Текст книги "If Snow Hadn't Fallen"

Автор книги: S. J. Bolton

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

19

I’M NOT A good sleeper at the best of times, and this was hardly one of those. After everyone left I dozed, had a few odd, short dreams, and time after time found myself staring at the ceiling, listening for movement outside. At around half past four in the morning, I heard it. The door to the shed was being pulled shut.

I got up and tugged on clothes and trainers, surprised at how calm I felt, but somehow I didn’t think it was the masked men out there. My first move was into the living room to make sure the letter-box was holding firm. It was. A peek through the curtains told me that no one was at the front door. In the conservatory I held my breath to keep the glass from steaming up. Nothing in the garden that I could see. I had my torch. Before venturing out, I was going to shine it into every dark corner. I also had a very sharp knife, the best impromptu weapon I could find. Then the shed door swung open and there was the woman in black, spinning on the spot in a slow, lazy circle.

I watched for a second or two. She hadn’t switched on the shed light, it was almost impossible to make out what she was doing. Twirling? Dancing? The open shed door seemed hardly to bother her. I risked the torch, sending a long white beam across the garden to focus on the rotating dark figure. Whose feet weren’t touching the ground.

I reached her in seconds, but it took valuable minutes to cut her down. She’d lifted the punchbag off its ceiling hook and tied a length of strong, nylon rope in its place. The other end of the rope was tight around her neck. If she’d had some experience of making nooses, I’d almost certainly have been too late. Her neck would have broken the second her body fell. At it was, she was slowly choking to death, her weight conspiring with the rope to cut off air. When I got the rope off the hook we both fell to the floor. At that stage, I had no idea whether she was alive or not, but the rope was still dangerously tight around her neck. I managed to loosen the knot, and in doing so pulled away her veil. Her eyes flickered open.

I looked the woman in black in the face for the first time, saw the shape of her head, her hair, features that I recognized. As she took a huge, painful gasp and began breathing again, everything became clear. I helped her sit, before closing the shed door and putting on the light. I wrapped the duvet around her, sat down opposite on the mat and gave her time.

I knew now, finally, what had been bothering me about the night Aamir was killed. The crowd had been too quick to conclude that the attack had been racially motivated. The angry crowd of Asian men had arrived too soon. We’d been watching a carefully staged performance. Smoke and mirrors. Looking at the photograph on Aamir’s bedroom wall, taken during a dance performance, I’d almost got there. I’d just been too focused on the white woman at its centre. I’d missed what else it had been telling me.

The face opposite mine was Asian, dark-skinned and fine-featured, every bit as beautiful as I’d expected. The form still gasping for breath was tall, slender and agile; the body of a dancer, who could move gracefully across snow-covered ground and climb like a monkey. Only the hair was different to the picture I’d carried in my head. The gleaming, ink-black hair I’d imagined was no more than an inch long over the entire, perfectly formed head. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t realized sooner. The woman in black was a man.

‘I saw your photograph,’ I said. ‘On Aamir’s bedroom wall. I’m so sorry.’

He started to cry then. Soundlessly, his face buried in his hands, he wept for the man he’d loved, and for his own life, which he’d been on the brink of ending. I watched his shoulders rise and fall for several minutes, then I moved closer and wrapped my arms around him. He wasn’t much wider than a girl, but so strong; able to support his dance partner high above his head. This was the man who’d been Aamir’s proposed companion at the Rambert Dance Company, the man who’d shared the double bed in his stylish flat, the secret the Chowdhury family had been ashamed to share with the police.

There is little tolerance for homosexuality among devout Muslim communities. To many it is an abomination, a crime against God and nature, possibly the worst form of disgrace a man or woman could inflict on their family. Aamir Chowdhury had been a practising homosexual and it had cost him his life.

‘Were you there, the night Aamir was killed?’ I asked. ‘Did you see what happened to him?’

He nodded and tried to speak, but it was a second or two before I could make out anything above the sobs. ‘They tricked us into meeting there,’ he got out at last. ‘I got away. He didn’t.’

