Brand New Friend

by Kate Vane

  Paolo thought about the squaddies who occasionally ran riot in Swindon pubs, on leave from nearby bases. He tried to imagine the vulnerability they concealed while fighting, leering and mooning at passers-by.

  Mark had said it was learning about Northern Ireland that had opened him up to politics and new ways of looking at the world and ultimately led him to animal rights. All this while they were waiting for the kettle to boil. Paolo felt pleased that Mark had chosen him to confide in (though he couldn’t help wondering if he had already told Claire).

  Reading on, it seemed the main difference between the lives of the real (but to Paolo insubstantial) Mark Swift and the somehow more credible, if fictitious, Mark Benson, was that while Mark Benson had spent two years finding himself after leaving the army, Mark Swift had joined the Metropolitan Police. And the rest was history.

  Tilda’s piece included quotes from a retired corporal called David Thrower who served with Mark in the army. He was obviously scrambling for anecdotes. He didn’t actually say he kept himself to himself, or if he did Tilda had wisely edited it out, but that seemed to be his message.

  Paolo had intended to travel straight home from Salford but he decided to have one more go at speaking to Mark. After the usual pantomime of calling Mark’s different numbers had got him nowhere, he took the train back to Leeds (on the basis that a taxi would be no quicker at rush hour) and headed to Acorn Community Garden again.

  When he got there the shed was locked. He looked around the garden and saw a woman who appeared to be muckspreading. Wearing one of the fleeces that Sid died in and a beanie hat.

  He walked over. ‘The place is quiet.’

  ‘It’s November.’

  ‘You’re here.’

  ‘Manure. There won’t be a massive queue of volunteers for this job.’

  She stood up. She was strongly built, solid. He guessed she was a bit older than him but clearly fitter than he was.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ she said. She looked thoughtful. ‘Are you a journalist?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m a friend of Mark’s.’

  ‘He’s still got one, then.’ She was looking at him. She was going to mention the sofa, he thought.

  ‘I’m a big fan of the World Service. You’re on telly these days, aren’t you? I prefer radio. The pictures are better.’

  ‘So do I,’ he said, with feeling.

  ‘Are you here to investigate? Clear Mark’s name?’

  ‘I just want the truth,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ she said sceptically. ‘Did he tell you about me?’

  ‘He hasn’t told me anything much,’ said Paolo.

  ‘Do you want a brew?’ She stuck her fork in the ground. ‘I’m a trustee by the way. Danni. Danni Huxton.’

  The super-shed was partitioned inside. About a third was an office with a lockable door. The rest was given over to tool storage and a workbench on one wall, and a small area with coat hooks and lockers.

  The office was as neat and minimal as Mark’s bedsit.

  Paolo sipped his tea, already feeling lulled by the small paraffin heater after standing out in the cold.

  ‘The irony is,’ said Danni, ‘Mark and I have had a few run-ins. I thought he was too much the radical. Anti-authority. He doesn’t like to differentiate between volunteers and service users. He says there should be no hierarchy here. Everyone is a gardener.’

  ‘You think that’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s good up to a point. But ultimately, we have a duty of care. Service users have vulnerabilities and volunteers have responsibilities. Put simply, some “gardeners” can have keys to the toolshed and some can’t. I’ve given a list to the police, it’s up to them to follow up.’ She sipped her tea. ‘So, when did you know Mark?’

  ‘I was a student at the uni in the eighties. Mark wasn’t a student but he used to hang around with us. As far as I was concerned, he was an animal rights activist and a jobbing gardener.’

  ‘I’m an ex-cop too. Detective Inspector.’

  ‘That makes me feel better.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You fell for it too. Sorry – I didn’t mean to be flippant.’

  ‘You’re alright. I just worry about what all this means for some of our service users. A lot of them have come out of jail or are homeless or have mental health problems. They only need one setback to convince them that life’s a con, that nothing they do will make any difference, that we’re as bad as everyone else who’s let them down.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ he asked.

