by Jane Casey
‘Are your employers OK with you taking the time off?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘They’ve been really helpful. It’s a good thing they’ve let me take the time; I’m in no fit state to see clients.’
‘What sort of clients?’ Maeve asked. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an osteopath. I work at a clinic in Mayfair. There are four of us, so it’s not a disaster if I can’t be there.’
‘What upset you at the clinic?’
‘I said she wasn’t sleeping a lot. I asked if there was anything the doctor could give her to make her sleep, because I am losing my mind.’ He laughed again. ‘Can’t put her down, can’t get a break, can’t even make a cup of fucking tea. I had no idea it was a twenty-four seven job. And she’s the worst boss in the world, aren’t you, Ciara? Doesn’t matter what Daddy needs. Ciara comes first.’ He kissed her head. His voice had softened as he spoke, taking the edge off his words so I didn’t feel I had to call social services immediately.
‘What did they say to you?’ Maeve asked.
‘They just said that was babies. They said at her age I could expect it. They asked if there was anyone who could give me a break now and then. I said there wasn’t and they just shrugged at me and laughed. Not their problem, I suppose.’
‘Didn’t they know about your wife being in hospital?’
‘I told them. But they don’t care. No one cares. We’re just names and numbers. The health service is not fit for purpose. Health visitors are demons. The only one who called to the house told my wife she’d need to get rid of our cat, Harold, because when Ciara was crawling she might get into the litter tray and in the meantime he might sleep on top of her in her cot. Harold was old and had dodgy teeth and arthritis. No one would have adopted him if we’d taken him to a shelter. My wife took him to the vet and had him put to sleep that afternoon, before I got home from work. She couldn’t take the risk, she said. But Harold would never have gone near Ciara. He just purred at her. I did say she’d have to be in the fucking cot in the first place to let Harold sleep on her and as far as I can see the second she touches the mattress she wakes up, but it was too late. He was gone. And I wouldn’t mind but the health visitor must have known that Ciara won’t be crawling for six months. She was biased against cats, or she just needed to say she’d given us some advice so she could justify her job – it was a box for her to tick, nothing more than that. But with the frame of mind that Anna was in … she freaked out. Anna loved that cat. She loved Ciara. But she got so anxious, and paranoid, and then she was hallucinating …’ He trailed off and wiped his face on his sleeve, mopping up tears. ‘Sorry. I’m ranting.’
‘It’s fine. I understand,’ Maeve said, her voice warm with compassion. ‘So naturally, you were upset when you left the surgery. Were you still upset when you got on the bus?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you were angry with the bus driver?’
‘Yes, I suppose I was.’ He screwed up his face. ‘I can barely remember. My memory is shot. It’s the lack of sleep.’
‘Do you remember the girl you sat beside on the bus?’ I asked, dragging him back to the point. ‘Do you remember noticing anything about her?’
‘I remember her. She was taking up practically the whole seat with her bags and her coat.’ He looked away, thinking. ‘She had her music turned up and it was leaking from her headphones. Very annoying sound. You know when you can just hear the words but not the tune? That. She didn’t try to talk to me. I was ready to do the usual age, name, not-a-great-sleeper conversation, because that’s all I do now, but she didn’t really look at me. She had her head down. I thought she was asleep. I was so fucking envious.’ Wilf laughed hysterically. ‘I thought, of all the luck. Sitting on the bus, having a nice kip, nothing to worry about except getting off at the right stop.’
The smile faded from his face as something else occurred to him.
‘What is it?’ Maeve asked.
‘I’m not proud of this.’ He winced. ‘I actually leaned on her when I was getting off. Deliberately. I wanted to wake her up. I’d tried shoving her bags over to her side of the seat, but she didn’t really react. I just saw red. I was thinking: why should she sleep in peace when I can’t? It all got on top of me.’
‘Did she wake up?’
‘She twitched.’ Wilf looked stricken. ‘I was ashamed of myself the second I did it. It was like – you know if you see a bottle on a wall and you knock it off, because you want to see it smash? And then you wonder why you did it? It was like that. I wanted to get her attention, I suppose, but she was only a kid. I shouldn’t have bothered her, and I knew it. I ran off the bus as quickly as I could.’
