A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

‘I’m going to take it in a minute, under exam conditions. If I pass, I’ll be one step closer to getting a job as an operations officer for cases – that’s the official job title.’

  ‘You mean a spy?’ I can’t help laughing, and once I start, I can’t stop. I’ve got a pictures desk editor locked in my flat and my best friend wants to be a spy.

  ‘Keep it to yourself, all right? It says on the website that you can’t tell anyone.’ She makes a dismissive noise. ‘Seems a bit unrealistic, doesn’t it? They can’t mean anyone anyone.’

  ‘No. I’m sure they mean you can tell whoever you like as long as they’re not wearing an Al-Qaeda T-shirt.’

  ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘I think I’m laughing, but there’s not much in it.’

  ‘I’m deadly serious about this, Fliss. I spoke to a detective who said I’d make a good chief inspector, and it started me thinking . . .’

  ‘Why were you talking to a detective?’

  Tamsin groans. ‘I know it’s against your principles, but will you please buy a newspaper and read it? And when you’ve done that, come here so that I can not let you out of my sight.’

  ‘Tam, I need you to go to mine. Have you still got the set of keys I gave you?’

  ‘Somewhere. Why?’

  ‘Just . . . go to my flat and unlock the door. Let Angus Hines out, lock up again – that’s it, then you’re done. It won’t take you long. I’ll pay any expenses – petrol, cab fare, tube fare, whatever – and there’s a slap-up meal in it too, at a restaurant of your choice. Just please, say you’ll do it.’

  ‘Can we rewind to the “Let Angus Hines out” part? What’s Angus Hines doing in your flat?’

  ‘He came in, I didn’t want him there, I couldn’t get him to leave, so I went out. I had to lock him in or he’d have followed me and I didn’t want to speak to him. He’s a horrible, self-righteous bully. He gave me the creeps.’

  ‘You locked Angus Hines in your flat? Oh, my God! Isn’t that . . . false imprisonment or something? Kidnap? Fliss, you can go to jail for incarcerating people against their will. What’s wrong with you?’

  I press the ‘end call’ button and switch off my phone. If she wants to let him out, she can go and let him out. If not, they can both stay where they are and have fun disapproving of me.

  Maybe I ought to ask my taxi-driver if the Kray twins ever locked a pictures desk editor in their flat, and if so, what happened to them as a result. Except that he’s now involved in a phone conversation of his own, which leaves me with no choice but to think.

  Yes, I knew Laurie worked at Binary Star when I applied for the job. Yes, I knew about his links to Helen Yardley and JIPAC. I knew he was trying to get Ray Hines out of prison. No, I didn’t for a minute think I’d end up being coerced by him into taking on a film about miscarriages of justice involving cot-death mothers. If I had, I’d have run a mile; Dad was dead by the time I started at Binary Star, but Mum wasn’t.

  She still isn’t. It will break her heart if I make a documentary that portrays Ray Hines as innocent. Even if Dad was wrong to say what he said about her that day in the restaurant, that’s not how Mum will see it. She’ll be devastated.

  That used to be enough to make me certain I didn’t want to do it.

  Then why go and work for Binary Star, alongside Laurie Nattrass?

  Could I have been hoping, as early as January 2007, to find myself in the position I’m in now?

  If I ring my home number and say all this to Angus Hines, will he finally be satisfied and let me make the documentary? I bury my face in my hands. Oh, God. What have I done? I should tell the taxi-driver to turn round and go back to Kilburn, but I can’t face it. I don’t want to go anywhere near Angus Hines ever again.

  The cab pulls up outside Binary Star’s offices. I pay and get out. The outer door’s unlocked, so somebody must be in. I push through the double glass doors and slam straight into Raffi. ‘A Felicity on a Saturday?’ he says, hands on hips, mock disbelief all over his face. ‘I must be seeing things.’

  ‘Do . . . do you normally work on Saturdays?’

  ‘Yup.’ He leans forward and whispers in my ear, ‘Sometimes I even work on the Lord’s Day of Rest. Don’t tell Him.’ I wonder if there’s something Raffi’s scared of, something he’s trying to convince himself is nothing. Why else would a person spend the weekend in the office? I decide I’m probably projecting; Raffi looks fine.

