The Keeper

by Jessica Moor

  ‘They won’t like me saying this. ’Scuse me. Not they. Her.’ Angie directed her eyes towards the door and up, towards where they both knew Val’s office was. ‘But sometimes I think you probably do need to go back. Just to be sure.’

  She kept her voice light, like she was talking about double-checking that the iron was really unplugged.

  ‘Will you go back to . . . er, Charlie?’

  Angie gave a smile. Her face felt stretched out, like a sweater that had lost its shape. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so, pet,’ she said.

  Lynne continued to look at her, and Angie felt herself giving in to her gaze, saying a little helplessly, ‘I think sometimes in life you just say to yourself, enough’s enough.’

  ‘But you never really know, do you?’

  Angie folded her arms and settled further back into the sofa. ‘Well, I think sometimes you do know.’ She looked over at Lynne and smiled again. ‘But you don’t know yet, do you?’

  Lynne pulled at a loose yarn in her jumper. It bunched up, then gave way a little.

  ‘No.’

  Angie laughed, and stood up.

  ‘Oh, you will at some point, I’m sure.’

  17.

  Whitworth had never done an interview like it – the way Val seemed to need to valiantly defend and carefully document the absolute absence of insight she had to offer about Katie. It was as if she couldn’t see the girl as anything other than the extended arm of her own vendetta. She seemed to refuse to see the girl as a person, just something to grind her axe on. Yes, she had seemed troubled sometimes – why should she not? It’s troubling work we do here. Had she appeared happy in her relationship? God knows, but if her boyfriend was as useless as most of the young men Val knew, then there was no reason why she would have been.

  She was still refusing to let them speak to the residents. That was, she refused until Brookes asked her, with an assumed innocence that Whitworth had to admire, how it was that she hadn’t known Katie was working under an assumed name, given, he added in a masterstroke, ‘You must surely have run a DBS background check on her?’

  Val went very quiet then, and in a constricted voice she said, ‘We’re on very limited resources here, Detective.’

  ‘Oh, tell me about it,’ Brookes said. He gave a bland smile. ‘Working on a shoestring budget’s nothing new to us in the Force, Mrs Redwood. But . . . and I’m sure you know the legislation and that better than I do . . . but from what I understand, Katie was working around kids, is that right?’

  Val Redwood swallowed.

  ‘Not directly.’

  ‘In that case, I’d have thought – and I’d need to double-check here – but I would assume that having an enhanced DBS check would be a legal requirement. What do you reckon, sir?’

  He turned to Whitworth, who nodded.

  ‘I think you’d be right there, Constable.’ Clever lad.

  ‘It was pending,’ Val said, very quietly. ‘These things can take six months. I’d been advertising this post for nearly a year and . . .’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And my instincts towards Katie were . . .’

  ‘But she was around the children on a daily basis?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Brookes nodded brightly. ‘Pending, was it? Well, that explains that. You weren’t to know. These things can take for ever. Tell you what, we can leave it off the paperwork. Don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about your employment practices, do we?’

  Val shook her head slowly. ‘No.’

  ‘Now, could you bring in the first of the ladies staying here so we can get on with asking our questions?’

  Val said nothing, but stood up from the desk, and nodded. Then –

  ‘We’ve had more nasty tweets, you know.’ Her lower lip seemed to wobble slightly. The effect was jelly-like. ‘Awful things. Bitch. Whore. Slut. You know.’

  Whitworth didn’t know, but he felt he could guess well enough to nod an encouraging, ‘Yes, love, we’re on the case,’ and usher her out with his eyes.

  He waited until she’d left the room to lean towards Brookes and mutter, ‘Well done.’

  * * *

  • • •

  Whitworth was now waiting for Val to bring in the Asian girl who had raised the alarm on the first day Katie went missing. He had been unwilling to start making concessions to Val Redwood, but he had to admit that two male detectives questioning a traumatized Asian girl might not be the most photogenic option.

  ‘We’ll do one-on-one interviews,’ he had said to Brookes.

  Brookes had looked furious for a second but had quickly smoothed his face out.

  It had been something of a relief to give the lad an order after their conversation with Val Redwood – the whole interaction had left him feeling useless. Stupid. He knew Brookes had done a good job. Young talent ought to give him hope for the future.

  ‘Cool,’ Brookes said, and smiled. ‘Totally get where you’re coming from. Don’t want any misinterpretations.’

  ‘Don’t want to frighten this girl,’ Whitworth continued. ‘Especially if she’s been horribly beaten by her father.’

  ‘Brother,’ Brookes said absent-mindedly.

  ‘Father, brother . . .’ Whitworth swatted the quibble away. ‘Whatever. I think it’s best if it’s just me.’

  ‘Anyway, gives me a chance to crack on with my research into “Katie Straw”.’ He used air quotes to sketch his scepticism around the name.

  Police work, in Whitworth’s experience, was like trying to find your away around a town that is made up almost completely of cul-de-sacs, just on the off chance you might find the one road that leads somewhere.

