Reparation

by Gaby Koppel

  I’ve left Mutti at home with strict instructions. No smoking in my flat. No cooking. Don’t ring me at work unless it’s an emergency. She’s got a copy of The Times, twenty pounds, a tube map and directions to the British Museum.

  I finally get through to DI Mike Jenkins at Stoke Newington. I need to get him onside without sounding bothered. Play it cool. Unfortunately, goes on DI Jenkins, there are “massive” local sensitivities around the whole incident. The orthodox Jewish community are wary of the media. He would love to work with us, natch, but he very much doubts the family will want it.

  I bet he hasn’t even asked them. I put my pen down, and move one step up from nonchalant. I run through our case solved stats. A single film can generate so many calls. Sway local sympathies. What about justice for the little girl? And what about the risk of the perpetrator offending again?

  “Do you really want the death of another child on your conscience?” I ask. There’s a silence from the other end and I swear I can hear DI Jenkins rolling his eyes. Click, whirr, dialling tone. He is, it seems, far cooler than me.

  I pick up my car keys. “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in N16.” Andrew doesn’t respond. Which is probably a good thing. He’ll only be on to Sarah and the next thing I know it’s another lecture on our partnership with the police. That partnership works like a pair of standard issue handcuffs.

  It’s a damp, humid afternoon as I inch my way through the Islington logjam and fork right down Essex Road. Just before the traffic lights at the end, I’ve reached the edge of known territory. I stop to get out the A-Z. If I turn right here, I could stop at Dave’s and spend a lazy hour together without anybody being any the wiser. I hold that thought, and drive on. I work my way forward, past a scraggy green. You can tell you’ve crossed the border into Hackney because litter begins to pile up on the pavements and it’s now raining. The main road becomes narrow and winding, forcing the buses to push past each other between the tottering terraces. The road ends in front of a shabby, thirties-built civic building.

  I turn right, splashing through puddles, into a narrow street lined with shops and cafes. It’s all got an air of down-at-heel hippie chic. Multi-coloured macramé shopping baskets and babies in slings. On men.

  Round the one-way system, the Bohemian vibe gives way to Turkish grocery shops and pound stores. I kick aside a sodden fried chicken carton as I double lock the car. Using my copy of the local paper as an umbrella, I make a dash for the less ghastly of two ethnic greasy-spoon caffs. The cappuccino is watery and bitter. I stir in two heaped spoons of sugar, but that just makes it worse.

  It’s on the front page of the now soggy paper. In a crime-ridden borough, this is one that stands out.

  I go through the article, looking for clues about exactly where the family of Bruchi Friedmann lives. From my dreary years as a cub reporter, I know it must be here, the name of the road. Local people want that kind of information. They want to know which of their friends lives in the same road as the dead person.

  Next stop is three doors up, a scrappy looking estate agent’s. There’s only one person in the office, an acne-faced young man who introduces himself as Tim. He’s wearing red braces as though the yuppie dream never died.

  “I’m looking for something in St Kilda’s Road,” I say.

  “Rent or buy?” I take a punt on what’s going to net him more.

  “Buy.” He raises an eyebrow.

  “They’re pretty big. Is it just for you?”

  “Sorry, didn’t I say? I’m looking for a flat.”

  “How much did you have in mind?”

  “It depends…” He’s beginning to suspect I’m wasting his time. Which of course, I am.

  “I’m not getting much. To be honest, we don’t get too many in that area. They tend to go privately.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No agents. They keep things close.”

  “When you say ‘they’?” He stops tapping and looks straight at me.

  “You do know that in St Kilda’s virtually every house is umm, Jewish?”

  “Well…”

  “You have been down there, haven’t you?”

  “I knew there were Jewish people living there. I just didn’t realise it was so…”

  “Then you aren’t…?” He stops himself, looking embarrassed. “I sort of assumed that you must be – somehow – though you don’t look, quite…” He makes a hand gesture towards my jeans and leather jacket.

  “I’m Jew-ish,” I say.

  “OK, cool. Sorry, it’s easy to say the wrong thing. Fall foul of the political correctness police, and all that, you know.”

  He starts tapping again. There’s a rattling sound from behind me as the door opens and a gust of damp air wafts through, blowing the papers around his desk. A man in rain-splattered overalls walks in. He shoves a piece of paper onto the desk with dirty hands.

  “As you can see, I’m just with a client, Germaine,” says Tim, scribbling a signature. The man seems oblivious to the reprimand.

  “Them’s the ones I’ve done. ’Av’ you got any more for me?” The estate agent shoots me an apologetic grin and mouths “Sorry,” at me. He swivels round on his chair, picking up a large hard-backed notebook from the desk behind.

  “Have you done the new ones in Durley, East Bank and Holmleigh Road?”

  “Yep.”

  “And how about putting the ‘sold’ notices on Cranwich and Heathland?”

  “I’ve run out. Got three For Sale left, no Sold.”

  “They’re out the back. And do me a favour mate, use the back door when you leave.” Germaine stomps out, and Tim resumes at his computer, rolling his eyes for my benefit.