  ‘There’ll be a disciplinary process. We’ll try and run the place somehow in the meantime. Volunteers, trustees, maybe sessional staff. But Mark pretty much is this place, day to day. Or was.’

  ‘Will he be dismissed? I mean, I know he lied about his past, but his change of identity was state sanctioned. It’s not as if he’s committed a crime.’

  She put down her drink, gave a bitter laugh. Then her eye was caught by something through the window. ‘Looks like we’ve got company. Alright, lads, door’s open.’

  Paolo thought it would not be unfair to say that, if there had been a hierarchy, the ‘lads’ she was addressing would be service users rather than volunteers. They had the ruddy faces of street drinkers. One was wearing an overcoat with cans in each pocket. The other was wearing a parka which was torn on one side.

  Paolo realised the inadequacy of disguise. Even dead, Sid’s complexion had looked healthier than this.

  They lurked in the doorway, so the heat from the paraffin heater was replaced by cold wind.

  ‘Where’s Mark?’ asked the one in the overcoat.

  ‘He’s not coming in today,’ said Danni.

  ‘We’ve come to tell him that we’ll be his alibi.’

  ‘Right,’ said Danni. She glanced sidelong at Paolo, to see if he’d caught the ambiguous phrasing.

  ‘Cos we know he wasn’t here when that man got killed. He was with us. He came with John and me to the drop-in clinic down at Duke Place. He helps us, doesn’t he?’

  It wasn’t really a question and his friend didn’t really answer but he gave an emphatic nod.

  ‘How do you know when the man was killed?’

  ‘We read it in the Metro. Afternoon, it said. And we must have still been there cos we had to wait. Too many druggies, see.’ He wrinkled his nose fastidiously. ‘We’ll go to the police. For you. Only we’ve no money for the bus.’

  ‘Come on, Bob. You know we don’t give out cash,’ said Danni.

  This led to a lengthy back-and-forth. The man repeated his demand and Danni repeated her refusal and both seemed to feel the conversation had to be had, although the outcome was not in doubt.

  Paolo knew he should be using his fine journalistic brain to observe the telling detail that marked each man out, that told the story of who he was, but the life they’d led had scoured them of distinguishing features. Both had lank hair, small eyes screwed-up as if against the weather, and a bowed posture.

  The one in the parka had gone outside and left his friend arguing. Paolo decided to join him. The man gave a slight nod as he tried to light a cigarette with a Zippo. It was a roll-up with barely a shred of tobacco in it and as he lit up he screwed up his eyes. There was a bleak poetry in his movements, despite his having been assigned a non-speaking part.

  ‘I’m a friend of Mark’s,’ said Paolo. ‘And a journalist. Would you be willing to speak to me?’

  The man looked at him but didn’t answer.

  ‘I don’t want the wrong person to be blamed for this.’

  The man drew hard on his roll-up.

  His friend opened the door but his argument with Danni wasn’t over. She offered, in the tone of someone who had said the same words a thousand times, to let them use the office phone to call the police. He said that was no good because they’d only be put on hold. He asked again for money but without force, as if he had already admitted defeat.

  The two men left.

/>   ‘Will they go to the police?’ asked Paolo.

  ‘Probably not. Maybe next time they get picked up for something unrelated they’ll offer it as a bargaining chip, but it’s not much as things go. Even if it’s true.’

  ‘You didn’t find them convincing?’ asked Paolo.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Maybe they’re undercover cops too.’

  She didn’t laugh.

  19

  Paolo still had to make a statement about the day of Sid’s murder – Mark calling him, his arrival in Leeds, both of them attending the crime scene. He was shown into an interview room with soft, low chairs and a coffee table with a box of tissues and a vase of dried flowers on it. A quiet space for witnesses and victims. He sat in one of the chairs and it was lower than he’d imagined. Not a chair you could get out of in a hurry. No doubt that had been thought of. Grieving relatives can get aggressive too.

