The story makes a wearisome sort of sense, but falls apart at the seams. Khalifi seems to me too sane to be a person-chopper-upper. I mean, no one is too sane to be a murderer, we could all be that, but you’ve got to be a fairly committed nutter to slice-’n’-dice with such happy abandon. That’s not the worst part of the story, though. The bit that makes no sense is the revenge killing. Who took the revenge? Rosemary Langton, Mary’s mam? Her solicitor husband with the collapsing face? The Langtons have a twenty-three-year-old son who has been more keenly investigated now than would have been the case seven years ago, but still. I remember the beige carpets and the willow tree in the garden. Some families just give off a choppy-uppy odour. Others don’t. This one didn’t.
Which leaves me back with Ali el-Khalifi. He of the mobile face and the glide-rail know-how. I’ve had my head too full of Langton and Mortimer to give Khalifi proper attention, and it’s time to put that right. I want to know him better. There’s a way in which police work stops you doing that, but I’ve got all weekend now.
I slip the car into gear and leave the car-park.
Sexy secretary. Woman of mystery.
20
First stop: Llanishen. I’m not looking for clues. It’s atmosphere I want.
Because of the way this enquiry started – because I found her leg, her lovely, lovely head – Mary Langton feels vibrant and alive. She sings to me. Yet the blunt, objective truth is that Langton, poor girl, was really too boring to end her life distributed across a number of suburban outbuildings. The cow teeth and the hockey should have won out over the pole dancing. She isn’t, on the face of it, the sort of victim that most attracts me.
Khalifi’s different. In a way, that displaced, clever, well-connected womaniser should have piqued my interest from the very first. I should have attached to him at least as much as I did to Langton, yet he’s still nothing more to me than a couple of photos and a pathologist’s report.
It’s time to get to know him, and I’m starting here. With the reservoir. Vacant and almost hostile. Empty of water. Empty of purpose. Clouds racing fast overhead and enough cold in the wind to feel like a threat.
I drift around, just getting a feel for the place. The fenced-off, empty lake. The rough ground around it. The dog walkers.
A good place to die, this. To lie spread out, under the wind.
The prickle I felt yesterday has settled in now. It has a feel of permanence.
When I get too cold to stay longer, I go back to my car and drive to the dead man’s flat. A two-bedroom penthouse on Ferry Road down by the bay. Value, around half a million pounds. Half a million is a lot more than a lecturer could afford, but Khalifi bought early, when prices were lower, and he did plenty of consultancy work for private-sector firms. Overall, there doesn’t seem to be any huge discrepancy between his incomings and his outgoings.
It’s easy enough getting into the building: there are people coming out as I enter. The flat itself is locked.
I try knocking at the door in case there’s still any SOCO activity there. Try neighbours in case any of them has a key. End up having to rouse up someone from building maintenance. Produce my warrant, sign a book, get the key. I’d prefer not to have done that, because Watkins will be angry if she learns. But she probably won’t learn.
Back to the flat.
The apartment is all about the emptiness. There’s a huge east-facing balcony opening onto the bay. The same grey light that Adams had. The same changeless change. Except that Khalifi has the city version of this view: the marina, the Assembly building, the patches of muddy green. Cardiff’s version of an esplanade.
There is something addictive about the view, but not necessarily in a good way. Self-harm: that’s addictive too.
The interior boasts blond wood floors in kitchen and living room. White walls. White kitchen units with a shiny black work surface. One wall – would an estate agent call it a feature wall? – is lined with an expensive designer-looking wallpaper that has a silky finish. Perhaps it is silk. But I doubt if Khalifi chose it. I bet it came with the flat. His own taste seems timidly restrained to a few obvious choices. A few Moroccan things: tiles, rug, photos, a framed print of some fort or other. And some engineering stuff. A cubic sculpture made of interlocking pieces of highly machined metals. Half curiosity, half art object.
