with his finger hovering over the pause button too. In this way, switching between play and pause, Josh watched as Michael walked across the screen in slow motion. Which is when he knew there was no doubt. It was the jerk in his shoulder that betrayed him, the shortened stride as if his right leg was weighted. Michael was limping. There were only four of his strides in frame, but they were enough. Josh had walked beside that limp across the Heath many times. But only ever at the beginning of their jogs, when Michael’s right calf was still cramped.
He paused the tape again. Leaning in to the screen, he tried to make out Michael’s expression. But he couldn’t. His face was a grey blur. It didn’t matter. Josh knew. That was all that mattered. He finally knew. However Michael had got to the school that day, he hadn’t, as he’d claimed in his statement to Slater, walked there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“MICHAEL.”
Michael was at the edge of the clearing when he heard Josh call his name. It was a warm evening towards the end of April, two days after they’d seen each other at Samantha’s private view. Just minutes earlier, pausing on his way home from a fencing lesson, Michael had been standing alone at the clearing’s centre, looking up at a flight of house martins darting for insects in the fading light. The trees of the South Wood were coming into leaf all around him. The white candles of the horse chestnuts already shone bright against the darker shades of foliage and bark.
The only time Josh had ever called Michael by his full name was when he’d introduced him to other guests at that first party. Otherwise he’d always been “Mike” to Josh. At times, even “Mikey.” But never Michael.
He turned, slowly. Josh was standing at the far end of the clearing. He wore his Corporation of London uniform: a pair of dark combat trousers and a dark green polo shirt bearing the corporation’s crest on his chest. Michael was relieved to see he held nothing in his hands. He wondered how long Josh had been watching him.
“Josh,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You were in my house,” Josh said, not moving. “That day. You were in my house.”
Michael felt the air leave his lungs as if he’d been plunged underwater. He’d known as soon as he’d seen Josh standing there. As soon as he’d heard him say his name. But it was still a shock, to hear the words, to hear him state them so baldly. He thought for a moment about trying to pretend he didn’t know what Josh was talking about. But he knew it was no use. His expression would have already told Josh all he needed to know. So, instead, Michael completed the dismantling of their false minutes.
“And you weren’t,” he said.
Josh remained motionless. His hands were balled into fists. He said nothing, leaving Michael’s words to fall in the air between them. Michael was about to speak again when Josh started walking towards him. “Why?” he said, his jaw tense, the tendons showing on his neck. His voice was hoarse, a strained whisper. “Why? That’s all I want to know. Why did you do it, you fucking bastard?”
Michael backed away a couple of paces, his hands held out to appease Josh. “I didn’t,” he said. “I was there, but I didn’t do anything.”
Josh stopped advancing. “I should kill you,” he said. His eyes were welling. Michael could see the mix of rage and grief swelling through his body. “I should kill you now.”
“Josh, please,” Michael said. “You’ve got to listen to me. You’re right, I was in your house. I was there.” He paused. He had to say it. “I saw her fall.”
Josh’s face began to twitch with suppressed tears.
“But it was an accident.” Michael continued. “I swear. An accident.”
Josh was upon him before Michael had time to move. Somehow he breached the distance between them in a single stride and, grabbing at Michael’s T-shirt, pushed him backwards towards the fence. Michael gripped his wrists and wrenched them away, pushing Josh off him at the same time. “Josh!” he shouted, backing farther off, his fencing bag falling to the ground. “For Christ’s sake, just listen. Please!”
Josh was breathing heavily. He looked as if he might come at him again, but then, as quickly as he’d launched his attack, his body softened. “Just tell me why,” he said again, quietly.
So Michael did.
He described how he’d come round that day, looking for his screwdriver. He hated saying the word. It sounded so trivial, so insignificant, to have caused such pain. But that, he told Josh, was why he’d been there. Then Michael tried, as best he could, to explain about his concerns. He’d found the back door open. He’d wanted to make sure they hadn’t been burgled. And then he tried to tell him about Caroline too. But it was too much for Josh. Or too little.
“A ghost? A fucking ghost?” he shouted at Michael. “Is that what you’re fucking telling me? You killed my daughter because you thought you saw a ghost?”
“No!” Michael shouted back. He could feel his own anger rising. If Josh had been there, if he’d just stayed at home instead of going to screw Maddy. If he’d just been there, then none of this would have happened. “Not a ghost,” Michael said. “Just her. You have to understand. It was all so soon. I’d had those fucking letters…It was all—” He broke off and looked at Josh. As if to say, We’ve both done this, both of us. We are both to blame.
“Then what?” Josh said.
There was a bench to the side of the clearing. Michael went and sat on it. With his head in his hands, he told Josh how Lucy had appeared from nowhere, how he’d tried to catch her but he’d failed, and had watched her fall instead.
“And then,” Josh said, pacing in front of Michael, “you left. You fucking left.�
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“Yes,” Michael said, staring at the ground. “I left. And I wish with all my life I hadn’t.” He paused, looking up at Josh. “But then so did you.” Josh turned and looked down at him. “You left, too,” Michael said. “You left. And if you hadn’t…”
“All right!” Josh said, cutting his hand through the air. He walked away from Michael. The ground within the clearing’s fence was bare and tired, patches of short grass between the earth. But beyond it, beyond Josh, Michael could see swathes of bluebells carpeting the woodland floor. Beyond the fence there was life. Michael wanted to be out there, among those bluebells. He wanted for all of this to be over.
Josh turned back to him. He looked exhausted. There was so much Michael wanted to ask him. Why had he left the house? Was it really for Maddy? And why then, leaving Lucy alone? But he saw Josh was not to be pressed. He was like a charged mine, sensitive to the slightest of pressures. But he had to keep him talking. Michael knew that, too. So he asked him, instead, how he knew. How had he found out he’d been in the house?
Josh’s answer was short, staccato, his mind engaged elsewhere, battling competing impulsions of revenge and survival. Michael stayed on the bench while he talked, nodding as Josh told him about the soil, the tape, his betraying limp. When he’d finished, Michael knew there was only one question left for them to answer.
“What do you want to do?” Michael said. “Now you know.”
Josh was frowning at him, staring. He nodded, slowly. “You have to leave,” he said. “Samantha and Rachel. You have to leave them. The street, London. You have to go. Now.”