‘We have. And according to Norman Street it’s all my fault.’
‘Really? Tell me more!’
‘I wish I could but I’ve already been accused of treason, so I’ve taken a vow of silence.’
‘Is it right that the chief inspector in charge of the case is an alumnus of William Roper?’
‘David Scott, yes. Do you remember him?’
‘I don’t think so. Do you see much of him?’
I swallow my sip of champagne with a splutter.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing. I just meant - well, unless there’s something I don’t know.’
‘There’s a good deal you don’t know, Tom, omniscient though you’d like to be thought. But there’s nothing to know about DCI Scott and me.’
‘I was just wondering if I could get him to come and talk to Year Twelve about a career in the police. I like to get former pupils in when I can.’
‘I can give you his mobile number if you like.’
He fishes a pen and a diary out of his pocket and I start to reel off the number, until I realise that he’s not writing it down but looking at me quizzically.
‘I remember phone numbers,’ I say defensively. ‘It’s just a thing I do.’
There is no stinting at this wedding: lunch, speeches and toasts all happen in abundance. So, it is late in the afternoon and beginning to get dark by the time we gather ourselves for the walk home, and it has started to rain. We make as much haste as we can but it is difficult in our wedding gear and with the wind hurling the rain in our faces, so when we reach the High Street and see a taxi drawing up outside the County Hotel, I dash across the road to commandeer it, with the others trailing wetly in my wake. Out of the taxi emerge the Amiels, mère et fille, looking dry and elegant and sporting several designer carrier bags. I am aware that we, by contrast, present a sorry sight. As Mme Amiel’s eyes sweep over us I am conscious not just of our wetness but that Ellie’s wet dress is clinging to her, that Annie has a wine stain on her jacket and that Freda’s face is smeared with chocolate. I dive into the taxi.
Back at home, it’s agreed that Ellie and Freda will stay the night since Ellie won’t be fit to drive for hours, so we all go and take off our damp glad rags and re-emerge, as if by consensus, in pyjamas. We close the curtains and turn on the fire in the sitting room. Ellie feeds and baths Freda and when she is settled to sleep, I make tea and a mound of cheese on toast, which we eat with our fingers, squeezed onto the big sofa, shouting out the answers to Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. I can’t remember a happier evening we have spent together.
18
SATURDAY: Investigation Day Ten
Scott gathered up the students’ statements strewn across his desk and stacked them in a pile. Not a thing. Nobody had seen anything, nothing unusual had happened, the evening of Wednesday February 27th had been entirely uneventful, except that a man had been brutally murdered in a college library.
He rubbed a hand over his unshaven face and looked at his watch. Four o’clock, and he had been here since seven. An entirely fruitless day. They were stuck, going precisely nowhere. In the night, he had convinced himself that the missing Turks held the key and railed pointlessly about their being whisked away; now he was less convinced. With Laurent and Ceren missing, he was inclining to the bigger picture: not a personal attack by two men driven wild by another’s malice but a conspiracy.
There were two possible kinds of conspiracy. One was the Islamic crusade: a sort of two-man terrorist cell aiming to clean up the college. Gina Gray had pooh-poohed it, didn’t believe her nice Iranians capable of it, but he wasn’t ready to relinquish it as a theory yet. The other possible conspiracy involved the Russian Mafia and the Turkish drug trade and was potentially so far-reaching that it was hard to know where to start.
Ekrem Yilmaz and Valery Tarasov ending up in the same small UK college – that was surely no co-incidence. Yilmaz knew Valery’s father. He and Anton Tarasov had both managed to dodge the bullet when Mikhail Belenki got caught and sent to jail. If Yilmaz’s death was Belenki’s revenge, they would never catch his killers. Without clear proof of a Russian involvement they would get no co-operation from the Russian authorities – probably wouldn’t even if they had proof. But if it was associates of Belenki who had killed Yilmaz, then wasn’t Valery Tarasov in danger too? Unless. Unless Tarasov was the killer – or one of the killers – saving his own skin by doing Belenki’s dirty work for him. Is that what Tarasov had meant when he said, I am safe here?
