by Stav Sherez
Geneva made illegible notes, acronyms and names skipping by her like station signs through a train window. She knew she’d need to get a handle on some of this material later and kicked herself for falling into the professor’s soothing tones when she was supposed to be interrogating him. ‘And how was her work going?’
‘She was having problems these last few months,’ Cummings admitted, looking down at the table. ‘She kept coming to see me, tearing out her hair, wanting to give it all up.’
‘What kind of problems?’
‘She was a perfectionist. She kept criticising her own work, much more than I ever did. She wanted it to be perfect, to take account of everything. She thought that if she had all the facts about a given subject, the answer would be bound to reveal itself.’
Geneva nodded, thinking back to her own time at university and to how similar Grace’s ideas were to hers concerning police work.
‘But it doesn’t work that way,’ Cummings continued. ‘We can never have all the facts. There’s too much information and it’s constantly changing. And even if in some way you could gather all the information, it wouldn’t necessarily lead to an answer. I tried to explain to her that undergraduate work was about realising this. Finding the limitations of your methodology. It’s more about unlearning than learning‚ but Grace had a hard time with this. To be honest, most of our international students do. They come to London expecting certainty and accuracy and we tell them it’s impossible, a chimera.’
‘Did Grace have any arguments? Any falling outs?’ She remembered her own days at university, the heady shuffle of people, late-night discussions fuelled by booze and slogans, the shouting and placard waving. She watched as Cummings took a moment to think it over.
‘Most students like to take a bite out of us former colonisers, the white man,’ he replied without a hint of irony. ‘Grace wanted to take modern African leaders, the modern African system, to task. She wasn’t interested in colonialism or its after-effects.’
‘Did that get her in trouble?’
‘Occasionally. I remember one day at the refectory, I was sitting at a table with Grace and some of her friends. They were having a debate – no, it was an argument really. One of her fellow African students harangued her for going after black men. Said their job wasn’t to attack their own but the white man. It got quite heated for a while until another friend calmed them down. But these are students, Miss Miller, they get heated over which brand of coffee the canteen uses, if there are too many black cleaners in the building. I’m not sure this has anything to do with what happened.’
‘Everything has something to do with what happened, Professor, we just don’t know it until we have all the details.’
Cummings shook his head mournfully. ‘You sound just like Grace, Detective. I’m sure the two of you would have got along very well.’
Geneva ignored the comment, not sure whether it was intended as rebuke or compliment. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
Cummings laughed. ‘I have no idea. They don’t tell us these things. She was a very pretty and highly intelligent girl. I would think she had one or maybe several‚ but you’d have to talk to her friends about that.’
Cummings riffled through his notes again but Geneva could see he wasn’t really looking at them, his eyes clouded as if some debate were raging inside.
‘But something changed, right? Something happened?’ She was guessing but she saw him flinch, then shake his head.
‘I don’t know how relevant this is but you say you want to know all the details.’ He took a deep breath as if making some kind of inner decision. ‘The last couple of terms she’d been slipping a bit. Grades down, a few essays not handed in on time. It happens to a lot of students but I never thought it would happen to Grace.’
Geneva felt a blast of heat rushing through her. ‘When was this?’
Cummings thought it over. ‘When she came back from the Christmas break. There was something . . . something different about her.’
‘Different how?’
‘She seemed less communicative, more fervent, I don’t know – maybe I’m just imagining it.’
It was probably nothing, a break-up with a boyfriend, the pressures of work. ‘Did you ever meet her parents?’
‘No. We rarely do. Even with domestic students. She hardly ever talked about Uganda or her childhood. Not to me, anyhow. She was a member of the East African Association but that’s normal for students from her part of the world. Most of them stop going after a year, they start making friends because of shared interests and hobbies rather than history and genealogy.’
‘Drugs?’ Geneva stared at the professor.
‘What, Grace? I very much doubt it. She didn’t even drink. As I said, she was a serious student.’
‘Until the start of this year.’
Cummings nodded. ‘I can only tell you my impressions; I’m afraid they’re probably not worth much at all to you, Detective.’
Geneva stood up and shoved the notebook back in her pocket. ‘They’ve been of more use than you can imagine, Professor,’ she said, watching Cummings stare at the files on his desk. He looked smaller, encased in his chair, buttressed by paper, and despondent too, as if now that the interview was over his last link to Grace had been severed and all that remained would be memories.
She was reaching for the door when he spoke.
‘I’ve just had a thought . . . I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything but Grace’s friend, Cecilia . . .’ He tapped another cigarette on the table, sighing almost silently. ‘Well, we were supposed to have a meeting yesterday to discuss her dissertation but she never turned up.’
8
Grace Okello had not been a hoarder. For someone who’d spent two years in the same tiny flat, she had amassed very little.
Carrigan flicked through the inventory, lining up words and phrases with the objects they described. He glanced up at a poster advertising safaris in Uganda. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he stared at the family of lions in the bottom left-hand corner. He could almost taste the jungle, that deep wet sour stench that was always present. People saw jungles and thought they were places of life, an uncontrollable spurt of growth, but he’d been there and knew that jungles were only about death. Murder was an every minute occurrence. The ground was made of the rotten mulch of leaves and dead insects. The plants had sharp spikes and devious poisons. The animals spent all night either killing or hiding.
