by Jane Casey
‘Why don’t we just come back when they’re gone?’
‘Because they’ve seen us. They know who we are and they’d know why we were running away.’ She frowned, not looking at me. ‘I’m not leaving without doing what we came to do, so if you want to stay in the car, stay here. I’m going in.’
In the lift, I had to stop myself from leaning against the wall because there was a definite smell of wee from the scarred metal that lined it. My knees were trembling as if I’d done a ten-mile run instead of a sedate walk past a group of kids.
‘OK?’ Maeve asked, glancing up from her notebook where she’d been writing. Her hands didn’t shake, unlike mine, which were balled in my pockets to hide the tremors.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look pale. Press the button for seven, please.’
I took my gloves out of my pocket and draped them over the button before I pressed it. Nothing on earth was going to make me touch anything with my bare hands.
‘Did you hear what they were saying?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘It was horrible.’ I said it with more force than I’d intended and Maeve looked up again.
‘They were just chatting shit. Trying to impress each other. They didn’t actually expect you to suck their—’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. But it was a bit much. Maybe Josh was right.’
‘About what exactly?’ Maeve snapped. The doors juddered open. She strode out without waiting for a reply.
‘About the two of us coming here on our own.’ I hurried to catch up with her. ‘He wanted you to wait for him.’
‘He was being ridiculous.’
‘He doesn’t like to let you out of his sight.’
‘He’s overprotective. He doesn’t think women are capable of looking after themselves – you must have noticed that.’
I had, and I hadn’t actually minded it. He was tough and uncompromising and not afraid to weigh in physically when he needed to. I was quite happy to stand back and let him protect me, but I didn’t say that out loud because Maeve would never have agreed.
‘If you hadn’t been able to come along, I’d have been here on my own,’ Maeve went on. ‘And I would have been fine. We are fine.’
I didn’t feel fine. I felt nervous and far from help. My radio was in my hand, just in case. Maeve could sneer at Derwent all she liked, but of the two of us she was the one who had ended up in hospital more often; she practically lived in harm’s way, it seemed to me. Then again, that was all part of the strange little tango she and Derwent did all the time, where she took risks and he pretended not to care.
Maeve had gone back to scanning the doors, looking for flat 76. ‘Ah, here we go.’ She tapped on the door and it opened almost immediately.
‘Mr Bashir?’
He nodded. He was young and fit, immaculate in black trousers and a white shirt, and he looked wary.
‘We’re here to see Halima.’
‘Yeah, I said to her I didn’t think it was a good idea.’
‘Let them in, Mo!’ The voice came from the sitting room, and in response he ducked his head and stood back. I’d assumed that he would be in charge, but it seemed as if Halima was the one calling the shots.
Halima was sitting on a sofa, unveiled, and beamed at us as we came in. I shouldn’t have been surprised but she looked like any other young woman who cared about her appearance. I never got used to the contrast between the public appearance of devout Muslims and their private life. Halima was twenty-five and stunningly pretty. Her make-up was worthy of a YouTube tutorial, and I found myself saying as much.
She laughed. ‘Thank you. I used to want to be a make-up artist when I was younger.’
‘You’re so good at it. Your eye make-up is perfect.’ It shaded from iron-grey on her lashline to pearly pale under her brow bone. Her eyebrows were like wings, thick and dark.
‘Good brushes and patience. You’ve got to keep blending it and blending it. Build it up slowly.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Maeve grinned. ‘Rather you than me. I look as if I’ve gone ten rounds with a heavyweight if I try to do a smoky eye.’
‘How long is this going to take?’ Mohammed was standing in the living room doorway, jangling the change in his pockets irritably.
‘We won’t be long,’ Maeve said.
‘Is there any chance we could have a cup of tea, Mo?’ Halima asked.
‘Yeah. Of course. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just milk,’ Maeve said.
‘Same for me,’ I said.
