This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  He ground out his cigarette and went back inside, closing the emergency door carefully behind him. As he turned to walk back along the rows of books, he realised that he was in the Archaeology section. Of course. In his experience, books on archaeology were always consigned to the outer reaches of libraries: they were large and not much read. His eye was caught by a title: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq. It was a fairly new book and he wanted to read it: he’d not been as angry as many people at the invasion of Iraq, though he had thought it was stupid, but the wanton destruction of sites and artefacts had driven him wild. He pulled the book off the shelf and heard something clatter to the ground. Something that had been pushed in beside the book on the shelf. A knife, an ordinary, small kitchen knife with a black plastic handle. He took out his handkerchief and used it to pick the knife up. Though incongruous in this setting, it would have been a harmless enough object, the blade no more than seven centimetres long, had it not been for the fact that both handle and blade were encrusted with a brownish substance that he recognised without doubt as dried blood.

  He stood looking at it as it lay on his handkerchief, nestling in his palm, and willed himself not to hope for too much from this. Before he even started speculating he needed to know if the blood was Yilmaz’s. He took out his mobile and called the station. The first of his team to be found was Boxer. He gave him a terse account of his find and told him to get over right away with evidence bags.

  ‘And Steve,’ he said, ‘let forensics know we’re going to want a DNA comparison and fingerprints, top priority. Let Dr McAndrew know we’re going to need the knife matched up to Yilmaz’s stab wounds, and tell the SOCOs I want them back here to finish their fucking job.’

  While he waited for Boxer he couldn’t help speculating, whatever he told himself about not running too far ahead. If this was the knife that was used, then the killers dumped it here before going out of the emergency exit – nothing else made sense. But the emergency exit was closed when Clive Davies did his rounds at ten-thirty, so someone had to have closed it from inside. Maybe one of the killers went out that way and the other closed the door and went out through the office. Easier for one to slip past the porter unnoticed than two, they may have thought.

  He thought about cancelling his talk at the school now he had this new development to think about, but it was going to be all waiting for the next twenty-four hours – waiting for the forensic results, waiting for Lynne McAndrew’s assessment of the knife as a weapon. He might just as well go.

  The school was unrecognisable as the place where he had spent seven years. As he approached the imposing front entrance, Scott read on the glossy sign that The William Roper School was now a city academy, pursuing excellence, funded by private money. A corporate logo was etched into the double glass doors and a card swipe controlled the entrance. He rang the bell beside it, gave his name and was admitted. A woman behind a reception desk summoned today’s runner and a girl of twelve or so appeared to lead him to the year twelve common room.

  The logo (a twisted ‘W’ and ‘R’ in red and black, surmounted by an academic-looking scroll) was everywhere. The uniform had been designed to match too: the girl was wearing a knee-length black skirt and a public school-type red and black striped blazer. He asked a few questions, more out of politeness than anything, as she led him along a warren of corridors and she answered them dutifully, attaching ‘sir’ to the end of each reply. Well-drilled, he thought.

  The common room was nothing like the cosy shambles he remembered from his sixth form days. Upholstered chairs were grouped in a wide circle, a wall of windows with a view out to the abbey gleamed on one side, while on the other, as he was shown, a door opened onto an enclosed, glass-sided bridge leading to the Senior Library. About thirty students had gathered to hear his pearls of wisdom. They were not in school uniform – a post-sixteen privilege they had not lost in the school’s makeover, though he would bet there was a no jeans rule, since no-one was wearing them. As Tom Urquhart had promised, they had plenty of questions. He joked that it was odd to be on the receiving end of questions for a change and at first he found himself being grudging in his answers, as unwilling as any police interviewee to divulge more than he needed to.

  Q. What made you go into the police?

  A. I’ve always liked problem-solving.

  Q. Did you go to university?

  A. Yes, I went to Nottingham University.

  Q. What subject did you study?

  A. Archaeology and Geography

  Q. What ‘A’ levels did you do?

  A. Geography, English and Classical Civilisation

  And so on. But he warmed up after a while, became more discursive, told a few carefully anonymised true-life stories of life in the force, and the forty-five minutes were soon slipping away. He was quite surprised to hear Tom Urquhart say, ‘We’ve just time for two more questions, I think.’

