Head Case

by Ross Armstrong

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t have it,’ he says.

  ‘What? Go and get it. I’m going to cut out Jarwar and hand it straight to Levine, along with an innocent mistake story. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘No. No, it won’t be fine. Because last night my car was broken into, and now the fucking tape isn’t fucking there.’

  I size him up. He’s aware of what this looks like. Police don’t look kindly on concealed evidence. But tribunals are even more suspicious of police that mysteriously lose things altogether. So am I, and I’m making sure he knows it.

  ‘I know. I know I shouldn’t have left it there. Fuck!’ he says.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve got rid of it. And no one knows we had it,’ I say. A touch coldly, more theoretical than actual commiserations. ‘Unless they did know, and that’s why they broke into the car…’

  ‘Yeah, I get it. But we can’t report stolen evidence that we stole in the first place, so I say we let it…’ he mumbles, as his phone rings.

  I give him the ‘take it’ face and overhear that Aisha seems to have been liaising with the insurance company. I start to mouth to him but he pushes me away; he knows better than to tell anyone what was stolen. I curse my naïve self for tossing something into his hands that could be so important.

  While Emre takes the call, I dismiss coincidences and wonder who could possibly know we had that tape. The walls appear to close in and lights flicker as I see conspirators around every corner and find myself walking uneasy.

  I hurry past the interview rooms, and see a boy sat alone in the second. He looks to the floor, biting down on his hand, everything and nothing on his mind. He’s like one of those hologram stickers that changes as you walk around it. Look at him from one angle and he’s a lost little thing, stranded and scared. He would be angelic if he could find reason to smile.

  When I’m not dreaming about the blonde girl in the classroom, or daydreaming with endless hollow lyrics in my head, it’s this kind of child that fills my mind. The ones that distant generations and apathy and the internet built. In my mind they are angry and festering and hold broken bricks and they are hopeless and hopeful and there are swarms of them. An Atlantic Ocean squall of them. And what happens next could go either way.

  He looks up and I recognise him as I see his scarlet birthmark, but I duck from view before he sees me. I’m not scared of him. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of him.

  But just to test myself I lift my head back into view and stare in at Eli. And leave my gaze there as he rolls his neck around and looks back at me.

  We stay there for a few seconds. Him carrying his grudge, me trying to hold onto what authority I have. But I’m not making any apologies. I put my hand on the handle, turn it and step inside.

  He sits next to the tape recorder, ready to give his statement. I shouldn’t be here, but he greets my presence with an odd inevitability.

  ‘PCSO Mondrian,’ he says, flatly, like he’s been drained of something.

  ‘Eli. You’ve got to stop…’

  My thought drifts away. But I don’t need to finish it. It looks like he might nod in agreement for a second, but then he decides not to give me that much.

  He looks down to his hands. Clenching them together and wincing.

  ‘I never meant –’ he says before stopping himself.

  ‘Never meant… what?’ I say.

  He looks up.

  ‘Shit, I never meant –’ But he stalls again, his mood changing as he stirs and tenses. It’s just me and him in here. He shouldn’t have anything on him, anything sharp, he really shouldn’t have anything like that, I remind myself. But I still shouldn’t be here.

  ‘You’ve got to keep your head down. Stay out of trouble,’ I say, slowly. ‘CCTV places you at an incident where shots were fired. So play ball. If one of your lot has a gun, tell the officer where they got it.’

  He looks to me. Surprised somehow at the sentiment and sense of care. He clenches his fists, harder this time.

  Then, as if from nowhere, he cries. It’s absurd, like seeing a statue weep. He doesn’t soften, but the tears come sure enough.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘For what?’ I say.

  ‘Everything.’

  His body crumpling now. I hear footsteps down the hall.

  ‘Hey. I don’t know who would want to do that to you. But I’ll find out. Okay? I know people. I could find out,’ he whispers.

  ‘It was an accident. A stray bullet,’ I say.

  More footsteps. He shifts in his seat before continuing.

  ‘Yeah, I reckon you’re right. Still… I could find out whose bullet. I could get them back for you.’

