Chapter 3 — THE MAN WHO CALLED 911

The recording of that call is nine minutes and forty-one seconds long.

I have listened to it twice. The first time was in a room with a detective, because I had to confirm it was my voice in the background. The second time was on my own, eight months later, at two in the morning, which was a mistake and which I do not recommend.

For the first ninety seconds it is Emmett giving an address and answering questions.

Age. Weeks. Conscious. Bleeding — no. Moving her legs — yes.

At one minute fifty-two, Margot arrives at the bottom of the stairs.

You can hear her heels on the marble, four of them, then a stop.

"Arthur." She used his surname wrong for twenty-six years, and I have never worked out whether that was contempt or genuine, and I have decided it does not matter. "Hang up the phone."

He does not answer her.

He says, to the dispatcher, "Her left arm is deformed at the wrist."

"Emmett. Hang up that phone. This is a private residence."

"They're sending an ambulance."

"I said hang it up."

And then, at two minutes twenty, Margot Halloway says the sentence that her own attorney later spent an hour trying to persuade a jury was a figure of speech.

"You work for me. Hang up the phone or don't come back."

There is a pause on that recording of two and a half seconds.

Then Emmett Cole says:

"Then I don't come back."

I was on the floor for that. I heard it happen four feet above my head and I did not understand a single thing about what I was hearing, because I thought I was listening to a man lose his job over a stranger.

At three minutes ten, the dispatcher asks him to describe what happened.

He says: "I was on the second floor landing at the west end. Mrs. Halloway put her hand on Mrs. Thorne's shoulder and moved her body weight forward and Mrs. Thorne went over the rail."

That is a sentence written by somebody who has thought, at some point in his life, about how you say a thing so that it survives.

At four minutes, Margot tries a different approach, and this is the part that I find hardest to listen to, because it is the only moment on that tape where she sounds like a person.

"Emmett. Please."

"Ma'am, I need you to step back from her."

"She tripped. You know she tripped. She's been unsteady for months, everyone's seen it—"

"Step back from her, ma'am."

At five minutes forty, Roz comes down.

You can hear her on the tape, above me, saying "oh my God" about six times in a row in a voice that gets higher each time, and then Emmett saying, very calmly, "Rosalind. Front door. Open it and stand outside so they can see you. Then don't come back in."

He got her out of the house.

I did not understand that either, at the time.

I understood it four months later when I found out that Roz Neto had eleven months left on a visa sponsorship that Margot Halloway controlled, and that Emmett had put her on the front steps in full view of an arriving ambulance crew so that she would be a witness who had been outside, uncoachable, from the second minute.

At seven minutes, the sirens are on the tape.

At eight minutes ten, a paramedic's voice.

And at eight minutes fifty, you can hear me, very close to the phone because it was in Emmett's hand and his hand was under my shoulders.

Slurred, but on the tape, and time-stamped, and later played to a jury:

"She pushed me. She said I don't belong here."