  ‘Are there really no female officers available to conduct the interview?’ Val asked, seemingly as a last-ditch attempt at obstruction. Whitworth had smiled at her.

  ‘None with the appropriate experience, I’m afraid,’ he replied, thinking briefly of Melissa, with her too-tight skirt, back at the station.

  Val had told them in a thorny whisper that the girl had been horribly beaten because she didn’t want to be forced into marriage; that she was terrified – her eyes had opened like a set of blinds at the word – of men. That he must. Be. Sensitive.

  She offered no further direction on what sensitivity was supposed to look like.

  Whitworth had dealt with a few of them in the past. Asians, that is.

  He found that they tended to be tough nuts to crack. You’re not supposed to generalize, but what was a cop’s instinct without the occasional generalization? Besides, it wasn’t as though he thought the closed-ranks mindset was a bad thing.

  It was all about family for Asians, which was bang on the money as far as Whitworth was concerned. Family honour. Most English people didn’t get a sense of things like honour until they were older. Middle-aged, he supposed. The age when you realize family’s all you’ve got.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘I know this is frightening, Nazia,’ he told the girl once she had settled, speaking with as much clarity as he could muster. ‘But we really need to understand what Katie’s movements were that night.’

  ‘I’m not frightened.’ The Brum accent was so unexpected it took all of Whitworth’s self-control not to look around the room to see if someone else was speaking. ‘I want to help.’

  He smiled at her. When his voice came out, he noticed that it was oddly slow.

  ‘Could you tell me when you last saw Katie, please, Nazia?’

  ‘Thursday. Late afternoon. Early evening. Fourish?’

  He gave her his kindest smile. Get her on side, he thought. Make her think you set some store by her judgement.

  ‘Did you notice anything odd about Katie’s behaviour that day?’ he asked.

  ‘Well . . .’ Nazia paused for a long time, pulling the cuffs of he
r jumper over her hands so they stretched. ‘Maybe she was a bit quiet. Not that happy. But she never seemed very happy.’ She shut her mouth sharply and made an odd, reflexive sort of movement, as if to tuck her cropped hair behind her ears. ‘But I don’t know if this is the kind of job that makes people happy.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She mostly just filled in forms. She always seemed tired.’

  Like everyone else in the world, then.

  Whitworth decided that the best approach was to keep looking kind. People tended to have two broad ideas of police officers – the harsh type, and the kind type. With a witness like this, you needed to make them think that you were the kind type, that they were talking to you because they wanted to.

  Perhaps that was what Val Redwood had meant when she told him he had to be sensitive.

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought this was the kind of job you’d do unless you care about it. Like me, being in the police.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe there’s all sorts of reasons you’d want to do it. Maybe it makes you feel better about things.’

  ‘What, working here or working in the police?’

  ‘Both. Neither. I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe it all got a bit much for her.’

  ‘Maybe it did.’

  ‘Did she strike you as a strong sort of person?’ He knew it wasn’t a good question. There was no real aim to it. But he’d said it without thinking.

  ‘I’m not really sure how strong people are supposed to strike you.’ The counterpunching quality in this girl was growing. She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I’m not sure if there’s anything that great about being strong.’

  ‘So . . . would you say that you thought she was weak?’

  It was a dangerous question. A dangling question. Anyone who was observing would say that it implied a value judgement, and value judgements were supposedly a no-no. Which was bollocks, of course, because value judgements existed for a reason.

  He could see that the girl – Nazia? – was considering whether or not to take the bait.

  ‘I think she was normal. I don’t know if that makes her more or less likely to kill herself.’ Then, it seemed, it was her turn to be curious. The veiled look lifted away for a second. ‘Is there a certain type of person that kills themselves?’

  Whitworth remembered that in her culture – he wasn’t sure exactly where she was from, but you could more or less guess – they tended to think of suicide as a sin. A mindset like that didn’t have much wiggle room for the idea of terrible unhappiness. God was supposed to decide when you died, and it demonstrated a certain kind of uppityness to think that you could weigh in on the decision.

  They used to think of it that way here, too, of course, but people had matured out of that idea. Now suicide was a pathology, something that couldn’t be helped.

  In his bones, he felt the answer – yes, there was a type of person, and that type of person was selfish. But you’re not supposed to say that.

  Whitworth wondered how much better he’d be able to do his job if he didn’t have to spend so much damn energy trying to remember all the different things that you were and weren’t supposed to say.

  ‘Yes.’ The yes was supposed to stand for ‘Yes. People who are depressed. People who just need it to stop, need the pain to go away. Suicide is the cure that kills them.’

  A woman like his mother wouldn’t have dreamed of killing herself, not when there was a family to take care of.

  ‘I don’t know if she was one of those people. But I don’t think Katie killed herself, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’

  A feeling. He changed the subject, which made it feel like an embarrassing piece of small talk rather than a police interview on a suicide investigation.

  ‘So, Nazia, you were the first person to notice that Katie was missing?’

  Back on solid ground. The girl was scowling now, resisting. This was good; this meant that he was probing somewhere close to the wound.

