by Louise Hare
The detective would be in soon. That’s what they’d told him. And it wasn’t like he was under arrest. He’d given a brief account by the side of the pond, his head turned away from that sad bundle on the grass. The constable had asked him to walk back to the station with him and give a full statement. Lawrie hadn’t been able to think of a good enough excuse for not complying.
Eyes open, eyes closed, it made no difference. He could still see that tiny hand and the curl of black hair fixed in his vision, hear the hiccupping sobs of the dog walker. He’d turned away when the foolish constable began to unwrap the blanket that Lawrie had closed up out of respect, staggering back with a yelp as he discovered why the woman was so upset. Served him right for doubting them, but for a moment Lawrie had hoped – had prayed – that he was mistaken. The woman had been allowed to leave once she’d given her brief version of events. She reckoned she hadn’t touched the body, though how she could have seen the baby without doing so, Lawrie didn’t know. He could still feel the weight of the bundle in the muscles that ran up his right arm, could still feel the swift release of that tension as he’d let it fall to the ground.
The door opened. ‘Lawrence Matthews?’ Lawrie nodded as the man entered. ‘Detective Sergeant Rathbone.’
The detective was smartly dressed, his jacket pressed and his dark navy tie neatly knotted. In his thirties, Lawrie guessed, with a narrow moustache and pockmarked cheeks that cried out for a beard. He sat down opposite and placed a manila folder between them. He didn’t look at Lawrie.
Rathbone pulled out a notebook, a packet of cigarettes and his matches, laying them neatly by the folder. He took a cigarette from the pack, not offering one to Lawrie. Striking a match, he sucked the flame into the open tobacco before shaking it out and dropping the spent match to the floor. There was no ashtray, and Lawrie found the careless action irritating, his lips turning upwards a little as he realised how ridiculous it was to bother about such a small thing.
‘What you smiling at?’ Rathbone looked up suddenly.
‘Nothing, sir.’ Lawrie leaned back and swallowed, his throat dry. ‘I just had a silly thought. That you could do with an ashtray.’
Rathbone cupped his hand behind his ear. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, son. You’ll have to speak more clearly if you’re going to keep on in that accent.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He slowed the pace of his words, but not too much in case Rathbone thought he was trying to be funny.
The detective pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket. ‘From the beginning then. Since this morning. I want to know exactly what you did, who you saw, everything. I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.’
‘Since this morning?’ Lawrie’s forehead creased as he thought back. ‘I left the house just before five o’clock.’ He paused and Rathbone waved him on. ‘Went to work same as always.’
‘You’re a postman?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Could this man not see the uniform he was wearing? ‘Sir, is there any chance of a glass of water?’
Rathbone arched an eyebrow. ‘Don’t change the subject. I said I’d let you know if I wanted you to stop talking.’
Lawrie blinked. ‘Yes, sir. Well, after I clocked off, around midday, I decided to go for a ride to Clapham Common.’
‘Why there? Why not Brockwell Park, somewhere closer to home?’
‘The sun was out and I thought… well, the Common is where I first stayed when I arrived in this country, see. I like it there.’ His palms were sweating now, thinking about that damned parcel. Guilt must be written all over his face.
Rathbone put down his pencil and looked him directly in the eye for the first time. ‘This all seems rather coincidental, don’t you think? Way I see it, you had no good reason for being by Eagle Pond.’
‘Wrong place, wrong time is all. I mean, do I need a purpose to use the Common? Does anybody?’ Oh God, he was babbling now. ‘Sir, it’s just a park after all. I was just passing by, I go there all the time. At least twice a week.’
Rathbone stared; Lawrie looked away first.
