Don't Let Me In Read online

  Mo isn’t what you would call an observant Muslim, in fact he has told me on more than one occasion that he thinks all religions are “scams” and he drinks and smokes – legacies, he says, of his medical training days.

  “That’s good. It must be hard to keep positive in there.”

  “I haven’t the heart to tell him it will fail.”

  Mo looks straight at me in a way that is almost like a child saying something daring and wanting to be contradicted. I can’t do that for him.

  “I thought the lawyers said there were reasonable prospects of success?”

  From high up in the house there comes a strained and prolonged gurgling sound. I recognise it straight away. I’ve inventoried every sound my house makes – it’s the bathroom radiator struggling against Boyle’s law. It’s needed to be drained for three weeks now. I keep asking Henry to do it but he isn’t the most practical of men. I resolve to fix it once Mo leaves. It’s what the sisterhood would want, I tell myself.

  “You know what I tell a patient when they ask me if they will be cured of their addiction? I tell them I can help them, that we will give them every tool they need to get clean, but that ultimately it is in their hands. They have the power and if they stick with it then they have reasonable prospects. This is what the lawyers are telling us. There are some reasonable prospects. They bill us and our lives turn on reasonable prospects.”

  He leans back in his chair, shrugs and then takes a sip of his coffee, “I don’t blame them. They’re part of the system and sometimes it turns and good things happen, but I see it in their eyes, there’s not enough there.”

  For a second I find myself about to start listing, forensically, the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, but we both know the problem is the lack of any new evidence.

  Instead I nod.

  “Your podcast, your show though, that does offer possibilities.”

  “I told you six months ago when you first walked into this kitchen and sat right there.” I point at the chair. “I think there is a story to your brother’s case, a story that needs to be told, but I’m not a lawyer and I can’t set him free. This isn’t what this is about. My podcast was always an examination of a case with questions hanging over it. I’m not here to try the case.”

  The corners of Mo’s lips turn up. “Ah, I know this but” – he raises his right index finger – “my father used to tell me that everybody has a meaning. My meaning is to help people get well, to steer them out of the maze of addiction, and your true meaning is to find out the truth. Just look at the publicity we are getting. The lawyers will make their arguments, but what keeps innocent people from rotting in jail is good people on the outside believing in them, and day by day there are more of us.”

  I shrug and sip my coffee. I’m not convinced. The first time we met was six months ago. Mo approached Cathy, my agent and one of my oldest friends, after reading about my investigation, a few years ago now, on a Tory MP who had been charged with historic child sex offences. Even though my politics were on the opposite end of the spectrum to this man, I knew there was something phoney about the case against him and the more I dug the clearer it was that his accuser was lying. Eventually, my pieces brought out other witnesses who could testify that the accuser wasn’t telling the truth and the case was dropped. Khalil sent emails to me which were redirected to Cathy, and it was she who suggested I take a look at the case files and, once I was interested, suggested the podcast format that would mean I wouldn’t have to leave the house to go to a studio.

  For the first few meetings Cathy was present, but I’ve grown to trust this urbane and, let’s face facts, handsome doctor. After he told me about his little brother’s case I said I would read through the file he had brought me and that’s all I could promise. I knew why Cathy had introduced him to me: she thought I wouldn’t be able to resist, that it would be getting me back on the journalistic wagon. That in some way this story would be my therapy. She was right.

  Mo stands up and starts pacing up and down. He’s still smiling but his brow is furrowed and he raises his hand as he speaks. “You see, the appeal is not a story. It is not about his innocence; it’s technicalities and is nothing but lawyers’ talk. It will not set my little brother free. Only something new can do that – new evidence – and your show…” Mo wrinkles his nose and wags his finger mischievously. “It is pulling up rocks and seeing what is underneath, and I have great hope that it will flush something or someone out.”

  I know exactly whom he is referring to. Since day one, Mo has made it clear: he thinks that Tom Ellis killed Lauren. The lack of motivation, the rock-solid alibi and the absence of any other evidence have yet to prove an impediment to his belief.

  “Well, so far we have nothing new I’m afraid.”