It’s hard to find the human in this room. I move around changing the position of things, for no reason except to make a mark. The only thing that really feels personal – sentimental even – is a small wooden sail boat with heart-shaped sails cut from white-painted metal. It sits in a little alcove with a garland of fairy lights. Its lack of stylishness is almost its best feature. Like he temporarily forgot about being cool, forgot about wanting to impress.
I think of myself inhabiting the space in that Hobbs outfit. Clicking round in heels.
A woman of mystery.
I’d carry a slim pearl-handled pistol and take secret lovers.
I wonder where Buzz is. What he’s found.
The bedroom offers me more. It’s flash. Not in a clever way, but in a touchingly crass one. Giant bed. White duvet. A purple silk throw. Blue and red silk scatter cushions. Some expensive clothes. A large mirror and twin mirrored side-tables. In the bathroom: more of the same. The fixtures are all modern, glitzy, posh. But it’s those other touches that delight me. The leather shaving set with the badger-hair brush. The bottles of body lotion from Penhaligon’s. Monogrammed towels.
I run the brush against my cheek. Smell the lotion, feel the towels.
My colleagues, whom I respect and adore, neglect this kind of evidence, because it’s not court-worthy. Because you can’t photograph it, or tabulate it, or put it into an evidence bag. But it’s solid gold all the same. There is a packet of Fetherlite condoms in the mirrored cabinet. The whole place is very tidy.
I spend an hour or two just kicking around the apartment, then leave. Hand back the key. Sign out.
I know what I’m doing now. I’m on the scent.
Khalifi had a female colleague, Jenny Harrison. About my age. Attractive. One of my colleagues interviewed her in the normal way and came up with normal answers. I’ve got a pile of paper somewhere that has a mugshot of her and an interview report sheet.
But normal isn’t always the right approach.
I don’t have her address but drive round to the university, show my warrant card, and force some poor receptionist to give it to me. She gives me an address on Ton-Yr-Ywen Avenue, just off the Maes-y-Coed Road. I drive up there as fast as I can, keeping an eye out for cameras on the North Road.
Harrison’s address. Modern house. Bland as a shoebox and as functional.
I knock. She’s in.
Brown hair. Blue eyes. Nice eyes, actually. Friendly. Jeans, boots, jumper. Some jewellery. She’s every bit as pretty as her photo, maybe prettier. Also pregnant. And, after introducing myself, I ask the obvious question.
‘Six months,’ she says. ‘It’s our first.’
I don’t know who the ‘our’ is, but I don’t care. We sit down in the kitchen. Postcards stuck to the fridge. A loaf of bread proving on a countertop.
‘Ali el-Khalifi,’ I say. ‘You and him.’
‘There wasn’t really a me and him. And it was ages ago.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s not . . . I mean, I’m sure there’s no connection between that and. . . you know.’
People are so stupid. Sweetly, irritatingly stupid. Of course there’s no connection between gentle, pregnant Jenny and whoever danced around Llanishen scattering Khalifi’s body parts. But that makes her an ideal witness.
I nudge her for her story and she tells it.
It was five years ago. She was fairly new in the department, Khalifi a well-respected lecturer. He was very charming to her, very attentive. She knew that he had an agenda, of course, and ‘well, put it this way, I never thought Ali was the settle-down-and-get-married type.’ He invited her out one evening. She said yes. He
took her somewhere expensive, ordered champagne. They ended back at his place.
‘Back at his place. Meaning?’
‘Well, not that, no. But I did go up there.’
‘So you must have thought about it? Having sex with him. You wouldn’t have gone back there unless you’d thought there was a possibility.’
‘Yes.’ Gentle Jenny has a grounded quality that’s nice to be around. It makes her a steady witness too. ‘I think I was curious. I wanted to see him in action. Wanted to see his place. And, you know, I was a bit drunk. A tiny bit flattered. New in town and all that. I’m not the one-night stand sort of girl, really, but – well, you’re right, I was interested enough to go back with him.’
‘Did he pressure you? Was there any intimidation involved? Even that creepy sort that hovers in the background but isn’t definite enough to put your finger on?’
