Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

―

Michael was staring at a pen on his desk when the entry buzzer sounded. His mind, still loosened by recurring images of Lucy, had wandered. A pulsing nausea swilled through him. All morning he’d paced his flat as if about to make an entrance into an auditorium, an uncomfortable nervousness in the pit of his stomach. So at first, on hearing the buzzer, distracted and confused, he’d done nothing. But then it sounded again, for longer, more insistent. Going into the hall Michael picked up the receiver and pressed the intercom.

“Hello?” His voice was hoarse, dry.

“Mr. Turner?” a woman asked.

“Yes,” Michael said.

“Detective Sergeant Slater, CID. I was wondering if I could come up for a quick chat?”

Michael stared at the plastic grid of the speaker, his finger still on the intercom button. “Is everything all right?” he said.

“Just routine,” she replied. “But I’d rather explain in person, if that’s okay.”

“Yes, of course,” Michael said. “Fourth floor, all the way to the top.” He pressed the entry button and heard the front door click open, then the sound of Slater’s footsteps as she entered. There were no others following.

He heard her steps again a few seconds before she reached his flat. Delicate taps echoing in the concrete stairwell. He didn’t wait for her knock but opened the door to meet her, greeting her with a nod.

“Thank you, Mr. Turner,” she said, as he held the door for her and she entered.

She was small, petite, of a similar frame to Caroline. She wore plain clothes: a pair of jeans, a blouse, a navy jacket over her arm. She wiped at her forehead with her hand, hot from the walk up the stairs.

“Would you like some tea?” Michael said, closing the door.

She smiled at him, disarmingly natural. “No, I’m fine, thanks. Some water would be great, though.”

She followed him into the kitchen and living area. As he ran the tap, testing the temperature with the tips of his fingers, she walked the length of the room, ending where Michael had stood watching Josh the night before. “Beautiful view,” she said, looking out at the Heath, and then down at the Nelsons’ garden.

Michael couldn’t take the waiting any longer. He’d already surprised himself with his ability to slip into the stream of his altered yesterday. But he doubted he’d be capable of sustaining it under direct questioning. He had to know if she knew.

“Do you mind,” he said, as he brought her the glass of water, “if I ask what this is about?”

She smiled again as she took the glass. She had close-cut brown hair, tomboyish in style. She looked no older than twenty-eight, twenty-nine. There was, Michael noticed, the scarring of a burn on her neck. “Just some routine enquiries,” she said. She took a sip of the water. “Shall we sit down?” she asked, indicating the sofa.

As Michael sat she took out a notebook and a pen from her jacket, then joined him. “If I could just confirm your name?” she said, holding her pen above the page.

Michael laughed, a short expulsion of breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But not until I know what this is about.”

She looked up from her pad, her pen still poised. For a moment she said nothing, as if weighing his guilt. But then she smiled again. It was, Michael saw, the opening gambit of much of her conversation. A learnt trait, perhaps.

“It normally works better with me asking the questions,” she said, then paused as if allowing her official tone to catch up. “We’re conducting,” she continued, resting her pen, “house-to-house enquiries. In connection with an incident at your neighbour’s house yesterday.”

“An incident?” Michael said.

“Yes,” she replied, taking up her pen again and returning to her notebook. “The Nelsons. A death.”

Looking back over the years, Michael would come to see how his response at that moment, although formed in relation to his knowledge of what had happened, might still have replicated that of a neighbour genuinely hearing the news for the first time. It was something about hearing those words in the mouth of another. Of knowing for certain, through language not sight, that Lucy’s fall had happened, that the fact of it was alive in the world. It was history, already causing action and reaction.

His intake of breath was involuntary, as if he’d touched a scalding plate. DS Slater looked back up at him.

“Who?” he asked.

“The youngest daughter,” she said simply. “Lucy.”

Michael brought his hand to his mouth. “Oh my God,” he said, turning away. His words, his feelings were real. He didn’t understand how, but it was like learning it anew. Hearing it, not just knowing it.

“How?” he said, turning back to her.

She met his eye. He half expected her to say, You tell me, Mr. Turner, or to pull his fingerprint from the back of her notebook. But she did not. She licked her lips, and he saw she was anxious. Was she meant to be telling him so much? Perhaps, for all her familiarity, she was a novice. Certainly her age would suggest as much.

“A fall,” she said. “Most likely an accident, but…” She tailed off, then smiled again, brief and tense. “Well, you know. We have to be sure. So,” she took up her pen again, “if I could just confirm your name?”

“Michael,” he said quietly. “Michael James Turner.”

“And your date of birth?”

The questions were standard. If she was a novice, then DS Slater acted her part well, reeling through them with a practiced rhythm. How long had he lived in the street? His occupation? For how long had he known the Nelsons? Michael answered them directly. None of them yet required him to deviate from the facts. But then, running into it as if it were as innocuous as any of her other questions, she asked him, “And what were your whereabouts between three and five p.m. yesterday afternoon?”

Michael began with the unaltered truth. “I had a fencing lesson,” he told her. “At four. Over at the leisure centre in Highgate.”

She wrote her notes. The silence unsettled him. The sound of her pen. “The one by the school,” he added.

She looked up from the page. “Yes,” she said, as if asking him to keep it simple. “I know.” She looked back down. “And what time did you leave for your lesson?”

Michael paused. This had to be arrived at, not presented. Thought, not said. “Um,” he said. “It must have been around three-fifteen, three-twenty at the latest.”

Again, she brought her eyes up to meet his. “To get to Highgate?”

“Oh, sorry,” Michael said. “I walk. I should have mentioned that. I always walk to my lessons.”

“Right,” Slater said, making another note in her pad. “And can anyone verify you were at the leisure centre?”

And that was it. Michael, with fewer than ten words, had spoken the course of his alternative day. And Detective Sergeant Slater had written it down. It was a statement. It existed. It could be questioned, challenged. Strangely calm, Michael went on to tell her about Istvan, looking for his number in his phone to give it to her. If she questioned Istvan would he mention Michael’s being sick? And if he did, would she guess the cause? It couldn’t be helped. It was a risk he had to take. Istvan was, after all, his alibi.

Was there, Slater asked him, anyone else who might have seen him at the lesson? A receptionist? A gardener? Michael didn’t think so, as far as he knew. She nodded. When prompted he told her about his walk home, across the Heath. It was a beautiful evening, so he’d stopped, rested in the woods. He’d taken his time. Had he seen anything in the Nelsons’ house when he’d left? Or when he’d returned? No, Michael said. No, nothing he could think of.