But she’s still doing that thing with her jaw, so I say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and look at my hands and go on saying it till she stops lecturing me.
Then she stops.
I say, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ and get up to go. She says, ‘Okay,’ and then for no reason at all, except maybe to annoy her, I say, ‘Sorry, do you mind? Can I ask where you got your suit? I just think it really works on you.’
An expression crosses her face which I can’t read. Maybe it’s anger – her default setting – but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s something else. But anyway, she says, ‘Hobbs,’ and I say, ‘Oh, Hobbs?’ and she nods, then looks down at herself, straightens out the fabric, and says, ‘Thank you.’ If it weren’t against the laws of physics, I’d think she reddened.
I give her a lovely big smile and walk out of her office.
14
Penry again. Same room. Same lighting. Same guards. Same paintwork.
He’s in a better mood this time. Too good. Buzzy and over-energetic, the way a four-year-old is before a sugar crash.
‘Bloody hell, Fi, you spend a lifetime in the police force, but it’s only when you get in here you understand what’s really going on. Some of the stories I’ve heard . . .’
He starts to tell me some of them, waving his hands and laughing too loud. The tales he tells mostly sound like bullshit to me. I expect when he comes down off his high, they’ll sound the same way to him. I’m not judgemental though. Penry’s got to do two years inside. If this is part of his adjustment process, so be it.
I let him talk a while, then interrupt.
‘Brian, can I ask a favour?’
I tell him the picture as I see it. Two murders, one suicide. ‘Everyone thinks that Khalifi must somehow be linked to the Langton death, but it seems to me we ought to be looking hard at the Mortimer death too.’
Penry asks a few questions in quick succession, getting himself up to speed. His assessment of the case is rapid, decisive. I realise I’m seeing him in police mode, the way he was before his career went off the rails.
‘This is real, Fi, is it? You’re not just . . .?’
‘Trying to cheer you up? No. It’s real. I mean, it is from my point of view. Watkins thinks it might be worth looking at. Everyone else thinks I’m barking mad.’
‘Good enough.’ He rubs his face with both hands. When he removes them, he looks older. More like himself actually, minus the sugar high. ‘What’s your hypothesis?’
‘Don’t have one. But here are the pieces. Mortimer was involved in drugs, but an idiot when it came to bringing them into the country. Khalifi has expertise in materials and access to an enormous amount of manufacturing knowhow. Plastics certainly, but general engineering too. The two men very likely knew each other. If Khalifi did something that pissed off some big-league drug dealer, then maybe Mortimer was in the firing line as well. Obviously no one snuck into Mortimer’s cell to bump him off, but maybe he gets a message saying that unless he kills himself his family will be murdered. Or whatever.’
I stop. It all sounds ropey to me when I say it, but there are three corpses kicking around. They’re real.
‘Got it,’ says Penry. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
We talk rubbish for another ten minutes. Uncomfortable minutes. I’m always aware of the guards, of the other prisoners, the atmosphere of poverty and limits. I’m aware of the walls.
As soon as I can, I leave.
Outside the jail, I realise I’m not coping so well. My head is worse than I’d realised. As a teenager, I was ill for two years. Mental illness, as bad as it gets. For much of that time, I was kept in a secure unit. There was a courtyard garden and various common areas where we were allowed to come and go freely, but that was it. Outside access to the unit was via a porters’ lodge. Staff and visitors needed to show ID to enter and leave. Patients were prohibited from leaving without written discharge papers from one of the shrinks, so we were imprisoned every bit as much as Penry is now. More so, in some ways. The courtyard garden had two wooden benches, an ornamental maple tree, a couple of cypresses, and some bedding plants which were constantly being trashed by the crazier patients. There was a metal bin for cigarettes, but we all just scattered ciggy stubs on the ground and let the nurses clear them up. We weren’t allowed matches, of course – someone would have tried to burn the place down – but there was an electric lighter gadget on the side of the bin and a cigarette machine inside the building. We all smoked twenty or thirty a day, the nurses too.