  ‘What’s the worst thing about being in the police?’

  The question came from a boy who had not spoken before. Scott considered it. In his darkest gloom over the weekend he would have said, It takes away your life, eats you up and spits you out. Now, he said, ‘It can be frustrating. When the public won’t help. When we believe people know something but won’t tell us, because they’re afraid or they don’t trust us. When we’re pretty sure who the criminals are but we can’t get the proof. That can really get you down.’

  ‘What makes you stay, then?’ a girl asked.

  He smiled.

  ‘Well, the pay’s not bad. And sometimes, just sometimes, you get a lucky break and it all falls out for you, and then there’s nothing like it.’

  As he drove back towards the station, he realised he was passing More Street. He wondered if Gina would be back from work yet and, without quite intending to, he turned off and stopped outside her door. He wouldn’t tell her about the knife yet, he thought as walked up the path, but his interviews with the Iranians were a plausible enough reason for calling. He rang the bell, which appeared not to work, and then banged the knocker. He could hear movements inside and eventually the door was opened, not by Gina but by the daughter he had met the other evening.

  ‘Oh, hello, Detective Chief Inspector,’ she said, and gave him a cool, appraising look. ‘Have you come to arrest my mother?’

  21

  MONDAY: Present Tense

  I am treading a fine line, skating on thin ice, standing on a volcano, sitting on powder keg, playing with fire. Alternatively, I have tempted Providence, put my head in the lion’s mouth and taken my life in my hands. I am certainly out of my depth and sailing too close to the wind. I rehearse these metaphors as I pedal into college on Monday morning. I could make a language exercise out of them: now let’s see if we can arrange these idioms in order of seriousness.

  Things did not go as well as I hoped yesterday: Ceren has not been persuaded to return to college and I would not – cannot – throw her out. She has promised me, however, that she will ring her parents today, and I have no option but to trust her. What she will say to them I have no idea. Annie still looks dangerously willing to go to the stake for her cause, and to take me with her.

  As soon as I get onto the campus, before I’ve dropped my bag or taken my coat off, I go into the International Office. Better to get this over as soon as possible. I don’t actually go into the office, but put my head round the door, as though this will make what I’m about to say deniable.

  ‘Ceren Vural,’ I say breezily to Monica, the adsministrator, who has just walked in and also still has her coat on. ‘Don’t worry about contacting her parents – I’ve got it in hand.’

  This is approximately true; I have, after all, told Ceren to ring them. This, however, is not what Monica thinks it means, nor what I intend her to think it means. Though my utterance is superficially true, its perlocution – that Monica should believe that I have spoken or will be speaking to the Vurals – is a lie. For forty-five years I have regarded myself as a truthfu
l person, perhaps pathologically so. I don’t even go in for white lies in the interests of sparing feelings (my daughters, I know, felt I was unnecessarily frank, especially in my assessment of their performances in school plays and concerts), but now I am lying, and when Monica says, ‘Oh, thanks, Gina. How did they take it?’

  I am forced to confront my lie and, panicking, I take to my heels.

  ‘Sorry, Monica,’ I call as I turn tail. ‘Nine o’clock class. I’ll catch up with you later.’

  As I push my bike over to the English Language building and trail up the stairs to my office, I rehearse my crossexamination in court when I stand charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. I used to do this when the children were small. I would leave them in the charge of a first-time babysitter and go out to the theatre, or drop them at the house of a friend who had a small pool in her back garden and go and do the shopping. Then, as I sat in the theatre or trawled the supermarket aisles, I would imagine myself in the coroner’s court. And how much did you know about this fifteen-year-old you had engaged to care for your children, Mrs Gray? Had you ascertained to your satisfaction that she would be able to cope in an emergency? In retrospect, would you say you had behaved like a responsible mother? Or, And you had no qualms, Mrs Gray, about leaving a five-year-old – a five-year-old who could swim only with the assistance of inflatable arm bands – in the charge of a woman with three other children to take care of?