It had been this man, the key to it all, whom I’d seen running away that night. ‘So you know who killed him?’ I asked next. He let his head drop and rise again in a simple act of confirmation.

‘Was it the five men we arrested?’

Eyes the colour of oiled chestnuts gleamed back at me. ‘You know who killed Aamir,’ he told me.

I did. I just didn’t want it to be true. At that moment I’d have given anything for Aamir Chowdhury to be the victim of nothing worse than racial hatred. But I knew I’d have to face it some time.

‘His family,’ I said.

20

WE TALKED FOR the rest of the night. His bruised throat was obviously painful but he managed to tell me that his name was Hashim, that he was twenty-four years old and that he and Aamir had known each other for just over a year. They’d talked about moving away from London, finding a place where no one would know them, of marrying. They’d talked about it in the way some of us talk about winning the lottery, in the way I sometimes dream of a future with Joesbury.

It was never going to happen. Although they’d done their best to be discreet, rumours of the relationship had reached Aamir’s family. His parents had tried to persuade him to go back to Pakistan, to marry a girl from their home village, never to see Hashim again. Aamir had refused, and his loyalty to the man he loved had killed him.

‘Was Aamir’s father one of them?’ I asked, remembering the softly spoken man, who’d been so calm, so dignified in his grief.

‘Yes,’ said Hashim. ‘And his uncle, two brothers and a cousin. His father was the wolf.’

The city started to wake up and still we sat talking, huddled under a duvet in my shed. After seeing the attack on Aamir, Hashim had been living rough, using a stolen burka to move around unrecognized, foraging food wherever he could, knowing that the men of Aamir’s family were still looking for him, that they were watching his mother’s house constantly. He hadn’t dared go back there, as much out of concern for his family’s safety as his own.

As the blackness of the sky started to fade, I broached the subject of Hashim making a statement.

‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he told me.

‘We’ll protect you,’ I said, wondering if we could.

‘You’ll never prove anything,’ he said. ‘Any number of people from the community will give them alibis, stand up for them. You think that man, Shahid Karim, really saw five white men running from the park that night? They will all lie.’

‘What about Aamir’s mother?’ I said. ‘His sisters? Surely—’

‘The last time Aamir saw his mother, she disowned him,’ Hashim said. ‘Even if she and his sisters know, they won’t go against the men. The same thing would happen to them.’

I remembered the atmosphere in the Chowdhury household. The polite hostility, the edginess, the eyes that couldn’t quite meet mine.

‘You’ll never bring charges,’ said Hashim. ‘You’ll have to let them go, and when that happens, they’ll come for me. Or my family.’

Round and round we went, in endless circles. I tried to point out that forensic evidence would convict them, no matter what alibis family members came up with. I told him about the footprint found in my garden just hours earlier. I told him there were places we could hide him, until it was all over.

‘Even if you manage to put one or two of them away,’ he said, ‘these families stretch out for ever. So many cousins. I’ll never be free. Not while they know I’m alive. And what happens when they decide to threaten my sisters? Or my mother?’

‘I get that they’re determined,’ I said. ‘But so are the police. They tried to kill a police officer tonight. Every officer in the Metropolitan Police wants a conviction now. Me more than anyone. They want to kill me as well as you.’

As an attempt at solidarity it failed. ‘They didn’t come here for you,’ he told me. ‘They know better than to attack a copper. They were looking for me. I heard them talking about what you said to Amelia. If they’d bothered to check the shed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

Hashim got to his feet and, on legs that felt stiff and heavy, I did the same. He opened the shed door and stepped out into the cold air of a December morning. The sun was on its way up and somewhere, on the rooftops of London, it would be possible to see the most wonderful sunrise imaginable. I knew that because the last of the night sky shone a rich petrol blue, the light in the east was just starting to turn gold and the heavy clouds above us were the colour of blood.

‘What do you want to do?’ I asked him as we walked the length of my garden.

