The Perfect Lie, page 6
‘Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, I’m afraid. Just because it doesn’t prove you were there, it doesn’t automatically prove that you weren’t.’
‘But if I’d killed him there’d be forensic evidence. There’d have to be. If there isn’t any, surely that proves I couldn’t have done it.’
‘Doesn’t quite work like that, I’m afraid.’
‘But you told me it was up to the police to prove I did it. That it wasn’t up to me to prove I didn’t.’
Brian nods. ‘True, but they’re starting to stack up evidence on their side. As far as I can see it, we’ve got nothing on ours.’
‘But their evidence is all wrong! It’s being misinterpreted.’
Brian shrugs. ‘What can I say? The law’s an ass.’
I stand up and start pacing the small room. ‘No. No, that’s not good enough. I didn’t do anything, Brian! We have to do something. You have to get me out of here.’
‘Amy, sit down, please. It’s no use getting worked up.’
When he says that, I want to throttle him or punch him in the face. Were I a violent person, I might well have done. Maybe that’s one of his tactics to find out whether I’m innocent or guilty. Rile me and get me worked up and see if I snap.
‘Amy, listen to me. They’ll be searching your house as we speak. Sooner or later they’ll find that phone. Then they can get their digital forensics people to look through it and they’ll be able to see everything on there. They’ll go through the rest of the house with a level of meticulousness you wouldn’t believe. They’ll speak to friends, family, neighbours. They’ll do whatever they can to build an even stronger case against you. It’s already on a knife-edge, and anything else will just tip the whole thing over in their favour. Sooner or later, we need to think smart and try for damage limitation.’
I look at him. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that we might not have the option of having you walk free from here today. As things stand, the Crown Prosecution Service may well consider that the police have enough evidence to charge you. And that’s when all hell breaks loose. That’s when they really dig in and pile up the evidence in order to try and convince a jury. This is a murder charge. That carries a minimum fifteen year term. If they can show you took a weapon or went equipped, you’re talking twenty-five years plus. If they can prove it was done for gain, to obstruct or interfere with the course of justice or if it was otherwise aggravated, the starting point is thirty years.’
I feel my breath catch in my throat. I can’t face thirty years in prison. I can’t even face another hour in my police cell.
‘Any evidence of planning or premeditation, concealment, anything like that will only increase the sentence. Now, if this all starts to look like a real possibility, we can limit the damage. If we can show an intention to harm rather than kill, some sort of provocation, evidence of self-defence or that it wasn’t premeditated, those are all mitigating factors. Without the intention to kill or the premeditation, we’re potentially looking at a manslaughter charge instead. Presuming we’re not talking about diminished responsibility on mental health grounds, which I think we’d find very difficult to achieve — and in any case shouldn’t need — we’re looking at ten years or under.’
‘Ten years?’
‘Possibly less. You’ve no criminal record, you have children waiting for you at home, you’re an upstanding member of the community who was provoked and defended herself and didn’t mean to kill him. You’re unlikely to pose any threat to the wider community.’
‘But none of that happened! I wasn’t even there!’ I yell.
‘And if we can prove that, great. But we can’t. So unless there’s any evidence which is going to suddenly and miraculously come to light that can prove you weren’t there, that’s our best-case scenario.’
‘Ten years? You’re telling me ten years in prison is the best I can hope for? Missing a decade of my children’s lives? Because of something I didn’t even do?’
‘I think we can push for less. And you’d likely be eligible for parole in half that.’
‘Brian, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything. I’m not serving time in prison for something I didn’t do!’
Brian’s eyebrows flick upwards momentarily, and he cocks his head. ‘You might not have much choice.’
19
Saturday 4 August, 9.20pm.
Brian’s words have been ringing round my head ever since I came back to my cell.
Ten years.
Eligible for parole.
You might not have much choice.
This has all suddenly become normal talk. I think back to my life before that knock at the door. It was only hours ago, but it seems like an age. This world is so far removed from the home life and routine I know. Is this going to become my new normal?
I don’t know if it’s because my brain is protecting me by assuming that this is the new normal or because I’ve always had faith in the criminal justice system, but I seem to have developed an odd conformity to everything that’s going on. It’s almost as if I know I can’t change the situation, so I’m just going to have to ride it out.
My cell door opens and a police officer tells me DI McKenna wants to speak with me again in the interview room. This must be one of their tactics — get you in, ask a few questions, plant a few seeds, shit you up and put you back in your cell for a few hours. I don’t know if it usually works, but all it’s doing is getting me more annoyed and aggravated.
She goes through her usual routine of sitting us down, starting the recording equipment and introducing herself, DS Brennan, Brian and me.
‘Amy, I know you’ve been advised to go no comment by your solicitor, but I would personally advise you that it might be a good idea to offer your side of the story. Judges and juries don’t tend to look to favourably on defendants who no comment their way through the interview process.’