‘It is rather convenient though, you must admit.’ Rathbone tapped ash from his cigarette onto the floor. ‘A baby dies, through some manner or other, to be determined. Perhaps it’s a loved child, perhaps it was an accident or the family couldn’t afford a burial, perhaps at least the person responsible for her death regrets it. That’s what it looks like to me. He doesn’t want her body to go unfound. So he waits until dark before placing her body by the edge of the pond, knowing that people walk their dogs there. Then he starts to worry – what if she isn’t found? He goes back to check and lo! There comes our Mrs—’ Rathbone checked his notes. ‘Barnett. Perfect timing. She panics and, seeing a man on a bicycle, she runs towards him seeking sanctuary. He steps in and rescues the body as planned so it gets a proper burial. Make sense?’
‘The last bit, about her running towards me, yes.’ Lawrie sat up and leaned forward. ‘She was the one who found the…’ His tongue wouldn’t form the word. He’d barely touched the child but he could still feel the slip of its – her – skin against his, the catch of her tiny fingernails as he’d snatched his hand away. ‘You’ve got the woman’s statement right there in front of you. She was there first. She was the one made me go and look.’
‘Because there was no one else there.’ Rathbone fired out the words. ‘No one around but a nigger on a bicycle. You think she’d have gone to you for help if there’d been a single other person around?’
‘I don’t… I mean… what’s that got to do with me?’ Lawrie felt small all of a sudden, unprepared. He took a breath and tried to order his words. ‘I just went there for some fresh air, not looking for trouble.’
‘So when she says that you cycled past the pond once, then again not ten minutes later, you don’t think that seems like odd behaviour?’
‘No! And I did a good thing, helping that woman. I coulda just cycled off, you know? She was acting all hysterical, like a madwoman. And that dog of hers… But I could see there was something very wrong. I stopped to help.’
‘So what? You’re some kind of good Samaritan then?’ Rathbone sneered.
‘My mother brought me up to have good Christian values.’ Lawrie fought the rising wave of humiliation that made his skin prickle. His mother would be horrified if she could see him now.
More notes were made with that sharp pencil. Lawrie tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry; he coughed uncomfortably as his breath caught in his throat.
‘You saw the baby though.’ Rathbone watched him keenly. ‘Definitely one of your lot, wouldn’t you say? Maybe it wasn’t you after all, maybe you were just helping a pal?’
Lawrie looked down as his hands, clenching them together in his lap to stop the shaking. They’d told him he wasn’t under arrest but he couldn’t imagine that the interrogation would be any more severe if he had been. He understood now why they had brought no water to him. He was supposed to be uncomfortable. They thought he was a murderer. At best Rathbone had him down as an accomplice. The air around him felt as thick as the bright yellow custard that Mrs Ryan served up for pudding on Sundays, too dense to breathe properly. Should he just confess? Tell Rathbone about the parcel he’d been delivering? But what if the woman at Englewood Road denied it?
‘You’ve nothing to add?’ Rathbone paused before letting out a weary sigh. ‘If I find out later that you’ve lied, things will go very badly for you, you know?’
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ Lawrie blinked as more smoke was blown in his direction. Rathbone’s cigarette, together with the nicotine haze hangover from the jazz club the night before, was making his eyes smart. At this rate he may as well take up the habit himself. ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you. Speak to my boss. He’ll tell you that I spent the morning doing my job, not hanging around that pond like a ghoul. Talk to my landlady. I never been married, never had a child.’ Just in time he stopped himself from mentioning Evie. He didn’t want this man going round to
the Coleridges’, questioning Evie about him while her disapproving mother looked on. ‘I’m not the only coloured person in London, you know.’
‘You’re speaking too quickly again.’ Rathbone raised his voice. ‘You seem agitated. Why is that?’
‘I’m not agitated, I’m just tired is all.’ He hadn’t slept for over twenty hours and fatigue was dulling his mind. ‘I’m hungry. And thirsty. I been here for hours and not even been given any water to drink.’