‘I won’t come back here,’ he told me. ‘They’ll be watching this place. I won’t bring trouble on you again.’

‘Do you have money? A passport?’

‘At home,’ he said. ‘I can’t go there.’

‘Hashim, what will you do?’

He put a hand to his neck, where the nylon rope had burned a thick red welt into his skin, and shrugged. ‘I’ll go to the river,’ he said. ‘No second chances that way.’ He walked to the gate and pulled back the bolt.

I caught up with him. ‘The river?’ I thought of swirling, icy-black, merciless water. He wouldn’t last five minutes if he went into the river in December. ‘Hashim, do you really want to die?’

‘They won’t rest while I’m alive. If they can’t get me they’ll come for my family until I give myself up. I can’t watch someone else that I love die.’

His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, they shone with the misery of a life built on secrets and shame. ‘Thank you, Lacey,’ he said. ‘Assalamu Alaikom.’

He turned from me, would be gone in less than a second. If he went in the river, he would die for sure. It would be over. I took hold of his arm and made him look at me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I told him. ‘But you’re right. There’s no other way. You have to die.’

21

EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT evening was the time we’d agreed upon. Still plenty of folk around, but most would be mushy with Christmas cheer. The chances of our being noticed by the wrong people were slim.

As a nearby church clock struck the hour, I left the flat via the back door and walked to the shed. I was wearing gym clothes; the officers at Scotland Yard watching me on CCTV would think I was going to the shed for exercise, as I’d already informed them I often did.

I closed the door, switched on the light and got my breath. The punchbag had gone. So had the duvet and pillow that Hashim had used. There was no trace of him, other than the black robes hanging from the hook where he’d almost hanged himself, and he wouldn’t be needing those any more. I pulled the burka over my head and let it fall to my feet. It was long on me. The headdress was next. I’d already researched how to wear and tie it.

I hadn’t expected the feeling of claustrophobia that would overwhelm me when my world was reduced to an inch of vision and the suffocating warmth of my own breath, but I’d no time to waste getting used to it. I left the shed, careful to avoid the lines of the camera, and then, much less elegantly than Hashim, I climbed the wall.

On the other side, I let my robes fall into place, pulled the eye-slit straight and set off through the snow. Now I was the woman in black.

I saw the men before they saw me. Two of them in a green saloon car parked close to the corner of the street, huddled in padded jackets, one of them with fluorescent triangles on the shoulder. That one I recognized now as Aamir’s younger brother; the other man I’d never seen before. They watched me make for the main road. I didn’t look their way, but walked as quickly as I could through brown slush and over patches of ice. The car engine started up as I passed them.

The other men watching my flat, those in the unmarked police car, had no interest in the heavily veiled Muslim woman who’d appeared from the back of the row of houses. They stayed where they were.

I crossed the Wandworth Road and saw a bus heading my way. That was the first bit of luck, because I really didn’t want to spend too long hanging about at a bus stop. In the shop window ahead of me I could see the green car waiting to pull out of my road. They’d want to be sure of where I was going before committing themselves. I reached the bus stop. The bus was twenty yards away. It arrived, I stepped on board and saw the green car pull out into the path of oncoming traffic. Horns sounded. Someone yelled out of a car window and the bus pulled away. I didn’t look back.

Two stops later I pressed the bell to get off. Not far now, but this was the tricky bit. On the street again, I moved as fast as I could. They believed themselves to be following a strong and agile young male, they’d expect him to be nimble. I hadn’t far to walk, but along pavements that alternated slush with ice, past tipsy crowds who saw no irony in wishing a Muslim woman a Merry Christmas, and with the ever-growing awareness of the hunters getting closer.

For a hundred yards or so, the traffic kept pace with me. Then it cleared, the saloon drew level and moved ahead. I was yards away from the entrance to Vauxhall Underground Station. The car pulled into the kerb and Aamir’s brother got out of the passenger side. They were expecting me to head down the steps into the station, to try to lose them on the Tube, and one of them was set to follow me on foot.

