by Deborah Bee
Seems like Terry got off scot free compared to me, and the day the bastard comes out I have to go in to this. It’s so hot in this sweaty little room, so I try to open the window, but the metal frames have been painted over with cheap white gloss, all over the pane too, and the latch is stuck fast, with globules of dried paint dripping through the notches in the handle. There’s not a breath of air, and someone’s put the heating on full blast, like they do in old people’s homes and nursery schools, warming up the low hum of urine accidents.
I pick up the packet of teabags and a pint of skimmed milk that Mrs H has given me and lock up.
There’s no stair carpet; there are marks where a stair carpet used to be, but no stair carpet. Not yet, anyway, so your feet can’t help but clatter.
On every landing, behind other locked doors, children are shouting and babies are crying, TVs are blaring and women are silently blaming themselves for absolutely everything. That’s what we do.
I pass two of them on the stairs, Indian ladies, hollow eyes that don’t meet mine.
There’s a big colourful sign running across the top of the noticeboard stating that this is The York Gate Women’s Refuge and there’s a map pinned underneath. It’s at the other end of Camden from my flat, and up here they’ll call my area ‘King’s Cross’, and down there, we call this area ‘Regent’s Park’, so by my reckoning that makes actual Camden about as wide as the High Street, and that’s it.
‘It’s one of those buildings that was made for the servants of the big houses around the park. Edwardian,’ Mrs H had said. She also said that, at that time, if there weren’t enough servants around, they let ‘Johnny foreigners’ live there, and the jury’s out on whether she was trying to be funny or not.
The block takes up one side of the whole road and faces a row of little tiny Victorian cottages, with quaint little front gardens, picket fences, and pointy gables on the roofs, the sort of houses that every Londoner dreams of owning, except if they are bang opposite a red-brick block, half full of squatters.
The end of the block nearest the park and the posh houses and the croissant shops and small-volumes-of-French-poetry-bookshops, towards Primrose Hill, has new front doors, all painted white with a choice of a million buzzers for each flat. The end nearest the railway line doesn’t, that’s for sure – the doors there are hanging off their hinges, there’s seven loads of shite in the front gardens, like shopping trollies and plastic hatstands and paddling pools covered in dog poo – that’s the end that’s full of squatters, apparently, so Mrs H says. York Gate Women’s Refuge is somewhere in the middle, gifted to Camden Council she said, for a pound or something, so they’d get it all done up.
It’s just two double-fronted blocks, you know, in a terrace, with central front doors in each block and stairs going right up the middle of each, if you know what I mean. So they’ve gone and blocked off one door, right, for security I s’pose, completely blocked it off, with a sign and a big arrow pointing towards the other door.
So, you go in the other door, and first you have to buzz, then you have to look in a camera thing, then you get through that door. So far, so Fort Knox, right?
Then you’re in this kind of lobby with a thick glass screen like you used to get in the taxis in Liverpool, and you talk through that to a security guard, (mostly glowering ex-coppers but there’s one smiley one who gives me a wink), where you explain what you are doing there and everything. Someone’s there, day and night, they said, but you’re not gonna get in after ten, are you? Not unless you are a resident, or the police, or the fire brigade or something, any of the emergency services, which presumably you’d want to come in for whatever the emergency was that was going on. But your residents, they get these key fobs, so your residents can come in and out like they want, like normal folks. But I have to tell you, I got the impression that they don’t really want you out and about after ten, because who are we kidding, it’s not like any of this is normal, right? Staying out clubbing or something it’s gotta be asking for trouble, yeah?
So, then the receptionist lady, and IT MIGHT NOT BE A LADY – I know! I’m all for sexual equality and all that, believe me – the receptionist PERSON lets you through the lobby doors, and then you’re into the main hall. That’s it. And then all the rooms go off that and the stairs, so it would have been four flats on that ground floor but they’ve all been turned into the communal areas. There’s a big kitchen for each block and a laundry room, and a dining room that looks out onto the garden so you can sit and have your coffee looking out, then there’s two TV rooms and little smaller rooms for therapy and the suchlike. There’s one big room at the back with no TV, and that’s used for group activities, Mrs H said. I dread to think what that’s all about. Seriously, group silences, I bet – apart from them, social workers’ll talk the hind leg off a donkey given half a chance.
