by Sarah Hilary
‘Did they speak to one another at all?’
‘No. Leastways, I didn’t hear anything. I thought she was going to kiss him. She got up close. Like she wanted to smell the roses. Then he went down.’ Jeanette folded her arms and looked around the room, reciting the next words in a bored, nasal tone. ‘I didn’t see the knife until after. If I’d seen the knife, I’d have rung the police, whatever. It didn’t look like it was going to kick off, but I guess he wanted to take her home, or he was mad at her for being here.’ She shrugged with scorn. ‘He’s big, didn’t need the knife, could’ve carried her out. She probably weighs about six stone.’
‘She stabbed him.’
‘Yeah.’ Jeanette returned her stare to Marnie’s face. ‘How’d she do that? I mean, they’d all like to do it, to whoever put them in here. She didn’t look the type, though, not really.’ She shook her head. ‘I guess that’s why she freaked out afterwards.’
35
‘Is anyone else having a gorilla-in-our-midst moment?’
Jeanette had clocked off. Marnie was in the office, with Ed and Noah. Her thumbs were pricking. There was no news of Hope or Simone. No sightings. Hours of CCTV footage to check, with permissions taking longer than usual to work through the system.
‘Simons and Levin,’ Noah said, in answer to her question. ‘Harvard psychologists. Is that what you mean?’
Marnie saw Ed’s quick glance at Noah and smiled. ‘First-class degree in psychology.’
Ed sketched a salute.
‘So Simons and Levin get these volunteers to watch a basketball game on tape,’ she said. ‘They’re meant to count ball passes. Midway through the game, a two-metre-tall pantomime gorilla walks across the pitch and waves at the camera. In every test, less than half the volunteers see the gorilla. Is that right?’
Noah nodded. ‘Some of them thought Simons and Levin switched the tapes. They couldn’t believe they’d missed the monkey. But they did.’
‘Fifty per cent in every test just . . . didn’t see him.’
‘Her. It was a woman in the gorilla suit,’ Noah said. ‘You think the women here missed something they should’ve seen?’ He paused. ‘Something like Hope meaning to stab Leo?’
‘No way of knowing, but I’m wondering.’
‘Back up,’ Ed said. ‘Hope meant to stab Leo?’
‘It’s a theory we’re working on. Not the only one, but if she meant to kill him and if Simone knew that . . . It’s a motive for them to run, as soon as they knew he was awake.’
‘She told Leo she was living in the refuge,’ Noah said. ‘Why do that? If she’s running now . . . I don’t understand.’
‘The pull of home,’ Ed murmured. ‘I’m amazed Ayana’s held out this long without calling her family. Most women make the call within days of coming here.’
‘We still don’t know whether she’ll give evidence against Nasif,’ Noah reminded them.
‘That can wait,’ Marnie told him. ‘It’ll have to wait. We’ve got two missing women, one of whom might’ve tried to kill her husband.’
The television’s soundtrack was ceaseless. Didn’t the women ever switch if off?
‘What was that about Mab and Shelley’s rings?’ she asked Ed.
‘Mab’s a bit of a magpie. I put it down to the scavenging during the Blitz . . . She’s in the habit of picking up anything the others leave lying around. I’ve asked them to be careful, but . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We usually find the stuff in the chair cushion – you saw her. It’s harmless. The others understand. They’re pretty patient with her, in fact.’
‘Right.’ Marnie stretched, rubbing at her neck. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Ed. These are the worst witnesses I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. None of them knows the value of honesty. They’ve learnt the hard way to deal in other currency. Lies, or platitudes, whatever we want to hear. No such thing as the plain truth. They’ve probably learnt to lie to everyone, friends and family. Doctors. The police. Themselves. They don’t even know they’re doing it, I bet. It’s a survival instinct. A reflex.’
Ed said, ‘I can’t argue with any of that.’
‘I thought the problem we’d have would be keeping them from talking about the stabbing before we took their statements. We kept them apart, we were careful to do that. They hadn’t spoken among themselves before we took statements. Even so,’ she spread her hands, ‘different versions of the same thing. At least . . . Shelley thinks Leo got complacent. That he never imagined Hope would fight back.’