  ‘I’m going to be working most weekends from now on,’ I tell him, trying to sound busy and professional. He purses his lips at me. I should think so too, the amount we’re about to start paying you. Is he beaming the words into my brain, or am I being paranoid? Either way, I feel as if I might as well be twirling a pistol in each hand, wearing a T-shirt with ‘Stand and deliver’ emblazoned across it.

  ‘There’s a surprise for you in your office,’ says Raffi. ‘Come to think of it, there were a couple of surprises for you in Maya’s office, last time I looked.’ Before I have a chance to ask what he means, he’s gone, the doors banging behind him.

  Maya’s office door is shut, her ‘Meeting in Progress’ sign hanging from the handle. I can hear her and several other people talking over one another. Workaholic freaks, the lot of them. Don’t they know what Saturdays are for? Why aren’t they curled up on their sofas in their pyjamas, watching repeats of A Place In The Sun: Home Or Away?

  Someone with a loud voice says, ‘I appreciate that.’ I wonder what the ‘that’ is. Fag smoke? Is this a secret meeting of the Nicotine in the Workplace Appreciation Society? I decide that whatever surprises Maya has for me can wait until later.

  In the office that’s either mine, Laurie’s or nobody’s, depending on your point of view, I find what looks like a small silver robot standing in the middle of the floor. It takes a few seconds for me to read the label that’s stuck to it and work out what it is: a dehumidifier. My heart sinks to somewhere in the sub-gut region. A week ago I’d have been delighted, but not now. The timing says it all. Raffi knows this is supposed to be my new office, and he knows it doesn’t have a condensation problem. Is the dehumidifier his way of letting me know I’ll soon be back in my damp old room where I belong?

  I lock the door and turn on my computer. Laurie’s sent me an email that says, ‘Revised article attached’, and, beneath that, ‘Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless device’. The BlackBerry has contributed more words to the message than Laurie has, and it’s never even had sex with me. If I weren’t so on edge, I might find this funny.

  There is no article attached to the message. Luckily Laurie has sent another email – from his laptop, presumably, once he realised he couldn’t append the relevant file to his BlackBerry – this time consisting of no words, only the attachment. I open the article and click on ‘print’. Then I root around in my bag for Angus Hines’ business card. I send him an email, answering the last question he asked me as honestly and fully as possible, and explain that I ran away because I would have found it too hard to answer face to face. I tell him how painful it is for me to think about my dad, and that I tend to do anything I can to avoid it. I don’t apologise for locking him in my flat, or ask if he’s still there or has managed to get out.

  Apart from the two from Laurie, the only interesting message in my inbox is from Dr Russell Meredew. ‘Fliss, hi,’ it begins. What kind of greeting is that? Isn’t this man an OBE? I check the files: yes, he is. It could be worse, I suppose: Yo, Fliss, what up? I read the rest of his email. ‘I’ve spoken to Laurie, who tells me you intend to include interviews with Judith Duffy in the film. He thinks this is a bad idea, as do I. If you want to give me a ring, I’ll explain why. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job – please don’t think that – but there’s a danger in trying to be even-handed when it’s a case of a bird in the hand being worth a pathological liar in the bush, if you get my drift. I think perhaps we should talk on the phone before proceeding with the interview we put in the diary the other day. My willingness to be invo
lved in your project partly depends on what sort of project it turns out to be, as I’m sure you appreciate. Very best, Russell Meredew’.

  In other words, don’t listen to my enemy’s point of view – just take my word for it that she’s evil.

  I press the ‘delete’ button, making a gargoyle face at the computer, then ring Judith Duffy’s home number again and virtually beg her for a meeting. I tell her I’m neither for nor against her – I simply want to hear whatever she might have to say.

  I’m about to grab the new version of Laurie’s article and leave the office when I hear voices in the corridor that sound as if they’re coming closer.

  ‘. . . either of them gets in touch, please impress on them how important it is that they contact us.’

  ‘I will.’ That’s Maya.

