I Let You Go

  ‘Belt,’ the custody sergeant says, holding out a clear plastic bag.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ He is speaking to me as though I know the rules, but I’m lost already.

  ‘Your belt. Take it off. Are you wearing any jewellery?’ He’s getting impatient now, and I fumble with my belt, dragging it out of the loops on my jeans and dropping it into the bag.

  ‘No, no jewellery.’

  ‘Wedding ring?’

  I shake my head, instinctively fingering the faint indentation on my fourth finger. DC Evans is going through my bag. There’s nothing particularly personal in there, but still it feels like watching a burglar ransack my house. A tampon rolls on to the counter.

  ‘Will you need this?’ she asks. Her tone is matter-of-fact, and neither DI Stevens nor the custody officer says anything, but I blush furiously.

  ‘No.’

  She drops it into the plastic bag, before opening my purse to take out the few cards that are there and tipping the coins on to the side. It’s then that I notice the pale-blue card lying amongst the receipts and the bank cards. The room seems to fall silent and I can almost hear my heart banging against my ribs. When I glance at DC Evans I realise she has stopped writing and is looking straight at me. I don’t want to look at her, but I can’t drop my gaze. Leave it, I think, just leave it. Slowly and deliberately she picks up the card and looks at it. I think she is going to ask me about it, but she lists it on the form and drops it into the bag with the rest of my possessions. I breathe out slowly.

  I’m trying to concentrate on what the sergeant is saying, but I’m lost in a litany of rules and rights. No, I don’t want anyone told I’m here. No, I don’t want a solicitor …

  ‘Are you sure?’ DI Stevens interrupts. ‘You’re entitled to free legal advice while you’re here, you know.’

  ‘I don’t need a solicitor,’ I say softly. ‘I did it.’

  There is a silence. The three police officers exchange glances.

  ‘Sign here,’ says the custody sergeant, ‘and here, and here, and here.’ I take the pen and scrawl my name next to thick black crosses. He looks at DI Stevens. ‘Straight into interview?’

  The interview room is stuffy and smells of stale tobacco, despite the ‘no smoking’ sticker peeling away from the wall. DI Stevens gestures to where I should sit. I try to pull my chair closer to the table, but it’s bolted to the floor. On the surface of the table someone has gouged a series of swear words in biro. DI Stevens flicks a switch on a black box on the wall beside him, and a high-pitched tone sounds. He clears his throat.

  ‘It’s 22.45 on Thursday the second of January 2014 and we’re in interview room three at Bristol police station. I’m Detective Inspector 431 Ray Stevens and with me is Detective Constable 3908 Kate Evans.’ He looks at me. ‘Could you give your name and date of birth for the tape, please?’

  I swallow and try to make my mouth work. ‘Jenna Alice Gray, twenty-eighth August 1976.’

  I let his words wash over me; the seriousness of the allegation against me, the consequences of the hit-and-run on the family, on the community as a whole. He’s not telling me anything I don’t know, and he couldn’t add to the weight of guilt I already feel.

  Finally it’s my turn.

  I speak quietly, my eyes fixed on the table between us, hoping he won’t interrupt me. I only want to say it once.

  ‘It had been a long day. I had been exhibiting on the other side of Bristol and I was tired. It was raining and I couldn’t see well.’ I keep my voice measured and calm. I want to explain how it happened, but I don’t want to come across as defensive – how could I defend what happened? I’ve thought so often about what I would say if it ever came to this, but now that I’m here, the words seem awkward and insincere.

  ‘He came out of nowhere,’ I say. ‘One minute the road was clear, the next there he was, running across it. This little boy, in a blue woolly hat and red gloves. It was too late, too late to do anything.’

