Falling Off Air

by Catherine Sampson

  So far the police had told me nothing of the circumstances of Adam's death, except that he had been hit by my car. What little I had learnt, I had heard on the radio. Adam, who hated driving, had caught the Northern Line to Tooting Bec station and had walked up from the tube toward my house. When he crossed the road to turn into my street, a car—my car—had hit him before proceeding in the direction of the city. The radio suggested that there had been witnesses, but gave no detail of what had been seen. My car had been found abandoned near the Oval.

  “If you're out of questions I have a few.”

  Mann rolled her eyes but Finney ignored her.

  “How did you know where to find the car?”

  Neither of them answered me.

  “Why look at the Oval of all places? And why go looking for my car at all? I hadn't reported it missing, and I doubt any of your witnesses could tell you more than the color and make. You do have witnesses, do you?”

  “You'll choose a better hiding place next time than the Oval, will you?” Mann parried, fighting a rearguard action. I didn't bother to answer her. I thought for a moment, and something occurred to me.

  “Did you get a tip-off, was that it?”

  “Or did you give us a tip-off, was that it?” Mann came back, but too quickly. She'd let the information slip. Someone somewhere had told the police about the car. I put the information aside to be analyzed later and moved on rapidly, while I still had the upper hand.

  “Don't you think Adam's death might have something to do with Paula Carmichael's?” I said.

  “You mean to say,” Finney said slowly and carefully, “you want us to consider Paula Carmichael's death, where you were the first at the scene, also a murder?”

  “You've been investigating it as though it could be a murder,” I pointed out.

  Finney shook his head. “That investigation's over.” He paused, searching I thought for a decision about how much to say, then decided on total disclosure. “We're satisfied that Paula Carmichael's death was suicide. We have records now from her psychiatrist. The woman was clinically depressed. She'd been prescribed Prozac, but she hadn't taken it for several days before she jumped. She even wrote about committing suicide.”

  I frowned at him. His sympathy for Paula Carmichael seemed to have evaporated. I had never heard him refer to her as “the woman” before. Did he feel that by committing suicide she was wasting police time?

  “What was she depressed about?” I wanted to know, but Finney had had enough, and he held up a hand to stop me in midflow.

  “Would you object very much,” he asked, “if we had a go now?”

  Chapter 14

  THERE must have been a dozen of them. Not all men, but in general the job still attracts more men than women. I won't dwell on the symbolism of the zoom lens and the victim laid bare, but that morning it felt like rape.

  They were huddled around my front door, and I told the minicab driver to stop fifty yards away, so I could decide what to do next. I paid him and got out, then stood on the pavement for a good thirty seconds without a single bright idea in my head. They are paid to be observant, but they were chatting and laughing, their eyes reaching no farther than the end of their cigarettes, knowing that as long as they sat outside my front door they would eventually get what they were waiting for, my fellow journalists, some of them no better than vultures, and with nastier habits.

  I wanted to run—or to punch them, and it was that urge which set me walking toward them. I had put on sunglasses to save my swollen eyes from the early morning glare, but now I took them off and put them in my pocket. If I was going to face the cameras—and sad to say that was more likely than that I could fell them all with one left hook—then I must engage the cameras. To cover my eyes would be to cut myself off. To let the camera gaze into my eyes might be to garner some sympathy. When you've been in the media too long, such cold-blooded analysis of the business of communication becomes second nature. It was in my favor, for instance, that I had put on no makeup. I would look shell-shocked, as though this thing had hit me from nowhere, not as though I had planned a murder. Was I calculating? Absolutely. But then I really hadn't planned a murder.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said as the human wall loomed in front of me. There was pandemonium for a second. I might just as well have said, “Mob me, gentlemen, please.” Then the cameras exploded in a flurry of clicking and I found a microphone thrust in my face.

  “Did you kill Adam Wills?” someone shouted at the back of the crowd, and there was some amused cackling from a man I knew slightly, and whom I had thought better of. Other questions were shouted, but the theme was similar, and my brain was speeding along its own path. I turned slightly, so that the television cameras had my full face, and I tried to look into the eyes around me as I spoke, so that I didn't look shifty or as if I had anything to hide. My legs were shaking under me, not from nerves but from exhaustion and misery. I could smell the stale cigarette smoke on the breath of the nearest hack and I wanted to vomit. It would have made for great television, and it would have been the end of me. Set the agenda, I murmured to myself, set the agenda. Don't let them set it.

  “As you probably know, Adam Wills was the father of my twins,” I said, counting down the words to a thirty-second soundbite. That's long for a soundbite, but this was a big story and I was a big suspect. If I was editing this story I would give me thirty seconds. I tried, moreover, to structure my statement in such a way that if they chopped it up, it would not misrepresent me wherever they cut. There was no point in saying “I wanted to kill Adam Wills but I didn't,” because those first six words would make the perfect headline and the last three would end up on the floor of the editing suite. What I said instead was, “Whatever happened between us, I could never have wished Adam any harm. I know the police have to eliminate me from their inquiries, and I support whatever they have to do. I hope they'll be able to find the stalker too, if only to eliminate him. They have to find Adam's killer because one day my children have to know what happened to their father, and I have to know too. I'm sorry, I have to go …” I elbowed my way through the shouted questions to my front door.

