Out of the Ashes

by Vicky Newham

  ‘It’s horrible.’ Dan said.

  ‘He said they called themselves “street rats”. I thought he meant that was their gang name. What he meant was that was how others saw him, and . . . ’ I stifled a sob, ‘ . . . how he saw himself.’ I fished in my pocket for a tissue. ‘And it’s all our fault. We barged in there and terrified him, and he ran off.’

  ‘C’mon, Maya.’ Dan’s voice was gentle. ‘We’re all buggered. Let’s leave the guys to do their job. The best way we can help is to catch whoever did this.’

  I nodded. ‘This is one of those occasions where it upsets me more to know that he has no family to notify of his death, than it would to be the person to tell them. No-one to cry and grieve his loss. What sort of life is that?’

  ‘Let’s go. The search teams might have news on Abbie. And we’ll need to grab a couple of hours’ kip before we hit the streets again.’

  I shook my head. ‘Keep me posted on the manhunt.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’ll meet you back at the nick. There’s something I need to do first.’

  Maya, 8 p.m.

  I rang the bell a second time. Waited. She was in. The lights were on and I could hear her on the phone in the front room.

  A face peered round the curtains. Her expression contracted when she saw who it was.

  A few moments later Suzie opened the front door a couple of inches and spoke to me over the burglar chain. ‘What do you want, Rahman?’ It was a snarl.

  ‘Could I come in, please?’

  ‘No chance.’ She patted the top knot in her hair and looked over her glasses and down her nose. ‘You can say what you want to say from there.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Suzie, I need to speak to you. It’s late. It’s bloody freezing and your neighbours will hear every word I say, standing here.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ She stood back, letting me enter the house. ‘What’s this about?’ she asked, trying to sound far more innocent than we both knew she was. She led the way along a narrow hall into the lounge.

  ‘I need to speak to you about two things.’ The room was spacious and cosy, with table and chairs in one corner. Clear surfaces except for a laptop and her mobile phone. Beside the sofa, a few toys nestled in a neat crate and there were photographs of a young boy on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’ll give you five minutes.’ She pretended to glance at the clock on the wall over the fireplace. ‘I’ve got split ends to trim and a deadline to meet.’

  ‘The first thing is official. The second is . . . ’ I paused.

  Her face was belligerent.

  ‘. . . personal.’

  ‘Oh?’ She stared, eyebrows raised. Intrigue had eclipsed defiance.

  ‘Duckett House.’

  She groaned. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You entered a crime scene, knowing very well that the best way of helping the victim was by calling 999 immediately and not trampling over evidence.’

  The shrug was a reflex action, and quick as a flash. ‘What if he was alive?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You don’t put yourself in danger. You check whether the scene is safe before you do anything else.’ I’d seen the toys, and strained my ears for the sound of a child, partner or flatmate. ‘You could have got yourself shot. Don’t you care?’ It was odd to be having a similar conversation with Suzie, to the one Jackie had had with me.

  She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Does it look like it?’ She gestured to the empty room.

  ‘As unarmed police officers, we are told repeatedly that we mustn’t enter a crime scene where there’s a possibility that someone’s armed. We have to wait until firearms officers have declared the site safe to enter.’

  ‘OK, I geddit. Can you switch the lecture off now?’

  ‘You cannot put yourself at risk like that.’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Enough to come round here and say it.’ And I didn’t see anyone else doing that.

  ‘That’s rich. When we both know it’s your precious crime scene that you care about.’

  ‘Of course I care about that. It’s our best evidence source. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care if you get your brains blown out chasing a story. Is a scoop really worth getting yourself killed for?’

  She snorted. This time the gesture was more conciliatory than hostile.

  ‘I’ll take that as a “no”.’ I paused. ‘Look, I know we’ve had our run-ins, but you’ve got to keep yourself safe and you’ve got to stay off crime scenes. If public interests are your priority . . . ’

  She flashed me a piss off look . . .

  ‘Then not doing things which impede police investigations should also be your priority. OK? Let us do our job, and you do yours.’

  ‘I had no idea you had such a caring side, Inspector.’ She pulled her cheeks upwards into a sneering grin.

