This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  David is mildly apologetic about the fingerprinting business and, possibly as a peace offering, he gives me a titbit of information about the case. He has a little rant about his frustrations, which makes him seem young again and puts me in danger of feeling maternal, which isn’t how I really feel about him at all. We do the fingerprinting and it is just like they do it on the telly: I have to press my fingers on an ink pad and then a policewoman presses my hand down and rolls it to and fro to get complete prints. It feels peculiarly unreal.

  Then he walks me to a cab and this is where the trouble starts. As we’re walking the mere hundred yards, David asks, oh so casually, about the nice ethnic thing he saw on my sofa yesterday evening. Now, when I’m rattled I resort to verbal aggression – mindless insults if necessary. Annie is just the same. When I took her to her first day at infant school (a trendy, uniform-free institution) two older boys, waiting to go into school, laughed at the clothes she was wearing. Without a blink, she clapped a hand over her nose and said, ‘Cor, you stink!’ and they melted away. So this is me: when David asks about the ethnic thing, I accuse him of being gay. Accuse is the operative word. I sound like the worst sort of homophobe, and I like gay men usually – probably more than I like straight ones. I think I deflected his suspicions but I am ashamed of the way I did it.

  The Two-year Masters class is back up to eight students with the return of Atash and Farid, but they are looking pretty glum so I do a little performance about the fingerprinting, displaying my still-inky fingers to entertain them, and then I do something really irresponsible: I tell them what David has just told me – that they’ve found a knife in the library. I don’t know what possesses me. David didn’t actually tell me that it was confidential but I know that it was for my ears only. Really, I’m just showing off, and I’m ashamed all over again.

  When I finish their class at four, I pack up and go home. I want to be there when Annie gets back from the Police Station; I feel a bit guilty about sending her on her own. As I come down the road towards the house, I see the MG standing outside and Annie talking to her father through the window.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask as I approach.

  ‘I rang Pa,’ says Annie, ‘when I got your text.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what you were thinking, Gina,’ says Andrew, all self-importance, ‘expecting her to go to the Police Station alone.’

  ‘I’d have been fine, Pa,’ Annie contradicts him, ‘but I thought as I had a lawyer on hand -’

  ‘You thought you’d like to be picked up from school and carried off in the fairy coach,’ I cut in, with a wave at the MG. ‘And I’ve no doubt Pa didn’t mind having it admired by the girls either.’

  ‘You’re so cynical, Ma,’ reproaches Annie. ‘I’m sure you’re a bad influence on me.

  ‘As you are on me.’

  ‘I was just asking Pa if he’d like to stay for supper.’

  I look at Andrew and he at me. He declines.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a lot of work to get on with. One way and another, I’ve not managed to get much done today.’

  He doesn’t actually say that, between us, we’ve wasted his day, but I read the subtext.

  As Annie and I walk up the garden path, I ask, ‘Did Pa talk to you about A levels?’

  ‘Yes. He said it’s all right about Drama.’

  ‘Your Ms Donald was pretty persuasive.’

  ‘She’s ace,’ she says, glowing with a rare pleasure. ‘But Pa said it was you who really persuaded him.’

  Then, as I’m fumbling for my door key, she adds, ‘So I have to say on this occasion you’ve been pretty ace too.’

  I am so astonished at this unlooked-for accolade that I drop my key. Annie says, ‘Oh for God’s sake’, picks it up, opens the door and bundles me inside.

  24

  WEDNESDAY: Investigation Day Fourteen

  ‘There’s a Miss Iwaki to see you, sir,’ the desk sergeant told him when he got into work at eight-thirty.

  He found her sitting in Reception, formally dressed in a pinstriped grey suit and white shirt. As he ushered her up to his office he remembered her explaining the need to change before going to dance at the SU: Those were library clothes. They weren’t dancing clothes, you see. Presumably today’s outfit was visiting the Police Station clothes.

  He showed her to a chair, offered coffee, which she declined, and asked how he could help. He had absolutely no idea what might have brought her here. Gina had joked about her fancying him; he hoped this wasn’t some flirtatious little game. He wasn’t in the mood. He regarded her neutrally – not aggressively, he hoped, but without any effort to be friendly or reassuring. She tucked her hair behind her ears in a little nervous gesture and then said,

  ‘I am sorry for disturbing you, but I heard you found a knife in the library?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  He heard the rough edge of surprise and anger in his voice and saw her flinch slightly.

  ‘Mrs Gray told us, yesterday. I’m sorry if –‘

  ‘Told who exactly?’

  ‘Told our class.’

  ‘I see.’

  Damn the woman for blabbing, and damn his own stupidity in blabbing to her. With an effort at sounding calm and reasonable, he asked,‘And why did you want to see me?’

  She dropped her head for a moment but then raised it and looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘I think the knife is mine, maybe.’

  ‘Yours?’

  It was impossible to hide his astonishment.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  She answered calmly. She had prepared this little speech, he thought.

