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Back I Know What I Saw
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
  55. 1
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  59. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘He gave you a cheap Camus, that doesn’t change anything,’ I said.

‘Xander,’ he said, looking around. ‘I don’t think it was him. He even told me I could pop round tomorrow and he’s going to dig out some more books for me. For free!’

My heart dropped. ‘No – Amit. You can’t go back there. You don’t know what I know,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what he’s capable of. Sure, he can act nice. Just as he must have done with the police. He might even be nice, most days. But he killed a person, Amit. Stood over her and strangled her.’ I snatched the book from his hand and flung it high into a neighbouring garden.

Amit’s face hardened and he ran quickly in the direction I had thrown it. He returned empty-handed. ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he said and stormed off.

The cold night passes slowly and I fall asleep not long before dawn. When I wake it’s with the terrifying idea that someone has killed Amit. Of Amit being rolled up in a curl of turf.

When I reach out with my hand and touch the hard, icy ground, I am pulled back into wakefulness. I need to move. I gather up the flattened boxes. I don’t want to leave them here. If I leave the den whole, it will become cuckooed, and places like this one, safe and dry and obscure, are hard to find. I fold the cardboard before pushing it deep into the bush, out of sight.

It is still too early for there to be many people around. I get up and walk into the lifting sun. My thoughts cycle back again and again to this question: where is she? I need to find out where he has dumped her body. She can’t have just vanished. She is somewhere. For now. Until she surrenders to disintegration.

After some minutes of walking, the blood has warmed my muscles through. By the time I get near, the traffic on Park Lane is in full commuter flow. A right down South Street and I am on the road heading straight towards Farm Street. The building is washed in golden morning light and it makes a fraud of what happened in that house. There is only one thing to do now and that is to confront him. If I challenge him, what can he do? I will present him with what I know. That I was in the house at the time he killed her. That it was I who made the noise that startled him. That it was my strange smell that caused them to comment. And that I watched as he strangled the life out of that poor woman.