Noah nodded. ‘Simone said something similar, that he gave Hope the knife to taunt her for being passive. A way of marking his territory.’
‘Tessa thought it was simple self-defence,’ Ed said.
‘Yes. And Jeanette couldn’t come up with a reason why or how Hope got hold of the knife.’ Marnie frowned at an ink stain on the pad of her finger. ‘Ayana believed she meant to do it. Her only guaranteed way out, but even so . . . However you cut it, we’ve got five versions of the same thing. Self-defence gone wrong. I suppose they share the same triggers. They didn’t need to talk in order to exchange versions of what they saw. Too much shared experience did that for them.’
‘Yes, it did,’ Ed said.
‘So that means – what? That they’d all like to stick a knife in their abusers?’ Marnie shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. It’s possible to survive trauma without resorting to violence.’
‘We’re not saying they’d do it,’ Noah countered, awkwardly. ‘Just that self-defence would be the obvious inference they’d draw in that kind of situation, given their own experiences.’
‘Self-defence is one thing. Violence is different . . .’ Marnie stopped. She bit the inside of her cheek, checking her phone for messages from the station. ‘It worries me that they want to please us. We’re authority figures. We scare them. Even I was scaring them, and God knows I’m a pussycat.’
Ed said, ‘Ayana wasn’t scared. You said she thought Hope meant to kill Leo.’
‘That’s what she told Noah. Ed . . . you know Ayana better than we do. Should we be giving more weight to her evidence than anyone else’s?’
‘Perhaps. She doesn’t miss much.’ Ed linked his hands behind his neck. ‘She’s hyper-alert when it comes to women, scared of her mother, almost more than she is of her brothers. That might mean she steers clear of other women, from instinct rather than anything else . . . You’re right about currency, about the way these women deal in honesty, or don’t deal. Violence isn’t just something they’ve grown up with; it’s a way of communicating. Fear’s the same, and anger. Even for Ayana. Her mother grew up with rules, violence. She passed it along, her legacy to her daughter.’
Marnie listened for sounds of the women in the dayroom, but the television was like blotting paper, soaking up all noise except its own. ‘No one had anything new to say about Simone. You saw her and Hope together at the hospital – that wasn’t pretence, was it? She really cares for Hope.’
Ed nodded. ‘I’m sure she does, but knowing Leo’s awake, and if it wasn’t simple self-defence? If Hope did mean to kill him and if she admitted as much to Simone . . . I can see Simone wanting to run. It would be instinctive, whether or not she planned it. Her experience of the police wasn’t a happy one.’
‘So where would she go? If she’s trying to hide Hope?’
‘I don’t know. I wish I did. The only places she knows in London are the Bissells’ house and the flat where Lowell kept her. She wouldn’t go back to either of those.’
‘All right. Let’s try something else.’ Marnie nodded at Ed. ‘You should get back to work. This next bit’s for us to sort out.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay. If Simone gets in touch, I’ll call you right away.’
‘Same here. Thanks.’
When Ed had gone, Noah asked, ‘Where now?’
‘The Proctors’ house.’
‘I thought we needed Leo’s permission.’
&nbs
p; ‘We only need his keys.’ She held up a bunch on a fraying key ring. ‘The hospital hadn’t discharged her. We have reasonable grounds for concern over her safety. Let’s see what’s at the house.’
36
Houses said a lot about the people who lived in them. The Proctors’ was a new-build, masquerading as old. Reclaimed red bricks, Victorian possibly, over a modern shell of breeze blocks. Hollow walls, Noah guessed.
This was where they lived, Hope and Leo Proctor, where she ran from.
The house was like all the others in the street, except in one respect. All the windows at the front had slatted wooden shutters. All the shutters were tightly closed. The shutters stole six inches of living space, an extravagance in a house of this size. How much had it cost? And what were the Proctors hiding, or hiding from?
‘They’re never out of the house at weekends. She doesn’t say hello, keeps her head down most of the time. He’s at work all hours. Mind you, lots of families are like that nowadays. I’m not saying there’s any funny business.’ The Proctors’ neighbour, Felix Gill, swilled his stomach back into the waist of his trousers, indulgently. ‘They’re a nice enough couple . . .’ He finished admiring Marnie’s ID and handed it back. ‘No one’s at home, if you ask me. I haven’t seen her in a few days.’ He folded his arms, resting them on top of his gut. ‘She the one you’re looking for?’
