You Weren't There

The room at the station had a clock that clicked loudly enough to become a fourth person in every pause.

Mum sat beside me. A solicitor named Caroline Dunn sat on the other side, with a notebook open and a pen laid across it. Before we came in, she had spoken to me privately and explained what would happen, what I needed to understand and what I should ask if I didn't understand. She had not told me what to say. I was grateful for that and frightened by it.

Adebayo came in with another officer, introduced everyone for the recording and explained why we were there. She spoke steadily. Nobody raised their voice. I began to understand that being treated seriously could be much more frightening than being shouted at.

She asked me to describe my role at the fundraiser again.

This time I started before the event. I told her when I arrived, who lent us the camera, where I'd put the tripod. I described the silent viewing copy and the planned separate audio. When I didn't remember a time, I said so. When I knew a time only because it appeared on a recording, I said that too.

At the beginning, it felt painfully slow. Then I realised the slowness was the point. My first account had been smooth because I had filled in its inconvenient spaces.

“Tell me when your brother came to the balcony,” Adebayo said.

“Before the speeches. Around a quarter to nine, I think. I didn't check the time then.”

“And what did he say?”

I told her about the case, the request to cover, the promise to explain later.

“Did you know he intended to take the backup camera?”

“No.”

“Did you suspect something was wrong?”

“Yes.”

It was the first answer that made Mum move beside me. Not much. Just a shift of her hand on her knee.

“What made you suspect that?”

“He wouldn't tell me what was in the case. He asked me to cover for him rather than telling Val himself.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you tell Mr Dacre your brother was moving equipment?”

“No. He didn't ask me then.”

“Did you see your brother carry the case out?”

“Not directly. I saw it later in the viewing copy.”

“So when you told me he was with you throughout the break, you already had a recording showing him elsewhere?”

“Yes.”

The clock clicked.

I wanted to explain that the recording showed him only for a second. That it was a corner of the frame. That I hadn't watched it as evidence when I made the cut. All of those things were true, and none altered the answer.

Adebayo let the silence remain long enough that I had to sit inside it.

“Why did you give that account?”

“I thought he'd stolen the camera. I found the label in his room. I didn't know where he'd gone, and I was afraid saying that would make you think he'd done something to Rowan.”

“Had you any reason to believe your brother had harmed Rowan?”

“No.”

“Then why not tell us what you knew?”

I looked at Mum, then back at the inspector.

“Because I didn't trust what would happen after.”

Adebayo nodded once, not in agreement.

“What did you think would happen?”

“That you'd stop looking at anything else.”

“Because your brother had taken a camera?”

“Because we're—”

I stopped.

“Go on.”

I had been about to say because we're the sort of family people expect trouble from. It sounded melodramatic in the room, and it sounded insulting to Mum, who had spent years doing ordinary decent things without expecting anybody to congratulate her.

“Because people make decisions about Sam quickly,” I said. “He left college. He works in kitchens. He gets things wrong. I thought you'd see that before you saw him.”

Mum looked down.

Adebayo put her pen on the table.

“Bea, our work is to test information, not accept one person's preferred explanation. Your false account didn't protect your brother from assumptions. It gave us inaccurate information to test and made the accurate parts of what you said harder to rely on.”

“I know.”

“I'm explaining it because you need to understand the practical effect. Not only that lying is wrong.”

I nodded.

The solicitor asked for a brief pause. She checked that I understood what had been said and whether I wanted a break. I said I could continue.

Adebayo asked when I'd first spoken to Sam after the interview on Saturday. I told her about the call outside the centre.

“What did you say to him?”

I could hear my own voice from that morning, angry and frightened, making the sentence sound almost clever.

“I said I'd told them something he needed to make true.”

Mum closed her eyes.

The words landed on the table between us. I had known they were bad. I hadn't known how much worse they would sound when I no longer controlled their tone.

“Did you ask him to give the same false account?” Adebayo asked.

“I wanted him to explain where he'd been. But yes. I think I also wanted him to make my answer work.”

“Did he agree?”

“No. When I told him properly, he said I had to correct it.”

“When was that?”

I gave the approximate time, then checked the message history when asked. We separated what I remembered from what the phone could show. The process was careful and undramatic. It stripped the afternoon of all the reassuring phrases I'd used in my head.

At one point Adebayo asked about the eleven-minute cut.

“The highlights file was always going to be edited,” I said. “The break didn't need to be in it.”