  I’m lying to him, but I don’t want to get his hopes up. Mo likes to maintain this upbeat, optimistic demeanour but on more than one occasion I’ve caught him tearing up as he talks about his brother being in prison, and each time I’ve come up with some flimsy reason to excuse myself as I know he doesn’t like me seeing him this way. It’s just too early to tell him about what may after all be a dead end. It would crush him, and anyway, the appeal may succeed in any event.

  Mo sits back at the table and then does something I wasn’t expecting, and which makes me miss a breath and sends a shockwave of serotonin through my brain. He reaches out a hand and places it on top of mine and for a moment the world falls silent as I look at it covering mine completely.

  His eyes, dark and heavy after his night shift, which were full of a mischievous glint a second ago, suddenly seem serious and questioning.

  “I know you will keep trying. I have faith in you.”

  The moment hangs there, ready to turn one way or the other, and I’m at its mercy completely, ready to surrender to whichever way it goes.

  My phone buzzes and then falls from the worktop behind me.

  “Christ, let me get that.”

  I pull my hand away and I’m not sure whether it’s with relief or disappointment.

  Luckily, the phone isn’t cracked. And the message that nearly caused it to dive off the work surface like a lemming?

  It’s a Twitter direct message; the picture shows a young girl, @Emmaroses2367, and is as innocuous as it gets, but the message is the opposite.

  Race traitors like you deserve to be buttfucked. I’m watching – your biggest fan Frenchie….XX

  I blocked him and he just set up a sock puppet account, probably will do so again. I block the fake user.

  “Fuck.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  I put the phone into my jeans pocket. “Yeah, just the usual messages of support.”

  Mo smiles sadly and gives a weary shrug. “Welcome to our world. I told you that you should come off those sites. They are a sewer.”

  “I can’t, it’s part of the job, and anyway it would be like burning books. I want this part of my life unfiltered.”

  I don’t add that social media is one of the last ways that I can communicate with the outside world. Mo suspects, of course. How could he not when every meeting takes place in my home and he’s long since stopped inviting me to his house to meet his family or to lunch/coffee elsewhere? I sense he wants to talk about that, but that is a professional/personal line we haven’t crossed yet and that’s how I want to keep it. The last thing I want is for Mo to write me a prescription for Prozac on my kitchen table.

  “Well you must not let them in here.” He points to his head. “That’s where they want to live; only you can allow them that space though.”

  I flash him a quick grin. “Don’t worry, I won’t. No one gets in here. These losers” – I wave my phone – “don’t bother me.”

  But that’s not entirely true. I can feel the pins and needles, the ripples caused by the barely submerged crocodile of panic, and I’m afraid of falling apart in front of him. I’m stronger when I’m alone; it’s other people who make me weak.

  I mak
e a show of checking my watch. “So, your shift starts soon. I don’t want to keep you from the hospital.”

  There is a flash of something that may or may not be disappointment in Mo’s eyes.

  “Yeah, I better get going.”

  I nod and then walk with him to the front door. I can see him looking at the locks but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Khalil would like to send you a letter. Would that be okay?”

  At first I didn’t want to communicate with Khalil. When I started reviewing the materials I wanted to come at it without prejudice, and without the emotional involvement of knowing Khalil as a person and not just a subject of my investigation but then one day Mo asked me could his brother send me a letter and how could I say no to such a polite request? But there has only ever been one letter and given the contents I never thought he would write to me again.

  “Sure, tell him to go ahead.”

  “Thank you, Sarah, I will. Have faith.”

  We exchange a slightly awkward air kiss and then I let him out. I don’t look beyond him as the chaos of the street’s traffic, the people, the cars, all the light on this road, can still make my head spin with confusion. As soon as he steps out onto the porch I close the door shut and lock it quickly.

  Back in the kitchen I make myself another espresso whilst looking at the fridge, which I know contains a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  I take the cup of freshly brewed coffee and take a seat at the table. Lil’Bitch is back, sitting on the radiator and looking at me, I want to say quizzically, but remembering my vow not to anthropomorphise mentally ticks myself off, and anyway I’m not even sure all humans act with human emotions, so why should a cat? I pull my phone from my pocket and navigate to WhatsApp and there it is, the delicate strand in the maze that may be the only way out of Khalil’s labyrinth.

