Post Mortem (39 page)

‘There's something about an officer's locker. This is where you keep your stuff, and what is inside is between you and your maker. That is, unless the DSI decide to spin it.'

This was greeted with another murmur of laughter from the pews. Collins pressed her lips together and blurred the image before her eyes. She imagined the reality of him at that locker. The hurried search. The phone, perhaps, in his hand.

‘I went down the steps to those lockers. There's probably a fancy phrase for this that I can't find. Something that captures how it felt going to that basement room with Hadley's key. The
rows of grey metal lockers, the relief out on patrol, and me with one to empty . . .'

He caught Mandy's eye. It seemed to give him strength, for he continued in a more matter-of-fact tone.

‘Firstly, of course, Hadley had
two
lockers.' He shook his head in mock disapproval. ‘And this at a time when management are telling us to hand them back.' His voice had an edge of aggression now. ‘And for any members of the press who've managed to smuggle themselves in here uninvited, don't get excited. There's nothing sinister in him holding on to those two lockers: no hidden secrets, just that after nearly thirty years in the job, a man
needs
two lockers.

‘What was inside them then, these two unofficial lockers?

‘In one, a very extensive collection of Met-issue black biros. I gave up counting when I got past a hundred. They're probably of historical interest. A copper's always got a pen, and you've got to hand it to Hadley, he seems to have grasped that point at least. What else? Oversize Met shirts – too many of them. It seems he ordered new but never got rid of the old. Well, it is hard to part with an old shirt, we can all agree on that. Stuck to the inside of the first locker door was a photo of his wife and children. I won't tell you what photos some officers have taped to the inside of their locker doors, but Hadley, that least sentimental of men, had a picture of his wife. Mandy saved him, he always said that. They've raised four children together.'

All heads turned towards the family, an obeisance to their loss.

‘Now Mandy's going to have to finish that job without him. Boys, I know it's tough, but Hadley knows he can rely on your mother and I know that in your hearts you know this too.

‘For those of you here who don't know Mandy, she's another of our so-called little people. The press and the politicians call people like Mandy and Hadley “unsung heroes” – that is when they're
not stitching them up and voting themselves pay rises. Mandy is a state registered nurse. She's spent her professional life mopping up after people she doesn't know, holding their hands and doing her best. Hadley knew good sense when he saw it. So Mandy, it might not feel like it right now, but I know that somehow you're going to get through this.

‘Hadley didn't have rank and he didn't work in a glamorous squad. No murder inquiries, no hiding out, none of that Jedi knight stuff. No scrambled egg on his shoulders either. No one ever called him sir, nor would he ever have wanted them to. He was a day-to-day copper. Early turn, late turn, night duties: all his working life answering 999 calls. He never worked out of uniform. He had a contempt for CID and was fond of pointing out that uniform dealt with and solved more crime. He could wax lyrical about that. He could in fact
go on
.

‘He was a great believer in simplicity – right from wrong, punishment fits the crime, that sort of thing – and his way has been out of fashion in recent times. He had principles and they were principles that people who aren't in the job probably won't understand. He'd never call anyone with rank sir. They were always “guv” – and that went right the way up to the commissioner. “Guv” indicates respect, but not too much. Constable was the most important rank in the Met: that was his opinion and he was right.

‘When he arrived at work, he was invariably wearing tracksuit bottoms and some awful football shirt. Anyone seeing him enter via the station office would think he was returning for bail. He was at his funniest when he smartened up for court. I relished those moments – Hadley emerging from the locker room with his shoes shiny, his hair Brylcreemed down.'

Shaw broke off and found Collins in the congregation. He looked her full in the face as if defying her. A few heads turned to see who it was that had caught his attention. Shaw coughed and there was some confused laughter. He resumed.

