know those artsy types, couldn’t watch ’em. If we had even one solid thing on him—a witness, DNA, anything—then you’re dead right: he’d’ve been my best bet. But we didn’t. And same as Susanna, he’s from a good family, well-off, nice middle-class accent; he’s good-looking but not enough to come across as a smug prick, he’s articulate, intelligent, likable . . . Get him into a decent suit, get rid of the stupid hairdo, and he’d come across great. That nice normal boy, a killer? Ah, no.”
Rows of blank black windows in the apartment block; something in the light made them look broken out, jagged holes onto emptiness, dust thickening on ripped-down posters and overturned chairs. No sound anywhere, not a far-off motorcycle or a shout or a snatch of music.
“You, though,” Rafferty said, utterly matter-of-fact. “I could get somewhere with you.”
This is the amazing part: for a split second I almost laughed in his face. Me of all people, for God’s sake, who the hell would ever believe— Maybe I should see it as some kind of triumph of the human spirit: even after everything, there was some tiny fragment of my mind that really believed I was still me.
“The little stuff makes a big difference,” Rafferty explained. “Like the eyelid, you know that thing it does, the . . . ?”—gesturing with a finger—“And the limp. The way you slur your words a bit—only when you’re under pressure, like, most of the time no one would even notice, but God knows you’d be under pressure on the stand. The way you get twitchy, jumpy. The way you stumble, get your sentences tangled up. And the way sometimes it seems like you’re not really tuned in; that out-of-focus look you get.” Leaning in: “Listen, man, I’m not slagging you. In normal life, with people who know you, none of that matters. But juries don’t like that stuff. They think it means there’s something wrong with you. And once they think that, it’s only a wee little skip and a jump to you being a killer.”
The trees moving, tiny subtle clicks and shifts, where there was no wind. Branch-shadows scrawled violent as earthquake-cracks across the bare earth. Smell of burning tires, stronger.
“And there’s the memory,” Rafferty added. “Susanna or Leon, they could get up there and swear they had nothing to do with what happened to Dominic; all they’d have to do is convince a jury they were telling the truth. You, man, it wouldn’t matter whether you convinced the jury or not. We’d be able to prove your memory was cabbaged. Nothing that came out of your mouth would matter a damn.”
I said, much too loud, “None of that is my fault.” Which I knew was ludicrous but it came out of me anyway, ripped its way out— “It wasn’t my fucking choice.”
Rafferty said, gently, “So what?”
“So you don’t, you don’t get to, to use it against me”—the rising anger was so overwhelming it tongue-tied me, fucking moron, way to prove Rafferty’s point, wanted to punch myself—“you don’t get to act like it, it, it— That doesn’t count.”
“It would’ve, though,” Rafferty pointed out matter-of-factly.
I couldn’t answer that; I could barely breathe. “I’m not saying I would’ve ever taken things that far,” he reassured me. “I wouldn’t’ve. Hand to God. I’m not in the business of sending innocent men down for murder. But the thing is, I didn’t need to. I just needed Hugo to think I would. That’s why I went for you over Leon. Because Hugo knew as well as I did, if you got into a courtroom, you’d be fucked.”
He said something else to me then. I can still see the equivocal spark of a smile lighting his face and I’ve spent hundreds or maybe thousands of hours trying to remember what it was he said but I can’t, because just as he started saying it I realized that I was about to punch him in the face, and just as he finished saying it I hit him.
I took him by surprise. The punch connected with a thick smack and he went over sideways onto the terrace. But he rolled with it, and by the time I scrambled to my feet—strange light-headed lucidity almost like joy lifting me, finally, finally—he was up again and coming at me, low, hands out and taut like a street fighter. He feinted to one side and then the other, grinning when I leaped to follow, beckoning me on.