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Chapters (59)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for I Know What I Saw
  3. By the Same Author
  4. Dedication Page
  5. 1
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  54. Now read on for a preview
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  59. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I cannot make out at this distance what is being said, but Amit is gesticulating with his hands to a figure in the doorway. It must be Ebadi. After a minute Amit seems to turn to go but is stopped by something Ebadi has said. Ebadi steps back into the house and just as I think that the door is going to shut safely between them, Amit follows him inside.

26

Monday

As I wait here in the growing darkness, panic begins to overtake me. Amit has just walked into the house of a murderer and I let him. I don’t even know what he’d planned to say to him. If he went over there and started talking about a dead woman or a missing woman, what was Ebadi likely to do?

I cannot sit here, hiding behind a car, and let him come to harm. Not this time around.

I get up from my position and march towards the house but an unformulated thought stops me. My brain begins to click and shift through the gears and once it has, I stop and turn back. I can’t break the door down. So, then I have to ring the bell. What if he refuses to open the door? What if he opens the door and refuses to let me past? Calls the police? What if, having heard the doorbell and seeing me, he panics and does something to Amit? I can hardly call the police. They wouldn’t come after all the fuss I have created and laid at his door. Or if they did they would arrest me. My heart begins to pump and suddenly I feel light-headed. I don’t feel in control of events and I know now why I have laboured so hard to avoid having to care for another person. My life on the streets doesn’t allow any room for that. I have tried so hard to stay alone and yet here I am.

The safest thing is to wait. He has no reason to kill a boy. An identifiable boy, with long hair, in a school uniform. A boy who would be missed, by hundreds of people. An image of Amit comes into my mind. In it he is being strangled. I shake my head to rattle the picture free. It disappears.

But there are others waiting to take its place. I try to think of something else. Someone else. Rory. Grace. Seb. I screw my eyes shut and see Amit in a box, being buried.

Rory. Grace. I will myself to think of anything but this, so that I can contain this panic of Amit being buried.