We had seen him on the CCTV; that was exactly what he had done, hoisting a heavy-looking nappy bag onto his shoulder, his knees knocking as he hurried down the aisle.
‘And you didn’t notice anything else strange on the bus? Anyone behaving in a strange way?’ I asked. Speaking of behaving in a strange way, Maeve was staring across the room at the kitchen table. It was all very well for her to check out of the conversation, but someone had to get us out of there or we would spend the rest of the day listening to him moan about how unfair life was and how miserable fatherhood was making him.
‘Nothing odd. It was a very unmemorable journey. Ciara was dozing. I was wondering if she needed a nappy change. Nothing else caught my eye, I’m afraid.’
Maeve reached into her pocket and pulled out an evidence glove. ‘Mr Potter, may I look in your bag?’
‘What? Why?’ He looked at it wildly. I was feeling just as confused.
‘There’s something in it that I’d like to look at more closely.’
‘Help yourself.’ He still looked nonplussed.
I watched Maeve pull the glove on as she inspected the nappy bag. She drew something out of the pocket at the side: a pair of kitchen scissors with black handles and long, pointed blades.
‘Why do you carry a pair of scissors around in your nappy bag, Mr Potter?’ She tilted them so they caught the light.
‘Because it’s impossible to open the cartons of baby milk without them. I use powdered formula at home, but when we’re out it’s easier to use ready-made stuff. You try opening it one-handed while a baby is screaming in your ear.’
‘I’d rather not.’ Maeve was still peering at the blades. ‘I think I’d like to take these away for forensic examination, Mr Potter. Is that all right?’
‘I suppose. I’ll have to get another pair. One more thing for my to-do list.’
‘But at least the baby has gone to sleep,’ Maeve said with a smile.
‘Has she? Oh brilliant.’ His face fell. ‘Now I have to decide if I should hold her so we can both get some rest or try to put her down. I could really do with sorting out some food for myself. And there’s a wash to put on.’
‘We’ll let ourselves out,’ I said quickly, and led the way to the front door. As it closed behind us, I heard the rising air-raid siren noise of an outraged baby who was not happy about being woken up and wanted to tell the world about it. ‘Uh oh.’
‘Uh oh indeed. I’m never having children.’
‘Never?’
‘Never,’ Maeve said firmly, and took her evidence bag back to the car.
Chapter 9
The last passenger on our list to interview was the elderly woman who had travelled the length of Northcote Road beside Minnie Charleston. Pete Belcott had grudgingly agreed to talk to the four Spanish students about what they had seen, which involved waiting around for an interpreter and an appropriate adult just so he could get four different versions of the same unhelpful story. On the whole I preferred our job, especially since where we were going was a definite step up from the council estates we’d visited first.
‘What do we know about Mrs Helena Griffiths?’ Maeve asked me as she pulled into a parking space on one of the parallel residential roads that led from Northcote Road to Wandsworth Common. There had been nowhere to stop outside the h
ouse, a red-brick Victorian villa that faced the common, beautifully kept and with a shiny Mini on the drive.
‘She lives in a nice house.’
‘She does indeed.’
‘Umm … She’s a pensioner. A widow. She lives alone in her nice house. She agreed to talk to us, but she can only give us twenty minutes of her time.’ I leafed through my notes. ‘That’s about it. I can’t think this is going to be very useful.’
‘You never know,’ Maeve said mildly.
‘She’s hardly a suspect.’
‘Everyone’s a suspect at the moment.’
‘Even Ashton Mayfield?’ I still felt guilty about assuming the worst of him.
‘He’s not top of my list, but he’s not off it either.’
‘I’m inclined to think we should take a closer look at Wilf Potter,’ I said slowly. It felt risky to reveal what I was thinking, in case I was dead wrong, but Maeve was looking encouraging. ‘He was tired and stressed. He could have snapped. Lashed out at her. He admitting leaning on her – maybe that was to disguise that he was actually stabbing her at that point. If someone told us she’d cried out as he was standing up, he’s explained it.’
