I Know What I Saw.
Imran Mahmood.
Manilla Press (Allen & Unwin). 2021. 384 pp.
ISBN 978 1 78658 082 5.
Xander, who recounts this experience, lives on the streets, but it is clear from the start of this book that he is no ordinary street-dweller:
Before. Before, when I was like you, I had your problems and your conveniences. I know you think that we spontaneously appear, caked in dirt, and that we just materialise on the street, but we don"t. Remember, we bring ourselves here from some warm place. We only come when the balance weighs in favour of leaving, when the problems of staying outweigh the rest.
He tells, in the first pages, that his mother was an academic "above all else"; his father a physicist who would set discussion topics for him and his younger brother, Rory, and "hand out a prize for the best idea"; and he, himself, "slid into Cambridge with four As to read maths." His childhood seems to have been happy, and we can hear, too, from the opening sentence of his narration, that he is literate and imaginative:
The sky is a bruised sea. It threatens to burst and split the night. There is a children's play park nearby. The gates are shut but unlocked and they push open easily with a gentle squeak. Of course at this time of night it's deserted and I know I can sleep here until light. Time as it ticks on a watch is not as useful to me as how the light looks when it waxes and wanes. For me the time is hidden in shadows and in the length they cast on the ground.
Xander beds down on the wood-chips under the children's slide, but he is challenged and attacked by another street-dweller. He survives the threatening knife because he is bigger and more sober than his attacker, but the vicious kick to his temple leaves him confused and in recurrent pain, and it is pouring with rain and bitterly cold. He needs somewhere dry to recover, so he consults the map he has created in his head over the years, and which tells him of the relative safety and dangers of various London areas for street-dwellers like him. Red Zones are where "the streets have been taken over by gangs"; Westminster, Chelsea, and a few others areas are safe Green Zones; Vauxhall, Camberwell, Elephant and Oval are "the neutral Blue Zone."
He is still confused, cold, and in pain when he finds shelter under the stone steps of a house near the park, then, although knowing it is illegal, he pushes open a half-open basement door and steps inside. He calls out, planning to explain he was just passing and thought to warn the occupiers about the open door. There is no answer, so, when the pain in his head begins to be unbearable, he creeps up the stairs and into a large room, where he falls asleep on the carpet. A noise, voices, and footsteps wake him, so he hides behind a large chesterfield sofa next to the wall. From there he sees a slightly tipsy couple, and an argument unfolds and escalates until the woman hits the man and he reacts by punching her. She falls and hits her head on the edge of the table. The man, realizing the woman is dead, panics, rearranges the scene so it looks like a drunken accident, then flees. Xander goes and checks the woman's pulse. There is no sign of life:
I look around just as the man did, and suddenly I am in this loop riven with his urgency and guilt. I have to escape. I cannot be here with a dead body. I mean, look at me. I'm a homeless man. I'm an easy person to point fingers at. I run back to the sofa and pick up my coat and shoes... I race through the hallway... then run back into the room to wipe down the things I have touched... The police, I think, if the guy called the police and I am found in this state, I will be undone. I'm sure I can hear a siren in the distance. I must move.
The pain in his head makes him confused, but he is certain about what he saw and feels guilty for not stopping it. He gets far from the scene and eventually falls asleep in a doorway. When a policeman wakes him, he is sure he will be accused of murder. Instead the policeman sees his head injury and calls paramedics who, although he objects, take him to hospital. He has given his name to the police, they know where he was attacked, and when in a moment of disorientation and guilt he burbles out to the nurse, "I let her die. I watched as she was murdered," the police get involved again.
From that moment on, Xander's story becomes a roller-coaster of accusations, misunderstandings, tangled events, fear, and confusion. It is clear he has gaps in his memory, some of which are due to his head injury, but some are a deliberate suppression of memories related to trauma surrounding the death of his brother, the subsequent break-up of his relationship with his much-loved partner, Grace, and to a large sum of money Xander had withdrawn from their joint bank-account and left, for safe-keeping, with a mutual friend. This money turns out to be of major importance in a murder trial, but it has gone missing.
I Know What I Saw turns into an intense, gripping thriller as Imran Mahmood immerses the reader in Xander's thoughts, actions, and especially, his shock and doubts as seemingly impossible things are revealed to him and it becomes clear his memory cannot be trusted. "I can't distinguish the truth from the patches I manufacture," he says when a fragment of memory about Grace comes back to him.
Those days are like stones rubbed smooth from years of worrying at them. But they are like relics on a hill—whole but broken off. Even the good ones are fragments of something visual, pulled or glued together with my own brush. I can't distinguish the truth from the patches I manufacture. This must be true of all memory.
He feels "adrift," and the thought that in the times he can't remember, he "did things—could have done things—" terrifies him. He is still certain about what he saw, but proving it seems impossible. He has help from an old friend, from a young boy who helps him navigate computer searches, from a lawyer, and from a policewoman who, although carefully professional, feels sorry for him, but the problems seem insurmountable. On Waterloo Bridge...
...the river's muddy faces swell and shift but they are still impassive, inscrutable. Tourists and workers in suits and coats pass behind me but don't give me a second glance. I don't want to be seen. I could climb over this low barrier and slip into the water without so much as a turned glance.
This seems to herald a predictable ending, but nothing in this book is predictable, and the final twist in the story comes as a shock.
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