I can see the clothes from my position by the car. A sage-green blouse. A creased-up linen skirt. A pair of pointed shoes with a heel. As I stare at him, he clutches a cream blouse and brings it up to his nose.
They’re a wife’s clothes, I find myself solemnly thinking. No wonder his chin shakes. I wonder how many weeks or months it has taken him to accept it. To clear out her side of the wardrobe – to bring the clothes here – and to donate them.
How could I possibly go over and interrupt that? Not only interrupt it, but taint it, with my sordid activity?
What if I am found out? And he – a widower – is called to court, because he witnessed me burying evidence, and is forced to relive the day he finally summoned the courage to throw his wife’s clothes away? I couldn’t make him do that.
I stand in the cold sunlight and continue to study him. He’s well dressed, with a nice car. They had a nice life, I think. Barbecues every Bank Holiday Monday with their friends. Three children who visit all the time, not like me and Wilf; weirdly aloof but needily competitive, too. Little bowls of Maltesers and M&Ms around the house, and not just at Christmas. She will have loved Glade plug-ins and I bet he would have been irritated by their synthetic smells. I can picture them now. I turn away. I can’t bear it. His sadness.
I shouldn’t put all of the clothes in one bin, anyway. I should spread them out.
I’ll take them somewhere else.
It is the first time in my entire life that I am being meticulous. That I am thinking and planning and going over things. And it is to get away with murder.
It would surprise everyone. This attention to detail I’m exhibiting. Everyone except Reuben. He wouldn’t be surprised at all.
‘That brain,’ he had once said, almost sadly, to me, at Wagamama’s for lunch when I seamlessly ordered eight dishes for everyone from memory.
Wilf was looking at me carefully.
‘Joanna’s brain?’ Mum had said. ‘Silly Joanna?’
Silly Joanna has its roots in a phrase Mum, Dad and – sometimes – Wilf used to say, while laughing. They would laugh when I admitted I didn’t know whether Germany had a coastline or confessed that I wouldn’t know how to start a fire. Joanna could never survive on a desert island, they would say, while laughing at the very thought of it.
Reuben’s expression had darkened at that. In the car, on the way home, he had said, ‘Do they always do that?’
‘Do what?’ I’d said.
‘Drag you down.’
‘They’re only joking,’ I had said meekly, and he’d looked at me, aghast.
I smile faintly at the memory now. He’d be proud of me, if it weren’t for the subject matter.
I am facing Sainsbury’s, away from the man, still holding my bag of things, not really looking, when my eyes land on it.
On the side of the building. Like a webcam. White, with one black eye. A CCTV camera, it must be. My eyes trail across it. There’s another. And another on the far corner. I crane my neck, leaning out of the car window. I see them, different shapes – some rectangular, some like domes, some shabby and rusted – stuck to the buildings on the other side of the street. A café. A deli. A card and gift shop. It’s like the whole world is opening up in front of me. I’ve never noticed before. CCTV. CCTV. CCTV. It’s everywhere. Like ants in a nest, the more I look, the more I see. It’s everywhere. It’s absolutely fucking everywhere.
It is only a matter of time before they find me.
People do not get away with murder. And this is one of the reasons why.
I see my attack framed in the lenses of a hundred cameras, a kaleidoscope of Joannas and Imrans. My back to the camera, as I push him. A side view of my hand lifting up, striking his. A view from down the canal, Imran tumbling down the steps. My mind skitters into irrationality. A view, close-up, of Imran’s face as he dies, as he breathes in the water. A view from inside as he struggles for breath. From inside his cells as they die. From inside those cells’ nuclei as the lights go out. From inside his brain as his memories die and become nothing at all.
It’s remarkable that here I am, a killer, and I am still outside Sainsbury’s. That Sainsbury’s even exists.
I go inside, just in case anybody’s keeping an eye on me. I’ll buy something. Anything. So as not to arouse suspicion.
I pay at the kiosk, holding a pint of milk, trying not to think. The handle cools my fingers.
A paper catches my eye as I queue. I almost rub my eyes in astonishment.
CANAL-SIDE RACE HATE
Race hate? Race hate?
I shift closer to the paper, trying not to draw attention to myself. I can’t buy it, of course. I can’t even reach and touch it – there’s probably a bloody camera right behind me – but if I shift a bit, I can read the front page.
I scan it quickly. They think it was racially aggravated. Because he was Pakistani, Muslim, I think dully. That area of London had been rife with racial unrest.
I stand, staring at the paper, holding my milk, and thinking of Reuben. He is always my first thought. Poor Reuben, and the work he does for his charity.
I pay for my milk in cash. 45p.
How can they decide it was racially aggravated when it wasn’t? How can they unilaterally tell their side of the story? What about mine?
But then, I think, as the automatic doors open for me, why wouldn’t they? This is the price I pay for anonymity. I have no right of reply. No right to even ask them why they think that. A man is dead, because of me, and living with people’s assumptions about my motivations is surely part of my punishment. I can’t believe I’m even thinking it. I have no rights in this situation, and nor should I. None at all.
I get in my car again and stare at my mobile like it is a snake about to attack me. I could call now: 999. Or google the number for the nearest police station. Drive there, and end it all.
I reach over and hold the phone in my hand. It’s weighty. One call, and I would likely go to prison for life. Life. It’s said so casually on the news. But – life. One call, and I could explain, to those dear to me, how it happened. That I was frightened. That it wasn’t about his race. That I didn’t leave because I didn’t think … because I didn’t think that his Pakistani life mattered.
There are a million reasons to call, of course. To do the right thing. To make amends. So the family can finally know what’s happened. To trust in the justice system that it won’t punish a good person for making a bad mistake, and let it decide my fate for me. So I can stop lying to Reuben. So I can stop living with it; stop waiting for the police to knock the door. All those pros, listed out in my mind. All those pros, and then just one con, but with a weight as dense as mercury: I would more than likely go to prison. Jail. Inside. Just one con, but it matters more than any of the others.
I turn the car’s ignition on, the bag of soiled clothes with – no doubt – Imran’s DNA on them sitting next to me like a bomb.
That afternoon, I think, I’ll put them out. For charity. I’ll go through the donation bags left over in our kitchen, and then the incriminating items will be gone, jumbled up with everybody else’s, like unidentifiable faces in a crowd.
I’ll say I was having a clear-out, if anybody asks. Only those close to me will know how unlikely that is. I’ll tell them I read an article recently about minimalism. And even if they don’t believe me, confusing my loved ones is the best option I have now.
It’s better than the alternative: keeping the clothes, hanging, like spectres in the back of my wardrobe.
Reuben’s father sends me a text. He texts me often. He started tentatively, when he got a mobile, but texts in earnest now. It’s always overly formal, and almost always signed off with a ‘P’, but I like them.
I don’t open the message now. Can’t look.