Friendless Lane

by Helen Black

  I’m causing things to happen in the world, indeed I’m orchestrating it, and yet I’m not part of it. Instead, I hover above it, my hands just out of the frame. Planning my next move.

  We’re sitting at lunch and I’m pushing my food around ostentatiously. Poor Jenny looks inconsolable. She was so happy when I started eating again and now she’s a busy ball of worry. Even Alerdice seems disconcerted.

  ‘Everything okay, Kate?’

  I pause for a second, then look up at her, as if my reactions have a slight time lag.

  ‘What? Oh yes. I just feel a little strange today,’ I say.

  ‘Why don’t you come and see me after you’ve eaten something?’

  Another pause, a smile. ‘Thank you.’ I put down my cutlery and push my plate away. ‘I’ll do that.’

  Jen-Jen gives a squeak, like a small animal in pain. I used to have a gerbil called Dante that made noises like that.

  You have to hand it to her. She’s taking her close protection duties very seriously. Someone is out to get me and she’s ever-vigilant for who that might be. The last thing she needs is me self-sabotaging.

  After lunch, I wander into Alerdice’s office. I don’t knock.

  She’s rubbing hand sanitizer on to her palms. The woman has serious issues. She smiles at me and puts the tube away. I sniff loudly and wipe my own palm under my nose in an upwards motion. Then I put it on the desk and rub in a circular motion, knowing that the second I leave, Alerdice will pull out her antibacterial wipes. She won’t, of course, be able to pinpoint the exact spot that I’ve infected and will have to clean the entire side of my desk.

  As I say, serious issues.

  ‘Did you eat anything?’ she asks, trying unsuccessfully not to look at the snot on her table.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she says. ‘You seemed brighter after the visit from the police.’

  ‘Did I? Well, Jack is such a sweetheart, don’t you think?’

  She eyes me coldly. ‘He seemed very professional.’

  ‘He is,’ I say. ‘But obviously it’s not the same with me.’

  She gives me a doctor’s frown. A frown that is leafing through the pages of her textbooks. A frown that thinks it has the answer, even when there isn’t a question. I’ve seen a lot of these frowns over the course of my life.

  ‘Kate, we’ve talked about how you see yourself as different to other people, and how that isn’t helpful.’

  ‘But I am a bit different.’ I lean over the desk, lowering my voice. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘No, Kate, I don’t.’

  I giggle. This tactic often comes hand in hand with the frown. Put the patient in their place. Burst the bubble. Do not collude with their delusion. It might work but for the fact that I’m not deluded.

  ‘It’s not healthy to live in a fantasy world, Kate.’ She folds her arms and looks at me. ‘And while you’re doing it, you won’t get better.’

  And you won’t get out of here, is what she doesn’t add, but we both know exactly what she means.

  ‘Well what do you want me to say?’ I ask. ‘Tell me and I’ll say it.’

  ‘It’s not about what I want. It’s about you accepting the truth,’ she says.

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘That there’s no special relationship between you and that policeman.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I say.

  She waits and watches. She thinks this is a battle of wills. Honestly, she thinks that if she sits there long enough, I’ll back down. Me, who wet my bed and lay on those damp sheets for ten years rather than back down.

  ‘Well?’

  I swing my head from side to side as if I’m weighing up my choices.

  ‘Well I can lie if you’d prefer,’ I say. ‘I can tell you that Jack and I mean nothing to one another.’ I stretch over and put my germ-ridden hand on hers. She winces and tries to pull away but I have a tight grip. ‘Or I can tell you that we lived together before I came here.’

  She’s looking right into my eyes, trembling ever so slightly. I release her hand and leave the room.

  I’m smarter than she is. Much smarter. We both know it. The patients are taking over the asylum.

  [#]

  The team were making progress, building a vivid picture of Khalid Hussain.

  He was currently single, though there was a photograph of him with his arm around one of his colleagues at her birthday drinks on her Facebook page. He seemed to be holding a glass of orange juice.

