by Katie Lowe
I wonder what he’s doing here. If he’s been pushed into talking to Conviction as a kind of damage control, on behalf of the Met; or if he’s here willingly.
If I, for him, am the one that got away.
I think of the way he looked at me the day they gave me the news, and every subsequent day at trial.
There’s no way it isn’t the latter.
‘What we found,’ Byers says, ‘is a set of Graham Catton’s prints on the knife. You can view the pictures on the website, but there’s one important thing to note about the way those two sets of prints intersect. They’re going in opposite directions.’
I feel his warm, living hand against mine. The press of it.
‘As though Hannah held the knife in the right direction, and Graham held it back, his fingers intertwined in hers.’
I feel the knife’s weighted handle, slick with my sweat.
‘Forensics did, however, note the absence of prints belonging to Mike Philips. “However,” the report says, “this does not rule out the possibility of the perpetrator wearing gloves – leading to smudging of existing prints from victim’s wife.”’
A door creaks overhead, and I tap the stop button, instinctively.
I look at Dan. He doesn’t look at me.
Evie pads down the stairs, her slippered feet appearing first.
‘Hi, darling,’ I say. I sound like a parody of myself. Like someone feigning innocence, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. ‘How’s your day?’
She clicks the kettle on without speaking. The silence between us is awful.
Since our argument, we’ve found an uneasy truce – our conversations mediated by Dan, largely consisting of small talk.
Now, though, something has changed.
She turns to face me. ‘Are you listening to Conviction?’ There’s a fierceness to her, her shoulders squared and eyes bright.
I nod. I look again at Dan, who still hasn’t met my eye. She drags a chair along the tiles, and sits. ‘Go on, then.’
‘Evie …’ Dan says, softly.
‘It’s fine. I just want to listen to it with you.’ The silence falls again. She’s defiant, daring me to say no. I reach for the phone, and I press play.
‘And then, there’s the blood. Remember, at trial, the prosecution said that Graham Catton opened his eyes – just for a moment – to see the man who would take his life. It’s a vivid image – that split second of absolute terror.
‘But … Graham Catton was six foot four. He played rugby at university. He was, by all accounts, a pretty strong, athletic guy. Mike Philips, on the other hand, is five eight, and – at eighteen – pretty scrawny. Sure, he’s got a knife – but does it really make sense for Catton to just lie there, and take it, with absolutely no struggle at all? Because he’s a family man. He doesn’t know where his wife and daughter are, at this point. He’s got everything to lose.
‘And no one who knew Graham Catton – no one who’s spoken to us for this series – has given one ounce of credibility to the idea he’d give that up without a fight.’
‘No way,’ a new voice says. I recognize it immediately: I can smell the sour odour on his breath, feel him leering a little too close. ‘What you have to understand about Graham was that he loved his family. More than anything.’
Byers interjects: ‘This is Darren Andrews – Graham Catton’s best friend, and Hannah Catton’s sometime Clinical Director at the clinic where they both worked.’
‘He and I would argue about it, sometimes. Because their marriage wasn’t perfect, and a lot of the time, he’d try to keep things to himself – when they were having problems, or whatever – because he wanted to protect them. Especially that little girl. He was mad about her. Absolutely lovestruck.
‘But that meant if any of us said anything about Hannah – not that we were necessarily out of line, just giving friendly advice, or whatever – he’d … well, he’d get pretty angry about it. You’d see him resisting the urge to tell you where to stick it, at the very best of times.
‘So the suggestion, for me, that he just lay there and slept through this guy knocking his wife out – which, also, by the way, doesn’t ring true, because he was one of the lightest sleepers I ever met – and then, when he finally woke up, just lay there and took it, knowing his daughter was in the next room?
‘Absolutely not. It just isn’t possible. I’m sorry, but someone is lying here.’
There’s no music, now. No sound, but for a thick and chilling silence between words, like the air between snow.
