This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  There was flurry of activity. Heads turned, someone’s coffee went over, a murmur of conversation started to rise. It was running away from him. Damn Tyler and his bombshell. He couldn’t have told him this before he got started? He’d rip his head off later.

  Questions were being thrown at him.

  ‘Could Yilmaz have been the stalker husband then?’

  ‘What nationality is the passport?’

  ‘Are we running checks on these people?’

  He held up a hand, thinking furiously.

  ‘All right, let’s think about that. It’s interesting, but maybe not that significant. In answer to your question, Paula, the passport’s Russian – show them, Mark – and she’s definitely Russian. I’ve met her and she’s either Russian or a very good actress. The most likely assumption is that she hasn’t changed her passport since her divorce and Yilmaz was her married name. Which tells us that the ex-husband was a Turk and she chose not to tell us that. The names are an odd coincidence, but there’s no way Ekrem Yilmaz can have been the exhusband. Think about it. If she came all this way to escape from him she was hardly going to sit in class with him and say nothing. It’s possible Yilmaz is a name like Smith or Jones in Turkey.’ He turned to Boxer. ‘Steve, check out the ex-husband and see if there’s any connection.’

  As the muttering subsided, he moved on rapidly.

  ‘Now, the glamour of the outfit.’ He selected Desirée’s carefully posed photo. ‘Desirée Bonfort, French, aged 23. Taking a two-year MA in Comparative Literary Studies. Here with boyfriend, Denis de Longueville - over here.’ Again he pointed. ‘He’s 24, studying European Law, and he’s the only one without an alibi for Wednesday night. Says his girlfriend was at the Students’ Union so he stayed in his room all evening – they live on campus – watching television. No law against that of course, but he’s hazy about what he watched. I asked him why he didn’t go to the French film and he said he came to England to improve his English so what was the point of watching French films. He was nervous, though, definitely, the most nervous of all of them. I’m not saying he’s our man but he’s hiding something. We need to dig for connections between him and Yilmaz.’

  He stopped and surveyed the board.

  ‘Then there’s this young woman, Yukiko Iwaki. 23. Doing Women’s Studies. She’s key. Yukiko was on duty in the library on Wednesday evening – they pay students to staff the place in the evenings. She says she saw Yilmaz in the library earlier in the evening but he wasn’t there at closing time. She cleared the library at nine-fifty and closed the main doors at ten o’clock.’ He turned back to the diagram of the library, using his pointer. ‘Then she went out herself through the staff office, here, locked this door behind her, handed the key to the porter in the foyer of the Social Science block – he confirms that - and went over to the SU to join the other girls.’

  He broke off as DS Paula Powell raised a hand.

  ‘Yes, all right, DS Powell, I know - the other women. If you saw Yukiko Iwaki, even you might call her a girl. She’s tiny - weighs about six stone I should think. She certainly didn’t kill Yilmaz. And that more or less leaves us the Turks and the Iranians. These two here, Farid Hosseini and Atash Shirazi, are Iranians, late twenties, studying Electronics. They were both pretty uncommunicative, said they spent the evening at an Iranian Society meeting. All their friends will vouch for them. That’ll be a difficult alibi to break. The interesting thing, though, is that Hosseini came back at the end of the afternoon. The Director of English Language at the college could be quite useful to us, I think. Hosseini went to see her and she persuaded him to come back and talk to me. He told me that Yilmaz was not only an informer but a drug dealer. He got coy when I asked who he sold to, but when I suggested continuing the conversation at the station, he mumbled that I should talk to the French boys. I assume he means Amiel and de Longueville. The Turks were not helpful, absolutely denied that Yilmaz had been spying on them and claimed to have been at home with their families. They’re both early forties and have wives and children with them. Again, difficult alibis to break.’

  He scanned the board for the remaining face.

  ‘And finally, Valery Tarasov. Russian, aged 22, studying International Relations. I have information that his father was killed by the Mafia in Russia shortly before he arrived here, and he’s desperate not to be sent back. He himself wasn’t prepared to confirm this to me, though he did admit that his father died last year. If our dead man was dealing, it’s possible there could be a connection with Tarasov. We’ll need to pursue that. Any questions or suggestions?’

