OK, so helping Scott was not my sole reason for going to the police. There was the matter of the lie, which needed sorting out. The lie about me working for Huntingdon Whitely.
It took me ages to get up the courage to go into the station. I was on the verge of turning back and going home a dozen times, but eventually I went in. I asked the desk sergeant if I could speak to Detective Inspector Gaskill, and he showed me to a stuffy waiting room, where I sat for over an hour until someone came to get me. By that time I was sweating and trembling like a woman on her way to the scaffold. I was shown into another room, smaller and stuffier still, windowless and airless. I was left there alone for a further ten minutes before Gaskill and a woman, also in plain clothes, turned up. Gaskill greeted me politely; he didn’t seem surprised to see me. He introduced his companion as Detective Sergeant Riley. She is younger than I am, tall, slim, dark-haired, pretty in a sharp-featured, vulpine sort of way. She did not return my smile.
We all sat down and nobody said anything; they just looked at me expectantly.
‘I remembered the man,’ I said. ‘I told you there was a man at the station. I can describe him.’ Riley raised her eyebrows ever so slightly and shifted in her seat. ‘He was about medium height, medium build, reddish hair. I slipped on the steps and he caught my arm.’ Gaskill leaned forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped together in front of his mouth. ‘He was wearing … I think he was wearing a blue shirt.’
This is not actually true. I do remember a man, and I’m pretty sure he had reddish hair, and I think that he smiled at me, or smirked at me, when I was on the train. I think that he got off at Witney, and I think he might have spoken to me. It’s possible I might have slipped on the steps. I have a memory of it, but I can’t tell whether the memory belongs to Saturday night, or to another time. There have been many slips, on many staircases. I have no idea what he was wearing.
The detectives were not impressed with my tale. Riley gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Gaskill unclasped his hands and spread them out, palms upwards, in front of him. ‘OK. Is that really what you came here to tell me, Ms Watson?’ he asked. There was no anger in his tone, he sounded almost encouraging. I wished that Riley would go away. I could talk to him; I could trust him.
‘I don’t work for Huntingdon Whitely any longer,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ He leaned back in his seat, looking more interested.
‘I left three months ago. My flatmate – well, she’s my landlady really – I haven’t told her. I’m trying to find another job. I didn’t want her to know because I thought she would worry about the rent. I have some money. I can pay my rent, but … Anyway, I lied to you yesterday about my job and I apologize for that.’
Riley leaned forward and gave me an insincere smile. ‘I see. You no longer work for Huntingdon Whitely. You don’t work for anyone, is that right? You’re unemployed?’ I nodded. ‘OK. So … you’re not signing on, nothing like that?’
‘No.’
‘And … your flatmate, she hasn’t noticed that you don’t go to work every day?’
‘I do. I mean, I don’t go to the office, but I go into London, the way I used to, at the same time and everything, so that she … So that she won’t know.’ Riley glanced at Gaskill; he kept his eyes on my face, the hint of a frown between his eyes. ‘It sounds odd, I know …’ I said and I tailed off then, because it doesn’t just sound odd, it sounds insane when you say it out loud.
‘Right. So, you pretend to go to work every day?’ Riley asked me, her brow knitted too, as though she were concerned about me. As though she thought I was completely deranged. I didn’t speak or nod or do anything, I kept silent. ‘Can I ask why you left your job, Ms Watson?’
There was no point in lying. If they hadn’t intended to check out my employment record before this conversation, they bloody well would now. ‘I was fired,’ I said.
‘You were dismissed,’ Riley said, a note of satisfaction in her voice. It was obviously the answer she’d anticipated. ‘Why was that?’
I gave a little sigh and appealed to Gaskill. ‘Is this really important? Does it matter why I left my job?’
Gaskill didn’t say anything, he was consulting some notes that Riley had pushed in front of him, but he did give the slightest shake of his head. Riley changed tack.
‘Ms Watson, I wanted to ask you about Saturday night.’ I glanced at Gaskill – we’ve already had this conversation – but he wasn’t looking at me. ‘All right,’ I said. I kept raising my hand to my scalp, worrying at my injury. I couldn’t stop myself.
‘Tell me why you went to Blenheim Road on Saturday night. Why did you want to speak to your ex-husband?’
‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business,’ I said, and then, quickly, before she had time to say anything else, ‘Would it be possible to have a glass of water?’
Gaskill got to his feet and left the room, which wasn’t really the outcome I was hoping for. Riley didn’t say a word; she just kept looking at me, the trace of a smile still on her lips. I couldn’t hold her gaze, I looked at the table, I let my eyes wander around the room. I knew this was a tactic: she was remaining silent so that I would become so uncomfortable that I had to say something, even if I didn’t really want to. ‘I had some things I needed to discuss with him,’ I said. ‘Private matters.’ I sounded pompous and ridiculous.
Riley sighed. I bit my lip, determined not to speak until Gaskill came back into the room. The moment he returned, placing a glass of cloudy water in front of me, Riley spoke.
‘Private matters?’ she prompted.
‘That’s right.’
Riley and Gaskill exchanged a look, I wasn’t sure if it was irritation or amusement. I could taste the sweat on my upper lip. I took a sip of water; it tasted stale. Gaskill shuffled the papers in front of him and then pushed them aside, as though he was done with them, or as though whatever was in them didn’t interest him all that much.
‘Ms Watson, your … er … your ex-husband’s current wife, Mrs Anna Watson, has raised concerns about you. She told us that you have been bothering her, bothering her husband, that you have come to the house uninvited, that on one occasion …’ Gaskill glanced back at his notes, but Riley interrupted.