This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  ‘He’s not here, sir.’

  ‘Was the door unlocked?’

  ‘We had to force it, sir.’

  Scott goes inside and I dare not follow, so I concentrate on trying to hear anything he says. I hear ‘struggle’. Was that ‘signs of’ or ‘no signs of’? I hear a lot of moving around, drawers being opened and closed, a window being opened, and then the underling emerges with some stuff in a bag and Scott follows him out.

  ‘Get that lot straight to the lab.’

  He takes a look round the living room and kitchen and I’m interested to watch a professional at work, to see where he looks first, where the obvious hiding places are. (I’ll pass on a tip: if you’ve got anything incriminating, never hide it in the bread bin or the freezer). He says nothing as we drive back to the main campus, so I venture an indirect approach.

  ‘Are you allowed to take things away from someone’s room like that, without a search warrant?’

  He’s wondering whether to bother answering, but he says, eventually, ‘He was reported by you as a missing person; we’re looking for anything that will help us find him. What was taken away was possible evidence of criminal activity.’

  ‘A weapon you mean? Or blood’

  He sighs, ‘No.’

  ‘Drugs then?’

  He says nothing. I am beginning to get tired of this.

  ‘So do you have any more idea where he is than I would have if I’d gone in and looked round his room?’

  He brings the car to a stop outside the Student Union building and without looking at me he says, ‘Amiel’s wallet and phone aren’t there. That means we can check for credit card transactions and cash withdrawals and monitor his phone activity. We’ve still got his passport, so he won’t be leaving the country. It shouldn’t be difficult to locate him.’

  ‘Alive or dead?’

  ‘We’ve no reason to suppose he’s dead.’

  ‘Except that he was very helpful to you about Ekrem Yilmaz’s drug-dealing activities and Ekrem Yilmaz has been brutally murdered.’

  He opens his door and before he can come round and usher me out of my side, I get out myself. I smile breezily at him across the bonnet.

  ‘Well, DCI Scott, I’m sure you’ll keep me informed of progress. If he hasn’t turned up by tomorrow, I shall have to phone his mother and I’d like to have something to tell her.’

  I think he’s going to get back into the car without replying, but instead he moves towards me and says, ‘Talking of phoning, maybe you can tell me something. The girls – women - in your class all made mobile calls to each other on Wednesday evening, though they say they spent the evening together here at the Union. Desirée Bonfort, Christiane Becker, Ceren Vural and Irina Boklova all made calls to one another in the early evening and Yukiko Iwaki called Christiane Becker just before ten, though she claims that she met up with them shortly afterwards.’

  I pat his arm in what I know is an irritatingly patronising manner.

  ‘You’ve never been a young woman DCI Scott. The early calls were to discuss what they were wearing and the optimum arrival time. Yukiko called to say she was coming over. Women like to communicate. We think it makes the world go round.’

  As I walk across to my office I wonder why I feel the need to be so arsey with him and I find I can think of several reasons:

  1. I have a problem with men in general (due in no small part to my experience of marriage) and with men in authority in particular.

  2. I feel a need to keep prodding to make sure that David Scott, whom I remember as a schoolboy, is really a senior policeman.

  3. (Paradoxically when taken with 2) it is just possible that I fancy him.

  10

  TUESDAY: Investigation Day Six

  They brought Denis de Longueville into the station for questioning. If he wanted to play it by the book, then he could see how he liked it. At first he wanted to call a lawyer in London - a friend of my father - but when he was told that they would keep him at the station till his lawyer arrived, he agreed to the prompt arrival of the duty solicitor. Emma Bright was small, sharp-faced, young and assertive. Scott had dealt with her before but he’d never seen her so fluttered by a client. De Longueville strolled in wearing a blazer and an open-necked white shirt. His air of disdain and his immaculate tailoring seemed to stir Ms Bright to even greater efforts than usual in the defence of her client’s civil liberties.

  Her client, in spite of his air of hauteur, was palpably nervous to start with. Sweaty palms, Scott thought, but he watched him relax visibly as he saw where the line of questioning was going. What had he been expecting? Scott wondered. Was he asking the wrong questions? He was interested in the drug-dealing as the most promising line open at the moment. Had de Longueville ever bought drugs from Ekrem Yilmaz? Ms Bright replied that her client was not obliged to answer that question. Did he ever use drugs, smoke a bit of cannabis, for example? Her client was not obliged to answer that either. Did he know of anyone else who bought drugs from Yilmaz? Her client preferred to remain silent.

  Scott tried a different approach: he described the manner of Yilmaz’s death in graphic detail and had the satisfaction of seeing de Longueville’s pretty, self-satisfied face turn a shade paler; he asked him, as a future lawyer, if he didn’t think it right that the police should make every effort to find Yilmaz’s killer or killers. Did he not, Scott asked, think it was his duty to give the police every possible assistance?

  Ms Bright requested a conference with her client and eventually came back with a deal. Her client, she said, intended to have a career as an international lawyer. Of course, he wished to give the police all the help he could but he was understandably anxious not to prejudice his future career by acquiring any sort of criminal record. She had advised him that his own personal behaviour could not be deemed relevant to the case under investigation, but he was prepared, in the spirit of civic duty, to name some of Ekrem Yilmaz’s associates, without any implication that they had been involved in criminal activity.