  ‘Any ideas about what Yilmaz was doing in the library after hours, sir?’ Simon Kerr asked.

  ‘Not at the moment. If he was in the library earlier in the evening, it’s possible he secreted himself between the stacks there so he could stay after closing time, but we don’t know what for.’

  ‘Could it have been some sort of terrorist thing, sir, that went wrong?’

  ‘A bit of arson you mean? A plan to burn the place down because it contained un-Islamic books?’

  ‘Maybe someone found him there. Have you thought about the library staff, sir. Librarians are funny about their books.’

  ‘Oddly enough, Simon, I have thought of that. All the library staff are female – not unusual, I gather. We’ll talk to them, of course, but it would be a pretty weird way to deal with an intruder, even if he was brandishing a can of petrol. When we get the SOCOs’ report we’ll know more about what Yilmaz had with him and that may help. Anything else? No? Then Steve, you start running these characters through the computer. Keep their passports till we know what we’re dealing with. Simon and Paula, we’ve put out an appeal for information from students who were in the library that evening, or outside the Student Union, where they’d have a clear view of comings and goings at the library. They may make contact here at the station, but I’ve said they can talk to us at the college. I want a team there to take statements. Anything unusual – anything at all - I want to know right away. There’s an office in the English department they can use. I’ll talk to Irina Boklova-Yilmaz, and to the French boys. Mark, you get a team to check alibis and go through their mobile phone records. And I’d like a word, please, in my office.’

  5

  FRIDAY: Relative Clauses

  My legs are unwilling as I pedal the last uphill stretch of my ride home. Friday night, I tell them encouragingly, Annie’s bound to go out. I’m going to watch some rubbish on the telly with a glass of wine, have a bath, and go to bed with a Trollope (Joanna in this case). I enter the house cheerfully, expecting to have time for a cup of tea and a chat with the cat before Annie gets home, bringing her aura of swirling agitation with her. I smell her presence before I hear it. Cigarette smoke. In the sitting room I find her lying on the sofa, eyes half closed, trainer-clad feet on the arm, a litter of dirty mugs and plates on the floor beside her, a children’s television programme blaring in the corner. I deal with it well, as usual.

  ‘Get your shoes off the sofa,’ I scream. ‘How many times have I told you? And you’ve been smoking. And what’s all this mess? And why haven’t you been at school?’

  She opens her eyes wide and stares at me, contempt oozing from every pore. My sixteen-year-old daughter, Marianne, known to me as Annie and to her friends as Man. She has two modes: one is frenetic, the other passive-aggressive. The latter is in operation today.

  ‘The sofa’s shit anyway. You smoke. The mess is my lunch. I couldn’t do games ‘cos I’ve broken my ankle.’

  ‘What do you mean, broken your ankle? Let me look at it. Which one?’

  She waves a foot, grimacing. I grab it, she protests loudly, I remove the designer trainer and reveal a perfectly normallooking ankle.

  ‘THERE’S NOTHING THE MATTER WITH IT,’ I yell.

  ‘It’s REALLY painful.’ Her voice rises in injured righteousness. ‘They wanted to ring you but I said you didn’t like to be disturbed at work.’

  Oh fine. So
now they have me down as an uncaring mother.

  ‘How did you hurt it?’

  ‘Jumping off a table in Drama.’

  ‘Well you shouldn’t be made to jump off tables.’

  ‘God, Ma. I wasn’t made to – I just did, right?’

  ‘Well if you had a free afternoon, why didn’t you get on with some of your coursework?’

  ‘I was in shock.’

  She mumbles this into the sofa back, so I have to ask her to repeat it.

  ‘I WAS IN SHOCK.’

  And then I start laughing, and I can’t stop. I am hooting with laughter and wiping away tears. I would like to roll on the floor. For a moment I think she might be going to laugh too; there is just a flicker, a twitch of the lips, but she suppresses it and gazes at me with weary pity. I gather up the dirty crockery and retreat to the kitchen.

