by M. H. Baylis
He feared he’d be seeing more of Eve Reilly. The polar opposite of the doctor, with her pudgy Celtic face, eyes the colour of the Irish Sea and a shouty, school-teacher’s voice. It would work in Parliament, he realised: all those jeering men would not like it, but they’d listen to it, because it was like the voice of their nannies and their teachers. He knew he should cut some slack in the direction of Eve Reilly, who must have slogged hard to get where she was, whose shoo-in seat was realistically no longer a shoo-in seat after the Independents’ landslide in the council elections, and whose first proud walkabout had been upstaged by the one thing Millbank couldn’t manage: a human fireball. Yet somehow he couldn’t feel the compassion demanded. ‘I think’… ‘my first day’… ‘I’ve watched’ – every time Reilly had spoken, she’d made it about herself. He hadn’t warmed to her at all.
A woman’s figure appeared, from behind a parked van, walking quickly towards him. He thought for a moment that it was Dr Georgiadis, then dismissed as fantasy the idea that he could think about someone and have them appear. As the woman came closer, though, he realised he’d been right. It was the Greek doctor, approaching fast. He put up a hand in greeting. She didn’t seem to see it at first, then, as she got nearer, recognition dawned. She didn’t smile. She looked out of breath, troubled.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m good,’ she said, then added. ‘I am lost. I think.’ She spun round, looking behind her, then back. ‘Is this Lawrence Road?’
‘It is. Where are you looking for?’
‘The… Greek Cypriot Elders Centre?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Back in Cyprus we still call them old people. No one minds.’
‘You’re behind the times,’ Rex said. ‘Old people are elders. Violent is vibrant, and gang-bangers are young men with issues around stabbing.’ He’d hoped for a laugh, but she wasn’t listening. She was looking back up the road again. ‘There isn’t anything like your Elders centre down here,’ Rex went on. ‘I know there’s one further up, towards Palmer’s Green. Have you got a map, or something with the address?’
She stared at him blankly. Rex took out his phone and googled the place.
‘There is a Cypriot Elders Centre on Lyndhurst Road,’ he said. ‘But that’s a long way north. What made you think it was down here?’
‘Lyndhurst!’ she said. ‘That’s it. I got mixed up. I gave the cab driver the wrong address.’ She looked at her watch. ‘They’ll have finished now. Sugar!’
Rex didn’t know anyone who still said ‘sugar’ instead of swearing. A bus came into view. It was a little one, a Hopper, which would weave south before joining up with St Ann’s Road and ending by his beloved pub, The Salisbury. It was a Friday evening. The print edition had come out that morning. There were still things to do, but nothing that couldn’t, equally, be done on Saturday. And if there was any day when he deserved to get drunk, then it was today.
‘You might as well hop on this with me and take in some local landmarks.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘Little Turk!’
‘Sorry, Lawrence?’ Rex placed his coffee down carefully on the desk. It was not quite the Monday morning greeting he’d expected.
‘The girl’s surname was ‘Küçüktürk’, which means Little Turk. The Ottoman Sultans forced the Kurds to take Turkish surnames, and that was one of the more delightful ones they came up with. So you could say being called ‘Turk’ is actually the hallmark of being a Kurd.’ Lawrence grinned over his glasses.
‘Unless you’re called Atatürk. Or was he Kurdish too?’
The grin vanished, and Lawrence fingered his bowtie in silence. Rex, sore after a solo Sunday-night attack on the raki bottle, regretted his words.
‘Useful info, Lawrence, thanks,’ he added, as he switched his monitor on. ‘What the hell’s this?’
‘Oh. That,’ Lawrence chuckled, with the satisfaction of a man who knows something other people are on the brink of finding out.
Susan had employed some electronic wizardry to ensure that, as each of her staff switched on their computers, a letter appeared on the screen, in a font that looked handwritten. In it, she explained that, due to health reasons, she was taking an extended break in her native USA, but had every intention of being back in her office before the autumn. She wished everyone ‘a great spring and summer’, and trusted they’d all ‘welcome, assist and co-operate with’ her temporary replacement.
‘A.K.A. whoever’s been in the Holy of Holies with the blinds down since the crack of doom,’ Lawrence added, in a loud whisper, jerking his silvering curls in the direction of the editor’s office.