‘We’ve come to get a few things.’ Marnie deployed her smile, disarming Gill.
‘I don’t have a key,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I offered, but they didn’t fancy swapping keys.’
‘That’s all right.’ Marnie held up the bunch she’d taken from Leo at the hospital. ‘We’ve got everything we need.’
Inside, the house felt empty. It smelt empty, too. With the recent chill of a place unlived in for a short while. They checked the rooms perfunctorily, before returning to the living space on the ground floor.
The sitting room had the dodgy chic of a showroom: everything arranged to evoke the idea of gracious living rather than its reality. A small sofa with matching armchairs, a low table in pale wood, like the bookcase. Woodchipped walls and ceiling, sisal flooring, rough underfoot but it probably did a brilliant job of hiding dirt and wear. Otherwise, the colour scheme was white, off-white and guano. A television, smaller than the average in a modern household, was screwed to the wall opposite the sofa. DVDs in the bookcase, in place of books. The shuttered windows hid the view of the street; impossible to know if Felix Gill was still out there, watching the house. No plants or flowers. No photographs or pictures.
The room at the back of the house was dressed for dining. There was no other way to describe it. The table had a runner of grey linen with lavender trim, matching placemats and plates, smaller ones stacked inside larger. Fake diamonds the size of a child’s fist were scattered artfully up the runner. One wall was papered with a pattern of purple flowers, aiming for regal but falling short. The back of each chair sported a satin bow, the same colour as the table runner. The room wasn’t camp, exactly, but Noah had been in nightclubs with more restrained decor. He found it hard to believe the Proctors ever used the room, for eating or anything else.
They went upstairs, to the bedrooms. In the front room, a double bed stood under twin prints of fruit on the wall. White bed linen with a silvery throw folded back at the foot. The bed didn’t look slept in, its pillows smugly plump. The shuttered windows leaked light in weak stripes on to the faux wood floor. A mean-fisted chandelier hung from the ceiling, its glass pendants snatching their reflections as they stood at the side of the bed.
‘Take off your shoes.’
Noah glanced at Marnie. She was looking at the smug pillows. ‘I want you on the bed.’
‘You want . . .?’
‘You’re six foot. That’s about Leo’s height. This bed looks small . . . Better take your shoes off before you test it.’
Noah toed off his shoes and lay down with his head on the pillow nearest the door. The bed was at least ten inches too short, his feet dangling past the silver throw. He eyed the chandelier. ‘Maybe Leo sleeps in the other room?’
‘Comfy? The bed.’
Noah shifted, testing both sides of the mattress. ‘It doesn’t feel slept on.’
The second bedroom was the same: an undersized bed in a neutrally decorated room. Marnie ran her finger along the shutter’s wooden slats, inspecting for dust. She didn’t ask Noah to lie on the bed; it was obviously the same model as the first one.
‘Show-house furniture,’ she said. ‘They make it small, so the rooms look larger.’
The bathroom was spotless, all surfaces gleaming. No hair in the plugholes. Black and white towels, fluffy enough to be new, folded in stacks on a pair of white wicker laundry baskets. Showroom toiletries, in ceramic dispensers. Marnie opened the wall-mounted cabinet, exposing an impressive collection of pill bottles and plasters, antiseptic creams, Vaseline. She checked the labels on the prescription bottles. ‘Hope’s antidepressants . . . She stopped taking them because they made her clumsy. She broke a mirror.’ She ran a finger around the cabinet’s mirrored doors. ‘Not this one.’
Noah inspected the date on the pill bottle, and its contents. ‘It doesn’t look like she took many.’
‘No. I don’t suppose Leo liked the clumsiness.’
They went downstairs to the sitting room. Marnie sat on the sofa, inviting Noah to join her. The sofa was big enough for two, assuming intimacy was on the agenda. They disengaged their elbows and stood, looking around the room a second time.
‘Do they really live here?’ Noah wondered. ‘Or is the whole thing just for show?’
