Post Mortem (37 page)

Hadley suggested with an almost apologetic shrug that this was, in the end, a practical matter: somewhat irritating, like all the other things that stopped him from watching Manchester United, but ultimately as easily solved as a broken alternator or a blocked sink. It just required a bit of effort. ‘Well,' he said, sighing out loud and apparently stirring himself into considering the possible solution to this moment's particular problem. After a moment of contemplation he resumed in the manner of a thoughtful discourse. ‘We could start with criminal damage, I suppose, or breach of the peace, perhaps. I'm sure I'll be able to think of
something
.'

Outraged now at his powerlessness, at the trick, at the mockery, at the possibility of a broken promise and above all at Hadley's apparent indifference to it all, Jack squealed, ‘You
said
you
wanted to get off on time. You
said
you wouldn't arrest me.'

Hadley was unmoved. ‘As I said, I'd much rather not. But you can always force me to change my mind. And if I do have to arrest you, I should warn you that I'll be most pissed off.'

From the moment Jack began to squeal, it had been a done deal. It was just a question of waiting it out. When he finally agreed to call his friends, his tone was unrecognizable from the anguished scream to which he had subjected Hadley, Lizzie and his mother for the past ten minutes. On the phone he was low-key, streetwise: nothing much was going on in his life. He was certainly not someone who ever howled or pleaded. He grabbed a grey hoody from the back of a chair.

‘How's it going, man?' he said, arranging to meet up in town, and doubtless to find some trouble before the day was out. ‘Safe.'

As he opened the door, his mother said, ‘You need a coat.'

Jack was a man now. ‘Mum, this is
me
. You'll have to decide. You can't kick me out
and
tell me to wear a coat. Up to you.'

Lizzie caught a glimpse of his mother's face, suddenly stricken.

She stood at the communal doorway and watched Jack stomping off angrily down the street, just a skinny kid with no coat on. She went back inside the flat. Hadley was sitting holding the tortoise in the flat of his palm. He stroked the animal's shell and made small talk, allowing ten minutes to make sure Jack did not return.

Jack's mother said how surprisingly friendly tortoises were: they would even eat from your hand. Hadley said he had had one as a boy.

‘Really?' Lizzie said.

She had imagined him briefly and convincingly as a boy in grey shorts, straight from a Hovis ad. He smiled at her ruefully. She had missed the point again. Who knew whether he had ever had a tortoise?

He had turned back to the mother and added, not without sympathy, ‘They can be a devil to find.'

47

B
aillie stretched back in his chair.

‘So what does the Crown Prosecution Service have to say?'

Collins handed him the paperwork. ‘Not in the public interest to prosecute.'

Baillie glanced through the prosecutor's report.

Baillie put the report down. ‘That's pretty conclusive.'

Collins aimed for a neutral tone. ‘Yes, sir. It is.'

‘You did a good interview, of course. And she answered all your questions?'

‘She said she couldn't really remember the roof. Didn't want to remember it.'

‘Well, that's understandable.'

Collins nodded. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘And there was nothing left unresolved?'

She didn't answer.

‘Well?'

‘Yes, that's right, sir.'

A shadow flitted across Baillie's face, but it was only momentary and he quickly smiled. ‘But you're still not happy, are you, Sarah Collins?'

Collins looked down. ‘Well, I wasn't convinced, sir. Particularly not by her account of Farah's phone call to her from the payphone . . .'

‘But in any case we haven't recovered a recording?'

‘No. The search team reported back a couple of hours ago. They haven't found anything at Shaw's house.'

The detective chief inspector went over to the window. Behind him the Thames snaked, brown and estuarial. Presently he said, ‘You will have to let it go.'

Collins wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.

‘Boss?'

Silence for a moment.

Baillie's back remained turned. Collins waited. Finally Baillie said, ‘Is it not at all possible that what she's saying is true?'

‘It is possible, of course.'

‘Well.' He turned back with a half-smile on his face. He sounded patient, kindly even. ‘Sarah, as the prosecutor says, she's given a
consistent account. She hasn't requested a solicitor to be present when she's been under caution and she's answered every question.'

‘Yes. She has.'

‘Are there any outstanding lines of inquiry?'

‘No, sir.'

‘I understand Mehenni entered a guilty plea to the charges and the court has agreed to offer a token community service on condition he accepts the move away from Kenley Villas?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Well, that's good.'

Collins had an uncomfortable sense that Baillie knew already how this conversation would end. She didn't want to volunteer the conclusion for him, but she could think of no effective objection.

Baillie said, ‘You've done a very thorough job investigating this, so please don't be offended. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that at the end of all your efforts we are back where we started. We don't know exactly what PC Matthews said and it's clear we'll never know. And do you know what? Perhaps it doesn't matter that much.'

‘Sir, it's only part of a bigger allegation—'

Baillie put his hand up as if he was stopping traffic. ‘Hang on, Sarah. Please give me credit for understanding that. Hear me out. Perhaps we should take stock, review the bigger picture? These are some facts we do know for sure. We know Farah's father started it all with his hatred for his neighbour. We know that Farah abducted a five-year-old child and risked the child's life. And PC Matthews lost his life, we know that too. These are some of the things we know.'

There was silence again.

Collins cleared her throat. ‘And we know that Farah is dead too. Let's not forget that.'

Baillie exhaled. ‘You think I have no sympathy for that?'

He waited, but Collins did not reply. He continued.