  I grip the edge of the table with both hands, anchoring myself in the present as the past threatens to take over. I can hear the screech of brakes, smell the acrid stench of burning rubber on wet tarmac. When Jacob hit the windscreen, for an instant he was just inches away from me. I could have reached out and touched his face through the glass. But he twisted from me into the air and slammed on to the road. It was only then that I saw his mother, crouching over the lifeless boy, searching for a pulse. When she couldn’t find one, she screamed; a primordial sound that wrenched every last gasp of air from her, and I watched, horrified, through the blurred windscreen, as a pool of blood formed beneath the boy’s head, tainting the wet road until the tarmac shimmered red under the beam of the headlights.

  ‘Why didn’t you stop? Get out? Call for help?’

  I drag myself back to the interview room, staring at DI Stevens. I had almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  25

  ‘Of course she could have stopped!’ Kate said, pacing the short distance between her desk and the window, then back again. ‘She’s so cold – she makes me shiver.’

  ‘Will you sit down?’ Ray drained his coffee and stifled a yawn. ‘You’re making me even more knackered.’ It was past midnight when Ray and Kate reluctantly called a halt to the interview to allow Jenna some sleep.

  Kate sat down. ‘Why do you think she’s rolled over so easily now, after more than a year?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ray, leaning back on his chair and putting his feet on Stumpy’s desk. ‘There’s something not quite right about it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Ray shook his head. ‘Just a feeling. I’m probably tired.’ The door to the CID office opened and Stumpy came in. ‘You’re back late. How was the big smoke?’

  ‘Busy,’ Stumpy said. ‘God knows why anyone would want to live there.’

  ‘Did you win over Jacob’s mother?’

  Stumpy nodded. ‘She won’t be starting a fan club any time soon, but she’s onside. After Jacob’s death she felt there was a lot of criticism levelled at her by the community. She said it had been hard enough being accepted as a foreigner, and the accident was more fuel for the fire.’

  ‘When did she leave?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Straight after the funeral. There’s a big Polish community in London, and Anya’s been staying with some cousins in a multi-occupancy house. Reading between the lines, I think there’s a bit of a question mark over her eligibility to work, which didn’t help matters when it came to tracing her.’

  ‘Was she happy to talk to you?’ Ray stretched out his arms in front of him and cracked his knuckles. Kate winced.

  ‘Yes,’ Stumpy said. ‘In fact, I got the impression she was relieved to have someone to speak to about Jacob. You know, she hasn’t told her family back home? She says she’s too ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed? Why on earth would she be ashamed?’ Ray said.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Stumpy said. ‘Anya came over to the UK when she was eighteen. She’s a bit cagey about how she got here, but she ended up doing cash-in-hand cleaning for the offices on the Gleethorne industrial estate. She got friendly with one of the guys working there, and next thing she knows, she’s pregnant.’

  ‘And she’s no longer with the dad?’ Kate guessed.

  ‘Precisely. By all accounts, Anya’s parents were horrified that she’d had a baby out of wedlock and demanded she go home to Poland where they could keep an eye on her, but Anya refused. She says she wanted to prove she could do it alone.’

  ‘And now she blames herself.’ Ray shook his head. ‘Poor girl. How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-six. When Jacob was killed she felt it was her punishment for not listening to them.’

  ‘That’s so sad.’ Kate was sitting in silence, her knees drawn up to her chest. ‘But it wasn’t her fault – she wasn’t driving the bloody car!’

  ‘I told her that, of course, but she’s carrying around a lot of guilt over the whole thing. Anyway, I
let her know we had someone in custody and were expecting a charge – that’s assuming you two have done your job properly.’ He glanced sidelong at Kate.

  ‘Don’t try and wind me up,’ Kate said. ‘It’s too late and my sense of humour’s gone AWOL. We did get a cough from Gray, as it happens, but it got late, so she’s been bedded down till the morning.’

  ‘Which is precisely what I’m going to do,’ said Stumpy. ‘If that’s all right with you, boss?’ He undid his tie.

  ‘You and me both,’ Ray said. ‘Come on, Kate, time to call it a night. We’ll give it one more shot in the morning and see if we can get Gray to tell us where the car is.’