Inside, some architect had designed the place to be cheerful. The common room was clad in varnished pine so it looked like some Nordic sauna. The seating was built-in with heavy leatherette cushions. The only movable items were either completely soft – beanbags and foam cushions – or too heavy to lift. The TV was screwed to the wall. The knives and forks in the canteen were plastic. Even so, never a day went by without someone trying to do something stupid. One guy, I remember, normally one of our tamer schizos, scavenged dry leaves from the garden and built a pile of them inside one of the chair seats. He didn’t set fire to them straight away, because the smoke alarms would have sounded instantly, so he waited till the one day each month when fire drills were held anyway. As soon as the alarms started ringing for their regular test, he used a cigarette butt to get his leaves alight. Instead of shutting off after their test sequence was completed, the sirens just went on sounding. For a good few minutes, the staff just ignored the noise, clustering in the corridors with their coffee mugs and tutting. Not until someone noticed that the common room was filling with smoke did anyone take action. One of the seating bays was properly ablaze before the fire was brought under control. When they rebuilt everything, they drenched the place in some flame-retardant chemical that made two of the self-harmers sick for weeks. That was us: smart enough to cause destruction, crazy enough to want to.
In those two years, I spent more time in that facility than I did at home.
Cardiff jail is more like that place than anywhere else I’ve ever been, and I can feel some of my old self-destructive patterns starting to gather themselves, like fog patches forming in the beam of car headlights. Self-harm was never particularly one of my things – I was a little too crazy for that and the self-harmers stood well below me in the private hierarchies of the insane – but I used to like pressing kitchen knives against my forearms to see how much I could feel. The usual answer was almost nothing. I drew blood a few times. By accident mostly.
Now, standing on the road outside Cardiff Prison, I feel that old impulse again. To press some cold steel against my exposed arm. To study the blade as it whitens my skin. Hoping to feel something, terrified I won’t.
I want to roll up my sleeve so I can look at my white skin and blue veins.
But those are bad thoughts. Addictive. A flight of stone stairs, leading down.
I have a plastic bag of ready-rolled joints in the boot of my car, concealed under the tyre irons, along with a cigarette lighter and a bar of chocolate. I’ve an impulse to stand and smoke a joint, right here outside the jail.
That’s not a good idea, though. I can feel my brain send a chatter of alarmed telexes to my impulse control centres. All in capitals: DO NOT DO WHAT YOU ARE THINKING OF DOING. REPEAT. DO NOT DO WHAT YOU ARE THINKING OF DOING. The telexes are followed by lists of reasons. Think about where you are. Remember that you’re trying to cut down. Remember that you want to be a supergreat and perfect girlfriend to Buzz – your phrase, Griffiths – and Buzz really, really wouldn’t like you being hauled in on some possession charge, now would he?
The chatter and the lists continue, but already the impulse is waning. Buzz is tediously traditional on issues like whether it’s okay for coppers to smoke weed, so I haven’t told him that I do. He doesn’t know that I grow it in my garden shed and would go nuts with me if he found out. He’d probably report me.
But in the end, it’s not those reasons that make the difference. These days, I’m trying to do things right. To
avoid escape routes. To do things in the right way for the right reasons at the right time. Sometimes, the right thing is for me to smoke dope. A comfort blanket I can’t yet give up. But it’s not the right thing for me now.
I stamp feeling into my legs. Jump up and down. Pump my arms. Run just far enough to feel out of breath and for one of my feet to start blistering.
I start to feel more normal. The prison feeling hasn’t quite left, but it’s not dangerous any more, just unpleasant, like last night’s cigarette smoke in the hair. I need to wash the feeling away.
I limp back to my car, wondering how long it takes to get to Droitwich.
15
Two and a half hours is the answer. Some accident just south of Worcester blocks two lanes and I end up spending an hour in almost stationary traffic, watching long curtains of rain sweep across from the Malvern Hills. I keep switching stations on the radio, trying and failing to find music that doesn’t annoy me, then end up settling for exhaust fumes and silence. I power the windows down and let the rain come in. I think about lowering the soft top, but don’t.