  ‘As you know, I was on duty in the library the evening Ekrem passed away. I was there from five-thirty so I had no time for dinner. I took some food with me – some salad and an apple. I took a knife from my flat to cut up the apple. I don’t like to bite it like English people.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I ate my food and put the salad container in my bag. I meant to wash my knife before I put it away, but I don’t remember if I did – I got busy then, issuing books. The next day when I unpacked my bag I found no knife. I realised I left it in the library, but of course it was impossible to go back now. Then I bought a new knife and I forgot about it.’

  ‘So where did you leave it?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I ate in the Library office, so maybe on the table there.’

  ‘What was the knife like?’

  ‘Just small. Like cutting vegetables knife. Maybe this long.’ With her fingers she indicated a length of about twelve centimetres.

  ‘What was the handle like?’

  ‘Black. Just plastic – not wood.’

  He sat looking at her for a moment and then got up and walked across to the window to think. Could this be true? Could the murder of Yilmaz have been so spontaneous, such a piece of improvisation that the killers came unarmed and just happened on a fruit knife left behind by a ditzy young woman preoccupied with getting off to meet her friends for a girls’ night out? He had thought it an odd weapon, that little knife. Hardly the weapon of a professional killer. But if her story was true, the finding of the knife really got them no closer to the killers all. He turned back to her.

  ‘I’ll need to get you to look at the knife when the forensic experts have finished with it. And we’ll need to take your fingerprints, for comparison with those on the knife.’

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘you took my fingerprints already. Because I was in Ceren’s room.’

  He was thinking about her story. It was plausible enough and why would she tell him the knife was hers if it wasn’t? Still, he didn’t have to take it at face value. There were a couple of things he could check. He phoned for a WPC to come and sit with her for a short while, then he went down to the Incident Room and called for the forensic report on the contents of the library waste paper bin on the morning of February 28th. He also rang and harassed Forensics f
or details of what, beside blood, had been found on the knife. He was snappy with everyone, he knew, impatient and curt. He saw glances exchanged among the team, silent comments on his black mood.

  The report on the contents of the bin was lengthy and complex, largely because they had included, among other things, the Deputy Librarian’s breakfast. There was no mention, though, of what Scott was looking for - an apple core. When Forensics called him back, however, he was informed of minute particles of vegetable matter round the base of the knife handle, including a trace of malic acid - apple.

  Returning to his office and dismissing the WPC, he said to Yukiko,

  ‘When you’d eaten your apple, you threw the core in the bin, presumably?’

  She laughed.

  ‘I wonder why you interest in my apple core! Is this a weapon too?’

  Getting no answering smile from him, however, she continued,

  ‘No, actually. It would smell bad in the morning. I put it in my salad box to take home.’

  So that was it. He had no doubt that she would identify the knife as hers or that one of the sets of prints on the handle would be hers. There was just a chance that the other prints would lead them to a killer but he couldn’t see how. The randomness of the killers picking up a knife left lying about confused his picture of the crime. Everything else had been so professional, he felt: the unseen entry and exit of the library, the absence of forensic clues, the ferocious efficiency of the killing itself. It was true it didn’t smack of a Mafia-style punishment killing – no bullet between the eyes - but the KGB had used some imaginative elimination methods in the past – a poisoned umbrella tip and a radioactive supper among them – so he supposed the Russian connection was still top of his list of possibilities.

  ‘Well, thank you for coming in,’ he said to Yukiko. ‘That’s certainly helpful. I’ll see you down to Reception.’

  As they took the lift down, he said, ‘I suppose Mrs Gray told you she’d had a letter from Ceren?’

  ‘No.’

  She was genuinely startled, he could see.

  ‘I thought she would have told you,’ he said. ‘She seems so keen to share information with you all. Ceren’s letter said that she was staying with friends. But you haven’t seen her?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  There was a pause and she seemed to feel that something more should be said.

  ‘But it is good news Mrs Gray has a letter,’ she said. ‘This makes us very happy. And makes her parents happy, I think.’

  As he walked back up to his office (part of a newlyconceived plan for keeping fit) he thought about this conversation. Why had Gina not told the class that she’d heard from Ceren? She knew how anxious Yukiko and Christiane were about her. There was no doubt that Yukiko really had been surprised to hear it. And there was something else. Yukiko had said it would make Ceren’s parents happy. When Gina had spoken to him on the phone yesterday, he’d asked her if she’d shown the letter to anyone. No, she’d said, and he was almost sure that she’d said, I told the International Office and the English staff and then I rang you. What about Ceren’s parents? Weren’t they a priority? Well, maybe the International Office called them. Still, it was odd.

  25

  THURSDAY: Imperfect Tense

  I know as soon as I walk into the Department building that something disastrous has happened; the air vibrates with drama. From the bottom of the stairs I can hear my office phone ringing insistently and Gillian runs out of the Department office, pink with agitation.

  ‘Gina, something terrible. There’s been – there’s been another death.’

  The last two words are delivered in an urgent whisper. Then she drags me into the office to give me the details. When I stagger, reeling, into my office, my phone is still ringing. It is Monica from the International Office confirming what I’ve just been told: Valery is dead. I can hardly believe it even as I write the words. He is simply dead, shot in his room in the early hours of this morning.

  I am reaching for my phone to call David when it leaps into life in my hand. When I pick up the receiver, the Principal’s voice explodes in my ear.

