by Angela Misri
Amélie pointed at a word on my notepad and demonstrated the sign. When I didn’t respond, she did it again, adding a kind smile. I shook my head, but, almost against my will, mimicked her sign, following along as she went through some simple words. Then she asked Heather to say them out loud, one at a time, so that I could focus on how words were formed through the lips. Portia. Baker Street. Scotland Yard. But when she got to Brian, I shook my head again.
I wrote on my notepad, “I appreciate the help, but I would like you both to leave. I have much to do today and casebooks to review.” I tried to pass it over, but to my surprise, found a note being passed to me first.
“You believe that because your abilities are superior, so too should the magnification of their loss,” I read off her note, my eyes leaping to meet hers. I opened my mouth to deny it, remembered why I was writing notes instead, and angrily blinked away my tears.
Olsen reached out to cover my hand with hers and, looking straight at me, blew out all her breath. When I looked confused, she did it again and then raised her eyebrows at me.
I finally understood and after taking a moment to dramatically roll my eyes, I blew all the breath out of my body, calming my racing heart.
“You have emotional and mental issues to overcome too. I can help,” she wrote.
She wrote on the notebook and then spoke to me as the other woman signed the words one at a time.
“Remember when you first got here? It was so hard to be taken seriously as a detective. You overcame.”
I glanced over at Amélie, who was nodding and signing something at the doctor.
“Amélie says you will surprise them again,” she wrote, smiling at her young friend as she passed the notebook back to me. Could I do it again? Fight through the derisive drumbeat against my gender, my outsider-status as a Canadian, and worst of all, the old-boys club of detective work? I must have transmitted these feelings on my face because Heather picked up the pencil again.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of the fight,” she wrote.
I blew my breath out again in response, rising to get my afternoon medication as the two women laughed at my reaction. I did not share their ease.
CHAPTER 8
SEVERAL DAYS LATER I sat in my usual café, having my usual Saturday breakfast, trying to hear the people around me. Normally, I picked a table in a corner so as to enjoy my meal in quiet, but today I handed a note to my waiter asking for a central location. He looked puzzled, but did as I asked. I sat warming my hands as they wrapped around my tea and looked from table to table, straining to hear actual words rather than underwater sounds of conversation.
The smells in the room were sharper to me today: the sweetness of the cake tray as it passed my seat, and the pungent carafes of coffee that sat on the tables around me. I noticed that my perfume had faded to the point that I could not detect it anymore and reminded myself to look into Amélie’s distracting perfume. My grandmother was constantly trying to introduce me to new beauty products; it might be time to allow for that.
Among the few bright spots were my evening visits with Brian, which I had missed while trapped at the hospital. Last night I noted that he smelled of clean soap and peppermint as usual, but with an underlying scent all his own. It was the first time I had ever noticed that. We were both hesitant of each other’s injuries, carefully avoiding bruises and burns, but at least we were alone again. He was less receptive to my report on the young girl who had seemed unfazed by a bomb blast that had dropped everyone else to the ground. I didn’t know how the girl was involved. She might not be, but her reaction was unexplainable and that made it important, to me at least.
His reaction made me think of the last thing Olsen had written to me before leaving my rooms. She asked how Brian was recovering from his injuries and, while I knew her to be far more empathetic than I, I wondered why she was asking. She had hesitated before answering, eventually writing that people handle pain in different ways and that Brian’s personality and pressures might make him unwilling to deal with his trauma, putting them aside because he was the head of his family. At the very least, she suggested I watch for uncharacteristic reactions and his dismissive response to the girl could be considered uncharacteristic. He was usually flatteringly interested in my views.
A tap on my shoulder brought me out of my solitary thoughts. My waiter said something incomprehensible to me and then pointed out the window, where I could clearly see Ruby and two of her small peers standing outside the café. I had sent another note with another of her peers after the bombing, asking for her help identifying the girl at the college bombing. She must have found something. Whatever the waiter was saying, their appearance was clearly upsetting him, so I wrapped up my untouched pastry in a napkin, put a few coins on the table, and left without trying to communicate any further. By now, Londoners should be more sympathetic to their fellow human beings left out in the cold while fewer and fewer of us actually had the means to enjoy a meal in a restaurant. But there was no point in trying to explain that to this man, I thought to myself, pushing the glass door open to the cold morning air.
Ruby waved at me, and then elbowed one of the boys who had accompanied her, who handed me a dirty piece of newsprint upon which he had written the words, “No sine of girl wit cruches.”
I wasn’t surprised. The only details I had been able to pass on were a rudimentary description of her face and height — a near impossible assignment even for industrious scouts like these. Spying the outdoor furniture for the café stacked in the alley, I led the children over to right a table and a few chairs so that we might sit in the relative protection provided by the two buildings.