She laughs. She knows what I mean, which is more than I do. I’d miss any creepy background intimidation until someone groped my breast and I found myself displacing their kneecaps and bursting their testicles.
But that’s another story.
Jenny says, ‘No. I mean, there was the champagne, the nice restaurant, the BMW he picked me up in. You can call that “pressure” if you like, but not intimidation. No way.’
‘And in the apartment? You get up there, and . . .?’
I can see it. The big, expensive view over the bay. Lights set to moody. Mozart on the stereo. More champagne. The place was a shag pad. A single man’s idea of every single woman’s dream. Gentle Jenny gives the lie to that. She’s got what most women want: an ordinary house on an ordinary street. A good job, a steady husband. Bread rising on the sideboard and a bun in her oven.
‘As soon as I got up there, it felt wrong. I mean –’ She wrinkles her face. It’s a look that manages to be compassionate and patronising at the same time. ‘You know, he tried hard. It was quite sweet really. That’s almost what made it feel wrong, the trying. I think he wanted me to be something I wasn’t. Like he wanted me to be wearing Manolo Blahniks and was disappointed when I said I got my stuff on sale at Dorothy Perkins.’
We laugh. Share a female-bonding moment.
She resumes, saying, ‘I sobered up pretty quickly, said sorry, I wasn’t ready, and got out of there. He was okay with it. I mean, I think he was.’
She wrinkles her face again. The same expression. She’ll have a wrinkly baby, I reckon.
‘If you’d gone ahead and had sex, did you get any sense that the sex would have been weird in any way?’
‘No.’ She answers that too quickly and I make her think again and take longer to answer. She still says, ‘No.’ Our search of the apartment found nothing obviously kinky.
‘Was there a moment, even a brief one, where you felt threatened, especially when you said you were going?’
‘No, definitely not. We kissed goodbye.’
‘Drugs? Did he offer you anything? A party drug, I mean. A line of coke? Ecstasy?’
‘No.’
More hesitation now, which I like. ‘But you’re not that kind of girl, are you?’ I say.
‘Put it this way, I think if I’d been a different sort of girl, there might have been more exotic fare available. Looking back on it, I think he was anxious. Anxious to score, anxious what I thought of him. He tried really hard. I don’t just mean in a dirty-old-man way, but in general. Working for the department. Getting his consultancy work. Dating women.’
Forensics have done the basics on the flat, but drugs were never their principal focus. They’d have been looking for signs of struggle, traces of blood, any DNA. They’ll probably have swabbed the toilet cistern in the bathroom as standard, but that’s not where Khalifi would have snorted his coke. He’d have done it straight from the shiny black worktops in the open-plan kitchen/living room. Mozart playing and the champagne cooling. A woman there to admire it all.
The worktop on the island unit wasn’t in one piece. There were two pieces, butted together with some black silicone-type material in the join.
‘The thing about Ali,’ she says, ‘is he never quite felt like he fit in. I mean, he did. In reality, he truly did. He was British much more than he was anything else. I don’t think anyone treated him differently because he had Moroccan origins. But I think he tried extra hard to compensate. Maybe he’d have done better if he’d been more relaxed about it.’
I nod, but also notice that she said ‘British,’ not ‘Welsh.’ Cardiff is multicultural enough, but it’s not London. I think of Khalifi’s flat. His consultancy work. All that departmental diligence. All that effort, and what he really needed was Welsh skin, a stocky build, and a deep knowledge of the oval ball.
We talk a bit more, but Gentle Jenny doesn’t have much more to offer. She sees me out.
‘Look,’ she says, ‘can I just ask? I never told anyone about that night with Ali. It just seemed better to let it go. I know maybe you can’t say, but I’d love to know . . .’
Sweetly stupid.
‘He was career-minded,’ I say. ‘He knew not to try it on with students. These days, that would get him fired. But you? You were new, young, pretty – you were fair game. He seems to have been reasonably compulsive where women were concerned. I just wanted to understand his game plan. How he operated.’