“Was your brother's appearance a reason you removed it?”

I looked at the table.

“Yes. Not the only reason. But yes.”

“Did you delete the silent viewing copy?”

“No.”

“Did you alter the original card?”

“No.”

“Did you ask anyone else to?”

“No.”

“Who received the highlights link?”

“Judith and the college media address. I sent it when the export finished on Saturday. It wasn't posted publicly by me.”

“Who could access that college address?”

“Mr Ellison, the media tutor, the student events team. Finn's one of the student organisers. I don't know exactly who else.”

The other officer made a note.

“Why didn't you explain your false account when you handed over the drive?”

“Because I kept deciding I could tell you later.”

Adebayo waited.

“There isn't a better reason,” I said.

She nodded and moved on.

We went through the events I had mentioned since the first interview: Val's uncertain sighting, the door in the camera frame, the conversation about the jacket. I was careful not to repeat Sam's remembered argument as if I'd heard it myself. I said he had something to tell them, and that I hadn't asked him to rehearse it with me.

Adebayo asked whether I had spoken to Finn about the equipment wallet. I showed the Friday-night message and the packing photograph. The officers already had copies, but they asked me to explain the sequence in my own words.

“Did you see Mr Sayer remove the wallet from the case?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone open the case after your photograph?”

“No.”

“Could another person have had access to it?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is where your direct knowledge ends.”

“Yes.”

I almost resented her for refusing to let the facts stretch. Then I thought of Sam and understood why the refusal mattered.

When we reached the bag, I remembered Finn's words in the car.

“He knew about the blue headphones,” I said.

Adebayo looked up.

“Explain.”

“On Saturday. Before I saw the photo Denise had been sent. He said the bag had Rowan's blue headphones in it.”

“Could he have heard that from someone else?”

“His mum was with Denise. She might have told him.”

“Did he say where he'd heard it?”

“No.”

“Was it unusual for him to know what headphones Rowan owned?”

“No. They were friends.”

She wrote it down without making it larger or smaller than it was.

I told her about Judith's explanation of the funds. Adebayo said they were obtaining relevant records and that I should not approach donors or students to ask about private finances. I said I wouldn't. She asked what Rowan had actually written on the running order. I repeated the words, not my interpretation of them.

By the time we finished, the glass of water in front of me was warm. I had drunk half of it in little sips whenever a question frightened me. The solicitor asked a few clarifying questions. Adebayo explained the next steps without promising an outcome for the false account or the camera theft.

I signed what I was asked to sign only after reading it. That took longer than I expected. Written down, some of my own sentences looked unfamiliar, and I checked two details before agreeing they were accurate.

When the recording ended, Adebayo sat back.

“Is there anything you haven't told us because you're worried about someone being upset with you?”

I searched my mind with an uncomfortable seriousness.

“I don't think so.”

“That's a different question from whether you think it's relevant.”

“I understand.”

I thought of Imani, of Rowan's notebook, of Finn saying the bursary hadn't come up between them. I had told her all of it, with the limits attached.

“No,” I said. “Nothing I can remember.”

“If that changes, tell us.”

“I will.”

This time the promise frightened me enough that I thought I might keep it.

Outside, Mum and I stood in the car park without moving towards the car. The solicitor had gone after giving Mum her contact details. Traffic passed on the road beyond the wall. A man in a suit was trying to stop a parking receipt blowing off his dashboard.

Mum handed me a packet of tissues.

“I'm not crying,” I said.

“I know. Your nose is running.”

I took one.

For a minute we watched the man with the receipt. He finally trapped it under a coin and shut the door with satisfaction entirely disproportionate to the task.

“Are you disappointed in me?” I asked.

Mum looked at me.

“Yes.”

I nodded because I had asked for the answer.

“And I love you,” she said. “Those aren't competing facts.”

I pressed the tissue against my nose.

“I keep wanting somebody to say it wasn't that bad.”

“I know.”

“It was.”

“Yes.”

She put a hand on the back of my neck, warm and firm.

“You've begun to put it right. Beginning isn't the same as finishing.”

We got into the car.

On the way home, she asked whether I still wanted to work my short shift. I said I did. She said she would pick me up afterwards if I needed her to. We stopped at a red light, and I watched a woman help a child untangle a scooter strap from a fence.

At home, Sam was sitting on the stairs, just as I had been earlier.

“All right?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But it's said.”

He nodded and moved his feet so we could pass.

For once, nobody asked me to make it sound better.