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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
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  54. Now read on for a preview
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  59. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I think about everything Michael did. How he pulled and teased at every silk string gently, so that unless you looked hard, you wouldn’t see them twitch at all. It was Michael. All Michael, but I can’t just tell him that. He looks at his watch and I suddenly experience a rush of control. He thinks this is slipping from him.

‘Do you believe in free will?’ I ask.

‘Free will? As in you can choose what to do?’

‘Is there another kind?’ I say, a hint of vinegar in my voice.

‘If that’s what you’re saying – that you had no free will – then –’ He takes a breath to find the rest of his sentence.

It isn’t what I mean at all. But it will do as a placeholder. These answers cost me something, but I hope they will buy me something more in return. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you. Do you believe that all your moments are mapped out and follow inevitably one after the other?’

He considers this as he rolls the cuffs back on his pale blue shirt. All men look beautiful in blue, even him. I don’t know why.

‘No. I don’t think I do.’

‘Then think again, Detective. Really try to imagine what that would mean.’

4

Then

The man. The car crashing into the traffic lights. The whole fantastic, tragic event on the bridge hung over me as I finally walked home that evening an hour later than expected.

I should have thought of the injured people, of the blood, the agony. But it was the man’s face that consumed me, the arrangement of it. And his words: ‘That’s why I’m here, to save you.’ I tried to think if somewhere in my head, there was a name for him and a context, but no matter how deeply I mined, I couldn’t find it.

I reached our small Victorian terrace house and unlocked the front door, keys jangling, and my heart rate picked up again. The hallway was dark and silent but still bore the scent of fresh paint from the remodelling – Russell’s idea. I saw him then, his face rinsed in the light of his computer, the screen reflected twice in his glasses. He smiled when I walked into the open-plan kitchen and he hunted quickly in the fridge for a bottle of beer. He flipped off the lid and slid the bottle to me – saloon-style – over the marble top. I caught it just in time.

‘Russ! Let me get my bag off at least.’

He raised his hands in surrender. ‘My bad. Put way too much elbow into that.’ He reached for his laptop and dived back in. ‘I’ve got some pomodoro going for dinner.’