by Sarah Hilary
The paramedic glanced up. ‘Okay?’
Noah nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Leo, is it? All right, mate, we’re going to make you more comfortable.’
Noah stepped away, to give them room to work.
On the sofa, Leo’s wife was sitting wrapped in a shock blanket, her shoulders circled by her African friend’s arm. A female paramedic knelt next to them, winding a bandage around Hope’s right hand; she’d cut herself, on the knife. Her friend was holding a wad of rusty cotton in her left fist. Behind them, the jungle mural was an aggressive arc of green, tall grass parting around a lion’s pink muzzle.
Yellow light snapped across the ceiling, making the women cringe: lightning.
DI Rome had been right about the storm. She was briefing the police team who’d arrived with the ambulance, speaking quietly, holding their attention. Noah watched, knowing what was going through her mind: the need not to compromise the evidence, to manage her witnesses; the fact that she’d have to reconstruct all this in court. Training drummed it into them: ‘One chance to get it right, and in the right order.’
‘Let’s get you on the stretcher, Leo.’
Ayana and the others watched the paramedics with the false calm of those who’d witnessed trauma before, and often. Noah needed to wash the blood from his hands, make himself less frightening.
He left the dayroom and found the kitchen. Children’s paintings were pinned to three of the walls, fastened to the fridge by magnets. Outside, the concrete yard was empty except for noisy sheets of rain. The ordinariness of it made Noah blink. Had he really just sealed a man’s lung with a phone card? Yes, his palms were sticky with Leo Proctor’s blood. Adrenalin made the ends of his fingers jump. His mouth tasted of copper coins, cheap.
A drawer hung open under the sink. He guessed it was where Ayana Mirza had found the cling film. He closed it, checking the other drawers for cutlery. Looking for knives like the one the forensic team had just bagged – the blade with Leo Proctor’s lung tissue on it. Nothing sharper than a potato peeler in any of the kitchen drawers. Noah kept searching and found the knives, finally, on top of the fridge, in a blackened, greasy butcher’s block. Out of the reach of children. Hope Proctor would’ve needed a chair to reach the block. Noah didn’t touch it. He ran the hot tap, scrubbing at his palms with the pads of his thumbs, waiting for his pulse to slow.
Lightning cut across the yard, its bright reflection trapped for a second in the sink. He counted six before the thunder came. The storm was closing in.
‘How’re you doing?’ Marnie Rome was in the doorway.
‘I’m good.’ He tore a sheet of paper towel. Dried his hands. ‘You were right about the storm.’ It sounded like someone was stir-frying the yard, rain spitting, sending up a smoky mess of steam.
Marnie came to the sink. ‘We’re going to be a while taking witness statements. Most of the women are calm, but I don’t trust that to last.’ She stripped off her jacket and rolled up her sleeves before soaping her hands as he had done. ‘You impressed the paramedics with your first aid. Not bad for a copper was the consensus.’
‘Trauma training,’ Noah said. ‘Did they say anything about his chances?’
‘Just that you’d done good, but a punctured lung is a punctured lung.’
‘Why did she do it, did she say?’
‘She’s not said anything.’ Marnie’s quick eyes flicked to the butcher’s block on top of the fridge. She touched the left side of her neck, as if it hurt. ‘Her friend with the braids, Simone, says the knife was Leo’s, that he came here armed. If that’s true, it was probably self-defence.’
‘He came here with a knife?’ Noah thought of Proctor’s dead weight, his face turned inside out with pain. Hope was half her husband’s size, weighing maybe eight stone. Leo was nearer seventeen. Noah’s arm ached where he’d held Leo in a sitting position until the paramedics took over. ‘How did she get it off him?’
‘I don’t know. It’s something I need to find out. We’re not short of witnesses, but it’s too soon to start taking statements, that’s what the paramedics think.’
More lightning lit the yard. Steel-coloured, like a snapped cable. Marnie rolled down her sleeves, leaving the cuffs loose.
‘Let’s make some tea . . .’
Noah searched for mugs in the cupboard above the stove.