The kitchen over this side, my side as it turns out, looks like the sort of kitchen you used to get in schools back when they had kitchens in schools. It’s all easily wipe-downable stainless-steel basic. The fridge is the size of a house but not new – second-hand from a restaurant or something – cos it’s got scratches on the door from where it maybe, once upon a time, smacked into a wall. It’s got a million shelves but hardly any food in it, ’cept for a few plastic boxes with people’s names written on, in permanent marker, which I had to laugh at: lacks a bit of that optimism if you ask me. There are at least ten open cartons of milk in the door as well as an open tub of humus, half a squeezed lemon, half an avocado gone black, not covered with cling film. What is it with people not using cling film? Makes food last longer; don’t they watch the ads on TV? Who wants half an avocado that’s just been sitting in a fridge for days with other people spilling their off-milk all over it?
I switch on the kettle and look for a mug. There are Muppet mugs and Barbie mugs and Camden Graphics mugs and Nationwide Building Society mugs, all donated very kindly I’m sure, and all stained brown from years and years of half-drunk tea that was supposed to make you feel better and didn’t. Go on, have a nice cuppa tea, make you feel better. Not.
The kettle shoots steam out the spout and clicks off.
You know what? This place ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It’s new, yeah, sure it’s new, and it’s in a nicer area – well, nicer than you usually get any rate – but inside, Jesus Christ, it’s just like any other women’s refuge. There’s nothing like relying on pity for your décor; stuff that nobody wants is always stuff that nobody wants, however much you try and spruce it up, kid yourself.
Nothing’s nice here, really, not at all. I don’t know what they were doing, spending all the money on poshing-up the building but forgetting to make it comfy. I mean, really! It’s shabby, that’s what my mam would have said, shabby! The sofas are either modern and plastic shabby, as if they come out of an office waiting room or something, or pink velour shabby, from house clearances. The dining chairs are all scratched and wonky and nothing matches, and it’s not like anyone has even had a stab at making anything match. There are pictures on the walls that have got to have come from a second-hand shop, no glass like, just amateur people’s paintings – scenes from somebody else’s holiday. Almost makes it worse, doesn’t it?
And then some halfwit has bought some posters. You can hear someone thinking, ‘Oh I know what’ll cheer the place up, a load of posters!’ So they’ve gone off and spent a fiver on some clearance shite posters, and then they go and stick them to the freshly painted walls, with Sellotape. I mean, WTF, really?
‘Today is a new day.’
Do me a bloomin’ favour.
‘Today is a new day,’ in pink letters on a pink gingham background, like a housewife’s pinny.
Jesus. Someone has gone and got a permanent marker and scribbled in the corner, ‘BUT TOTALLY THE SAME SHIT’ and I think, ain’t that the truth?
Fifteen
DS Clarke
‘Hello. Yes. It’s DS Susan Clarke from Camden, London. I’m calling i
n regard to a prisoner you have recently released, a Mr Terry Mansfield. Yes, I can hold.’
DS Clarke is back at her desk on the first floor of Camden Road Police Station, deleting spam emails, and cursing the lack of IT to deal with the shite firewall. Livvy had fetched her a prawn sandwich from M&S, the one with brown bread and low-fat mayonnaise, but this week she’s on the 5:2 diet, and can only drink a pink plastic container of blended kale, blueberries and chia seeds. So, she’s skipping lunch altogether.
‘No. No,’ she says into the phone.
Heavy sigh.
‘No, I don’t know of his whereabouts.’
She picks up a pencil and starts tapping it on the desk. She does that sometimes.
Heavier sigh.
