‘That’s not… You shouldn’t do that. That’s some serious shit. How did you do that?’
‘Oh come on, Bartu, that’s not the most interesting bit of the story.’
‘Then what the hell did you find?’ he says in a choked gasp, almost forgetting to breathe.
‘Mr White’s messages. Words that confirmed that he’d been in contact for a while. But, again, that’s not the most interesting bit of the story. Anyone could have got to that bit and I know anyone could get there, because they got there too, but what they didn’t get… is a call from Mr White.’
‘You got a call from –’
‘Try not to repeat everything I say, it’ll take at least twice as long if you do that. The next thing you say is “so how did he have your number?” then I say “obviously I must’ve given it to him” then you say… ’
‘So you’re saying, it isn’t Akhtar?’
‘To which I say, no; I’m saying it is Akhtar. Akhtar Junior. He used his dad’s laptop because he doesn’t have one, or a smartphone, or any of those things kids from richer, less strict families would have. The upshot is, Asif says he didn’t do it.’
‘Didn’t write the messages?’
‘No, of course he wrote the messages. But what Jarwar and the rest think is grooming from an older man, with words like “don’t tell anyone at school about us”, could simply be a kid trying to have an affair with his ex-girlfriend without anyone at school knowing about it.’
‘And he doesn’t know where the girls are?’ Visible air rises between us. I rub my hands together and look around; mindful of our lost tape, aware of listening ears and passers-by, in this frozen world.
‘He says he doesn’t. He wanted advice on what to do; I said tell them everything you know and leave nothing out and that’s what I want you to do to right now.’
‘Okay…’ Bartu says, glancing around as we continue walking. Walking to just to keep moving, to stay warm. We don’t know where we’re heading yet.
‘They think they’ve got their man. They’ve already got neighbours willing to say they never trusted Akhtar Senior. A couple of parents, white parents, who say they refused to let him give their daughter lifts home because there was something odd about him. He also has previous for GBH. The strategy is to lean on him with all this so he’ll give up where he’s hiding them. Oh, and they’re not looking at it in conjunction with any other crimes, and certainly not one in a different borough ten years ago. Levine nearly pissed himself laughing when I asked that.’
‘You’ve got to admit that yours sounded a little less good than mine. Just saying,’ I announce.
‘Okay. So what now?’ he says, as we walk up the hill, the ground crystallising beneath our feet.
‘You haven’t even heard the best bit yet. That last call wasn’t Asif. I phoned reception and found out exactly which students and teachers were present at the school clubs the girls were snatched after. Don’t ask how I did that.’
‘I won’t.’
‘So now we have thirty-eight people who realistically may have been the last ones to see those girls. Thirty-eight people who might have seen this guy at any time in the last few months. Thirty-eight chances to jog some memories. The only thing that sticks in my craw, is that one of those thirty-eight, in a school of over a thousand, is Asif.’
‘Shit,’ Bartu says, as we pass the empty library. ‘So… where are we going now?’
‘Either way, we are so close, I can feel it!’
‘Yes, but which way now?’ he says.
‘Well, we could go to the school… ’
‘Which is stupid and dangerous for us… ’
‘Or we could go to Tanya Fraser’s house.’
‘What’s at Tanya Fraser’s house?’
‘There we go, good on you; now that is a good question,’ I say.
Then the radio crackles and the voice comes through.
‘Mondrian. Bartu. This is Jarwar. Over.’
‘Go ahead. Affirmative. Over,’ I say, quickest on the draw.
‘Thanks for everything on this case. I know you’ve been close to it. Over.’
‘What is it? Over,’ I say.
‘I just wanted you to know before you hear it second hand. We’re near Tottenham Marshes. I think we’re about to find the bodies. Over and out.’
And I drop to a crouch, get low and breathe.
Documented Memory Project #3
When I saw my old playing fields I was reminded of days lying on the yellowing grass. By turns idyllic and mundane, depending on which day the images come to me, they form a dream room landscape I return to, like my mind is a lo-fi TV show, with only the means for a few sets, constantly recycled due to budget restrictions.
But this image is specific and has only just come back to me. I don’t think it’s a false assumption. I don’t think it’s been deformed by current events. I gaze at the maroon canvas of the back of my eyelids.
A friend of a friend had passed the message on to me in woodwork. I crumpled up the lined paper and didn’t show a soul before it made its way deep into my grey trouser pocket, never to be seen by other eyes.
It was the Monday of the last week of term and I was headed to the kissing tree. True to its name, it was picked out as it was big enough for two young bodies to hide behind, out of view of the mass of kids scrambling around for the football on the concrete schoolyard with its porridge-like consistency from a distance. I had never been invited to the tree before and never would be again.
Sarah Walker leaned against the other side as I made my way around it and stood limply observing the single curl that fell from her otherwise tightly-wound blonde hair. It lay just below her chin like a hook and as I reached to touch it she took my hand and pulled me in, causing me to fall and slam both hands against the tree, either side of her head. I narrowly avoided head-butting her and was still recovering from this as her green eyes met mine and I noted the constellation of freckles, which I had seen recede and fade over the years but not disappear completely, clustered lightly around her mouth as if she had been freshly dusted with tiny biscuit crumbs.