  Today I hear the prosecution counsel:

  You knew, did you not, Mrs Gray, that Ceren Vural had information that could be helpful to the police in tracking down a murderer?

  And I hear my own shamefaced mumble:

  I thought she might have.

  And yet you kept her secreted in your house? You hid her from the police, not only depriving them of vital information but causing them to waste valuable resources looking for a young woman who was safe and well and living in your spare bedroom? How can you possibly justify that?

  I didn’t feel that I could throw her out when she was unwilling to go.

  Why? Was she homeless? Did she have nowhere else to go?

  Well, not really. She –

  Did she not have a room waiting for her on the campus, not to mention parents who would have been glad to welcome her home?

  She didn’t want to go back to her room, or to her parents.

  She didn’t want to? And that was enough, was it, to justify your criminal behaviour?

  My daughter felt very strongly that she should be allowed to stay.

  Would you tell the court the age of your daughter?

  She’s sixteen.

  And you are prepared, are you, to blame a sixteen-year-old – a child – for your own irresponsible actions? What kind of mother are you, Mrs Gray?

  I stand in my office gazing out of the window. How did I get myself into this? And how am I going to get myself out? I have to stop sleep-walking. I must take control. My phone rings and Gillian in the department office tells me that Mme Amiel wants to see me. This is more than I can manage this morning.

  ‘I’m teaching. Tell her I’m teaching all morning. And I have a meeting at lunch time. And busy this afternoon. If she leaves a mobile number, I’ll ring her.’

  This lying business becomes quite easy with practice, I find. I feel guilty, but only slightly. My empathy with Mme Amiel’s distress is moderated by the memory of all those designer carrier bags.

  I teach the Two-year Master’s class at ten o’clock and find that now there are only six of them – the sad remnants of the original unlucky thirteen. No Ekrem, of course, no Laurent or Ceren, no Asil and Ahmet and now no Farid or Atash, since they are being interrogated at the police station. I feel terrible about this, of course, because if I had told David Scott that Ceren was all right, he would have seen that his theory of the two-man punishment squad really didn’t stack up.

  So here they sit, the six survivors, Irina and Valery, Desirée and Denis, Yukiko and Christiane. What shall I do with them? It seems impossible to have a proper class. Since I have some homework to return to them, I decide on impromptu tutorials. I give them an exercise on phrasal verbs to get on with (stand up, stand down, stand for, stand out, stand in, stand to, stand by, stand up for, stand in for and so on) and I go over their work with them.

  It is odd to sit so close, poring over their work. I seem to feel the tension in each of them, vibrating quietly beside me, as they, no doubt, can feel mine. And none of them looks quite well. It’s a bad time of year, of course – we all have an end-ofwinter pallor – but young faces shouldn’t look like this, so weary and hollow-eyed. What is happening to us all?

  As I head for the SCR for coffee, my mobile rings and I see that it’s David Scott calling. I can’t talk to him. If I talk to him, I shall have to lie to him – by omission at the very least. I switch my phone off. Now I’m running from him as well as from the Amiels and there is no hiding place. Normally, when I don’t want to be tracked down in my office, I go over to the library but that’s obviously not an option at the moment. I lurk in the SCR, anxiously eying both entrances the whole while, then take a circuitous route back to my office to pick up my books for my next class. I enter fully prepared to find David lying in wait, but he is not, so I collect my things and head off.

  At the end of the morning, I decide that the only safe thing is to leave the campus, so I walk into town and buy myself a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich in the café on the top floor of Waterstones. No-one, I’m pretty sure, will think of looking for me here. It is ridiculous, of course, to be reduced to skulking like this but I promise myself that it’s only temporary. I refuse to spend another day like this. When I get home tonight, the situation with Ceren must be resolved.