He got up and crossed the room, still a little out of breath from his confrontation with Monroe. His hand was throbbing, the flesh swelling around his wedding ring. The ring was too tight against his finger, sized for a younger man, but he liked the constant pressure, the close proximity of the metal which never allowed him to forget.
He stared at the bed, stripped of sheets and mattress, and thought about the nights Grace had slept on it, the lying-awake nights wondering about life, about boyfriends and grades and money. He turned to see Jennings staring at the wall. He followed the DC’s eyes to a small circular pattern of dried blood. The specialists would tell them angles, height, trajectories – but there was no mistaking the stain for anything else. Blood was always blood, but it was also so much more. Blood was evidence of a life interrupted. And blood announced itself. The heart sent it crashing through the veins and arteries and even when those were ripped or violated the heart continued sending fine sprays of blood everywhere, on the wall, clothes, weapons, as if it were the body’s last utterance, a final attempt to point from the grave and avenge its own death.
‘I keep looking at it,’ Jennings mumbled. ‘I can’t stop.’
Carrigan put a hand on his shoulder, felt it buckle under him. How long had he left Jennings in the room by himself? ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘Blood’s like that, it . . . it has a certain attraction. Go talk to the porter. I’ll meet you back at the station.’
Jennings blushed and thanked Carrigan. He took one last long look at the circle of blood, as if hyp
notised, and walked out of the flat.
When Carrigan was finished he let himself out, locked the door and replaced the crime-scene tape. Grace’s possessions would be transferred to the incident room later tonight. He’d detail Miller to go through the reams of papers, the books and notes and graphs he’d found. It was pointless work but it needed to be done and there was something about his new DS that told him she would do a good job. The fact that it would also keep her out of his way was an added bonus.
He knocked on the door next to 87, waited until a Japanese man peered out. He ran through his spiel, flashed Grace’s photo, got bemused head shakes and polite rebuttals. Another door closed, nothing out of place or suspicious, another name ticked off. He’d already detailed some uniforms to do this but he knew he wouldn’t be totally satisfied unless he did it himself.
He spent the next two hours in a repetition of knocking, asking, thanking, leaving. The tenants were on their way to late shifts or in the middle of changing a baby’s nappy, or doing the laundry, the washing-up, the day’s crossword. They scrunched up their faces at the interruption, glanced cursorily at the photo, shook their heads and went back to their lives. He passed through cramped flats smelling of disappointment and loss, through lives lived in small boxes, piled atop each other, work and sleep the only two certainties. No one was interested in why the police were asking about this one girl. Branch had expressly forbidden them to mention that she’d been murdered, knowing how soon this would leak to the press. But with only a photo no one cared, no one thought twice about saying no. There was still a sanctity about murder; people who usually wouldn’t say a word to the police offered up all kinds of evidence and rumour. No one cared if the girl next door was a prostitute or drug dealer but if she’d been murdered then they could be next.
He reached the last flat on Grace’s floor and pressed the buzzer. It was sticky with something, like most of the buzzers, and he wiped his hand on his trousers, thinking of the coffee and cheeseburger he was going to have when this was finished, diet be damned. He could hear the buzzer ringing inside the flat, competing with the sound of relatives arguing, washing machines spinning, TVs blaring and kids screaming. It didn’t surprise him that most of the residents didn’t welcome the knock on the door. Bayswater had always been a place for immigrants fleeing religious persecution, revolution and dictatorship. They took the last of their savings and bought a one-bedroom flat, somewhere they could lock the door, not answer the bell. Huguenots in Paddington and Romanovs in Queensway. Now there was a new breed fleeing civil wars and uprisings across Africa and the Middle East. They lived lives of quiet solitude, sequestered in their flats, not really part of the city, occasionally meeting in émigré groups, rehashing old tales, their eyes always fixed on the door. He wondered if their lives were really better here – safer, yes, but cut off from their own history and culture they seemed to wither like plucked flowers.
The door opened slowly, a centimetre at a time, and a middle-aged woman with straggly grey hair peered at him through the crack. ‘I’m not buying anything.’
He tried for his best smile. ‘That’s all right, I’m not selling anything.’
This seemed to throw her; she stood there looking him up and down, clucking to herself and shaking her head.
‘If I could take a minute of your time, please?’ He showed her his warrant card.
‘You here about the noise?’ she said, letting the door open a further few inches. Carrigan squeezed himself through. ‘I’ve been to the porter but he’s always drinking, doesn’t care about us tenants.’ She stood so close to Carrigan that he could feel the heat of her breath on his neck.