‘This ain’t The Ritz, son. We don’t do silver service here.’ Rathbone barked a laugh. ‘Look, you was the only darkie anywhere near the scene of the crime. No good reason for being there.’ Rathbone leaned forward until Lawrie could smell the stale tobacco on his breath, overflowing like a used ashtray. ‘Between you and me, I don’t give two shits about some dead nigger baby. Too many of you around here already, but the law is the law. A suspicious death has to be investigated and someone has to hang for it.’ He let the threat catch in the air before going on. ‘Tell me what I need to know and I can make sure it don’t come to that. I’ll get you a bed. A hot meal. A fresh brew. I tell you something, our cells are far more comfortable than some of them places your lot live in.’
Lawrie felt his chest tighten as his eyes pricked with tears; he would rather die than shed them in front of this man. He thought of his brother; Bennie would never let a man like Rathbone get the better of him.
Rathbone opened his mouth to speak once more but was interrupted by a knock at the door. A younger man entered, also in plain clothes but less senior by the way he held his body as he nodded apologetically at Rathbone, who sighed and stood, following his colleague outside. Lawrie checked his watch again. It would be dark out now. Would the evening papers have printed the story already? What if the police had given his name? Donovan would kill him if they mentioned that he worked for the Post Office. A journalist had already been snooping around outside the police station when Lawrie propped his bicycle up against the wall of the building, hoping that the location was enough insurance against it being nicked. The reporter had been too focused on firing questions at the constable to have really looked at Lawrie, but that had been hours ago now. Plenty of time for someone to let a name slip.
‘Looks like you can go.’ Rathbone reappeared, his face barely moving as he spoke. ‘But don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll be seeing you soon enough, I expect.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Lawrie stood and made for the door before the detective could change his mind. Whatever had gone on outside that interview room, it had not pleased Rathbone.
A uniformed constable showed him to the spot where his bicycle had been moved to, dumped on its side in the yard at the back of the police station. Even in the dim dusk light he could see the slashes in the tyres without having to bend down. A glance over his shoulder showed Rathbone and the younger detective watching him out of the lit window. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction.
He pulled his scarf up around his freezing ears and began to walk with his bicycle towards the main road, some sixth sense slowing him as he reached the corner, just in time to pull back. The journalist of earlier had multiplied into a huddled pack, puffing away on their cigarettes as they watched the front door of the police station. The bicycle wobbled beside Lawrie as he made a detour, discovering new streets that were both unknown to him and yet sadly familiar. Terraced houses with the occasional shocking rubble-filled gap. During the day these were children’s playgrounds, the bombed-out buildings becoming forts and castles. Dens full of hidden treasure. In the darkness they were macabre ghosts of London’s recent past.
Lawrie stopped off at a corner shop and bought a bottle of ginger beer. He’d be late for tea and Mrs Ryan would wonder what kept him. Evie too, when she arrived home from work before him. The thought of having to relive the whole experience again, seeing their faces fall in horror and pity, drained the energy from his legs.
He kept on going for the best part of an hour, but only three streets from home he wasn’t sure he could make it. There was an alleyway on his right and he managed to bump the bicycle along the broken cobbles, shouldering open a wooden gate that was only half on its hinges, given up since it no longer had a house to guard. What had once been someone’s backyard was overgrown with weeds and Lawrie slumped down into them, his back resting against the brick wall that still stood. A loose brick and a hard smack removed the bottle top, a helpful trick that Aston had taught him. The ginger beer burned his throat but it was a comforting fire, warm and familiar, and the sugar punched him in the face, waking him from his daze. He belched and wiped his mouth.
The skeleton of the house clung upright to the air, glass and debris littering the ground around him. The outhouse had survived almost intact, though its wooden door had decayed. Lawrie could see the porcelain bowl, the half-light of the distant moon glancing off its curves. This was a city marked by death, the darkness finally catching up with him. Everywhere you walked in London you could see tragedy through absence: construction sites that had sprung up to replace the missing homes, the widows who looked older than their years, that missing generation of men that had forced a desperate government to send their mayday overseas. Lawrie was only in the country because of the misfortune of others. He’d thought he was coming to help, same as Bennie had. ‘Doing his bit,’ as they said here.
