Love Story, With Murders (17 page)

There is something addictive about the view, but not necessarily in a good way. Self-harm: that’s addictive too.

The interior boasts blond wood floors
in kitchen and living room. White walls. White kitchen units with a shiny black work surface. One wall – would an estate agent call it a feature wall?
– is lined with an expensive designer-looking wallpaper that has a silky finish. Perhaps it is silk. But I doubt if Khalifi chose it. I bet it came with the flat. His own taste seems timidly
restrained to a few obvious choices. A few Moroccan
things: tiles, rug, photos, a framed print of some fort or other. And some engineering stuff. A cubic sculpture made of interlocking pieces of
highly machined metals. Half curiosity, half art object.

It’s hard to find the human in this room. I move around changing the position of things, for no reason except to make a mark. The only thing that really feels personal – sentimental
even –
is a small wooden sail boat with heart-shaped sails cut from white-painted metal. It sits in a little alcove with a garland of fairy lights. Its lack of stylishness is almost its best
feature. Like he temporarily forgot about being cool, forgot about wanting to impress.

I think of myself inhabiting the space in that Hobbs outfit. Clicking round in heels.

A woman of mystery.

I’d carry
a slim pearl-handled pistol and take secret lovers.

I wonder where Buzz is. What he’s found.

The bedroom offers me more. It’s flash. Not in a clever way, but in a touchingly crass one. Giant bed. White duvet. A purple silk throw. Blue and red silk scatter cushions. Some expensive
clothes. A large mirror and twin mirrored side-tables. In the bathroom: more of the same. The fixtures are
all modern, glitzy, posh. But it’s those other touches that delight me. The leather
shaving set with the badger-hair brush. The bottles of body lotion from Penhaligon’s. Monogrammed towels.

I run the brush against my cheek. Smell the lotion, feel the towels.

My colleagues, whom I respect and adore, neglect this kind of evidence, because it’s not court-worthy. Because you can’t photograph
it, or tabulate it, or put it into an evidence
bag. But it’s solid gold all the same. There is a packet of Fetherlite condoms in the mirrored cabinet. The whole place is very tidy.

I spend an hour or two just kicking around the apartment, then leave. Hand back the key. Sign out.

I know what I’m doing now. I’m on the scent.

Khalifi had a female colleague, Jenny Harrison. About my
age. Attractive. One of my colleagues interviewed her in the normal way and came up with normal answers. I’ve got a pile of paper
somewhere that has a mugshot of her and an interview report sheet.

But normal isn’t always the right approach.

I don’t have her address but drive round to the university, show my warrant card, and force some poor receptionist to give it to me. She gives me
an address on Ton-Yr-Ywen Avenue, just off
the Maes-y-Coed Road. I drive up there as fast as I can, keeping an eye out for cameras on the North Road.

Harrison’s address. Modern house. Bland as a shoebox and as functional.

I knock. She’s in.

Brown hair. Blue eyes. Nice eyes, actually. Friendly. Jeans, boots, jumper. Some jewellery. She’s every bit as pretty as her photo, maybe prettier.
Also pregnant. And, after introducing
myself, I ask the obvious question.

‘Six months,’ she says. ‘It’s our first.’

I don’t know who the ‘our’ is, but I don’t care. We sit down in the kitchen. Postcards stuck to the fridge. A loaf of bread proving on a countertop.

‘Ali el-Khalifi,’ I say. ‘You and him.’

‘There wasn’t really a me and him. And it was ages ago.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s not . . . I mean, I’m sure there’s no connection between
that
and. . . you know.’

People are so stupid. Sweetly, irritatingly stupid. Of course there’s no connection between gentle, pregnant Jenny and whoever danced around Llanishen scattering Khalifi’s body
parts. But that makes her an ideal witness.

I nudge her for her story and she tells it.

It was five years ago. She was
fairly new in the department, Khalifi a well-respected lecturer. He was very charming to her, very attentive. She knew that he had an agenda, of course, and
‘well, put it this way, I never thought Ali was the settle-down-and-get-married type.’ He invited her out one evening. She said yes. He took her somewhere expensive, ordered champagne.
They ended back at his place.

‘Back at his place.
Meaning?’