  “Hold on, we’ve got a couple of things here. A two-bedroom flat in Paget Road – for one hundred and fifty thousand, leasehold. You’ll love this one. It’s packed with original features, and another one in St Andrew’s Grove for one five five – lease is shared between four flats – any good?”

  “Yeah, can I see the details?” I wait until the printer is chuntering until I say, “That little girl. Killed last week. That was round here, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep. Ghastly. It was in St Kilda’s, actually.”

  “Oh?” I say. Tap tap tap of his fingers on the keyboard.

  “But I think you knew that, already.” He looks straight at me and I blush, waving my newspaper. “It was in the Gazette.”

  “That’s not why you want to live there?” He must think I’m a bit of a weirdo.

  “Oh God no. But it makes you think, doesn’t it?” He takes the copies from the printer and hands them to me. “Nice fireplace,” I muse. “But the kitchen needs a bit of work.”

  I spend some time going through the descriptions line by line, to reinforce the impression that I am a genuine flat hunter. But I decline the offer of a viewing, saying I need to show the details to my boyfriend first. As I get up to leave, Tim hands me his card.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I don’t suppose you know what number that little girl lived at, the murder?”

  He smiles a resigned smile, “Eighty-eight.” As I’m turning to open the door, he adds, “You know, if that’s all you wanted, you could have just come in and asked.” The door clicks shut behind me.

  Back in the car and up the road. Past the one-way system it broadens out to four lanes, and then quite suddenly everything changes. Men on the pavements are dressed in the full kit. Big black hats, with curling earlocks and long black coats. Long white socks. Dave should see this. He’d realise how easy he’s got it with my parents.

  Most of the women are pushing prams. Not buggies, but big old-fashioned perambulators that most other people junked years ago. You can’t even buy those any more. The children with long earlocks blowing in the breeze, and the women and kids are all dressed in a strangely old fashioned way you don’t see anywhere else. I can’t quite put my finger on what seems so out of time until I see that some of the women are wearing plastic rain bonnets. My grandmother used to w
ear those in the 1960s to protect her shampoo and set.

  As I’m cruising along what looks like the main shopping street, a news bulletin comes on the radio. The cause of death of the girl has been established – it’s definitely a murder then. At least the poor mother hasn’t been left in the dark for weeks wondering what exactly happened.

  I pass a busy parade of shops and pull up just long enough to look around – none of them are chains apart from the incongruous betting shop in the middle. Some of the signs are in Hebrew, all of them seem to be selling exotic stuff you don’t get elsewhere. This, I realise, is a whole different world, and though it’s next door to normal London, it’s as though there’s an invisible wall sealing off a little network of a few streets.

  It’s easy to find St Kilda’s because it’s the one cordoned off with police tape. And on the pavement just beyond, there they are. It’s like a horde of alien invaders in this little world – a whole crowd of people dressed in their own uniform of combats and parkas, with a lot of Nikons slung round their necks looking like hi-tech jewellery. It had to be only a matter of time before the tabloids cottoned on. We’re going to lose this if we don’t move fast.

  Where to go though? I’m not getting anything here. I’m back in the car and heading up the main road, across the junction then I take a right and park. There’s an old-fashioned red telephone box a few yards along. I walk towards it, open the door, and am greeted by the familiar smell. Pee and damp paper. Above the phone, the usual selection of prostitutes’ calling cards offering “Full French”, and inviting me to “Be Naughtie with Norma”. To the right, there’s a full set of telephone directories, hanging by their spines in a metal holder. I twist one up towards me, S–Z. The covers are torn, and some of the pages are missing. I leaf through, looking for “synagogue”, and when I find the place there are quite a few. I run my finger down the list. There it is. Egerton Road N16. “Synagogue, The New”.

  I walk to the end of the road. Above the Post Office is a sign telling me this is Egerton Road. I’m here already. So where’s the synagogue? There’s a makeshift fruit stall, and a large house with a doctor’s brass plate, then the waste land and the row of houses.

  As I’m sauntering along, I call my home number, but there’s no reply. Maybe Mutti is out improving herself, with the help of the Elgin Marbles. And then, there it is. Must have been splendid once, presiding over its street corner in its cathedral-like way. Grand stairs leading up to four big columns beneath a double dome. And a sign:

  UNITED SYNAGOGUE

  * * *

  NEW SYNAGOGUE

  ORIGINALLY FOUNDED IN LEADENHALL STREET 5520 – 1760

  RE-ERECTED IN Gt St HELEN’S 5598 – 1838

  REBUILT ON THIS SITE 5675 – 1915

  ARCHITECTS

  JOSEPH & SMITHEM

  I knock on the enormous front door, turning to survey the scruffy frontage as I wait. Tufts of grass, and cracked paving stones, strewn with a light scattering of used cans and crisp wrappers.

  “Yes?”

  I turn back to see a small, elderly man with a moustache and a cross expression holding the door half open. He’s wearing an ancient hand-knitted jumper under a jacket. Round his neck is a black cab driver’s licence number.