  They walked down to the back yard. Stumpy held up his hand in a salute as he drove though the big metal gates, leaving Ray and Kate standing in the near-darkness.

  ‘Long day,’ Ray said. Despite the tiredness, he suddenly didn’t feel like going home.

  ‘Yes.’

  They were so close he could smell a faint trace of Kate’s perfume. He felt his heart banging against his ribcage. If he kissed her now, there’d be no going back.

  ‘Night, then,’ Kate said. She didn’t move.

  Ray took a step away and fished his keys out of his pocket. ‘Night, Kate. Sleep well.’

  He let out a breath as he drove away. So close to crossing the line.

  Too close.

  It was two before Ray fell into bed and what seemed like a matter of seconds before his alarm sent him back to work. He had slept fitfully, unable to stop thinking about Kate, and he battled to keep her out of his head during the morning briefing.

  At ten o’clock they met in the canteen. Ray wondered if Kate had spent the night thinking about him, and immediately chided himself for the thought. He was being ridiculous, and the sooner he put it behind him, the better.

  ‘I’m too old for these late nights,’ he said, as they stood in line for one of Moira’s breakfast specials, commonly known as a ‘clutcher’, thanks to its artery-hardening properties. He half hoped Kate would contradict him, then felt instantly ridiculous for the thought.

  ‘I’m just grateful I’m not still on shift,’ she said. ‘Remember the 3 a.m. slump?’

  ‘God, do I ever? Fighting to stay awake and desperate for a car chase to get the adrenalin going. I couldn’t do that again.’

  They carried plates of bacon, sausage, egg, black pudding and fried bread over to a free table, where Kate flicked through a copy of the Bristol Post as she ate. ‘The usual scintillating read,’ she said. ‘Council elections, school fêtes, complaints about dog shit.’ She folded the paper and put it to one side, where Jacob’s photograph looked up at them from the front page.

  ‘Did you get anything more from Gray this morning?’ Ray said.

  ‘She gave the same account as yesterday,’ Kate said, ‘so at least she’s consistent. But she wouldn’t answer any questions about where the car is now, or why she didn’t stop.’

  ‘Well, fortunately our job is to find out what happened, not why it happened,’ Ray reminded her. ‘We’ve got enough to charge. Run it by the CPS and see if they’ll make a decision today.’

  Kate looked thoughtful.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘When you said yesterday that something didn’t feel right…’ she tailed off.

  ‘Yes?’ Ray prompted.

  ‘I feel the same.’ Kate took a sip of her tea and placed it carefully on the table, staring at her mug as though she might find the solution there.

  ‘You think she might be making it up?’

  It happened occasionally – particularly with high-profile cases like this one. Someone would come forward to confess to a crime, then you’d get halfway through interview and discover they couldn’t possibly have done it. They’d miss out some vital fact – something deliberately held back from the press – and their whole story would collapse.

  ‘Not making it up, no. It’s her car, after all, and her account matches Anya Jordan’s almost exactly. It’s just…’ She leaned back in her chair and looked at Ray. ‘You know in interview, when she described the point of impact?’

  Ray nodded for her to carry on.

  ‘She gave so much detail about what Jacob looked like. What he was wearing, the bag he was carrying…’

  ‘So she’s got a good memory. Something like that would be imprinted on your brain, I would have thought.’ He was playing devil’s advocate; predicting what the superintendent would say – what the chief would say. Inside, Ray felt the same nagging feeling that had troubled him the previous day. Jenna Gray was keeping something back.

  ‘We know from the tyre marks that the car didn’t slow down,’ Kate went on, ‘and Gray said herself that Jacob appeared “from nowhere”.’ She sketched quote marks in the air. ‘So if it all happened so fast, how come she saw so much? And if it didn’t happen fast, and she had plenty of time to see him and notice what he was wearing, how come she still hit him?’

  Ray didn’t speak for a moment. Kate’s eyes were bright, despite the little sleep she must have had, and he recognised the determined look on her face. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t want to charge her yet.’