Brian, as I thought he might, interjected. ‘DI McKenna, will you please stop trying to intimidate my client with talk of court cases. I know what you’re doing with words like “judge”, “jury” and “defendant”, and it would be worth me pointing out that courts don’t take that sort of police intimidation lightly, either. Unless you’re planning to charge my client and attempt to progress this matter towards a court case, I’d appreciate it if you could steer away from mere speculation.’
I can imagine Brian would be quite a formidable person to have on your side in court. I don’t imagine he’d actually get to that point, though. Don’t barristers or senior lawyers of some sort tend to represent people in court? I don’t know. And the crushing realisation that I know far less about the legal system than I thought I did fills me with dread.
McKenna ignores Brian’s comments.
‘The reason we wanted to speak with you again, Amy, is that in the search of your property we discovered a black iPhone 7 Plus wrapped in a cloth and shoved behind the radiator in your downstairs toilet. Do you recognise it at all?’
McKenna shows me a photograph of a mobile phone on top of a cream and pale orange patterned rag.
I look up at Brian, but get no sense of what he’s thinking. As impressive as his interview room patter is, he’s not exactly helped me so far. I’ve gone from being the victim of an entirely innocent mix-up to staring down the barrel of at least a decade in prison.
I decide to talk.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Could it be yours?’ McKenna asks.
‘I don’t know. It looks similar.’
Brian leans across. ‘You don’t need to answer these questions,’ he says.
‘I do. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I want to get out of here as quickly as I can,’ I say to him, before turning to McKenna. ‘I don’t know anything about any phone behind any radiator. I lost my phone a couple of days ago, and I haven’t seen it since. I don’t recognise that bit of cloth, and I don’t know how it would have got there.’
‘It seemed to be hidden pretty deliberately. What would you say the odds were of a mobile phone accidentally landing in a piece of cloth, somehow wrapping itself up and being dropped behind a radiator of its own accord?’
‘Is there any evidence that this is my client’s phone, or are you merely speculating?’ Brian asks.
McKenna ignores him. ‘Amy, do you recognise the mobile number 07700 900494?’
I swallow. ‘Yes. It’s my number.’
‘We called that number after retrieving the phone, and it showed as a missed call on the phone we retrieved. It was on Do Not Disturb mode, which meant it went straight through to answerphone and wouldn’t vibrate if a text message or email came through. So there’s no way anyone would have heard it ringing or vibrating behind the radiator — because it wasn’t. Do you think that’s the sort of thing someone might do if they were deliberately trying to hide it?’
‘I… I don’t know,’ I say.
‘But it is your mobile phone, yes?’
‘I don’t know. If you say so.’
I try to work out what the hell’s going on. The enormity of it is clear, but it makes no sense. I desperately try to think back to when I last saw my phone. It didn’t seem particularly relevant before, but now I realise everything could hinge on it. My future could depend on it.
‘We haven’t been able to do a full analysis on it yet, Amy, but forensics told us it looks as though someone’s tried to clean it. There are microscopic traces of blood on the phone. Do you know whose they might be?’
I feel my throat starting to close up. This can’t be happening.
‘Did you cut yourself recently? That might explain it.’
I shake my head. I can’t speak.
McKenna leans forward. ‘Amy, this isn’t starting to look particularly good, is it? I know you’re not keen on speaking with us, but I really do think it might be in your best interests to tell us exactly what happened this morning.’
20
Saturday 4 August, 10.00pm.
I’m desperately trying to work out what’s going on here. I’m convinced that sooner or later I’m going to wake up and find out it was all a dream. It has to be. There’s no other option.
You hear these stories about people doing things in their sleep, or when they’ve blanked out. But that can’t be the case. It didn’t happen while I was asleep — I was sitting out in the garden all morning, reading my book. I remember every minute of it. Don’t I?
I’d certainly remember putting my book down, getting in my car, driving to Roger’s house and murdering him. Besides which, I remember realising when I got up on Friday morning that I couldn’t find my phone and thought I must have left it at work. That was a whole twenty-four hours before Roger died. I planned to have a look when I got there, but totally forgot.
I was pretty sure I plugged my phone in to charge in the kitchen on Thursday night. I can’t be certain, though. It’s just routine. If I have my phone on me when I’m going up to bed, I plug it in to charge in the kitchen overnight. I always have. We all do.
I always said when the boys got their first iPad that it’d be totally locked down with parental controls and wouldn’t go anywhere near their bedrooms at night. They’d have to leave it downstairs. I didn’t want them playing on it all night or having to check it and play on it the second they woke up.
So maybe I did leave my phone at work on Thursday. But I certainly didn’t pick it up on Friday, so how the hell did it manage to get back home, then to Roger’s house and back on Saturday morning? None of it makes any sense.
My body feels like it’s shutting down. There’s nothing I can do. Every direction I turn, there seems to be something else that’s determined to see me go down for murder. A murder I didn’t commit.
At first I thought there must have been some huge mistake. Roger’s neighbour was clearly senile or thought he saw something he didn’t. I can kind of see why they would have arrested me based on that. But that should have been where it all ended.
