Absolution by Patrick Flanery Page A

know I do. She showed you into my house. Forgive me, Ms White, but could you explain the purpose of your questions?’
    ‘All part of the investigations, to be sure we have missed nothing that might help the case – nothing that might help, as you would say, with apprehending your intruders.’
    ‘They are not my intruders.’
    ‘ The intruders, then, if you prefer.’ Ms White managed to look down her nose at Clare, even though, seated as she was, Clare remained taller than the other woman. ‘You use a private security firm?’
    ‘It is private to my knowledge. Perhaps the state has some interest in it?’
    ‘I do not know. Perhaps you know something we do not,’ the woman said, and sniffed again.
    ‘No,’ said Clare. ‘Do you need a tissue?’
    ‘It occurs to me, Mrs Wald, that surely your private security firm employs men with guns. Would they not respond with guns if you summoned them?’
    ‘I have not yet needed to summon them. We might try now, if you like,’ Clare said, daring a curl of the lip. A silence rolled around between them on the floor and Clare wondered how responsive her security men would be. ‘I hope you get them, the intruders.’
    ‘Show them to me, madam, and I will. Just show them to me,’ said Ms White, as if Clare herself were one of the intruders.
    ‘Your officers never even asked me for a statement.’
    ‘But that I think is a lie.’ Ms White riffled through the papers in her binder and retrieved a single page. ‘ Four men, aged twenty-five to forty. Average height, muscular build. Race uncertain .’
    ‘I did not say anything of the kind. I have no idea what their age might have been. I could not even say with certainty that they were definitely men.’ Clare wondered if, in the aftermath of theinvasion, she had given a statement she could not now remember.
    ‘You signed the document,’ said Ms White, holding it up for inspection.
    Clare was certain it was not her signature – too jagged, too unkempt. ‘I did not,’ she said, but then had a moment of doubt. If the panic had been as acute as she remembered, then it was entirely possible that a shaking hand would have distorted her signature. The name on the document was, she could see, the issue of a hand wandering free of the brain’s control.
    ‘Are you accusing my officers of something?’
    ‘No, I cannot do that. I am – uncertain. All that I am doing is accusing someone of making a mistake. I do not remember giving a description. I do not remember putting my signature to that document. But no, thinking about it again, I am certain that I never gave an official statement. I was never taken to a police station – that is beyond doubt. I have never been called to testify or witness. That scrawl, the signature, it could be anything. I do not think it is mine. I say that emphatically.’ In fact, Clare doubted herself even more, and, after all, the woman was only trying to do her job.
    Ms White clicked her tongue, shook her head, looked concerned, sniffed again. ‘It seems there is some very grave misunderstanding, then. Because here, quite clearly, someone purporting to be you – I can read your name – has levelled the blame at four men, aged twenty-five to forty, of average height and muscular build, and indeterminate race. Indeterminate race. Is that a euphemism, madam?’
    ‘As I did not make the statement, how can I know whether it was meant as a euphemism or a statement of fact? I think you should leave, Ms White.’
    ‘You should be careful, madam, because someone I think is pretending to be you. Or else you are forgetting who you are, and where you have been. Why do you think that would be? Why should someone give us evidence on your behalf that was not you,and pretend to be you? It seems a very strange situation. I think you are forgetting something. I think you are not feeling well. There are places for the sick to get well, if you are sick. It could be arranged.’
    ‘I am not sick. I am in perfect