  I remember, though, that I shan’t be going straight home after work: I am summoned to a Parents’ Evening at Lady Margaret’s College to discuss Annie’s progress into the Upper Sixth (Lady Margaret’s has no truck with new-fangled nonsense and years twelve and thirteen remain the Lower and Upper Sixth as far as they are concerned). Decisions have to be made about which subjects she will take only to AS level and which she will carry on to A level. She is doing Latin, History, Economics, Drama and Art. She likes Drama and Art best but they won’t get her a place to study Law, which is what she and her father have decided she wants to do.

  When Andrew first proposed sending the girls to Lady Margaret’s College, I protested that I would never feel comfortable there: I would resent the tone of the place, which seems to ask whether you are good enough for it rather than what it can do for you, and I would despise the teachers, who had found a soft option, who couldn’t hack it in the front line. (I was still in the front line myself in those days. I’ve since found my own soft option but at least I did my time. I have paid my dues). Andrew said I was being ridiculous (when was I ever anything else?) but it was true and remains true. As soon as I enter the school’s hallowed portals I have an urge to behave badly, and when teachers complain that my daughter is disruptive, I want to grab them by the ears and tell them what disruptive is really like. I know, you see, what this evening will be like; the script is already written. Usually I am able to ride their complaints about Annie with a judicious mixture of modified agreement and cheerful optimism, but today I’m really not feeling strong enough.

  After an afternoon of pretty mediocre teaching, five-thirty finds me cycling up the drive to Lady Margaret’s amid the four by fours, the Rovers and the occasional Bentleys. I am swearing quietly under my breath. I start, of course, at a disadvantage on these occasions because we are supposed to come in pairs. Tables are placed at intervals round the vaulted hall, with a teacher sitting behind each. Facing her (or occasionally him) are two chairs to accommodate a brace of parents. I am anomalous. I’m not the only lone parent here, of course, but I’m unusual enough to feel conspicuous.

  I start with the Latin teacher. Mrs Emily Duncan (MA Oxon, as the white card in front of her identifies her) is younger than I expected from A
nnie’s account of her, and not badlooking, though lamentably badly-dressed in a green and orange patterned jumper with a black and white check skirt. She is reasonably up-beat to start with. Annie has quite a flair for unseen translation, she tells me, but she is terribly careless in prose composition and she will really have to buckle down to learning the set books if she’s going to get a good AS grade. I promise that I will make sure she does, though I suspect that we both know that I can’t deliver on this, and when I discuss the possibility of her going on to ‘A’ level, she is clearly rattled.

  ‘But I understood from Marianne that she wasn’t planning to carry on. And I really do think that’s wise.’

  ‘Her father wants her to carry on,’ I say, ‘because she wants to be a lawyer.’

  She actually looks at the empty chair next to me, as though Andrew might possibly be the invisible man. Then she smiles at me and says, ‘Oh, I think AS will be quite enough for that. After all, all sorts of people do law degrees these days, don’t they – I mean from quite disadvantaged schools?’

  ‘But this,’ I retort, ‘is an outrageously advantaged school, isn’t it? And one of its advantages is that our daughter can take A level Latin.’

  Why am I doing Andrew’s dirty work for him? Do I care whether she does Latin or not? Is arguing just a habit with me?

  ‘Marianne seems quite sure that she wants to drop it,’ she persists.

  ‘And her father is quite sure he wants her to carry on, so they’re just going to have to fight it out,’ I say.

  ‘Who do you think will win,’ she asks nervously.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ I tell her. ‘They’re pretty evenly matched. But I think my money’s still on him.’

  Miss Eileen Porter (BA London), Annie’s History teacher, is a different proposition altogether. She is fiftyish, plump and pallid, with flat colourless hair and an ingratiating smile that is belied by her beady little eyes. She is dressed this evening in layers of brown and sits behind her table like an oversized brown hen. I know her of old as she taught Ellie too. She usually prefaces her remarks about Annie with the observation that of course, she’s not like her sister, but since Ellie’s fall from grace I think we can assume that she’ll drop that as an opening gambit this evening. She tells me instead that she finds Annie challenging and opinionated.