Handing the pastry to Ruby, I pulled out my own notebook to write a response while she carefully divided the treat into three. I waited for the boy to scarf down his portion, and then handed him the notebook with my pencil. I had written one word with a drawing of a cross, hoping he would understand. The girl’s crutches had been carefully wound with cloth and bunting, perhaps hinting that her condition was not a temporary one. That probably meant she frequented a doctor’s office or hospital for ongoing care.
He looked down at it, scratched his head, and then answered a question from Ruby, who was looking down at the note curiously. She nodded and said something back to him, which he leaned over the table to carefully write, holding my pencil uncertainly over the paper in his hand.
“Arnie an his crew werk Harley street,” his note answered. “We can chek wit dem.”
“Please tell Arnie there is more where this came from for all of you,” I wrote, handing the note to the boy and handing a coin to Ruby.
CHAPTER 9
LATER THAT SAME DAY I sat waiting impatiently for Inspector Michaels to reappear at his desk. Twice I waved away concerned officers, and twice I stood up, walked around, and then immediately sat back down when I realized my impatience made the office stare at me anew.
Finally, Michaels came into view as he clomped down the stairs across the room from where I sat waiting. I assumed the clomping sound because I was used to hearing it when he walked those stairs, the distinctive sound of his walk known to me at this point. I stood up again and quickly made my way towards him as he sent one of his detectives off in one direction and signed something on a clipboard for another.
He noticed me and actually gave a small smile in my direction, saying something that I could not hear. I shook my head to confirm that I still hadn’t regained my hearing and his smile faded, to be replaced with the dreaded response of pity as he waved me into his office. I shook off my negative reaction to his concern and followed him in, noticing the hint of perfume hovering on his uniform. Unless I was mistaken, his relationship with my cousin Heather had progressed. That was her perfume — an older Chanel bottle that had been watered down, something I had remarked on a few months ago and she had admitted to having bought off the back of a truck. Welcome to Londo
n in an economic downturn.
I pulled out my notebook as he manoeuvred himself behind his desk, taking out a cigar and lighting it before taking the note I extended his way.
“I may have a lead, but I need your help to investigate,” was what the note said, and it got its planned reaction from the large man as he yanked out his cigar to demand, “Who?”
I still couldn’t hear him, but I mentally catalogued the shape of his lips before I could stop myself and tapped the note I had handed him. He impatiently flipped it over to read the rest, “A young girl I saw at the college before the bomb exploded.”
“Girl?” he barked at me and again I was able to read his lips based on what I anticipated his questions would be. He realized that he was speaking and how fruitless that was, so with a shake of his head, he flipped open his own notebook on his desk and scratched out a few sentences while flakes of cigar ash fell over his work. Brushing those off, he handed the note to me and then swung his attention towards his door.
I took the note to read, “Unless this little girl was carrying a batch of mines in her handbag, I’m more concerned about your partner. He’s been late three times this week.”
Brian was never late, but even if he were, I was not his keeper. I needed the Yard’s constables to find this girl. In my current state I was half the investigator I usually was. I turned to see Michaels in conversation with one of his men and then he ran back behind his desk, collecting his overcoat. He looked at my note asking for help and, to my growing anger, waved it away, pointing at me and then at the officer in the doorway and barking orders at both of us.
He practically bolted out of his office and I made to follow him but was stopped physically by the officer, a man I had never met. He tried to make hand gestures to make me understand what he was saying, but I pushed him aside to follow Inspector Michaels out of Scotland Yard and into the police car he had just stopped outside the building.
I clambered inside the backseat of the car, ignoring Michaels’ protests, which I couldn’t hear, but could most certainly deduce from his angry mouth and pointing finger. I stoically sat next to him, facing forward with my arms crossed over my chest. He very quickly figured out that I was not getting out of the car and it started moving on his order.
Once we got moving, I passed my notebook over to Michaels. I had written, “If you won’t help, then at least tell me where we are going.”
He looked down at the paper and then rolled down the window to tap his cigar before replacing it in his mouth and taking up my pencil to answer.
“There’s been another threat. Downing Street,” he wrote back hurriedly.
I felt a little jolt at reading that note; Downing Street was, after all, the main office of the British government, and I quickly wrote, “The prime minister? The cabinet?”
Michaels read the note as we pulled up — Downing Street being under half a mile from Scotland Yard — and shook his head as we exited the vehicle, frustrating me to no end as that could mean anything.
I hesitated as I closed the car door behind me. Outside the political offices of the British Government, police had set up a cordon that reminded me very much of the scene where Constable Bonhomme had lost his life and I had lost everything else.
Michaels seemed to sense that hesitation in me so I forced myself to nod at him, following his lead as he stepped up to speak to one of the officers to let us through the cordon. The building had obviously been evacuated, as evidenced by the number of secretaries and clerks standing out in the cold without their coats. If any of the upper echelon of the government had been here, they would have been taken somewhere safe, off-site and away from the growing crowd of curious Londoners.
I looked around at the melee and sighted Brian directing a few officers as they came out of the front door of 10 Downing Street. Quickly I made my way to his side, tapping him on the shoulder when I got close enough. He turned and immediately frowned, shaking his head when I tried to hand him my notebook.