I text Buzz to let him know I’ll be late.
The farther I get from Cardiff jail, the less sure I am of what I’m doing. I mean: I think it needs to be done. I’m just not sure it’ll be worth another bollocking from Watkins. When I get into Droitwich proper, I stop the car and call Watkins’s mobile. She answers it in her normal snappish way. I tell her what I want to do and where I am.
‘Droitwich?’
‘Mortimer’s wife and kids moved back here when he went to prison.’
‘And you’re there why?’
‘I’ve been visiting a friend,’ I say. ‘So I’m in the area.’
There’s a pause down the end of the line. I can’t hear anything, but I bet she’s doing that thing with her jaw. Then, ‘Okay.’
‘Okay as in, “Yes, please, go ahead and interview Sophie Mortimer”? I don’t have to.’
‘It’s fine, Constable. You might as well, since you’re there.’
That’s hardly a massively positive vote, but it’s good enough.
‘How is it where you are?’ I say. ‘It’s rainy here. Not too cold, though. I don’t like the cold.’
Another pause, probably some jaw action involved in it, then, ‘Let me know what you get from Mortimer.’
She rings off before I can say goodbye.
I drive slowly to Mortimer’s house. I have the address from the inquest notes. I don’t know if she’s still here. I didn’t call ahead.
The house is at the end of a short cul-de-sac. Pleasant, unremarkable. Patches of lawn in front of every house. A few shrubs. Tidy, clean. Lights on in the house I’m after.
I get out of the car and ring the doorbell. Nothing. I’m about to ring a second time when the door opens. It’s a woman. Younger than I was expecting. Mid-thirties, which I’d known from the inquest notes, but somehow hadn’t pictured. Also prettier. Slim, blonde, hair more than shoulder length, a kind of natural sulkiness around her mouth. Skinny jeans, a floral print top in dark grey and lilac, black biker jacket.
‘Mrs Mortimer?’ I ask.
‘Not anymore. I don’t use that name anymore. I’m Sophie Hinton now.’
I introduce myself, show my warrant card, ask for twenty minutes of her time. She says she doesn’t have twenty minutes, she’s expecting a friend to drop the kids off any moment now, then has to go straight out.
I say, ‘Well, any time you’ve got . . .’
She doesn’t like it much, but she swings the door open, lets me in, and shows me through to the kitchen. The room had its last major refurbishment in the 1980s, it looks like. Country-style cabinets with limed oak doors and tiled countertops. I can’t put the kitchen together with the woman, then remember I’m in her mother’s house.
I sit down. Hinton doesn’t. She doesn’t take her jacket off. She puts her phone down on the counter, but in a place where she can still see the screen. Her car key down next to it.
There’s a vibe in the room which I can’t explain. Obviously there are some classes of people who exhibit an almost automatic them-versus-us hostility to the police, but a nice little cul-de-sac in Droitwich isn’t somewhere I’d expect to encounter it.
I introduce myself. Say why I’m here: ‘We’re investigating a couple of serious crimes in Cardiff. One of the victims probably knew your husband. I just want to check if there’s anything there we need to explore.’
She sits down on a stool at the breakfast bar, but there’s something provisional in the way she sits, one long leg sloping all the way to the floor, as though to show she could get up and walk out at a moment’s notice.
‘Have you ever heard of a man named Ali el-Khalifi?’ I ask. ‘He was an engineering lecturer at the university.’
‘Never heard of him.’ Her response is instant but followed by a hesitation. She amends her answer. ‘A Middle Eastern guy?’
Yes, I tell her. North African, in fact, but I don’t think Hinton is after geographical exactitude.
‘Met him at an office party, maybe. I didn’t talk to him.’
Her leg moves as she says this. Her toes comes in under her centre of gravity, so she’s even closer to standing up than she was before.
‘We found him cut into about fifteen different pieces round Llanishen Reservoir. He used to work with your ex.’
Hinton’s colour rises. She reaches for her phone and fiddles with it.