  I notice his eyes are dry now. I don’t know what to make of this kid. And what he’s trying to make me swallow.

  ‘Eli. Don’t be fucking stupid.’

  ‘But, I could…’

  But I can’t stay to hear the rest. Seems like Eli wants to make a bargain. The kids a mess, but he’s someone else’s mess. As I slam the door, I get a firm tap on the shoulder and turn sharply to find Bartu standing behind me.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he says, without looking or considering the boy behind the door at all.

  *

  Emre Bartu insists we don’t break our shift. Not today, not after the warning, but he does say we can drive, and if we go past Myddleton Road then so much the better. He says it with an air of finality, as if it’s early January and he’s taking me to see the last of the neighbourhood’s Christmas illuminations before they all come down. But I don’t see it quite like that.

  ‘Slow, slow,’ I say as we go past. Keen to catch the smallest glimpse of him, even if we are merely passing on a parallel road and he is twenty or so metres way.

  ‘All right,’ he says, slowing, but not so much as to be conspicuous.

  He doesn’t want to even breathe next to this case today. We’re detailed to go and check on a lady that’s had a fall, and Bartu is more than happy with that.

  As we glide past, I only have a second to take him in, Jarwar pushing his head down as he is carefully placed into the back seat of her car. I don’t have long to make a profile. His hair is flecked black and grey, as if the colours were flung from an art room paintbrush onto his canvas. He’s tall and thin. He wears black, round spectacles and is fifty I would guess. But this is all I get and I’m lucky to get that.

  ‘You think that’s our man?’ I say, with only a hint of provocation, as we get up to speed again.

  He responds with a look that says ‘It doesn’t matter what I think’ and ‘Let’s not talk about this’ and ‘You know what I think’. But I’m not sure I do know what he thinks, not anymore.

  ‘That deaf bastard didn’t even tell us who Katherine Grady is,’ I say, as we speed away.

  ‘Steady, mate. You need to manage your mood,’ he says.

  ‘All right. He’s not a bastard. But we still don’t know who she is. And Stevens is partially deaf. Those are just facts,’ I say, as he falls quiet.

  When we arrive at number 42, Evelyn, a lady that Emre has looked in on a few times before, flings open the door. And, after a second of wondering who the hell we are, throws her arms skywards and bellows.

  ‘Darling boys! Come on, come in!’

  He’s referred to her as the Grand Dame of Tottenham and I can see why. He thinks she used to be an actress, or photographer’s muse, or a dancer of some repute, but he can’t remember which. Either way, it’s nice to be where you’re wanted for once. Her face shows a fierce purple bruise but she wears so few signs of anxiety about it that it could be stage make up. She seems more concerned about what tea we’d like than her own problems. Her mind isn’t what it used to be, Bartu has told me, and her falls are becoming a frequent occurrence, but I see no sign of weakness from her here, as she flirts and flits around like she’s still backstage at Drury Lane, or in the photographic studio, or wherever her natural habitat used to be.

  Her home
smells of the colour peach. Of exotic hot drinks and lavender. I dream of this kind of grace in age for a moment. Her home is small and might offensively be described as humble, but it’s also full of knick-knacks; a pink chaise longue, an antique Victorian card table, a fulsome collection of Chinese fans, lanterns and parasols.

  But if Bartu hoped for a respite from the case, it isn’t entirely forthcoming.

  ‘Have they found those girls yet? Probably on holiday together, I reckon,’ she says.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Bartu. ‘Not our area.’

  ‘And anyway they didn’t know each other,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yes. No, I did hear that,’ she says.

  I start to play with my phone distractedly and then remind myself that’s rude.

  ‘Sorry. How did you hear that?’

  ‘It was in the paper, love. Here we are,’ she says, holding out today’s front cover of the Tottenham Advertiser, emblazoned with a picture of the three girls in school uniform.