‘A marriage is private.’ Marnie walked to the bookcase. ‘That was Hope’s line when we spoke at the hospital.’ She opened DVD cases, looking inside each one before sliding it back on to the shelf.
‘Private would be . . . dirty towels in the bath,’ Noah said, ‘a porn stash under the bed. There’s nothing here that needs to be behind closed doors.’
‘So where do they keep their secrets? They did a good job of covering up the abuse, until now. What was the neighbour’s line? A nice enough couple . . . And Leo was holding down a job. Hope wasn’t saying anything, to anyone, about what was going on here, before the stabbing. I thought we’d find . . . something.’
She looked around the room, shaking her head. ‘Behind closed doors . . . These secrets are buried deeper than that.’ She looked at the wooden shutters. ‘Someone’s cleaned here recently, but not in the last couple of days.’
‘Hope’s been in the refuge longer than that. So unless Leo does the cleaning . . .’
‘He gets someone in. Or he got someone in. To clean up before he went to the refuge, to deal with Hope.’
‘So maybe someone else knows what he was hiding.’
‘Maybe.’ Marnie walked to the rooms at the back of the house.
Noah followed. The kitchen was fitted, and showroom-clean. Slick surfaces, granite. No cups on the draining board. Polished fruit in a bowl on the table. No magnets on the fridge door. No evidence of living. The space smelt of carpenter’s glue, like a stage set.
A knife rack stood by the window above the sink. Noah wondered if the knives were real; everything in the kitchen had the air of a prop, unused. But they were real, he knew that. One was missing from the rack. The knife Hope Proctor had used to stab her husband. ‘What happened to Simone,’ he started to say, ‘in Uganda . . .’
‘It happens here.’ Marnie opened the fridge.
Noah saw cans of beer and a couple of bottles of wine, not much food. ‘Here?’
‘In the UK. In London.’ The fridge gave out a pulse of cold. ‘In the last four years, we’ve had – God knows – well over a hundred calls from girls and women at risk from FGM. Female Genital Mutilation. Last estimate said over a hundred thousand operations had been carried out in the UK.’
‘But . . . it’s illegal.’
‘Illegal to operate. Illegal to arrange to operate.’ Marnie shut the fridge.
‘A hundred thousand operations. Zero convictions. You can imagine how Ed feels about that.’
They shared a bleak look; sometimes this job felt like throwing rice at a house fire. Marnie’s voice had softened when she mentioned Ed. It made Noah wonder if they were sleeping together. He’d been wondering it on and off since Friday. Ed wasn’t just cute; he was smart and serious, and warm and funny. Noah knew what Dan would say: ‘Stop pairing. Not everyone needs a soulmate. Casual sex works for the vast majority of the population.’ When Noah challenged him on this statistic, Dan prevaricated.
‘Come on,’ Marnie said.
They went into the hall. The cupboard under the stairs had a latch on it, locking from the outside. She slid the latch and opened the door.
It was just a cupboard under the stairs, the place people stored their vacuum cleaner, not much room for more than that. Raw stone floor and walls. A smell of damp. And worse.
Noah set his teeth.
Marnie wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘Can you smell it?’
He could: the ammonia stink of a scared animal.
‘Classic abuser’s technique,’ Marnie murmured. ‘Isolate your victim, narrow their field of reference. She doesn’t say hello, keeps her head down . . .’ She looked again at the cramped space. ‘He kept her in here.’
They could both see it. The squeezed shape of Hope Proctor huddled under the stairs, her body folded to fit inside. Door locked from the outside, nothing but her panicked breath for company, and the bruises he’d planted on her.
‘We need to ask Leo some more questions,’ Marnie said inflexibly. She made no reference to her earlier interrogation, or Noah’s criticism of it.
Seeing the hole under the stairs – smelling it – Noah was forced to side with her. He might not like Marnie’s methods, but he couldn’t ignore the implications of the cramped space he was seeing. ‘How’d you think he’ll react to the news that she’s gone?’
‘Last time, he took a knife to her hiding place. That gives us a fair idea . . .’ Her phone buzzed. She checked the display and turned away before taking the call. ‘Marnie Rome.’ She listened in silence, her shoulders up, tension in the nape of her neck.
