by Paula Daly
But it’s not easy for her. Her face, she knows, is set in a deep scowl and she is casting black looks at any man who is courageous enough to glance in her direction. So she goes back to the bar. She needs more vodka. The little she has inside her is not enough to change her mood significantly and so her only option is to have more. Tess checks her purse. She has fourteen quid and a few coppers. She’ll need to keep aside at least three pounds for a taxi home or she’ll be stranded, so that leaves her with enough for three more drinks. ‘A double?’ the barman shouts over his shoulder and Tess nods her head. He has sweat patches beneath each arm and on his top lip perches a moustache – a relic left over from the previous decade. He places the glass in front of Tess and adds a paper umbrella from beneath the bar. Then he looks at her as if he has bestowed the most unique gift. ‘What’s your name?’ he asks.
‘No,’ replies Tess flatly, and she takes her drink to where she was a moment before.
There is a barricade of sorts around the dance floor. Something at waist height to lean against, to stand behind, a purpose-built structure designed to separate pursuant and prey. Tess isn’t sure yet which category she falls into so she stays where she is. She swallows half her drink and her frown softens. She swallows some more and the rest of her face follows suit. She feels some pressure in the small of her back. A hand? A groin? Whatever it is its owner is not very subtle and this makes Tess smile. Her first smile of the week. She thinks about turning but she doesn’t. She likes the brazenness of this person. Likes the way they’re not pulling away when she hasn’t reacted to their touch. She smiles some more.
The song changes and she hears a voice in her ear. ‘Do you smoke?’
And even though she doesn’t, she says, ‘Yes.’
The palm on her back is removed and she is handed a cigarette and she turns, holding her hair away from her face as he lights the end for her. She inhales deeply and then blows away the smoke and when it clears she’s able to get some sense of him. He’s not great-looking. Who is around here? But he’s taller than Tess and his skin is good and his eyes are alive and he doesn’t look smarmy. He smiles at her, happy she’s giving him the time of day, and Tess decides right then and there that he is the answer. ‘Hello,’ she says.
Now Tess wakes up with a jolt; her bedroom in semi-darkness. Is it morning? Or is it not yet night? She’s disorientated. There’s a banging inside her head but she can’t remember drinking. She remembers going to bed. What happened before that? Oh, God. Steph. Now she remembers. Steph. At the Midland Hotel, she saw her daughter.
The banging resumes and it’s only now that she realizes it’s not inside her head at all but it’s someone trying to get in. She pushes herself into a sitting position and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She is wearing only one sock. She tries to stand but her legs feel unsubstantial, as if they can’t take her weight and so she sits back down again for a moment. How long has she been in bed? She has no idea. Could she have been here a week and her muscles have atrophied to the extent that they no longer work?
‘Tess!’
The sound of her name being shouted through the letterbox startles her. Come on, she tells herself. Move. Move yourself.
There is a band around her wrist which she uses to tie back her hair with. It leaves a hollow in the flesh where it’s been cutting in. She stands. Her head swims a little but she’s OK. She takes a step. She’s still OK so she descends the stairs. When she walks into the front room, she sees the letterbox is open and a set of eyes is surveying her. She opens the door and the caller stands. ‘You weren’t answering your phone. I got worried.’
Clive.
‘Where does Rebecca think you are?’ she asks.
‘The gym. Don’t panic.’
‘How’d you find me?’
Clive shrugs. ‘Wasn’t hard.’ Tess holds the door wide. ‘You look like shit, by the way,’ he says, stepping in. He surveys the spartan space, the neatly kept living room without any real possessions in it, and raises his eyebrows. ‘Been burgled?’
She walks through to the kitchen. ‘Why are you here, Clive?’
‘I called Avril. She said you were interviewing a witness alone yesterday and you’d not checked in with her either. You didn’t answer your phone and I got worried. I’m allowed to be worried, aren’t I?’
Tess pours red wine into two glasses.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any beer?’
‘No.’
Clive takes one large swallow as if the wine is indeed beer and drains most of the glass. They sit at the table. ‘They’re resetting Avril’s nose tomorrow so she won’t be in,’ he says. ‘She said to tell you that if I got hold of you. Where’ve you been, Tess?’
‘Nowhere. I’ve been here.’
She sounds unconvincing even to her own ears and it’s clear he doesn’t believe her, but Clive drops it. Whatever’s going on with her is her business, she’s told him this more than once, and he knows not to push.
‘So how did it go with the witness, anyway?’ he asks.
‘What? Oh, she bailed. Decided she didn’t want to talk after all. Turned out to be a wasted trip.’ Her voice is level as she delivers this lie but inside she’s screaming. She’s back inside the car, the girl with the braided hair looking at her through the windscreen, looking at her as if to say, Do I know you? And Tess wants to reach out her hand through the glass and say, Yes. Yes, you know me. Don’t you remember?
‘Are you OK?’ Clive’s face is full of concern as he studies Tess from across the table.
‘Course.’
‘You look like you’ve been crying. I’ve not upset you, have I?’
‘Just tired,’ she tells him.