  ‘I keep them all. I’ve got the ones with you in them here,’ she says, presenting a pair of front page stories with lines reading ‘PCSO shot by stray bullet’ and ‘Back on the beat’ respectively. The second showing a picture of me in uniform for an unwanted photo opportunity the Friday before I started back.

  ‘I know rumour travels fast but I didn’t think it was in print. Does everyone know about this?’ I say to her, glancing to Bartu.

  ‘I’d say so darling,’ she says, as Bartu lazily scratches his chin. I have a natural mistrust of the press getting into things. I’m also uncomfortable with how much the image in the article about me shows my scar and I can’t remember agreeing to that photo. But maybe I did; the mind plays tricks.

  I scan the room and see the multitude of newspapers stacked into corners, locals mostly and not just her own. I’m not sure whether you’d call her a hoarder or if she just likes to stay informed. It looks like she gets the free ones from anywhere within a ten-mile radius. They somehow fit the decor and go back quite a way, judging by the number of them. Bartu comes over and joins me, calling out the names as he sifts through. He takes them from piles respectively at knee, hip and chest level.

  ‘Stratford and Newham Express… Hackney Citizen… Haringey Advertiser… London Turkish Gazette?’

  ‘It’s not all in Turkish! You should know that, right Em? Can I call you Em?’

  Emre shrug-nods, resolving that the words ‘Err, I’d rather you didn’t’ weren’t on the drop-down list. That’s how nick-names work; it’s very rarely your decision and if you insist on one you’ve come up with yourself you get pegged as ‘a-bit-of-a-knob-end’, and usually are one.

  ‘I like to stay up on the Turks. Like to stay up on everything.’

  ‘I can tell,’ says Bartu, scanning the room. The stacks of papers, only registering as soft furnishing on first entering, now seem to pen us in. I pick out their particular smell. Cream and chalk. Yellowing paper, print ink and dust.

  ‘Aren’t you lot interested in local news?’

  ‘Not as interested as you, obviously,’ Bartu says.

  ‘And I don’t read,’ I say.

  ‘Well, you should. Your generation, I worry about you lot. With your computers and what not,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not so much “don’t” actually. As “can’t”. Yet. But I’ll get there,’ I say, tapping my scar.

  ‘Oh, love. Well you will do, and when you do, you keep reading, ‘cos it’s what separates us from the fucking morons.’

  It’s supposed to be heartening, I think, but makes me feel slightly belittled.

  ‘Do you actually… read all these… Evelyn?’ Emre says.

  ‘Yeah, course,’ she says, sitting back in her chair.

  Even if it’s a half-truth it’s impressive. We look around at the pages and paragraphs, arms folded, prodding me like bigger boys.

  ‘Matter of fact, wondering what you thought about something.’ She sniffs and takes in the room with a sideways glance.

  I’m all ears. Emre Bartu is slightly less composed of ears, but he’s still interested.

  ‘All this? Bit similar to those girls that went missing down in Battersea. Ten years ago it musta been. You remember the ones?’

  A few beats, we turn to face her, her bruised visage pinning us with keen eyes.

  ‘Yeah, they weren’t from around here. But I think one of them was Turkish, which accounts for the interest from the Turk Times. Three girls… from the same school… I think.’

  I scratch my head, just next to the scar. It itched when she said the words ‘three’ and ‘girls’, so I put it out of its misery.

  ‘What happened to them? Were they found? D’you remember?’ she says.

  Her grandfather clock ticks as she looks at us.

  ‘I steered clear of serious news up until I started this job. And no one’s mentioned… any case like that. So, no, I don’t know what happened to them,’ I says.

  She snorts and flicks her nose with the back of her knuckles.

  ‘No, neither do I. I remember it happening though. Sure of it. Turk Times. Two thousand and four.’

  I blink at the reams of paper. When I look to Bartu it’s clear that he’s already twigged that I won’t be the one doing the reading.

  ‘Go on. Turk Times are in those five piles there, and there’s one more in the utility room. And three by the stairs.’