  While he waited he read Mail Online on his phone. Not his usual fare, but David Thrower, the man who had spoken to Tilda about Mark’s army past, was featured in an article. He had become rather more loquacious overnight, and much more certain about Mark Swift’s opinions. Presumably an offer of money had boosted his memory. Now, it seemed ‘everyone knew’ Mark was rampantly left-wing, if not anarchist, and his work ethic was not a positive but a sign of sinister intent.

  Paolo was surprised when DS Afzal entered the room.

  ‘I thought it would be a constable taking my statement,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll be along in a moment.’ He stood without elaborating and Paolo thought, what does he want, an autograph? He had been asked in stranger places, including once when he was standing at a urinal in a West End theatre and another time when Maryam was having a tantrum in Pizza Express and he was failing to calm her down.

  ‘I think you are a trustworthy man,’ said Afzal finally, just as the silence was becoming excruciating enough to make Paolo consider resorting to talk about the weather.

  ‘I try to be.’

  ‘Even though you lied at the crime scene.’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You did not tell us you were a journalist.’

  ‘I was there as Mark’s friend.’

  ‘I would hope you would not use your proximity to events to disclose facts that are pertinent to the investigation.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘And I hope you won’t use your position to open up old wounds. For example, investigating a fire on the Leeds University campus over thirty years ago.’

  Afzal was softly spoken but there was nothing meek about him. He was determined to be heard. Which was fine, but Paolo wasn’t quite sure what he was saying.

  ‘Go on.’

  DS Afzal finally took a seat and sank comfortably into it. He would have known, of course, what to expect. His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the arm of his chair. Syncopated, thought Paolo.

  ‘Tell me more about this fire you don’t want me to investigate,’ said Paolo.

  ‘You don’t remember? You would have been in your second year.’ Afzal’s eyes searched his face.

  Did he? ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘The officers at the scene treated it as murder,’ said Afzal. ‘A man died, suffocated by smoke. He was asleep in a room upstairs.’

  ‘Who would sleep in a university office?’

  ‘It was the night watchman. Complete with pillow and blankets.’

  ‘So he decided to get a bit of shuteye,’ said Paolo, inexplicably speaking like an extra from The Sweeney, even though Afzal was more Adam Dalgliesh. ‘Didn’t wake up in time.’

  ‘We believed the fire was set deliberately. But then word came down we were treating it as suicide. Rumour was that the Met had intervened.’

  ‘None of my friends would have done that. We were committed to non-violence.’

  ‘Given what we know now, your insights into your friends might not have been entirely accurate.’

  ‘You think Mark did it?’

  Afzal looked at him quizzically. Paolo mused on what his first name might be. He was, like Morse or Rumpole, a man who seemed ideally suited to only having a last name.

  ‘You think he killed Sid Jenkins as well?’

  ‘I think he’s hiding something,’ said Afzal. ‘Presumably you know what it is. Or you can find out. You’re a journalist after all.’

  ‘Senior officers would be discredited if it came to light that they dismissed something as an accident which they clearly knew to be a crime.’

  DS Afzal nodded as if to concede the point. ‘You’re right of course. But it is time all these past secrets were exposed.’

  Paolo had mixed feelings. Of course it was good that we were learning the truth about the cover-ups of decades ago, from Hillsborough to Savile. But he wanted to know what was happening now. Were the revelations from the past distracting us from today’s injustices? Would the answer to that question be revealed in another thirty years?

  ‘I’m not a crime reporter. I’m just here as a friend.’

  Afzal gave a wry smile. ‘But whose friend are you?’

  20

  How could he describe their shared house to Salma, here in their lavishly austere kitchen with its granite and slate and stainless steel, its french windows looking onto the immaculately coiffed garden?