  He nodded slowly. Releasing a suspect after a full admission: the chief would hit the roof.

  ‘I want to find the car.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference,’ Ray said. ‘The most we’ll get is Jacob’s DNA on the bonnet, and Gray’s prints on the wheel. It won’t tell us anything we don’t already know. I’m more interested in finding her mobile. She claims she threw it away when she left Bristol because she didn’t want anyone to contact her – but what if she threw it away because it was evidence? I want to know who she called immediately before and after the collision.’

  ‘So we bail her,’ Kate said, fixing Ray with a questioning look.

  He hesitated. Charging Jenna would be the easy route to take. Plaudits at the morning meeting; a pat on the back from the chief. But could he charge, knowing there could be more to it than met the eye? The evidence told him one thing; his instinct was telling him another.

  Ray thought about Annabelle Snowden, alive in her father’s flat even as he begged the police to find her kidnapper. His instincts had been right then, and he’d ignored them.

  If they bailed Jenna for a few weeks they could try to form a better picture: make sure there were no stones unturned when it came time to put her before the court.

  He nodded at Kate. ‘Let her go.’

  26

  I didn’t call until nearly a week after our first date, and I could hear the uncertainty in your voice when I did. You were wondering if you’d misread the signs, weren’t you? If you’d said the wrong thing, or worn the wrong dress …

  ‘Are you free tonight?’ I said. ‘I’d love to take you out again.’ As I spoke I realised how much I was looking forward to seeing you. It had been surprisingly difficult, waiting a week to speak to you.

  ‘That would have been lovely, but I already have plans.’ There was regret in your voice, but I knew that tactic of old. The games women play at the start of a relationship are varied but largely transparent. You had doubtless conducted a post-mortem of our date with your friends, who would have dished out advice like washerwomen leaning on the garden fence.

  Don’t come across as too keen.

  Play hard to get.

  When he calls, pretend you’re busy.

  It was tiresome and childish. ‘That’s a shame,’ I said casually. ‘I’ve managed to get hold of a couple of tickets to see Pulp tonight and I thought you might like to come.’

  You hesitated and I thought I had you, but you held fast.

  ‘I really can’t, I’m so sorry. I promised Sarah we’d have a girls’ night out at the Ice Bar. She’s just split up with her boyfriend, and I can’t let her down too.’

  It was convincing, and I wondered if you had prepared the lie in advance. I let a silence hang between us.

  ‘I’m free tomorrow night?’ you said,
your upward inflection turning it into a question.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m already doing something tomorrow. Some other time, maybe. Have fun tonight.’ I hung up and sat by the phone for a while. A muscle flickered at the corner of my eye and I rubbed it irritably. I hadn’t expected you to play games, and I was disappointed that you felt it necessary.

  I couldn’t settle for the rest of the day. I cleaned the house and swept up all Marie’s things from every room and gathered them in a pile in the bedroom. There was more than I thought, but I could hardly give it back to her now. I stuffed it all in a suitcase to take to the tip.

  At seven o’clock I had a beer, and then another. I sat on the sofa with my feet on the coffee table, some inane quiz show on the television, and I thought about you. I contemplated ringing your hall to leave a message, and being surprised when you were there after all. But by the time I had finished my third beer I had changed my mind.

  I drove to the Ice Bar and found a space not far from the entrance. I sat in the car for a while, watching people go through the door. The girls were in the shortest of skirts, but my interest was nothing more than idle curiosity. I was thinking about you. I was unsettled by how much you occupied my thoughts, even then, and how important it suddenly seemed that I knew whether you had told me the truth. I had gone there to catch you out: to walk through the crowded bar and see no sign of you, because you were back in your room, sitting on the bed with a bottle of discount wine and a Meg Ryan movie. But I realised that wasn’t what I wanted: I wanted to see you walk past me, ready for your girls’ night out with your miserable, dumped friend. I wanted to be proved wrong. It was such a novel sensation I almost laughed.