I Let You Go (22 page)

I make myself breathe deeply and evenly, hiding my sobs; not wanting the police officers to pay me any more attention. I imagine them knocking on Iestyn’s door, and my cheeks burn with shame. News that I was going out with Patrick spread so fast round the village: perhaps the gossips already have hold of this latest scandal.

Nothing could be worse than the look in Patrick’s eyes when I walked back into the kitchen with the police. I read the betrayal on his face as clearly as if it had been written in letters ten-foot tall. Everything he believed of me was a lie, and a lie built to cover up an inexcusable crime. I can’t blame him for the look in his eyes. I should have known better than to let myself get close to anyone – to let someone get close to me.

We’re already on the outskirts of Bristol. I need to clear my thoughts. They will take me into an interview room, I imagine; suggest that I call a lawyer. The police will ask questions and I’ll answer them as calmly as I can. I won’t cry, or offer excuses. They will charge me, I’ll go to court, and it will be over. Justice will finally be done. Is that how it works? I’m not sure. My knowledge of the police is gleaned from detective novels and newspaper articles – I hadn’t ever expected to end up on this side of the fence. I see a stack of newspapers in my mind, my photo blown up to show every line on my face. The face of a killer.

A woman has been arrested in connection with the death of Jacob Jordan
.

I don’t know if the papers will print my name, but even if they don’t, they’re sure to run the story. I put my hand on my chest and feel the hammering of my heart against my palm. I’m hot and clammy, as though I’m coming down with a fever. Everything is unravelling.

The car slows and turns into the car park of an unattractive cluster of grey buildings, set apart from surrounding office blocks only by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary crest above the main entrance. The car is expertly manoeuvred into a tiny space between two marked police cars, and the female detective opens my door.

‘Okay?’ she asks. Her voice is softer now, as though she regrets the harsh words she threw at me earlier.

I nod, pathetically grateful.

There isn’t space for the door to open fully, and it’s awkward getting out with my wrists cuffed together. The resulting clumsiness leaves me feeling even more frightened and disorientated, and I wonder if that’s the real purpose of handcuffs. After all, if I ran off now, where would I go? The backyard is surrounded by high walls, with electric gates blocking the exit. When I’m finally upright DC Evans takes hold of my upper arm and guides me away from the car. She doesn’t grip me hard, but the act makes me claustrophobic and I have to fight the urge to shake her off. She leads me to a metal door, where the male detective presses a button and speaks into an intercom.

‘DI Stevens,’ he says. ‘Zero nine with one female.’

The heavy door clicks open and we walk through into a large room with dirty white walls. The door slams behind us with a noise that seems to stay in my ears for a full minute. The atmosphere is stale, in spite of a noisy air-conditioning unit fixed to the ceiling, and a rhythmic banging comes from somewhere within the warren of walls that lead away from the central area. At the edge of the room is a grey metal bench screwed to the floor, where a young man in his twenties sits, biting his nails and spitting the results on to the floor. He wears blue tracksuit bottoms with frayed hems, trainers and a filthy grey sweatshirt with an indiscernible logo. The stench of his body odour catches the back of my throat and I turn away before he can see the mixture of fear and pity in my eyes.

I’m too slow.

‘Get a good look, did you, sweetheart?’ The man’s voice is high and nasal, like a boy’s. I glance back at him but don’t speak.

‘Come and check out the goods, if you like!’ He grabs his crotch and laughs, the burst of sound incongruous in this grey, cheerless box.

‘Cut it out, Lee,’ DI Stevens says, and the man smirks and slumps back against the wall, chuckling at his own wit.

DC Evans takes hold of my elbow again, her nails digging into my skin as she steers me across the room to stand in front of a high desk. Wedged behind a computer is a uniformed officer, his white shirt strained across an enormous belly. He nods at DC Evans but affords me no more than a cursory glance.

‘Circumstances?’

DC Evans takes off my handcuffs and instantly it’s as though I can breathe more easily. I rub the red grooves on my wrists and find perverse pleasure from the twinge of pain it gives me.

‘Sarge, this is Jenna Gray. On the twenty-sixth of November 2012 Jacob Jordan was hit by a car on the Fishponds estate. The driver failed to stop. The car has been identified as a red Ford Fiesta, index J634 OUP, registered owner Jenna Gray. Earlier today we attended Blaen Cedi, a cottage near Penfach in Wales, where at 19.33 I arrested Gray on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and failing to stop at the scene of a road traffic collision.’

A low whistle comes from the bench at the back of the custody suite, and DI Stevens turns to shoot Lee a look of warning. ‘What’s he doing there, anyway?’ he asks of nobody in particular.

‘Waiting for his brief. I’ll get him out of the way.’ Without turning round, the custody sergeant yells, ‘Sally, get Roberts back in trap two, will you?’ A stocky female gaoler comes out of the office behind the custody desk, a huge ring of keys clipped to her belt. She is eating something, and she brushes crumbs off her tie. The gaoler leads Lee into the bowels of the custody suite, and he flashes me a look of disgust as he rounds the corner. That’s how it will be in prison, I think, when they find out I have killed a child. Disgust on the faces of other inmates; people turning away when I walk by. Then I bite my bottom lip as I realise it will be much, much worse than that. My stomach clenches with fear, and for the first time I wonder if I can get through this. I remind myself I’ve survived worse.

‘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.’

‘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.’