  He liked Sherlock on the telly. He was an avid follower of cricket and thought Ahmed Shehzad was a ‘genius’.

  His parents had come to Luton from Lahore in 1968. He spoke Urdu. He went to the mosque every Friday night for congregational prayer. He usually took his father with him.

  Jack checked his mobile. Still nothing from Lilly. He needed to know where Gem had gone to school.

  ‘Good work, guys,’ he called across the incident room. ‘But remember, we’re looking for links between our suspect and our victim.’

  He’d pinned a photograph of Gem next to the grinning Hussain. It was an enlargement of the mug shot taken when she’d been arrested. She looked wide-eyed and confused. A kid who didn’t quite understand what she was doing there. Jack knew that other coppers would have used a picture from the autopsy, preferably one from the scene, the messiness of her death evident and unsanitized. He himself avoided doing that where he could, out of respect. He hadn’t known Gem, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have wanted a bunch of five-o looking at her bare arse for encouragement.

  ‘Anything from his pupils?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a school Facebook page,’ said a young copper called Byron from the back of the room. ‘A bit of interaction on there.’

  ‘Isn’t that slightly creepy?’ Jack asked.

  Byron leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. ‘More common than you think these days, sir.’

  Jesus. Pupils sending messages to their teachers on Facebook? Jack could only remember one message he and his mates had sent theirs: a two-fingered salute from the top deck of the bus.

  As if he’d read Jack’s mind, Byron laughed. ‘It’s all changed since your day, sir.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

  ‘They don’t use video recorders any more,’ said Byron. ‘Or scrolls.’

  Laughing, Jack made for the door. ‘If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the tech suite with Lauren.’

  [#]

  The desk in front of the television screen was littered with empty cans and plastic sandwich wrappers. Lauren herself was absently chewing on a crust, slumped on an elbow, cheek resting squashily in her hand.

  Jack didn’t blame her. Reviewing CCTV footage was an arse-ache of a job.

  When she caught sight of him, she pushed the crust into her mouth and straightened.

  ‘Sir.’ She tried to swallow the dry bread in one. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Any joy?’

  She coughed, banged her chest and took a swig from one of the cans.

  ‘Sorry.’ She picked up an A4 pad and showed it to Jack. It contained a vertical list of numbers. ‘These are the dates and times when the BMW passed the camera in Latymer Street. They start last night.’

  ‘Good work.’

  She smiled and tapped one of the numbers into the remote. The screen jumped into life showing a road at night, the street lamps lit, cars streaming past.

  ‘This is last night just before seven.’ She slowed the film right down. ‘Here’s the car.’ The BMW inched into the frame and passed slowly out of it. She rewound so it came into the frame again, then she paused it and zoomed in. ‘You can’t really make out the features of the men in the car, but you can see there are three of them.’

  Lauren was right. There were two figures in the front and one in the back, a splash of red at head level. That must be the beanie Lilly had told him about.

  Lauren tapped in another number. ‘Here we are the ni
ght before.’ The BMW came into frame again. ‘Around the same times arriving and leaving.’

  ‘Aren’t we the creatures of habit?’ Jack laughed.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Lauren waved her pad. ‘Virtually every night, virtually the same times.’

  ‘What about the night Gem died?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I guess they’d have been busy,’ said Jack. ‘What about three days beforehand? That’s when Forensics think she was probably taken.’

  Lauren checked her pad and tapped in the numbers. Again the BMW came into view. ‘Hello, boys.’ She paused again and gave them a wave. ‘Hold on a minute, sir.’ She zoomed in. ‘Am I imagining it, or is the one in the front much smaller?’

  ‘The driver?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No, the passenger. Look.’ She pressed her pen horizontally against the screen so that it was in line with the top of the driver’s head. The passenger fell well short. ‘The driver’s much stockier as well.’

  ‘He’s a man,’ said Jack. ‘The passenger isn’t.’

  Neither of them spoke for a second.

  ‘Can you clean it up?’

