Everything but the Truth

by Gillian McAllister

  I tried another set of key words: break in.

  There were over a hundred hits.

  ITEM 16

  casey.jones@scotland.police.uk

  Sorry to hear of your second break-in … This is looking like a problematic family. I will try and get intelligence on them from their old address. We will come by for finger printing but I have to tell you that I am not sure much can be done if the families on that estate use each other as alibis.

  orders@CCTV4U.co.uk

  Thank you for your enquiry about CCTV and security lights and we are very sorry to hear of your break-in. They most certainly are motion sensitive. Would you like to proceed with the order?

  j.douglas@gmail.com

  I need a locksmith following a break-in. Do you have any availability urgently?

  info@oban.scotland.gov.uk

  I am sorry to inform you that your request for consent to double-glazed windows has been denied despite your break-in. The appearance of listed buildings in Oban must be uniform in order to preserve the character of the building. If you wish to appeal against this decision …

  They went on and on. The emails with the police especially. There was an email trail about the failed identity parade, the first time, but it got worse after the second break-in. The tone of the police emails – What do you expect us to do? – coupled with the desperation and volume of the Douglases’ emails made me start. They ordered CCTV. Security lights. Sensors. They changed their locks. They replaced and replaced and replaced their windows, only for them to be smashed again. They weren’t allowed to get double glazing. It would be incompatible with the old frames.

  I had sympathy for them. Just a twinge.

  You have been logged out, Google displayed at the top of his email account.

  I didn’t realize why.

  43

  I pushed the laptop away and drew my knees to my chest, amongst the detritus of my stalking. The trial transcript was still strewn around my living room like there’d been a great gust of wind that had disturbed a neat stack of papers and blown them around. The laptop was still open on his logged-out email. It looked like the flat of a mad woman.

  I stared at it, thinking nothing except how that lovely relationship – the way we laughed at Howard sprinting around the house in the middle of the night, holding hands underneath the duvet – had become this.

  My door opened ten minutes later. I hadn’t locked it. And there he was.

  I jumped.

  That man who’d deliberately lured those boys in. Like a killer. Like a psychopath.

  Jack knew the code for my building. I was not allowed into his world without breaking in, but he was allowed into mine, I saw.

  He leant against the kitchen counter, lit up by the spotlights, balancing his weight on the tips of his fingers.

  ‘What –?’ I began.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he interrupted.

  He looked bigger than before, imposing, in my kitchen. I imagined another news headline about him. Pregnant woman found … I shook my head. No. He wouldn’t ever hurt me. But how could I be sure?

  ‘What do you want?’ I said. I looked around me, in spite of myself.

  He’d arrived too quickly for me to tidy up.

  At first I thought he wouldn’t notice. It didn’t look that bad. It was just a few papers.

  But then I saw it through his eyes, and it was frightening. Pages everywhere. His email inbox on my screen. Oh God, his email inbox.

  ‘Rach?’ he said.

  He took a few steps into my living room, then knelt down on my carpet, like an archaeologist about to uncover something historically significant. His body language covered up the real anger within, and I was taken in by it.

  He looked up. His eyes met mine. ‘Have you been in my emails?’ he said. And, as he said it, his eyes landed on a page of the trial transcript. He reached out, his fingers stretching for the loose, well-thumbed pages. ‘What is this? Is this like … a dossier on me?’

  I saw his eyes rove over the sheets. Pages and pages of his trial. The worst week of his life. Oh God, oh God.

  He stood bolt upright, then looked straight at me. ‘What’s this?’ he repeated.

  Seeing the pages again, in his hands, ignited my anger. That he’d looked at me, time and time again, and lied. That he’d planned the whole thing. That he didn’t see fit to tell me that; to be honest.

  ‘You fucking lured those burglars in,’ I said. ‘You trapped them.’

  Jack’s eyes went very round.

  ‘You wouldn’t tell me,’ I said, heading, ill-advisedly, for the immediate defensive path. ‘You wouldn’t explain anything.’

