Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

Michael looked across at Josh. Apart from his tiredness, he looked unchanged. Although his eyes, he saw, had lost the distance of their focus, as if they could no longer bear the promise of a horizon.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said, and he meant it, in the full scope of the word, more than he’d ever meant it before.

Josh didn’t look at him. “How did you hear?” he said.

“The policewoman. She came to the flat.”

Josh was already shaking his head, biting his lower lip. A vein, like a sudden worm, appeared across his forehead.

“That bitch,” he said. “Treating me like a fucking criminal. A suspect!”

Josh turned to face him, anger enlivening his eyes. Michael saw how deeply it was rooted, below his heart, his stomach. “I mean can you imagine if after Caroline…someone had come along and pointed a finger and—” He broke off. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking away again. “It’s just…”

“I know,” Michael said. “It’s okay. Really.”

Josh leant back against the bench. “At least that’s done with now, anyway. The DCI, or whatever he’s called. Her boss. He said there was no case.” He let out a breath in disbelief. “No case? Of course there’s no fucking case!”

“I’m sure it was just procedure,” Michael offered. “Standard stuff.”

“Yeah?” Josh said more quietly. “Well, then they should take a hard look at their fucking procedures.”

There was no case. Michael leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he took in what Josh had said. For the last two days he’d been sure he would see her again. Detective Sergeant Slater. He’d waited, each morning, for the intercom to buzz, to hear the taps of her footsteps in the stairwell. To watch as she drew out her notebook and pen once more. He was sure his false day would have been tested and found untrue, his deleted minutes resurrected.

“The coroner gives his judgement today,” Josh said from beside him. “They did the autopsy—” His voice broke over the word, the images it conjured. The smallness of her body. Silently, he began to cry.

Michael reached out and laid a hand on his back. It was the first time the equation of their contact had been reversed. He felt the muscles of Josh’s shoulder blades spasm under his palm; the physicality of his pain.

“Christ, Mike,” Josh said, when he could speak again. “I’m telling you. When you have kids. No one tells you…I mean, they do, but…” He rubbed his hands roughly across his face, then looked at them, as if expecting to see a stain of his grief. “The love,” he said. “It’s…it’s…” He couldn’t find the word, and when he did it came in a whisper. “Cruel.”

Michael took his hand away. To feel Josh’s fragility, to touch it, was too much. “How’s Sam?”

Josh took a breath, gathering himself. “Not good,” he said, frowning at the constellation of cigarette butts at their feet.

“She’s beating herself up over the gate. The child gate.” He sighed and began shaking his head again. “We took it away. I don’t understand. She was always fine. Careful, like we’d taught her.” He shrugged. “I…I just didn’t hear her. Nothing. Only when she…” He trailed off again, unable to say what had killed his daughter.

Michael looked towards the city, the dome of Saint Paul’s dwarfed by cranes, shafts of sunlight bursting against glass towers. He didn’t understand, either. Had Josh been there? Is that what he was saying? Did he know? Michael swallowed, trying to naturalise his voice. “You were downstairs?” he asked.

For a moment Josh said nothing. When he looked back at Michael, his expression was defensive. “Of course I was downstairs.” The vein was proud across his forehead again. “Where else would I be?”

“I just meant if you were in the garden,” Michael said. “When it happened. Then you couldn’t be…”

Josh looked away from him. “No,” he said, as if this was an answer he’d given too many times before. “I wasn’t in the garden.”

A woman walking two pugs came and sat down on a bench to their left. Rummaging in her handbag, she took out a pack of cigarettes, drew one out and lit it, the lighter cupped in her palm. The pugs at her feet breathed short and heavy from the climb.

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Josh stared at the ground again. Michael sat beside him, still processing what he’d said. Josh must have told Slater he’d been in the house. Sam, too. Without knowing it, the two of them had conspired to make each other’s versions of those minutes true. Josh in the house, Michael not. So where had Josh been? He’d never know and he could never ask him.

Michael felt a flush of desperate anger. If only Josh hadn’t left the house — but he had, so it no longer mattered. All that did, and all that would now, over the coming months and years, is whatever Michael might do to help heal the wound they’d both made. This is all he had left to place in the scales against what had happened on that landing, on those stairs. His actions would have to be many, countless. But it was all he had to offer.

“If there’s anything,” Michael said eventually, “I can do. To help.”

Josh didn’t seem to hear him, and Michael was about to repeat himself, when he finally spoke. “It’s because I moved her,” Josh said, more to himself than to Michael. He was nodding, as if he’d worked out the answer to a puzzle. “That’s why they questioned me.”

From nowhere Michael saw Lucy fall again. Slowly, a bare foot searching, her blonde hair, her hand opening. And he always would. He knew that now. She would always be with him. She would never leave him. Just as the sight of his daughter lying in that turn on the stairs would never leave Josh.

“But, who wouldn’t?” Josh said. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, she’s my daughter…”

“It’s more likely,” Michael said softly. “They were just following procedure. Honestly Josh. Going by the book.”

Josh nodded, but with less conviction. Suddenly, he stood up. “I need to go home,” he said.

Michael rose from the bench, too. The woman with the pugs looked over at them, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth.

“On my own, Mike,” Josh said, holding up a hand.

He looked as if he might cry again. Like a man at odds with the world, a man who was losing. “Sure,” Michael said. “Of course. Give my love to Sam,” he added, as Josh turned from him. “And I meant what I said. If there’s anything…”

But Josh was already walking away down the path. Michael watched him go, this man whose life, in less than a second, he’d torn apart. A man who, like him, had chosen to save himself, and who in making that choice had unknowingly brothered them, bonded as they now were by their lies and the false minutes they’d conjured.

“THAT’S IT. NOW walk away. Slowly now. Just walk away. Take it easy.”

Daniel lowered the lunging whip, turned from the horse, an old bay mare, and walked towards where Sally leant, against a fence at the far end of the scrubby field.

“Don’t look back,” she called to him. Her two dogs, lying at her feet, raised their heads at his approach. “That’s it,” she said. “Nice and steady. Keep coming.”

After five months at West Valley this was the first time Daniel had let Sally give him a lesson. Up until now he’d preferred to stay away from the horses and occupy himself with his maintenance jobs instead. But this morning, when she’d offered again, he’d accepted. He couldn’t say why, but he was glad he had. In the role of teacher Sally seemed more settled than usual. As if everything else in her life was a distraction or a disturbance. As she spoke to him now her voice was coaxing, more gentle than Daniel had ever heard it before. And she was smiling too. So it must be working, he thought, as he neared her. The horse must be following him.