  It’s from Amy Wilder, one of Lauren’s friends. I know from reading the police witness statements that she was one of the people who testified about the events of the party. But she wasn’t called by either side at trial. She simply had nothing material to say about Khalil, she had seen him arrive but that was about it.

  The message arrived after my last podcast:

  Hi Sarah, I got your number from the website. I’ve been listening to the podcast and something you said about timings made me think back and well it would be good to talk.

  I call her and she answers on the third ring.

  Fifty minutes later and I’m lying on the couch, with a purring Lil’Bitch on my chest, and we are both about as contented as can be.

  Later that evening in bed, once Henry has turned his bedside light off, he reaches for me in the darkness but I pretend I am asleep even though he must know I am not. I wait and then he removes his hand from my stomach just as I knew he would.

  When I hear him start to snore I reach out for my mobile phone and send a WhatsApp message and, though I wait until my eyelids start to grow heavy, no reply comes.

  4

  When

  Some mornings I feel that the guilt weighs so heavily it will stop me from getting out of bed. Today is one of those days, compounded by the fact that I can’t be the mother that I so desperately want to be. I love Finn more than anything else in my life. It’s trite to say it but I would die for him, of that I have no doubt whatsoever. I would die for him and yet I can’t find ten minutes most mornings to spend with him, despite the silent promises. I tell myself that I have a higher purpose, to help clear an innocent man who is rotting in prison, and that surely this outweighs playing with my son, but deep down I know the real reason: I don’t want my guilt to poison his innocence.

  I lie in bed wondering if I could just stay here, merge with the duvet and disappear forever. It would probably be best for all of us. “You knob,” I hear myself say out loud, and the part of me that remains from before laughs. I never could abide self-pity and thankfully what remains of me from before still can’t apparently.

  It’s this last thought that saves me and allows me to cast off the heavy duvet and get dressed. I do worry about the day that this may not happen and I know it’s a possibility. One morning I just won’t get out of bed, but not this morning.

  Henry isn’t in the kitchen when I descend, a fact that annoys me, as Finn has decided to engage in some impromptu painting and I can see red, blue and green paint bleeding from his notebook onto the expensive brilliant white of the Corian worktop. Finn looks absorbed in a way that I recognise from my own obsessions; his eyes are alive in a way that happens when he paints. From his first Pollack like experiments with baby food and our kitchen walls, he has always seemed happiest when painting.

  He is standing on his chair, and throwing paint on the paper, and he doesn’t notice me enter the room.

  The mess doesn’t bother me. The expensive kitchen was Henry’s idea, I rarely cook and I’m not interested in “clean and tidy”. A lifetime of cleaning has always seemed the antithesis of a fulfilled life but the fact that Finn is standing on his chair just one topple away from a broken ankle, or worse, makes me sharp with him.

  “Finn, get down right now!”

  I regret shouting immediately as I see his expression change from joy to hurt in a heartbeat. This is how childhood innocence disappears and is replaced by anxiety, I think: one remonstration at a time.

  When I was pregnant with Finn I used to tell myself that I wouldn’t be the type of mother who spends eighteen years acting as a health and safety monitor, that I would let my child live, explore and take risks, but the fear, nobody told me about the crippling fear that makes me everything I didn’t want to be.

  I take Finn in my arms and place him on the floor.

  He starts to cry and at that moment Henry makes his entrance, a copy of The Guardian under his arm, and so I know exactly where he’s been: spending some time alone before work.

  Henry kneels down and takes Finn’s head in his hands.

  “What’s wrong, my little soldier?”

  Finn is bawling now, and taking big gulps of air in between telling Henry that “she” “stopped” “me” “painting”.