  ‘And I had no idea that you got scared.’ I knew she’d seen me clock the chain on the door. I recalibrated. It was now or never. ‘I also wanted to speak to you about something else . . . ’

  ‘Ah. The personal matter.’

  ‘I gather you covered Józef Feldman’s funeral for the paper last year? Rosa’s husband?’

  She was frowning. ‘What if I did?’

  ‘Would it be possible to see some of the photographs you took of the day?’

  She was staring intently. ‘Why? Has this got something to do with the murders?’

  ‘No. Rosa has just told me that my dad was at the funeral. And two friends of his. We’ve . . . we’ve lost touch.’

  I could see that Suzie was thinking. ‘So, you come round here and give me a lecture, and then expect me to do you a favour? Is that how it goes?’

  I’d anticipated she’d take this line. ‘We were annoyed about the crime scene, but my concern for your safety is genuine.’ I thought about what to say next; hoped that, for all Suzie’s defensiveness, she could see that I had been trying to help her.

  ‘And now you want me to do you a favour?’ Her face oozed irritation.

  I needed to show some vulnerability and now we’d shifted off professional ground, that wasn’t hard. ‘The truth is I haven’t seen or heard from my dad since 1990. I looked online, at the article, and didn’t see him in any of the pictures. If you have any other photos of the funeral, I’d really appreciate seeing them.’

  Her gaze searched mine while she processed what I’d told her and decided how to respond.

  ‘Twenty-nine years is a long time,’ I added, swallowing the emotion I hadn’t realised would surface. ‘If he’s alive, I’d really like to know. But I don’t want to start hoping he is without some evidence.’

  Maya, 8.45 p.m.

  Jasmina and I revived the log fire with some kindling and a couple of fire-lighters, and lit the candles on the hearth. The two of us stood in her spacious lounge, motionless, as the yellowy light from the fire flickered over the photographs which lay like jigsaw pieces on the Persian rug in front of us. Many of them had been in the family for years: faded black and whites, old Polaroids which Dad had taken, school photographs and family photos – all snapshots of our lives. Jaz. Sabs. Mum. Dad. Me. And the faces of friends we no longer saw but hadn’t forgotten.

  Next to them, the images from Józef Feldman’s funeral, which Suzie had printed out, changed the story we’d thought we’d known for all those years. They suggested a new reality which was going to take some getting used to.

  I stared at each image in turn. ‘If Dad’s alive . . . ’

  Jasmina’s husband, Rubel, appeared in the doorway with Dougie close behind, carrying a tray with steaming mugs and a box of Jaffa Cakes on it.

  ‘Here you are. We made you some tea.’ Rubel padded across the carpet. From his trainers and jogging bottoms, I guessed he’d recently been for a run or was about to go.

  ‘The Jaffa Cakes were my idea so make sure you leave me some,’ Dougie teased.

  I appreciated his attempts at levity. ‘Sorry to turn up uninvited, Rubel.’

  ‘Don’t be sil
ly.’ He placed the mugs on coasters on a drinks table. ‘You’re family, and it’s not every day you discover that your long-lost father might be alive after all.’ He gestured to Dougie. ‘And I haven’t seen this fella since I got back from Pakistan.’ He cast his eye over the rug. ‘Just think. If you hadn’t helped to carry in Mrs Feldman’s shopping, you might never have found out that Kazi was at the funeral.’ There was an expression on Rubel’s face that I’d never seen before.

  It was true. It was almost as if fate had thrown Rosa and I together – except I didn’t believe in that sort of thing. ‘You know the old iPhone that Mum’s got?’ I said to my sister. ‘The one she uses to listen to Bangladesh Radio. For months now, I’ve suspected that Dad gave it to her.’ I took the Forensic Services print-out out of my bag and handed it to Jasmina. ‘I had it tested for prints.’ I looked over at Dougie, and his eyes held mine for a moment. You might get good news, bad news or no news, he’d said, when I told him what I was planning to do. Right now, I had no idea which it was. He’d known Jasmina and me for over ten years. He’d watched as the cross-currents of grief and longing swirled in my life. Every day he’d seen me bury each tiny piece of hope that Dad was alive, and seal them over, one by one.

