Текст книги "If Snow Hadn't Fallen"

Автор книги: S. J. Bolton

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

7

‘I KNOW HOW she got out.’

I must have jumped a foot in the air. The street had been empty. I’d climbed down the steps to my front door – very gingerly, they were steep and narrow even without a covering of snow – and had been about to slip the key into the lock. Instead, I stepped back and looked up. Above me, peering over the railings a little like Juliet on her balcony, was the pale, pretty face of a young boy.

‘Barney? What are you doing? You’ll freeze to death.’

‘I saw you in the park,’ he told me. ‘I watched you climb in. I saw her, too. I know how she gets in and out.’

I walked back up the steps. Barney was wearing shoes but no coat. I didn’t know him well – I make a point of not knowing anyone well – but I knew he lived with his father in the house next door. I had the impression that they owned the whole house, rather than a part of it, and just let out the basement flat. Just the two of them. No mother that I knew of.

‘You saw me just now?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘My room is at the top of the house,’ he said. ‘At the back. I saw you climb in and look for her.’

I wondered whether the officers carrying out door-to-door enquiries had thought to talk to children.

‘Barney, can I have a quick word with you and your dad?’

‘Dad’s not in,’ he told me. ‘He had to work late. You can talk to me.’

Not as easy as Barney might think. I couldn’t talk to him alone, either in his house or my flat.

‘Look, just stand inside the doorway so you don’t get wet,’ I said. He did so, and I stood on the step outside. ‘You said you know how she gets in and out,’ I added. ‘Does that mean you’ve seen her before?’

He nodded. ‘I think so,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t be sure, because until the snow came it was too dark in there, but I’m pretty certain I’ve seen someone moving around. It’s always the eyes you notice, in the dark. And cigarettes, sometimes, although she never has a cigarette.’

There was something about the thought of this young boy watching eyes move in the dark that I found rather creepy.

‘So how does she get in?’ I asked him.

‘There’s a missing railing,’ he told me, without hesitation. ‘It’s the twenty-first along, counting from the north-eastern corner. I can only see the missing spike from my room, but I’ve been down to look and the whole of the railing is missing. No one big could get through, but a kid or a lady could.’

‘So why didn’t I see it?’

‘It’s behind some bushes. You can squeeze past the missing railing, through the bushes and you’re in.’

‘Any idea how long she’s been coming to the park?’

‘I’ve only noticed her a couple of times,’ he said. ‘She looks sad, doesn’t she?’

‘She certainly does,’ I agreed.

‘Do you think she was anything to do with what happened there? You know, when the man got burned?’

A horrible thought struck me. ‘Barney, did you see that?’

He shook his head. ‘I was downstairs with Dad, watching TV,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know anything was going on until we heard the sirens. Dad wouldn’t let me go out to look.’

‘Quite right too.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Look, is he back soon? It’s getting quite late for you to be on your own.’

Barney’s eyes fell away from mine. ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘I’d better go in now. Bye, Lacey.’

I watched him close the door and heard the lock turn. I didn’t like the idea of him being on his own, but on the other hand, I’ve never imagined it’s easy bringing up a kid alone. And he seemed a bright, sensible boy. On a whim, because I really make a point of not getting involved – with anyone – I scribbled my mobile number on a square of paper, along with a note. Call if you need me. I pushed it through his door and turned back to the street.

I was on edge after my adventure in the park, still jumpy, alert for anything out of place. Otherwise, I might not have noticed the man on the other side of the road, some seventy yards away, watching me.

Five foot eight or nine, medium build, in jeans, boots and a dark, padded jacket, with a hood pulled up around his head. Although I could tell he was looking my way, I couldn’t see his face. His hands were tucked into his pockets and he stood half hidden inside a doorway, clearly trying not to be seen. He might have succeeded had his jacket not had triangles of a lighter-coloured, fluorescent fabric on the shoulders and cuffs. It wasn’t a jacket I remembered from the night of the murder, but people can have more than one jacket, can’t they?

I started to walk towards him, reaching in my own pockets for my warrant card and radio, but a second after I moved, so did he, stepping out of the doorway and heading off towards the main road. I picked up speed, he did the same. He reached the corner and turned. I was too far behind but I carried on, making my way through the snow as best I could. I got to the main road, but even with all the snow, there were still too many people around. He’d gone.

8

THE NEXT DAY I went to consult my plastic surgeon, which, in all honesty, is not something I ever thought I’d say. But in the midst of the Ripper investigation, I’d been at the centre of an attempted apprehension of a suspect in the early hours of the morning. On Vauxhall Bridge, he and I had had a difference of opinion about the wisdom of plunging into the Thames. He’d won. His victory, though, was short-lived and his body had been pulled out of the river by the Marine Policing Unit some days later. I fared a little better, managing to cling to some lines and be fished out like floating jetsom. For weeks afterwards I looked like the loser of a prize-title fight, and, specifically, my nose had been broken just above the bridge. As it had happened in the line of duty, the Met was paying to get it put right.