‘Just because she annoyed him by being asleep?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he knew who she was.’ I was trying to put it together, fumbling towards a reason. There was something he’d said that had caught my attention … not about the cat but before that. His wife? ‘He ran for the bus, didn’t he, even though he had the baby. He was determined to catch it. There are loads of buses on that route – he could have waited for the next one fairly easily.’
‘Good point. But we don’t have any evidence at the moment that he did anything. And we don’t have a motive.’
We had watched the CCTV many times, paying particular attention to the shove that Potter gave our victim before he got off the bus, but if he had the scissors or something else sharp in his hand, we couldn’t see it. The CPS would tell us they needed more than that if we approached them about charging Wilf Potter, and they would be right. No jury would want to send a man to prison for life based on what we currently had. If the scissors didn’t have Minnie Charleston’s blood on them, we would be nowhere.
‘You did well to find Wilf Potter for us,’ Maeve said, out of nowhere. ‘That was good police work.’
‘Thanks.’ I looked at her, surprised.
‘I know you don’t always feel as if you get it right. Sometimes you definitely get it wrong, like with Ashton and the knife.’ She was choosing her words carefully and instead of bristling at the criticism, I listened. ‘But I wanted to say that you’ve been doing a good job on this case, and I see how hard you’re trying. You’re getting better all the time, Georgia.’
A warm feeling filled my chest. ‘Thanks.’
Maeve nodded, as if she could tell it meant a lot to me. ‘Now let’s go and see if Helena Griffiths has all the answers we need.’
‘I’d like to be able to help you, but I don’t think I can. I’ve racked my brains trying to remember.’
I’d recognised Helena straightaway from the CCTV when she opened the door – the iron-grey straight hair, the dancer’s posture despite the fact that she was in her mid-seventies. Her eyes were a muddy shade of green but still sharp and unclouded; if there had been something to see, I felt she’d have noticed it. In person she gave me the strong impression that she wouldn’t tolerate us wasting her time. We had already blotted our copybooks by entering the house along with a gust of wind that blew papers off the hall table and sent them skidding across the tiled floor. I had hurried to pick them up, returning with a handful of post and leaflets that she took from me without thanks. Maeve had picked up a single envelope in the time it had taken me to retrieve everything else, which I supposed was the privilege of rank. When I was a detective sergeant I might find it beneath my dignity to scrabble around in a stranger’s hallway for post.
She had held it out to Mrs Griffiths. ‘This isn’t the sort of thing you want to forget to post, is it?’
The older woman had more or less snatched it out of her hand and stuck it under a small bronze statuette on the hall table. I peered to see the address printed on the envelope: Penalty Charge Notice, Wandsworth Council (Payments). A parking ticket.
‘At least you didn’t ask us to fix it for you,’ I said. ‘Most people do.’
She had given me a withering look and turned away. I rolled my eyes at Maeve behind her back and got an answering gleam of amusement.
‘Do you remember getting on the bus?’ Maeve asked now.
‘Yes, of course. It was at the bottom of Northcote Road. I’d been shopping and I decided to get the bus home.’
‘What were you shopping for?’ I asked, trying to find some common ground. She stiffened.
‘I hardly think that’s relevant to your investigation.’
Maeve turned to look at me and I read a warning in her eyes: Don’t annoy her or we’ll get kicked out. I had only been trying to make conversation. I cleared my throat, wishing that we’d been offered the usual cup of tea or a glass of water so I had something to do. After our windswept arrival, Mrs Griffiths had led us into a small sitting room by the front door, clearly determined to get our interview over with as soon as possible. It was a pleasant little room with floral upholstery on the chairs and sofa, and well-polished antique furniture, but the grate in the marble fireplace was empty and the radiator was cold. Neither Maeve nor I had taken our coats off. Mrs Griffiths didn’t seem to notice the chill in the air, possibly since it was emanating from her general direction.
‘When you got on the bus, did you notice Minnie Charleston?’
‘I noticed the empty seat beside her, so I sat in it.’