  “Umm.” I’m fed up of lying. I flash my researcher identity pass. “I work for a television programme, and I wondered if somebody here would have the time to tell me a bit about the area?”

  “Hmph.”

  “It’s just er… a documentary about the community. Sort of.” On reflection, one can have too much truth.

  “You want to come in or not?”

  As he shuts the door behind me, clanging reverberates through the empty building. I follow the old man through a foyer and up some dusty stairs covered with threadbare carpet, and reeking of a dusty gloom. He leads me into a small office that smells of mothballs. Behind the desk is second elderly man, bent over a ledger.

  “Sidney, the young lady works for the television. She wants to know about the area. What can we tell her?” He looks up from his book keeping.

  “What’s that, Morrie? Television? Is she going to put us on the television?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Sidney. You’re too old.”

  “I’m younger than Magnus Magnusson.”

  “You were born too old.” Sidney frowns and puts down his pencil. They both turn to look at me.

  “I’m interested in the Jewish community,” I say.

  “What can we tell her?” asks Morrie again, as if I wasn’t in the room.

  “Well”, says Sidney, folding his arms, “It’s all changed now. It’s all the frummers. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, of course. We get on very well. But it’s not like it was.”

  “Frummers? Do you mean orthodox – religious?”

  “Bit more than that, dear. The Hasidic people. In Israel they call them Haredi. The guys with the black hats.”

  “So, you’re not Jewish, then?” says Morrie. “We could do with a few new members. The old ones are dropping like flies.”

  “Mmmm, like flies,” repeats Sidney.

  I think it’s wiser to skip my religious credentials. “I’m interested in the little girl who was killed recently – St Kilda’s Road.”

  “We could make you a nice shidduch,” says Morrie.

  “Yes,” says Sidney, “I’m still single.”

  “It’s a bit late to start thinking about that, Sid. You spent too long as a mummy’s boy.” He turns to me. “Would you believe he lived with his late mother until she died at ninety-one?”

  “St Kilda’s Road,” I repeat, beginning to feel exasperated. “The little girl.”

  “Tragic.”

  “The murder of the little girl?”

  “No, Sidney and his mother.”

  “But what about the murder in St Kilda’s?”

  “Terrible business that,” says Sidney.

  “Terrible,” agrees Morrie.

  “I want to get them to agree to a reconstruction of the crime on television. So we can catch the killer.”

  “Good idea. So what’s the problem?”

  “The police won’t let me speak to the family. Can you help me find some other way around?” The two men look at each other. Sidney picks up his pencil and turns it around in his hands.

  “You know anything about the Friedmann family, Sid?” asks Morrie. Sidney nods.

  “Well?”

  “What d’you think, Morrie? I’m not sure.”

  “What you mean you’re not sure?”

  Sidney says something in something that sounds like a garbled form of German and I assume is Yiddish, a language I feel I should know but have actually never heard before. Yes, my parents’ conversation is spattered with slang like meshuge and broiges and tuchus, but they can’t actually string it together in sentences. Not that they’d want to, of course. It’s for the peasants, as Mutti would say with a shudder, as if her normal mode of communication was some kind of elevated Platonic discourse instead of a bastardised hybrid of kitchen German crossed with English. But, in her private linguistic hierarchy, Yiddish represents the lower orders, and when her snobby friends come round to tea they converse in terrible French, under the illusion that it makes them sound elegant.

  What I hear now is something she’d dismiss as the language of the shtetl. Though the cadences are familiar, identifying separate words is like trying to pull fish out of a fast-flowing stream. I manage to catch “weyss nicht”, and “rebbe”, the rest is a current of verbiage. After a minute or two, Morrie says to me,

  “You really think it will help to catch the person who did this?”

  “I’m afraid there are no guarantees. But would you rather put your faith in Stoke Newington police?” They shake their heads in mournful unison.

  “The family belong to the Veltz community”, says Morrie. If you like, I can introduce you to Rabbi Stern.

  “That would be fantastic. Do you think I can speak to him today?”
He arches a grizzled eyebrow at me.

  “You think I got so many other important things to do?”

  Rabbi Stern’s house is a large, brooding, thirties-built semi. As we are approaching, Morrie takes a skullcap out of his pocket and arranges it on his head. A little girl answers the bell. He says something to her, the only bit I catch is “Reb Stern”. She runs back into the house, calling out, “Tateh, Tateh.”

  When the Rabbi emerges, he’s a dead ringer for Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. It may be the biggest cliché on the planet but this man really is Topol. And what makes him come over all earthy and Eastern European is that over his shirt he’s wearing one of those cream vest-like garments with fringes and black stripes at either end, just like in the film. Morrie and the Rabbi shake hands. They talk for some time in an undertone, Morrie gesturing towards me while I try to look respectful, and the rabbi throws the occasional glance my way but never seems to look straight at me – he’s hitting a spot about two feet to my right. The two men become very excited. I wonder if they are having an argument. Finally, they shake hands and the rabbi goes back into his house.