How to Disappear Read online

  Despite his own reassurances, Aidan is sure that this is not the right thing for Zara to be doing, but his voice has been lost in the crowd. The State does not have her best interests at heart, of that he is certain, no matter what they say. To them, she is a commodity. She has knowledge, and that knowledge is going to be extracted from her, and then she will be discarded. They have placated Aidan with promises of anonymity, with assurances that they are professionals, that what she is doing is important and right. But right for who? For them, that’s who. If she angers people, if her identity is accidentally leaked, they won’t care. They will have got everything out of her that they wanted, and they will leave Aidan and Lauren to clear up the mess. ‘Of course you think that,’ Lauren had said recently when he pointed all of this out again. ‘You’re a cynic.’ And maybe that’s true. Aidan is drawn to the negative, is forever perusing horror stories on the internet, has recently taken to binge-reading articles about leaked identities late at night. Witch hunts, public sector omnishambles. He works in IT, and has spent his days recently voraciously reading past cases instead of working.

  The curtain is drawn tightly around Zara by an usher, secured by Velcro, which Aidan cannot resist reaching out to check. The usher glances at him, a quick, proprietary look from behind square glasses. Aidan ignores him, and keeps checking it along the length of the curtain. If he can just secure it more tightly … make sure nobody at all can see her …

  ‘You’ll be in the public gallery,’ the solicitor says to them. Harry’s young. Mid-thirties. He drinks matcha lattes that leave his tongue bright green. Aidan catches glimpses of it as he speaks to them in meetings and has to try very hard not to comment on it. Harry gets on especially well with Lauren, but then everyone does. They’re both fast talkers, gesticulators. Lauren invited him over for a curry she made from scratch in the summer, bought a load of chickpeas at the market – way, way too many – and Aidan sat and listened to his wife and the CPS solicitor for the evening, worrying about blurred boundaries.

  Harry runs through Zara’s account with her quietly once again. He perches like a flamingo behind the box, one leg against the wall’s wood panelling.

  Aidan and Lauren hover in the corner of the courtroom. ‘It should be quick,’ Lauren says. ‘I think.’ She runs a hand through her ashy blonde hair. Aidan’s wife is sometimes beautiful and sometimes less so, though he would never say that. Aidan finds her fascinating in this way. Her features are slightly irregular somewhere around the nose and mouth. She is ‘interesting to look at’, he once said while drunk, which he regretted.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ he reassures her, though he doesn’t mean it, isn’t sure. How could he be?

  He stares up at the windows above and wishes that they hadn’t done the right thing. That they had done the wrong thing. The easy thing. That Zara didn’t care so much. That she had seen the murder but closed her eyes and walked away. Pretended it had never happened.

  4

  Zara

  The Old Bailey, London

  Zara is sitting behind the black curtains, waiting for the questioning to begin. Although nobody will be able to see her, her cheeks are flushed. She tries to calm herself with deep breaths.

  All she has to do, she tells herself, is tell the courtroom what she saw.

  Except it isn’t that simple. Not at all. Zara doesn’t find anything simple, not really. She is one of life’s over-thinkers, according to the therapist.

  But that night changed everything. That night is all about gut instinct, for Zara.

  She reaches to take a sip of the water provided in the white plastic cup. This … this is different. Right and wrong have become mixed up.

  She saw the defendant stab the victim, Jamie, while his friend looked on. She saw the blood leaving Jamie’s neck, a cascade on to the floor around him. And Zara is here because of that.

  Because she knew Jamie.

  She started volunteering in Islington with Waste Not as part of her anxiety recovery. ‘Look, who do you want to be?’ the therapist had said, and Zara had thought: God – who? What a liberating question.

  ‘I like causes,’ she had said eventually. ‘Like … the environment, and animals, supporting the underdog. I don’t know. Homeless people. I feel sorry for them.’ It had come out of nowhere, but it had felt like real, authentic Zara who was speaking. Not the one who tried to fit in at the school away weekend – thinking a million disastrous thoughts a minute, instead of cycling – but the real her. And so every other Thursday, at six o’clock in the evening, she’d head to the high street to hand out the food that a few cafés and restaurants had reserved for homeless people. She would wear a hi-vis vest, bright yellow, and carry a stiff paper bag containing hot meals, the steam gently warming her hand. At first, she had to find the homeless people – in shop doorways, in underpasses – but, after a few months, they started coming to her. That’s how she had met Jamie, and the rest of them.