  ‘I can try.’

  Jack stared hard at the passenger. In his heart he was certain he was looking at Gem on her way to her death.

  [#]

  It was tempting to take the footage up to the Chief Super and wave it in the man’s face, but Jack knew it was premature. No doubt the eejit would demand the cleaned-up shot.

  Jack needed to show just a little more patience. Then he would really enjoy seeing the look on the Chief Super’s face. Oh he would enjoy that with every fibre of his being.

  His mobile beeped. A text had come through from Lilly.

  The school Gem attended before PRU was Field High School.

  Oh my God. Jack began to dance around as if the floor was hot.

  ‘I’ve got you now, Khalid Hussain,’ he said. ‘I have well and truly got you.’

  [#]

  Jack had to work hard at keeping the smile from his face as he entered the Chief Super’s office. Unusually for the Chief, there was something on his desk: a large silver trophy that he was polishing with a cloth.

  ‘Microfibre,’ he told Jack. ‘Does a great job.’

  Jack nodded sagely. The only trophy he owned was a fake Oscar that Phil Cheney had brought back from a conference in Los Angeles. The plaque on the base read ‘The World’s Biggest Dickhead’.

  ‘There have been some developments on the Gemma Glass case,’ said Jack.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I think we’ve found enough to link her to the suspect.’

  The Chief Super took a corner of his cloth and rubbed it around the inside of one of the handles with long, smooth movements. ‘Go on.’

  ‘First of all, we know Hussain was a regular at Orlando’s.’

  ‘We have a statement?’ the Chief Super asked.

  ‘We’ll get one,’ said Jack. ‘When we lift this guy, the girls will talk.’

  The Chief Super raised an eyebrow. ‘You think they’ll do the decent thing?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Trouble is, Jack, these aren’t decent people.’

  Jack was taken aback. Gem, Kelsey and the other girls had problems, but they weren’t beyond the pale. Sure, they didn’t have the advantages of a private education and a university degree. They didn’t host dinner parties or attend church, but that didn’t make them gutter folk. Who knows what might have happened to the Chief Super if he’d had a similar start in life. Maybe he’d be selling his arse in Tye Cross with the other rent boys.

  ‘We’ll get the statement,’ said Jack. ‘Though we won’t need it.’

  In his lap, he had a manila envelope. He reached in and removed a small piece of paper. He placed it on the Chief Super’s desk.

  ‘This is the name of the school where Hussain works,’ he said. ‘It’s also where the victim went to school.’

  ‘She was attending school?’

  ‘Not at the time she was killed, no,’ Jack conceded. ‘But for several years she attended Field High School, and Hussain worked there for every single one of those years.’

  ‘It’s a big place.’

  ‘Nine hundred pupils. Not that big for a secondary around here,’ said Jack. ‘It’s inconceivable that Hussain didn’t know the victim.’

  The Chief Super checked his trophy, turning it this way and that, including upside down. Who the hell cleaned underneath the base?

  ‘Just because he might have taught her doesn’t mean he killed her,’ he said eventually. ‘A lot of other teachers must have known her.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Jack. ‘But they haven’t spent the last six months visiting the red-light district, sir.’

  He reached into the folder and pulled out the photographs. They were still grainy and imperfect, but he was satisfied they were clear enough. He placed one carefully on the desk and pushed it towards his boss.

  ‘This is Hussain’s car. You can see the registration number.’

  ‘Where was this taken?’

  ‘It was pulled from CCTV footage from the camera on Latymer Street,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a one-way.’

  ‘And what’s there?’

  ‘Orlando’s.’

  ‘When was it taken?’ the Chief Super asked.

  ‘Last night,’ said Jack. ‘We have him arriving at seven thirty-five and leaving at eleven thirty-two.’

  He took out the log lovingly compiled by Lauren. Again he passed the document to the Chief Super. ‘These are the dates and times of Hussain arriving and leaving the area for the past weeks.’

  ‘Why is this one highlighted?’

