Knife Edge : A Novel (2020)

by Mayo, Simon

  The student thought about his sisters and took courage. As soon as the shops opened he would check the newspaper. If the IPS woman had replied, he’d buy a prepaid phone and send the next message. He ran through the words in his head, then muttered them under his breath.

  They felt right. He swung out of bed and dressed quietly.

  23

  7.45 a.m.

  THE CARTERS’ SPARE room was tiny with barely enough space for the single bed and upturned wooden box that functioned as a bedside table. Famie hadn’t slept much. She’d texted Charlie from bed, then got woken up by her reply at four a.m. That had been that. She’d lain awake with images of yesterday’s journalist scrum at her front door running through her head.

  A gentle knocking brought an already dressed Jo into her room. ‘Sorry to disturb,’ she whispered, ‘but thought you’d like to see the paper.’ She left a Telegraph on the end of the bed and exited.

  Famie wiped sleep from her eyes and sat up. ‘Thanks,’ she called after Jo.

  The paper had been folded at the Classifieds page. Her ad was nestled between an apocalyptic quote from the Book of Revelation and an advert for a new cat food.

  Long-range forecasting is complicated.

  Which way is the wind blowing?

  Famie was pleased with it, given the haste of its composition. Her weatherman wouldn’t miss it. If he, or she, was looking.

  She swung out of bed and pulled her hoodie over Sam’s old Def Leppard T-shirt that she’d ended up sleeping in. It came down to her thighs. Just about modest enough to eat breakfast in.

  ‘So we’re in then,’ she said, flourishing the Telegraph as she entered the kitchen.

  A radio by the sink played classical music. Sam stood by a coffee machine, frothing milk. He raised his hand in acknowledgement. Jo was eating a bowl of fruit at a small, round kitchen table, with more cut flowers displayed in a tin jug at its centre. Delightful, thought Famie, though trying too hard. Who had fresh flowers at breakfast? Sam handed out three coffees. He pointed at what he could see of his old T-shirt. A good twenty centimetres hung loose from beneath the hoodie.

  ‘I looked for a Mozart but could only find Def Leppard,’ he said. ‘Suits you more than me anyway. Sorry it’s not longer.’

  Famie pulled her hoodie tight around her. Kept her knees together. ‘It’s hideous. But thank you anyway.’

  ‘You can keep it if you like,’ said Sam. ‘If the media pile-on is still in position by your flat, you might need it again. You’re welcome here any time.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ said Famie. ‘But I reckon it’ll be OK today.’

  Sam and Jo exchanged glances.

  ‘You’re not just on page forty-five,’ said Sam. ‘You’re on page one too.’

  With a sinking feeling, Famie unfolded the paper. An old photo of Seth Hussain was topped with the words ‘Slain man’s brother linked to al-Qaeda’. Her trained eye scanned the text – her name was in the last paragraph: ‘Detectives have been speaking to IPS journalist Famie Madden, 43, who is believed to have been in a relationship with Mr Hussain.’

  She closed her eyes, sighed deeply. ‘They got my age wrong,’ she said. ‘But obviously the rest is true. Did everyone know?’ Sam and Jo both shook their heads. Then, another thought. A prickle down her spine. ‘Not good,’ she said. ‘Not good to be even a small part of this story.’

  ‘You think you might be a target now?’ said Sam.

  She tapped her fingernails against the mug, some indecipherable, long-buried rhythm. Charlie told her she did it when she was thinking and that it was very irritating. The tapping stopped. Famie shrugged, shook her head.

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t feel good though.’

  Famie sipped and swallowed, relishing the first burn in her throat. The radio played some Mendelssohn. She knew this was just for her.

  ‘Great service,’ she said. ‘I must come again.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Jo, ‘especially if the press are after you.’

  ‘Listen, before I go,’ Famie said, ‘can we just compare notes on this?’ She indicated the ad in the paper. ‘I’m assuming we never hear from whoever it is again. So, meantime, who killed our friends? Between us we should be able to cover the bases. Two journalists, or former journalists’ – she raised her mug to Sam – ‘and a copper. Best theories. Does everyone buy the al-Qaeda line?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Speculation, all of it. And journalist speculation is the same as everyone else’s. Islamist terrorists obviously are number one, some al-Qaeda affiliate presumably. Or the Russians. Their security services have been pretty incompetent recently but they are still capable of great brutality. I’d start there.’

