This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  He was not sure he really wanted to pursue this. What had been a vague idea just nagging away in his mind was having to be put into words, and he knew that, as he exposed it to the light of day, it was going to sound absurdly far-fetched. But he had started now so he would make the best case he could.

  ‘That’s your liberal western perspective, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Suppose a couple of religious extremists - Muslims - had decided to clean things up. They kill Yilmaz because he’s a dealer, they abduct – perhaps kill – Amiel because he’s an addict and they take Ceren because she’s behaving inappropriately for a Muslim woman. She wears jeans, doesn’t cover her hair, goes to discos.’

  ‘So do some of the other Muslim women students.’

  ‘Yes, but this is happening to students in this particular class.’

  ‘So, you’re thinking – who?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking Asil and Ahmet, but they’d gone home before Ceren disappeared. So, it would have to be your Iranian guys.’

  ‘Farid and Atash? Oh David, this is absurd. They’re perfectly nice guys.’

  ‘Studying Electronics – learning how to blow us all up, you said. And they were very disapproving of the French boys, as they called them – Laurent and Denis – and their drug habit.’

  ‘Of course they are. They’re Iranians. They have views and beliefs that we don’t share. But that doesn’t make them serial killers.’

  Scott stood up, and shook his head. He knew he had taken this far enough.

  ‘Of course you’re right. I think this case is just getting to me. Too many leads and too little evidence. And the feeling all the time that people know more than they’re saying. Losing the Turks hasn’t helped. But you’re right. It’s crazy. I’m going over to look at Ceren’s room. Do you want to come?’

  ‘If that’s all right. We can walk across – it’s not far. It’ll be easier than trying to find somewhere to park.’

  As they followed the path that snaked between buildings, Scott thought how odd it was that he had so resented her tagging along to look at Laurent’s room, but now having her here was almost comforting. Her thoughts, however, were obviously going in a different direction. Suddenly she said, ‘I’m just thinking, that message - The criminal was executed - it appeared on the board the day after we had a discussion about different types of killing and whether the killing of a criminal was only execution if it was done by the state. It was Farid and Atash who wanted to argue that anyone who killed a wrongdoer could be said to have executed them.’

  ‘You mean, they could actually be claiming responsibility for Yilmaz’s death in that message?’

  ‘I find it almost impossible to believe. They really are nice guys.’

  ‘At least the message only says criminal singular. There’s no implication that anyone else has been killed.’

  ‘No. Though I was thinking if you were right about the punishment idea they could be after the whole class.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we could all be punished for something. There’s me for a start. I don’t live with my husband, and I’m pretty outspoken in class about women’s rights. Then Denis and Desirée live together but they’re not married, Valery lives off the ill-gotten gains of drug-trafficking and prostitution, Irina has run away from her husband – and bad-mouths him at every opportunity. Which leaves just Christiane and Yukiko. Well, Christiane is quite forceful about the treatment of women in the Islamic world – and if you thought she and Yukiko were lesbians, so might others. And that cleans up the class.’

  Scott stopped and looked at her.

  ‘So, we’d better hope I’m wrong, then, hadn’t we? Shall we go in?’

  Hawthorn Hall was one of the original halls of residence from the college’s days as a teacher training establishment. In contrast to the self-contained flats Scott had seen in Beechwood Village, here were long corridors of closed doors leading to cramped study bedrooms. The lighting was gloomy and it all looked as though it could do with a coat of paint. As they headed up the stairs, Scott noticed a communal kitchen at the end of the corridor and put his head round the door. It looked as messy and depressing as any he had known in his own student days.

  Ceren Vural’s room was on the second floor. The door stood open and inside two DCs, one male, one female, were carefully going through the room’s contents.

  ‘Anything of interest yet?’ he asked.

  It was the woman who spoke.

  ‘Doesn’t look like an abduction, sir. No sign of a struggle, all neat and tidy.’

  ‘Anything missing?’

  ‘We haven’t found her wallet or phone. Her toothbrush is still here, though.’

  She pointed to the small wash basin in one corner with a shelf full of toiletries above.