  ‘That’s three days before the day we know Gem was killed. We know she was taken by her assailants three days beforehand. She was last seen alive on that date in Tye Cross, and our man was there too.’

  The Chief Super lifted his cup and placed it on a shelf in the corner of the room. He took a step back, admired it, moved it a fraction to the right and admired it again.

  ‘It’s still hardly conclusive, is it?’

  Jack had known he was going to say that. He could have guessed the words he’d use.

  ‘There’s also this.’ He placed the last photograph on the desk. ‘It’s on the way home from the club, on the night we know Gem was taken.’ He paused to let the Chief Super take in the image. ‘If you look in the passenger seat, you can see it’s a girl.’

  ‘I’m not sure you can, Jack.’

  ‘Well you can see by the dimensions that it’s not a man. We can see that whoever it is, they’re white. And we know from the earlier footage that this person was not in the car on the way into Tye Cross.’

  ‘You think it’s the victim?’ asked the Chief Super.

  ‘I’d stake my life on it,’ said Jack. ‘They picked her up at the club and took her away with them.’

  The Chief Super picked up the photograph. ‘This won’t stand up in court as ID evidence.’

  ‘It won’t need to,’ said Jack. ‘The DNA will nail our guy. All this does is give us sufficient cause to suspect and arrest. No one, not even the press, could blame us for picking up Hussain and swabbing him.’

  The Chief Super exhaled a derisive ‘Pah.’

  ‘We have to do this, sir.’

  The Chief collected up the documents, pressing them into a neat pile, and returned them to Jack.

  ‘Okay, make the arrest,’ he said. ‘But if this all goes wrong, on your head be it.’

  Chapter 7

  You’re not surprised when Raz pulls into the country lane.

  You knew he was bringing you here. You didn’t even need to ask.

  You’re a bit more surprised to find Leah sitting on the sofa, knees tucked under, watching the TV among all the mess from last night’s party.

  ‘What, you didn’t even start cleaning up?’ Raz asks her. ‘Skanky bitch.’

  She stares at him with a look full of pure hatred.

  ‘How can you just sit there with all
this shit around you?’ Raz kisses his teeth and kicks an empty cigarette packet across the room.

  Leah shakes her head at him and goes back to watching the telly. A girl who can’t be much older than us has had a baby, but now she wants her boyfriend to pay for a boob job ’cos she thinks he’s going off her or something.

  ‘Turn that off,’ Raz says, but Leah doesn’t move.

  He’s getting mad now and you’re scared.

  He was horrible all the way over here, from the second he picked you up, asking you again and again if you’d told anyone what had happened at the party.

  ‘No,’ you said. ‘I haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘Because telling someone would be very stupid.’ He leaned over and prodded the side of your head with his finger. ‘Stupid.’ Another prod. ‘Stupid.’ And another.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I’ll know if you’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ you said and started to cry.

  ‘You’ve got to understand that my mates could get really angry and they know where you live.’

  He walks across the room now, grabs the remote and turns off the TV. Leah carries on staring at the blank screen.

  ‘You ignoring me?’ Raz kicks an empty wine bottle and it clatters across, hitting the sofa. ‘You got nothing to say to me?’

  Leah looks up from the telly as if all this shouting is the most boring thing she’s ever heard. Like she’s heard it all a million times before.

  ‘Got any booze?’ she asks.

  He throws back his head and laughs, not because it’s funny. ‘You fucking white girls are all the same. Booze and pills. Pills and booze.’

  ‘So have you got any?’ Leah asks.

  He shakes his head and wanders away.

  You sit down next to Leah. She smells like she hasn’t had a bath in ages.

  ‘Why did you introduce me to him?’ you ask.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she says. ‘I introduced you to little Ali.’

  ‘But you must have known Raz was his cousin,’ you say.

  Leah sighs. ‘No one forced you to hang about with him.’

  ‘He said he wanted me to be his girlfriend.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  Leah shakes her head. ‘Grow the fuck up.’