  ‘For their own safety, they need to understand that all activity around this documentary film stops until further notice. It won’t be for ever.’

  ‘And if you find the Twickenham address Rachel Hines gave you . . .’

  ‘I’ve told you, I haven’t got it,’ says Maya. ‘I gave it to Fliss.’

  ‘. . . or if you remember it . . .’

  ‘I’m unlikely to remember it, since I never knew it. I was probably thinking about something else when I scribbled it down, and I handed it over without looking at it. Bring me a list of all the streets in Twickenham if you want, and I’ll see if any of the names ring a bell, but, aside from that . . .’

  ‘All right,’ says the louder of the two men, in a strong Yorkshire accent. I recognise his voice from the message he left me: DC Colin Sellers. ‘So if we could have a quick look round Fliss Benson’s office before we go?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘She’s got more than one?’

  ‘She’s kind of moved into Laurie’s old office, but I’m not sure she’s finished moving all her stuff yet. And Laurie’s not been in to collect his things.’

  ‘We need to see both.’

  ‘Laurie’s old office is just along here. Follow me.’

  What about a warrant? I want to scream. I leap out of my chair and duck down behind the desk, remembering only when I see its four wooden legs that its bulk doesn’t go all the way to the floor. I knew that. Shit, shit, shit.

  The footsteps are getting closer. I spring up, lunge across the room at the dehumidifier and knock it over. I pick it up, turn it so that the broadest side is facing the office door, and sit with my back pressed against it, pulling my knees up to my chin and putting my arms round my legs, refusing to listen to the voice in my head that’s saying, What’s the point? So they won’t see you when they look through the glass in the door – so what? In a minute Maya’s going to let them in, and they’re going to find you, very obviously hiding from them.

  Is there any way I can pretend I’m sitting like this because I’m feeling particularly humid today? I’m sweating buckets; maybe that’ll help make the lie convincing.

  I hear the quieter of the two male voices say, ‘What’s that? An electric heater?’

  ’Never seen one as big as that,’ says Sellers.

  I tuck my chin into my chest. I had no idea I could do this: make a ball of my body while still sitting up. Maybe I ought to take up yoga. What are you going to say when they unlock the door, walk in and see you?

  ‘Sorry, guys, do you want to start with Fliss’s old office? It might take me a while to track down one of the spare keys for Laurie’s. He was always forgetting his, using the spares, then putting them back in odd places.’

  Thank God. My relief lasts about half a second, until it occurs to me that the only good thing about my old room was the view of Laurie’s office, across the courtyard. I could lie on the floor beneath the window and not be seen by the police, but then if Maya walks past, she’ll see me through the glass in the door. With much panicky swearing through gritted teeth, I shunt the dehumidifier round, so that its widest side now faces the window, and pull it a metre or so across the room. Will the detectives notice it’s been moved, or will they assume all four sides are the same?

  This is the only place I can sit and not be visible from either vantage point. I assume the tucked-in-ball position again, and wait for what seems like years, listening out for the sound of the police coming back in this direction. And when I hear them, my plan is to do what, exactly? Questions flit round my brain: too many moths around a lightbulb, clustering blackly around the source of light, making it dark. Why am I bothering to pretend I might get away with this, and what’s the point anyway? Why did Tamsin tell me to read a newspaper? Why do I love Laurie so much when I shouldn’t even like him? Why can’t I bear the thought of being told by DC Sellers that I can’t speak to Ray again until he says I can? Why are the police looking for her? Do they think she killed Helen Yardley?

  Is that the story she wants to tell me?

  Footsteps. And DC Sellers’ boom-box voice again, faint but getting closer. I scramble across the floor to the window and try to prise it open. It feels as if it’s been painted shut. Have I ever seen Laurie with his window open? Did I ever notice anything apart from every detail of the man himself – the hairs on his arms, his ankles in black socks – in all the hours I spent gazing across the courtyard at him? Silly question.

  I push and shove, leaning my whole weight into the window, muttering, ‘Yes, thank you, thank you,’ as if it’s already given way – a little trick that’s sometimes worked for me in other situations. There’s a creak, then – glory and hallelujah – it opens. I climb out, and am about to lie down next to the wall when I remember my bag. Shit.