  Their living room in the shared house had been papered with white woodchip. The bedrooms had wallpaper like something your nan used to have when you were a kid, which was probably when they’d last been decorated. The carpets were faded and sticky. The windows were slick with condensation in the winter mornings (occasionally it turned to ice) and you had to pull your clothes into bed with you to warm them up before you put them on. When he felt brave enough he’d crawl out of bed and light the gas fire with a match, on the basis that carbon monoxide poisoning was marginally preferable to hypothermia. He loved it.

  He loved everything about Hyde Park, the streets of red-brick terraces always full of groups of students and Asian families and hardly any cars, the international supermarket selling foods he’d never heard of, shops selling vintage clothes and second-hand books and wholefoods, the fact that all his friends lived within shouting distance (just as well as hardly anyone had a phone), the short walk across the park to lectures or to the Union, the proximity to the Hyde Park cinema and the Royal Park pub.

  They had drawn lots for the bedrooms. Dudley got the attic and Isabel the bigger of the first-floor rooms. That meant Paolo and Claire were last to choose but she said it wouldn’t be safe for a woman to be on the ground floor so she got the room next to Isabel’s and he had to sleep downstairs.

  There was even a box room on the first floor. Well, they called it the box room, although their landlord didn’t exactly agree. It was a tiny, cupboard-like space with just enough room for a single bed and a wardrobe (as long as you didn’t want to open the wardrobe). When he showed them round he asked a little wistfully if they might have another friend who would take that room. They all ignored him.

  Their ‘landlord’ was younger than them. He was from an Iranian family, and cheerfully told them that he was doing his ‘A’ Levels. None of them thought too much about it, it was just another amusing anecdote they told everyone who came round, until Isabel upstaged them with a story, told in her trademark bored drawl, of a village she’d been to in Rajasthan where a ten-year-old boy drove a car and sold hashish.

  He looked around his current home. It still had that showroom patina, was yet to have the scuffed wall or the squeaky door or the corner where pens and keys and old receipts mysteriously congregated that would make it home.

  They’d had it remodelled at almost unimaginable expense. Salma may be a political radical, a brave fighter for freedom, but she was a child of wealth and she spent money with unreflecting ease. When travelling to a new city she headed straight for the best hotel in the same way that homesick backpackers would seek out McDonald’s. He could spend too but he always felt an illicit thrill when he did
it. In his head he could hear his mother tutting at the expense. For Salma buying the best was second nature. How he loved that poise!

  Neither of them was much good at cooking but they had someone come in and cook for them several times a week, piling up Tupperware in the fridge with little careful notes on how to reheat each dish. He had thought this an extravagance but since they had a kitchen that would not disgrace a Michelin-starred restaurant he supposed it should get some use.

  What did it matter? He was home, Salma was beautiful, the girls had disappeared to their rooms with Salma’s admonition that they had better be in bed soon, and they were sitting across the table from each other, the remains of the family meal in glorious disarray, finishing a bottle of wine.

  When he had finished speaking, Salma said, frowning, ‘So you joined this group because you were concerned about the tears of bunny rabbits?’

  He knew she was laughing at him, that gentle, mocking undertone, but still it gave him pause. Why animal rights? He wasn’t sentimental about animals. He had never had a pet. He became a vegetarian because he thought factory farming was not only cruel but unnecessary when you could so easily just not eat meat.

  Why had he chosen one cause over another? Because he was competing with Claire? Because he fancied the woman with peroxide hair? Because of Mark?

  For some in the group protecting animals was everything. Animals were somehow pure while humans were complicit in the mess created by their species. He knew that would make no sense to Salma. Like the people who rescued donkeys from Afghanistan, stepping over starving children and emaciated heroin addicts to reach them. For him it was different.

  ‘It wasn’t just about animals. They were a symbol, a rallying point. It was about the way corporations chewed up living things, reduced everything to profit. The meat industry involves the mistreatment of animals, but it damages people and the environment as well. Inefficient land use. Climate change. Animals injected with antibiotics leaving us all at risk of resistance. Poor pay and conditions for workers.’