‘Yes, I’m calling from the Community Safety Unit, Central and North London. Yes, I can hold.’
She fires off an email to Livvy, asking her to secure a place for Clare at the Regent’s Park refuge. It’s only a temporary measure, for her own safety. She wants Clare close by – she’s got more she wants to ask her. If she needs to, she can get her moved further away once she’s got some answers. She puts her wallet and ID into the side pocket of her Zara bag that is slung on the back of her chair.
The officer on the other end of the phone is back.
‘Hmm,’ DS Clarke says, trying to hold her anger in check. ‘Look, young man, why do you want to know if I know of Mr Mansfield’s whereabouts? Aren’t you supposed to know where he is? I thought he was tagged. Your Governor told me this morning that he was tagged.’
This time she throws the phone down.
DS Clarke sends yet another email to the Governor of Liverpool Prison, formally asking for more information regarding the premature release of Mr Terry Mansfield, prisoner number 127963, and pointing out the ineptitude of his long-term release protocol, and his officers along with it.
She picks up the report on her desk, a very short report she notices, about the Oval Road Repeated Knocking, No Response. She checks the address and grabs her bag.
‘If a job’s worth doing . . .’ she thinks to herself, as she straps into the Volvo.
PC Olivia Halsall is running down the back steps of the station, waving at her to stop.
‘Shall I join you, sarge?’ she says. ‘If you’re going back to the property?’
She climbs in, pulling her skirt down over her knees. DS Clarke wonders why these girls wear their skirts so short. It’s not a beauty contest, it’s a job.
‘So, Livvy, nothing at the property?’ she says.
What happens next perfectly demonstrates to DS Clarke why some women aren’t particularly suited to certain aspects of policing. The gathering of data. The bigger picture, the finer details. Some female minds always get caught up in what people feel and how they feel it, rather than fact. What are the facts PC Halsall? she wants to scream, but she doesn’t!
‘We spoke to a neighbour. A Mrs Vocking. She’s an older lady and can’t remember much about the couple next door except that he seemed like a nice chap,’ says Livvy, gazing out of the window.
‘How old is older?’ says DS Clarke, knowing the answer won’t impress her. Eighty is old, she thought to herself. Or ninety.
‘Oh, I don’t know, about forty-five or fifty. And she said that the young gentleman was an attractive man.’
‘Has she seen them recently?’
‘She said she couldn’t remember seeing Clare, but that there was some banging last night, around midnight, and that she noticed some bin bags in the front garden this morning. But she said they don’t take building refuse, or garden refuse, in the Camden area, because that’s for the council to deal with and she finds that a bit unfair given that she’s there alone and doesn’t generate a lot of refuse herself, but she could really use some help with the garden refuse because she doesn’t drive herself you see.’
‘And did you look in the bin bags, Livvy?’ DS Clarke says, as the nervous twitch in her right cheek sets off.
‘Oh no, they’d gone by then. It’s bin day, you see.’
DS Clarke shakes her head imperceptibly, but Livvy wouldn’t have seen it even if she had been facing that way.
And DS Clarke thinks to herself, any refuse worth having will be halfway to Dover by now, in a container.
*
The terraced houses in Oval Road are not your typical London two-up, two-down Victorian style. DS Clarke didn’t know much about architecture but she guessed that these were built before that. They’re four storeys, grey brick, with arched windows on the second floor, and mostly black or white front doors. This is the fancy end of Camden, where the artists and poets used to hang out. Jasper Conran used to live two roads down. And Stephen Fry. Or was it David Hockney? Or Alan Bennett? Some of the gardens towards the High Street are overgrown, front rooms spilling onto the windowsills, spider plants in plastic pots, china figurines, yellowing books.
Number 289 Oval Road was, from the outside, well kept. The front door had been recently painted black, and the curtains were drawn so there was no possibility of seeing inside. The side gate was locked, bolted from the inside top and bottom and padlocked from the front.
