Читать книгу Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018 - Amanda Robson, Amanda Robson - Страница 7

She presses a tea towel to her wound to try to stem the blood, but it is gushing, insistent. The harder she presses the more it pushes back. She cannot look at her sister, at her clammy, staring eyes. A siren grinds into her mind. Louder. Louder. Her eyes are transfixed by repetitive flashing lights. The doorbell rings and she feels as if she is moving through mercury as she steps to answer it. To open the door with a trembling hand – a hand that smells like a butcher’s shop. Three police officers stand in front of her: two men, one woman.

The woman asks her name softly.

She gives it.

‘Can we come in?’ the female officer asks.

She nods her head.

Two steps and they are out of the tiny hallway. Two steps and her entourage follow her into the living room of their shiny modern flat: stainless steel and travertine, brown IKEA furniture. Two more steps and three police officers stand looking at her sister’s blood-mangled body. At hair splayed across the white floor. At alabaster stiffness.

The larger male police officer barks into his phone, demanding backup, forensics, a police photographer. And someone who sounds like a robot talks back to him.

‘Backup on the way.’

The policewoman turns towards her, puts her hand on her arm. She has soft blue eyes that remind her of a carpet of bluebells hovering like mist on the floor of the woods back home in springtime. Woods where they used to play.

‘You said on the phone that you’d killed your sister. Is that what happened?’ the policewoman asks.

‘I thought she was going to kill me. So I … So I …’

She cannot continue. She cannot speak. She opens her mouth but no words come out. She hears a howl like a feral animal in the distance, and then as the policewoman puts her arm around her shoulders and guides her towards the sofa, she realises that she is the one making the noise.

The policewoman sits next to her on the sofa, smelling of the outside world. Of smoggy city air. Soft blue eyes melt towards her.

‘What happened?’ the policewoman asks.

‘My sister was angry. So angry. I’ve never seen her like that. Never.’

Her words die in the air, like her sister has died. They just stop breathing, without the blood. She moves towards bluebell eyes. The police officer puts her arm around her and she clings to her, sobbing. The woman strokes her back, whispers in her ear, rocks her back and forth, like a baby.

She sits for a while. She does not know for how long. Time has abandoned her. Somewhere in the distance of time that she is no longer part of, her neck stops bleeding. Somewhere in the distance of time her flat is invaded. By people in cellophane suits wearing plastic caps and rubber gloves. By a photographer. By an army of dark-suited people with no uniforms.

Somebody is moving towards her. She cannot see him properly; everything is blurred – nothing in tight focus. He is speaking to her, but she cannot hear him. He looks so concerned, so insistent. Some of his words begin to pierce through the silence that is pushing against her eardrums.

‘Arrest. Suspicion of murder. Something which you later rely on in court.’

And he is pulling her up to standing and cuffing her. The gentle bluebell woman has melted away. As he leads her out of her flat, she cannot bear to turn to say goodbye to her sister. She cannot bear to take a last look.

Into the custody suite. Plastic bags taped to her hands and feet. When did that happen? In her flat? Before she got into the police car? The custody suite is a state-of-the-art tiled rabbit warren. No windows. No corners. No edges. It doesn’t seem real, just as what has happened doesn’t seem real. Voices don’t speak, they reverberate. It smells of stale air and antiseptic.

A police officer wearing rubber gloves and carrying a pile of paper bags escorts her to a cell. The cell is so modern it doesn’t even have a traditional lock on the door. Everything is electronic. Space age.

‘I’m just going to take a picture of your neck wound,’ the police officer says.

A small camera appears from her pocket and the officer takes a string of snaps.

‘And now I need to remove your clothes and bag them. They will be sent for forensic analysis. Is that OK?’

The prisoner nods her head. The police officer removes her clothes, so gently. Folds them and puts them in individual paper bags. Gives her a paper jumpsuit and instructs her to put it on.

‘Forensics will be here soon to examine your hands.’

Hours later, hands inspected, plastic bags removed, a silent police officer is escorting her to the interview room in the custody suite. She looks at the wall clock. Eleven p.m. The officer opens the door of the interview room to reveal her family solicitor, Richard Mimms, sitting behind a plastic table, the skin around his overtired eyes pushed together too much, framed by black-rimmed glasses.

She has only seen him once before, when they went to his office with her mother, many years ago. She thought his eyes were strange then. They’re even stranger now. She sits down next to him on a plastic chair, the grey table in front of them. The officer leaves the room, locking the door behind him.

‘Your mother has instructed me to act for you. Is that acceptable?’ Richard Mimms asks.

The word mother causes nausea to percolate in her stomach. She pictures her being told the news. Home doorbell slicing through canned TV laughter. Mother putting her teacup down on the coffee table and walking across the sitting room, into the hallway to answer the door, silently begging whoever is disturbing her evening peace to go away.

But the voice she doesn’t recognise in the hallway isn’t going away. It pushes its way into her quiet evening, tumbling towards her, becoming louder, more insistent. Mother is pale, moving like a wraith. For she has seen the foreboding in the police officer’s face.