‘We’ve knocked and everything,’ Terry said, returning from the toilets on the landing and wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘But he won’t answer. Definitely in there, though.’
‘It doesn’t have to be a man,’ added Brenda, the receptionist, as she came in with the post. ‘Susan was a woman.’
‘Was, Brenda?’ Rex queried.
‘Maybe she’s gone away for a sex change!’ Terry said.
‘Perhaps it is Susan in there,’ Lawrence added. ‘But now she’s called Stephen.’
Brenda, a large lady who’d recently had her hair done like the Queen, touched the lacquered bun and looked about to say something stern. She never got the chance, however, because the door of the Editor’s office opened, and the Whittaker Twins, Mark and Robert, walked out.
They were the paper’s ad sales team, a faintly Dickensian pair with large, creamy faces and suits like school uniforms. No one found it easy to talk to them and yet, for reasons that remained a mystery, they were extremely good at conjuring advertising revenue out of the air. Susan had made all the staff create a Twitter profile and the Whittaker Twins had 9,400 followers. No one else had more than a few hundred.
Even so, even bearing in mind Susan’s propensity for Zen-like management pranks, even remembering that she and the Twins had some unbroached, clandestine history, no one could believe this grey-eyed, charmless pair had been put in charge of s: Haringey.
They were right. As Mark and Robert Whittaker moved out into the room, another figure appeared in the doorway behind them. Slender but shapely, in black blouse and matching trousers.
‘Ellie!’
‘Hello, Bren,’ said the new boss, striding across the room and launching a hug-kiss manoeuvre on the receptionist. Brenda Bond, mother to five grown-up children, was having none of it, and sat down heavily on the nearest swivel chair before Ellie could reach her. She went for Terry instead who, whatever his true feelings, never passed on a chance to press himself up against a pretty girl.
‘It’s good to be back,’ Ellie said, reddening slightly as she removed Terry’s hands from her waist.
‘I remember someone being very keen to leave,’ Brenda said.
Ellie Mehta had been the graduate trainee a couple of years back. Despite enthusiasm and brains, she’d been nigh-on impossible to train, had refused a pay cut when everyone else was swallowing one, then fled without notice to the nationals, promptly stiffing them on a big local story. Stiffed Rex, in particular, who was the last one to speak.
‘So that’s why Susan said there was no need for a handover.’
‘Hang on. You knew the boss was leaving?’ Terry’s eyes narrowed.
‘She told me she was going on Friday. She wouldn’t tell me who was going to be in charge. She obviously knew how much flak she’d get,’ Rex said wearily. He took a sip of his coffee, waiting for the painkillers to kick in. It hadn’t been a bad weekend: pub with the pretty Greek doctor on Friday, an impromptu, blossom-sprinkled walk round Bruce Castle with her on the Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, he’d rung her up after doing a couple of hours in the office, but she hadn’t answered. And then, somehow, there was nothing like being alone on Wood Green High Street on a chilly Sunday afternoon to make a person feel that their life had gone astray. He’d gone home and done a bottle in whilst Alan Yentob explored Islam on the TV.
‘Rex,’ Ellie
said, settling for a chilly handshake with her former mentor. ‘I know we’ve got the odd bumps to iron out and… well, what about lunch?’ Sensing his reluctance, and other tensions in the room, she turned with a broad sweeping gesture. ‘Everyone? A team chow-down? I’ve missed The Famous Manti Shop.’
‘You always hated the place,’ Rex was about to say – but the words didn’t come out. Instead, he stood, smiled and said, ‘Lunch would be good, Ellie. I’m in.’ As he gave her a short, awkward hug, he was aware of his colleagues staring in amazement.
He knew they’d grill him about this later, but for now there was no time, as Ellie moved straight into morning conference. She began with a short, seemingly off-the-cuff speech, about how she was only there as back-up, a hand from Head Office, and in no way trying to be the boss.
She seemed to mean it. They ran through the stories of the day, discussing which were destined for the regularly updated website and which deserved longer treatment in the weekly print edition. At every stage, Ellie kept her gaze circulating around the small team, making it clear with her actions, as well as her words, that their views counted. She was trying too hard, Rex thought, but surely he’d been right to accept the olive branch. Why waste energy on a battle now when there would be dozens later? That had been part of his reasoning. The other part was fatigue, pure and simple, a heavy sorrow that had kept stealing up on him since seeing Mina die, making any fight impossible.