‘I don’t need anything.’ Halima looked up at him and to my surprise she winked. He smiled back at her before he left the room. He really was extraordinarily handsome. Halima watched him leave with eyes like stars. Then she sighed. ‘Sorry about my husband. He doesn’t usually boss people around but he’s being very protective at the moment.’ She said it proudly and then her hand went to her stomach. ‘I’m five months pregnant. He wants to make sure I don’t get stressed out.’
‘We’ll try not to upset you,’ I said.
‘You’re going to ask me about what happened on the bus and you don’t think that’s upsetting?’ She laughed, a brittle sound, and now she did look tense. It was as if her brave face had been for her husband’s sake. Now that he’d left the room, she was looking far less cheerful. ‘OK. Well, maybe you’re used to dead kids, but I’m not. I saw a report on the news the other night and I was like, oh my gosh, I was there. That was my bus. That would have been bad enough, and then you called me and told me I’d sat beside her …’ She pressed her fingers to her lips, shutting her eyes, and I wondered if she was going to be sick.
‘Hopefully we won’t need to talk about anything particularly distressing, Halima.’ Maeve’s voice was full of sympathy. ‘I just need to know what you saw, that’s all.’
‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Well, start at the beginning. Have you ever heard the name Minnie Charleston?’
‘Not until I heard it on the news this morning.’
Maeve nodded. ‘Did you recognise her?’
‘No. I’d never seen her before.’ She leaned back, running one hand over her stomach in small circles as she thought. ‘I didn’t really look at her, you know. I saw the seat was free and I just went for it. Even though I’m pregnant I don’t get offered seats very often.’ Her expression clouded. ‘My mum says it’s because my bump is too small, but the midwife promised me it’s fine.’
‘Did she speak to you when you sat down? Or look at you?’
‘Not that I noticed. I don’t get talked to much, though. It’s old people who try. They’re the ones who are most likely to give me grief, you know? Call me a letterbox or whatever. I don’t like to encourage them to chat.’
‘I can understand that. So she didn’t say anything?’
‘No. I thought she was asleep. She didn’t move or anything.’
‘Could she have been dead?’ I asked. ‘Or dying?’
She went pale. ‘You think she was dead already?’
‘No, no. We genuinely don’t know when she died. I’m just asking for your impression.’
‘Well, no. I think she was alive.’ She considered it. ‘I’m sure she was humming or coughing while I was sitting next to her.’
I looked at Maeve casually to see if she was thinking what I was thinking: it could have been her last exhalation. In which case, Ashton was back in the frame. Her face was unreadable.
‘You didn’t stay on the bus for very long.’
‘Just a couple of stops.’ She winced. ‘I should have walked, really. Don’t say anything to Mo. He likes to think I’m out there getting my steps in, but sometimes I get tired, you know? And I was going to the doctor’s for a check-up. I didn’t want to have to rush.’
‘I was wondering if something happened on the bus that made you uncomfortable – someone behaving oddly? Staring? Making comments?’
‘No.’
; A rattle at the door made her fall silent. Mo came in with a tray and set it down on the table, concentrating hard on not spilling it.
‘Are you sure you don’t need anything?’
‘I’m fine, babe.’ Halima smiled up at him. ‘You could check on the washing machine. It’s not draining properly.’
‘I’ll have a look.’ He went out again and Halima rolled her eyes affectionately.
‘That’ll keep him happy for a while. What were you asking me?’
‘Whether anyone did anything inappropriate on the bus. Anything that made you uneasy.’
She shook her head, baffled.
‘On the CCTV,’ Maeve said gently, ‘it looks as if someone asks you to move straight after you sat down. An elderly man.’
‘Oh yeah. I forgot about him. He was a grumpy old sod.’ She shrugged. ‘He didn’t know I was pregnant. He had just had a hip replacement, he said, and he wanted to sit down. I explained I needed the seat. Someone else stood up for him. Then it turned out he was going to the surgery too, so I walked with him after I got off the bus. He held my arm because he was a bit wobbly.’ Her smile lit up the room. ‘Community outreach. Proof that Muslims can be helpful. He was grateful.’