What he could not fathom for the moment was how Laurent Amiel and Ceren Vural fitted into this. Amiel had bought his drugs from Yilmaz and had maybe picked up his connection with Tarasov. And Ceren Vural? She seemed a total innocent, but there was some connection between her and Yilmaz, whatever anyone told him to the contrary. He had talked to her the day Yilmaz’s body was found and he had seen a very distressed young woman. They would have to keep digging, but he could swear they would find a connection. So, there was further work for Boxer and his team: background checks on the Vural family, more digging on the Belenki connection and anything they could get on Farid Hosseini and Atash Shirazi – anything that linked them to extremists, anything unusual at all.
He stood up. He was starving, he realised. He hadn’t had a proper meal since Gina had cooked him pasta on Thursday night. Well, he wouldn’t resort to bacon sarnies again; he would go to the supermarket, get a steak and a bag of salad, and some new potatoes that wouldn’t take long to cook, and he would make himself a proper dinner.
The food looked good on the plate, quite professional, since the steak had come with a little pat of herb butter. As he ate, he reflected that this would be a respectable meal to cook for someone else. He remembered the way Gina had looked at his trolley in the supermarket. Well, he would invite her round and show her he knew how to eat properly. She might be a vegetarian, of course - it would be like her, and that was a vegetable sauce she had put on the pasta the other night. Well, he would buy a quiche from the delicatessen then – something healthy looking. No-one could object to that. We Clean 4 U would be coming for the first time on Wednesday so the house would be respectable; he would invite her round for supper that evening and impress her with his domestic skills.
He was wondering quite why it was that he wanted to impress her when his mobile rang from somewhere upstairs. He ran up and rummaged in the pocket of yesterday’s work suit.
‘David Scott.’
‘Hello,’ said a voice he did not recognise. ‘My name’s Tom Urquhart. I’m the headmaster of the William Roper School. I hope you don’t mind me ringing you at home at a weekend. Gina Gray has just given me your number and I thought no time like the present.’
Scott cursed silently. What did she think she was doing giving out his mobile number - unless this man had information to offer.
‘Is this in connection with a current police investigation, Mr Urquhart?’ he asked.
‘Tom, please. No, I’m afraid not, except that I spotted your name in the local paper, with the information that you were a William Roper boy. I was wondering, you see, whether you would be willing to come into the school and talk to our Year Twelves about your experiences in the police.’
‘We have a team that gives schools talks. I can pass your request on to them.’
‘I really wanted the personal touch. It would be good for these young people to see someone from their school who has been as successful as you have been. A chief inspector at forty – that’s quite something.’
Yes, and flattery will get you everywhere, thought Scott. Aloud, he said, ‘Obviously, I am very busy at the moment, in the thick of a murder investigation,‘
‘I know, and I know it’s an awful cheek to ask you this, but we’ve had a speaker cancel for the careers session on Monday afternoon. Is there any chance you could give us half an hour then?’
‘I don’t have anything prepared,’ Scott protested.
‘No problem. We fi
nd it always works better if our speakers are willing to answer questions. The students will have plenty to ask, I’m sure.’
‘Then yes, provisionally,’ Scott said. ‘But I’m sure you understand that if there are developments in the case I may have to cancel at the last minute.’
‘Understood. Many thanks. We’ll see you at three-thirty on Monday, then. You know where we are, of course, don’t you?’
Scott closed his phone and ate a last potato, now cold on his plate. Why had he said yes? He knew why: because he was not actually all that busy; because the harder he worked at this case the faster it seemed to run away from him; because he was mainly waiting for information, for results, for inspiration; because it would be nice to get some admiration, to play the successful detective even if that was the last thing he felt like right now.
