It Was Me
Sometime later you joke with yourself by imagining a conversation between you and a pretend cellmate. You name the imaginary cell mate Jack after one of the account directors at work. You did not know him that well then but to your imagination he seems perfect in that role. It’s just like the movies. Talking after lights out, passing the dark time until the groundhog day of prison starts again.
Conversation goes like this. I would be on the top bunk lying on my back, hands clasped behind my head and I brag to Jack,
“Of course there wasn’t that much blood.”
Then I pause before finishing in a deadpan voice,
“Never is, when you strangle them!’
On the bunk below Jack gasps out of shock and admiration and we burst into sniggers at how clever and criminal and hard we are. Except it is really just you laughing, usually on the train to work, freaking out anyone nearby.
Obviously at some point between when it happened and the time you feel comfortable to have such an internal dialogue you decide you are safe.
And why not? The hours, then weeks go past and before too long you forget what you were going to say to the cops if they did come; the alibis and the logical reasons why a bit of you or yours might be there on her clothes, on her skin or between her legs. But for some reason they don’t ever find her and soon the whole thing is like a book you read a long time ago. A book where you so identified with the lead character that what happened to him seems to have happened to you.
At other points you wonder what will happen if they do come, now that you are married with children. When your wife suddenly learns that you can never really know everything about anyone, even your life partner. What is she going to think about those hands that held hers, washed your children and carried her mother’s coffin on that hot summer day with storm clouds building on the horizon? How you almost tripped under the ridiculous weight of the box carrying the body of someone, who at the end looked so inconsequential you could have crumpled her up like a paper napkin.
You almost trip because you realised the cemetery is within two hundred metres of where you put her. And its not just the heat making you sweat, they are starting road works over there. You can see the workers in their reflective safety shirts and hardhats and you wonder how road workers feel now they have swapped coolness and comfort for enhanced visibility and sun protection.
One night, half drunk a few weeks later, the two of you are on the couch watching a show on Netflix about an assassin and your wife says,
“I reckon it would be pretty easy to kill someone if you had to. Like if Sarah was being held captive and if you didn’t kill who they asked you to they would kill her.”
And you look at her, two glasses ahead of her from the good bottle of pinot sitting on the Ikea table in front of you both and almost say,
“Well it depends. Do you mean easy to actually decide to do it or how easy it is to get someone actually dead? Because I can tell you there must be an easier way because the way I did it was fucking hard work.”
The muscles in your forearms were sore for days after and you worried for weeks after that you had left something behind. Something incriminating like your fingerprints or your face on closed circuit TV.
But you don’t say anything.
You are in the toilet when Jack, the account director starts calling your name. He must be standing at the bathroom door and his voice is soft and timid. You know what he is thinking. You would be thinking the same.
‘The poor bloke is trying to have a nervous shit before a big meeting and here I am yelling at him.’
So you go, “ What’s up Jack?” thinking the 10.30 meeting is early.
And Jack goes, “There’s two guys here to see you.”
You know Jack well now, a hard worker but definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
So you think,“ Well duh dickhead,” but before you say anything he adds, “They’re cops.”
And there it is, just like that. Not for one moment do you think the car has been stolen or something has happened to the girls. So you yell out “OK, I will be out in a minute.”
You hear the door shut again, you wipe, stand and get yourself together.
You wash and dry your hands, open the door of the toilet and walk slowly to the reception and of course the 10.30 meeting is now in reception as well. And they see you approaching and they stand up from their chairs. But two other men are hovering at the reception desk and they see the men react to my presence and they turn and one nudges the other very subtly. They move forward and cut you off from the 10.30 meeting attendees.
Almost before you know it you are in the lift going down to ground, leaving confused work colleagues and clients behind.
And the last thing you see before the lift doors close is Jack coming from your office with your mobile in his hand. He thought you had forgotten it and that right there is Jack in a nutshell. Nice guy but always a bit behind the game.
