The Witness

I was the one who was going to deliver the surprise. Neither she nor he knew that I had found out about them. Or about this hideaway of theirs. It was an accidental discovery on my part, just as I had accidentally discovered their affair.

Just after Christmas last year, I was leaving to Mindanao for my project. The timing was poor because everybody, including my Filipino colleagues, were on holiday. But I had a deadline and only I could go to the village outside of Surigao, meet the persons I needed to meet, complete my report and have something to present to the renewable energy committee that paid for the project. Despite the hurry to leave and catch my plane, I had noticed the flip-flops in a corner of the garage that I rarely visited. I had been looking for my seldom used safety boots and there, beside the boots, were these blue house-slippers. They were not mine.

Over three hours later, safely on the plane, I had an epiphany looking down from twenty thousand feet at mountainous white clouds that filled my window. There was a guy in her past who had liked the colour blue. He often wore blue-coloured footwear. I remembered when I began dating her and we were introduced, that that habit was the thing that struck me most about him. He owned several pairs of blue footwear. I know because he wore a different one on each occasion we met, including my wedding day. I was sure it wasn’t a sentimental ornament that she – my wife – kept, because the pair looked new. Next to my dried, mud-caked boots, the flip-flops clearly stood out. In my mind, I was sure there was a more current reason for the presence of the slippers.

I must point out that in following up on my suspicions – to have them either proved or disproved – I did not at any time resort to underhanded measures. I did not employ any form of surveillance. I did not bug any phones or hire investigators to trail anyone or rifle through unattended documents and bags. That was a conscious decision on my part. I simply went about my daily business and remained alert.

It wasn’t long before I came across little clues to indicate that there was indeed something afoot. My wife is a stickler for order. Everything in its right place, was her life-long motto. And yet, one of our Ikea cups was stacked slightly differently at home a couple of times. Her travel plans for work got a little erratic, dates were reshuffled more frequently than usual and tended to carry over into the weekends. There was awkwardness in her voice during calls home while I was away. Like I said, just little things really. It was all very circumstantial, until I made the fortuitous discovery about the house in the country.

I was back from the Philippines, had submitted my report to the renewable energy committee and moved on to other work. In late February, the renewable energy guy, the gentleman who had sent me to Mindanao, called and asked to meet over dinner. He had two fresh proposals for me to consider. We had dinner, spoke about the projects, agreed tentatively on deliverables and remuneration and as he took the bill, I asked where he lived. He said that until a few months back, he had owned a property in the country. He’d let it go for a good price and had moved into the city. I asked more about the place in the country. He said it was a converted industrial building, which its most recent buyer had done up as a semi-retro modern house. Apparently, the latest incarnation had appeared in a tv show about posh homes. I asked who the buyer was and was given the full name. His full name. I hid my surprise well, only saying casually that the name sounded vaguely familiar.

So I had accidentally found out where he lived. It seemed to me this knowledge was the break which brought together the peripheral clues – blue slippers, odd things at home, her incongruous mannerisms – and would allow me to confirm either way if there was an affair going on. In my mind, the house in the country began to loom larger. I am not the vindictive type so I did not choose an anniversary or birthday or some other special date on the calendar for my ‘visit’. I choose a day close to a weekend, left for a job overseas, called home on arrival and returned a day earlier than I was supposed to, heading straight to this place in the country.

I parked some distance away and walked over. It was a nicely done up place and had cost a tidy sum – I could tell as I’d managed to watch the documentary. The architect had married the original, dull industrial structure with a glassy modern wing and swimming pool. In the dark, with the lights on, the architecture truly stood out in the landscape.

Any lingering doubts I had were erased by the sight of her car parked outside the house. An immense sense of relief, vindication perhaps was what it actually was, washed over me and for a moment, I stood shaking in the darkness, not yet having solved the problem of how to gain access to the place. Part of me wanted to turn and walk away right then, wishing someone – God maybe – would declare me the winner for being correct in my suppositions and that it would all end there. That didn’t happen. And it was not the kind of satisfaction that most human beings would have been content with.

I found an unlocked sliding door that allowed me to slip into the building. I didn’t think I’d triggered off any alarms. Calmly, I walked down a curving corridor and came to a spacious living area with French doors that opened up to the swimming pool glistening with mood lights outside. That’s when I first heard the rattle of the wind rapping against the glass. Thunderclap. A storm was perhaps on its way but inside, everything was cosy.

Where were they? I stepped softly on the carpet, enjoying the long pile as I noiselessly made my way across to another curving corridor. I glanced at the paintings on the wall. I looked for photographs that may have familiar faces on them. There was a low mantelpiece that ran along one side of the corridor and resting against it were several tastefully done portraits. There he was, smiling broadly in the shots and beside him, stood a woman. It wasn’t her. My wife. It wasn’t her. Who was that with him? I didn’t recognize her. How deep was the treachery here then?

