Post Mortem (27 page)

‘OK. Baillie's just done a fresh appeal with the new description. She seems to be orientating herself along the coast – can you make sure all the train stations along the line are spoken to personally and provided with posters. I've got to crack on – Mehenni's waiting for me.'

Before she went down to Mehenni, Collins unlocked her desk drawer and withdrew a small evidence bag. She cut it open and slipped its contents into her jacket pocket.

He was standing waiting for her in the entrance hall with Alice. Collins stood back from the glass door and watched.

Alice was a distraction. She streaked her hair blonde and favoured pencil skirts. Today her spike heels were a shiny patent red. She was dead keen – you had to give her that – but she seemed to have no sense of the impression that her fashion choices made on the public. All her weight was on her left foot, the right twisted in front of it. Collins suddenly found herself feeling protective of young, optimistic Alice. In a few years the optimism would give way to something else and the shifts would prematurely age her young, plump skin.

Alice turned and glimpsed the DS through the door glass, and a smile of relief stretched across her face: Mehenni was obviously hard work. Collins had wanted a moment before speaking with him, but now, hiding her disappointment, she stepped out into the station office. Mehenni turned to her. Collins saw a man of small frame and height, clean-shaven, with dark skin and fierce brown eyes. She had, of course, not known him when his daughter was alive. However, it was hard to imagine that the hard set of his mouth, the pinch at the edges, the frown lines between the eyebrows had all arrived overnight. She offered her hand, but he shook his head in refusal. She withdrew her hand without comment.

‘Mr Mehenni, thank you for coming in. I am sorry for your loss.'

He had the strict, formal air of a man who was not deceived by her courtesy, and she knew she would not easily get past his rage.

‘Can I ask you to come through?' She was pushing back through
the glass door. ‘Normally family liaison officers are not present during the interview. Will that be all right for you?'

Mehenni did not react to the question.

Collins pressed on. ‘Good. Well then, Alice will wait for you and drive you home when we've finished. Alice, I'll call you when we're done.'

Alice, only too keen to be dismissed, walked quickly away. Within seconds she was talking to a flirty officer from another team. It didn't create a good impression. Collins would have to have words. She was pressing her fob against the lift.

‘Apologies for bringing you all the way out here. We're separate from general policing, so it's more secure, more independent. We've got recording facilities. It's important I record what you've got to say.'

Younes Mehenni's anger was a river in spate. Collins changed tapes but it did not abate. He denounced the British people, the British police, his neighbour. He was most virulent on the subject of the female police officer, PC Lizzie Griffiths. He had never, never thought, never
imagined
that that woman could have done him so much harm. He lapsed into his own language and then back into English. How could he have ever imagined?

Through all the rage Collins could hear nothing helpful, no valuable information. There was anguish hidden behind all that anger, she realized that, but Mehenni gave no glimpse of it. Like a radio operator with headphones clamped on, she closed her ears to the man's fury and listened instead through the painful crackle for any useful signal. She waited for the tapes to finish and then sealed them, leaving the fresh tapes unopened on the table. There seemed no point continuing with the interview like this. Mehenni was still talking; more rage, more formless blame. Collins leaned forward, gesturing gently but firmly with her palm out for a moment's quiet.

‘Mr Mehenni.'

He looked at her.

‘Mr Mehenni, your daughter is dead and I am sorry for that, truly I am.'

Mehenni's face hardened. He clenched his jaw. He was not interested in her sympathy. He didn't want to talk about his dead daughter. Collins waited. She wasn't really offering sympathy.

‘Do you smoke?'

He shook his head. She opened the window to the roof. Perhaps out there things would become clearer to him.

‘Would you mind stepping out with me while I have a cigarette?'

The wind was blowing strongly and the clouds moved steadily across the sky as if in a hurry to be elsewhere. Mehenni leaned back against the wall and shivered through his jacket. Sid hopped about at the edges of their space, his head cocked on one side. Collins smoked in silence. After a few minutes Mehenni gestured towards the bird. ‘You have fed him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Now you'll never get rid of him.'

‘No, I suppose not.' She inhaled, holding the smoke in her lungs. ‘I'm not sure I want to.'

He reached out an open hand. ‘Could I have a cigarette, please?'

She took the box from her pocket, flicking it open with her thumb and offering it to him. She passed him her lighter. He turned his shoulder to light the cigarette and then leaned back against the wall. He handed the lighter back without looking at her.

‘Thank you.'

‘You're welcome.'

They smoked in silence for a while, neither looking at the other.

Collins said, ‘You do not trust me.'

Mehenni gave a derisory exhale. ‘Of course not.'

‘Do you understand my role?'

He did not answer.

She pressed on. ‘I am the investigating officer. That means I'm the person whose job it is to find out what happened. You don't have to like me or even to respect me, but if you want justice, you will have to help me because I'm all you have.'

Mehenni coughed as though clearing his throat.

Collins said, ‘I saw your daughter's body. I saw her on the tarmac at the bottom of Portland Tower and I was present at her autopsy. I know she was just a child. Fourteen. No more than a schoolgirl.'

