There were two other people in the room: a woman of around twenty-five and her blonde-haired son, who was about the same age as Jessica. He had a strangely elfin-looking face that both charmed and disturbed. He was watching me with naked, childish curiosity. I smiled at him but he looked away nervously. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a pencil. On the top it had a rubber, in the shape of a grinning little banana man. Jessica was collecting them. There were all kinds of fruit people and you got them from petrol stations. I pulled the rubber off the pencil, put it on my little finger and jiggled it up and down. The boy looked up in shy fascination. Then I took the banana man off my finger and put it on the boy’s. I’d been saving it for Jessica.

  The boy said: ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  His mother cut in: ‘Leave the man alone love.’

  She was flicking nervously through a newspaper. I looked over her shoulder and a headline caught my eye: MYSTERY DISAPPEARANCE OF OXFORD PROFESSOR. I looked away immediately, through the window high up in the corner. You could still see the discoloured patches on the window sill, where the bars had once been. The boy was holding the little banana man and tugging at his mother’s dress: ‘Look! Look!’ The woman put down her newspaper to remonstrate gently with the boy, who started to suck his fingers defensively: ‘Take your fingers out of your mouth love.’ When he did, you could see corns where the skin was almost broken.

  I asked the mother if I could look at her newspaper and she handed it to me wordlessly. I skimmed through the first few pages to make it look like I was just idly reading then eventually I turned to the story that interested me. There were just three short paragraphs. ‘Renowned historian’ Richard Weldon had failed to turn up for a lecture a week ago: colleagues had searched his college rooms and then his North Oxford house before calling the police. A full investigation into his disappearance was currently under way but had produced no firm leads as yet. One theory was suicide: Weldon’s wife had died recently after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. But friends insisted that he had been coping well with her death and had shown no signs of suicidal tendencies. Weldon was also said to have been involved in negotiations over the fate of a political prisoner in an unnamed African country. Police had yet to rule out a link.

  I skimmed through the story again and stared for a minute or two at the grainy, unrecognisable photo of the man – I could hardly remember what he looked like alive anyway, only dead. Then I started reading another article on the opposite page, about a bizarre incident that had happened the other night. Two strangers had been walking across Albert Bridge from opposite directions. When they crossed paths one had suddenly grabbed the other and hauled him over the railings into the river. Being young and a strong swimmer, the victim had survived. His assailant had gone straight to the police station and confessed his crime. What was odd was that not only was the crime motiveless, but the perpetrator was a well-respected doctor with a happy marriage, two children, no history of mental illness and no financial problems. He had fully co-operated with the police but could offer no explanation for his act. He had, however, expressed a wish to see the person he’d pushed into the river, and the man in question had agreed to a meeting.

  I thought about this article for a while. It disturbed me almost more than the one on the man I’d murdered. I wondered what exactly it was that the doctor wanted to say to the man he’d pushed into the river. With some surprise I realised what it was about the story that disturbed me: I was jealous that this man was being given the opportunity to speak to his victim. I folded the paper neatly and handed it back to the woman.

  She looked my way: ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘Only French ones.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She started sucking on it as if her life depended on it, then coughing and sucking on it again.

  She said: ‘So what are you here for?’

  ‘Oh you know. The usual. First-degree murder.’

  The woman giggled, then so did the little boy in imitation. In fact he started laughing so hard, in this peculiar uncontrollable way, that his mother eventually had to tell him to stop.

  I continued: ‘Just a traffic offence actually. Went through a red light.’

  ‘Really? They pull people in for that?’

  I didn’t reply. Eventually a policeman came in to get the woman. I was on my own for a minute or two, then the same guy came back for me. We went down some stairs and along another corridor, past door after door, most of them half-open. Through one of them I could even hear the woman I’d given the cigarette to a few minutes before. She was saying: ‘You can check it if you want. But it’s not an offence if I wasn’t soliciting. Listen, I know the laws on this better than you do …’

  We stopped at a door at the end of the corridor. There was a name on it: ‘Friedman’. The policeman knocked and then signalled for me to go in. A bored-looking guy sat behind a desk. He looked up from the papers he was reading and started asking me a string of questions. Had I had anything to drink in the last twenty-four hours, had I taken any medication or any illegal substances, etc. He picked up the breathalyser lying on the desk and asked me to blow into it, which I did. Then he asked me whether I’d be prepared to give a blood sample, if necessary, and I said I would, if necessary. I was wondering about the name on the door, Friedman. It reminded me of something, but it took me a while to remember what it was. It was the name that had been on the little memorial stone inside the cave, where Christian and I had disposed of the body. It occurred to me that maybe the policeman in front of me was related to the little boy who’d lost his life in the cave but there was no way of finding out, short of actually asking the guy. I almost did at one point but then I stopped myself.

  ‘Hello? Are you with me?’

  The police guy was looking at me strangely. I hadn’t been listening. I’d been thinking of something else.

  ‘I said, is there anything else you want to say to me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like anything else.’