  ‘So you … is this my trial?’ He glanced at it again.

  Of course he hadn’t realized straight away. It was just pages and pages of incomprehensible witness cross-examination. He’d probably never seen the entire trial written down.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I was no longer scared of him. I was bolstered by my anger.

  ‘Where did you …?’

  To my surprise, Jack was bewildered. That I’d got my hands on it, ordered it behind his back. And rightly so.

  And now I had to live with the fact that I didn’t know what I was capable of. Which was similar to how Jack lived, too. It was strange and horrible how things worked out. I blinked. Was it really only a few moments ago that I had justified hacking into my boyfriend’s email? I didn’t recognize myself. How awful I had become.

  ‘I ordered it. Tell me what happened with those boys, Jack.’

  ‘Did you log in to my emails? Google said … I saw the IP address for a new login. It had your service provider on it. BT. Central Newcastle. Was it you? That’s why I’m here. I want to know.’

  ‘Did you plan to lure Dominic in and kill him? Were you really waiting? If so, how the fuck did you get off?’ I said nastily. ‘You must have had a brilliant lawyer. A snake.’

  Jack’s expression darkened at that. He looked down at the floor, sucked in his breath, then looked at me again. ‘You tell me. Looks like you’ve made a fucking Freedom of Information Request instead of asking me.’

  ‘Instead of asking you?’ I thundered.

  ‘I do not need to defend myself to you about something of which I was acquitted,’ Jack retorted.

  ‘You were not acquitted. You are not not guilty.’

  His mouth tightened around its edges. If I just focused on that mouth, and not his arms, rigid by his sides, or his legs, spread wide, aggressive, I could pretend we were happy, and he was just moistening his lips ready to kiss me. I stared and stared at that mouth.

  ‘I was acquitted, Rachel. And if you don’t agree with that then I don’t think we’ve got too much more to say to each other, have we? You’re ordering things about me. You’re reading my personal emails.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I … yes.’ My eyes felt moist.

  ‘You’re not who I thought you were,’ he said sadly. His eyes were in the shadow of his brow.

  ‘Neither are you,’ I said.

  His mouth turned down. He brought a hand to his forehead and rubbed it. ‘God, I loved you,’ he said.

  That sentence broke my heart more than all the others. More than all the lies put together. ‘What about Wally?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not saying … I’m not saying I’ll never see you again,’ Jack said with a snort that sounded almost derisive. It was cruel, that little laugh of his. So different to the low chuckle that I had loved so much.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rach. Co-parenting? Split fifty-fifty? I don’t know. Let’s not.’ He took a deep breath, then blew slowly out of his mouth, like a smoker. ‘I need to decide where we’re at. Then the other stuff.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘The reporters did what you did,’ he said. ‘They do bloody hack your voicemail. My pin’s 6865, if you want to join them.’

  I blushed. It was the same as the security code to unlock his phone, and I knew it. I didn’t tell him.r />
  ‘Or maybe you want my bank pin?’ he continued.

  He was berating me. I’m sad to say he seemed to square up to me, like a puffed-up tomcat. I felt a dart of fear then. At what he might do. At what he had done. Maybe one day I would let myself into his house and he’d raise that gun to me, I found myself thinking. He’d lied about everything else so far. Why not that, too? Maybe he was capable of harming us.

  ‘You killed somebody,’ I said softly to him. ‘And I am in the wrong for trying to find out more about it? You were a closed book.’

  ‘You don’t bloody know me,’ he roared, in full-on Scottish mode.

  I took a step back at that. My hand went to my stomach, instinctively.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ he said, more softly this time. He glanced down at my belly, then met my eyes again.

  ‘Why should I believe you’re good when you murdered somebody?’ I said. ‘I spent my career saving lives. You killed someone. And you planned it. You bloody planned it. Davey as much as told me, and you said he was mad. I went and asked him, and you stopped me again. It was premeditated. Malice aforethought,’ I shouted, the words springing to mind from the transcript. ‘Malice.’