She wore her tie the other way around, small bit at the front, large bit tucked into her shirt, in a way that I never dared to, and her skirt wasn’t from the usual suppliers. As such she was often questioned about it by teachers, who always let it slide. She pushed her tongue out so I could see it. I just stared at it. So she grabbed the back of my neck, pulling my face closer, then forcing my lips onto hers, my tongue eventually poking into her mouth and staying rigid as she did all the work and I hesitantly closed my eyes. She tasted of cigarettes and an orange alcopop procured from cooler kids. When it finished I realised I had rather rudely kept my hands in my pockets throughout. And as she left I lifted my middle finger to my bottom lip and tasted fresh metallic blood on my tongue.
29
‘The girl next door is playing on my mind
Digging in my garden to see what she can find’
When we get there, there are no bodies. But there are clothes. And blood, a lot of blood.
‘Not sure you should be out here, lads,’ the gent says, but everyone else is. There’s police tape, vans, detectives who I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, people in white jump suits taking samples. It’s certainly a scene. We stand tantalisingly far back, unable to go further for fear of being caught in the midst of it all. Particularly by Jarwar, who did us the courtesy of letting us know it was happening, so we could forget about it, not stand next to her while she stands next to bigger boys who administer the last rites on this thing. Fortunately for her, we couldn’t get close enough to cramp her style even if we wanted to, and she has her hands too full to notice us in the distance.
She buzzes around trying to conduct the orchestra as another car arrives and Turan steps out. Jarwar immediately sees him and her body language says she didn’t expect to. There are enough cooks putting their feet in the broth as it is. Metres and metres away on the other side of this, a gent
leman special constable stands guard at the front of it all, in our way, warning us off in the kindest possible terms. He’s a volunteer; expenses only. But even he has more status than us: the power of arrest and other privileges we can only gaze at from afar.
‘We’ll get off then,’ I say, and none of us moves a muscle.
Stonebridge Wood offers decent cover, particularly by night, but also there’s an area at its centre you would only venture into to take a piss, or to help a kid build a covert tree-house. The likelihood is that this was done last night, but it’s possible they’ve been in there for longer than that. Time is one of the first things they’ll be trying to ascertain.
We see the clothes. Three sets. Laid out in perfect order. Coat over jumper over shirt, all carefully together as if worn comfortably by the girls who no longer lie within them. Conspicuous by their absence. And below them school skirts. And below them ripped black tights. And below them patent leather shoes. All in a neat line next to each other. The shirts are red, thick with blood, the rest of the clothes may be, too, but the blood shows up strong against the white of the shirts at this distance, like it’s been poured over fresh snow.
Spotlights have been erected by men and women in luminous jackets to point into the darkness of the woodland.
To say look here, look here, see this, see this.
Miscellaneous material hangs from the trees. It could be items from their rucksacks, which lie below, next to their clothes. Could be underwear. Could be pieces of torn shirt. The spotlight reveals them to be reddened too. Real blood is a lighter shade than you would imagine.
Steam rises to them from the breath of the men beneath, in the wood. People tread carefully, in the wood. It’s like a silent movie. As, for all the jostling and heat of bodies, there is a library hush, only usually replicated in Catholic Mass or a cemetery or in the presence of the bodies themselves. But there are no bodies here, in the wood.
The Special starts to look, too, too uncomfortable to force us away physically or ask us to leave again. He turns in time to see a suited woman, presumably a detective, walk over to the edge of the water that runs nearby. She leans in and with a pencil, pokes at something and then lifts it. She brings it over and holds it up near one of the spotlights. She doesn’t seem to recognise it. But I do. I know exactly what it is. It’s a Tottenham School prefect’s tie. The normal tie was black with yellow stripes, but if you were given a special award or were a prefect you got the inverse pattern, a yellow tie with black stripes. It’s supposed to separate the good kids from the bad kids. I never had one.
‘Anyway. All the best,’ Bartu says, nodding to the Special.’
‘Thanks, lads,’ he says.
We amble back to Bartu’s car. I feel nauseous.
‘What stings more, seeing the clothes and the blood? Or the feeling we were so close?’ I say, as he pulls out and we head back to the beat. I like to break things down into their smallest parts. Even the tiniest atoms of thoughts. Even the quarks.
‘How close did we really get? In the end?’ he says.
‘I could feel something. I’ve got this thought in my head, like I’ve forgotten to do something.’
‘I get that all the time.’
‘Yeah, well yeah, it’s like that. Only I’ve had it for a long, long time and it almost hurts me. It pings around my head, it makes me uncomfortable, it’s like a Post-it has fallen down from my brain stem. Something I made a note to do, and now it’s rumbling around in there, in my skull, getting all mushed up. And every so often it turns over and I see a piece of it. A word arrives to me like a tune or a lyric in my head sometimes, when I wake up, after my thoughts have had a chance to reorder themselves in the night. But, I can’t, for the life of me, remember what is on that Post-it. And it makes me so uneasy it makes me feel… sick.’