  He was piercing me with this odd stare that was hard to meet, but equally hard to pull away from: ‘No. No, there’s nothing else.’

  We continued to stare at each other for a few more seconds but then finally he looked back down at his paperwork: ‘Well you’ll have to come back tomorrow with your driver’s licence. Then you’ll receive notice from the magistrate’s court sometime over the next few weeks.’

  I could feel the sweat under my armpits. The guy was writing something and I just stayed there watching him until finally he looked up again: ‘OK. You can go now.’

  I got up slowly. The guy was watching me almost inquisitively and I noticed that my mouth was open, as if I were on the verge of speaking. It was this torturing desire to confess which was hardly going to go away, quite the reverse. The only way to rid myself of it would be to yield to it, which in due course I would most certainly do. The realisation of this came as an unexpected relief, momentarily liberating me from what felt like an intolerable pressure. It was perhaps like the relief of someone who is finally informed that he has a terminal illness, after he’d long suspected it.

  I had to fill in a form then queue up and get it stamped by a policeman behind the counter, who handed me my car keys. I walked out through the glass doors and as soon as I was outside I started taking great gulps of the polluted London air, as if I’d been submerged for minutes and was on the point of drowning. I looked at my left wrist – I kept forgetting that I didn’t have a watch any more. It was something to do with the fact that I had no idea of when I’d murdered the man. I calculated with my fingers. Was it eight days ago, or nine? Sometimes it felt very close, like something that happened an hour ago, then at other times it seemed very far away indeed, like the distant memory of falling in love for the first time.

  I stopped a young guy and asked him the time. He didn’t reply though, he just looked up at me expectantly and I realised he was actually a beggar. He had a wispy beard and a suede jacket like Christian’s. I reached into my pocket but I had no change on me. Wait a second, I said, there’s a cashpoint on the corner. As he followed me there he started talking in a curiously high-pitched voice, wheezing and taking quick, shallow breaths as he did so. I’d work if I could, he said, but I’ve got this incurable disease, a congenital thing that leaves me short of breath, there’s only seventeen other cases like it in the whole of Britain. He said this last bit with evident pride. I got some money out and gave it to him, three twenty pound notes.

  Whispered voices emanated indistinctly from somewhere in the house but it was hard to tell from where exactly. There was a pervasive smell of cigarettes too, the French ones I’d been smoking lately. Had Marianne helped herself to mine or had she bought her own? Clothes, toys, bottles, glasses and dirty plates lay strewn about the sitting room and I started to pick them up out of habit but then I stopped. It was this weird premonition about things and I went into the bedroom, our bedroom. The place was a tip as well. Both of them were in there, Marianne and Jessica. Marianne was still in her grey nightgown although it was about six in the evening now and Jessica was naked, despite the fact that I’d dressed her that morning. She was perched precariously on the dressing table so that she could see herself in the mirror – she was putting on lipstick and rouge and mascara, smearing it all over her face like a hideous mask. The dressing table, which Marianne normally kept immaculately clean and tidy, was a mess of open tubes and pots, some of them knocked over and spilt. Marianne was lying on the bed. She was playing with a doll, the one Jessica had told me was getting married. She was moving its arms and remonstrating with it.

  ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  Neither of them looked up. Marianne’s nightgown was speckled with purple; at first I thought it was blood but then I noticed a half-drunk bottle of wine by the bed. She’d got through all the stuff we’d bought for day-to-day consumption and now she’d started on the crate I’d laid down the year Jessica had been born. It was supposed to be for Jessica’s twenty-first birthday or something.

  I strode across the room and picked up Jessica: ‘OK. Let’s get you cleaned up.’

  I carried her into the bathroom and ran the bath. The lipstick had somehow got all over her, not just on her face but on her body too, like some kind of warpaint.

  I interrogated her as I washed her: ‘Have you eaten? Did Mummy get you anything to eat?’

  ‘Yeah. We had chocolate doughnuts! And wine.’

  ‘She gave you wine?’

  ‘I wanted milk but there wasn’t none.’

  ‘Any. There wasn’t any.’

  I got her clean then took her along to her bedroom to get dressed. I could hear Marianne in the other bedroom, still drunkenly talking to the doll bride. Jessica was playing an obscurely malicious game with me as I put her pyjamas on: ‘Where do you live, Daddy?’

  ‘What do you mean? I live here of course.’

  ‘No but where do you live really?’

  ‘Here. I told you. You know that.’

  ‘But where do you live Daddy? Where?’

  And so on. She wasn’t tired at all and I could see it would be difficult to get her into bed. Then after a while she changed tack. She was saying: ‘Did you go to the petrol station today? Did you? Did you?’

  ‘I did. And I’ve got you something.’

  I reached into my pocket for the rubber banana man I’d got for her but then I remembered that I’d given it to the little elfin-faced boy instead: ‘You’ll have to earn it though. You’ll have to go to bed like a good girl then I’ll give it to you in the morning.’

  ‘I want it now!’

  ‘Well you can’t have it now.’

