Post Mortem (36 page)

‘The phone call from Farah. The one where she asked to meet you. You reported it, of course.'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘I was embarrassed. I had been warned not to give witnesses or suspects my personal mobile but I'd gone ahead and done it. I'd had a bet with Hadley that I could get Younes to hand himself in and I'd been too keen to win it. After the call I told Farah not to call me again and changed my number. Of course I regret not reporting it now.'

‘And did you tell Inspector Shaw?'

‘No.'

The interview, it seemed to Collins, was a skein of denial, and yet everywhere she applied pressure, it held.

She said, ‘There was a recording.'

Lizzie didn't answer.

Collins insisted. ‘Farah's father says there was a recording.'

Lizzie looked her directly in the face but did not speak.

‘Farah's father told me that she recorded that conversation with Hadley in the hallway—'

Lizzie interrupted, allowing herself to be impatient. ‘That's different, of course, from there actually being a recording.'

‘If you'd let me finish—'

‘But that's just nonsense.'

‘No, what you are saying is nonsense. That phone call from the payphone – that was to tell you about the recording. You panicked because you had given a false statement and so you told Hadley about Farah's call. Younes Mehenni says Hadley took the phone from Farah by force.'

Lizzie's hands were clasped together and she dug her thumbnail into her palm.

Steve said, ‘Is that what happened, PC Griffiths?'

She blinked slowly.

‘No, that isn't what happened.' She paused. ‘I've told you what happened.'

Collins resisted the nagging presentiment that the investigation was in fragments: at the centre of it, a void that could not be knitted together. Years ago, on holiday with her parents, she had swum over the drop of a loch and seen, beneath her childish white legs, the land shelve away to unknowable depths.

She said, ‘Tell me what happened on the roof.'

Lizzie tilted her head towards the ceiling. When she looked back at Collins, her face was tight with tension.

‘I find it hard to think about it . . .'

‘Well, do your best.'

‘I can't remember it.'

‘Nothing?'

Lizzie bent forward. She cleared her throat and then began to cough, as if something was stuck in her throat. It was quite clearly genuine and the coughing was getting worse: she retched, and Collins was afraid she might even be sick. Steve got up and patted her on the back. He offered her water. She took it and gained control of herself, wiping her mouth on a tissue from the box.

Steve said quietly, ‘Shall we stop for a bit?'

Looking down at the desk, Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, no. Let's finish. I want to finish.' Then, after a pause, she said quietly, ‘I don't want to remember.'

Collins nodded. ‘Farah said, “I am innocent too.” Do you remember that?'

Lizzie looked up but she did not reply. Her face was pale and smeared.

Collins said, ‘Why would she say that?'

There was a pause. Lizzie wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. She looked drained, utterly exhausted.

‘Well, I think I said to her that Ben was innocent and she didn't want to harm a child, and maybe she said it then. She let him go. He climbed over to me.'

Collins felt herself releasing her hope of revealing the truth. It was like opening her hand and watching a stone fall away into deep water.

‘Let me guess,' she said. ‘You didn't see them fall?'

Lizzie looked her in the face, and in spite of herself, Collins felt an unexpected compassion.

‘That's right. I didn't see them fall.'

Collins remembered those two bodies on the concrete, and Lizzie pale and shaking on the roof.

She said, ‘About twenty minutes before she took Ben, Farah tried to call you. But you had changed your number.'

Lizzie looked down at the desk and shook her head. She mumbled something and drew her hand across her face.

Collins said, ‘I didn't catch that.'

Lizzie continued to look down. ‘I don't know. ‘I don't know'.

Collins waited but Lizzie remained silent. Collins said, ‘Your training sergeant at Hendon described you as an idealist.'

Lizzie looked up and a shadow of a smile passed briefly across her
troubled face, as if she had glimpsed a memory long gone. ‘Did he?'

Collins did not return the smile.

‘He did. But perhaps you've changed.'

There was a silence.