  Jasmina traced her finger down the data on the A4 sheet. ‘Finger print patterns are inherited. Those obtained from the phone show very close similarities with yours and mine?’

  ‘Yep.’ I felt guilty for not telling her sooner.

  ‘Are you sure they aren’t mine? Or yours?’

  ‘Please don’t hate me. I gave them your prints and mine. Got them from our phones.’

  ‘Jeez.’ She walked over to the window and drew the curtains. ‘When you rang and said you had news, I wasn’t expecting this.’ She glanced at the photographs again. ‘You might have asked before you took my fingerprints.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I did it in a fit of impetuousness.’

  Jasmina was solemn.

  ‘Sabbir wasn’t alive when that phone appeared in her room at the residential home, and I made sure I wiped the surfaces clean a few weeks before I took it. So, unless she’s got a secret visitor who happens to be a family member, they’ve got to be Dad’s prints.’

  ‘I can’t believe he’s alive.’ Jasmina’s voice was soft and she took my hand. ‘Look. Have you noticed? There are no family photos after the day Dad left. We stopped being a family that day, and never realised. Dad left and the longer we went without hearing from him, we closed the circle, piece by piece, over his absence.’

  ‘None of us have got over it though.’ It was true. Mum’s life had stopped the day he left, and we had spent all the years since wondering what happened. I felt Jaz’s eyes searching my face. ‘Something that’s always confused me is why we decided he was dead.’ My mind was awash with thoughts along the same lines as Jaz. ‘If he’d died, he would’ve been identified, and we would’ve been notified. There would’ve been a funeral. That never happened so the most likely explanation is that he left us – by choice, or because something happened.’

  Dougie was standing beside me now, and he gently put his arm round me. My mind was racing, and it was a comfort to feel contained. Held.

  ‘I don’t remember any of us talking about it,’ Jasmina said. ‘What might have happened, yes, but you’re right – it is as though we collectively decided to believe he was dead.’

  ‘Was it because that was easier than believing he’d chosen to leave us and was out there,’ I waved my arm, ‘happily living his life somewhere else?’

  Dougie pulled me closer.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jasmina’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘It makes sense, I suppose. If he’s been alive all that time, what do we do now? We can’t suddenly become a family again.’

  I had no idea either. I pointed at the image of Dad in the Feldmans’ back garden with Józef, Ody and Cyril. Me on Dad’s lap. ‘I remember that day. Mum was ill, and she was annoyed that Dad wasn’t home, so I said I’d go and fetch him. I remember the blackberries. Must’ve been late summer, was it?’ I pulled myself out of Dougie’s arms, kneeled down on the carpet and picked the image up. I peered closer, inspecting every millimetre. ‘It’s so weird. I can vividly recall this photograph being taken. Me on Dad’s lap. The men playing cards. The garden at the back of Rosa’s shop. But I have no idea what they were laughing about, or who took the picture.’ I swallowed. ‘I knew Dad, Józef, Ody and Cyril were friends but . . . ’ I studied the image Rosa had given me again. The four men sat in shirt-sleeves, perched on crates in the garden at the back of Rosa’s shop, playing cards and drinking beer from bottles.

  As I pored over the images, I became aware of a thought scratching at the edges of my mind, a sense that something had been awry that day. Suddenly, sitting here on the carpet, I felt a tide of grief pour through me. I sniffed and swallowed. ‘The one thing I remember more than anything was that Dad didn’t want to go home.’ I tried to lock into the memory, to feel my way back into what had happened.

  I’d smelled Dad’s tobacco.

  Seen the blackberries, the playing cards, the bottles of beer.

  ‘I told Dad that Mum had sent me. He was worried about her and he wanted to know if she’d eaten, but he kept wanting to delay going home.’ Warm tears tumbled down my cheeks. I turned to face my sister who slid to the floor and gently took my hand in hers. ‘Like he dreaded it.’

  The tobacco.

  The beer.

  Perfume.

  ‘There was a woman.’ I pulled my hand free and clasped it over my mouth. ‘That’s it. I remember her perfume. He didn’t want to go home because there was a woman in the back garden at the shop.’