  Peace breaks out over spaghetti Bolognese and when she tells me it is delish I am really pleased, until I reflect that she probably wants to cadge money for her evening out. We are just considering ice cream for pudding when I hear a familiar sound – the throaty rattle of a small and ancient car that is being driven into the ground. Annie hears it too.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ she says. ‘El wants you to baby-sit.’

  So let me introduce you to Ellie, my elder daughter, who should be in her second year of reading Drama at Manchester but produced a baby last summer and is intermitting while she decides how to juggle motherhood and a student life. The baby’s father is an absence; I’ve not even been given a name. Ellie is sharing a house with friends from school – the jetsam remaining when the smarter crafts sailed off to university and new horizons. They get by with temporary jobs in pubs and restaurants; they’ve always got grand schemes for making money without actually having to do a job.

  Their house is horrible – a grubby muddle. I feel guilty, of course, that she and my granddaughter are living there rather than under my welcoming roof. There is plenty of room in my house and perhaps I am a wicked woman not to suggest it. Mind you, Ellie has never asked. I can terrify myself in the dark watches of the night by picturing eight-month-old Freda crawling round the house picking up E pills and popping them in her rosy mouth, but I have to hold the line. If they lived here, I’d feel responsible: I’d be up in the night to her, I’d be worrying about her nappy rash, I’d be pureeing carrots in the Moulinex because living on tinned food can’t be good for her, and before I knew it I’d be in sole charge while Ellie clattered off back to Manchester. I never really felt I chose motherhood the first time round; I’m damned if I’m going to do it again.

  My former husband, Andrew, thinks I should take on Freda and allow Ellie to get on with university. He says I am being unbelievably selfish, but I’m not inclined to engage with his moral universe. I heard a short story by Anne Enright being read on the radio the other day, in which she referred to someone’s occasional brother. It struck me because that is exactly what Andrew was, even when I was married to him – an occasional husband.

  He is a human rights lawyer (the kind who don’t make any money). Throughout our married life he was away, always abroad somewhere on a fact-finding mission or with a commission or just defending some poor bastard against the power of a corrupt state. Many people think he’s wonderful, and I’m sure he is if he’s the only thing standing between you and cruel and unusual punishment. Our problem, as his wife and daughters, was not just that he was so often absent but that even when he was at home he wasn’t really with us: he was on the phone, on the computer, in the messy little junk room which we grandly called his office.

  Eventually I decided it would be easier not to have him around at all and sued for divorce. It didn’t work out that well, actually. I know he’s wonderful at getting justice for the underdog but he also got himself a very good divorce settlement. When he tells me that I should take on responsibility for Freda, I point out that this would mean giving up my job and that someone would have to pay the bills. I ask whether that would be him. He has paid maintenance for the girls, of course, but Ellie’s stopped the moment she became eighteen and what he pays for Annie barely keeps her in designer trainers. ‘God, Gina,’ he says, ‘you know how much of my work is pro bono.’ I rest my case.

  As I hear Ellie’s car die outside, I go to the front door. She is striding up the front path carrying Freda on one arm and, ominously, a large bag in the other hand.

  ‘Thanks so much, Ma. I think everything’s here. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘Sunday?’

  She looks furiously at Annie, who is hovering uneasily behind me.

  ‘Didn’t you tell her?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘It’s a party. Up in Manchester. I’ll be able to see everyone. You don’t mind do you?’

  ‘A party? For the whole weekend?’

  ‘Oh come on, Ma. You know how it is. Please. I must be allowed to have some fun - occasionally.’

  She thrusts her double burden at me and runs off down the path, calling over her shoulder,

  ‘I’ll just get the buggy.’

  She returns with the buggy, hands it to Annie, plonks a kiss on Freda’s head, blows one at me and is off down the path again.

  ‘You’re not driving to Manchester in that, are you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Ellie –‘

  ‘It’ll be fine, Ma.’

  And she’s off in a screech and a rattle. Freda starts to whimper. I thrust the bag at Annie, who looks resentful and remembers to limp as we trail indoors.