  And that’s how she recognized him when she saw him. When she saw what happened to him.

  5

  Aidan

  The Old Bailey, London

  Zara is almost at the end of the questioning.

  She has told the jury – from behind the screen – what she saw. About the two teenage youth football team players who killed a homeless man in the bandstand during the school holidays the summer before last. She’s told the courtroom in shaking tones that she knew Jamie, the victim. About Waste Not. About the discarded roof tile the second defendant, Mal, picked up and tossed to the first defendant, Luke. Mal is charged with supplying that weapon, Luke with murder. She tells them about how Jamie lay helplessly, blood leaving his body, until he was silent.

  Aidan sometimes dreams about what Zara must have seen. A bloodied man and a murderer standing in the twilight. He wakes, itchy with sweat. His stepdaughter doesn’t know how much it will affect her, later. He wishes he could take this thing she’s seen and absorb it into himself.

  ‘And what did you hear?’ the barrister says.

  ‘Not much,’ Zara says. ‘The defendants shouted something – a phrase? It was in another … another language, I … Latin, maybe? A club motto?’

  ‘The club’s motto is “We Stand Together”. In English,’ the barrister says icily.

  ‘Not that,’ she says. ‘Never mind. It was … I don’t know? A chant?’

  ‘A chant?’

  ‘They said something I didn’t understand, alright?’

  ‘But you can’t remember anything more about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One final question,’ the defence barrister says to the curtains through a sigh. He is irritated by Zara, by her evidence.

  He has a pink mark on his nose from pushing his glasses up with his knuckle, which he does every few minutes. ‘Can you talk me through the movements of the first defendant, his co-accused the second defendant, and the victim?’

  ‘The movements?’ Zara’s disembodied voice asks.

  ‘They just walked up to this sleeping, homeless man, did they? And killed him in situ?’

  ‘Yes. Mal passed Luke the roof tile, and he stabbed him with the point of it.’

  ‘And the homeless man did nothing? Perhaps he was high on drugs, or drink?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Zara says.

  ‘I see,’ the barrister says, leaving a drawn-out pause.

  Aidan looks across the public gallery. There they are. Holloway FC, the Premier League team, all wearing suits and yellow or blue ties. Club colours. Some key members of the youth team are here, who feed the Premier League team. Five men. Coaches. Managers. A few younger lads, too. Rangy-looking teenagers with tanned foreheads. Aidan saw the latest Premier League match on television two nights ago. The commentators mentioned the upcoming trial, but only briefly.

  Luke’s parents are here, too. Aidan has a morbid fascination with them. Their child has done something unthinkable. The parents are desperate to believe it isn’t true, not their kid. Aidan knows a watered-down v
ersion of that feeling. Doesn’t every parent? One Christmas, his daughter from his first marriage, Poppy, called him a twat because she didn’t get the £500 pair of trainers she wanted. He ate his Christmas dinner alone, heart in his feet, thinking: I messed it up. She was supposed to grow up to be nice: humble. That’s what children don’t realize. They don’t realize they are avatars of their parents. It is like Aidan has taken his heart out of his chest and has to watch it walk around outside his body. And the heart doesn’t even know. The heart wants Gucci trainers.

  ‘So, Girl A,’ the barrister says, ‘if this was not an intoxicated person, why would he lie there – and not defend himself at all?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps he felt he had nothing to live for?’

  ‘No, he did. He did have things to live for.’

  ‘Did he cry out, or shout? I’m just trying to imagine the scene, here.’

  Zara says nothing.

  Aidan looks over at Luke in the dock. He used to be tall and slim but, after a year on remand in HMP Wandsworth, he is muscular around the neck and arms, like a swimmer.

