What Sam Took

Sam had made coffee for two people, which was how I knew he was frightened.

He didn't usually make coffee for himself. He drank the kind that came cold in a bottle and cost enough that Mum called it a financial decision. Now there were two mugs on the kitchen table and the jar of instant coffee stood open beside them.

“I didn't know how much you put in,” he said.

I looked into my mug. It was approximately the colour of engine oil.

“Are you trying to keep me awake until Christmas?”

“Bea.”

I sat down opposite him.

He had shaved. Badly, in a hurry. There was a nick under his chin and a small patch he'd missed near his ear. For a second I saw him at thirteen, pretending to shave beside the bathroom mirror while I sat on the closed toilet lid and made unhelpful comments.

Then I put the paper label on the table.

He looked at it without touching it.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“I can get it back.”

“That wasn't the question.”

“I know.”

“Where's the camera, Sam?”

He rubbed both hands over his face.

“I gave it to someone.”

“Gave it.”

“Not like that.”

“What other kind of giving is there?”

“I needed money. Temporarily.”

The fridge made a clicking noise. It had been doing that for months. Mum said it was the thermostat. Sam said it was about to die. Neither of them had asked anyone who might actually know, because asking might lead to an answer that cost money.

“How much?” I said.

“It doesn't matter.”

“It matters to the person whose camera you stole.”

He flinched at the word.

“I was going to put it back.”

“You don't get to borrow things secretly.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

He pushed his mug away.

“Three hundred and eighty.”

I stared at him.

The camera had been donated to the centre by a local production company after they'd upgraded. It was worth more than that. I knew because I'd spent a lunch break looking up the model and imagining owning one that didn't come with a sign-out sheet.

“What for?”

Sam looked at the back door.

“Don't do that,” I said.

“What?”

“Look for somewhere else to be.”

He laughed once without humour.

“You sound like Mum.”

“Good. One of us should.”

He sat quietly for so long that I began to hear the rest of the house: a pipe ticking, a car passing, the upstairs window moving in its frame.

“I lost some money,” he said.

“Lost it where?”

“Online.”

I knew then. There had been little things over the last few months. Sam with his phone tilted away at dinner. Sam borrowing twenty pounds and returning fifteen, saying he'd forgotten the rest. An argument with Mum about an overdraft letter he insisted wasn't important.

“How long?” I asked.

“Not that long.”

“Sam.”

“Since February. On and off.”

“Does Mum know?”

“No.”

“Does anyone?”

“The person I owed money to.”

“Who?”

“Dex.”

I knew Dex only as a name attached to plans that usually went wrong. He had worked with Sam at the supermarket before Sam got the kitchen job. He was a real person, not a criminal in a leather jacket, which somehow made the whole thing more stupid and frightening.

“Did he threaten you?”

“No.” Sam said it sharply. “It's not like that.”

“Then why—”

“Because I said I'd pay him back. Because I'd already said it twice. Because I thought I could sort it without everyone looking at me like you're looking at me now.”

I looked down at my hands. My thumbnail had a ridge in it from where I'd trapped it in the tripod latch. I pressed the ridge against the table edge until it hurt.

“You took it out during the break,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“To meet him.”

“Where?”

“The petrol station by the bypass.”

“How?”

“He picked me up outside the centre.”

“And after?”

“We drove out there. I gave him the camera. He said he'd hold it until I paid him. Then he dropped me near the high street.”

“What time?”

“I don't know exactly.”

“Try.”

“After nine. Quarter past, maybe. I didn't look at the clock and think, better remember this for the police.”

The word hung there.

Sam stared at me.

“What did you tell them?”

I took a breath.

“That you were with me. In the balcony. During the break.”

His mouth opened, then closed.

“Why would you do that?”

I laughed. It was an ugly sound, and I couldn't seem to stop it quickly enough.

“Sorry. Was that the wrong kind of covering for you?”

“I meant tell Val I was moving equipment. Not—Bea, Jesus.”

“You wouldn't answer your phone.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“I found the label. Rowan's missing. A detective was asking where you were. What was I supposed to think?”