‘In the police room at court, Hadley's tunic was buttoned up against all the odds. “Waste of taxpayers' money to order a new one,” he told me once as he struggled with the buttons. “I'd only have to get a new one in six months. Don't know what it's down to either, because I bloody love lettuce.” By the time he got to give evidence, a button would have gone and his hair would have sprung up again. I think it must have been made of wire. I remember him swearing in the gents', trying to enforce some order on his appearance. If I happened to catch his eye, he would say, “Not a word, guv. Not a word.” But in spite of his losing battle against the phenomenon of his own body, when he went up the steps Hadley always impressed. He impressed because he himself was impressed by absolutely no one. He had no particular axe to grind, just a weariness with the pervasive bullshit of most human beings and a simple and unfeigned sympathy for those beset.

‘I'm going to miss him. Of course all the coppers who worked with him will miss him too. But I'd say that there are also lots of people who will never know that they are missing him. They won't know that an old-fashioned copper doesn't patrol the streets of London any more. They won't know what they have lost. He won't be there to talk sense to youngsters. He won't be there to turn a blind eye when that's the right thing to do. He won't be there to find an unorthodox way round a problem. He won't be there with simple kindness. And he won't be there to remind the rest of us of how to do it: the old-fashioned coppering that has always been London's secret enemy against both tyranny and idiocy.

‘Don't worry, I'm nearly at the end. In a minute we can all go and have beer and sandwiches. Just one last thing. I haven't told you yet what Hadley had inside the other locker. Some of you will know already, but for the rest of you . . .'

Shaw met the eyes of his audience.

‘Now calm down, everyone, there's nothing to worry about. No nasty surprises. Any guesses, then?'

His eyes found Collins and a flicker of a smile passed over his face. He was still looking at her as he resumed speaking.

‘Taped to the door of the second locker Hadley had a photo of the 1968 Manchester United team.' He turned away from Collins towards Hadley's wife. ‘It's a great photo, and if you don't mind, Mandy, I've kept it. It's already sitting framed on my desk. What a glorious moment it captures. Matt Busby, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, George Best, just twenty-two years old and stuffed to bursting with brilliance. Hadley told me once that in the footage of Man U at the European final at Wembley 1968, there's a very small boy behind the Manchester goal, and that was him. George Best on the field: he was Hadley's inspiration. A player who cut effortlessly through the bullshit and who could spot a good and a pure thing when he saw it.' Shaw swallowed hard. He could barely speak the last words, and the congregation leaned forward to catch them. ‘And that is how I will remember Hadley Matthews: a man who would fight for a good and a pure thing.'

The officers milled around in the graveyard, dark uniforms among the headstones. Mandy was having a brief conversation with Carrie Stewart. Collins, standing alone, watched them hug. Ben was running among the daffodils and Carrie called out to him not to climb on the graves.

Collins was longing for a cigarette. Jez came over and stood beside her.

‘You did a good job, Sarah. You gave it your all.'

‘Thank you, Jez. I really appreciate that.'

‘Come on, no point hanging around here. Let me take you for a drink. I promise not to be an idiot.' Jez glanced over towards Inspector Shaw. The contempt in his voice was ringing. ‘And George Best, by the way, was a terrible drunk who threw away everything good he was ever given.'

51

A
cold evening was setting in. Lizzie got her coat and her wellingtons and unlocked the door to the fixed caravan where she had been staying.

Her father had taken them to Pagham when her mother left. It was a place where she had been
allowed
– all the usual rules had been suspended. No one had to wash and you could have as many ice creams as you wanted. It had been a brief time of blistering heat and the noisy screams of children as they plunged their sunburned skin into the sea.

In April, however, it was a colder, quieter country. The beach stretched away, grey-blue pebbles and mist. Strange salt-brave plants with spiky leaves and globular fruits held firm in spite of the shifting terrain. The horizon was a blue mist. The seafront, a deserted border of bungalows and auto repair shops, was divided only by shingle from the vastness of the sea. The water swelled out into cold blue, deepening into darkness.

