Until It's Over by Nicci French Read Free Book Online Page B

theory,’ he said. ‘It’s a crap theory. But it’s a theory.’
    ‘But you probably didn’t bring me in here to get my ideas about the case.’
    ‘We’re always grateful for input,’ said Mitchell. ‘But what really interests me is what you saw.’
    ‘The problem,’ I said, ‘and I feel really bad about this, is that I didn’t see anything.’
    ‘But you were there,’ said Mitchell. ‘You were there when it happened.’
    There was a long silence.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I almost want to say, “Ask me anything but that.” I’ve got a very good memory. Ask me about my first day at primary school, every holiday I’ve ever been on. Next week I’ll remember the colour of the tie you’re wearing. But in that moment when I ran into Mrs Farrell’s car door, I didn’t take in anything at all. I didn’t even know it was her. I hit the door, I hit the ground, I heard someone apologize and I was dragged inside. My memory’s like a faded fax of a bad photocopy. You can use a magnifying-glass, but all you’ll see is a mess and a blur.’
    I expected Mitchell to look depressed or cross. I thought he might send me home like a bad girl. But he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bell,’ he said. ‘Compared with some witnesses, you’re like Mr Memory. I’m going to bring in another officer and you’re going to say everything you know, and she’ll write it down.’
    ‘It won’t take very long,’ I said.
    He smiled again.
    ‘Oh, yes, it will.’
    For me the police had always been vague, abstract figures. I saw them in their cars, blue lights flashing in the darkness, or walking along the street, and I felt slightly anxious, as if I might be doing something wrong without realizing it, and that when their eyes settled on my face they would see a furtive criminal. Night after night I saw them on Maitland Road and in Hackney, stopping black youths and searching them, standing in pairs with walkie-talkies crackling, shepherding the violently drunk or the stupefied stoned into the backs of their vans. Before Peggy’s murder I had never been into a police station, except the one occasion when I’d reported a stolen wallet, and then I’d only got as far as the front desk. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, and I was sheepishly surprised to discover they seemed quite normal, not brutal or racist or ignorant or fiendishly clever – just slightly bored and harassed men and women doing their job and thinking about what they would do once their shift was over.
    Of the three of us, it was definitely Dario who was having difficulty in talking to them.
    ‘They’re not interested in you taking drugs,’ said Davy, before we were all interviewed that second time. ‘They’re interested in who killed Peggy. Right, Astrid?’
    ‘I know that,’ said Dario. ‘But I’ve got this feeling I’ll break out in a sweat and just announce it. I won’t be able to stop myself. I once heard about this guy going through Customs. Nobody was interested in him, and he suddenly started crying and confessed he’d got cocaine in the false bottom to a set of knives and forks he was carrying.’
    ‘Knives and forks?’ said Davy.
    ‘Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is, I’m going to confess to something. I can feel it. They’ll look at me and I’ll break.’
    ‘The point is,’ I said, ‘someone’s been murdered.’
    ‘I don’t know anything. I’ve told them everything I know.’
    ‘Tell them again. Then sign your name at the bottom and that’ll be that.’
    Of course, it could never be that simple. Someone had been killed a few yards from where we lived, a few minutes after we had spoken to her. It almost felt as if she had been killed before our very eyes, but we hadn’t noticed. I knew her face, her name. Every time I passed the house, I looked down into the recess where the bins had stood, and where her body had been crammed, and imagined her there. After a couple of days, the space started to fill