Mr Induri sat me down, shone bright lights, poked something long and sharp up both nostrils and took photographs from so many angles I wondered if he’d missed his vocation as a portrait photographer. Finally he projected one of the shots on to a white board behind his desk and picked up a felt-tip pen.

‘I like to take a conservative approach,’ he said, redrawing the outline of my nose in a thin black line. ‘When I work on a nose, I want the end result to be the patient looking better, not different. In your case, we’re largely trying to sort out some damage and get back to where we were before. Is that fair?’

I agreed that it was, and then he asked me if I was involved in the investigation into the Aamir Chowdhury murder. I nodded warily.

‘I knew Aamir,’ he said, adding a few curves to the end of the nose. ‘He was doing a rotation with me here when it happened. Have you made any arrests yet?’

This was the first time I’d come across someone who had actually known Chowdhury. I’d been aware that he worked at St Thomas’s, but it’s a big hospital.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen. And the investigation is still ongoing, I’m afraid.’

As Mr Induri stepped back to consider his line-drawings from a different angle, something made me ask, ‘Did you know him well?’

‘Rhinoplasty is a mixture of science and art,’ he answered, drawing more lines around the nose on the white board, as though the subject of Chowdhury had never come up. ‘The nose has to work. Fitness is very important to you, I see that from your file. You need to be able to breathe easily and well.’

I agreed again. Since my nose had been broken, it had been difficult to keep up my usual regime of exercise. The oxygen just wasn’t getting through the way it used to.

‘Aamir kept himself to himself,’ said Mr Induri. ‘Young men from devout Islamic backgrounds often do. No one seems to have known him too well. But he was intelligent and hard-working. Always very polite. And respectful – towards the patients as well as his colleagues. It was a dreadful thing.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Especially for his family.’

Mr Induri placed his hands on his hips, looking from my face to the one on the white board. ‘Unimaginable,’ he agreed, before bending forward at the waist, removing his glasses and peering at me. ‘This is not just about science. A surgeon needs a good eye,’ he said. ‘You need to know what looks good. I like to think I know what looks good.’

‘I hope so,’ I said, as he turned from me once more. ‘I think I saw his sister last night. At the park where it happened.’

Mr Induri nodded. ‘Yes, I think he mentioned sisters,’ he said. ‘And brothers, too. I got the impression of a large family. Now, we can smooth out these bumps and ridges fairly easily. The scarring will be around the nostrils and not noticeable after the first few weeks.’

I didn’t want to think about scars. ‘Did you ever meet any of his family?’

‘No. I think I saw a lady waiting for him outside one day – she could have been a sister … We’ll have to take some tissue from your scalp and maybe even some cartilage from your ear, so there’ll be secondary healing sites, but nothing to cause us too much concern. What I would really be tempted to do, in your case, is make it a bit longer. Can you see? ’

I looked again at the picture on the wall. Mr Induri had extended the length of my nose by roughly a quarter of a centimetre, giving something to my face I didn’t think I’d seen before. Then he flicked photographs to a profile shot and started drawing again.

‘You’ll now have perfect classical proportions,’ he said. ‘Before, you were a tiny bit snubbed. Now, perfect.’

As I left the hospital, I realized I had to talk to Aamir Chowdhury’s sister, if indeed it had been her in the park the previous night. And also that I’d just agreed to spending several thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on giving myself a bigger nose.

9

‘I’M NOT SURE, Lacey. Any suggestion that we’re being insensitive could reflect very badly on us right now.’

‘I know. Which is why I need something from you. Something new to talk to them about. And I was with him when he died. It’s natural I would want to visit them at some stage, isn’t it?’

‘We’re on a real knife-edge with this one. Maybe I’d better come with you.’

I hadn’t told DI Tulloch that I was in my car at the end of the street where Aamir Chowdhury’s family lived, that I was seconds away from knocking on their door. I wasn’t even sure what I hoped to gain. I just knew there was something odd about the woman in the park and that odd things were always worth following up. Tulloch had agreed with me that it was unusual, but was nervous about my going to visit them alone.

‘Ma’am, no disrespect, but you can be a bit scary at times. And this girl could be very young. No one’s scared of me.’

‘Well, I’m a long way from agreeing with you on that one. OK, it’s worth a go. What are you wearing?’

Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Trousers,’ I admitted, ‘but otherwise pretty respectable. Shirt, sweater. Do I need a headscarf?’

‘No, you’ll be fine. Just be modest and respectful. Can you manage that?’

Given that she was on the end of a phone line and couldn’t see me, I allowed myself to bristle. ‘It’ll be a push, but I’ll give it my best shot.’