‘I bet he was.’ Maeve sipped her tea and I remembered to drink some of mine, to build trust. There were places we visited where you’d get dysentery or something very like it if you accepted a glass of water, but this flat was spotless. ‘Halima, can you go back to the beginning again and tell me everything one more time? Just in case you remember any other details now that you’re thinking about it?’
‘I won’t.’
‘You had forgotten the grumpy old man,’ she pointed out.
‘Yeah, I had.’ Halima sighed. ‘OK. One more time.’
This time, she didn’t come up with any further details to interest us. She remembered two other passengers who had got on at the same stop as her, but they had remained near the front of the bus, well out of stabbing range.
‘And that’s it,’ she finished. ‘That’s all I know. Except …’
‘Except?’ Maeve prompted.
‘Well, you need to speak to the guy who got on when I was getting off. He almost missed the bus. He had to run for it. He was sweating and I heard him swear at the driver because the doors closed just as he got to them. He thumped on the glass and the driver opened them again. He looked agitated, you know? Upset.’
‘We definitely need to talk to him. Can you describe him?’
‘Tallish, lanky, brown hair, white.’ Halima shrugged. ‘That’s all I really noticed. To be honest with you, I was mainly looking at the baby.’
‘The baby?’ I repeated, checking I’d heard correctly.
‘He had it strapped to his chest. It was crying and his face …’ she trailed off, thinking about it. ‘He was just at the end of his tether. That’s what I thought. I thought, I hope you’ve got someone at home who can take over from you, because you should not be looking after a little baby in that state of mind. So I think you should talk to him. If anyone was fit to kill the other day, it was him.’
Chapter 8
It took some detective work to track down the man with the baby; it was my job and I actually enjoyed it. I’d printed off a couple of stills from the bus CCTV and taken them to the doctor’s surgery, reasoning that the people getting off the bus had been heading there, so there was a chance the man getting on the bus had come from there. The receptionist was a young woman with thick glasses and straggly brown hair.
I introduced myself and explained why I was there. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
She peered at the images for long enough that I had time to imagine a complete makeover for her: new make-up, contact lenses, a few highlights …
‘No. I don’t know him. Sorry.’ She slid the images back across her desk, under the scratched plastic screen that protected her from the public.
‘Could you get other people to look at them? The doctors, I mean?’ It was a large practice that hummed with noise. The phlebotomy clinic was in full swing and the attendees seemed to be regulars, nodding to one another and chatting as if it was a social club.
‘The doctors are all busy with patients.’ She pushed her glasses up. ‘Besides, I don’t think they would know him, necessarily. We have sixteen consulting rooms and we often have locums when our doctors are on holidays or off sick or doing home visits.’
‘OK. Thank you.’ It had been a long shot. I couldn’t blame her for not knowing who he was, really; he might not even have been there. But if her eyesight was bad enough for her to wear those pebble-lensed glasses, maybe she just hadn’t been able to see him in any detail.
I sidestepped a couple of elderly women in knitted hats like tea cosies, then headed for the door, glancing at the noticeboard next to it out of idle curiosity. Vaccinations Save Lives: Vaccinate Your Child Now. Travel Immunisations: Talk to Reception. Your Surgery, Your Community: Tell Us What You Think. Mother and Baby Clinic, Tuesday Afternoons. Free HIV Testing. Stop Smoking Clinic, Wednesday Mornings.
It had been the previous Tuesday when Minnie had got on her bus. Tuesday afternoon.
Mother and Baby Clinic.
Baby.
I queued up again. The receptionist looked at me blankly when I got to the front of the queue, which confirmed my suspicions about her eyesight. She brightened when I asked about the clinic.
‘Oh yes. That’s run by Helen, one of our nurses, and the health visitors. It’s very popular. You don’t have to be registered with the practice to come along and weigh your baby, get advice, that kind of thing.’
‘Is it just for mothers, or can dads come too?’