Now
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Tess stands in the conference room, ready to address Innocence UK. She has done this many times but today her game face has deserted her. And whatever zeal she usually possesses appears to have vanished. She stands in her tired suit with her tired face and the expressions on those reflected back at her tell her that they’re aware something is amiss.
Tess tries to rally herself before speaking. ‘So we can now cast doubt on the time frame the prosecution claims was adequate for Carrie to get to Ella’s house, commit murder and get home again,’ she says. ‘Avril and I drove the route and when we repeated it in rush hour it would be almost impossible. I’ve also had word that Morecambe FC were playing at home that evening, in a cup game, so the streets would have been busier still.’ Tess pauses. The panel are taking notes, jotting down the particulars. ‘And then we have the witness, Mr Hurst, saying he saw Carrie get into her car directly after the murder. His statement should be straightforward enough to refute with a standard eye test. As long as it’s not argued his sight has dramatically declined within the last four years, so I’ll track down his medical records from the time of the murder just to be on the safe side.’
‘I feel a “but” coming,’ says Tom.
‘Disappointingly, there are two,’ replies Tess. ‘The car captured on CCTV, the white Honda CR-V, was fairly rare. There are only seven in Lancashire, two in Morecambe, and one of those is Carrie’s … Perhaps more worrying, though, is that when we interviewed Carrie again, this time pressing her a little harder, she admitted to following Pete Kamara four times when he was having the affair with Ella. This, coming from the woman who claims she couldn’t care less who he was sleeping with … It was jarring to hear her admit that, to say the least.’
‘Is it worth doing another psychological evaluation?’ asks Vanessa Waring.
‘I’m not sure. She’s pretty strung out right now, her daughter’s having the baby – in fact she must have had it by now – and all Carrie can think about is that she’s not there with her. I’ve heard since our visit they’ve got her on some heavy-duty anti-anxiety medication. Would that affect the evaluation?’
Vanessa considers this.
‘What’s your gut instinct?’ asks Clive.
‘You mean, did she do it?�
�
‘Did she?’
Tess thinks. If she had to call it one way or the other which way would she go? There’s a collective gaze on Tess. They expect an answer. ‘I’m pretty sure she didn’t do it … but my gut’s hardly going to impress the appellate court. We need more. We need another angle.’
Tom taps the end of his pen on the desk. ‘Avril reported there’s a friend of Ella’s? Some friend who doesn’t want to talk?’
And Tess feels her cheeks become hot. ‘Oh, yeah, she was a no-show.’
‘Is it worth contacting her again?’ Tom asks.
‘I don’t think so.’ Tess looks down at her notes and flips over a couple of pages. Can Tom tell she’s lying? She thinks not, but she’s reluctant to lift her gaze just in case. She takes her pen and crosses out a couple of words, frowns as if what she’s looking at doesn’t really make sense.
‘OK,’ Tom says, ‘so, what next? I’m thinking forensics. Fran? Chris? Anything you want to chip in with here?’ Tom looks at them both expectantly.
Fran Adler moves her reading glasses to the tip of her nose so she can peer at them from over the top. ‘I think there’s enough here to warrant requesting the forensic records. I’d like to see the reports that were not submitted in court. The reports we didn’t get to see. And I wonder, do we retest the blood that was found at the scene? Make sure it’s actually Carrie’s? I’m thinking that if there’s a chance it isn’t, then we should go ahead and retest.’ Fran glances at each member of the Innocence UK panel in turn to gauge their reaction.
From what Tess can determine no one is sure if this is a good idea. ‘If we do retest and, again, it is proven to be Carrie’s blood, surely that’s more damning for her?’ she says.
‘But what if it’s not her blood?’ replies Fran. ‘Or what if the sample didn’t come from Ella’s front door at all? There have been a lot of mix-ups, Tess.’
Tess concedes that there have. But still, it seems too great a risk to take. If they retest the blood and it is Carrie’s they’re basically agreeing that she was there in that house with Ella. That she murdered her. And that’s bad.
Or … is it?
It’s bad for Carrie, yes. But is it so bad for Tess?
If they retest and the blood is found to be Carrie’s, they can abandon the case. No questions asked. There would be little value in going forward with it as they would be compounding Carrie’s guilt. They could chalk it up to experience and move on to another prisoner who requires their help.
And Tess wouldn’t have to think about it any more.
She wouldn’t have to think about Steph.
She could shut off that part of her life and never revisit it.
Tess has never influenced the progress of a case for her own advantage and she wonders if she is capable of doing it now. Am I? she thinks, the idea shaking her. She turns her attention to Tom. He has the final say. He’s deep in thought, appearing to be weighing their options. Should she push to retest the blood?
‘I’d be very interested to see the results of the fibre analysis,’ says Chris Pownall from across the table. New to the team, Chris has spoken very little in these meetings so far, so it’s a bit of a shock when he actually does. ‘The fibre analysis wasn’t submitted as evidence. Is that because it wasn’t done, or is it because the police didn’t like the result of it and decided not to make it available?’
Tom is nodding. ‘Yes,’ he’s saying, ‘interesting. Good call, Chris.’ He turns to Tess. ‘Let’s delay any decision about the blood for now. I’m thinking it might be a good idea to abandon testing it completely. Just to err on the side of caution. Tess? Are you in agreement? Fibre analysis next?’