  I push myself through the window again. Why is it such a tight squeeze? I can’t have got fatter since three seconds ago. I’m surprised I haven’t lost half my body weight, the amount I’m sweating. Back in the room, I freeze, panic rollercoastering through my veins. The police and Maya are right outside; seconds away. I hear a metallic jangling: a bunch of keys. I grab my bag, and half fall, half wriggle through the window. There’s a loud tearing sound as I hit the courtyard’s paving stones. Christ, that hurt. I kneel up and detach a swatch of material that used to be part of my shirt from a jagged shard of wood protruding from the window frame.

  I hear the key turn in the lock. No more time. I push the wood that’s come free back into the frame and give the window a shove. It almost shuts. There’s no way I can close the catch, not from outside and not with Maya and the two detectives walking into the room, so I do the only thing I can do: lie flat on my side, pressing my sore body against the wall under the window. I scan the rooms on the opposite side of the courtyard. I’m safe – they’re all empty.

  ‘It’s a dehumidifier, Sarge,’ DC Sellers says. So the quieter man’s in charge.

  ‘What do you reckon to Maya Jacques?’ he asks.

  Maya’s not with them any more? What the hell’s she doing, letting two cops loose in my office unsupervised?

  ‘Good body, good hair, bad face,’ says Sellers. Bad personality, I’m tempted to call out, from what I’m trying, euphemistically, to think of as my courtyard retreat. There are weeds sprouting up between the flagstones. One is almost touching my nose. Its leaves are sprinkled with soil and white powder: paint dust from the window. I’m already cold; soon I’ll be freezing.

  ‘I think she knows the Twickenham address. She protested a bit too much.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she tell us?’

  ‘Laurie Nattrass has nothing but contempt for the police – he says as much in a broadsheet at least twice a week. Do you think he’d tell us where Ray Hines is staying?’

  ‘Probably not,’ says Sellers.

  ‘He wouldn’t. He’d protect her – that’s how he’d see it, anyway. I think we’d better assume everyone at Binary Star feels the same way. Here, look at this.’

  What? What are they looking at?

  ‘New message from Angus Hines.’

  No, no, no. I nearly wail out loud. I left my email inbox up on the screen. This is the part where the police find
out I locked a man in my flat. This is the beginning of me going to jail.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Have you opened it, Sarge? Living dangerously, aren’t you? Interception of Communications Act, and all that.’

  ‘I must have leaned on the mouse by mistake. “Dear Fliss, here are two lists you might find interesting. One is of all the women, and a few men, against whom Judith Duffy has given evidence at criminal trials. The other is of all the people she’s testified against in the family courts. All, on both lists, were accused of physically injuring and in many cases killing a child or children. You might also be interested to know that in another twenty-three cases, Dr Duffy testified in support of a parent or parents and said that, in her opinion, no abuse had taken place.” ‘

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s it. “Best wishes, Angus Hines”.’

  That’s it? No mention of illegal imprisonment in my basement flat? I swallow a sigh. It would be a basement flat, wouldn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that before. Locking up other human beings is never ideal, but when there’s any sort of cellar involved, you know you’re dealing with a monster. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

  ‘Thirty-two on the criminal list, fifty-seven in the family courts,’ says Sellers. I hear a whistle that I think means, ‘That’s a lot of people’.

  ‘Family court proceedings are confidential. Where’s he got these names from?’

  A good question, but not the main one in my mind. Why has he emailed me the two lists, with no explanation? Is it his way of saying he wants me to make the documentary? Perhaps by locking him in my flat, I proved to him that I have flair and initiative. Yeah, right.

  He could have got the names from Judith Duffy. She might well keep a record of everyone she’s given evidence against in court. She and Ray are now friends, Ray and Angus are more than friends . . . I press my eyes shut, frustrated. I’m accumulating information, but making no progress. Each new thing I find out is like a thread that leads nowhere.

  ‘Holy crap,’ says Sellers.

  What? What?