‘Well, not
that
, no. But I did go up there.’

‘So you must have thought about it? Having sex with him. You wouldn’t have gone back there unless you’d thought there was a possibility.’

‘Yes.’ Gentle Jenny has a grounded quality that’s nice to be around. It makes her a steady witness too. ‘I think I was curious. I wanted to see him in action. Wanted to
see his place. And,
you know, I was a bit drunk. A tiny bit flattered. New in town and all that. I’m not the one-night stand sort of girl, really, but – well, you’re right, I was
interested enough to go back with him.’

‘Did he pressure you? Was there any intimidation involved? Even that creepy sort that hovers in the background but isn’t definite enough to put your finger on?’

She laughs. She knows what
I mean, which is more than I do. I’d miss any creepy background intimidation until someone groped my breast and I found myself displacing their kneecaps and
bursting their testicles.

But that’s another story.

Jenny says, ‘No. I mean, there was the champagne, the nice restaurant, the BMW he picked me up in. You can call that “pressure” if you like, but not intimidation. No
way.’

‘And in the apartment? You get up there, and . . .?’

I can see it. The big, expensive view over the bay. Lights set to moody. Mozart on the stereo. More champagne. The place was a shag pad. A single man’s idea of every single woman’s
dream. Gentle Jenny gives the lie to that. She’s got what most women want: an ordinary house on an ordinary street. A good job, a steady husband. Bread rising
on the sideboard and a bun in
her oven.

‘As soon as I got up there, it felt wrong. I mean –’ She wrinkles her face. It’s a look that manages to be compassionate and patronising at the same time. ‘You
know, he tried hard. It was quite sweet really. That’s almost what made it feel wrong, the trying. I think he wanted me to be something I wasn’t. Like he wanted me to be wearing Manolo
Blahniks
and was disappointed when I said I got my stuff on sale at Dorothy Perkins.’

We laugh. Share a female-bonding moment.

She resumes, saying, ‘I sobered up pretty quickly, said sorry, I wasn’t ready, and got out of there. He was okay with it. I mean, I
think
he was.’

She wrinkles her face again. The same expression. She’ll have a wrinkly baby, I reckon.

‘If you’d gone ahead and had
sex, did you get any sense that the sex would have been weird in any way?’

‘No.’ She answers that too quickly and I make her think again and take longer to answer. She still says, ‘No.’ Our search of the apartment found nothing obviously
kinky.

‘Was there a moment, even a brief one, where you felt threatened, especially when you said you were going?’

‘No, definitely not. We kissed
goodbye.’

‘Drugs? Did he offer you anything? A party drug, I mean. A line of coke? Ecstasy?’

‘No.’

More hesitation now, which I like. ‘But you’re not that kind of girl, are you?’ I say.

‘Put it this way, I think if I’d been a different sort of girl, there might have been more exotic fare available. Looking back on it, I think he was anxious. Anxious to score,
anxious what I thought
of him. He tried really hard. I don’t just mean in a dirty-old-man way, but in general. Working for the department. Getting his consultancy work. Dating
women.’

Forensics have done the basics on the flat, but drugs were never their principal focus. They’d have been looking for signs of struggle, traces of blood, any DNA. They’ll probably
have swabbed the toilet cistern in the bathroom
as standard, but that’s not where Khalifi would have snorted his coke. He’d have done it straight from the shiny black worktops in the
open-plan kitchen/living room. Mozart playing and the champagne cooling. A woman there to admire it all.

The worktop on the island unit wasn’t in one piece. There were two pieces, butted together with some black silicone-type material in the join.

‘The
thing about Ali,’ she says, ‘is he never quite felt like he fit in. I mean, he did. In reality, he truly did. He was British much more than he was anything else. I
don’t think anyone treated him differently because he had Moroccan origins. But I think he tried extra hard to compensate. Maybe he’d have done better if he’d been more relaxed
about it.’

I nod, but also notice that she said
‘British,’ not ‘Welsh.’ Cardiff is multicultural enough, but it’s not London. I think of Khalifi’s flat. His consultancy
work. All that departmental diligence. All that effort, and what he really needed was Welsh skin, a stocky build, and a deep knowledge of the oval ball.

