Page 50 of No Safe Place

Friday | Morning

Callum

They came back after a ten-minute break, which presumably was supposed to be enough time for Callum to absorb the news.

The label of his T-shirt was scratching his neck, but he didn’t want to rub it. He didn’t know much about body language, but was pretty sure there was something about touching your neck.

‘So, if we go back to Wednesday evening, before you found Sam outside the house.’ Field cleared her throat. ‘What were you doing that evening, Callum?’

‘Drinking.’

Wilson’s pen was poised over her notebook, but she didn’t bother writing his one-word answer.

He was tempted to leave it there. To be unhelpful and obtuse and say fuck it, fuck all of them. David was dead, and someone had attacked Sam on his doorstep, and what was it all for? Why were they interviewing him instead of catching the psycho who did it?

But Lily had a wide-eyed panicked look, and he wanted the interview to be over, for her as much as for himself.

He heard David’s voice in his head saying breathe, Callum – and a wound opened behind his ribcage. It occurred to him that every time he heard David’s voice, which was several times an hour, recalling his advice and his mantras – the grief would hit him again.

‘Lily and I had an argument. I was pissed off – I wanted to get pissed. I was listening to music.’ He frowned, trying to remember the order of things. ‘Lily left at midnight, maybe?’

Lily nodded, but Field and Wilson weren’t looking at her. Really, he wasn’t sure why they’d let her in here.

They don’t know.

He went to take a sip of water, but his hand was shaking so badly that he had to put the cup straight back down.

‘Okay,’ Field said. ‘That’s good, Callum, thank you. Now let me know if I’ve got any of this wrong – you were drinking beers and whisky, and at around midnight, Lily left the house, and you were there alone.’

‘Cider,’ he said. ‘It was cider.’

Wilson made a note.

Field didn’t seem overly comfortable. Callum imagined she was usually much more together than this, more with it. But maybe the setting, or the fact he was mental – something was throwing her off her game.

You and me both , he thought.

‘Okay. So – my next question. When you found Sam on the ground, why didn’t you call 999?’

Lily stiffened as Field said it, but the army of Maxwell’s drugs swimming through his system must be doing their job, because it wasn’t the gut punch he would usually expect.

‘I couldn’t.’

Field’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? Your phone was in your back pocket.’

Callum didn’t speak.

‘What happened next?’ Field said. ‘As in – I’d like you to expand upon your answer.’

Field didn’t want to waste one of her questions. She was trying to find an OCD loophole. He was all too familiar with the practice.

‘I don’t use the phone, not properly. I can’t explain it, but I just couldn’t do it. That number—’

He couldn’t finish the sentence. A muscle in one eye was twitching, his foot tapping under the table, like his whole body was betraying him, tuning in to the high-frequency note of panic that was vibrating through him.

He was surprised when Field moved on. ‘Thank you, Callum. I know it must be hard to talk about.’

Callum shot a look at Lily, who was staring wide-eyed at Field, like she was a fascinating TV show.

‘Question three – how did you know Sam, and was it via David?’

She’d asked him that at the house. ‘I met Sam in hospital, when we were teenagers.’ He looked around the room. ‘Here, actually – the Maudsley. Different ward, though.’

Wilson and Field exchanged a look and waited for him to carry on. Next to him, Lily cleared her throat.

‘I haven’t seen Sam since we were teenagers.’ He paused. ‘The people you go through that shit with, you don’t always want to be around them when you get better. Or they don’t want to be around you.’

Lily was wringing her hands in her lap, but looked calm otherwise.

All this – it was all something to do with the paper, David’s fucking crusade against shit therapists that had got him promoted and talked about and launched his career.

‘My fourth question—’ then Field smiled. ‘Halfway there now.’

It felt like they’d only been talking for a few minutes. Callum was relieved, at the thought of it being over, of going back to bed.

‘When was the last time you saw David, before Friday? And how did he seem?’

Callum shut his eyes. Technically two questions, which would make the total nine.

He steadied himself. It was part of the same question; it was all one thing she wanted to know. It was fine.

And anyway , he thought, already not believing it, it doesn’t even matter if she does ask nine questions. It’s just a number.

‘I don’t see him, I speak to him on the phone,’ Callum managed, his voice strained. ‘I spoke to him on Tuesday morning. He called me—’

‘But that wasn’t your usual appointment slot, was it?’ Field frowned. ‘You were only on the phone for five minutes, and you terminated the call.’

They had been looking at David’s phone records. It made him feel sick again. The unreality of the situation, its bizarreness, kept being punctured by the realisation that this was an investigation. It was real.

‘Next question,’ the lawyer prompted.

‘Actually, Mr Greyson,’ Field said, with a tight smile. ‘I was waiting for Callum to expand on that last point.’

‘It wasn’t an appointment. Sometimes I speak to him when I needed to. It was a benefits thing.’ They looked at him blankly. ‘He was letting me know that they were stopping my disability living allowance.’

‘Okay,’ Field said.

God. Madman on the loose and she wanted to talk about his fucking dole money. Today of all days, they must believe he was mental enough to deserve it.

Under the table, Lily put a hand on his thigh. Gentle squeeze.

The room was heating up, the smell of food getting stronger. The label in his T-shirt was infuriating him, and he had a layer of sweat on his skin. Lily squeezed his leg again.

Two.

He nearly missed Field’s next question.

‘When you found Sam, on the doorstep. What did you do?’

He blinked. Her tone was harder, like she was getting impatient.

Well, he was getting impatient too. Impatient for this to be over. To be back in the dark where it was cool and he could take the T-shirt with the itchy label off, and be left in peace.

He jerked his leg and Lily took her hand away.

‘It wasn’t the doorstep. She was on the pavement, beyond the gate.’ He shut his eyes.

One moment he was totally fucked, but then he saw the figure on the ground, and he was instantly sober. Like he’d not had a drop.

They were waiting for him to speak. ‘I didn’t recognise her at first because of the blood. Straight away I could see her neck was the worst, so I pressed down on it and then I realised it was her. Sam.’

Everyone was looking at him, rapt.

‘And I shouted for help, and I tried to stop as much of the bleeding as I could. I was scared I was strangling her, but I had to, didn’t I? Press down?’

The room was dim enough that he could imagine himself back in the dark again, with Sam. Crying out for someone to help, the unbearable need to take his phone out and call an ambulance.

If he had …

‘It’s okay,’ Field said, finally. ‘There was nothing more you could have done, Callum.’

His heart was beating fast, like it had done that night.

And he was back here. Back at the Maudsley. The police thought it was him – he could tell. He could end up in prison and then what?

His brain kicked in and he was catastrophising, playing out every scenario, from his arrest to his imprisonment, to his dying alone in a cell – all in a split second.

He couldn’t hear what Field was saying and his panic levels were rising, and then Lily was speaking, the words muffled. Field’s lips stopped moving and Lily’s face was in front of his, and he took a proper breath of air.

He was tempted to ask for Maxwell to bring him a beta blocker, a little life raft of calm. But he needed to be able to focus.

‘Sorry,’ he managed. ‘Could you say that again?’