  He stared at me then, so hard I wondered if he would say anything more to me ever again. ‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t then,’ I yelled. ‘Go!’

  But although I was angry, something significant was waking up inside me. I’d been in his emails. Was there really ever an excuse for that?

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ he said to me, turning as he walked towards the door.

  His eyes were cold stones. Maybe it was because of the emails, but I suspected it was also because I admitted that I’d asked Davey again. His expression had changed when I’d said that.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied.

  Though the sad thing was: I had. Those emails, with their sad tone, the repeated enquiries of the police: they had almost been enough for me. I had started to feel the things I should have felt towards my boyfriend: understanding, sympathy, love.

  ‘Well, if you want to know anything further, I refer you to my court case,’ Jack said. ‘You think I’m a fucking murderer?’ The swear words were biting in his soft Scottish accent. ‘Fuck you then.’

  He crossed the room, opened the door, and left.

  And that was that.

  44

  One year ago

  I called in on the boy again, the next night. I wanted to see him, to check on him, even though it would annoy him.

  ‘Alright?’ he said.

  He was sitting up, reading a book. I looked at the cover: We Were Liars.

  ‘Contemporary young-adult,’ I said, gesturing to the book. I was trying to make conversation, to make sure he was okay. I wanted him to talk to me about Freud and Marx and all the things he liked to sound off about.

  ‘Yep.’

  He put the book down, splayed on the bed, and looked at me.

  ‘You alright?’ he said with a smile, and I knew then that he was okay.

  ‘Just weathering the night shifts.’ I smiled, hovering in his doorway.

  The window was still open, letting in the chilly air.

  ‘I bet,’ he said. He reached for the remote control. ‘Nothing on at this hour.’

  ‘I doubt it. Aren’t you tired? Or cold?’ I looked at the window.

  ‘Always was a night owl,’ he said. He glanced over, then back at the television, then over to me again. ‘Would you mind adjusting that?’ He pointed to the bracket that supported the television. It was sort of a long, sturdy arm, with a forty-five-degree angle in the middle.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Though this is definitely outside my job description.’

  ‘You’re good like that,’ he said softly.

  ‘How are you feeling about what we … about our chat?’

  His eyes met mine. ‘Good. Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me. I will never forget it.’ He nodded, once, looking away moodily in a teenagerish way, his eyes clearly misting over, even though he tried to hide it.

  ‘How’s that?’ I said, wrenching the arm.

  He appraised it. ‘A bit higher,’ he said. ‘I want to recline and watch it lying down. I’m tired.’

  He was worsening, I thought. I was adjusting his room for him, to make him more comfortable as the cancer raced ahead. The television stand was now more than six feet from the ground, and he seemed satisfied with that. He could watch it while he lay down. While he dozed. While he slept more and more.

  He threw me a grateful look as I left. My hand lingered on the doorframe for a split second longer than usual.

  45

  Present day

  There were a few things that made me do it. Jack leaving. The discovery that he’d planned the whole thing. My mind was reeling.

  I wanted to inspect myself, as if under a magnifying glass. Jack hadn’t been perfect. Mez and Kate weren’t perfect. My parents’ relationship hadn’t been perfect. My mother had led a secret life.

  And I wasn’t perfect, either. I wanted to retrace my steps. I wanted to go back and meet myself, to go home. Like studying an advert for a missing person, I went back to the place where I had lost my way. Rachel Anderson. Age: 29. Short. Average weight. Last seen outside the RVI.

  I suppose it was going back there that made me recall it properly. I’d not set foot inside that part of the hospital since the day it happened. I had since kept my feet outside the linoleum floors of Block B1 where I had worked. Ward G. I’d never forget it.

  It was late, and I drove straight there. My body remembered the drive – left at the roundabout, indicate right immediately and turn off the road. I felt the thrill of driving a route I knew well; the swing of taking a corner at just the right pace, the fluid motion of the steering wheel like a silk scarf underneath my fingertips. I knew nobody would be there; they were always so chronically understaffed.