‘Please sit down, I’ve something to tell you,’ he says.

‘Your mother has instructed me to act for you. Is that acceptable?’ Richard Mimms repeats, jolting her back into the room. She looks at him and nods her head.

‘Yes. Please.’

‘So,’ Richard Mimms continues, ‘we’re allowed a short time on our own together before your interview.’ There is a pause. ‘I want you to say as little as possible about what happened. Too much detail can be twisted against you.’

‘How?’ she asks, confused.

‘Stick to the basic outline of what happened – don’t tell the police anything personal. Anything they might be able to use against you.’

She can only just follow what Richard Mimms is saying. Her head aches and she isn’t concentrating properly. All she can see is her sister’s face contorting in her mind, from the face she loved, to the face that moved towards her in the kitchen.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Richard Mimms is asking. ‘Leave the detail to us. Your brief and me. The professionals.’

Words solidify in her mind.

‘My brief? Already?’ she asks.

‘I’ve got someone in mind. Very thorough. Never lost a case.’

She tries to smile and say thank you but her lips don’t seem to move.

Richard Mimms leans towards her and puts his hand on her arm.

‘Keep strong until Monday. I’m sure we’ll sail through this and be granted bail.’

But his manner seems artificial. Overconfident. She wants him to go away.

They are interrupted by a senior officer arriving, filling the room with his broad-shouldered presence and understated importance.

‘Detective Inspector Irvine,’ he says, shaking her hand. He sits down opposite her. ‘My colleague Sergeant Hawkins will be here soon so that we can start the interview. Can I get you anything: tea, coffee, water, before we start?’

‘No thanks.’

A difficult silence settles between them. He is appraising her with his eyes in a way that is making her feel uncomfortable. She is relieved when the Sergeant arrives. He doesn’t introduce himself. He just sits down next to DI Irvine and nods across at her. She is too traumatised to nod back.

The DI presses a button on the tape recorder.

He leans towards it, announces today’s date, and the names of those present in the room. He leans back in his chair, and folds his arms.

‘So,’ he starts. ‘You called 999 and told the operator that you’d killed your sister. Is that what happened?’

‘It all happened so quickly. My sister stabbed me … and then I …’

She stammers. She stops.

‘Has the medical officer seen your injury?’

‘No. Not yet.’ She pauses. ‘An officer has taken a picture of it.’

‘So it can hardly have been that serious if you’ve not requested a doctor.’

He stands up to have a closer look.

‘We’ll need forensics and medical to check it properly,’ he says, without an ounce of sympathy. ‘So your sister stabbed you – what did you do to defend yourself?’ he asks as he sits down again.

Her insides tremble as she recollects. Her sister’s eyes coagulate towards her.

‘We were …’ She pauses. ‘We were in the kitchen.’ Another pause. She bites her lips. She begins to sob.

She feels the slippage of skin. The resistance. The wetness.

‘We need to know precisely what happened. Where you were standing. Step by step. Movement by movement. Can you remember?’

She doesn’t reply.

‘Can you remember?’ he repeats.

She stirs in her chair. ‘I was standing by the sink.’

‘What did your sister say to you?’

‘She was angry.’

‘Why was she angry?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t think.’

‘Please think,’ the DI insists.

‘My sister never got angry. Not like that. I had never seen her like that.’

His words rotate in her head.

‘Detective Inspector, my client is extremely distressed. Mentally incapable of continuing this interview. I request she is allowed some sleep and that we continue this tomorrow, when everyone is a bit fresher,’ Richard Mimms demands.

DI Irvine presses the tape recorder button again.

‘Request allowed,’ he says. Richard Mimms collects his papers, crinkling his eyes at her as he leaves.

Back in her cell, all she can think about is her sister’s cold, dead, fish-like eyes. She lies awake all night on the hard trundle bed, shivering and trembling.

In the morning, breakfast is a piece of dry toast, and lukewarm coffee in a disposable cup. She feels as if someone has punched her in the stomach, so she cannot touch the toast. One sip of the metallic-tasting coffee and she pours it down the sink. Then Sergeant Hawkins appears, to take her back to the interview room.

Once there, she begins to hear her sister’s voice screaming in her head. A hysterical scream becoming louder and louder. Trying to push her sister’s scream away she sits down next to Richard Mimms. She can smell his aftershave. Herbal. Overpowering. DI Irvine and Sergeant Hawkins are opposite, their accusing eyes pushing towards her. She watches a finger pressing the button of the recording machine. The date is announced. The names of all present. And the interview begins again.

‘Tell me, when did you first see your sister yesterday evening?’ DI Irvine asks.

Her words stagnate in her mouth. The screaming is overpowering her. And somewhere through the tears and the darkness and the scream, she answers DI Irvine’s questions. And somewhere through the tears and the darkness and the scream, she hears the words.

‘You are charged with the murder of your sister.’

Charged. Murder. Sister. Sister. Murder. Charged.

Words slipping through her brain as she is escorted back to her cell.