  ‘Give it to me!’

  She stared at me with menace in her eyes. What was she threatening me with? In what way could she hurt me? But I realised soon enough how weak I was faced with her.

  ‘Listen, why don’t I read to you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What about your dolls? Do you want to play with your dolls?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘How about Teddy then? Where’s Teddy?’

  Suddenly she went strangely calm and silent.

  ‘Well? Why don’t you go and get Teddy? Where is he?’

  She didn’t say anything. She was tentatively shaking her head. In fact her whole body was trembling in an odd way.

  ‘Hey. I asked you a question. I asked you where Teddy was.’

  Still she didn’t answer. She was looking at the floor, then I caught her furtively glancing in the direction of the door, as if to calculate her chances of dashing out of the room without me catching her. I grabbed her by the shoulders: ‘Jessica! What have you done with Teddy? Answer me!’

  She mumbled something but in such a tiny voice I couldn’t catch it: ‘What was that? What did you say? I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I said he’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  Her voice seemed to come from a million miles away: ‘To heaven.’

  ‘Heaven? What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you before. The man got him. Teddy got sick.’

  ‘Man? What man? What are you talking about?’ I was shaking her and almost shouting: ‘Where’s Teddy? Where is he? Show me. Show me what you’ve done with him Jessica!’

  ‘In the garden.’

  She was whimpering and shivering and I could tell she was too scared to cry properly – frightened as to what I might do to her.

  ‘In the garden where? Show me Jessica. Show me!’

  We went out into the garden. She led me to this narrow strip between the fence and Marianne’s shed-cum-studio that didn’t get any light and had no grass growing on it. Someone had been digging there though and I noticed a delicately constructed little cross impaling the earth, a tiny thing only a few inches high.

  ‘Let go! You’re hurting me!’

  I was still gripping Jessica and I noticed that my fingers had left little red marks on her shoulder. As I relaxed my hold she pulled away violently and ran back towards the house. I made no effort to pursue her. I stared down at the little plot then got down on my knees and started digging with my hands. The earth was loose and easy to scrape away. I pulled out a wooden box, like a big cigar box. I opened it. Inside was a little figure enveloped in a white tea towel. I unwrapped the teddy bear and held it in my hands. I had this bizarre feeling that it was in fact alive and I could even feel it pulsating. The thought horrified me for a moment, until I realised that it wasn’t the teddy bear that was pulsating but the veins and capillaries in my own fingers. It was hard to make out whether the teddy bear’s mouth was grinning or snarling. I put it back in the box.

  I sat out in the garden for a while, on the grass. I felt the sharp edge of the cigarette packet in my pocket and got it out and smoked one, although it was difficult to light with my shaking hands. There were storm clouds in the sky and the atmosphere was hot and almost unbearably heavy. I still had the wooden box in my arms, I was cradling it like a baby.

  Huge drops of rain started to fall and I got up and went inside. I didn’t want to see Marianne and Jessica till I’d calmed down so I got started on the pile of washing-up in the sink. But then I lost interest half way through and dried my hands and lit another cigarette – I’d been practically chain-smoking ever since the bedsit and could feel it every morning, the wheezing and the nicotine hangover. I looked up at the childish drawing of a man that was pinned to the kitchen wall and that was really not bad and I wondered if Jessica would end up an artist like her mother. It was almost the first thought I’d had about the future since the day of the murder. I continued to stare at Jessica’s drawing until I could feel the man’s black eyes drawing me in like I was falling into them, into some fathomless well but I didn’t know where it was, whether it was there somewhere in the bedsit or in my hands or deep inside me.

  I went into the study and opened up the drawer in the desk with all Marianne’s stuff in it. I pulled out a notebook – her diary for this year – and started reading, positioning myself so I could easily throw it back in the drawer and pretend to be doing something else should Marianne come in. At first I read through each entry but since they were mainly abstract remarks about her work I started scanning through them, on the lookout for names, troubled more by what the writing didn’t say than what it did. Eventually I came to the last entry. It was dated the day of the murder. A single sentence, marked with an asterisk: ‘Discussion with R. – agreed and now to tell M.’ I flicked through the rest of the blank pages then put the notebook back in the drawer. There was relief at the blank pages. Relief that she’d written nothing since that day, but also dread that she would do so eventually and that I wouldn’t have the willpower to stop myself reading it.

  Now I walked through to our bedroom, the wooden box still under my arm. I thought I was calm but then as soon as I saw Marianne and Jessica I lost it again. Marianne was lying propped up on the bed with Jessica beside her. It took me a moment to realise what the situation was, what Jessica was doing. She had her eyes closed and perhaps she was half-asleep, sucking at her mother’s breast as Marianne stroked her head and whispered to her.

  ‘For Christ’s sake Marianne … She’s three years old!’

  Jessica had opened her eyes and was looking up at me in fear, her little face pressed close to her mother’s shoulder. I was waving the wooden box at them: ‘What’s this? What the hell’s this? What are you trying to do to her? What the hell are you …’