Free The Light of Day: A Novel by Graham Swift Page B

weren’t nerveless eyes. Flint not steel. Not in for the kill. Your last case: what do you do? Come on strong and extra tough, or show mercy?
    “You didn’t know what you were doing”: like something held out, dangling.
    And how he wrote his report, how he assessed, for example, the arrested party’s reactions—immediate confession (she herself had made the call), immediate submission to custody—might, just might, affect the sentence.
    It must have been well past midnight.
    “You’re ready to sign the statement you’ve made? That you followed Mr. Nash to Beecham Close, then drove away, then drove back. Those were your movements tonight?”
    “Yes.”
    “You don’t have a record of taking truthful statements. I wouldn’t want to take an untruthful one from you.”
    So. He couldn’t help that. Ammunition. But fired over my head.
    I might have said, “Phoney statements can be true, even if they’re not what the witness ever said.” And he might have said, “That’s what all the bent cops say.”
    I didn’t say anything. Be the humble, scared Joe Citizen. Evidently distressed.
    And maybe he’d been there too: close, near the edge, near the limit. Some other time, in an interview room.
    “Nothing you wish to add?”
    “No.”
    “About ‘intuition’ . . . ?”
    “No.”
    “A true account of your movements—which you even happened to time precisely.”
    “Professional habit.”
    “Of course—like one of us. Technically you committed the offence of impersonating a police officer. I shan’t press that.”
    (But “I’m a detective” wasn’t a lie.)
    “You ‘thought something bad was going to happen.’ That’s to stand as already stated?”
    “Yes.”
    “It could still read as if you had prior knowledge . . .”
    “Then why should I have
suddenly
turned back?”
    “Quite. Of course. And then there’s another point that hasn’t been mentioned. It’s my impression, it’s my distinct impression, from all you’ve said, that the thing you thought was going to happen—the bad thing—was going to happen to Mrs. Nash.”
    “But it has, it did.”
    I must have been giving it off in waves.

17
    A corner table in Gladstone’s. It’s a thrown-together place with a pseudo-Victorian feel. Music-hall posters on the wall. In Wimbledon you can go to Rio or imagine Jack the Ripper is prowling outside.
    She asked for a white wine. I ordered a beer. Sipped it very slowly, watching the level in her glass like you might watch an hour glass.
    In life there’s a sound principle: make a little do for a lot. Don’t expect much. This may be all you’ll get.
    She said, “He’ll be there now, he’ll be with her now.”
    She didn’t have to say it. I might have guessed: six o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and she had time to spare for me. So they were there and we were here. But she didn’t have to say it. Maybe I had the thought that for them too—him and the girl—time was running out. They were watching the glass, even now. Only twenty more days—if it was all true.
    “He has consultations at the Charing Cross on Tuesday afternoons. Up until five. Handy.”
    A sour kind of smile. As if to say: See what I’ve come to. Or as if we were like prim parents thinking of the children at play.
    Except we were the children, maybe—whispering in our corner while the grown-ups did their thing.
    And this look she had—as if the girl inside her was just beneath her skin.
    How does it work? Your life comes off its hinges, so you go back to where you were. Not grown-up and forty-something after all. Like Kristina, forced to be a child again. But now Kristina had become the woman—Bob’s woman. All the other way round. So Sarah had become the girl—the girl of long ago who didn’t yet have Bob. A student, being driven through France. Flashing trees, the road south. Don’t bank on it. A little for a lot, this may be all you’ll get.
    Is that how it is (I ought to know): a mid-life disaster takes away