I glance at Evie, her expression impassive, though the two clouds of red on her cheeks give her away. She’s mourning him, now, in a way that she hasn’t before. Because while I’ve always told her the truth – that he loved her more than anything else in the world – it’s different, hearing it from a stranger. More believable, somehow.
‘So,’ Anna Byers resumes. ‘Let’s go ahead and say there are flaws in the way the evidence was read, back in 2008. Maybe that means there’s an alternative reading – a different way of approaching the facts.’
Stevens clears his throat. ‘We did consider an alternative theory – for longer than you might think. But …’ Again, he pauses. ‘I’m totally prepared to accept that I’m at fault here, as much as anyone. Rachel O’Hare left the Met in 2010, and has been following a different career path since.’
There’s that damage control, I think. A clever move. One bad apple. That’s all.
‘But at the time we were working on this case, she and I were equals – in every respect. So I didn’t have the authority to contradict her, or she, me. In the end, we had to go on what we had, and her case for charging Mr Philips was – I thought – convincing. There was more evidence to support her hunch than mine. So the case went her way.’
‘DCI Stevens wouldn’t tell us what, exactly, his alternative theory was,’ Byers says. ‘Which is fair enough. In his position, I wouldn’t either. But I’d like to walk you through mine.’
She takes a breath. ‘Let’s say you’re a sleeping Graham Catton.’ A slow, eerie music rises behind. ‘You’re peacefully in bed. In your sleep, you feel the presence of footsteps you recognize. A pattern you know intimately well: familiar soles on familiar floorboards. You don’t move, as your wife climbs, naked, on top of you, though you welcome her presence. Her legs around you are a comfort. You’re half-asleep. It’s been a long day.’
I can’t look at Dan, though I feel the air sharpen between us. I know what he’s thinking. I did that, this morning. To him.
I was trying to make things right.
‘It’s only when you feel the cold, sharp point of the blade against your neck that you realize something’s wrong. You open your eyes, and in hers, there’s anger. A black, seething hate. You’d argued earlier, sure – but all couples do. You try to say that to her. You beg her not to do the thing she’s threatening to do. It’s a conversation that takes place in whispers, so you don’t wake your child. God knows this is a thing you don’t want your little girl to see. You wind your fingers between hers, gently. The two of you, now, hold the blade.
‘But while you’re stronger, she’s in the position of power. The angles, the way she’s holding you there – and, yes, the fact you’ve just woken up – all combine to put her at a distinct advantage. All she’s got to do is push down, once, and hard. You know you’ll bleed out in minutes. It might be less than that. You talk, and you talk. It’s amazing how long you rationalize it. How long you try to talk her out of it, not only to preserve your own life, but that of your family’s, as a whole.
‘After all, it’s not the first time you’ve had to deal with a situation like this. You love her, but you accept that she’s … well, fiery. You’ve picked up the scattered shards of plates thrown at the wall. You’ve apologized to neighbours for the screaming. You’ve always thought of it as something that, together, you would overcome. But it’s hard to believe that, now. Not any more. You can’t go on like this.’
/>
A shiver of recognition passes through me. Something about this rings true.
‘Because now, it’s life or death. The fact that she’s calm shows she means it. This isn’t just another blind rage. And no matter what you say, when words are all you have – when you really are paralysed with the knowledge that, to avoid getting hurt yourself, you have to hurt the woman you love – it doesn’t work. She simply doesn’t hear you. She doesn’t want to.
‘And so, you do the thing you don’t want to do, in order to save yourself. It’s all you can do not to shake as you do it – to remain, as far as you can, still – until the moment you reach up, and grab her throat with the hand that was, moments before, around the knife she’s pressing at yours. You need to push her away. To free your other arm; to restrain her. Surprise is the only weapon you have.
‘But it doesn’t work. The second you move, she sticks in the knife. You’re done for. It hurts to die like this – in the moments you’re conscious. And when you’re not, she waits, and watches as you slip away. And she doesn’t feel a thing.’