  Jo’s turn. ‘The drug cartels. So much of the knife crime in London is gang- and drug-related. Scores of deaths a year even without our friends joining the list. If your investigators were deep into organized crime, they would have rattled some pretty big cages. With some pretty big beasts in them. I’ve had three stabbings this year in my patch. Just kids really, but no one really reports on this stuff any more. We have two rival gangs fighting for territory and selling rights. It’s brutal stuff.’

  Famie blew steam from her coffee. ‘That makes some kind of sense,’ she said. ‘Seven stabbings in half an hour shows a level of sophistication but it isn’t exactly flying a plane into a building. Anything else?’

  Jo put a hand up. ‘One thing. Again, speculative. The word we seem to be getting out of the Yard operation is that your investigators had nothing of interest on their hard drives. Not only that, but that nothing had been added for weeks. As though their computers had stopped working.’

  ‘They were working,’ said Famie. ‘Andrew Lewis told me. Emails working. Just everything else is blank. No files, no reports, no contacts. Must be all offline.’

  ‘On paper?’ said Jo.

  Famie shrugged. ‘Their work must be somewhere. It must exist somewhere.’

  No one answered.

  ‘Anyway, that’s it,’ said Jo. ‘All I have.’

  Sam’s phone buzzed. ‘Tommi suggests a drive-past, to see if the good men and women of the Fourth Estate are still camping out at yours, Famie. He’ll be outside in five.’

  Famie gulped the rest of her coffee and was dressed and outside in four. Another hot day coming. She already regretted not showering. When Tommi’s Peugeot 306 pulled up, she jumped in, retuned his radio. He tutted. She ignored him.

  ‘Got a call from Sophie Arnold,’ he said once they were moving. ‘About four this morning. Why so early I have no idea. I answered because I always do these days. She says she wants to meet you, Famie. Says she only had your house number and you weren’t picking up.’

  ‘She has my email. Work haven’t switched it off just yet.’

  ‘I mentioned that. Said she didn’t want to write anything down.’

  ‘Was she drunk?’

  Tommi thought about that. ‘Could have been. But she was pretty coherent.’

  Famie was puzzled. ‘Maybe she’s resignation number fifteen. Did she leave her number?’

  ‘She did,’ said Tommi, ‘and said that she’d come to you.’

  When the Peugeot turned into Famie’s street, they’d gone only ten metres before they saw a couple of TV crews crossing the road.

  ‘Maybe Sophie coming to mine’s not such a wise move,’ Famie said. ‘I’ll call her.’

  As they drove past her flat, the scrum and their microphones, Famie, unseen, saluted them all with her middle finger.

  24

  AN HOUR LATER, Famie was on an already airless Tottenham High Road, two iced coffees in a cardboard tray, searching for 235 Flat B. She’d convinced a tired-sounding Sophie to stay where she was, that she would come to her. Famie assumed the coffee would be welcome.

  Walking out from Seven Sisters tube station she had bought a baseball cap from a street vendor, pulled it low over her head until the peak touched her sunglasses. ‘Paranoid already,’ she told herself. As far as
she could see there had been no photos of her published, just her name. The hat was a decent disguise. She caught her reflection in a twenty-four-hour supermarket shop window. The cheap blue hat looked ridiculous but at least she didn’t look like Famie Madden.

  235 Flat B was an apartment above a Chinese restaurant. The front door was shut, the blinds closed. Famie found a side door next to an overflowing rubbish bin. Foil take-out trays, congealed sauce and discarded ribs had spilled on to the pavement where they were beginning to heat up a second time. Famie held her breath.

  The four buttons on the door’s intercom were unlabelled. She pressed the second one in the row, hoping for the best. The door buzzed and she pushed her way in. She stepped over a pile of junk mail to reach the stairs. One flight took her to a landing and an adjacent door with a large A scrawled on it. Along a poorly lit corridor another door clicked open. Sophie Arnold leant out, waved her in.