  ‘She may have more than one toothbrush, DC Hart.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A movement in the open doorway alerted Scott and he turned to see Christiane Becker and Yukiko Iwaki standing outside the door, peering hesitantly inside.

  ‘We wondered,’ Christiane explained ‘if you have any news about Ceren.’

  He looked at their anxious faces. They were afraid for Ceren, there was no doubt about it.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘You may be able to help.’

  They sidled in, glancing at Gina Gray as they did so. Scott said, ‘We need to know what Ceren has taken with her. Does she have a bag she uses regularly, for example, and can you see it anywhere here?’

  They looked around.

  ‘Ceren has a shoulder bag,’ Yukiko said. ‘A brown leather bag. I don’t see it now.’

  ‘And she carries her books in a backpack,’ Christiane added.

  ‘What colour?’ Scott asked, taking out a notebook.

  The two young women looked at each other.

  ‘Blue,’ they agreed. ‘Dark blue.’

  The backpack also was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What about clothes,’ Scott asked. ‘Coat and shoes, for example?’

  Yukiko glanced along the garments hanging in the wardrobe; Christiane looked at the hooks on the back of the door. Her coat, they agreed, was missing – a long black wool coat – and her boots, but apart from that they couldn’t say. Scott looked at their wan faces and wanted to comfort them.

  ‘Thank you, girls,’ he said as he ushered them out. ‘That’s very helpful – and hopeful really. It does look as though she planned to go. Did she ever mention anyone she knew in the UK? Friends or relatives?’

  Again they checked with each other, then shook their heads. As they were leaving, Yukiko suddenly gave an exclamation.

  ‘The bedcover,’ she cried. ‘What has happened to it?’

  All six occupants of the little room turned their eyes to the bed, which stood neatly made up with a matching blue duvet cover and pillowslip.

  ‘The bed has a cover,’ Yukiko explained urgently. ‘A blanket with patterns – checks. Like Scottish pattern.’

  ‘Tartan?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Yes. Tartan. It covers the bed to sit on in the day.’

  As she and Christiane left, Scott said, ‘On second thoughts, I think we’ll fingerprint this room. And we’d better get prints from those two’- he nodded at the open door – ‘for elimination.’

  The two young DCs exchanged glances and then looked at Scott. A missing blanket, they knew, was not such good news. A blanket was what you used to wrap an unconscious or trussed body. Scott looked at Gina Gray and saw from her face that the implications were not lost on her either.

  17

  SATURDAY: Future Perfect

  We are off to a wedding. Given yesterday’s events, I felt, last night, that this was the last thing I would want to do today, but this morning the sun is shining and, in spite of everything, I am looking forward to it. This is not just any old wedding, you should understand, but a grand performance in the Abbey – possibly the Marlbury Social Event of the Year. I am amazed that we have been invited, and rather touched, actually. Th
e bride, Sophie, is the daughter of an old school friend of Andrew’s. Her younger sister, Belinda, was a contemporary of Ellie’s, so we saw a lot of one another when the girls were small, and they all went to Lady Margaret’s College – the girls’ equivalent of Marlbury Abbey School, though neither so old nor so distinguished, of course. Although you have heard me complain about the level of financial support he has given the girls, I can’t fault Andrew in the matter of school fees. Well I can, of course, because I’ve always worked in the state system and I think it would have done fine for our girls, but Andrew finds no conflict between his radically egalitarian professional values and laying out huge sums of money to buy his daughters a head start in life.

  Since Andrew and I split up, the girls and I hang on rather half-heartedly to this élite social world, and many of Andrew’s friends would be happy to see us drop off the edge, especially since Freda’s unscheduled arrival, but Sophie’s mother – bless her – has stayed a true friend and has invited us all to the wedding. If we can take the raised eyebrows, they won’t bother her. Andrew was invited too, of course, but he is in Venezuela, so we are going unchaperoned.

  I have an outfit: a midnight blue silk suit, bought in the Jaeger sale last year for the annual graduation ceremony at college and for just such occasions as today. I am teaming it with a red velvet rose pinned to my bosom and a floppybrimmed red hat. I was tempted to go for red shoes but I resisted. The shoes are navy and the bag matches. Those who are familiar with my usual sartorial style will find all this very remarkable.