  ‘Oh, so you’re in at last are you?’ he spits. ‘Well, perhaps you can tell me what the hell’s going on over there in your department.’

  I open my mouth automatically to answer but find I have nothing to say. I sit mute and helpless as he rages on.

  ‘Not so ready with your clever answers now, are you? Two students missing and two murdered in the space of two weeks. A bit remiss in the pastoral care area, wouldn’t you say? Or is it your admissions policy needs looking at? Do you do any checks on the backgrounds of these people you’re bringing over here? Well it wasn’t the Turks this time, was it? It looks like their government did right to get them safely home. Who knows what might –‘

  Unable to bear the sound of his voice any longer, I lay the receiver down on the table and walk over to the window. I’m not sure how long I stand there but when I pick the phone up again it is dead. Then something shocking happens: I start to cry. I am not a woman who cries; I never have been. My mother loathed what she called dripping. I don’t remember her crying even when my father died. I did. I was thirteen. It may be the last time in my life that I cried properly. Now, I almost don’t recognise what is happening to me: I feel the rising convulsions in my chest and wonder if I’m about to vomit. Then the sobs come, great, blubbering, undignified, snotty sobs, and at the same time my head is full of violent rage. This is better; this is familiar; this I can deal with. I rampage around the room, swearing, sobbing, hiccupping, kicking the furniture, hurling things about.

  I don’t think it lasts long. I stop; I take a few deep breaths; from my desk drawer I get out the box of Kleenex kept for weeping students; I blow my nose. Then I pick stuff up off the floor (I never throw books in my rages, incidentally; the taboo on messing with books must be deeply embedded in my psyche). After that, I get a new ring-binder folder out of a cupboard and write a label for it: PRINCIPAL HARRASSMENT. Then I sit at my computer and I type out, as far as I can recollect it, what the Principal said to me on the phone. I date and time it and I supply brief context – The murder of a student, Valery Tarasov, had just been reported. I print it out, punch holes in it and insert it into my new folder. I make a cup of strong coffee.

  As I’m drinking my coffee, I try to work out what triggered the snotty blubbering. Not grief for Valery: I never made any connection with him, really. I tried to establish a rapport at the start of the year with my usual repertoire of little jokes and comments but he blanked me out, as he did everyone, it seemed to me, except Irina. So, if not Valery then was it the unexpected diatribe from our revered Principal so early in the morning? Surely not. I have never in my life let a bully reduce me to tears, let alone a man I despise as much as I do Norman Street. Shock? Well, I’ve had shocks before without going drippy.

  I conclude in the end that I wept in pure frustration, that though I bitterly resent the Principal’s making me responsible for what is happening to my students, I do actually feel responsible myself. I feel I should be able to protect them, I feel I should be able to sort this out, and I can’t. How often I’ve said, hyperbolically, that something was a complete nightmare when it actually wasn’t at all; the situation didn’t resemble a nightmare in any way. This really is like a nightmare, though, where the everyday becomes sinister and familiar faces turn monstrous and threatening. In the past two weeks, I have seriously considered the possibility that almost any one of my nice, polite, friendly, civilised students could be a vicious murderer. And I shouldn’t have to be doing this; that’s what is sending me into a rage. It’s the job of the police. It’s David Scott’s job, and he sat here in this very office two days ago, wailing about the fact that he was getting nowhere and expecting sympathy from me. No wonder I’m in a rage.

  I am due to teach in ten minutes, so I go to the loo and with the help of a lot of cold water and a bit of makeup I manage to get my face lookin
g normal enough not to scare my class of Business Studies students. I pick up my books and go downstairs to spend an hour practising the vocabulary of business negotiation.

  Back in my office, I ring David for an update on Valery’s murder, but he is brusque and uncommunicative.

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it,’ he says. ‘We can’t afford any more leaks.’

  ‘Have there been leaks?’ I ask, but I know what he means: the knife.

  ‘What did you think you were doing telling the students that we’d found the knife? You must have known it was confidential.’

  I should apologise, I know, but I’m angry with him so instead I shout.

  ‘How was I to know it was confidential?’ I demand. ‘You didn’t say. Anyway, I did you a favour, didn’t I? I flushed Yukiko out. How long would it have taken you to work out by yourselves that it was Yukiko’s supper knife? Forever, if the general rate of progress of your investigation’s anything to go by.’

  ‘How did you know it was Yukiko’s knife?’

  ‘She told me. Yesterday. After class. Was she not supposed to? Was that confidential too? I do think you should make it clear when things are supposed to be confidential. We’re all a bit confused.’

  ‘Well, what confuses me,’ he says, and I can tell he’s working hard at keeping his temper, ‘is that you’re so free with some information but you didn’t tell the other students about your letter from Ceren. Why was that?’

  Now the answer to this is that when Ceren said in her letter that she was staying with friends, I assumed she meant Christiane and Yukiko and I didn’t want to raise the subject because they might have revealed where she was and I’d have been in the position of withholding information from the police all over again. If nobody actually tells me where she is, then I don’t know. Since this answer isn’t an option, I go for shouting again.