‘Ring me the minute you’re done.’

An evening meal was being prepared as I was led along the narrow hall of the Chowdhury house. I’d removed my shoes just inside the front door; one of Tulloch’s last-minute pieces of advice had been that domestic cleanliness is very important to Muslims. The young man in his twenties who’d answered my knock had taken my coat.

Somewhere in the house I could hear a television set, then silence and the opening of an upstairs door. I had a sense of the house coming together, of it focusing on one common point of attention. Me.

I followed the man, who I assumed was Aamir’s younger brother, into a large open-plan kitchen that was largely Western in décor and awash with floral prints. There was one painting on the wall, of a scene that I thought was probably Mecca, and several framed verses in Islamic calligraphy. Otherwise, only the bookshelves which covered the wall around the fireplace hinted at the Asian ancestry of the room’s occupants. And the occupants themselves, of course.

There were no photographs anywhere.

As I appeared, a man in his fifties rose to meet me. He’d been sitting in a chair by an open fire, reading a newspaper. He folded it carefully and inclined his head before stepping forward and holding out his hand for me to shake.

‘I’m Hassam Chowdhury,’ he told me. ‘Detective Flint, is that right?’

I would hardly have known him for the semi-crazed, grief-stricken man I remembered from the park. This man was traditionally dressed in loose cotton trousers and a long pale-brown tunic. He wore a knitted cardigan in deference to the cold, but it didn’t seem at odds with the rest of the outfit. His hair was cut short, his hairline receding, but there was no grey in his beard. He was tall and well-built, and every movement he made seemed considered and precise.

I heard a sound behind me and turned to see another man enter the room. Early thirties. Traditionally dressed. Bearded. This would be the eldest son. Aamir had been the second son.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr Chowdhury,’ I said, before turning towards the women in the room. ‘For all your family’s loss.’

The women barely acknowledged me, continuing with their food preparation. I could smell lamb, frying onions and something sharp that was making the insides of my nostrils twitch. The kitchen was a little old-fashioned. Several dozen gleaming copper pans and utensils hanging from the ceiling gave it an exotic appearance, as did the tied bunches of dried herbs interspersed among them.

There were four women. The short, plump lady in her fifties I recognized as Aamir’s mother. Another, who looked much older, was presumably Mrs Chowdhury senior. A woman in her mid twenties was chopping dried apricots, and the youngest, still a schoolgirl, sat at the table, books spread out in front of her.

All four wore traditional Pakistani dress: flowing trousers and embroidered tunics, headscarves that had been allowed to fall loose around their shoulders. I paid particular attention to the two younger women. The one standing might be tall enough to be my woman in black, but I wasn’t sure. She had a thin, proud face and a long, slender nose. Her eyes, when they looked into mine, were black and impossible to read. The younger girl never once looked up.

Mr Chowdhury motioned that I should sit down and I took the armchair on the other side of the fire. All the time he and I were talking, the women carried on with their work. Their movements were slow and quiet. They said nothing to each other. I knew they were aware of every move I made and every word I said.

‘You have something new to tell us?’ Mr Chowdhury asked.

‘It’s only a small thing, but we thought you would appreciate knowing,’ I said. ‘The masks that were found on Union Street, which we believe were worn by your son’s attackers, have been examined by our forensic experts and we’ve just had the report back. On one of the masks, they found very small traces of DNA.’

The reaction was muted but clear. I sensed the two sons moving behind me. Their father seemed to lean a little closer.

‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t take us much further forward at this stage,’ I went on quickly, because Tulloch had drummed it into me that I must not give them false hope. ‘I don’t know how much you know about DNA, but it doesn’t always give the certain answers that people seem to expect.’

One of the sons said something in Urdu to the other.

‘Meaning?’ asked the father.

‘Because the five men we arrested that night are all known to the police,’ I went on, ‘we have their DNA on record. It’s been standard procedure for some time when people are taken into custody. I’m afraid, though, that we haven’t been able to establish a match between any of them and the DNA we found on the mask. We’re sending it back to be examined again. We may find more a second time. On the other hand, it could have come from someone completely unconnected with the attack. The person who sold the masks, for example.’

Mr Chowdhury nodded his head slowly.

‘The reason we wanted you to know,’ I said, ‘is that if news gets out that we’ve found DNA and not brought any charges, people could get very angry. The general public seem to equate DNA with cast-iron proof. Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘There is another reason why I wanted to come here this evening,’ I said. ‘I was in the park the night your son was killed. I live very close by and I was on my way home when I heard the call from our Control room.’

The man visibly stiffened. ‘You were the off-duty police officer we heard about?’