It must the design of the building. The wind moaned and murmured as it sped through fashionable lotus-shaped cracks high in the walls, the external chill having let itself in. This murmuring was followed by a moment of stillness when my thoughts hung in the air, before a voice shot through the building. Her voice. I looked back from the corridor to the living area and swimming pool beyond. Outside, following the voice came the physical self, she walked hurriedly along the rim of the pool, wearing shorts and a loose shirt. A muffled voice answered her from somewhere within the building. I recognised his voice. My eyes followed her all the way until she was out of sight. I’d forgotten that I was standing in a position where I’d be visible to her if she’d turned her head to one side. After a moment’s delay, I followed.

What kind of a design was this for the interior of a house, even if it had been an industrial building previously? Who would put gas lamps in a house with holes (alright, lotus-shaped holes) just below the ceiling that allowed the wind – on this occasion for example – to howl and rattle as it made its way through the entire structure ? As a result, shadows swayed to and fro like the interior of an old ship at sea, at the mercy of the flickering lamps. I approached an open door at the end of the corridor that was flanked by a pair of small paintings of mountains. Looking in furtively, I could make out rows of wine bottles against the moody walls. Under a oddly coloured overhanging lamp in the center, was a low wooden table with four modern chairs. She was standing with her back to me in the circle of light thrown by the lamp above her. I entered the room, most of me still in shadows. When she stepped aside, she revealed the person seated in the chair. I saw his face, also hidden in shadows, then looked down to his hands and knees, from where a double barrel was pointed in my general direction. Almost immediately, yellow and red bursts flashed from the ends of the barrels and I felt two simultaneous deep stabs puncturing my belly, followed by loud thunderclaps and I was yanked backwards, as if I was an actor attached to invisible stage harnesses, and dropped onto a very cold floor. There was a rancid, burning odour in the air. I smelt cooking flesh before I passed out.

When I came to, I found myself seated in the chair next to the one he’d been in, like a casual witness, watching her sobbing into his shoulders, both of them standing several feet away from me. One hand of his was wrapped around her while the other held the dangling shotgun at an angle, muzzle downwards. The generally dim room was made gloomier by a long thin film of smoke hanging like a floating wedding veil. My hearing seemed to have been affected and I had to struggle to make out their whispered conversation. They sounded incoherent and I could only catch staccato bursts of unfinished sentences.

‘-too dark-not all the CCTVs-”

“-the alarm,” he said, “-had to protect-“.

“-only due tomorrow,” it was her.

“-accident!”

“-nothing wrong!”

“-mistake!”

“Alana can’t know about-”

“How do we-?”

He sounded confused, not at all his familiar confident self. Her protestations subsided into sobs again. Both stopped speaking and looked down to the floor where the gun was pointing. I followed the line of their gaze and the gun, to the body lying face up, at the entrance to the room. A deep dark red patch was visible around the abdomen. Comfortable in my chair, I had some recollection of gunshots and unbearable pain but looking down at myself, I wasn’t so sure that was what had actually happened. There was no evidence I’d been shot, no lingering pain or bloody shirt. I couldn’t recall clearly what had transpired earlier.

I looked at her – hair falling across her lovely face – away from the circle of light I sat under. In the dimness, there was a fragility I had not seen in her for a very long time. He was holding her in a – it seemed to me, not in a lustful but- tender manner. But there was genuine fear in both their eyes. A man – an intruder – had been gunned down. And the man was the husband of the woman who was having an affair with the owner of the gun, the shooter.

They weren’t looking directly at me but appeared to be aware of my presence. They did not – would not or could not, I wasn’t sure which – look at me seated in the chair, watching them. Instead, they were looking at my body lying in the pool of blood that had slowly crept up to their bare feet.

It took a moment, a very brief moment before it made sense. I knew, from where I sat – despite my suspect hearing, missing bits of memory and unsteady sight that may or may not have been caused by the wind and gas lamps – that I was seeing everything with more clarity than anyone else present. I could see that there was a defense which I had provided them generously and unknowingly. My text messages and call to my wife, my earlier than announced return date from my trip. And they – the police – would find my flight ticket, booked with my own credit card a day earlier. That I had planned to catch the couple by surprise would be clear even to a Lestrade. That they had been taken by surprise by an intruder would also be obvious. CCTVs? I’d noticed a few around the place. Those wouldn’t be the only ones in the building of course. Everything would be in the recordings, to show as much or as little as needed, when or if the police came. There would be enough mitigating circumstances available to let them off the hook. But then I hadn’t planned on getting killed tonight.

Photo by Lennart Hellwig on unsplash.com