Collins took a small black-and-white photograph out of her handbag and pushed it across the table. It was the picture of the dark-haired girl sitting on a wall, wearing a headscarf.

‘Mr Mehenni gave me this picture of Farah.'

Lizzie's face tightened up and her voice had a note of protest that Collins feared for a moment might be justified. There was, after all, no question attached to the image of Farah.

‘Why are you showing me this?' she said.

‘Farah's father gave it to me because he wanted me to understand. I suppose I want you to understand too. I‘m asking you to tell the truth.'

There was a pause. Lizzie did not speak.

‘Are you telling the truth?'

Lizzie cleared her throat and put her hand on her voicebox, as though it hurt her. She nodded slowly.

‘The tape can't hear that. Are you telling the truth?'

Lizzie's eyes flickered briefly over to Steve. Then she said, ‘Yes. I'm telling the truth.'

Collins wondered how Hadley had taken the phone. She remembered his big hands at the post-mortem, and how small Farah had been.

She said, ‘Hadley was the type of cop who gives the rest of us a bad name. Wouldn't you say that was true?'

‘I can't answer that.' Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, I won't be drawn into that. It's not relevant. It's not a proper question.'

46

L
izzie was the only prisoner at Victoria House. The cell was immaculate – no smell of detergent, no banging or fighting from outside – but Lizzie was in any case blind to her surroundings. She saw only the turmoil of her mind. Steve had told her they would be as quick as possible in making the charging decision. They could take as long as they liked as far as she was concerned. She could not imagine being free, could not think of the nuts and bolts of beginning to live again.

She thought of that photo of Farah Mehenni, sitting on the wall in that faraway place. She had looked so small but so lively.
Full of beans
. That image was another thing that would never leave her now.

Before she took Ben, Farah had tried to call her . . . No, she wouldn't think about that. No. Not now.

As for Hadley – what had the detective sergeant called him?
The type of cop who gives the rest of us a bad name
.

Lizzie could conjure him only in snapshots, fragments of the man. His large hands on the steering wheel of the panda car. His upright thatch of salt-and-pepper hair. Sometimes she hated him.

She had a sudden memory of a routine call. The threadbare upholstery of the police car, the plastic door wells stuffed to bursting with used blue plastic gloves and discarded breathalyser tubes, the whiff of stale clothing and body odour. Perhaps someone had put a vagrant in the back. It had been bitterly cold but the windows were wide open. Hadley had turned on the heating full
blast. Still the car stank, still the cold air rushed in. She had scanned the screen of the data terminal.

‘Left here. Number thirty-one.'

It hadn't really been necessary to tell him the number: of all the houses in the street it had been bound to be this one. The net curtains at the window were grey. The steps leading to the front door were chipped and dirty. There were several entry bells but they hadn't needed to ring. The shadow of someone moved around behind the narrow frosted-glass panes that gave on to the communal hallway. As soon as they approached, the door opened. A woman – in her forties, perhaps – stood wrapped in a light-blue towelling dressing gown. She was thin and wore no make-up. Her face was lined and her mousy hair was streaked with grey.

‘He's in there with the other kids,' she said. ‘He won't let me in.'

The woman was standing on the dirty tiled floor of the entrance of what had once been a grand Victorian house. Uncollected post lay scuffed and gritty underfoot.

‘Has he ever hurt the other kids?' Lizzie said.

‘Lord, no.'

‘Has he got a weapon?'

‘No, he just won't let me in.'

‘How many other children in there?'

‘Three.'

Lizzie name-checked the boy. He was known to police but not for anything particularly violent. A bit of public order, some drugs possession, but no dealing and no serious violence, at least not yet. She knocked on the door to the flat.

‘Jack, it's the police. Let us in.'

‘I'm not going to let you in. You're going to arrest me.'

His voice had the uncertain timbre of a larynx only recently broken.

‘Jack, let us in. If you don't, we'll have to break the door down.'

‘Are you going to arrest me?'

‘I don't know. We're going to get in one way or another, so you may as well open the door.'

‘I'm not going to open the door unless you tell me you're not going to arrest me.'