“Not that I did something to him.”

“I didn't think that.”

He looked at me.

I hadn't thought it clearly, in a sentence. I had thought around it. I had felt the shape of something terrible and put the first available words between us and it.

“I didn't,” I said again, less convincingly.

Sam stood up and went to the sink. He turned on the tap, then turned it off without putting anything beneath it.

“You have to tell them,” he said.

“So do you.”

“I will. I just need to get it back first.”

“Why?”

“Because then it's—”

He stopped.

“Then it's still stealing,” I said.

“I know.”

“Does Dex have it?”

Sam's shoulders shifted.

“Not now.”

Of course he didn't.

“He sold it this morning. Said he needed the money. I went to the shop, but they wouldn't give it to me without him. Or a receipt. Or the money. I don't know. The bloke just kept saying it wasn't my property.”

“It isn't.”

Sam nodded, still facing the sink.

I hated myself a little for saying it. Then I hated him for making it true.

My phone rang. Mum's name filled the screen.

We both looked at it.

“Answer,” Sam said.

I did.

“Have you eaten?” Mum asked.

The question was so ordinary that for a second I couldn't understand it.

“Toast.”

“That was breakfast. Finn's mum said you were at Denise's.”

“I was.”

“How is she?”

“I don't know.”

“No. Of course you don't.” Mum's voice softened. “Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Sam there?”

I looked at him.

“Yes.”

“Tell him Val's still looking for him. And Bea? You don't have to go to work tonight. Ring them. Explain.”

“I need the shift.”

“Just ring them.”

Behind her I could hear the pharmacy phone and someone asking where the plasters were. She said she'd be home at four and hung up.

Sam sat down again.

“We tell her when she gets back,” I said.

He nodded.

“And the police.”

“Yes.”

He said it, but neither of us moved to pick up a phone.

After a minute, I went upstairs.

The edited film had finished exporting. Judith had sent another message, this one simply asking whether I was all right. I didn't answer. I opened the folder containing the silent viewing copy and copied it to a spare drive, making sure I didn't move or rename the original file.

The inspector had said keep everything as it was.

I played the eleven minutes at normal speed.

There was less to see than I'd remembered. An empty stage, cables, the keyboard player crouching at his amplifier. Two volunteers passed through the service passage. Then Sam with the grey case. Then the end of a broom, carried by someone beyond the edge of the frame.

At 21:12, a door at the back of the passage moved.

I leaned forward.

It opened only a little. The camera angle showed the inner edge and a sliver of the space behind it, no more than a vertical strip of darkness. Someone crossed that strip, but the viewing copy was too small and too compressed to show a face. I paused, went back, played it again.

A sleeve. A hand, perhaps. Nothing I could honestly identify.

I resisted the temptation to make it larger and pretend that larger meant clearer.

At 21:16, I appeared below the balcony, carrying the cable Imani had mentioned. I looked up towards the camera. My face was tiny, but I could see the irritation in the angle of my shoulders.

Sam was nowhere near me.

I took the inspector's card out of my pocket and laid it beside the laptop.

Then I called the number.

Adebayo was busy. A different officer took my name and said someone would arrange to collect the drive. I explained the camera angle, the missing sound, the fact that I had a silent copy of the whole evening as well as the edited highlights.

“Have you noticed anything relevant?” he asked.

I looked at the paused frame of myself standing alone.

“There's someone at the back door,” I said. “During the break. I can't tell who.”

“Keep a note of the time. Don't alter the file.”

“I haven't.”

There was a space in the conversation where I could have said the rest.

Instead I asked whether they'd found Rowan.

“Not yet,” he said.

After we hung up, I wrote the time on a piece of paper: 21:12.

Underneath it I wrote: Sam not with me.

I stared at that second line for a long time. It was only four words. I had written longer things without difficulty: essays, emails, a speech for Mum's fortieth that had made her cry in the nice way.

Downstairs, Sam opened a kitchen cupboard and closed it again.

I turned the paper over.