‘Is that a question, Officer?’ Jan says.
‘No, the question is just whether you are prepared to accept there was a relationship between you both?’ he says, flaring.
I don’t know how it can harm my defence if I accept this but I follow the advice. ‘No comment.’
‘Okay then. Let’s do this the hard way,’ he says.
‘Exhibit RG/10 is a letter written by hand on light blue notepaper.’ I stare at it and remember it immediately. There are yin and yang signs on each corner. This was Grace’s trademark paper. She always wrote to me on that paper.
‘Do you recognise this letter?’
My letter. How do they have my letter? And then I remember: the belongings that Seb stored in his loft. This must have been part of the stuff that was taken. And then I think of the money and the thought passes through my mind that they might have taken the dollars. But Seb was sure they didn’t.
‘Officer, I gather this was taken in the course of a search without a proper warrant,’ Jan says.
‘We can argue about that later, Miss Cullen. For now, let me just ask you, Mr Shute, if you recognise the letter?’
‘No comment,’ I say, fighting against the urge to explain.
‘I’m just going to read it out. It’s got a date written on it: November 2nd 1989. My dear Xander, it says. I am not sure whether I am going to send this letter to you or whether it’s going to join the others I’ve started and crushed into balls. I want you to know I never meant to hurt you even though all we seem to end up doing is hurting each other over and over again. This time—’
I am whipped back three decades. I don’t remember the letter and what it said but I remember everything else. What I wore then – an old tweed jacket from a second-hand shop. Which brand of cigarettes I smoked – Consulate. I remember the colour of the walls in the room in which I read it – apple-white. I remember the twisting feeling in my gut. The hopelessness.
‘Stop,’ I say. ‘Yes. I knew her. We were in a relationship.’
Jan is angry but more at Conway than me.
‘By the looks of this letter, your relationship ended at her choice, so to speak,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say, my jaw tightening.
‘How did you feel about that?’ he asks.
‘I’m going to repeat my advice, Mr Shute.’
‘It’s okay, Jan. I felt how anyone would feel. I loved her. I didn’t want it to end. But it was beyond my control.’ I am articulating something I haven’t had a chance to become familiar with yet.
‘That’s an interesting phase you’ve used though, Mr Shute, isn’t it?’
‘Is that a question?’ Jan says. She is shifting in her seat. Coiled.
‘It will be, Miss. You see we also found these at your bail address, Mr Shute. At the bottom of a cardboard box we lifted from the loft. Is that your handwriting? For the benefit of the tape, I am showing the suspect exhibit RG/11, a letter without a date on it.’
I look at what he is showing me. It is still in a plastic police bag but I can make out the writing easily enough. It is my writing, or was.
‘No comment,’ I say.
‘It’s easy enough to get a handwriting expert in, Mr Shute, if you’re denying it as your writing but it has your name at the bottom. In it you use that same expression you’ve just used to me now. It’s beyond my control, you say in a letter you have written to the deceased.’
I am straining my memory to remember this but it is a fog. I look across to Jan who is incensed. Thankfully, she speaks for me as I grope around in my head for memories.
‘First of all, Officer, looking at the letter, it’s not addressed to the deceased, it seems to be addressed to a Mabel. And secondly, if the letter was found at his address, it obviously wasn’t sent to Mabel, whoever she was, so I don’t see the relevance of this.’
Conway isn’t fazed and seeing his face turn smug begins to worry me.
‘Actually, Miss Cullen, in the letter that your client has already agreed he was sent by the deceased, she signed it Mabel. Was that a pet name you used for her?’
‘It was,’ I say, and although Jan shoots me a scolding look, I don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to accept it.
‘We believe that you meant to send this letter but didn’t, for whatever reason. In it you say that you can’t let her go. You say, it’s beyond your control. And you say it one, two – five times – it’s beyond your control. What did you mean by that?’
The memory of that letter flashes in my mind in a burst of colour. There was something in that phrase that I remembered. It meant more or less than it seemed to at the time, but I can’t remember now which: was it more or less? It feels like it might have been a joke. But there is sentimentality there that doesn’t fit a joke.
‘It was a joke,’ I say.
‘Doesn’t sound like a joke.’ Blake speaks for the first time. Conway looks across at her with reproach.
‘Not a joke, joke. An inside joke but I can’t remember now what it is,’ I say.
Jan begins to wriggle as though she is climbing out of her body.
‘I’m going to remind you of my advice, Mr Shute.’
‘No comment,’ I say.
‘Okay. Just so’s you understand I’m going to still ask the questions.’
What was just warmth in the room is now squeezing me tight. The air begins to cloy at my throat and the urge to leave the room becomes desperate. I look over at Blake who hasn’t broken a sweat. Conway too sits as if in complete comfort. But still the room wraps itself around me.
‘Okay. Maybe to just change gear a bit. I want to ask you about the money. For the tape I am showing the suspect RTG/6, a copy of a bank statement for an account in US dollars. You would agree that this statement shows your name and the name of the deceased, Michelle Mackintosh?’
Jan’s eyes begin to widen but I can’t read why.
‘No comment,’ I say, gasping for air.
‘Well, it’s there anyway on the document. And as we pointed out in the last interview, we can see there that two hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars and twenty cents vanishes out of that account a couple of weeks before her death. Can you tell us who withdrew that sum in cash?’
‘No comment.’
‘It must have been her or you, since it’s a joint account. Was it her?’
‘No comment.’
‘Was it you?’
‘No comment.’
‘We have done some investigating since our last interview and according to the bank’s microfiche records, the person that withdrew this money was you. What was the reason for that? Did she agree to you withdrawing it?’
‘No comment.’
‘Actually, we know that she didn’t countersign the withdrawal. So, my question is, why did you take this money out before she died?’
My mouth has dried and I have a desperate urge to swallow. But the sheer cliché of it, gulping like a cartoon character, stops me.
‘Did you have money problems, Mr Shute?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look as if you have money problems.’
‘That’s not a question,’ Jan says before I can say my two words.
‘Okay, well, here’s a question. What did you do with it?’
‘Enough. I am requesting a break in the interview at this point.’
I’m not sure why Jan is so edgy about these questions but I am myself desperate to stop. I need to get out of the room, even for a few minutes. I pull my shirt away from my neck and take a deep lungful of sticky air.
‘Certainly,’ says Conway with a sneer. ‘We are pausing this interview to allow you to have a consultation with your solicitor, Mr Shute. The time by my watch is fourteen thirty-nine.’