  I have not discussed with the girls what they are going to be wearing: I never see Ellie for long enough to discuss anything and I know that any attempt to guide Annie as to what to wear will result in her appearing in ripped jeans and safety pins. I am quite anxious about what she will dress herself in but I’m acting casual and may be fooling her. She comes down to breakfast in her pyjamas, so that gives me no clue, but she appears again twenty minutes later looking, well, lovely, really.

  She is wearing a pale grey linen suit that I bought her, with a very bad grace, last summer. Marlbury College offers a three-day Introduction to the World of Work course every summer to post-GCSE students and I got one of Lady Margaret’s snotty letters informing me that my daughter would be attending and asking that I ensure that she dressed in a manner appropriate to a work environment. I suggested to Annie that she should go in a boiler suit or an overall but she wouldn’t play ball. It had to be a suit. We spent a fractious afternoon in the boutiques of Marlbury and eventually found the pale grey effort. She has never worn it since and I had written it off, but here she is, looking cool and elegant, her hair neatly coiled, footwear other than trainers on her feet and a challenging scowl on her face.

  ‘Nice,’ I say casually and go up to change myself.

  Ellie arrives breathless as usual and looking alarmingly inappropriate in a scarlet dress with tiny spaghetti straps over the shoulders.

  ‘Won’t you be cold, darling?’ I say and I listen to myself and think what a bore I am.

  It’s not the cold that worries me, of course, though it is a brisk March day and Annie and I are going to be chilly even in our suits. What worries me is that her outfit screams You all think I’m a scarlet woman so I might as well look like one.

  ‘I’ve got a raincoat in the car,’ she says.

  Oh fine. A scarlet woman and a tramp then. We tussle for a bit over my lending her something to wear over the dress while Annie rolls her eyes and jiggles Freda half-heartedly in her buggy. None of my jackets will be any good because anything big enough to accommodate my bust will swamp her, but I find a beautiful cream pashmina shawl, hardly worn, brought back from his travels by Andrew in the days when he still brought me presents. She takes it, slings it nonchalantly over one shoulder, and we set off.

  I have decreed that we walk down to the abbey: there’s nowhere to park nearby and we shall get oil on our clothes if we go in Ellie’s car. I push the buggy because Ellie can’t manage both it and the pashmina in the stiff breeze. We turn a few heads and I must say I’m rather proud of my little entourage. We are all blond (I’m pretty dusty these days but look good enough under the red hat) and the girls have their father’s height: they are leggy and willowy. Freda, I should tell you, is probably the best dressed of us all. Ellie may have got her own clothes wrong but she hasn’t put a foot wrong with Freda, who is wearing a little red coat (a Christmas present from my mother), a white furry bonnet, red mittens, white tights and heart-stoppingly tiny red shoes. We look good.

  The atmosphere is muted outside the abbey: people are stiff, self-conscious still in their best clothes, anxious about their hats, which threaten to fly away, and not yet loosened up by emotion and champagne. A phalanx of tail-coated ushers stands at the abbey door as I approach at the head of my posse. They part, rather reluctantly it seems to me, to let us through, and another greets us inside.

  ‘Which side?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Which side are you?’

  ‘Why? Is there a war on?’

  I hear Ellie snort a stifled laugh behind me. The young man smiles, polite but lofty.

  ‘Are you on the bride’s side or the groom’s?’

  ‘Oh, the bride’s every time, I think, don’t you?’

  And I sail on in. We find a pew with just a couple sitting in it. They smile politely at Freda but I can see that they think their morning is about to be ruined. I usher the girls in and I sit on the end so I can control the exits and entrances. Some people, I note, are kneeling for a little silent prayer; I allow my mind to wander.

  Which side are you on? Weddings are all about union, about coupling and yet nowhere are men and women more sharply divided. Look at the clothes for a start: all that suiting for the groom and his men and nothing but bare shoulders and lacy draperies for the bride and her maids. Every wedding looks set to host the rape of the Sabine women: the diaphanous nothings cry out to be ripped off and the floating skirts and spindly heels seem specially designed to prevent flight.