  Jasmina put her arms round me. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  I shook my head. ‘Wait. Did you?’

  ‘I thought we all knew.’ She looked at Rubel and Dougie. ‘That day he said he was going for a haircut? And came back without one and with lipstick on his neck? Oh, God, Maya. I’m so sorry. I really thought . . . ’

  I was trying to take it in. I felt hot all over. How could I have wiped the memory out? Had I simply papered over it?

  ‘It’s bound to feel weird.’ Jasmina dried my face with a tissue. ‘It does for me too and I wasn’t there. In a way, I think I knew less about Dad than you did. You always had such a . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . . special bond with him. That’s why I assumed you knew.’

  ‘Is that why he left us?’ I stammered. ‘For her?’ It was as though a bolt of electricity had shot through me. ‘Who was she?’

  Jasmina’s expression was scared. ‘I honestly don’t know. I never met her.’

  ‘Do you know what really upsets me?’ I faced my sister. Turned and looked at Dougie and the words came out in a whoosh. ‘I’ve never seen him look that happy.’ Thoughts shook loose in my mind. They swirled, making me feel giddy. ‘There’s so much about his life that we don’t know. It’s like . . . there was the dad we knew and loved . . . and this whole other person who’s a stranger.’

  Jasmina dabbed at my face with a tissue.

  ‘To think he’s been alive all this time,’ I said, stupefied. ‘Where the hell has he been living?’

  ‘And what does Mum know about it all?’ Jaz looked as bewildered as me.

  There were so many questions and so many unknowns. Within those, I was certain of one thing. I’d missed Dad with a ferocious intensity. If he was still alive, after Józef’s funeral a year ago, I wanted to see him.

  At the back of my mind, I was aware that I had a case to solve and was due to meet Dan in a couple of hours. Whatever the consequences, I was going to find my father, and that meant doing something I should’ve done a long time ago. I had just enough time to do it now. ‘We’ve never known what Mum knew,’ I said. ‘I’m about to go and see her, so perhaps we will finally find out.’

  Maya, 10 p.m.

  When I arrived at the Woodside residential home, visiting hours were over. I wasn’t meeting Dan for a couple of hours an
d I wanted to show Mum Suzie’s photos.

  The duty manager was in the office with a couple of the care assistants, enjoying a rare quiet moment. ‘Hi, Maya,’ he said. ‘Go through. She’s still up.’

  Suddenly I was aware that I hadn’t had time to wash the streets from my hair and clothes, and buy some flowers. Today, the dread which usually tugged at me when I approached Mum’s room had been eclipsed by a bubbling determination to find out from Mum what she knew about Dad’s disappearance. Tucked in my bag were copies of some of Suzie’s photos, and the print-out from the forensic services laboratory that I’d been carrying around for the last few days. Would I tell her about all of it? Best to play it by ear, depending on how she was.

  I knocked, and pushed the door open. A blast of warm air hit me. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said gently.

  She was sitting in the armchair beside her bed, watching the news on TV.

  ‘Keeping up with what’s going on?’ If she was watching the news, it was often a good barometer of how she was feeling.

  ‘It’s that shop, Jasmina. I’m sure it’s the old bagel shop.’ She fixed milky green eyes on me.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I tried not to wince. ‘It’s me, Mum. Maya.’

  Her attention was back on the television.

  ‘The police are investigating the fatal shooting of a ten-year-old boy in a Mile End squat earlier today,’ the news reporter said.

  ‘Shall I switch that off, Mum?’

  ‘I’m watching it.’

  ‘ . . . appealing for information from anyone who was near the notorious Ocean Estate . . . ’

  ‘I saw your sister on the telly yesterday. Have you seen her lately?’

  I put my hand on the radiator by the window and closed the curtains. Reminded myself, as I always had to, that it was common for dementia-sufferers to get confused, but it didn’t remove the sting of being called by my sister’s name. Perhaps, given she seemed to remember the bagel shop, it was a way in to talking about Dad? Or was that wrong? ‘I was talking to Rosa Feldman, Mum. The lady who ran the newsagent’s opposite the old bagel place. Do you remember her?’