by Simon Lelic
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely. I just . . . I don’t. Ask Syd. Ask anyone.”
Inspector Leigh’s smile, this time, told me she already had.
“What about after a drink or two, Jack? Say, during a session at the local pub. Might you get angry then?”
I swallowed, but somewhere in my throat there was a blockage. The pub. She knew about what had happened at the pub. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. If anything I should have been more prepared.
“That was different,” I said.
“What was?”
“The . . . thing you’re referring to.”
A frown like she really didn’t know. And yet somehow, even though she was frowning, she was still managing to maintain that little smirk.
I stood up, awkwardly to avoid a clash of knees. I moved into the middle of the room and was about to ask for a break when I spotted DC Granger leaning against the door frame. I hadn’t noticed him returning, and I had no idea how long he’d been standing there.
“There’s a knife missing from your knife block,” he said, as though he’d been part of the conversation the whole way through.
“What?”
“In your kitchen. There’s a knife missing from your knife block.”
I looked at Inspector Leigh, immobile and impassive, and then back at Dwayne Johnson over there filling up my doorway.
“It’s probably in the dishwasher.”
DC Granger shook his head, slowly. “I checked. It’s not in the dishwasher.”
“You checked in our dishwasher?”
A shrug like a rolling boulder. “It happened to be open. I happened to look.”
Which was basically a DC Granger–size lie. There’s no way the dishwasher was open. When it’s open you can’t even get to the sink. But it wasn’t the dishwasher at that point that was worrying me. It was the knife. The missing knife. I’d been aware it was gone. I’d just never before thought to wonder why.
“I think . . . I think I’d like you to leave now,” I said. I’d meant to sound bold. Affronted. The way an innocent taxpayer in situations like this is supposed to sound. Even to my ear, though, I didn’t come close.
To my surprise Inspector Leigh didn’t argue. She stood up as though she’d merely been waiting for me to ask.
“Well,” she said. “Thank you for your time, Jack. And for the delicious cup of tea.”
That smile. She’d asked me before about whether I got angry, and if ever I had a right to, it would have been then. At her demeanor, her insinuations. But as soon as I was alone once again in the hallway, all I felt was a swelling sense of dread. Because this was real, I realized. Whatever it was—whatever it is—there’s no denying anymore that it’s real.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JACK
IT’S GETTING LATE and Syd’s still not home. I want to call her, to tell her about today, but also I don’t want to panic her. On the other hand, if she were going to panic, she probably would have done so already. She saw this coming, after all. It won’t be any consolation to her, I realize, but there’s very little that would console her just now.
I don’t know what to write. Or I do, but I’m struggling to make a start. That’s what I hate most about when I worry, the fact that it stops me from doing anything else. But I don’t suppose I really have a choice. We’re barely halfway through—halfway to the point we’re at now—and time is clearly running out. If we don’t figure this out before the police come back, who knows if we’ll get another chance?
—
THE STUFF AT work, then. I told the police it wasn’t connected. It’s what I said to Syd, too, what I’ve been repeating, like a mantra, to myself. But it’s not as though I can just ignore it. And apart from anything, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I’ve been wrong so far more than I’ve been right.
I mentioned a missed call, if you remember. After my run-in with Elsie’s dad. The call was from a friend of mine. He . . .
Wait. This won’t make sense unless I go back further. Maybe I can’t tell you how this part ends yet, but I can at least be clear on how it began.
There was something else I said earlier, too. When I was talking about Bart, about how he’d been trying to help Susmita? What I said was that once in a while, in a job like ours, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t bend the rules. Which I suppose was a prelude to a confession. This confession. Syd spoke before about the stuff I kept from her, and this is one example of something I definitely should have told her about right at the start.
There was this family.
Wait, no.
There was this woman. Which already makes it sound like I fell into the same trap Bart did, but it’s nothing like that, I promise. This woman, she came to our offices looking for help. She was being evicted, she told me. She was hazy on the reasons why, which perhaps should have set off some alarm bells, but most people in her situation when they come to us, part of the problem is a lack of information. They often don’t know exactly what’s happening to them, or—even more commonly—what they’re supposed to do about it. And Sabeen, I thought, was no different from any of the others.
Our meeting didn’t last very long. I learned that Sabeen was a refugee from Iraq who’d been granted leave to remain. She was thirty-five years old, with black hair and green eyes, and a habit of gnawing the skin around her fingernails. I assumed initially that she’d come to me to apply for emergency accommodation, but what she wanted was to stay exactly where she was. The thing was, what Sabeen had presented to me was essentially a dispute between a landlord and his tenant. And though I was obviously sympathetic, this just wasn’t my department at all.
I tried to tell Sabeen this. She listened and seemed to be taking in what I was saying. I gave her some numbers she could call, the names of some organizations she could speak to, but when at last I reached to offer her my hand, instead of taking it she suddenly started crying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so distraught. And believe me, in my job you see people in tears on a daily basis. There was no chance either that Sabeen was faking it. I see that sort of thing often enough, too.