‘Absolutely,’ she says.
That evening, Tess flicks through a copy of yesterday’s Sun as she waits for her king prawn dopiaza to be prepared. It’s a quarter past seven, a busy time for the British Raj, and the open kitchen is all go. There are six chefs, as well as Rakib (who takes the orders on account of him having the best English), who addresses Tess as ‘Mrs Tessa’ – which she quite likes because she’s never been married, nor is she ever likely to be. The chef in charge of the naan bread works a slab of dough between his hands and throws it against the oven wall before catching Tess’s eye. He smiles shyly her way and Tess smiles back before returning to her newspaper. Customers who have placed their orders by phone come and go, the customers seated in the waiting area tap on their phones, and there is something gratifying about being here on a foul, rainy evening, some of the customers nodding in recognition to one another, some nodding towards Tess.
Tess thinks again about Kyle Muir’s statement that Carrie Kamara is innocent. That they got the wrong woman. And the image of her daughter, standing on the Midland Hotel steps, all apprehensive and vulnerable-looking, slips into her mind’s eye again. For the past couple of days, it’s as if Steph is always there, waiting in the wings, waiting for a quiet moment in Tess’s consciousness, or a break in her thoughts, so that she can slide into view.
Kyle said Steph knew things about Ella, things other people didn’t. Well, how did Kyle Muir know this? How could he be so sure? Perhaps it was simply pure speculation on his part. Perhaps Steph knows nothing. And surely if Steph did know something relevant she’d have gone to the police at the time? Surely she wouldn’t have sat back and watched an innocent woman take the rap for something she didn’t do?
Tess consoles herself with these thoughts, these unanswered questions. They make abandoning her daughter outside the hotel a little easier to stomach.
‘Mrs Tessa?’ Rakib says. ‘Your dopiaza is ready, love.’ Tess stands. She collects the brown paper bag, encased in a white plastic bag in case of drips, and hands Rakib a ten-pound note. He whispers that he has hidden two poppadoms within her order, ‘For your loyalty,’ and Tess thanks him, even though she’s quite sure every customer benefits from these complimentary extras.
She places the curry on the passenger seat of the car with the seatbelt wrapped around it protectively and sets off for home. As she drives, the gingery-garlic aroma fills the air and her stomach begins to complain furiously. She takes the twists and turns carefully, so as not to upset the dopiaza, and in less than five minutes, she arrives. Her mouth is watering as she takes the box of case files from the boot of the car, before grabbing her handbag and the curry, making sure to hold the plastic bag at arm’s length so she doesn’t get any turmeric-stained ghee on her coat. When she arrives at her front door, ravenous and eager to get inside, she finds it ajar.
Tess takes a step back and looks up.
Each window is in darkness. It doesn’t appear as if anyone is inside. And yet she knows she locked it. Knows she would never leave the house unlocked. She’s the type who must pull down on the door handle whenever leaving to check she really has the place secure.
She pauses. Thinks for a moment. Who else besides Tess has keys to this place? The owner? The letting agent? A previous tenant, who neglected to return a full set?
She thinks about the green car. The car she’s seen in her rear-view mirror repeatedly, the car that switches lanes on the motorway when she does, the car that disappears when the driver realizes he’s been spotted. Tess doesn’t know anyone who drives a dark-green Subaru. She doesn’t know anyone who’d want to follow her either. And she sure as hell doesn’t know anyone who’d want to break into her house.
She pushes the door open a little. The lounge is in darkness, the kitchen beyond that is in darkness too.
It is conceivable that it’s her landlord who has entered the house to check on his property. Check she hasn’t sublet the house to an army of undocumented workers or turned the whole of the top floor into a cannabis farm. He is well within his rights to inspect his property. But he is supposed to notify Tess first. It’s possible he forgot, she’s thinking, pushing the door open a little further. But is it also possible he left his property unsecured as well? Tess thinks this is unlikely.
She runs her hand along the interior
wall until she feels the switch beneath her fingers. She turns on the light. As she thought, the room is empty, so she deposits the box of case files near the front door and makes her way towards the kitchen. As she walks, she hears the creak of a floorboard upstairs, and she stops dead in her tracks.
Someone is in the house.
Unmoving, she listens. She listens and she waits. Whoever is up there is standing still also. Are they listening too?
Suddenly, she’s raging.
Making quite a bit of noise, Tess struts towards the kitchen. She puts the curry on the counter and takes a glass from the cupboard, filling it with wine. She slams a few cupboard doors. Next, she turns on the stereo, making like she’s settling in for the evening, before putting a plate in the microwave and pressing start.
Then, silently, she takes a long knife from the drawer.
She slips off her shoes and climbs the stairs, barefoot, the music from the stereo drowning out her steps.
Once upstairs, she checks her office.
Empty.
She checks the spare room.
Empty as well.
She pushes open her bedroom door and it’s then that she sees a figure sitting on the bed in the darkness.
Tess switches on the light and for a second both Tess and her intruder are blinded.