Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

“Four,” Josh replied, his knuckles white on the door frame. “She’s four.”

“Lovely age,” Jim said, smiling from his desk. “Lovely age.”

―

Josh waited until their last day working alongside the school before he took the cassette. Jim wasn’t going anywhere, so he’d had to ask him about the settings on one of the mowers he had parked up outside to get him to leave. Once they were at the mower, Josh patted at his pockets. “Shit,” he said. “My phone. Won’t be a sec.”

Jogging back to the office, he’d pulled out Jim’s chair, stood on it, and reached up for the cassette, slipping it into the back of his shorts. Its spine, he saw, as he took it off the shelf, was thick with other dates, layered-on stickers reaching back through weeks and months.

Josh was back with Jim in less than a minute. As Jim talked him through the mower’s operation he’d tried to listen, but his mind was already rushing through possibilities. It could be nothing. There was no reason, other than the date, that the police hadn’t requested the tape for another investigation entirely. But then, he’d told himself, what were the chances of that? This was, after all, where Michael had said he’d been. That must be why they took it. But surely if there’d been anything in it, then wouldn’t Slater have noticed? Wouldn’t she have pulled Michael in? But still, Josh had been waiting for months, for something more than just a sense or a few crumbs of once-damp soil. So he had to see it. He had to know.

He bought the TV the following day, from a Cash Converters on the Finchley Road. It was an old silver portable with a VHS player embedded under the screen. “I’ve got loads of films for that, too,” the checkout clerk told him as he paid. “There’s some great eighties porn. Classic hairstyles.” Josh told him he was good, thanks. He just wanted the TV. That was all he needed.

The image quality was poor. Black-and-white, with the occasional jump and shiver in the image. But it was clear enough. An elevated view of the sliding doors at the entrance to the sports hall. At first Josh began viewing it in real time, watching as a shard of sunlight slid across the floor, stretching the shadows of the door’s lettering. But then, remembering the time of Michael’s lessons, he’d pressed fast-forward, sending the counter in the corner of the screen climbing through the hours of the day. In jerky speed, a cleaner mopped the tiles, a pigeon hopped in, got trapped, then flew out. Every hour or so Jim would appear, carrying a different tool each time. Then, for several accelerated hours, the view remained empty. Just the municipal floor, the edge of a notice board and the encroaching shadow of a branch beyond the glass doors.

As the counter reached three o’clock, then three-fifteen, Josh slowed the tape to real time again. He didn’t care how long it would take. He just didn’t want to miss anything. He wanted to be sure. Michael’s lesson had been at four o’clock. It always was. But if he didn’t arrive, or if he was late, then maybe, just maybe that would be enough. So with the TV propped on the coffee table, his elbows on his knees and his fists under his chin, Josh watched the empty entrance, glued to the filmed minutes in front of him. As the counter reached three-twenty he felt a stab of guilt. It must have been around then, in the world on the screen, that he’d left his house by the front door. He tried to focus, to forget, as the minutes continued their steady climb, the moment he’d abandoned his daughter, and what else had followed.

All through the next half-hour, there was nothing. Three-fifty-nine. Four o’clock. The view remained unchanged, empty except for than the shadow of the branch edging closer to the door. Josh could feel his pulse quickening. With every second of Michael’s absence from the screen the prospect of proof was closer to hand. Perhaps Slater had taken the tapes but then never watched them. Perhaps, once the DCI had declared there was no case, they’d just sat in a storage cupboard for months before eventually being returned to the school.

But then, at the edge of the frame, another shadow began encroaching fast upon the shadow of the branch. Within a few seconds it had happened. The doors slid open and Michael, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his fencing bag slung over his shoulder, entered the building and walked across the screen, clearing its frame in just four strides.

Josh paused the tape, Michael’s exiting right foot still frozen on the far left of the screen. He pressed the rewind button, sending him back across the entrance and out the doors. Then he pressed play again, watching as closely as he could. Michael repeated his entrance. Josh’s breath was shortening. Once Michael had cleared the frame he immediately rewound the tape and pressed play again, but this time with his finger hovering over the pause button too. In this way, switching between play and pause, Josh watched as Michael walked across the screen in slow motion. Which is when he knew there was no doubt. It was the jerk in his shoulder that betrayed him, the shortened stride as if his right leg was weighted. Michael was limping. There were only four of his strides in frame, but they were enough. Josh had walked beside that limp across the Heath many times. But only ever at the beginning of their jogs, when Michael’s right calf was still cramped.

He paused the tape again. Leaning in to the screen, he tried to make out Michael’s expression. But he couldn’t. His face was a grey blur. It didn’t matter. Josh knew. That was all that mattered. He finally knew. However Michael had got to the school that day, he hadn’t, as he’d claimed in his statement to Slater, walked there.

“MICHAEL.”

Michael was at the edge of the clearing when he heard Josh call his name. It was a warm evening towards the end of April, two days after they’d seen each other at Samantha’s private view. Just minutes earlier, pausing on his way home from a fencing lesson, Michael had been standing alone at the clearing’s centre, looking up at a flight of house martins darting for insects in the fading light. The trees of the South Wood were coming into leaf all around him. The white candles of the horse chestnuts already shone bright against the darker shades of foliage and bark.

The only time Josh had ever called Michael by his full name was when he’d introduced him to other guests at that first party. Otherwise he’d always been “Mike” to Josh. At times, even “Mikey.” But never Michael.

He turned, slowly. Josh was standing at the far end of the clearing. He wore his Corporation of London uniform: a pair of dark combat trousers and a dark green polo shirt bearing the corporation’s crest on his chest. Michael was relieved to see he held nothing in his hands. He wondered how long Josh had been watching him.

“Josh,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“You were in my house,” Josh said, not moving. “That day. You were in my house.”

Michael felt the air leave his lungs as if he’d been plunged underwater. He’d known as soon as he’d seen Josh standing there. As soon as he’d heard him say his name. But it was still a shock, to hear the words, to hear him state them so baldly. He thought for a moment about trying to pretend he didn’t know what Josh was talking about. But he knew it was no use. His expression would have already told Josh all he needed to know. So, instead, Michael completed the dismantling of their false minutes.

“And you weren’t,” he said.

Josh remained motionless. His hands were balled into fists. He said nothing, leaving Michael’s words to fall in the air between them. Michael was about to speak again when Josh started walking towards him. “Why?” he said, his jaw tense, the tendons showing on his neck. His voice was hoarse, a strained whisper. “Why? That’s all I want to know. Why did you do it, you fucking bastard?”