‘We found his lung bobbing around in the water.’
Her colour hardens, but something else does too. ‘Look, I don’t know that person. I don’t want to sound insensitive. I’m very sorry and everything, but –’ She shrugs. ‘What was your question?’
‘Do you know why your husband – your ex-husband – killed himself?’
‘Because he was an idiot.’
‘Did anyone ever threaten you? You or your children? Did your ex-husband ever receive threats that he told you about?’
The question doesn’t get anything much more than a snort. Half laugh, half dismissal. ‘No,’ she says, standing up. She reaches for her phone and car key. Her colour is still high, still too bright, but there’s a kind of armouring now which I don’t think I’ll be able to penetrate.
‘Why did you leave him?’
‘Why did I leave him? He was a drug dealer. He had this Saint Mark thing going. Butter wouldn’t melt, and all that. Then what is he, really? A drug dealer who was busted and sent to jail. And we had two children together.’
There are tears in her eyes now, but the armour is still present, still shining.
‘Your ex wasn’t a dealer. Not really. He was some sort of middleman who screwed up. The person who killed Khalifi is the sort of person who would be happy to threaten wives and children too. We can’t protect you if you don’t tell us stuff. Sophie, have you been threatened? You or the kids? Now or in the past?’
‘No.’ She runs her hand hard through her hair, shaking it out. A kind of anger there. Or defiance. A running away? I can’t tell.
‘Or any recent contacts which struck you as odd?’
There are other questions I want to ask, but I’ve lost my witness. She’s in some space I don’t understand and can’t reach.
Sophie stands over me, taller and blonder than I’ll ever be, wanting me to leave. I nod, compliant and submissive. I don’t want to prompt a complaint to Watkins.
‘I’m going to leave you my phone number. If you need any kind of help, let me know. We can help, we just need you to ask.’
She nods. I write out my name and number on a sheet in my notebook, tear out the page and push it over the counter to her. As I do that, we hear a car outside, doors slamming, the sound of children’s voices. Sophie doesn’t take my number. Just leaves it on the counter.
We walk to the front door. The strange atmosphere is still with us, but I don’t understand it.
Hinton goes out to get her kids. I hang back, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Hinton
says something about me, because I see her gesture in my direction.
The kids spill out of the car. Theo and Ayla, I know from the inquest notes. Six and five. Ayla’s in some kind of ballet costume and wants to show her mother her pirouette. The friend drives off with a wave.
I say, ‘Thank you, Sophie. I’ll get going.’
Hinton gives me a look that says I can’t leave soon enough for her, then, abruptly, as I have my hand on the door of my car, says, ‘Actually, look, I have to go out. It would be easier if I didn’t have them. Can you look after them for ten minutes? My mum should be back soon.’
I say yes.
‘She should be here any moment.’
I tell her that’s fine.
Hinton looks at me hard. I think she’s trying to imply that she has fiercely high child-care standards and she’s seeking to determine if I meet those tests. I give her my best child-care face, whatever that is.
‘Okay.’ She nods. Takes me and the kids into the house. Gets orange juice for Theo. Puts the telly on. Says again, ‘It’ll be five minutes, literally.’
I don’t believe her. I think Sophie takes the path of least resistance in most situations. That she does whatever is pleasantest and most convenient and simply rearranges her mental furniture to make her own behaviour seems acceptable. Perhaps we all do the same thing, if not quite on Hinton’s scale.
I say again that we’ll be fine.
Hinton gives me the hard stare one last time, then whirls off.
Theo is in front of the TV already, watching an American cartoon. Things being whacked, splatted, and chased.
I say to Ayla, ‘I’m Fiona, a friend of your mam’s. You’re Ayla, aren’t you?’
Ayla nods. Her eyes are wide and serious. ‘Are you a policewoman?’
‘Yes.’
I assume Sophie said as much to her friend when she arrived. Ayla frowns at my answer, but I know why.
‘I’m a detective, so I don’t get to wear a uniform. I used to, though. It was very hot.’
Love Story, With Murders Page 8