While DS Clarke knocks on the front door, PC Halsall goes to see if Mrs Vocking next door is available. DS Clarke concerns herself with Clare – getting her out of hospital and into a secure unit, and wonders how that would work, considering Clare had not yet made a formal complaint. On her third attempt at knocking, DS Clarke’s phone buzzes.
‘Hi, Celia. What news on Clare Chambers? Slow down . . . No, slow down, Celia, you’re going too fast . . . OK, so there was a man outside her room – was it Gareth? Celia! Stop screeching . . . So, there wasn’t a man outside her room? Well, was there or wasn’t there? Who’s down there with you? No, I’m coming now . . . Stay where you are. Don’t leave her room.’
DS Clarke shouts as she runs for the car. ‘Livvy, there’s a suspected intruder outside her room.’ Livvy runs down the front steps and jumps in the car beside DS Clarke.
‘He’s not been identified,’ DS Clarke says, half to herself. ‘Livvy, find out what Walker’s been doing – she’s supposed to be watching the ward. And put PC Hall outside her room for the night – we’ll get another team down to do a search of the building. And get on to the hospital for the CCTV records. Let’s find him!’
Sixteen
Clare
I can hear breathing.
That’s how I know there’s someone there.
I open my eyes.
It’s the policewoman.
The same one that was at the police station, not the one sat outside my room in the corridor.
She’s staring out the window.
It’s morning.
She sees me watching her.
‘There’s no one there, Clare,’ she says, seeing my eyes flick towards the closed blinds.
I can’t see the row of chairs outside the door.
‘Did you get him?’ I say to her. My voice is still croaky.
‘Not yet, Clare, but we will,’ she says.
Like it’s going to be easy.
She’s clasping her hands together. It’s odd when people hold their own hands.
‘Why?’ I whisper. ‘He was right here!’
‘We’re looking into it, Clare. You can leave that to us. You can trust us.’
‘I need police protection,’ I whisper.
‘I understand that,’ she says. ‘We’ve organised for you to go to a women’s refuge.’
‘Can’t I stay here, until I go home?’
‘It’s simply not practical to have officers here around the clock. The women’s refuge is totally safe.’
I want to go home.
Why don’t they just arrest him?
Make him go away?
Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
They don’t know what they’re dealing with.
Who they’re dealing with.
I say nothing.
‘We have n
ot yet located the whereabouts of Mr Gareth James. As soon as we can locate him . . .’ she says, tailing off at the end of the sentence.
He could still be here.
You know I’ll always find you, don’t you, babe.
I wish I could just disappear completely.
‘You’ll be going to the new women’s refuge in Regent’s Park. It’s totally safe. You’ll be safer there than anywhere else, even here, Clare. We’ll escort you in a taxi. You can trust me,’ she says, putting her hand on my arm.
Why do people always do that?
I move my arm away.
It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s him.
I think that.
I don’t say that.
And then I think, actually, I don’t trust you either.
‘How do you know he’s not still here?’ I say. ‘He could be sitting right there.’ I nod towards the door.
‘Celia, your caseworker will come with us in the taxi and settle you in. The doctor says you are fine to go, provided you don’t feel too woozy.’
I wish she’d go away.
I wish they’d all go away.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t be woozy if they hadn’t knocked me out.’
‘You were in a very agitated state, Clare. It’s standard procedure for patients who are agitated.’
It’s standard procedure for people to get agitated when they think they are about to get murdered.
I didn’t say that out loud either.
The caseworker, Celia, knocks on the door and looks through the windowpane.
‘Good night?’ she says, hopefully.
Like it will make her day if I’ve had a good night.
Fake.
I nod and look away.
‘Ready to go?’ she says, looking at DS Clarke. She looks at me. ‘I’ve brought you some things to wear,’ says Celia, holding up a navy fleece and some trainers. ‘I think they’ll fit. You can give them back to me when you’ve got your own things. If you tell me exactly what you want, I can go over to your house and pick them up if DS Clarke says I can. Do you have a key?’