Terry was showing off some startling pictures of a fox, red and defiant, eating toast-crusts off his kitchen table. He thought they could link it to the unpopular zoo project on the marshes.
‘You know… Tottenham’s already got enough wildlife, thank you… sort of thing,’ Terry said. ‘I mean, everyone’s complaining about the foxes these days. Well, and the zoo.’
Ellie tapped the desk with a mauve fingernail. ‘A1, Terry. A1.’ It was a perfectly pitched parody of Susan, and it worked. Everyone laughed, and the mood relaxed.
‘I take it no one likes the zoo.’
‘What zoo?’ said Lawrence. It had become a local injoke to say ‘what zoo?’ whenever the zoo cropped up. And whenever there was a joke to be worked to death, Lawrence was keen to oblige.
‘It’s still a wildlife and wetlands centre,’ Brenda said, stiffly. ‘That’s what we voted for.’
Brenda and her husband Mike, a former policeman, spent a lot of time observing bird-life on the Lea marshlands that lay between Tottenham and Walthamstow. A decade ago, when the old council had first ring-fenced funds to improve the area’s outdoor amenities, Brenda had been one of those arguing for a wetlands centre over running-tracks and football pitches. Her wish had been granted, a site was duly readied, but then no money was spent. There’d been a raft of local authority boundary changes in the meantime, deepening the inertia.
The zoo issue made Rex, for the first time in his decades as a journalist, feel true loyalty towards Miles and his council. The old Labour rulers had been a passionate, charismatic bunch, forever getting into spats and having unfortunate things found on their laptops: great news copy but actually, fairly rubbish at running the place.
The new Council was different. Its Scots leader, Eric James Miles, was a Spartan figure who ran 10 miles round the reservoir every morning. The most extravagant thing about him was his decision to quit the Lib Dems and stand as an Independent. That, and a lock of white hair that he kept too long, so that he had to keep sweeping it out of his eyes, like a schoolboy. His fellow travellers on the Council Cabinet gave off a similarly sober air: they never bad-mouthed the opposition, rarely made reference to creeds and ideologies. The Independents’ dogma seemed to be mending the traffic lights on Westbury Avenue, their slogan something like ‘let’s put better lighting on the Harringay Passage’. In their spare time they all volunteered: helping primary kids to read, sitting with the elderly. They weren’t what hacks like him called ‘good copy’, but they were good people doing their best for a place too long overlooked.
‘It’s all too easy to have a pop at the council…’ Rex began.
‘Oh I don’t blame that lot,’ Lawrence chipped in. ‘I can’t remember the last time we had a bunch in charge who were doing their honest-to-goodness. No, I blame the interweb,’ he went on, adjusting his bow tie. ‘If only the local population had laid off the iguanas.’
‘Eh?’ Ellie looked confused.
Lawrence was right, however obscurely he expressed himself. Thanks to the internet, some citizens of the borough had developed a taste for exotic pets, especially those which were dangerous, and therefore good for enhancing street-cred. Accordingly, the animal charities in the area had become overloaded with unwanted crocodiles, tarantulas and hyenas. When a child was bitten by a homeless cobra in a sandpit, the newly-formed Harringay and Tottenham council came up with a masterstroke: the surplus fauna would be housed, prior to placement in proper zoos, in an annexe of the wetlands centre, the former, it was hoped, drawing more punters to the latter.
Rex summarised for Ellie. ‘They need specialist housing for the animals, heating ducts, extra ventilation, plumbing, drainage, staff – stuff they hadn’t researched properly or prepared for. Now it’s hit a stalemate, nothing’s been built for months and it’s not clear whether they can even afford to finish it. They won’t release any information.’
‘No one inside prepared to dish dirt?’ Ellie asked. ‘You’ll have tried that, I know, of course,’ she added.
‘Eric seems to have brought in a uniquely loyal team,’ Rex said.
‘Actually, some of these letters I’ve been getting…’ Lawrence began.