I didn’t promise her more than I could offer. I said I’d call her landlord, that was all, and try to get to the bottom of what was happening. Such was Sabeen’s gratitude that I immediately felt guilty for having got her hopes up. She left with a smile that sparkled, as though I’d given my word that I would find a way to help. Which I hadn’t. I tried to remind myself later that I’d done no such thing. Not that it made any difference. When I discovered what it was that Sabeen was hiding, one way or another I found myself committed.
—
THE LANDLORD LAUGHED when I told him who I was—who, notionally, I was representing—and when I asked him why Sabeen was being evicted, he told me, first, to mind my own business and, then, if I was so bloody interested, to go and take a look for myself.
There were five of them. Crammed into a bedsit barely big enough for one. Amira, at seventeen, was the youngest. She was Sabeen’s sister. Ali was the second-born, and you could sense immediately that he was furious with his powerlessness to improve his family’s lot. But as well as being in the country illegally (they all were, other than Sabeen), Ali had lost a foot on the journey from Baghdad. He’d got it caught under the wheel of a lorry. He’d had it amputated in Germany, but had fled the hospital before the authorities could take too great an interest in him, so the injury had never had a chance to properly heal. It pained him constantly, though not as much, I’ve always suspected, as the sense he’d allowed himself to become a burden. His family had waited for him in Germany, had half-carried him the rest of the way to England, and for Ali that wasn’t how it was supposed to have been. He’d left Iraq in order to help them. His younger sister, Amira, but also his parents: Kalila, his mother, and Hakim, his father, both of whom looked older than
their sixty-something years and who had their own ongoing health issues to cope with.
It was Sabeen’s parents who had the greatest effect on me. I mean, once I’d convinced Sabeen to open the bedsit door and I’d seen them all huddled on the sofa, my first instinct was simply to turn around. I could tell just from the look on Sabeen’s face that she’d misled me. But she pulled me inside, sort of dragged me apologetically before her family, and even though I couldn’t understand what it was that she was telling them, or a word of what her parents were saying back, they were looking at me like . . . well . . . this is going to sound kind of pathetic, I know, but they were looking at me the way I’ve always wished my own parents would. Just, I don’t know. Proud, I guess. Approving. Like even though I hadn’t done a thing yet, they were just grateful to have me on their side.
What could I tell them? The truth, I suppose, is the obvious answer: that their landlord was entirely within his rights, and that they were lucky he hadn’t reported them to the authorities. That technically I was the authorities and that I should have been reporting them, too. But the thing was, I couldn’t. I just . . . I couldn’t. They needed me, and it felt good to be needed—I won’t deny that was part of it. But also, when I heard what they’d been through, when I saw what they were going through still, I simply didn’t have the heart.
I imagine you’ve guessed where this is heading. In the end I didn’t just bend the rules. I broke them. It was easy enough to do: I added Sabeen’s name to the appropriate list, used certain criteria to ensure it jumped to somewhere near the top, and then bypassed the usual bureaucracy to assign her the first social-housing unit that became available. It only had the one bedroom, but it was far more spacious than the bedsit and, most importantly, it was almost entirely self-contained. There’d be no nosy neighbors to worry them nor any more bothersome landlords. As I say, easy. But it was also reckless. I thought I was helping, but the way things are looking right now, it would have been better for Sabeen and her family if I’d never allowed myself to get involved.
—
IT WAS ALI, Sabeen’s brother, whose call I missed that day I first encountered Elsie’s father. In the time since I’d been introduced to Sabeen’s family, it was Ali to whom I’d become closest. He was a good six or seven years younger than me, but given everything he’d been through, I looked up to him as I would an older brother. I half-suspected Ali looked up to me as well—for no other reason than he thought my job was more important than it was—though what I liked best about our relationship was that neither one of us was prepared to show it. We mocked each other mercilessly, vied openly for his parents’ affections—again just as though we were brothers, though without the complication of any genuine sibling rivalry.
“The pissing weather in this country.”
Ali’s English was even better than his older sister’s, and he had a fluency with swear words in particular that even Syd probably would have been impressed by.
“Is that why you wanted to see me, Al? To ask me to do something about the weather?”
I was smiling, but the fact is, I was also apprehensive. When I’d texted Ali in response to his phone call, he’d replied requesting we meet up. Even the phone call had been unusual, something we’d agreed would happen only in an emergency, so the fact that Ali had wanted to talk in person had told me it would be about something serious.
He scowled as he bracketed me with kisses, then turned one of his palms up toward the clouds. The sky was gray, the color of used washing-up water, and the air was heavy with a precipitation too cowardly to be described as proper rain.
“Allah himself couldn’t do anything to part these clouds. That’s why he gave England to the heathen.”
We were outside Balham Tube, and I looked for somewhere we could go that was under cover and also away from the crowd. I didn’t suggest coffee, because Ali would have only ordered tap water and then insisted after we finished that he pay the bill. I pointed instead toward the nearby railway bridge, and when we reached it we hunched together in the gloom.