Jenny nods. Almost blushes. Makes a little movement that intrigues me: tossing her head back and simultaneously flicking her hair aside with her hand. As though correcting herself. Like some old-time maiden who’d been caught with her garter loose or an ankle flashing free of her petticoats. I try to read the look in more detail, but it escapes me. I don’t think it matters.
A moment later, the door is closed. I’m alone.
I go to my car, get in, call forensics. Tell them to get someone to reswab the kitchen on Monday. The silicone join. They agree to do it.
Not that it matters.
I ought really to write up notes of this interview and get them on the system. But that means telling Watkins what I’ve done and she’d probably be pissed off at me for going off-piste. So I won’t do the write-up. Which is okay, I think. Gentle Jenny hasn’t given me evidence that will help in the courtroom or the police enquiry. She’s just given me a glimpse of Khalifi. A chance to get closer.
I lean back in the car seat. Allow myself to think of Langton’s head. The dripping hair. The clack of the pebble.
Try to picture Khalifi. Try to find him. But get nothing. Just that prickle.
The Khalifi prickle.
There is almost no movement on the street. Down the road from me, a fat woman is loading plastic bags into an old red car. I can hear piano scales being practised indoors somewhere. Soft notes, laid over the hum of traffic.
I know what happens next, what I need to do.
When I dissociate – when I lose all feeling in my body and can’t tell what’s happening with my emotions – there is normally a kind of upward-spiral thing that happens first. As though my soul is escaping upwards through my head. I think that’s why people with out-of-body experiences so often report themselves as floating above the room, not peering up at it from below. It’s why normal people sometimes call themselves dizzy, or ungrounded, or say they have their head in the clouds. Those normal people never go where I go, never experience what I experience, but it shows that our paths to dissociation are the same. The sensation is universal, even if I’ve carried it further than most.
I have it now.
A kind of heady uppiness. That phrasing makes it sound upbeat, even euphoric, and it can be like that at times. But not now. What I have is just a grey, upwards draining. I’m not scared by it. I don’t have any feelings about it at all.
I do my breathing exercises, because I’ve drilled myself into doing them, no matter what, but the exercises help only when you’re lost in the foothills. It’s too late for that now, for me.
I’m past the treeline and heading up.
21
Home.
Bath.
<
br /> A joint. A full, fat, long one. Weed normally helps me to settle, but it doesn’t now. Or maybe it does. I’m too numb to know.
I call Buzz, not because I want to, but because I know we’ll have to talk sometime this evening, and I don’t trust myself to do it later. We have a short, stupid conversation, but I don’t think Buzz notices anything. I hope not. I don’t want to scare him. He shouldn’t be scared.
We ring off and I’m alone.
I text Watkins. I write, DAD SAYS DO I WANT TO COME AND CHAT WITH UNICORN STAFF ON SEMIOFFICIAL BASIS. OK?
I get a text back two minutes later: ‘OK’. Nothing else. But it’s enough.
I’m not frightened.
Observing myself, I’m almost pissed off at my own reaction. Fuck’s sake, woman, what are you worried about?
Physical safety? Not an issue. Sexual safety? Ditto, almost certainly, and in any case it’s not as though I’m some dainty Victorian flower. So it comes down to what it always comes down to with me: psychic safety. And even here, I feel the same thing: Fuck’s sake, woman, get a grip.
Because, curiously, I know all this is temporary. This time tomorrow, I’ll be fine. As fine as I ever am.
I even realise that I’ve long known it was going to come to this. That first night, in the office, the one with the fireflies and the dead girl’s shoes, when I made the call to Dad. Did I really not know then that it would come to this?
The bath goes cold.
It takes me time to notice. I have to concentrate hard to figure it out. Put my hand under the cold tap, the hot tap, and back into the bathwater. I used to think my senses just went numb, but it’s not that. They’re still doing their job. Diligently reporting their information. Presenting their little manila packets of facts and data. But the management staff are all away on leave somewhere. I’m like the last guy left in corporate HQ desperately trying all the phones and getting no more than a fading crackle and an echo of laughter from somewhere sandy.
Love Story, With Murders Page 13