  The courtroom is completely silent.

  Aidan stares at the curtains.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It’s a … a blur.’

  ‘According to your account, Jamie lay silent and still for the entire attack, so you say. How sad, that he felt his life wasn’t worth anything to even justify rolling over. You’re certain he wasn’t … intoxicated in some way?’

  ‘He didn’t do drugs. Didn’t drink. Couldn’t afford to.’

  The barrister lets out a sharp, acidic laugh. ‘Surely most sleeping people, if woken by an attacker, as you say, would defend themselves, would they not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he didn’t? He didn’t even lift his head? How tragic.’

  And then, right before Zara says it, Aidan realizes. The barrister has worked something out, and has set a trap for Zara to walk into.

  ‘He did fight,’ Zara says. ‘He stood up first and he lurched towards them. Don’t say that about him. He didn’t think his life was futile just because he was homeless. He didn’t.’

  The courtroom is stunned into silence.

  Lauren turns to Aidan. She’s staring at him, his wife who, at the moment, is in her beautiful guise. She doesn’t look away, not even as the barrister starts to speak again.

  ‘Forgive my confusion, Girl A, but you previously said – under oath, I might add – that the victim did nothing. Page three of your witness statement reads: “The two defendants were standing over the victim and the first defendant began to attack him while the victim lay there, motionless.”’

  ‘I … I … I’m sorry.’

  And now, like a gun going off, Aidan realizes. Zara has lied. Zara is lying.

  The courtroom doesn’t speak. Nobody moves. Lauren’s eyes are boring into the side of Aidan’s head.

  ‘So, what is the true version of events?’ the barrister asks. ‘Who attacked first?’

  ‘Jamie,’ Zara says, very quietly.

  The courtroom stills.

  Only the judge moves, shifting in his chair at the bench, elevated above the courtroom, and speaks. ‘Girl A,’ he says softly. He’s wearing half-red, half-purple robes, a ludicrous court jester. ‘I have to say …’ the judge looks over at the witness box, even though he can’t see her. He lowers his glasses down his nose. ‘Who attacked first is absolutely crucial in this case.’

  ‘I know,’ Zara says, her voice strangled and plaintive from behind the curtain.

  Aidan wants to go and undo the Velcro and gather her up. He can tell Lauren feels the same.

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Zara says nothing, and Aidan knows she will be staring at the curtains in shock, frozen. She hates to get things wrong. One Christmas, when they were playing Trivial Pursuit, her hands were actually shaking as he asked her a question. She answered incorrectly, but he gave her the wedge anyway.

  ‘For murder to have taken place,’ the judge says, ‘the defendants need to have intended to cause grievous bodily harm or death, and – crucially – not to have been acting in self-defence. If you have not told the entire truth, Girl A, about the victim’s actions, then the defendants may not have committed murder. So I must ask you: what events took place, and in what order?’

  ‘Okay,’ Zara says, her voice thick. ‘The defendants stood over Jamie. Doing nothing. And then he … he attacked them first. And they reacted to that attack.’

  Aidan listens intently to the silence, shocked. And then it all unravels.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zara says from behind the curtains. ‘I’m sorry, I lied.’

  There’s another beat of silence, and then the courtroom comes alive.

  The judge shouts, ‘Approach the bench,’ and the barristers stare at each other. The ushers move around to the back of the witness box and, before Aidan knows what’s happening, the jury are dismissed through one door and the public gallery through another. As Aidan waits to leave the courtroom with journalists and other family members, he can feel the blood pounding uncomfortably in his head. Harry nods to Lauren and Aidan. He’ll bring Zara to them, the nod says, when the courtroom is empty. When it’s safe.

  The hairs on the back of Aidan’s neck rise up.

  They disperse into the foyer and Lauren sits on a bench affixed to the wall. Aidan immediately joins her. ‘God,’ she says to him, her expression aghast. Eyes wide. Hand to her forehead.

  ‘She lied,’ Aidan says.

  ‘They still killed someone,’ Lauren says tightly. ‘Whatever the detail.’