These final words cut through me. I stand, and turn on the lights; as they flicker on, a shadow – his shadow – slips past the glass. There, in a blink, and then gone. Neither Evie nor Dan seem to notice. They’re both perfectly still, staring at the black screen of my phone.
‘So many tiny mistakes; so many questions,’ Byers says now. The closing music begins, a familiar, steady beat. ‘It’s like the old Swiss-cheese theory. For those of you who weren’t forced to read pop-psych business books in the nineties, let me recap. You’ve got one slice of cheese, with one set of holes. On top, you lay another, and another, and another. Keep on going, until you’ve got yourself a little stack.
‘Chances are, it’ll hold up OK. The holes are random. There’s only a small chance one hole will overlap another, and so only a small chance of these individual holes causing a problem. But still … a small chance is more than no chance at all. And when those holes line up exactly – well, that’s when you’ve got a problem. That’s when innocent people end up in prison, while real killers get away with murder.
‘An obsessively cleaned house. An off day in forensics. A suspect with nothing to tie him to the crime but an anonymous call; a speck of DNA on a glove he’d lost, and a police force with a grudge. A litany of questions all answered one way, when another is just as – if not more – plausible. And so, the real killer slips through that hole and escapes. While Mike Philips, unsuspecting – unaware the hole is even there, like a character in a Looney Tunes cartoon – puts a foot wrong, and falls straight through. And spends the next ten years of his life behind bars.’
The credits roll. Dan reaches for the phone, and clicks it off. The silence between us is interminable. I sit. I will one of them to meet my eye. Finally, Evie looks up. She scans my face, as though searching for something. ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘It’s very flimsy.’ Dan’s tone is measured, careful. ‘It isn’t much of a case. All very circumstantial.’
I feel a flicker of hope, the spark of a match. And then it goes out.
‘Not that,’ Evie says. ‘I don’t get why you’d—’
She stops, mid-sentence. Her phone vibrates, as does Dan’s. They look at each other. I feel an icy foreboding, a chill that seeps through me. In her phone’s bright light, I see every flash of emotion on Evie’s face: confusion, turning to horror, to an awful, wrenching grief. She gives a low, animal moan – a sound I’ve never heard from her before. A sound I never want to hear again.
‘What the …’ Dan says. He’s pale, too. A sweat ripples over his skin, and I wonder if he’s going to be sick.
‘Evie, what – what is it?’
She hands me her phone without looking at me. Without saying a word. I see my face in the messenger bubble; my name.
Look what Mummy did, it says. And beneath, the photo of Graham held up in court. The violent flash of red at his throat, an incongruous brightness exposed. The eyes, half-rolled-back and half-closed, the expression a mask of pain. The blackening blood, all around him, turned crisp on the stained white sheets. I look at Dan, who hands me his phone, wordlessly. The image on his screen is the same. The message to him: You’re next.
26
‘No, Dan – they can’t do this.’
I hear the fury in my voice, misdirected. The white-hot force of my rage.
He doesn’t deserve it, of course. He’s right to tell me not to do what I want to do, now: to call the number Anna Byers left, months ago, and tell her just what I think of her listeners.
The account – a copy of my own, my name and face attached to an otherwise empty Facebook profile – has been deleted. Which means, according to Dan, there’s no hope of tracking down whoever created it. It’s probably for the best. I don’t know what I’d do if I could.
‘I know,’ he says soothingly. ‘It’s not right. But if you call her now, she’s going to use it against you. You’ll be portrayed as some madwoman who can’t control her temper. You know that.’
‘I don’t care. To send that to Evie – to you—’
‘It’s one person, Hannah. Not even a person – a troll. Anna Byers can’t be responsible for the behaviour of people like that.’
‘She’s pretty fucking happy to encourage them, though, isn’t she?’
His shoulders slump. He squeezes his forehead between finger and thumb; moves them down to his eyes, as though trying to erase the image of my husband’s corpse. All at once, I feel the exhaustion hit me. I sit, elbows resting on the table. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he says. It’s automatic, this response, unthinking. He doesn’t open his eyes.