Marnie filled the kettle and plugged it into the wall. ‘The advice is not to move Hope until she’s less stressed.’ She glanced at the window, which was swarming with rain. ‘Simone says she’s scared of water. That Leo used to make her sit in the shower for hours on end, to get clean.’ Her eyes blanked with censure. ‘Just one of the reasons she was hiding here.’
Noah remembered the scream: ‘How did he get in here?’ and although they’d meant Leo Proctor, he knew the women might just as easily be afraid of him. A stranger, male. He wondered why Marnie hadn’t come alone. ‘How did Leo get in?’
‘Something else I don’t know. Jeanette, she’s the screamer, is insisting the doors were locked, standard procedure. She’s in charge of security, for what that’s worth. From the smell of her, she was on a fag break. She’s concerned to let us know she was taking care. A bit too concerned.’
‘You think she’s covering her back?’
‘I’m entertaining that possibility.’
‘Is she under arrest?’
‘Hope? I should caution her before asking questions.’ Marnie sounded reluctant. ‘I’m thinking it can wait until she’s less stressed. She isn’t going anywhere.’
Noah thought of the way Hope shook as her husband lay with one lung collapsing, big fists empty at his sides. Leo wore a wedding band. Did Hope? Noah couldn’t remember. He needed to pay better attention to details like that. ‘What happened to her hand? I saw them bandaging it.’
‘She was clumsy with the knife, but the paramedics say it’s superficial, not much more than a scratch.’ Marnie poured boiling water into the mugs. ‘Jeanette says she didn’t see anything more than we did. She was at her post, only arrived in the dayroom after Leo was laid out on the floor.’ Her voice was tinder-dry, not believing this version of events. She picked a crushed yellow petal from the knee of her trousers. ‘Roses. How romantic . . .’
‘You think he meant to use the knife on her?’
‘Why else would he bring it? I’m tempted to think the roses were for hiding the knife, until he got inside.’
Noah opened the fridge to get a carton of milk. ‘What about our witnesses?’
‘Simone. Ayana. Mab, who was hiding behind the sofa, but with a clear sightline. Two others I’ve yet to speak with . . . I’m discounting Jeanette, for now.’
Five witnesses. All women in hiding from abusive men. How’d it felt, seeing Leo Proctor walk in, wielding a knife? Watching Hope stab her husband, possibly fatally.
‘Is there CCTV in the dayroom?’
‘Only at the front entrance – if it’s working. I’ve put a call through to the station about getting hold of the footage. No CCTV indoors. It’s important for the women to know they’re not under surveillance. It’s one of the ways they feel safe . . .’ Marnie picked up the tray. ‘You’re thinking how much easier it’d be if we had impartial evidence of what happened before we got here?’
‘Infinitely.’
‘Less legwork, more luck?’ She looked mournful. ‘No one loves us that much.’
6
Hope Proctor hadn’t moved from the sofa, sitting under the mural of the lion’s mouth with her friend Simone. Noah looked around, seeing the dayroom properly for the first time. A widescreen TV took up most of one wall, the plaster cracked around its steel brackets. Sofas and chairs faced the screen, as if the TV was a fireplace. Everything in the room looked cheap and disposable, with the surface shine of a catalogue purchase. The thin carpet carried a shallow stain, already turning black. Someone had cleared away the roses, but one or two petals remained, bruised by feet.
Hope and Simone weren’t alone in th
e room. Three women sat on a second sofa. Two were young, dark-haired. The third was a much older woman in a floral dress, gloved hands cupped in her lap as if she was hiding something there, her mouth turned inwards, cheeks collapsed from lost teeth. Mab, Noah guessed. Jeanette, who should’ve been watching the door, was sitting apart from the others. Ayana Mirza was standing by the window, twisting the orange and pink scarf between her hands.
Thick curtains hid the view outside. The rain was a constant tattoo, drumming on the windows and walls. Hope flinched from the sound, as if the rain was hot and hitting her bare skin. Simone hugged her, the foil shock blanket rustling under her grip. She had Hope’s blood on her hands, sheening her fingers.