  Scott had to be content with that. He knew that Yilmaz could have tried blackmailing de Longueville and he put that possibility to him, but the Frenchman shrugged it off with the rejoinder that he thought his word on anything would have more credibility that Yilmaz’s. Although Scott hated his smug tone and would have liked to wipe the smile off his face somehow, he knew that what he said was true, and he judged him to be a man who would get himself out of trouble by bluff, guile and pulling strings rather than by anything as strenuous as a violent murder.

  He’d called a team meeting for Wednesday morning. He needed to be able to give them a strong line of enquiry; at the moment they were going in too many directions at once. He got into his car and drove fast round to the college. He tracked down Clive Davies on his tea break but got nothing more than he had from the first interview with him. Davies was relaxed and eager to help if he could but he offered nothing Scott wanted. Here was the only man with the obvious opportunity to kill Yilmaz and he appeared to have zero motive. He didn’t feature in Yilmaz’s phone records or in de Longueville’s list of Yilmaz’s contacts; he was happily married, a model citizen and had never been to Turkey.

  Yukiko Iwaki was also anxious to be helpful: she came into Gina Gray’s office looking as neat and trim as usual, this time in a little Black Watch tartan skirt, black tights and a green sweater. A little doll, he thought. She made a small ducking movement of her head, a sort of residual bow, as he greeted her, and sat down tidily, knees together, on the edge of a chair. He took her again through the events of Wednesday night; she answered calmly and precisely without hesitation or uncertainty, changing nothing until he asked her, as he had before, whether she liked Ekrem Yilmaz. The previous time, he noted, she had simply said Not so much, really; this time she looked directly at him and said, ‘He passed away, so we should not speak badly about him, but I think nobody is sorry that he died.’

  As she left the room and he was scanning his notes, he spotted something he had
circled. He jumped up and called after her,

  ‘Yukiko.’

  He followed her down the corridor.

  ‘You closed the library doors just before ten but you didn’t hand in the keys till ten past ten. What were you doing in those ten minutes?’

  He didn’t really expect an interesting answer. Clearing up, he thought, or putting books away, but she gave a little trill of laughter and put her hand to her mouth in embarrassment.

  ‘I was changing my clothes, in the toilet.’

  ‘Why did you change?’

  ‘To go to the Student Union.’

  ‘And you couldn’t go in the clothes you were wearing?

  She giggled again.

  ‘I was wearing library clothes. They weren’t dancing clothes, you see.’

  ‘I see.’

  And suddenly he did see: not everything, but a glimmer of light.

  ‘Yukiko, if the stacks were moved together while you were in the toilet, do you think you would have heard them?’

  She was looking at him, wide-eyed with surprise for a moment, then she shook her head.

  ‘Maybe not. I always close the two office doors, and the water was running some of the time. And I think maybe I was singing a little bit too.’

  Again, her hand went to her mouth.

  ‘So you might not have heard someone going past the toilet door and out into the foyer?’

  ‘Aah. Maybe not.’

  ‘One last thing. Do you usually go straight out by the office door after you’ve locked the main door?’

  ‘Oh no. Usually, I make it tidy We don’t re-shelve the books. That’s the librarians’ job. But the students leave a lot of books on the tables and I pile them up tidily. I’m afraid I didn’t do that on Wednesday. I left a mess.’

  As he drove back to the station, his spirits, which had soared at the glimpse of a possible solution, started spiralling downward again. It wasn’t really such a clever solution; it left a hell of a lot of things unexplained. For one thing, there was the sex: there might have been time for Yilmaz to be killed in those ten minutes, but not for him to have sex first. And then wouldn’t the porter have noticed two men coming out of the office exit? He hadn’t asked Clive Davies about anything that happened before Yukiko handed the keys in, but wouldn’t he have mentioned two men coming out just before she did?

  He called Clive Davies on his work number and left a message for him to call back urgently. He decided to bring the Turks in for questioning: Ahmed Kurtal, Asil Yurekli, Ceren Vural, and five others who featured both in Yilmaz’s phone records and in de Longueville’s list. He was tired of getting nowhere, sick of being stonewalled. These people would be scared by a police station; it was time to play tough.

  11

  TUESDAY: Comparative Forms

  Nine a.m. I am in my office and I have to call Laurent’s mother. I can find no excuse for putting it off any longer. I have spoken to her once before. When we first realised that Laurent had a drug problem, back last October, I summoned him and told him he would have to go home. Simple. Easy. We have a no drugs policy. Out. Twenty minutes later, I got a panicky call from Gillian in the office.

  ‘There’s a woman on the phone, speaking French. I think she wants you.’

  Mme Amiel did want me and she was indeed speaking French, very fast and with a great deal of sobbing. Since she also repeated herself a lot, I got the drift: an absent father; her daughter such a good girl, never any trouble; Laurent a good boy really but in bad company; England her last hope et cetera. Cravenly, pusillanimously I gave in, stipulating only, in my crude French, ‘Laurent doit avoir l’assistance d’un conseiller de drogues, Mme Amiel.’