We talk a bit more, but Gentle Jenny doesn’t have much more to offer. She sees me out.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘can I
just ask? I never told anyone about that night with Ali. It just seemed better to let it go. I know maybe you can’t say, but I’d love to
know . . .’

Sweetly stupid.

‘He was career-minded,’ I say. ‘He knew not to try it on with students. These days, that would get him fired. But you? You were new, young, pretty – you were fair game.
He seems to have been reasonably compulsive where
women were concerned. I just wanted to understand his game plan. How he operated.’

Jenny nods. Almost blushes. Makes a little movement that intrigues me: tossing her head back and simultaneously flicking her hair aside with her hand. As though correcting herself. Like some
old-time maiden who’d been caught with her garter loose or an ankle flashing free of her petticoats. I try to read the
look in more detail, but it escapes me. I don’t think it
matters.

A moment later, the door is closed. I’m alone.

I go to my car, get in, call forensics. Tell them to get someone to reswab the kitchen on Monday. The silicone join. They agree to do it.

Not that it matters.

I ought really to write up notes of this interview and get them on the system. But that means telling Watkins
what I’ve done and she’d probably be pissed off at me for going
off-piste. So I won’t do the write-up. Which is okay, I think. Gentle Jenny hasn’t given me evidence that will help in the courtroom or the police enquiry. She’s just given me a
glimpse of Khalifi. A chance to get closer.

I lean back in the car seat. Allow myself to think of Langton’s head. The dripping hair. The clack of
the pebble.

Try to picture Khalifi. Try to find him. But get nothing. Just that prickle.

The Khalifi prickle.

There is almost no movement on the street. Down the road from me, a fat woman is loading plastic bags into an old red car. I can hear piano scales being practised indoors somewhere. Soft notes,
laid over the hum of traffic.

I know what happens next, what I need to do.

When I dissociate – when I lose all feeling in my body and can’t tell what’s happening with my emotions – there is normally a kind of upward-spiral thing that happens
first. As though my soul is escaping upwards through my head. I think that’s why people with out-of-body experiences so often report themselves as floating above the room, not peering up at
it from below. It’s why normal people
sometimes call themselves dizzy, or ungrounded, or say they have their head in the clouds. Those normal people never go where I go, never experience what
I experience, but it shows that our paths to dissociation are the same. The sensation is universal, even if I’ve carried it further than most.

I have it now.

A kind of heady uppiness. That phrasing makes it sound upbeat, even euphoric,
and it can be like that at times. But not now. What I have is just a grey, upwards draining. I’m not scared by
it. I don’t have any feelings about it at all.

I do my breathing exercises, because I’ve drilled myself into doing them, no matter what, but the exercises help only when you’re lost in the foothills. It’s too late for that
now, for me.

I’m past the treeline and heading up.

Home.

Bath.

A joint. A full, fat, long one. Weed normally helps me to settle, but it doesn’t now. Or maybe it does. I’m too numb to know.

I call Buzz, not because I want to, but because I know we’ll have to talk sometime this evening, and I don’t trust myself to do it later. We have a short, stupid conversation, but I
don’t
think Buzz notices anything. I hope not. I don’t want to scare him. He shouldn’t be scared.

We ring off and I’m alone.

I text Watkins. I write,
DAD SAYS DO I WANT TO COME AND CHAT WITH UNICORN STAFF ON SEMIOFFICIAL BASIS
.
OK
?

I get a text back two minutes later: ‘OK’. Nothing else. But it’s enough.

I’m not frightened.

Observing myself, I’m almost pissed off at my own reaction.
Fuck’s sake, woman, what are you worried about?

Physical safety? Not an issue. Sexual safety? Ditto, almost certainly, and in any case it’s not as though I’m some dainty Victorian flower. So it comes down to what it always comes
down to with me: psychic safety. And even here, I feel the same thing: Fuck’s sake, woman, get a grip.

Because, curiously, I know all this is temporary. This
time tomorrow, I’ll be fine. As fine as I ever am.

I even realise that I’ve long known it was going to come to this. That first night, in the office, the one with the fireflies and the dead girl’s shoes, when I made the call to Dad.
Did I really not know then that it would come to this?

The bath goes cold.