  Already I was regretting what I'd said. It would sound too cocky, too polished. The strange thing was, as much as I'd calculated what I had to say and how to say it, I had still had a hard time not breaking down. I meant every word of it. As I emerged from the shock of the night before, my need to know was growing like a gnawing hunger in my gut. It was almost incidental that I had to clear my name. I was shaking too much to find my keys, and it set my teeth on edge that they managed to get a few shots of me like that, scrabbling around in my bag, head down, incompetent. I swear one man tried to follow me right inside my house, and my foot reached behind me and made sharp contact with his ankle. As I shut the door I heard his voice behind me, complaining, “The bitch kicked me.” I locked the door and sat down hard at the foot of the stairs.

  Erica emerged from the sitting room, her face as pale as her Swedish hair. I had not enlightened her, when she arrived, about Adam's death or my car's involvement in it, but now I could hear the television and Sky News updating us live. The children scuttled around her legs and came to me. I scooped them up. Erica didn't come too close. I was a suspected murderer, after all. Who knew what evil I was capable of? A baby on each arm, I could still kick.

  “I have telephoned to my agency,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her, a buffer in case I tried to headbutt her to death. “They know about my situation. I have informed them I am leaving when you return.”

  I stared at her. Leave! I wanted to shout. Get out of my house! Instead I begged.

  “Just stay for today,” I said. “Please. This is all a horrible mistake and I need some time to get things sorted out.”

  “There is no mistake,” she said. “Their father is dead.”

  Her hips, her shoulders, everything about her down to her slightly freckled jaw was set. I looked at my watch. It was nearly two alre
ady. I'd been at the police station since eight-thirty. Five hours of questioning and I knew it wasn't over yet. Outside the sky was clear and blue, the temperature the fresh, sharp cool of autumn. The children were already stir-crazy, wriggling in my arms and begging to be put down, then crying to be picked up again. We would all be carried out in straitjackets if we were imprisoned in here all day. There was a good chance, however, that the press pack might be sufficiently stupid that they had not realized there was an alternative way out. It did not look like it from the front, but a small lane ran along the end of the back garden. I had no gate onto it, but after the storm part of the fence had collapsed, creating an adequate escape route.

  “Help me out 'til five,” I pleaded, “and I'll pay you double.”

  Now she shifted to look at me.

  “Cash,” I said. Her arms unlocked and fell to her side.

  She shrugged and nodded. She was not willing, but she was mine. I had three hours to salvage my life.

  Maeve's face fell when I walked into her office.

  “Robin, I thought you weren't coming in until all this blows over. You look terrible.”

  “I've done nothing wrong, Maeve,” I looked her steadily in the eye, “and this is supposed to be my first day back at work. I thought you'd be glad I've made the effort.” She gave me a twisted half-smile and glanced away, pulling a file of papers toward her then pushing it away, just for something to do. She gestured me toward one of the low armless chairs that put all her visitors at a disadvantage. She was wearing black, no sleeves, her arms tanned and taut. There were no love handles on Maeve, no cuddly cellulite. She was all bone and rippling muscle, honed in the gym morning, noon, and night.

  “You look great.” I tried to bring us back to some sort of normality. “Is the black for Adam?” I nodded at the dress.

  “It is.” She brushed a speck of dust from her modest breast. “I notice you, however, are not in mourning. Is there anything we should infer from that?”

  “How dare you.” My voice was low.

  “I'm sorry,” she said after a moment. “That was unfair. I know that the two of you … were very close at one time.”

  It was true that I had given no thought that morning to what might be appropriate, simply pulling on jeans and a leather jacket against the chill in the air, but I was in mourning as surely as Maeve was in black.

  “Maeve,” I said softly. “We've known each other a long time. Either you think I'm a murderer, in which case you shouldn't even be talking to me. Or you're just pissed at me because my private life is messing up your professional life. If you think I killed Adam, just ask me to leave now. If you don't, then could you please cut the crap?”

  The silence stretched. Maeve examined her fingernails for what seemed like several minutes, and then she leaned back in her chair.

  “I'm not going to ask you to leave, Robin,” she said, “but don't underestimate the shit we find ourselves in.”

  I realized I had been holding my breath. Now I breathed out, grateful for the “we,” and for the “ourselves.” My relief was short-lived.

  “You look like death, Robin,” Maeve continued, leaning forward again. “It's only hours since Adam was killed. You're giving yourself no time to recover. I do appreciate you coming in, in the middle of all this, of course I do, but take some time off.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what am I saying?’ I'm saying take some time off.”

  “I don't want time off.”

  “Well, as your manager,” Maeve attempted a mischievous smile here, then gave up on it, “I'm telling you that you need time off.”

  “You're suspending me.”

  Maeve held up her hand and waved it to and fro.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Don't be so melodramatic. We just want to let the dust settle. Let's call it compassionate leave.”