  *

  Evelyn wasn’t messing around, she’d kept them all. Her system means that Bartu can find the year easily enough, but as she has no handle on the month that still means fifty-two papers. He starts with front pages, a suggestion I had made, which I thought might just reduce the arduousness of the task at hand. However, if it didn’t make the front-page we’ll have to dig a little deeper, which is certainly possible, as Emre mentions that natural curiosity found him searching through similar cases on the internet a few days ago, to no avail. If this is real and not an older lady’s fantasy, it’s either buried deep in the search results or not on the net at all. We put our faith in the web as if all of history naturally resides there, but you still need someone to put it there. Sometimes our faith is better placed in black and white.

  When the front pages return nothing, I signal to Evelyn to put on another brew.

  ‘Now try pages two and three,’ I say, sitting back in Evelyn’s chair, settling into the warm groove she’s left behind as Bartu struggles with unwieldy papers on his knees. I’m the strategist, he’s my eyes; that’s just how it works out.

  When it comes, Bartu yells in relief as much as in excitement. It was early in the year, January to be exact – just as it is now. Not ten years ago to the day, but not far off.

  Three girls had been taken from their school on consecutive days; the similarities had been greater than Evelyn had even remembered. Bartu read it all to us, failing to play down his unease.

  He was still manfully trying to show only passing interest, stuck in the mode of not giving too much a way, while I had begun to ill-advisedly invite lady friends to tag along whenever it seemed apt.

  ‘… the girls were not said to be friends… They haven’t been heard from for three, four and five days respectively… Police are appealing for any information anyone may have at this time.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Evelyn says.

  ‘We think Mr Akhtar did that one, as well, do we?’ I say.

  I don’t know much about the Akhtar family. Nothing at all, in fact. Maybe they move around. Maybe he has a pattern, a way of doing things. He could’ve done it in other boroughs or cities and then he gets out just in time without leaving a trace behind him, only this time, when the internet made it that much easier for him to find and groom the kind of girls he was looking for, he naively didn’t count on his Mr White creation leaving an electronic trail. It’s a theory.

  Occam’s Razor is the law that states that the simplest solution is usually the correct one:

  Mr Akhtar + the previous crimes = a dangerous man with a very pervers
e obsession.

  That’s the conclusion that Bartu must be lost in, too, and if the police know about the other crimes, if they’ve looked that far back, then they’ll be checking Akhtar’s previous addresses against any similar unsolved acts. The only problem is I’m betting Occam’s Razor doesn’t work every time.

  ‘Damn it,’ says Bartu, pinching the top of his nasal bone with his thumb and index finger, like a migraine just came on fast. This thing just keeps on getting bigger, and falling back into his lap. Meanwhile I look at the paper and just for practice try to read the names.

  ‘We get back on this. Tomorrow. And we do it right,’ he says.

  ‘You boys be careful,’ Evelyn says. ‘Best to think before you bluster.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Evelyn. Thinking’s all I ever do,’ I say. As I put my hand against hers for a moment I think about my Grandma, my family, and things I haven’t thought about for a very long time.

  ‘Hey, you don’t know who Katherine Grady is, do you?’ I say, hopefully.

  ‘Err… no,’ she says.

  ‘Worth a shot,’ I say, casting my gaze back to the papers. I give up trying to read the names and focus on the pictures. Then when I look into the eyes of one of the girls, I see her staring back at me.

  And I feel something I haven’t felt for a long time with regard to a face.

  Any face at all.

  Bang.

  True recognition.

  *

  At home, halfway between waking and sleep, I picture the back of a blonde head. A girl, or a young woman. She’s writing on the blackboard, but this time it’s not in chalk. What is it? I can’t see. She writes in red. Something stops me from getting close to her, to seeing her face, but I can see her writing, in lipstick, red lipstick. No, not writing. Drawing. A symbol, the same one that was on the car window, and now I see it, it’s less clear cut. And now I know I made a mistake.

  It wasn’t a heart. It was something stranger. Something else.

  *

  Buzz. Buzz. I’m awoken by my phone vibrating next to me. My left hand reaches for it and the screen glares. Unknown numbers, again. Maybe I’ve been giving my card out too liberally.