  ‘I didn’t notice she was missing, I just noticed she wasn’t here.’

  Jennifer did that manoeuvre sometimes. The truth always had to be on her terms. He wondered if his daughter would ever inspire as much irritation in an older person trying to talk to her as he was feeling now. But his tone remained on track.

  ‘So you weren’t concerned?’

  ‘I just assume everyone else knows what’s going on.’

  It was worth another stab.

  ‘Did Katie say anything to you to indicate that she might not be able to attend her appointment with you?’

  ‘I’ve got no reason to think that there was anything wrong with Katie.’ Nazia shrugged. ‘That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything wrong, it just means sometimes it’s hard to tell. I mean, maybe she was stressed out that day. Plenty of things could have stressed her. That’s what it’s like round here. Doorbell rings and everyone’s heart stops. You hear the gravel crunching and every one of us is thinking, All right, there he is, he’s found me. And that’s . . . that’s the end. Of everything.’ She shifted in her seat and made the odd movement with her hair again. ‘Is there anything else? Can I go?’

  ‘What could have upset Katie. Specifically?’

  ‘I don’t know. Work. Work stresses you out, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And . . . there was a guy that day.’

  ‘A guy? What guy?’

  ‘Just a guy. I don’t know. White guy, I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Didn’t see him.’

  ‘When you say there was a guy . . .’

  ‘Yeah. On the street.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a guy who walked up and down a couple of times.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Dunno. I didn’t see him. Lynne did, though. And Sonia.’

  ‘But he wasn’t doing anything?’

  Whitworth didn’t care to admit it to anyone, but he’d walked past this house a few times over the years and wondered what warranted the small CCTV camera mounted above the door, the expensive padlock on the side gate. The cheap cars outside the swanky house. He’d wondered if it was an old folks’ home, or maybe the territory of a former soap star fallen on hard times.

  Maybe he, too, had stood there, eyes inquiring, hands in pockets.

  Maybe a woman like Nazia had stared back from behind a net curtain, heart thudding.

  ‘Do you think that Katie was a good person?’ Stupid question, he knew, but he was sick of navel-gazing. He needed to crack the thought, to say something out loud.

  ‘Yes.’ There was a look in her eyes he couldn’t put a finger on, a look that he wasn’t used to seeing on faces like hers. Defiance.

  Then Whitworth did something that he didn’t do, something it normally wouldn’t have occured to him to do. He put his hand out and covered Nazia’s with it. She jumped slightly.

  ‘Then keep believing that,’ he said. ‘We all just need to find our way to muddle through the day.’

  She nodded in the kind of way that he interpreted as not agreeing with him, and it seemed that whatever was taking place between them – whether it was powered by the force of confidence or compulsion – had drawn to a close. He became aware of her small stature and the cashew-creaminess of her brown skin.

  The girl was giving him a look he couldn’t give a name to, a look through wary eyes that gave him the urge to fold his arms across his chest and look away, to cut off her gaze. He grunted that the interview was over.

  She stood up, and he felt some odd desire to see her out of the room. Perhaps it was a paternal thing. He wanted to say something kind to her, to tell her that it would be all right, somehow, even though he knew the odds were that for a girl
in her position it wouldn’t be.

  All the more reason to say it, he supposed.

  When he opened the door for her he nearly collided with a tall, bone-thin, colourless woman hovering outside the door. Junkie. The thought was automatic, as was the impulse to tell her to move on.

  ‘What do you want?’

  The woman shrank back, hovered, sidestepped, looking past him to where Nazia’s face was, several inches below his shoulder.

  ‘Nothing, all right?’ She seemed outraged. ‘Just . . .’ Her face sliced into a smile that looked like raw meat. ‘Just wondering where Naz was. Wanted to check on my girl. Hey, Naz. All right, Naz?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Nazia muttered. She hurried past Whitworth and stood next to the junkie. Though separately so fragile, the two of them standing together looked like a wall.

  ‘Cheers,’ Nazia muttered to Whitworth. ‘See you later.’

  He gave a blunt nod and shut the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  Whitworth exited the room a few minutes later, after scribbling a couple of notes. On his way out he asked Val Redwood – who was hovering outside – to call in the next resident. The woman’s features yanked into their habitual scowl.

  ‘I wasn’t aware that, in addition to single-handedly running this refuge, I was also operating as your secretary, Detective.’

  He smiled at her good-humouredly. It was his go-to response for dealing with difficult women. Maureen was wise to it, but Val wasn’t. Not yet.

  ‘We appreciate everything you’re doing, love,’ he said blandly. What he didn’t say, though he was longing to, was How could you not notice that your own employee was using a false name, you stupid, incompetent, blinkered woman? Cutting corners was a bad look for anyone, but it especially grated on him with this drum-banging parody of a feminist, with her red lipstick, her arsey condescension, her sad dead employee.

  Val was looking at him coolly. He smiled at her.

  Nazia had receded into the labyrinth of the refuge. There were endless doors in that building, doors that always looked the same and no doubt opened into the rooms of women who were all the same, the same retelling of the same story.