  ‘Hey,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Got you a cold brew,’ said Famie.

  ‘Thanks. Come in. And, er, sorry about the mess.’

  ‘No worries. I’m not your mother.’

  Famie stepped inside. It wasn’t messy. One living room with a corner kitchen. A small sofa, an armchair, two wooden chairs, one holding a laptop charging. Two small framed prints were on the wall – old maps, Famie thought – and a family photo sat in a gilt frame above an electric fire. An open door led to a darkened bedroom. A clean sink, no plates or cups waiting to be washed up. The two small windows were open wide, the smell of the kitchens below already filling the flat.

  ‘I hope you like Chinese food,’ said Famie.

  ‘I used to,’ said Sophie.

  She appeared agitated, preoccupied.

  ‘Where’s the mess?’ said Famie, looking around. ‘Looks pretty damn clean to me.’

  ‘The bin is full,’ she said, ‘overflowing. And yesterday’s clothes are behind the cushions. I just shoved them there.’

  She was a young twenty-six, wild, curly blonde hair and a slender frame. Loose-fit cotton pyjamas billowed around her as she moved. They were right about the alcohol; Famie could still smell it on her breath.

  ‘Hangover?’

  Sophie grimaced. ‘Just a small one.’

  She sat on the armchair, Famie perched on the sofa.

  ‘Tommi said you called him at four a.m.’

  Sophie nodded, glanced down. ‘Took me that long to get the balls to call. And the gin helped.’

  ‘The gin always helps,’ said Famie. ‘But you didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  Sophie stared down at her cup, concentrated on drinking her coffee. Her hands began to shake. The ice in her coffee rattled. She cleared her throat.

  ‘I’m scared, Famie.’

  Famie waited for more but Sophie was drinking coffee again.

  ‘We all are, Sophie,’ she began, but Sophie shook her head.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said.

  She was taking deep breaths. Pain control. Building up to something. Famie was getting anxious for the girl.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she blurted.

  Famie, startled, kept her silence; Sophie’s intonation suggested there was more to come. Another deep breath.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she repeated, ‘and … and Seth is the father. Was the father.’ She pulled her legs to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and started to cry.

  Famie’s head spun. Seth and Sophie. Seth and Sophie? My God. She clambered on to Sophie’s chair and embraced her. She waited for the crying to subside. It bought her a few seconds. A few seconds without which she would have been cursing both Sophie and Seth as slut and manslut. A few seconds in which she then realized she had no right to feel angry, no right to be hurt.

  ‘My God, you poor thing,’ she whispered into Sophie’s ear. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Eventually Sophie calmed down enough to speak. ‘I didn’t know who to talk to,’ she said. ‘I feel so alone, Famie. Then I read about you and Seth in the paper.’ The tears came again. ‘It’ll be me next, I’m sure of it. And I don’t know what to do.’

  Famie held her hand. ‘I saw you at the funeral,’ she said. ‘Christ, you must have found that difficult.’ She felt her hand squeezed, a slight nod of the curls. ‘I couldn’t hang around. Had to leave.’

  ‘I saw you go,’ said Sophie. ‘I so wanted to come with you. Didn’t have the courage. And Amal would have noticed, I know he would. He kept looking at me …’

  Famie pushed back far enough to see Sophie’s tear-stained face.

  ‘Wait. You knew Amal Hussain?’

  Sophie’s hands started to shake again. She gripped her cup tighter. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘we met quite a few times.’

  Dread was beginning to sink deep into Famie’s gut.

  ‘Are you still working, Sophie?’

  She nodded.

  ‘So you know Amal is EIJ and has disappeared, right?’

  Another small nod.

  Famie sighed. ‘So I’m guessing you haven’t told the police and that’s the other reason I’m here.’

  Sophie hauled herself out of the armchair and walked to the kitchenette. Poured herself some water which she drank in three gulps. Famie studied her stomach. Nothing showing yet.

  ‘I haven’t told the police, no,’ said Sophie. ‘And there’s one more reason I asked you to come.’

  ‘Christ, there’s more?’ said Famie. ‘I can’t imagine what you’ve kept till last.’

  Sophie pointed at the laptop on the kitchen chair. Famie glanced at it.