19
SUNDAY: Second Person Plural
The glowing digits on my bedside radio tell me that it is 02.28 when I wake properly and listen to the sounds that have been disturbing my sleep for some time, I think. Aside from the background noise of the steady rain, I can hear someone moving around outside in the back garden - there is the swish of footsteps on the wet grass. Have they come for me? Is it my turn to disappear? They can’t snatch me from the bosom of my family, can they? If I scream, will the girls rush to my aid or pull their duvets over their heads? Should I ring 999 now? Should I ring David?
While my body is experiencing all kinds of panic reactions, my mind is baulking at the melodrama of the situation. I get out of bed and grope in the dark, on shaking legs, towards the window. I look out and can see nothing. The rain is still falling and there is no glimmer of moon. I stand there for a while hoping that my eyes will adjust to the dark and then I hear a familiar sound – the outraged cry of a cat that has been trodden on. My cat, my Mog, has fallen foul of the kidnappers in the garden.
Somehow, the thought that my would-be abductors might harm my cat galvanises me into action. I put on my dressing gown and grope downstairs. In the kitchen, I find the heavy torch that hangs behind the back door and a knife out of the knife block. I have no idea whether the torch’s batteries are functioning but I’m thinking of it as much as a weapon as a source of light. I unlock and open the back door as quietly as I can and then the breath is blown out of me as someone tries to knock me off my feet. I realise after a moment that it is the terrified cat and I brace myself for what is outside. With the knife in my right hand, I turn on the torch with my left and direct its surprisingly strong beam out into the darkness.
As the beam swings round, I pick out a figure - a horribly misshapen figure, bent and hunchbacked. It starts to move towards me and I realise that it is making a piteous noise. As it gets closer, I know who it is. It is Ceren. The misshapen back is simply her rucksack and she is wrapped in a blanket. She is dripping wet and as she reaches the door she throws herself into my arms and sobs noisily.
I bring her inside and stand and look at her. She is as wet as it’s possible to be. Water pours down her face from her sopping hair, the blanket sheds little pools around her and more pools form from the hem of her coat. She is grey with cold and, as her sobs begin to subside, I can see her teeth chattering.
‘I’m not going to ask you anything,’ I say, ‘until you’ve had a hot shower.’
We have a wet room off the kitchen, where the walk-in pantry used to be. Andrew had it put in. He liked to use his periods at home to keep fit for his real life elsewhere and he liked to be able to leap directly into a shower when he came in from cycling, running or playing tennis, without the danger of being thwarted by females doing unnecessary things in the bathroom. We hardly use it now but the shower is first rate, so I steer Ceren towards it. I get it going for her and leave her to it, with instructions to dump her wet clothes in the corner. While she is in there I turn the fire on in the sitting room, fetch pyjamas, a sweater and some thick socks from my room and get warm towels from the airing cupboard. Then, good Englishwoman that I am, I put the kettle on.
In the sitting room, cradling her mug of tea and dressed in my too-large clothes, she looks pathetically waif-like. Finally she speaks.
‘I trod on your cat,’ she says.
I sit on the sofa beside her and point out that the cat (who has come in to enjoy the fire) has suffered no ill effects, and then I ask, as gently as I can,
‘Ceren, can you tell me what happened to you? Who did this to you?’
Tears ooze silently from her eyes and I think she is not going to answer me, but then she speaks.
‘I am so afraid, Mrs Gray.’
I put my hand on her arm.
‘Who are you afraid of? If you can tell me that, I can help you.’
She shakes her head violently and puts down her tea mug. She is heaving with sobs again and she has her hands over her face as she says, ‘I am afraid to police. I can’t to talk to police.’
‘But the police are there to help you. If someone is trying to hurt you –‘
‘I mustn’t talk to police. This is why I must to leave.’
‘Leave where?’
‘I am afraid, Mrs Gray. I am afraid what I can say to police. So I must to go, to leave my room and go.’
I am struggling to accommodate what she seems to be telling me.
‘Ceren,’ I say, ‘are you telling me that no-one took you from your room?’
She draws a shaky breath and I can see the effort she is making to speak calmly.