Smart thinking. But wrong. I turned a sharp left, picked up my skirts and ran.

The covered walkway of St George’s Wharf was free of snow and had been sprinkled with grit to stop the smooth stone tiles from icing over. I ran at speed past the pink stone columns, up the steps and further into the modern complex of shops, apartments and restaurants. I glanced back as I reached the riverside. Two of them, Aamir’s brother and an older man, were coming fast. I ran on along the south bank of the river towards Vauxhall Bridge, and down beneath the underpass. Out on the other side, I dived to the left. This was the crucial part. I had to be seen, but not by them. I had seconds.

Very close to the point where the bridge leaves the land to reach out over the water, there is a steel access-ladder that – if you’re brave enough – will take you up off the embankment, over the river wall and down on to the beach below. I pulled myself up and swung over, clambering down a couple of rungs before dropping on to wet sand. The tide was high and there wasn’t much beach left. Pulling my robes free, I ran left beneath the shadow of the bridge.

‘Thought you were never coming,’ said a voice from nowhere.

Without bothering to reply, I tugged off the headscarf and robes. Breathing heavily, I held back both arms and let Emma pull a black jacket up over my shoulders. I took the black woollen hat she was holding out and tucked my hair up inside. Emma, like me, was dressed entirely in black.

‘How far behind are they?’ she whispered, as I peered into the shopping trolley that, an hour earlier, she’d pushed down to the river using an old concrete ramp that runs down the side of the MI6 building. Nestled in the trolley was a lumpy, misshapen Father Christmas. I pulled off the Santa mask to see the punchbag from my shed. If all went to plan, it had taken its last pummelling from me.

‘Couple of seconds,’ I replied. ‘But they’ll carry on along the embankment until they realize they’ve lost me. Did you have any trouble?’

I sensed, rather than saw, her shake her head. ‘I staggered a bit, mumbled, “Penny for the Santa”, everybody thought I was pissed,’ she said. ‘You know London, nobody wants to get involved.’

Time was tight, so Emma held a torch and shielded the light from it with her body, while I got the punchbag ready. The buoyancy aid that would keep it afloat for a minute or two was already in place. I pulled off the Santa Claus costume and replaced it with the burka and veil, tying both securely in place. Then, between us, Emma and I carried it to the water’s edge. The tide had turned about an hour ago and was on its way out.

‘Go,’ I told Emma, and watched her jog out from under the bridge and disappear into the darkness. It would take her around ten minutes to find her way up the ramp and then back on to the bridge. Eight minutes had gone by when my phone received a text.

Now.

I pushed the woman in black out across the water. The tide took her, whisking her out towards the centre of the river and off downstream.

Above me, on the bridge, Emma was shouting, convincingly playing the part of a passer-by who’d spotted someone in the river. I saw the beam of her torch on the water, thought that it perhaps picked out swirling robes. Pretty soon she was joined by other people. Someone announced that they were going to run downstream to keep it in sight, and then I heard footsteps banging down the steps.

Closer than felt comfortable, I heard male voices speaking in Urdu, and knew they’d be looking over the wall. I pressed close against the underside of the bridge. I didn’t move until long after the voices and the footsteps faded away, becoming cold as stone, until a second text from Emma gave me the all-clear. Then I made my way back to street level and lost myself in London.

22

I MET EMMA again at midnight. She’d spent most of the intervening time being interviewed by officers of the Marine Policing Unit, who were out, even now, searching the river. She told me the men who’d followed me had stood beside her on Vauxhall Bridge, watching the form they believed to be Hashim disappear on the dark water. They’d left before the police arrived.

‘Where is he?’ she asked me, speaking low as though, even now, people could be listening.

I looked at my watch. ‘Possibly the Channel Tunnel,’ I replied. ‘Or they might have just arrived in France.’

Hashim had joined a coach party from the north of England who were heading for the Christmas market in Bruges. Once I’d distracted the attention of the men watching my flat, he’d slipped out. While I was still hiding under the bridge, he’d sent a text to say he’d safely boarded the coach at Covent Garden.