  Henry looks up at me and I can see he is thinking carefully about what to say. I imagine this habit makes him think he is being deliberate and considering but I think his students must hate it when he does this, especially when it is accompanied, as it is now, by a little nod of the head. I don’t think he knows he does this, that he indicates that the issues have been weighed and that “yes”, on balance what he is about to say is the distillation of his carefully considered wisdom.

  “You have to let him explore his creativity, Sarah, it’s an essential part of his development. You can’t stifle it with” – he lowers his voice – “your anxiety issues.”

  Twelve months ago I would have told him to stuff his issues where the sun doesn’t shine and probably would have left the house to meet up with Cathy for a coffee, but not now. Guilt has my tongue.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right.”

  Henry inclines his head towards Finn. It’s an instruction and I obligingly obey, “I’m sorry, Finn.”

  Finn’s sobs have slowed in speed and I bend down and kiss him on the top of his head. And as I do so he puts out a chubby hand and wipes away the tear I hadn’t even noticed was dripping down my face.

  Henry doesn’t seem to notice. “Come on, son, it’s time for school. Let’s get ready.”

  When Henry and Finn have left the house, and once I’ve bolted the door, I run down to the basement. Nothing kills anxiety like work when it’s going well. With work, there is no suffocating panic, no shrinking of my universe down to a tiny place in my mind surrounded by the rest of me going bad. It’s all gone, because this podcast will change everything. I am going to set Khalil free. You see, it’s all about timings.

  Podcast Episode 4 – by Sarah Kelly - 8/11/2018

  I want to talk about timings. “When” is our watchword for this episode.

  The police, you will recall, put the murder at taking place some
where between 12 and 1am on the Saturday morning of 9 July 2006.

  Khalil initially said he was at home with his family. His sister, brother and mother all gave evidence to the police when questioned the first time that this was the case. It was only when presented with the video evidence that their statements fell apart. At first, you, like me, may have looked at this and thought uh huh, that looks fishy, why would they feel the need to lie to the police?

  Here’s what Mohammed, Khalil’s brother, has to say about this:

  “We knew that something had happened to Lauren and we knew that the boyfriend is always the first person to be suspected. We asked Khalil where he had been and he said wandering the streets. We panicked. You have to know what times were – are – like for Muslims in the UK. We are the bad guys, always suspected and never trusted, and we knew that although Khalil would never do such a thing, people would be blaming him so our first reaction was to protect him. We thought it wouldn’t be long before they caught the real killer so no real harm would be done.”

  Mmmm, I know what you may be thinking. These guys just constructed an alibi for someone in their family who may be guilty of murder and they are saying they didn’t think any harm would come of it – gullible, stupid or something much worse? The police and, as it turns out, the jury, thought it was a combination of all three.

  But remember 2005, the year before the murder, the Tube bombings, the second group of bombers on the loose, Jean Charles de Menezes? These were febrile times and if you and your family, however unjustified, felt you were being targeted, who knows how you might have reacted? And even if you are not with me on that, one thing I am sure of is the fact that he lied about being with his family does not make him guilty of murder.

  The prosecution, as you can imagine, went big on this element of the case. It wasn’t helped by Khalil’s second version of events, namely that he wandered the streets, worrying about his row with Lauren and that in this time he saw no one, spoke to no one and couldn’t even precisely provide details of where he walked (he said he was in a bit of daze and had also been drinking and smoking weed). The details he could remember were sketchy and, as for timings, he was all over the place. The one place he could remember passing was a 24-hour garage on the way home. This garage is on the main road that runs between Neston, where the party took place, and Heswall, where he lived. His defence team got hold of the CCTV footage from the garage and studied it, eventually pulling up a grainy forecourt video that shows someone on the street passing the garage at around 1.15am. The defence say that the blurry figure passing the garage is Khalil. The importance of this is that walking on foot at an average pace would mean that to get to the garage from World’s End would take most people forty-five minutes. Khalil was by all accounts stoned and drunk and, if my limited experience is anything to go by, you don’t speed up when this is the case. But taking the most conservative estimate means that if the murder happened in the time slot between 12.30 and 1am, then Khalil in all likelihood didn’t do it, as he couldn’t have made it to the garage forecourt in the time available.