  I drove to the back of my block. All of my favourite car parking spaces were empty. The one in the shade of the big tree. The wide one on the corner. I parked underneath the tree, spindly without its leaves, and sat back in the driver’s seat, staring at the door of the hospital.

  I never went in the main entrance. Hardly any doctors did. We all had our favourite doors near our wards, performed actions that only existed in muscle memory. I would put the code in – C2578Y – and swing the door open, push the next one, squirt the alcohol gel on to my hands and push the final door open. Sometimes, after long shifts, at busy times, I would go to press a non-existent alcohol gel dispenser in my own house, the base of my palm pushing the wall before I realized where I was. That sort of thing happened all the time, back then. I found those times stressful, but remembered them fondly now. Isn’t that always the way?

  One of the only times my role crossed with Amrit’s was when a baby called Adam was born at twenty-four weeks’ gestation. We practically lived in the hospital. The rota was abandoned. At the end of it, when he was taken off the High Dependency Unit and transferred to the ward, I took a cup of tea outside to celebrate. I kept remembering the worst of it – resuscitating him over and over, the drugs that didn’t work, his heart defect that wouldn’t close over. I hadn’t been to the toilet without my crash bleep for a month. I had no idea what the weather was doing. I had brought more and more underwear and socks to the hospital and been home less and less. But, sipping that cup of tea, I started to remember the good things, too. The joys of being a doctor that I didn’t know were joys until I did it. A shared cheer, delighted, with Adam’s parents in the HDU when he took his first breath.

  And then, much, much later, I would know yet more joys. A curry out with everyone where we toasted him. Seeing him a year later, walking steadily, obsessed with The Gruffalo book. Realizing it was worth it: all those professionals. All those months. All that input, to save a life. It would all be worth it to see him seriously proffer me a baked bean over his birthday lunch.

  I
finished that tea, tasting its rich tannin, and fell asleep on the grass. It was the best nap I’d ever had. I fell asleep on my front, on the lawn, underneath a balcony, and a nurse called the crash team. They thought I’d jumped. We all had a laugh about that as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  I eyed the door now, outside the hospital in late November, alone. Nobody was coming or going, but it was close to nine in the evening. And then I saw him: Amrit. He often stood outside after a birth, collecting himself. He was emotional like that. And he was so good at his job that nobody minded his occasional disappearances.

  The moon was slung low in the sky, lying on her back. And then I had a rush of thoughts, all at once, so significant, so anxiety-inducing, that I would have bent double if I could have; if Wally hadn’t been so big by then.

  If it had been a few weeks ago, when I was still unsure of the details of Jack’s crime, of the victim’s injuries, I might have – if the timing had been right, in the gap between finding the Google results and finding out what Jack had done, maybe, maybe – gone inside, used my old NHS password, and looked up the victim. It would have been easy. I could have read about the trajectory of the bullet and exactly which lobe it had entered and with how much force. I could have read the autopsy report and understood it. And, if it had been a few weeks earlier, I might have done that.

  How awful I would have felt. I could feel my mind trying to justify it now. He’d kept it from me. I deserved to know. But nothing could excuse it. I didn’t have any boundaries. I thought about how I’d continued to check up on the boy’s Twitter. It wasn’t just Jack I’d done it with. It was inexcusable.

  I was nosy. Investigative, to put it kindly.

  It all seemed to happen at once. One moment it was quiet – the moonlight illuminating the steam coming out of one of the vents next to the hospital canteen, the windows along a corridor illuminated sodium yellow – and the next Amrit was glancing over at me.

  Before I really knew what I was doing, I was getting out of my car and walking over to him, raising a hand in a self-conscious wave. He was wearing his scrubs. Scrubs always made the best pyjamas. There was something about them that I liked. The medicinal smell. The threadbare softness. The loose fit. But I’d thrown all of mine away.