  ‘It isn’t detail if they were defending themselves,’ Aidan says.

  ‘I’m sure Zara can clear it all up for us,’ Lauren says. ‘I’m sure she’ll explain.’

  Aidan isn’t so certain. Zara called Lauren right after she phoned an ambulance that night. Aidan had been next to Lauren as she took the call, and, when they had arrived, Zara’s hands were covered in dried blood from where she had tried to stem Jamie’s bleeding. Aidan watched as Lauren cleaned them up with a wet wipe from a dehydrated packet in the car, remembering sticky summers gone by. When they’d have both the kids in the back, Poppy and Zara, just a couple of months between them, feet kicking the front seats. Lauren had asked her if Jamie had attacked the boys first. If they were actually defending themselves against him. Aidan recalls it now. Zara had looked at Lauren curiously, those beautiful, roving brown eyes of hers focused suddenly on her mother. She had been wearing shorts, a denim jacket and trainers. All bloodstained. ‘If so, it was self-defence,’ Lauren had continued. ‘He could have been threatening them, Zara.’

  Aidan rests his head against the wall of the foyer now. But surely Zara wouldn’t lie? Would she? Why would she do something so foolish – and so unlike her, so misguided? Perjury, for God’s sake. Zara’s a fucking vegan, a climate change maniac. He thought she was ethical.

  ‘She’s in meeting room eighteen,’ Harry says as soon as he arrives in front of them a few minutes later. He’s holding a drink and looking unconcerned in that languid way of his, one hand in the pocket of his suit trousers. He leads them to the side room. It’s up two flights of stairs that turn back on themselves, and down a red-carpeted corridor. It’s silent up here, like a museum.

  Harry holds the door open for them. Zara is sitting there, just as she appeared in their kitchen this morning. Harry sits down opposite them. Lauren naturally turns to Aidan, a question mark in her blue eyes.

  Zara is absent-mindedly chewing on the inside of her cheek as they sit down, skewing her mouth to the left.

  ‘You said Jamie did nothing,’ Lauren says. ‘But he did?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zara says. Amazingly, she doesn’t seem to feel a need to clarify anything further. The mind of the teenager.

  ‘What sort of attack was it?’ Harry asks. ‘It’s very important – now – that you tell me the truth, Zara.’

&n
bsp; ‘They stood over him. They roused him, I think. He got up and sort of … came at them. He was shouting and stuff … but they scared him, they –’ Zara stops speaking and turns her hands over on the table, palms up. A small gesture of defeat.

  ‘And what exactly is stuff?’ Harry says. ‘Shouting and –’ he taps his pen on the table, ‘– stuff.’

  ‘Well –’ Zara says in a small voice.

  ‘But why would you lie?’ Lauren interrupts. ‘If he attacked first – I mean – Zara.’

  Lauren doesn’t understand lying. She tells every single person she meets exactly what she is thinking: Tesco cashiers and mechanics and postmen. ‘No croissant for me,’ she will say in cafés, ‘I’ve got three pounds left to lose!’

  ‘You want to know why?’ Zara says.

  ‘Yes,’ Lauren says softly.

  ‘After he – Luke – did it, he shouted at Jamie. He said, “You’re a waste of space. You’re worthless.” Right in his face. As he … as he died. Those were the last words he heard. And – you know – Jamie wanted to start working for one of the cafés that fed him. He had an interview and everything. And now it’s all lost.’

  Of course, Aidan thinks, looking at the thoughtful set of her mouth. Zara felt that them killing Jamie – no matter what he did first – was morally reprehensible. Despite the law, Despite everything.

  ‘I need to clarify the actual facts, Zara,’ Harry says tightly, glancing briefly at Lauren. ‘So the order of events was that Jamie lashed out at them – and Luke and Mal didn’t do anything first?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Zara says quietly. ‘He got up and he was … shouting and screaming and kicking out. He was … he didn’t like people in his spaces. He always slept out of the way. He got frightened when people disturbed him. So he came at them. Lunged. They tried to move – to run away from him. He was coming towards them and they panicked. They used the roof tile to … to get him off.’