‘Asil and Ahmet have gone. Also many other Turkish students. Police cannot question them so they must question me about Ekrem. But I cannot answer. I am afraid.’
‘Ceren.’ I pick my words carefully. ‘The police won’t hurt you, you know. Our police in the UK, well – they’re not like the Turkish police. They just want to find out who killed Ekrem. They won’t bully you. The inspector - Chief Inspector Scott – he was nice, wasn’t he? He didn’t bully you?’
Her eyes won’t meet mine. She looks down at her lap and plucks at the stuff of the pyjamas she’s wearing.
‘I am afraid what I can say,’ she says quietly.
We sit in silence for a while drinking our tea, and then I ask, ‘So where did you go when you left your room? What were you planning to do?’
She sighs as if she is too weary to tell the tale but she is a polite young woman and I am her teacher, after all, so she answers me.
‘I went to the woods, on the campus, near to Beechwood Village. I slept there. I think – thought – I can stay there one week and then is end of term and I go home, back to Turkey.’
‘Why didn’t you just go home right away?’
‘I can’t. My parents bought my ticket for one week time. I can’t change. I can’t to tell them what is happening to me.’
‘So you planned to sleep in the wood for a week? Oh Ceren.’
‘My brother, when he was young he did this. He ran away and lived three days in the wood. He was fine.’
‘But not in England, in March!’
‘First night was OK. Was cold and scary but OK. Then the rain came. So much rain. I was scared. I thought I would die from the rain.’
‘How did you find your way here?’
‘I remember we came here for tea party last term. I thought I remembered the way, but I was lost. I was walking and walking. When I got here there were no lights. I was trying to shelter in hut in garden but there are rats –‘
‘Mice, I think,’ I say in defence of my garden shed. ‘And possibly a hedgehog, but I don’t think there are rats.’
‘I was scared. I couldn’t stay. Then I trod on your cat.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Cats don’t understand why humans can’t see in the dark.’
‘And then I saw you and I thought God answered my prayer.’
She turns and looks at me, her eyes huge and trusting as a child’s.
‘Please, Mrs Gray, please let me to stay here with you.’
At this point there is a noise in the doorway. Annie is standing
there blinking in the light. She stares narrow-eyed at Ceren, who gazes back at her.
‘Annie,’ I say, ‘this is Ceren, one of my students. She’s here because she’s – in a bit of trouble.’
‘Who with?’
As I struggle with an answer to this, Ceren unexpectedly says, ‘With police.’
‘Cool,’ says Annie.
Then, as I look on open-mouthed, she advances on Ceren with her hand held out.
‘I’m Marianne,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after you.’
I gather up my last shreds of will-power and say firmly, ‘We’re not talking about this now. Go back to bed, Annie. Ceren I’m going to bring you a duvet so you can sleep down here. You’ll be warmer here than in the spare room. Annie, GO TO BED.’
After I’ve settled Ceren to sleep on the sofa, I return to my cold bed and pass the rest of the night in complete sleeplessness. For the first time in, possibly, ten years I want to ask Andrew’s advice. I want to know what my legal position is and whether I have, in fact, already broken the law. I could ring him on his mobile in Venezuela and I conclude vaguely that, being some hours behind us, it may still be evening there. I won’t do it though: I can’t bear to give him the opportunity to tell me what to do. I can’t bear having to respect his professional opinion, I can’t bear seeming to need him, I can’t bear giving him the chance to be nice to me.
At seven I can stay in bed no longer so I go down to the kitchen to make myself some breakfast. I make a big pot of tea and, since lack of sleep has made me ravenous, I cook scrambled eggs and eat them on a thick slice of buttered toast. While I’m eating, I make a list of the arguments that have accumulated in my mind against letting Ceren stay in my house any longer. Actually, I make two lists, one for Ceren and one for Annie, because I’m going to talk to them separately. I’m not going to let them gang up on me: the combination of Ceren’s tears and Annie’s ferocity will be more than I can deal with. One list, scrawled on my shopping list pad, reads:
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