If I had been just a little younger, and a little less mature, I would have thrown a fit at the dismissal I was receiving today, but as such, I just stepped around Brian and into 10 Downing Street through the open door. No one stopped me, at least physically. I wouldn’t be able to tell if they tried to stop me with words, so I headed up the stairs, nodding at officers I recognized as I made a visual perimeter of the place. It was a bit of a thrill to be within these walls, both for me and I could tell for a few of the younger officers who were inside the building for the first time. I took in everything from the rugs to the wooden details to the number of steps and the wear on the treads even as I noted that a constable had been posted outside each door as the inside of the room was searched by another.
Most of the police activity seemed to be concentrated on the first floor, so I made my way up to the second and then the third.
Only one door in the hallway seemed to be both unmanned and unsearched, and that attracted my eye. Unlike the others it had neither a room number nor a window into its interior. It could have been a cupboard, though its location seemed less than optimal up here on the third floor, which served as a private residence rather than offices. I sniffed at the door, but couldn’t detect the smell of cleaning supplies that you would expect in a spot where you store mops and buckets, nor the clean laundry smell of a linen closet. I smelled cigarettes, but no sooner had I reached for the doorknob than a long-fingered brown hand covered mine, making me jump. I had not heard anyone try to speak to me nor had I sensed someone that close. I turned, my eyes meeting a pair of dark brown ones, belonging to a man a little older than me, his face as handsome as I had ever encountered, with a cleft chin and high cheekbones. He was the source of the cigarette smell.
He spoke then, though so softly that the usual drumming wasn’t detectable for my injured ears. His breath smelled of bubble gum, which surprised me, as I took in his naval uniform, glancing at his hands and the waves of his hair and deciding that he was not what he seemed. Commanders of African descent were still quite rare in the Royal Navy. He repeated whatever he had tried to say the first time, an encouraging smile on his lips, so I took my hand off the doorknob to reach into my bag for my notebook.
With a speed I had not seen before, he crushed me against the wall, a slim knife appearing out of nowhere and now pressed against my throat.
I dared not scream, though I was relatively sure that I could communicate terror despite my communication issues, and instead stared right back at him defiantly. The fact that I chose not to struggle or scream seemed to confuse the man and I felt his grip on me loosen, though his body still held me in place so that I could feel every muscle pressed against me. He spoke again, this time directly into my ear. I still couldn’t hear a thing, but I guessed that he wanted to know who I was as much as I wanted to know who he was.
I managed to pull the note I had used in the cab out of my pocket and I slowly slid it between our bodies to show him. He quickly scanned the note and only then did he lower the knife, though I still couldn’t take a deep breath while I was flattened into the wall by his body. His eyes ran over the fading bruises on my face as I slowly placed my hands over my mouth, shook my head, and then placed them over my ears and shook my head again. When he still looked suspicious, I tapped the note in his hand and mimed writing.
He finally seemed to understand what I was trying to say and I felt his body’s heat recede, allowing me to stand on my own two feet again. Glancing down the hallway to see if we were still alone, he slid the knife into his pocket. That was when I gripped his belt with both hands, slammed my knee into his groin, and shoved him as hard as I could away from me.
He went down like a stone, completely silent as far as I could tell. I didn’t stop to see if he got back up, but sprinted away from him and down the stairs as quickly as I could. I got to the main floor where Brian and two officers stood conversing in low drumming tones with another man dr
essed in a Navy uniform. Seeing my distress, Brian pulled me to him and when I pointed up the stairs, ordered his men to investigate, following them up the stairs a little shakily. The man he had been speaking to was an ensign I didn’t know and I ignored him when he tried to speak to me. Brian came back down, sweat beading his forehead, and motioned his arms with palms upward to explain that no one had been found. He spoke to the ensign, who agreed with whatever Brian was saying, and everyone ignored my attempts to show them the spot where I had been attacked. I pulled the ensign up the stairs where he opened the closet door and waved his hands around inside, as if to prove to me that it was just a broom closet.
I restrained myself from shoving him into said closet in response, but Brian seemed to take whatever he was saying at face value, taking my elbow with a grim look. I didn’t argue as he escorted me from the building, but as soon as we were outside I yanked my elbow away, disgusted at being once again dismissed like a child. Instead, I scanned the throng of people outside the building for the face of the man who had attacked me. Brian was trying to get my attention, walking in front of me, and then again when I purposefully turned away. He gave up then, angry, and stalked away. I had a brief instinct to reach out and stop him, but instead my eyes stuck on a group of secretaries being led away from the building. There was something about one of the women that reminded me of the young girl on the crutches.
I followed the officer and the women he was escorting, getting as close as I dared to the woman who displayed the same heterochromia that I had seen that day in the crowd — one eye hazel, the other green. Purposely, I bumped the arm holding her handbag by its fingerloop, so that it dropped to the cobbled road between us.