The thoughts pressed on Lizzie continually and at unexpected moments. Brushing her teeth, starting her car: there it was. Falling, falling through space, through blackness. It was neither willed, nor considered. Rather it was something unavoidable, inescapable, a possibility that she had already rejected but that nevertheless rose within her against her will. A dark image that presented itself like an offering, the image of herself, joining them. Her own body silenced, on sand or pebbles or concrete.

It was clear she could not work. Disciplinary procedures had been suspended for the time being. She had been signed off sick.

It was true what she had said to Detective Sergeant Collins. To begin with, her memory of the roof had been darkness, with only sensations and fragments inside that space. The face of the boy. The bitter sensation of the cold wind. But her recollection had slowly filled and deepened, each detail brimming with meaning. Here, alone at Pagham, she had let it slowly uncoil, like drawing out a thread from deep within her.

She remembered the police radio standing upright on her desk, chattering away as she completed Mehenni's case papers after she had charged him. She had worked out that that must have been the gap of time in which it happened. She had watched him going to his daughter in the station office, angrily showing her the charge sheet and the immigration papers, telling her he had been remanded and then leaving her as he turned back with the detention officer towards the police cell.

She imagined Farah Mehenni returning alone to that alien kitchen with its flowery linoleum and pine panelling. She wondered if the grandmother had been at home or if the house had been empty. Who knows what darkness, what fears had turned inside Farah? Certainly it must have felt, if nothing else, bitterly unfair, bitterly lonely – her father in a cell and no consequences for Lizzie or Hadley.

And Farah had tried to call her.

Lizzie still shied away from that piece of information: Farah dialling her mobile number and discovering it had been disconnected. Her last betrayal.

She imagined Farah walking into her neglected garden. She could see the stained paving slabs, the wild buddleia, the sandpit abandoned by some other long-gone family. Over the fence the wrought-iron bench and the trough of bluebells. Ben in his bear
suit playing with the spaniel, Charlie. She imagined Farah inching towards her momentous action, talking to him, persuading him, lifting him quietly over the fence.

Lizzie hadn't even noticed the first time the dispatch was transmitted over the radio. It was only the second time that she had paid it any attention.

‘White male, aged five years, wearing bear suit. Believed taken from his back garden. Missing approximately twenty minutes. Any units available?'

And then she had heard the other call, the supposed suicide risk on Portland Tower. Understanding immediately, she had not transmitted. She had run instead down the station steps to her car. The car had kicked into action and the station's gates cranked open before it. The traffic gave way to let her out, but the road she had turned into was stationary with traffic nose to tail. She hit the middle of the steering wheel and the siren wailed. She was doing fifty up the bus lane, and a camera flashed her. The radio traffic crackled and scorched. She had prayed then intensely that there would be no consequences, no consequences and no damage, please God, no harm to the five-year-old boy in the bear suit.

The bus lane ended at the junction. She had been forced to push and bully the cars out of her way, honking her horn and pulling into oncoming traffic. She turned off the main road into the estate, weaving through its width restrictions and mini roundabouts and pulling up outside the communal entrance door to Portland Tower.

The block had towered over her, framed by a bright blue sky.

The frosted-glass panels of the entrance lobby were reinforced with hexagonal wire mesh. She pulled on the heavy door. It barely moved against the sturdy automated lock. She keyed in the number of the first flat and pressed call. It rang out with a loud, insistent buzz. There was no reply. She hit the wall with frustration, then keyed in another number. The buzzer rang out again, harsh,
indifferent.
Christ
. Never had she been so frustrated by how bad she was at getting into buildings. Hadley had a fire key: she needed him now when she most hated him.

But then, there it had been: the customary hostile voice of estates. The question that gave nothing away and made no promises.

‘Yes?'

She had held her warrant card up to the camera. ‘Police.'

No response.

She keyed the number again. The buzzer rang.

‘What do you want?'

‘Let me in. It's not for you. I've got a power of entry, and if you don't let me in, the courts will want to know why.'