The English just got on with life as if this was normal. Stiff upper lip, put on a brave face and pretend that if you can ignore the horrors of the past and think only of the future, then you too will be all right. This was an island of crazy people.
His mother had encouraged him to leave home but his brother had not warned him. Bennie Matthews had sent weekly letters home from his RAF base, addressed to their mother but always with a coded postscript for his younger brother. Never had he hinted as to what a dour country England was. Those postcards – what a dupe! Buckingham Palace in its pomp and splendour, the brilliant white dome of St Paul’s, the famous Tower Bridge sitting regal beneath bright blue skies that could have been painted on. Bennie was a real-life hero, posting his tales of derringdo, camaraderie and local dances before flying back across the Channel to save the Motherland. He’d never said a bad word about the country he’d died trying to save.
Lawrie tipped the last few drops of liquid onto his tongue, laid his head in his hands, and sobbed until his ribs ached. The sky was clouded over in a reddish-brown smog, not a star in sight to wish upon, but he closed his eyes and prayed. He wanted to go home. That was it, a simple statement that he’d denied for so long because home, as he had known it, no longer existed.
He regained control and wiped his face, dampening the corner of his handkerchief with spit just as his mother had done when he was a little boy, hoping that evidence of his weakness would not be apparent to anyone when he got home. It was late, and he made his way carefully, keeping to the warren of alleyways before going in through the back gate of Mrs Ryan’s house.
‘Where on earth have you been, love?’ His landlady called from the kitchen, opening the back door for him. ‘I left a plate in the oven for you if you want it? You must be starving. Spam fritters and spuds.’
‘Long story.’ He propped the useless bicycle up against the wall and left his boots outside by the door. He rested his forehead on the cold bricks of the outside wall until he felt composed, then went in.
The meal was coming to an end, Arthur and Derek sitting there with plates that were empty but for the grease stains. Arthur was caught up in the full flow of conversation and Lawrie was grateful to slink past them all without attracting any attention. He hung his coat up in the hall and took his time about returning to the warm kitchen.
‘I tell you quite honestly, Mrs Ryan,’ Arthur was saying as he entered, ‘I ain’t never been so insulted. Not in all my life.’
Arthur shook his head vigorously to emphasise his point. Usually Lawrie would be fighting back a smile, since Arthur took offence to something or someone at least once a week; twic
e last Tuesday alone. God only knew why the man had bothered to leave Trinidad when he seemed so miserable in London. Lack of funds seemed to be the only reason he was still here. In his forties, Arthur never spoke about his long dead wife, and Lawrie only knew of her existence through Mrs Ryan: landlady, matriarch and confidante – as long as you didn’t mind your secrets being shared within the boundary of her four walls.
‘So what did you say to him?’ Mrs Ryan asked, as she placed the teapot in the centre of the solid wood table that dominated her kitchen. She smiled at Lawrie, nodding to the cooker. ‘Sit down, love.’
‘What did I say?’ Arthur continued. ‘I say nothing. What else can I say? That man knows he can say whatever he likes to me. I say just one single word back to him, I’m out the door ’fore I can get my coat and hat on. He talks to me like I’m an imbecile ’cause he knows I just got to stand there and take it.’
‘What happen now?’ Lawrie asked Arthur, pouring himself some tea and cupping his hands around the mug.
‘My father would have beat me half to death, I even dared to think what this fella say to me.’ Arthur got into his stride. ‘I mean, is this what they teach children in this country? To give cheek to their elders ’stead of respect?’
‘Not in my day,’ Mrs Ryan agreed, placing a warm plate in front of Lawrie.
‘You should offer to kick the shit out of him,’ Derek advised, fitting a filter-less cigarette into his mouth. ‘I’ll give you a hand if you fancy teaching anyone a lesson.’