“How’s the foot?” I asked him. I’d managed to put Ali in touch with a doctor—someone Bart knew, not exactly NHS—and he was getting by now with a prosthetic and a crutch.
“Still missing,” he replied. “I keep hoping it’ll turn up in one of my socks.” He adjusted his weight so he was standing more comfortably. “Listen, Jack. You said to call you if anyone ever came around asking questions.”
The fact that he was so quick to get down to business only unnerved me all the more.
“Has someone been hassling you?” I asked him. “Who?”
“Not hassling us exactly,” Ali replied. “Just . . . watching.”
My frown was a question mark.
“Sabeen mentioned it first,” Ali said. “There was someone following her home from the Tube. And Amira, she thinks someone’s been going through our bin.”
“What?” I said. “Why would anyone want to go through your bin?”
Ali rolled his eyes at me. “To look for evidence,” he said. “Obviously.”
“But . . . what kind of evidence?”
“Evidence about who we really are! Amira said it’s happened more than once. She’s taken out the rubbish, and when she’s opened up the bin the other bags have all been ripped open.”
“That could be foxes, though. Couldn’t it? Or, I don’t know. Birds.”
“Then why was all the rubbish still inside, the lid of the bin left closed? Foxes don’t tidy up after themselves, Jack. Not even in this country.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again. I knew Ali wouldn’t have come to me had he not been genuinely concerned, but I knew as well how helpless he felt and how susceptible they all must have been to paranoia. To be honest, I was surprised it hadn’t manifested itself sooner.
“What about this person Sabeen says followed her?” I said. “Did they say anything? What did they look like?”
“It was too dark to see. And anyway they kept their distance. But again it’s happened more than once, and Sabeen, she . . . she’s worried it was someone from the government. Like . . . an immigration official.”
This time my smile was genuine. “An immigration official?”
Ali curled a corner of his mouth. “I knew you’d laugh. That’s why I wanted to talk to you in person.”
“I’m not laughing, Al, honest. It’s just . . . I mean . . . it’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? Maybe it was just another commuter, walking the same route home.”
Ali drew back his shoulders. “You know if someone’s following you, Jack. And there’s no way my sister would lie.” There was an edge to his tone that told me I needed to tread carefully. As much as Ali enjoyed a bit of mutual mockery, there was nothing he took more seriously than the welfare of his family.
“Talk me through it,” I said, trying to appease him. “Has anyone else noticed anything unusual? Have you?”
Ali, grudgingly, shook his head.
“What about your parents?”
“You know them,” said Ali, “they barely ever go out. But I trust my sisters’ instincts, Jack. They’re worried, too. I know they are, no matter how much they pretend they’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
Once again Ali shifted. “They didn’t want me to speak to you,” he admitted. “No one did.”
I could imagine precisely how that argument had played out. Sabeen and Amira and their parents would have resisted sanctioning anything they would have regarded as an imposition. It was hard enough whenever I visited them to get them to accept so much as a jar of honey. Ali, though, would have considered coming to me his duty, imposition be damned. I respected that passion in him enormously: that he would have willingly sacrificed his other foot, if it had come down to it, for the sake of protecting his family.
“You did the right thing,” I said, which ordinarily wou
ld have sounded patronizing as hell but at that moment was what Ali needed to hear. He visibly swelled, in fact, and I could picture him recounting the line to his sisters when he reported back on our conversation later. “So this . . . immigration official,” I said. “How many times has Sabeen been followed?”
“Twice, she thinks. And she wouldn’t have mentioned it if she weren’t certain, Jack. I’m not making this up.”
“Relax, Al. I’m not doubting you. I’ll look into it, I promise. But if you want my opinion, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. Immigration officials don’t tend to loiter in the shadows. And they don’t get paid enough to go checking through people’s bins.”
It was an attempt at a joke—a feeble one, admittedly, but even so it drew a reluctant smile.
“Probably you’re just being hounded by your typical south London weirdo. There used to be an asylum just up the road, you know. It got shut down in the nineties, all the patients kicked out onto the streets. There’s bound to be a few still in the area, and maybe one of them happens to have a thing for pretty Middle Eastern immigrants.”
Ali gave a snort. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I said ‘pretty,’ Al. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. It’s your sisters you want to be looking out for.”
Ali laughed again, and I could tell his mind was more at ease. “She likes you, you know,” he said to me.
“Who does?”
“Amira. She thinks you look like Doctor Who.”
Ali was grinning now, and even though I was aware he was trying to wind me up, I struggled not to let my embarrassment show. It was something he’d teased me about before: the way we’d both noticed Amira gazing at me, the habit she had of touching my arm. I was flattered, obviously, but I did my best to ignore it—which wasn’t always easy when her older brother was there, grinning at me from across the room.
“Which Doctor Who?” I answered. “The short one? Or the old one?”