Mehenni did not speak.

Collins reached into her jacket and took out the little blue horse with the silver nylon mane. She held it flat in her palm. ‘This was in her pocket.'

Mehenni stretched out his hand and she passed it to him. She saw it briefly cradled in his brown lean palm. He gave a low, involuntary moan as his fingers closed around it.

‘I'm so sorry, Mr Mehenni.'

He laughed. Then he tilted his head so that his back was resting against the wall and he was looking up towards the sky. He swallowed, and glancing to her left, Collins saw that silent tears were running down his cheeks. His mouth was clamped shut. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand.

She leaned back and lit another cigarette. She waited. Then she said, ‘Do you want me to find out how Farah came to die?'

Mehenni turned to her with a sudden clear focus. ‘Madam, there is no point in this. I will
never
trust the British police.'

She nodded.

‘You could have had a caution,' she said. ‘If you'd accepted a caution, that would have been the end of it. All you had to do was admit what you'd done and say you were sorry. But you couldn't do that, could
you? You brought Farah with you when you were charged. I saw you on the station office CCTV; handing her the paperwork after you'd been remanded to court. Why did you do that? Bring her with you to the station? The poor lonely girl, you terrified her, didn't you?'

Mehenni didn't say anything.

‘So that's it, is it? Really just a simple matter. You put all that pressure on your daughter and, not surprisingly, she broke. You are the reason Farah is dead. You are responsible and your daughter was responsible too: no one else.'

Mehenni cleared his throat with a harsh sound, as if some terrible obstruction pained him there.

Collins threw her cigarette on to the roof and ground it out with her shoe. She surprised herself by being angry too.

‘Is it pride that stops you talking to me?'

His voice sounded as though he was struggling with a terrible illness, cancer perhaps. ‘Not pride, no.'

‘Well what is it? Tell me, please, because I can't understand it.'

Suddenly he was racked. He doubled over, his hands on his knees as though he were on a running track after a long, bitter race. He made a guttural choking sound. Collins felt her own cruelty and it made her sick. She should never have taken him out on to the roof, never pushed him like this.

Then Mehenni was speaking, but she could not understand what he was saying. It was his own language mixed with English. She thought she heard the word
fault
, thrown up briefly and carried on in the current like jetsam disappearing fast downstream. She seized on it, putting a hand on his arm and speaking clearly, loudly, determinedly.

‘Whose fault? Your fault perhaps, yes, perhaps partly your fault, but not only yours?'

He was still bent over, gulping as if he had been rescued from those terrible rapids.

‘Mr Mehenni, I don't know the whole story yet. I will be honest with you: I'm not sure that I can ever know it. But you can be sure that at least I am in earnest in trying to find it out. What was it made your daughter take the boy, Ben, up on to the roof of Portland Tower?'

Mehenni's right hand was still clutched tightly around the little horse and his knuckles were white. His jaw was set, his face drawn and smeared with tears.

‘Mr Mehenni, the worst has happened. What have you got to lose now? Let's go back inside. You need to talk to me, tell me everything. We need to get it all on tape. Let's go back inside.'

Mehenni spoke for more than an hour. After she had sealed the tapes Collins asked him to sign for the little blue horse that she had given him on the roof. She stood by as he leant over the desk and put his signature next to Steve's entry from the post-mortem.

She said, ‘I'll call Alice to take you home.'

He raised his hand. ‘Wait . . .' He took a photo out of his wallet. ‘I have trusted you Detective Sergeant Collins. I want you to understand that. We are taught that every soul shall taste death—'

He could not speak. Collins waited. Then he handed over the photograph.

‘My daughter.'

35

T
he shop was empty and there was no one behind the desk. Lizzie stood in front of the shiny display stand of phone cases and headphones. It was a candy bar of pinks and silvers, metallic greens and blues. What fun a phone could be! A tall black man appeared from a door behind the desk and ambled over to her. He was a cool guy – that was the implication of his demeanour. This job was just to pay the bills and no one should take it too seriously. He smiled at her.

‘What are you looking for today?'

She wanted to be honest at last. The words could slip out easily: ‘Just give me an untraceable phone, please.' She steeled herself instead to show some interest in the different tariffs, how much data, how many free texts.

‘A pay-as-you-go, please. I'm a student, so I'm trying to save money on my phone.'

He looked at her for a moment as though sensing something was wrong, but then seemed to shrug it off. None of his business anyway. He lifted a phone from the stand and began to speak. Lizzie could not concentrate on his words; she just wanted to get to the bit where she bought the phone. She said, ‘Yes, that sounds great. How long will it take to activate?'

‘Oh, no time at all. About ten minutes.'

Lizzie sat on the cold shingle eating chips, waiting for the phone.

She was exhausted, struggling with the effort of concealment and aware that the end was drawing near. This would be the last chapter, the last deception. Then she would see what happened. She thought for a moment that she wanted it to be on her own terms, but then it struck her how such a phrase fitted a different existence. She was in another place now. She had lost herself.

Think about it. What have you done wrong?

I have . . . lied
.