But it is, I think. If I’d only told the truth at the time, none of this would be happening now.
I reach for my phone and start typing. I need to talk to Sarah. I need her to take my side; to join me in my righteous fury. But then I remember – she’d said she’d text me after the show. And she hasn’t.
She believes them, I realize. She thinks it was me.
Dan opens his eyes. ‘Do you want me to talk to Evie?’ I feel my cheeks burn, hot. I think I know what he’s saying: Talk to her. Smooth it over. And he’s right. After the messages, she’d disappeared upstairs. I’d called after her, but she’d told me to leave her alone. I’ll admit: in that moment, I was relieved. Because I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.
‘It’ll be OK,’ he says as I stand. ‘We’ll be fine. We’ll get through this.’
I smile, a weak assent. But I’m not sure I believe that, now. I’m not sure he believes it, either.
She doesn’t look at me when I enter. She’s cross-legged on the bed, looking out at the cool, black sky.
I close the door behind, and sit at the desk, a nervous tang in my throat. I want to touch her, but I’m afraid she’ll pull away. I’m not sure I’ll survive it if she does.
‘Evie. Look at me. Please.’
She turns to face me. Her eyes are dewy, red against the pale white of her skin. Her lip trembles, just as it did when she was a child – when I’d take away sugary sweets, or toys I thought she ought to grow out of. It was all for her own good. Everything I did, I thought I was doing for the best.
‘You have every right to be upset.’ I swallow the knot in my throat. I try to find the words I’d say to a girl who wasn’t my own: to be rational, balanced. ‘That message – you didn’t deserve that. Whoever sent it to you … they’re clearly someone very cruel, and very selfish.’
I am grasping for something: a sticking plaster, some way to make things right. In the end, there’s only one thing I can say.
‘I’m so sorry, Evie. For all of this. I really am.’
She looks up, a false boldness in her eyes. I see through it immediately. ‘What happened?’ she says slowly. Cautiously. ‘To Dad. What happened?’
I look down at my hands, the veins rivering through them, raised up against the skin. I wonder if it would be easi
er to tell her that I did it: that we fought, because we’d come to hate each other. That I wanted him to die.
If I did that, I suppose, it would all be over. Evie would cry, maybe scream; Dan’s footsteps would follow on the stairs. He’d call the police, and they’d take me away. I’d be charged with my husband’s murder, and my daughter’s heart would break – but it’d be a clean break, this way. She’d have facts she could hold on to: closure of sorts. It would be better than this – the torture of not knowing, of doubting me more, every day. Of being told by the whole world that I did it, while trying desperately to believe otherwise.
I could end it all, so easily.
Anna Byers could have her conviction, and her listeners could move on to someone else. These strangers sending Evie and Dan their pathetic, cruel messages – they could bask in it: the satisfaction of being proven right.
It’s this last thought that sways me: that helps me decide.
I look at Evie. ‘I wish I could tell you.’
‘You really don’t remember anything?’
‘It’s not that I don’t remember,’ I say, reaching for her hand. She lets me take it – a kindness. ‘I do have flashes of … well, moments. But …’ I pause. ‘Anna Byers actually made the point pretty well in the first episode. Memory isn’t reliable, and over time … it can be changed. So sometimes, I’ll think I remember something about the night … the night your dad died. But I honestly don’t know if those are real memories, or just my brain trying to fill the gaps.’
‘So what do you remember?’ She’s pushing me, now.
For once, I don’t push back. ‘I remember putting you to bed. He got home late, so it was right before he got home. And … I’m pretty sure I had a bath. My hair was damp when I woke up, and I remember being in the bathroom at one point.’
I see the blood swirl down the sink. Red lines in the cracks of my palm. I blink them away.
‘And I know he and I … I know we did have a disagreement, that night.’ I see her eyes widen at this. ‘Not a big one. It wasn’t even an argument, really. I just know we were annoyed at each other about something stupid. Or at least, it seemed stupid, when I … when I found him. If I’d known what would happen to him, later, I …’