  ‘It belongs to Seth,’ Sophie said. ‘And I know the password.’

  Famie stared at the laptop. It had been between them all this time but she had ignored it. It looked cheap; small, black, and with a manufacturer’s logo she hadn’t seen before. Not expensive at all. Classic Seth.

  ‘What’s on it?’ said Famie, suddenly fearful. ‘What have you found?’

  ‘I wanted to wait for you,’ Sophie said.

  ‘I know that!’ said Famie. ‘But—’

  ‘I wanted to wait for you, Famie, because there are pictures of you on it. That’s why.’

  25

  FAMIE PACED THE cage. It was too early for a drink and she hadn’t smoked since she’d got pregnant but she wanted both now. Sophie watched her as she circled the room.

  ‘How many photos?’ Famie asked.

  ‘Eight,’ said Sophie.

  ‘How bad are they?’

  ‘You want to see them?’

  ‘Just tell me first! Then I’ll look.’

  ‘You’re getting changed, I think. Taking off jeans, putting on a dress. Blue and white stripes. In his flat by the look of it.’

  ‘You make them sound harmless.’

  ‘You’re naked in one, topless in three.’

  ‘Christ, he was a shit.’ She smacked the wall with her hand. ‘He kept them. I remember him “deleting” them but he actually kept them all this time. Bastard.’ She continued her laps.

  Sophie knelt in front of the laptop, opened it, hit some keys.

  ‘How come you know the password anyway?’ said Famie. ‘I’ve never shared mine with anyone. Don’t know anyone who does.’

  Sophie hit enter. ‘Because I set it up for him. He suggested the first three words of his national anthem, so that’s what it is.’ She spun the screen to Famie. ‘Here. You do this.’

  Famie knelt next to Sophie, moved the cursor between the photos. Clicking. Enlarging. Cursing. Sophie’s description had been clinically accurate. It wasn’t exactly porn or anything near, but the nude shot was uncomfortably gynaecological. The rest she could live with.

  ‘Are there any others?’ she said.

  ‘Not of you, no.’

  ‘Of you?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘A few.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘He said he was deleting them.’

&nbs
p; ‘Jesus. Sounds familiar. Anyone else, dare I ask?’

  It was clear from Sophie’s face that there were.

  ‘Three,’ she replied. ‘You’ll be mostly interested in the last.’

  She clicked and spun again. The photo on the screen showed a grinning woman in the process of showering. It was Mary Lawson.

  Famie spluttered in disbelief. She stared at it for a long time, her fingers tapping on the side of the laptop. Eventually she looked away.

  ‘And the other two?’

  Sophie showed her the others. Both darker-skinned, both naked, both looking coy.

  ‘We’ve got quite the charmer here,’ said Sophie, her words almost a whisper. Famie felt her pain in every word.

  ‘Well,’ Famie said. ‘First point, we’re in some serious shit here, you and me. But second, if there’s nothing other than smutty pictures, the police never need to see it. What else is there? Have you looked? Please tell me there’s nothing about his terrorist brother.’

  She spun the laptop back to Sophie who clicked and tapped.

  ‘He seems to have used this as an overflow computer,’ she said. ‘There are sixteen documents that I can see, all containing articles he’s written for our website. They all date from September last year to March this year. Then it all stops. So nothing for three months.’

  ‘Dare I ask when the Mary shot was dated?’ said Famie.

  ‘February twenty-sixth last year,’ said Sophie.

  Another punch to the stomach. Famie’s head dropped. ‘We split on the twenty-seventh. It’s my birthday so it’s one of those break-ups you remember. I thought it was mutual but really it was because he was shagging his boss. He actually left me for an older woman.’

  ‘What a total prick,’ said Sophie. ‘He must have transferred these pictures deliberately.’

  ‘At least we were his favourites, then,’ said Famie.

  They both snorted.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Sophie. ‘The last document was sent via Mary, and at the top of the email he wrote this.’

  Another spin.

  Famie read out loud. ‘Hi M. Here’s the piece on the President you asked for. The last before we all go quiet. You’ll get the next one on parchment.’ She looked up at Sophie. ‘And this is the last document?’