‘OK, so Farah is dead too. I agree with you, Sarah, let's not forget that. It's a tragedy, it is indeed, but there's nothing we can do to undo it. PC Griffiths has given an account and she's also shown that she sticks to that account under pressure. Griffiths went to the roof and her actions probably saved the child's life. Surely she deserves credit for that. If we have no evidence we can put before a court against her, then she is innocent. Isn't that the law?'

Collins held his gaze. He was right. Even on her terms, he was right. She thought of Shaw. If she could have stopped him on that country road, then perhaps . . .

Baillie said, ‘It's time to put this to bed, Sarah. There's nothing to be gained for anyone in dragging it out. It's in everyone's interests to begin to move on.'

He turned back towards the river, perhaps giving Collins time to consider his words. She looked at the boy with the fish on the wall, considered the operculum frozen out in an extended gasp for breath, opening desperately for the flow of water over that strange internal fleshy corrugation, and suddenly she worked out the detail of the photograph that had been bothering her. Of course the fish wouldn't die. Anglers did not kill their fish; they photographed them and then they threw them back into the water.

The DCI had walked over to the coat stand in the corner of the room. He was pulling his jacket off a hanger. There was barely the inflection of a question in his voice. ‘So, is it white gloves at the funeral, Sarah?'

There was a pause.

Collins spoke quietly. ‘Yes, sir. It looks like it is.'

He was slipping his arm into the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Good. I'll go and tell the DAC in person. Bit of a treat for me. Not often I get the opportunity to deliver good news. He'll be pleased with you too, DS Collins, you can count on that.'

He straightened his lapels and took a step towards her. He held out his hand. It was warm and strong. Genuinely warm. He could afford to be magnanimous, she thought. He smiled broadly.

‘Well done on your hard work. Thank you for being so thorough. You've shown yourself to be a very talented investigator and I've taken note of that. A relief, as you said earlier, that we've covered all the bases.'

48

S
teve escorted Lizzie through the building's corridors. She was small and compact beside him and she brought to mind a Lowry painting, as if she were a matchstick figure. He couldn't but think of her as a girl although she was of course an adult and had power of arrest. There was something ridiculous about her yellow bleached hair and her too-large jeans, although he had to give her credit – she had done a good job of evading police.

She did not make small talk and neither did he. He considered offering her a cigarette or a coffee, but the slide into a casual conversation might prompt her to disclose finally what had happened and he didn't want to hear the full story. Still there were things that needed to be said. They were at the heavy glass door to the building.

‘I'll walk with you as far as the river. There's a little kiosk down there. Got to buy some fags.'

He leaned in to the doorway and lit a cigarette. They walked out into the shadow of the building. The wind was blowing bitterly. A street cleaner in a dirty fluorescent jacket was pushing his metropolitan barrow. A Chinese DVD seller was sitting at an empty pub table sucking on a cigarette. In the wind, crisp packets and cigarette wrappers blew across the paving parallel to the river's stretch. Steve buttoned his jacket.

Lizzie said, ‘How did you find me?'

‘Guesswork. You called me. I made a lucky guess.'

‘You're good at guessing?'

‘I s'pose so, years of practice. But I think it helped that you wanted me to find you. That's why you rang me.'

She did not reply. There was shame in standing on the edge and not jumping.

‘So, Lizzie, that's the end of it now.'

It was both advice and a warning.

They had arrived at the steps to the bridge. Steve stopped and held her wrist briefly. The grip was soft but it was clear he was detaining her.

‘Do I need to say anything?' he asked.

‘No.'

He seemed unsatisfied with this. His grip tightened slightly. ‘Do you understand me?'

She licked her bottom lip. ‘Yes. And you don't need to say anything else.'

They walked together up the steps to the bridge. A man was sitting with a dog on a rope. Next to the dog, an upturned hat. The street sleeper clocked Steve and did not even attempt a request for money. They turned on to the bridge and walked out a few paces. It was colder here over the river. They stood side by side. The water's grey swathe was corrugated in sharp waves, opaque.

Steve said, ‘I've got a question, Lizzie.'

‘OK?'

‘Why did you go back to Portland Tower. Why did you stand on the edge?'

Lizzie didn't answer immediately. She was leaning against the railings, looking downstream. Then she put her hand across her eyes. Steve waited for her and after a minute she took her hand away and spoke slowly.

‘I don't know. I don't
think
I wanted to jump. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself I could do it.'

‘Do what?'

‘I told Farah that if she would let Ben go I would stand next to her. But I never got the chance. I wanted to know that I could have done it.'

Steve leaned back against the railings. He reached inside his jacket pocket for his cigarettes but then thought better of it. ‘What will you do now?' he said.

‘I don't know. Resign probably.'

‘Don't do that. Move on. Everyone makes mistakes when they are young in service. Hadley and Farah found each other. Neither of them would back down. You thought other people knew better than you. Now you know not to make that mistake again.'

DS Collins took her cigarettes out of her coat pocket. She pushed open the window and stepped out on to the roof. The crow was nowhere to be seen and she missed him. She walked over to the edge. There was no boundary, just the unsheltered drop. She had always been scared of heights. She thought, not for the first time, that the problem was not falling, but rather the desire to jump. That was something she shared perhaps with Lizzie. Birds were flocking and swooping, dark keystrokes let loose against the fading sky. With her feet on the edge, Collins looked out towards the river. She could see two figures standing on the bridge.