  “I don't want leave, I don't want compassion.”

  Maeve passed her hand over her forehead.

  “Robin, you can't walk in here and expect … Look, you'll be on full pay, and of course we'll be very excited to have you back the moment this is all over. It's just very difficult for us right now. We've lost Adam, which is a personal blow to many of us who knew him. And how, for God's sake, can we cover his death when he was run over by one of our own … I know, I know, not you, just your car. I didn't mean to imply … but you must see it's very difficult for us. Very, very difficult all round. For us as well as you. I know that if there's anyone who is sensitive to the needs of the Corporation, it's you, so I'm sure you'll understand …”

  “Understand? Understand?” I could scarcely fit words together, and I stood there repeating it like an angry parrot. “Understand? You're screwing me, that's all there is to understand.”

  I walked out then in a red haze of anger and marched through the corridors that linked offices and studios and canteens like a blood, supply to vital organs. For all its backstabbing, its petty fights, and its many inadequacies I had still loved this place. Adam had loved this place. I saw no one I recognized and in my head they were all cowering under their desks, too frightened to say hello. A black hole was opening up inside me: The Corporation was no longer my home. I was in exile.

  Chapter 15

  WHAT on earth possessed you, at a time like this, to go and talk to that woman?”

  I was at my mother's, where I'd sent Erica and the kids when we escaped out of the back door. Erica had managed to take the kids onto Streatham Common for a walk without getting mobbed, and she informed me that they had tottered and tumbled around without a care in the world. We could sleep at my mother's to stay away from the press for as long as we wanted. Now my mother was helping me bathe Hannah and William. Which is to say that I was sitting on the toilet seat, a glass of merlot in hand, and my mother was perched on the edge of the bath with her customary glass of sherry. Between us we had about a quarter of an eye on the children. Their discarded clothes lay wrinkled and muddy like shed skins all over the floor, but in the past twenty-four hours domestic concerns like laundry had rapidly descended the list of life's priorities.

  Why indeed had I spent my only three hours on a visit to Maeve? It certainly wasn't loyalty to the new job I'd never wanted. Nor was it some misguided attempt to pretend everything was normal, which it clearly was not. Of course I had been canvassing support, knowing that if my employer (and Adam's employer) showed faith in me, then that nebulous thing known as my reputation would receive a boost. But I was not so stupid as to think the Corporation could save me.

  “The Corporation was Adam's life,” I said to my mother, as though that explained it.

  “You still haven't told me why you had to go there,” she pointed out softly. She'd been very gentle with me ever since Adam's death. She was my mother and she saw the pain in me where everyone else assumed there was none. Still, I sensed that deep down she was alarmed by what was happening.

  “Well, if I want to find out why he was killed and who killed him, some of the answers have to be there.” I thought it was obvious and I gave her a look that must have said she was a fool. My mother gave me a similar look in return but I carried on, caught up in the urgency of my mission. “There are people I need to talk to, and all of them are there … What the hell can I find out at home? I was just trying to keep my foot in the door. Damn Maeve.”

  I almost spat the last words and my mother heaved a sigh.

  “I don't want to interfere,” she ventured. “You must do whatever you decide of course, but—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted, snapping at her. “I should just put it aside, right? Like everything, always, pretend it's not happening, put it aside.”

  She was stunned into silence. In an instant I knew I shouldn't have said it. My sisters and I had frequently laughed at my mother's maxim behind her back, but none of us, as far as I knew, had ever taunted her with it before.

  “I'm sorry,” I muttered. “I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have sai
d that. But someone did this and tried to frame me, and frankly, if you don't want to see me in jail, I have no choice.”

  She bit her lip and gazed back at me, then shook her head sadly.

  “Let's get the children out,” she said, subject not closed but put aside.

  We got them out of the bath and into their nightclothes. I dimmed the bedroom light, laid the children down, and leaned over to kiss them and murmur in their ears. Their first day fatherless and they were oblivious. When they were older they would ask me about it. Would they half remember, half imagine a chill in the air, a cloud in their mother's eyes, the echo of sirens, the stern presence of the police? I prayed that there would be no more mystery about it by then. I needed to be able to say this is what happened and why, this is who did it and why. I needed to be able to say it was awful, but it is over. I stroked Hannah's hair. She was as good as asleep already, gazing up at me dreamily through heavy-lidded eyes, her mouth pulling on her pacifier. I resolved that their father's death would have no impact on their days. They would not be the tragic offspring of a murdered parent. Not if I had anything to do with it. Not if I could stay out of jail. Which did not seem then, as I stood over my children, as much of a challenge as it would seem an hour later.

  I went to bed just minutes after the children. I had no appetite for food. I was so drained that I could barely lift one foot in front of the other, and even if my mother and I had anything to say to each other, I would not have been able to articulate the words. I fell into a deep sleep and then half woke to voices downstairs. Despite my exhaustion, my brain was in such a state of excitement that I could not simply ignore them. I sat up and listened, but the words were muffled, so I crept to the door and opened it softly.