‘Tea.’ Marnie Rome shared her smile around the room. It was a great smile, reassuring without being overfriendly. Noah was trying to learn a similar smile. ‘I don’t know who likes sugar. Could someone give me a hand? Simone?’
Simone got up from the sofa. She’d threaded the braids with lemon beads, glass. The beads tapped together as she moved, concentrating on the task DI Rome had given her. She was about Ayana’s age, young enough to be pleased by Marnie’s approval.
Hope Proctor reached for Noah’s hand. ‘You were with him. Was he scared? Was he angry? Oh God . . .’ Her voice was fierce, low in her chest and deeper than he’d expected. Her face was blotchy with distress, her bandaged hand child-sized, fingertips icy with shock. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Did he know – he was dying? Was he very angry?’
Noah sat in the space left by Simone. ‘He was in shock,’ he said softly. ‘Like you.’
‘The paramedics got here quickly,’ Marnie added. ‘That’s a good thing. It means he has the best chance to pull through.’
Hope swivelled towards her, losing another layer of colour. ‘Pull through . . . Pull . . . Oh God.’ She put her hands to her face. The grey sweatshirt was much too big, its sleeves falling back to show bruises on her wrists and forearms. Noah had to look away.
Ayana was sipping tea, over by the window. She’d given him her phone card, knowing he could use it to stopper the sucking wound in Leo Proctor’s chest. How had she known that, and what else did she know?
Noah couldn’t forget the reason they’d come here, what Commander Welland was expecting from this visit: a statement attesting to Nasif Mirza’s violent temperament.
Hope rocked on the sofa, holding her hair from her face. Noah could smell the blood on her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in the same fierce voice as before. ‘I’ll be okay in a minute. You can charge me. You’re waiting to do that. I understand.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ Marnie said.
‘Why were you here?’ Each question was on an intake of breath, as if speaking was an effort, but one Hope was determined to make. ‘Thank God you were, but why?’
‘We came to see Ayana.’
Hope looked towards the window, then away, at the other women holding mugs of tea. ‘I can’t drink anything.’ She dipped her head, her throat convulsing. ‘Please. I’ll be sick.’ Her irises were slim rings around blown pupils. A frown emphasised the deep crease between her brows, suggesting this state of heightened anxiety was normal.
‘You don’t need to drink anything,’ Marnie said.
Simone moved back to the sofa, opening the circle of her arms to hug Hope.
Noah crossed to where Ayana was standing. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Her voice was very steady, her gaze unblinking. She had a south London accent, picked up at school, he guessed.
‘That was quick thinking, before. With the phone card.’
‘And the cling film.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘I saw it on television. A cop show. I watch a lot of television here. Soap operas. Phone-ins. Very bad for me. Everything here is a bad influence.’ She widened the smile, showing even teeth. ‘I like it very much. I read, too, and study. Criminal psychology.’
‘A distance-learning course?’
She nodded. She couldn’t leave the refuge, Noah knew that much. She looked at the sofa where the three women sat in silence, Mab and the two dark-haired girls. ‘They offered me a place with other Asians. That is how they put it: other Asians. I knew someone in a place like that. The women working there gossiped at the mosque.’ She put her lips to the mug. ‘I prefer it here.’
‘Even now?’
‘I don’t know how he got in. It is safe. They are very strict. The doors stay locked unless we ask.’ She frowned at the room. ‘We like them locked.’
Like a prison. A prison with television and books, and the chance to study, make friends. Noah wondered about the phone card, whose number she called when she needed to talk. Perhaps the card was for the television phone-in shows.
Rain shook the window next to their heads. He could smell it, tinny and cold, through the heavy curtains. ‘Let me get you a new top-up card, for your phone. You have a mobile?’
‘Yes.’ She touched a woven purse at her waist. ‘Thank you. There wasn’t much on the card. Less than five pounds.’
‘I’ll get you a new one,’ Noah promised.
They couldn’t quiz her about Nasif so soon after the stabbing. It would’ve been tough enough before, knowing what Nasif and the others did to her.