  She agreed eagerly: the best, no matter what it cost. Le meilleur, n’importe combien il coûte.

  So of course I’m really looking forward to talking to her again and explaining, in French, that we appear to have lost her son, who has now been missing for four days. I make some preliminary notes - useful phrases, an opening gambit – then I take a deep breath and pick up the phone. I present the conversation to you verbatim here for those who can really speak French and might enjoy the pleasure of critiquing my attempts, but I also give you a translation which, I feel, successfully conveys the extreme banality of our conversation. The translation, in fact, reads exactly like one of those model conversations one finds in English Language textbooks, which bear no relation to real life as we know it.

  ‘Mme Amiel? Ici c’est Mme Gray de Marlbury College. Je regrette que je dois vous raconter des mauvaises nouvelles.’

  (Madame Amiel? This is Mrs Gray from Marlbury College. I’m afraid I have to tell you some bad news)

  ‘Mon Dieu! Mon fils! Qu’est-ce qui est arrivé?’

  (My God! My son! What has happened?)

  ‘J’ai peur que Laurent a disparu, madame.’

  (I’m afraid Laurent has disappeared, madame)

  ‘Disparu? Laurent a disparu?’

  (Disappeared? Laurent has disappeared?)

  ‘Oui madame. Personne le n’a pas vu depuis vendredi soir.’

  (Yes, madame. No-one has seen him since Friday evening)

  ‘Ah mon dieu! Que vais-je faire?’

  (Oh My God! What am I going to do?)

  ‘Ne vous dérangez pas, madame. La police le cherche à ce moment, Madame Amiel, et nous esperons qu’ils le trouveront bientôt.’

  (Don’t upset yourself, madame. The police are looking for him at this moment and we hope they will find him soon.)

  ‘Ah mon pauvre fils, mon pauvre petit Laurent!’

  (Ah my poor son, my poor little Laurent)

  ‘Je vous informererai aussitôt que j’ai plus de nouvelles.’

  (I will inform you as soon as I have more news.)

  ‘Merci, merci. Ah Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu.’

  (Thank you, thank you. Oh My God, My God)

  ‘Au revoir, madame.’

  (Good-bye, madame)

  I replace the receiver, put my head down on my desk and whimper for a bit. Then I go out for a cigarette. What do I really think about Laurent’s disappearance? I ask myself this as I puff my way round the outside of the building. Do I really think he might be dead or do I think he’s down in London getting wasted on his mother’s money? DCI Scott will know by now whether he’s used his bank cards since he went missing, but is he going to tell me? I may need to bully him a bit. He thinks I’m a nosey old cow, I know, but I am after all responsible for Laurent - in a way. This isn’t just idle curiosity; I’ve told his mother I’ll let her know any news. I think of phoning him but an unusually ruffled Desirée has already been to my office this morning to tell me that Denis has been taken to the police station for questioning, so Scotty is presumably busy stringing him up by his thumbs at this moment. I’ll get him later though. He shan’t escape.

  I teach for the rest of the morning: I listen to a recording of train announcements with a bewildered elementary class and I don’t let them in on the secret that native speakers generally can’t make head or tail of them either; I read The Quiet American with an advanced class taking a literature option and I lose the will to live with a foundation year Economics group giving talks on supply and demand. As I return to my office at lunch time, Gillian comes out of the office, flapping a telephone message at me: the Principal would like to see me as soon as I have a moment.

  I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that I’m in the habit of popping into the Principal’s office for a chat. I have, in fact, never had a chat with him of any kind. He chaired the awesome appointment panel which interviewed me for my job and when he sees me around the college he smiles vaguely at me; he knows he should know who I am but can’t quite remember. So, always up for a new experience, I comb my hair, put on some lipstick and head across to Norman Street’s office.

  His secretary, obviously primed for my possible arrival, ushers me straight in and he comes round his desk to offer me a hearty handshake. His stock in trade is being the bluff Yorkshire man and I expect he
thinks of himself as good with people, which he probably could be if he were a bit more interested in them and a bit less interested in money. There used to be a cartoon character on children’s television with a face like a cash register and £ signs spinning in his eyes; I always expect our Principal’s face to do that. Money is what is exercising him this afternoon, though he goes through the niceties over Ekrem and we agree with one another that his death is a terrible thing to have happened and share the hope that the police will get to the bottom of it soon. Then he gets down to it.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you, Gina –‘

  Gina? Since when have we been on those terms?

  ‘- how important our overseas student recruitment is to college finances.’

  I smile noncommittally.

  ‘And we do appreciate what a crucial role the ELTD plays in both recruitment and retention.’

  Oh good. So crucial that he’s going to stop paying us peanuts?

  ‘But an event like this, you know, could seriously knock our overseas recruitment. People understandably get anxious and ….’

  I let him witter on in this vein for a bit and when he finally peters out I say,

  ‘If it’s any comfort, I think we shall find, when the police have gathered all their evidence, that Ekrem was a pretty unsavoury character and probably involved in criminal activities. The fact that someone like him has been killed shouldn’t make parents feel that the UK is a dangerous place in general to study in.’