Maeve smiled. ‘That’s not quite true, is it? When you got on the bus first, the seat wasn’t free. One of the passengers who was standing in the aisle waiting to get off had put her shopping down on it and you asked her to move her bags.’
‘Seats are for people, not shopping,’ Helena Griffiths snapped.
‘But you could have sat in one of the other seats on the bus. Four or five were empty by then. Was there a particular reason why you wanted to sit next to Minnie?’
‘I like to sit in the middle of the bus, not at the front or the back, because sitting over the wheels is bumpier and it makes me nauseous. It’s far enough away from the door that there’s no draught. And I like to be high up so I can see more. And I prefer an aisle seat. I don’t like getting trapped by the window.’
‘OK,’ Maeve said, and made a note. Mrs Griffiths frowned.
‘There’s nothing strange about that, is there?’
‘Nothing at all. Did you look at Minnie before you sat down? Did you happen to notice anything about her?’
‘I didn’t notice anything in particular.’ She considered it. ‘I didn’t want to sit next to someone who was likely to interact with me. I just wanted to make my journey in peace. She seemed quiet and normal, although you never can tell with bus passengers.’ Mrs Griffiths picked a bit of fluff off her knee. ‘In any event, I didn’t pay much attention to my fellow passengers. I wasn’t going to be on the bus for long.’
‘Why didn’t you drive?’ I asked. ‘That’s your Mini outside, isn’t it?’
‘I often walk down to the shops. I don’t take my car everywhere. It’s bad for the environment and bad for me. If everyone took more exercise and drove less and ate with more moderation, we wouldn’t have this obesity problem.’
‘I’m sure that would help,’ I agreed, and got a withering glare in response.
‘I do know what I’m talking about. I was a doctor, once upon a time.’
That explained the no-nonsense attitude. I was aware of Maeve sitting up a bit straighter beside me: we had both underestimated Mrs Griffiths.
‘Then you would probably have noticed if Minnie seemed unwell,’ Maeve said.
‘I might have.’ Mrs Griffiths sounded uncertain. ‘I suppose so. But she wasn’t a patient of
mine; I wasn’t thinking of her health. I was looking at the traffic and trying to predict how long it would take me to get home.’
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘No. She was very quiet. I thought she was asleep. She was quite pale and still.’ She blinked twice. ‘Do you think she had already been stabbed at that point?’
‘It’s possible,’ I said.
‘You arrested someone, didn’t you? A teenager?’
‘We did,’ Maeve said. Mrs Griffiths shuddered.
‘These teenagers killing one another. It’s terrible. An epidemic. They don’t think about the consequences of their actions.’
‘We’re satisfied that the teenager wasn’t involved,’ I said. ‘We let him go.’
She looked surprised. ‘Oh. Well, if you’re sure about that, then I suppose I’m wrong.’
‘Did you have any interaction with Minnie?’ Maeve asked.
‘No.’
‘And you won’t mind this question, given your medical background,’ Maeve said sweetly. ‘Did you notice any blood on your clothing after you got off the bus?’
‘Now that you come to mention it, I did have a mark on the sleeve and the side of my coat.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t realise it was blood. The coat is olive green, you see, so it looked black.’
‘Could we take your coat away to test it so we can confirm it is Minnie’s blood? We’re still trying to work out when she was stabbed.’
‘I’m so sorry – I took it to the dry-cleaners the next day. I can’t bear wearing anything dirty.’
‘Which dry-cleaners?’ I asked.
‘All Kleen on Nightingale Lane.’
‘Could we have the ticket? They might not have cleaned it yet.’
‘Of course.’ She bit her lip. ‘But they did say it would be ready to collect today.’
‘We’ll take the ticket anyway,’ Maeve said. ‘You never know. We might be lucky.’
Chapter 10
As I let myself into my house the warm smell of cooking filled the air, comforting as a hug. I pulled off my shoes and checked them for mud – or worse – then put them neatly side by side under the coat hooks. I brushed the raindrops off the shoulders of my coat before I hung it up, and took the time to inspect my appearance in the hall mirror. Not bad – I was flushed from the cold and the damp air had brought out the curl in my hair, so a few stray spirals made a pretty halo around my face.