There’s a knock on my cell door and it opens. The police officer tells me Brian wants to meet with me in one of the consultation rooms. I tell her to send him into my cell. I’m fed up of being dragged from pillar to post.
Brian’s head pokes round the door. ‘It really would be best if you came with me,’ he says.
I let out a huge sigh, get to my feet and follow them.
Once we’re in the consultation room, Brian coughs slightly before speaking.
‘Sorry about that. I never fully trust conversations in cells — they have a camera and microphone in there, you know. They say it’s to check on your safety, but you can never be too sure. At times like this it’s best to keep our cards close to our chest. You don’t see the police letting you in on what they know.’
I can’t work Brian out. Sometimes he says things like this which make me think he’s on my side, and at others I wonder if he thinks I’ve actually done this and just wants to get shot of me. Looking at it totally impartially, I’m not sure if I’d want to represent me in court right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m entirely innocent and I have to walk free. I need to get out of here.
‘I just wanted a quick debrief with you after the last interview. I’ve been having a look through everything and trying to work out where we go from here. I realise you’re pleading your innocence, and I respect that. I really do. But my job is to look at this in purely black and white terms, from the point of view of the police, CPS and the courts. I represent you, of course, but I need to be able to see things from their side and get an idea of where things might be heading. Sometimes damage limitation is the best we can hope for.’
‘But I haven’t done anything,’ I plead. ‘There’s no damage to limit. I didn’t do anything.’
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ he says, ‘and this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but that’s actually kind of irrelevant. The weight of evidence is growing. If it comes back that the blood on that phone is Roger’s, it’s Goodnight Vienna.’ He looks at me for a few moments, trying to suss me out. ‘Do you think it’ll come back saying it’s Roger’s?’
I close my eyes. I want to tell him I don’t know, but deep down I do. I know it’s going to be his.
‘Brian, I didn’t kill Roger. I wasn’t there. I was at home. I don’t know what happened to my phone or where it went, but I promise you I had nothing to do with any of this. I know nothing about it. Everything they tell me is totally new to me.’
Brian sits back in his chair and exhales heavily. ‘Okay. Let’s look at this step by step. Around nine o’clock this morning, someone knocks on your father-in-law’s door and is let into the house. Presumably he knew them or was expecting them. A minute or so later he’s beaten to death in his own kitchen, with no real sign of a struggle. A neighbour then sees someone leave, who he identifies as you. The police have traced your mobile phone’s movements as being identical to this. That phone then heads back to your house and is found hidden there later in the day, with traces of blood on it. Meanwhile, you have no alibi or evidence to place you elsewhere.’
I go to protest, but Brian raises his hand to silence me. ‘I’m just telling you how it is,’ he explains. ’Those are the facts. I’ve inferred no guilt — I’ve merely stated the truths of what happened. And yes, you’re absolutely right, it does make you sound incredibly guilty and I can see exactly why you wanted to object to it as I was saying it. And that’s exactly my point. The evidence is almost overwhelming. Almost.’
I lean forward and look at him. ‘Go on,’ I say.
‘Well, if we can shed some doubt on their evidence or methodology, or introduce a possibility which negates the evidence they’ve collected so far, we might be in with a chance.’ He swallows and leans forward to meet my eyes. ‘But I need to ask you something very directly. You’ll have to forgive me for treading over old ground, and I know you’ve plead your innocence continually, but I’ve been doing this job a long time and I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.’
‘Ask me,’ I say, knowing what he’s going to say before he says it.
Brian clears his throat gently. ‘Amy, did you kill Roger Walker?’
‘No,’ I reply, as clearly and confidently as I can.
‘Do you know who did?’
‘No.’
‘Were you at or near the scene?’
‘No. Everything I’ve told you is true.’
He looks at me for a moment, then nods slowly. ‘Alright,’ he says, leaning back and sorting through his papers. ‘Then it looks like you and I have some work to do.’
21
Saturday 4 August, 10.05pm.
For the first time since my arrest, I’m starting to feel at least slightly hopeful.
‘As I see it,’ Brian says, ‘the evidence is starting to look pretty overwhelming on face value. And this is where certain laws of logic start to come into play. Are you familiar with confirmation bias?’
I shake my head.
‘As human beings, we’re conditioned to look for patterns. We have our preexisting and predetermined beliefs, and we seek information that confirms those biases. It’s something the police have to be extremely careful about. The surer and surer they are that you’re guilty, the more they’ll interpret evidence as being an assumption of that guilt, and will tend to overlook anything which might be evidence of your innocence.’
‘Right,’ I say. I think I’m starting to see what he means, but I don’t know how this is going to help me.
‘The CPS and the courts will be looking at this afresh, mind. They don’t know you or the police officers. They’re impartial and won’t be susceptible to confirmation bias. That goes in our favour somewhat, but it does mean we’ll need evidence that either proves our case or sheds doubt on what the police are alleging. Are you familiar with the term “beyond reasonable doubt”?’
I nod. ‘I think so.’