‘I promised I’d let his mother know he’s safely away,’ said Emma. ‘She’s worried she couldn’t give him much money.’

Earlier that day, Emma, who was unknown to the watching members of the Chowdhury family, had visited Hashim’s mother and told her our plan. The elderly Pakistani lady, half frantic with grief and worry, had given Emma Hashim’s passport and as much money as she could afford.

‘He has enough,’ I said. I’d given him cash too. Several years ago I’d inherited a lump sum that I kept handy, just in case. I’d always expected that I would be the one who’d have to disappear quickly. Increasingly, it was looking as though I wasn’t going anywhere.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ said Emma. ‘Aamir’s whole family. Even his mother, his sisters.’

‘I think his sisters were terrified,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother tried to save him. We never did find out who called the police that night.’

For a minute or two we watched the river moving relentlessly on into the night.

‘They’re getting away with it,’ said Emma. ‘The worst crime I can imagine and they’re getting away scot free. Lacey, are you sure you can live with that on your conscience?’

If Emma only knew the burden my conscience carried around, every single day. I smiled at her. ‘I’m good at secrets,’ I said. ‘Merry Christmas, Emma.’ The following story, carrying Emma Boston’s byline, appeared in several national newspapers and online news websites in the ensuing days.

The Marine Unit of the Metropolitan Police is still searching for the body of a woman believed to be from London’s Muslim community, who fell or jumped into the River Thames near Vauxhall Bridge on Friday evening.

The alarm was raised at 8.20 p.m., when passers-by spotted a woman in the water, wearing the long, black robes of the burka. ‘We ran downstream, keeping her in sight for as long as we could,’ said Peter Staines, thirty-two, of Kennington. ‘But the tide was heading out fast and the surface of the river was very choppy. We lost her around Lambeth Bridge.’

Around fifty bodies are recovered from the Thames every year, according to the Marine Unit, most found in the tidal section between Teddington Lock and the Estuary. Many are suicides who leap from one of London’s bridges in a desperate attempt to end their own lives.

CCTV footage provided by MI6, whose London headquarters are directly adjacent to Vauxhall Bridge, shows a woman dressed in the traditional Islamic burka appearing on the embankment from the Vauxhall Bridge underpass and climbing an access ladder down to the beach.

A spokeswoman for London Muslim Women’s Group commented, ‘If this woman was from the Islamic community then her actions reflect the seriousness of her situation and the depths of her despair. Suicide is a sin under Islamic law. We see many young people caught between their desire to lead their own, Western-influenced lives and the pressures of their traditional families. We hear of forced marriages, abductions and imprisonment, intolerance of sexual freedom. For some, sadly, suicide is the only way out.’

Chief Inspector David Cook, head of the Marine Unit, said that whilst his officers would continue searching the river in the coming days, the high water levels and strong currents made him less than optimistic. ‘For all our best efforts,’ he admitted, ‘sometimes a body will simply disappear without trace.’

Despite appeals on television and online news sites, no one from London’s Muslim community has been reported missing, and it is now looking increasingly likely that we will never know either the identity of the woman or the story behind her actions. It seems the traditional Eastern communities that have made their home in our city, like the great river that runs through its heart, will sometimes guard their secrets well.

Snow continued to fall during the days that followed. The shops began to run out of snow boots and the local councils out of salt for the roads. The Marine Unit stood down their search for the woman in black and book-makers shortened their odds on London having a white Christmas.

I had a text message from Hashim, who was safe and well in Belgium. It was the last I ever heard of him.

They say that snow covers everything that is mean and sordid and ugly in the world and I guess that’s true. It covered the scorched grass where a dying man breathed his last. For a while, it even hid the sickening story of why he died. It covered the footsteps of the woman in black, just moments after she’d made them. But beneath the carpet of white, the ugliness remains, and the snow will melt and there’ll come a day when it’s visible again.

At least, that’s what we have to hope.