Ayana’s brothers. In her own home. Two of them held her down while the third squirted heavy-duty bleach into her eyes. When they let her up, she managed to grope her way out of the house and into the street, screaming for help.
Surgeons saved her right eye. They couldn’t save the left.
Blind in one eye, she could still see. The CPS believed her witness statement would help to put Nasif behind bars, but so far she’d kept quiet about what her brothers had done. According to the notes that Noah and Marnie had inherited, in the hospital after the bleach attack, no one visited Ayana. Until the third day, when a woman arrived, alone, clutching a hooded anorak. ‘I have come to take my daughter home.’
It was Mrs Mirza. Ayana’s mother.
Ayana didn’t stop screaming until the woman went away.
7
‘A knife?’ OCU Commander Tim Welland echoed. ‘At a women’s refuge? I thought these places were meant to be secure?’
‘We’re working on that now.’ Marnie moved aside to let the family liaison officer go past her, in the direction of the dayroom. ‘We need to find out how Leo got in, and how he knew his wife was here. But first we need to make everyone feel safe again.’
‘After a stabbing?’ She could hear Welland grimacing at the other end of the phone: good luck with that. ‘How’s Ayana Mirza?’
‘She helped Noah save Leo Proctor’s life.’
‘If they’ve saved it. From what you said . . .’
‘Proctor was stable when the ambulance took him.’
‘Do you think she meant to kill him?’
Marnie rubbed at the ache in her neck, petting the pain the way she’d learnt to, as it strayed around her body. ‘It was self-defence, that’s what our witnesses are saying.’
‘Reliable, are they?’ Scepticism soured Welland’s voice. ‘A knife in the lung sounds to me like attempted murder. I’m not saying she didn’t have a good reason to do it; I don’t suppose she was in that place from choice.’
‘You haven’t seen her, or heard her. She’s scared he’s going to live, but she’s not making excuses. And yes, she’s covered in bruises, of course she is.’
When she’d taken the knife away, Hope’s hand had been shaking. Marnie had understood, for the first time, how frightening it was to use a knife as a weapon, deadly.
‘I’m going to take her to the hospital,’ she told Welland, ‘and get her checked over.’
‘How’s DS Jake bearing up?’
‘He’s good. I’ve told him to get clean. He’s got a change of clothes at the station . . .’
‘A mess, is he?’
‘Proctor leaked all over him, so yes.’
Welland heard the cool edge in her voice. ‘Are you handling this all right?’
‘Have your plans changed?’ Welland asked abruptly.
‘For tomorrow?’ She shoved her hair from her face. ‘No. Of course if Proctor dies . . . then I’ll reschedule.’
‘Stay in touch,’ Welland said. ‘I need to know you’re on top of things.’
‘Of course.’ She pictured his open face, inviting confidences. Personally, she had no problem keeping secrets from Tim Welland. He knew too much about her already. She was glad of any secrets she could keep, insulation against his questions, his knowing.
He knows how they died, she’d often think, how they looked when they were dead. How I looked, weeping in the street outside – but he doesn’t know that I like salted chocolate or dumb TV spy shows where the heroine wears a different wig every week and kicks the crap out of everyone. He doesn’t know – if all else failed – about the writing. The words on my skin.
Secrets she’d kept from everyone. From Greg, her dad. From her mum, Lisa. From Lexie, the therapist they’d assigned her after the murders. Even from Ed Belloc, with whom she trusted most secrets, instinctively.
The clichés of her skin, teenage rebellion writ large. Embarrassingly so, now she was into her third decade, regretting the bilious girl she’d been, with her mascara-laden eyes and her biker boots, her studied solitude and near-autistic silences. She’d stopped being that girl when she was Ayana’s age, nineteen; hormones shucking away like the bark on a plane tree losing London’s poisons in the shedding of its scales. Fired with purpose, she’d considered a career with the air force. All that speed and power, the endless sky and adrenalin rush. She’d settled impatiently on the police. Never intending the choice to stick, seeing it as a way to rid her feet and fingers of their itch to get away, escape . . .