Hadley spoke up. ‘We're not going to arrest you. Let us in.'

‘I don't believe you.'

With a dismissive paw, Hadley waved Lizzie away from the door and took her place.

‘Jack, we're not going to arrest you. I want to get off on time and an arrest would hold me up. But you need to let us in or we'll have to break the door and then I
will
arrest you, mainly for annoying me but also to stop me being the one who has to wait for boarding up.'

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. Hadley stepped away from the door, which opened slowly.

A shelving unit had been overturned. The phone was smashed. Jack, a thin teenage boy, was wearing jeans, a T-shirt with the words
Game Over
and a baseball cap turned backwards. They followed him through to the kitchen. Three children were sitting round the table. One was cuddling a tortoise. Scrambled eggs and a broken plate were on the floor. There were images of saints on the wall and a framed print of some tapestried scripture.
Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is of God
. On the side was a porcelain Virgin Mary.

‘You've got a pet tortoise?' said Lizzie.

‘Oh yes,' said the mother. ‘They make grand pets, don't they, kids?'

The children, staring at her and Hadley, made no reply.

Lizzie said, ‘Do you want to show me where you keep him? Is it a him?'

The mother said, ‘We're not sure. It's difficult to tell. Off you go, Catherine, take the officer through and show her where Archie lives.'

The solemn girl shook her head, not fooled and wanting to stay
where the action was. The mother said, ‘Catherine, I'm
telling
you, not asking. Go on, kids, go with the officer. She wants to see the tortoise.'

The children's bedroom was dark, the curtains still drawn. It smelled of sour straw and damp. Lizzie asked to hold the tortoise. When she got back into the sitting room, Hadley had already heard most of it.

Jack, alternately furious and distraught, was saying, ‘Please, Mum, please let me stay.'

Lizzie didn't need to know the details. Dad, of course, was long gone. Years ago he had left this woman to raise his four children on her own. The mother had had enough but she needed reinforcements to implement a decision born out of sheer exhaustion. Any army, no matter how important the struggle, will give up after too long marching.

‘No, Jack,' she said. ‘I can take no more of this.'

‘I've nowhere to go, Mum.'

‘Perhaps you could call a friend?' Lizzie suggested. ‘They'll understand, help you out.'

Jack, suddenly incandescent, turned to her with a howl of outrage and contempt. ‘That is the most stupid thing you have said so far.'

The most stupid thing
. . . Hadley, plainly delighted, smiled broadly from ear to ear. Lizzie, who had said next to nothing, had somehow managed to say many, many stupid things, and of the many stupid things she had said, this had been identified as the most stupid.

‘Stupid?' said Lizzie, somewhat riled by Hadley's amusement and also puzzled by Jack's reaction, which seemed to contain something she could not easily pin down. ‘Your friends will understand. Why's that so stupid?'

‘You know
nothing
,' Jack howled. ‘NOTHING.' Hadley again caught her eye with a look of enormous gratification. Jack turned
to his mother, simultaneously furious and plaintive. ‘If I OD, Mum, it will be YOUR FAULT.'

Hadley rubbed his eyes and covered what appeared to be a genuine yawn with both his enormous hands cupped over his mouth and nose. As usual, his disclosed emotion when dealing with the public appeared to be no more than an all-conquering weariness. Why did everyone disturb his rest? Why did everyone get in the way of him sitting down and eating? The conspicuous emphasis was that he would do whatever looked like being the least trouble.

‘All right, Jack,' he said. ‘It's been fun and all that, but if you can't sort out somewhere to go, we will have to arrest you.'

Jack turned to him, dismissive. ‘But you promised you wouldn't arrest me.'

‘Well . . .' There was a pause. ‘Well, April Fool then, I suppose.'

‘It's not April the first.'

Hadley laughed out loud.

The boy, furious, spoke to him as if he was an idiot. ‘Go on, arrest me then,' he taunted with a desperate adolescent swagger. ‘What you going to arrest me
for
?'