‘Oh, they’re all welcome. We get dads and nans and everyone, really.’
‘Are any of the staff from the clinic here now?’
‘Helen is doing the phlebotomy clinic at the moment.’ She bit her lip. ‘But there are lots of people waiting so she won’t be able to talk to you. You could come back when it’s over.’
I could, or I could point out it was a murder investigation and skip the queue. I was about to do just that, in fact, when I caught sight of a very elderly man lowering himself into his seat, withered and bent as an old tree. He was clutching a yellow laminated card with a number on it, the badge of honour for the blood-givers. There was something vulnerable about him, something that made me worry if he had enough to eat, and someone to help him wash his clothes, and someone to help him get dressed. His shirt was loose and he had done up the buttons unevenly, so one side was longer than the other.
I felt myself blush, embarrassed to have even considered asking to interrupt the clinic. I could wait.
Ninety-three minutes later, the nurse came to find me where I was perched on the world’s most uncomfortable chair, and two minutes after that I had a name and an address. It was that easy.
Wilf Potter was not a handsome man. He had a long, bony head with a narrow jaw, like a horse, and the skin around his eyes was bruised with exhaustion. Patchy stubble covered his face. Instead of sitting down, we were standing in his kitchen, which gave chaos a new standard to live up to. Every surface was littered with half-empty baby bottles, nappies, wipes, muslins, half-folded laundry, a vast steriliser, colic medicine and Calpol, plates, cups, a couple of vases containing dead flowers and rank water, unopened post and the general detritus of life on hold. I had made the mistake of leaning against the kitchen counter, and had a sticky smudge on the back of my jacket as a result. I dreaded to think what it might be.
‘But I don’t understand – how did you find me?’ As Wilf spoke, he swayed from left to right, patting the small bundle on his shoulder. ‘Go to sleep, little one. Go to sleep.’
The baby blinked, eyes wide, about as far from sleep as it was possible to be. It had some sort of hideous rash around its mouth and its head was covered in a thick yellow crust – cradle cap, Wilf had explained, and apologised, as if we cared. There was nothing nice you could say about the baby except that it might
improve. Even the sleepsuit it wore had a faint brown tideline where some apocalyptic diarrhoea episode had left a mark.
‘The nurse at the baby clinic remembered you.’
‘Oh.’ His face flooded with colour and his movements picked up speed. ‘Oh, did she?’
Helen had been a large, good-looking woman with an imperturbable manner and an excellent memory. She had known him instantly, and told me why.
‘Apparently you got quite upset at the clinic,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘Do you have any children? No? You?’
Maeve shook her head.
‘Well, don’t. It destroys your life.’ He rubbed the baby’s back and it made a couple of convulsive movements, jerking backwards, almost tipping out of his arms. ‘I wish I could put her down, but she cries if I put her down. You wouldn’t think anything so small could be so heavy.’
‘Could I take her for you while we chat?’ Maeve asked. ‘I do have nieces. They’re a bit older now, but I think I remember—’
‘She won’t settle with anyone else,’ he said proudly. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he laughed. ‘Daddy’s girl, aren’t you?’
I hated that phrase. Daddy’s girl indeed. ‘Mr Potter, I understand that you made a scene.’
‘They were patronising me. I’ve been doing this for ten weeks. On my own for three. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Why are you on your own? Where’s your wife?’
‘Hospital. She has post-natal depression.’ He swallowed. ‘It’s bad. Very bad. I had no idea. I thought it was normal to be a bit off after you have a baby, but her brother died while she was pregnant and she hasn’t got her balance back. She was – well, she needed to be away from Ciara. It wasn’t safe for either of them to be together. So I’ve taken leave from work and I’m doing it all by myself for the time being.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Maeve said, as if she really was. ‘That must be awful for you.’
‘They don’t know when she’s going to get out, you see. They can’t say. It might be a week or months.’ His voice broke on the last word. I didn’t blame him; he looked as if he wasn’t going to make the weekend.