  Which side are you on? It is the ultimate divide – male and female. Look at what happened in the US election, in the showdown between Clinton and Obama. Race, you might think, was the great divide in American life, the fault line that threatens the stability of everything else Americans may construct, but was it the black presidential candidate who was said to divide the electorate? No, it was the woman. She’s such a divisive figure they said of Hillary Clinton.

  I have nothing against Obama, you understand. If I were American I’d have voted for him, but I did resent the way people talked about Clinton. I heard some American media type on The Today Programme one morning. No man, he said, could bring himself to vote for Clinton, not because she’s a woman but because she reminds him of his Third Grade teacher. Well, let’s unpack that a bit. For a start, are there any Third Grade teachers in the States who aren’t women? Very few, I would imagine, so not because she’s a woman is just a touch disingenuous isn’t it? Then, why should men object to their Third Grade teacher? Most children at the age of eight or nine enjoy school and like the teacher who is opening up the world to them. Could it be that these men look back with horror to their Third Grade teachers because they look back to a time when, God forbid, a woman – other than their mothers, who naturally doted on them – had power over them? Had power and, even worse, may have failed to acknowledge the majesty of their manhood, may possibly have made the mistake of thinking they were just little boys?

  I notice that a woman I know slightly is greeting me tentatively with a little wave. She looks puzzled and I realise that, in the midst of this scene of joy, my face may have inadvertently twisted itself into a rictus of rage.

  It is a nice conventional service and Freda behaves very well through Morning has broken, The Marriage at Cana, Speak now or forever hold your peace, The Vows and 1 Corinthians 13 (and the greatest of these is love). While they are signing the register, we sing Love divine, all loves excelling and she
gets a bit restive, so I take her outside. A little crowd has gathered, drawn by the line of limousines waiting to whisk the principals away to the reception. They look at me disapprovingly, I think. Maybe they’re just disappointed because I’m not the bride, or maybe they think I’m Freda’s mother and they’re shocked by my antiquity.

  My own mother was quite old when I was born – thirty-eight, which was old for her generation. She was a GP in a single doctor practice and it seemed to me that she worked all the time. I don’t remember her showing any sign of feeling guilty about my solitary weekday teas and lonely school holidays: she certainly never overcompensated with treats and cuddles as I did with my children. It disabled me, I think, as a working mother, my own lonely childhood: I knew what it cost a child to lose its mother to work.

  Her patients adored her, of course, and I was constantly told how wonderful she was. It occurs to me only now, as I’m telling you this, that she was like Andrew in this respect. Having spent my childhood in the shadow of a mother who gave generously to all and sundry but hadn’t much left for me, I chose a husband who was just the same. How’s that for stupidity? Interestingly, my mother took Freda’s arrival without a blink. Since Ellie was studying Drama, which her grandmother considers the academic equivalent of cordon bleu cookery, she wasn’t bothered about her dropping out of university and simply embraced the biological pleasure of a great-grandchild.

  At the reception in a blue and gold marquee, the girls quickly disappear to join the young, taking Freda with them to be petted and admired. I paddle about in the social shallows for a bit, sipping my champagne and exchanging passing pleasantries without getting drawn into joined-up conversation. I make people here nervous, I know: many of them have known Andrew longer than they’ve known me, but they don’t like to ask after him – or indeed to ask where he is. I suppose they imagine he hasn’t come because I’m here. And then they don’t know what to say about Ellie; nor do I, if it comes to that.

  Eventually, I accost Tom Urquhart, headmaster of the William Roper School, where I toiled for fifteen years. He was toiling in those days too, an eager young history teacher on a mission. He stayed with it when I got out, and he got his reward. He looks horribly grey and he’s sipping mineral water but he greets me with a hug and we find ourselves a couple of spindly little gilt chairs to sit on. We get through the preliminaries – work, children – and then he says, ‘You’ve had a murder on your patch, then?’