  Annie sets out for the uncertain pleasures of an evening spent trying to look old enough to get into a pub; Freda is consoled with a chocolate biscuit and we sit down to watch EastEnders, which she seems to enjoy until she falls asleep. I carry her upstairs and put her to sleep in my girls’ cot, which is now in Ellie’s old room, then realise that I am covered in chocolate. I take a bath.

  I read a lot of Other People’s Children once I’m in bed. I can’t switch out the light till I hear Annie come in. I know she shouldn’t be out in the pubs at sixteen but it’s what they all do. They know which ones will turn a blind eye and the concentration of teenagers in these drives older drinkers elsewhere. To comfort myself, I characterise these places in my mind as junior pubs. I live in a fool’s paradise, I know. I have given her five pounds for a taxi home, as usual, and as usual she has tucked it into her bra. They don’t take bags or coats with them: in their haphazard night life coats and bags get pinched the moment you put them down, apparently. So they set off into town nakedly exposed and I would be more fearful for her, except that when her girl friends – the posse - come to pick her up and they stride off, laughing, down the road together, they look terrifying. I know their confidence is skin deep, but I’m not sure they do, and I’m pretty sure the boys don’t. So I hope for the best, and soon after eleven I hear a car stop outside.

  From the shouted farewells, I guess the taxi is going on to drop off others, or she’s got a lift, but I shan’t see my five pounds again either way. She puts her head round my door, lit up like a firework, and says she’s had an ace evening and what’s all this about one of my students being killed? I promise to tell her in the morning (though she’s the last person I’d divulge anything to) and I turn out my light.

  It is when I am drifting off to sleep that the words on the board come to me again: If I would kill him, I would be happier. And I am puzzled because that’s a German error, and that makes no sense at all.

  6

  SATURDAY: Investigation Day Three

  Scott woke with Irina Boklova-Yilmaz in his head. Not because she was beautiful, he thought as he surfaced slowly to the knowledge that it was Saturday, certainly not that. She was one of the plainest women he had ever met. Most women in their twenties had something to recommend them but she seemed to fail on all counts: heavy build, pasty complexion, little piggy eyes and that weird red hair. She had sat opposite him, though, so composed, neither aggressive nor nervous, perfectly sure of hers
elf. When she answered his questions, her voice was surprising: low and rich, authoritative. He was almost intimidated. He had asked, with some tact he thought, if she was related in any way to Ekrem Yilmaz and amusement had beamed in her small blue eyes.

  ‘You think he was my husband? No. My husband was idiot but not so much idiot as Ekrem.’

  She pronounced the name ‘Ekrem’, with the stress on the second syllable and it sounded to him more authentic that everyone else’s ‘Ekrem’.

  ‘And your husband is not related to Ekrem Yilmaz.’

  ‘My ex-husband is name Direnç Yilmaz. Ekrem says – said – he knows my husband, that he is far cousin, but I think this is just wind-up.’

  ‘I understand that you’ve had some trouble from your exhusband, Mrs Yilmaz, and that’s why you’re here. Did Ekrem ever threaten to let your husband know where you are?’

  ‘Don’t please call me Mrs Yilmaz. I am Dr Boklova. My exhusband is simply loser, actually. He has no money to travel to UK even he knows I am here. I met him when I was on holiday by Black Sea in 2003. We married soon. You call whirlwind romance. Was big mistake. He wanted me for Russian passport. He thought he could make big money in new Russia, but he was complete failure actually. Now he wants me because I am bread-earner. Now he is street seller or something of that. Sad man.’

  And on the whole he believed her. So that was the end of that line. His talk to Clive Davies, the porter on duty on Wednesday night, hadn’t been any more helpful. Yukiko Iwaki had handed the keys in to him at ten past ten – he had written it in his log. Yes, that was usual; they generally tidied up a bit after the library closed. He had remained in his booth until ten thirty, then had done his rounds, checking the security of the buildings. He was sure the library’s emergency door had been closed; he always checked because people sometimes went out that way for a smoke and didn’t close it properly when they came back. He always checked the main library doors and they had definitely been locked on Wednesday night, as had the door from the library office.