I agreed that I was. ‘I saw your son’s attackers,’ I went on. ‘As far as we know, I’m the only witness of the attack itself and it’s largely my fault that the police don’t have a better description of them. It was dark and it happened very quickly, but I wanted you to know how sorry I am about that.’

‘Your sorrow does not bring my brother back. And it does not compare to ours.’

I turned to face the son who’d spoken. The youngest – and the only one not wearing traditional dress. ‘I know that,’ I said.

‘You put the flames out,’ said the father, and I was glad to turn away from the accusation I could see in his son’s eyes. ‘And you put water on his burning skin. He would have suffered much more had it not been for you.’

For a second the man’s pain shimmered across his face. He almost seemed about to break down again, to scream the way he had in the park. Then it was gone.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,’ I said. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer.’

I got up and took a card from my pocket. ‘If you need to contact me at any time,’ I said, leaving it on the table. I avoided looking at any of the women, but I made sure the card was close to the girl doing homework.

‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ I said, just before I left the room, ‘was your son engaged to be married?’

All movement in the kitchen stopped.

‘Why do you ask?’ said Mr Chowdhury.

‘I know he didn’t live here with you,’ I said, ‘and I understand that’s quite unusual in your culture. I just wondered if he was preparing to be married.’

‘My son was a doctor at St Thomas’s,’ he replied. ‘He worked on call and had to be within a twenty-minute journey of the hospital. He used to say that it made very little difference, that my wife and my daughters were round at his flat so much that it never really felt as though he’d moved out.’

I risked a smile, and saw it returned. He made a strange, old-fashioned, Eastern gesture. I’d never seen it before, but it had the feel of a blessing about it. As I left, I turned to the mother one last time. She met my eyes with her large, brown ones and I had a feeling that however long I stood there, she would continue looking back.

‘I don’t know, Ma’am,’ I said over the phone to Tulloch a few seconds later. ‘I left a card behind so they can contact me if they choose, but you were right, it probably was a waste of time.’

‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘There was something I should have mentioned before, but I just didn’t think of it. I tried to call you back, but you must have put your phone on silent.’

I pulled my phone out. Sure enough, one missed call from Tulloch.

‘The Chowdhury family are Pakistani in origin,’ Tulloch went on. ‘Both parents were born there. But the burka isn’t traditionally worn by women from Pakistan. There are a few exceptions, but it’s generally women from the Arabian countries – you know, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran – who cover themselves completely. Whoever you saw in the park last night, we can’t assume it was a family member.’

I hadn’t thought of that and admitted as much.

‘Chin up, Flint, we’ll get there.’ Tulloch sounded a lot more optimistic than I did. ‘We’ve actually got another lead,’ she went on.

‘Oh? Anything you can share?’

‘Let’s just say our prime witness, Mr Karim, isn’t the upstanding citizen he’d have us believe. We think he’s involved in some small-scale money laundering. And he’s very close to the Chowdhury family. It’s not impossible either that Aamir was involved too and they had a difference of opinion professionally, or that Aamir found out and was threatening to blow the whistle. Either way, we’re going to bring him in first thing tomorrow.’

That certainly was a good lead. There had always been something about Karim’s testimony that had struck me as just a bit too convenient.

‘Fingers crossed,’ I said.

‘In the meantime, I’m at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital,’ she said.

‘How is he?’ I asked.

‘Sore, tired, fighting off an infection, can’t stand on his feet for more than five minutes without collapsing, and grouchy as a bear with an axe in its skull. The bad news is, he’s probably going to live.’

He was Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury, Dana’s best friend and my – my what, exactly? I was still trying to work that one out for myself.

‘I’m sure he’d like to see you,’ she said in a casual voice that was fooling no one, least of all me. I’d known Mark Joesbury just three months, and in that time he’d arrested me on suspicion of murder and I’d got him shot. Last time I’d seen him he’d been minutes away from bleeding to death. As had I. I raised my left hand and the sleeve of my coat fell back just enough for me to see the bandage. The wound beneath was healing; skin is pretty efficient that way. Wounds inside were a different matter entirely.

See him? All I had to do was walk through the door of the Chelsea and Westminster hospital, ride the lift a few floors and there he’d be, the man who’d spent most of our short acquaintance believing me to be a cold-blooded killer. He could never know just how close to the mark he’d been. So I could not go to see Mark Joesbury. Not now; probably not ever.

‘You know what, Ma’am?’ I said. ‘I think the Chowdhury family know more than they’re telling us. When I asked if Aamir was about to get married, there was a definite reaction. Do you think he could have been seeing a white girl? That maybe it was a Romeo and Juliet thing?’

‘If he was seeing a white girl, I wouldn’t expect her to be hanging round the murder scene in a burka, would you?’

Well, there was no arguing with that one. But someone was hanging round the murder scene in a burka, and whilst I didn’t yet know why, I had a feeling it was important.