‘He’s not Eric, he’s the Messiah,’ Terry interrupted, paraphrasing his favourite film, ‘The Life Of Brian’, to smiles all round. It was true that the atmosphere around Eric Miles was faintly cultic. The man himself was a lay-preacher at a big, new, enthusiastic type of church at Tottenham Hale, and a number of his staff were known to worship there too.
Ellie had either glazed over with disinterest, or else was mulling things over deeply. She was still pretty, Rex thought: an alpha-combination of the Indian goddess and the county gymkhana. After a while in repose, she made some stark, conclusive movements on her pad with her pen and then flicked her hair.
‘I think the fox and the caption will work well on the web. Nice counterpoint to the grim stuff with the girl. What do you reckon, Rex?’ Rex nodded. ‘Talking of which,’ continued Ellie, ‘Interview with the girl’s family. Where are we?’
‘Mike says the Inquest will be today,’ Rex said, referring to Brenda’s husband, who now worked as a Coroner’s Officer. ‘Not expected to be anything more than a formality. I imagine they’ll bury her over in Ilford tomorrow, seeing as they’re Muslims.’
‘They might not be,’ Lawrence chimed in. ‘Some Kurds are Sunnis, some are Alevis, that’s a sort of Shi’a sect, then there’s your Zaza, your Yarsani… that part of the world is full of…’
‘So who is “they”?’ Ellie interrupted.
‘There’s a father. I’m guessing there’s a mum and siblings too, but I’m not getting in their faces today. I’ll try at the college, and I’ll get something before we update the page this afternoon.’
There was a pause. ‘Sorry, my fault for not being clear. I don’t want it for your webpage,’ Ellie said. ‘I want it for tomorrow’s paper. And I want the family.’ She clapped, a sudden report making everyone jump. ‘Come on!’ she said, leaning across the desk. ‘It’s not like this is just hours after. They’ve had a weekend for it to sink in. And it’s what everyone wants to know. How do they feel? Did they bring her up to do this sort of thing? Are Mum and Dad proud of having a martyred daughter?’
‘We don’t bring out a paper tomorrow. It’s on Friday.’
‘My paper comes out six days a week,’ Ellie said. ‘And as you know, Rex, that’s one of the conditions under which Sentinel Group News and Media keeps your paper going. If there’s a story we want, we get first dibs.’
‘So much for the h
elping hand from Head Office.’
‘I thought a scoop in the nationals would help you, Rex.’
‘I’ve had a few before,’ replied Rex. who stopped himself from adding that he’d been on The Times’ crime desk when Ellie was doing all her writing with crayons. ‘And no, I don’t like the idea of door-stepping a grieving father before he’s even buried his child.’
‘As you say, you don’t need to bother the parents. There’s bound to be half a dozen aunties and uncles and cousins who’ll talk to you. You know what they’re…’ She stopped herself.
‘Oh. What they’re like? Lovely attitudes you picked up in Shoreditch.’
Silence. Rex heard Terry take a breath. ‘Ellie, I don’t mind going over to their house and…‘
‘Ok. I don’t like it, Ellie, but you’re right, and I’ll do it,’ Rex interrupted, suddenly. No way was he letting Terry seize the advantage. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll find someone to talk to.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Thanks.’
The meeting moved on.
As they discussed the plans for the old Surgery on Wightman Road, the new, aggressive wave of begging on the High Street, and the judging of the primary schools’ RoadSafe poster competition, Rex barely spoke. He loathed himself for what he’d just done. It was cowardly, childish, spiteful. Agreeing to pursue Mina’s family, not because it was right, but because he didn’t want Terry to do it. He left the office as soon as the meeting finished, so he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye.
He was relieved to see the Bosphorus Café was closed, blinds down, a handwritten sign in the door, simply saying ‘Family Illness’. It looked like an old piece of paper, something they kept in a drawer.
He looked in the windows either side of the doorway, checking whether the proprietor’s odd magazine-note was still there. He couldn’t see it, but the salmon-coloured blinds moved as he was looking and he found himself eye-to-eye with the Hungarian waitress. She held up a finger, and went across to the door.
She let him in, the café strange and forlorn in the shadows, like a classroom at night. The girl looked like she’d been scrubbing the grills in the back: black smudges on her face and in her hairline.