‘I’ll make a note to speak to him,’ he said, looking around the room. There were photos of the last Shah of Iran on three of the four walls. The same photo, different frames, the glass polished and immaculate. The room was neat and ordered, so different from most of the flats he’d seen. Rugs covered the wooden floor, ornaments hung from the bookshelves and windows, pictures of two boys – running on a beach, practising football, play-fighting with one another – were spread across the white mantelpiece. ‘Your sons?’ he said, attempting small talk, but when he saw the expression on the woman’s face he immediately regretted it.
She looked at the photos as if seeing them anew, then shook her head. ‘Once upon a time,’ she replied, her English lilting and accented but strangely beautiful. ‘They disappeared ten years ago in Tehran.’ She stated this as if she was telling him which university they’d gone to, her voice resigned to whatever ten years of not knowing eventually left you with. He thought of his best friend Ben and his two daughters, the constant grief and worry, nights spent up waiting for them to come back home, and he was glad he didn’t have children; there was too much danger out in the world and there was too much awareness of that danger.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
The woman shrugged and offered him tea. He accepted, letting her gather herself together. She came back out of the kitchen with a large brass jug and two clear glasses. The tea looked like molten honey as she poured it from the jug, high above the glass, letting the liquid cool on its way down. It tasted both sweet and bitter in his mouth and he felt the caffeine kick in instantly. He took out the photo and passed it to her. ‘Do you recognise this girl?’
The woman looked at it, nodding to herself and taking a tiny sip of tea. ‘She lives down the corridor, yes. I saw her in the lift many times. What has she done?’
He looked over at the photo of the woman’s kids, thought about the last nine doors he’d knocked on. He was tired of playing Branch’s game. They’d get nowhere if people thought they were after Grace for drugs or prostitution. ‘She was murdered in her flat on Sunday night.’
The woman’s head snapped up and she dropped the photo onto the table as if it were infected. She put a hand to her mouth but nothing came out.
‘We’re trying to find out if anyone saw or heard anything.’
‘She was a good girl?’
The question surprised Carrigan. He nodded. ‘From what we know, yes, she was.’
The woman picked up the photo again, nodding to herself as she stared into Grace’s eyes. ‘Her boyfriend was the troublemaker.’
Carrigan felt the tingle at the edge of his fingers, tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Why do you say that, Mrs . . . ?’
‘Najafi, Golshan Najafi.’ The woman put down the photo. ‘Always arguing, those two, you could hear it all the way across here. The boyfriend he liked to shout. The girl not so much.’
‘You heard these arguments?’ Carrigan moved forward in his seat so quickly he unsettled the tiny glass, sending tea spilling across the table.
She picked up a cloth and started mopping up the spill. ‘Not the words, you can’t make those out, but the shouting yes, arguing all the time.’
‘How can you be sure it was her?’
Mrs Najafi clucked to herself as if the answer was obvious. ‘I stepped outside to tell them to be quiet. I saw this girl and the boyfriend. She always apologised, he just stared at me, those eyes, I felt like I’d been . . .’ She looked down at the folds of her dress.
‘What did he look like?’ Carrigan’s fingers were trying to keep up with the information, the squiggles and crossings in his notebook coming fast.
‘They all look the same to me. Young. Those eyes, like I said.’
Carrigan coughed, wrote something down. ‘Black, white . . . ?’
‘Black.’
‘How young?’
‘Maybe in his early twenties, it’s hard to tell. He wore a dark suit. Always with the fancy suits, that one. I knew he was wrong, a man who does not know how to behave with a woman.’
Carrigan’s clothes were heavy with sweat, the room seemed to be superheated, the windows all sealed with what looked like clingfilm. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’
She poured another glass of tea for Carrigan. ‘Sunday night. That’s why I remembered. When you said that.’
<
br /> He burned himself taking a long sip of the tea, kept his mouth closed and bit down on the pain. ‘Tell me what you heard, Mrs Najafi.’
‘The usual shouting. I just turned the TV louder, then the shouting seemed closer. I opened my door and that man, her boyfriend, was outside the girl’s door banging his fists against it. He was shouting her name, making threats. I closed the door before he could see me.’
‘Did you hear what kind of threats?’
‘He said she was a whore. Called her that several times. He demanded that she open the door.’
‘Did she?’
The woman shook her head. ‘I would have heard.’
‘What time was this?’
She bent down, picked up a TV guide and flicked through the pages. ‘About six in the evening. Come Dine With Me was on. I remember watching the first half, then the shouting started.’
‘How long did it last?’
‘He was out there for about ten minutes, then I heard the lift go. He shouted one last thing, this time he was closer to my door so I heard every word. He said You will pay for tonight.’
The sun was still out as Carrigan finished the last of his espresso, letting the thick liquid roll around his mouth before swallowing. It was almost perfect, bitter yet sweet, thick and full-bodied, the crema lasting till the last sip. He crunched down on a biscotti, sending crumbs scattering all over his jacket, promising himself the diet would start tomorrow. He wiped his mouth, checked his watch and was about to enter St Joseph’s when he noticed something. Too much coffee? Maybe.
A man was standing on the other side of the road staring at him. Carrigan was certain he’d seen him earlier, outside King’s Court. He blinked and when he opened his eyes the man was gone.