‘It’s probably seeing the blood. Their blood.’
I gaze at the faces going past as we drive. I recognise nothing. The world moves past on a carousel for me and everything either really does mean everything or absolutely nothing. Emotion sickness. I picture their terrified faces, stricken with the fear of what might come next, before next came and eclipsed even their very worst nightmares.
‘If it is their blood.’
‘What?’ he says.
The white lines in the road pass on and on.
‘We’re assuming it is their blood,’ I say.
‘It was their uniforms.’
‘Maybe. But they’ll have to test the blood.’
We stop at a red light.
‘Who else’s blood could it be?’
‘You can get blood,’ I say, with unintended foreboding.
‘Okay, mate,’ he says, shutting down the conversation.
I gawp aimlessly out the window as we get going, but the light-bulb is still flickering away inside of me.
‘I was starting to think,’ I mutter to myself. ‘If they are still alive, they’re going to start running out of room down there.’
‘What?’ Bartu says.
‘I said, if those girls are all still alive, wherever they are, one day they’re going to run out of room.’
‘Tom. I think you have to accept that this is –’
‘Stop the car.’
‘No, Tom, you need –’
‘Stop the fucking car!’ I shout, and for the second time in our short friendship I go to grab the wheel, but this time Emre Bartu knows to brake before I do this.
The door opens and I’m running, my version of a run anyway, but it’s a damn sight better than it was a few weeks ago. After a woman with blonde hair. I hear Emre’s door slam but I don’t feel his presence behind me, I feel like I’m on my own. I push past the crowds and then slip on ice, but I’m back on track quickly as I head down the main road.
She’s got a head start but I’m gaining on her.
I turn the corner and run into some young parents holding hands with their cute-looking kids, dressed as bears and angels, and I barge through them.
‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ I shout back as I turn the corner and then see her turn right. This isn’t like before. Last time it only seemed like she was trying to steer clear of me, there was a possibility she didn’t know I was there. This time she runs full pelt, as if she’s running for her life. We head down a side-road and I could shout ‘Stop, police!’ but I’d rather gain ground without her knowing precisely where I am. She’s gained some leverage because of my pace, but isn’t looking back and that could give me an advantage. Plus, these streets are coming back to me strongly. We turn again. This is a cul-de-sac.
Our bodies cut through the air. I hear only the sound of my own breathing. It’s surreal to find yourself calm at moments of such high tension. Running is only running after all. We do it for the bus. Sometimes we do it because it matters, but it all looks the same. My own body doesn’t even fully grasp the importance.
At the end of the road, she turns. I don’t think she has anywhere to go but she doesn’t falter, she runs in between two houses and keeps going. There’s a path. I haven’t been around here since I was young, so maybe it’s new. She darts down it and turns her head as she does and I see her.
I recognise her.
That face.
It’s so clear to me, unlike all the others.
She slips on the ice. She falls hard and grabs her leg. She lets out a yell and I want to help her. She gets up gingerly. She’s right there.
The girl of my dreams.
She hobbles for a moment. A spot of blood drips from somewhere, her hand I think. She’s flagging. She moans in pain. I remember her hand touched mine when we wrote in biology class from time to time.
She was left-handed. I am right.
I remember seeing long cuts above her knees when my eyes wandered in summer term. I’d keep watch on their progress. After a few days they’d fade to almost nothing. Then the next day they’d open up again, even deeper than before. I wondered what her home was like, after that rumour, about her angry father catc
hing her playing rough with another girl. She always seemed tough, but I had a feeling there was a world of niceness inside if you could only get to it. If you could only touch it.
‘It’s done. It’s over!’ I shout as I reach out and touch her back, feel her hair.
But then I lose my grip on her as we turn onto a new road. Then something hits me hard.
I hit the ground. My ribs ache. I’m not sure what’s happened. The pain isn’t here yet, it all happened so fast. My hand is numb, perhaps I hit my head, it’s too early to say.
I see her feet disappear in the distance. Her feet. Sarah Walker. If she’s really been missing for ten years, then I’ve found her.
Hide and seek.
Then a car speeds away and I realise that’s the cause of the unusual sensation in my ribs. I’d try and catch the number plate if I was in any state to do that. I feel like I’m back where I started. I know a hell of a lot more than I did, but not what any of it means. I’m in no position to take it any further. I’m not even in any position to get up.
Another car pulls up with a screech, heavy footsteps, a door slam. They stand over me. I hide my face, instinctively. I am vulnerable now. One hand goes to my side, my other towards my scar and I brace myself for the worst.
‘What are you doing?’ Bartu says, pretty commanding from this angle.
‘Being hit by a car, I think,’ I say.
‘Ah,’ he says as he picks me up, very carefully. I can’t be that hurt or he’d have called me an ambulance and not moved me until they got here. I have to take it from him, because my adrenalin’s up too high to assess if I’ve broken a bone or cut myself open.
‘Evelyn’s,’ I force the words out. ‘We’ve got to go back to Evelyn’s.’
30
‘Out for a walk by the waterside
the girl sat smoking, she choked, she lied.’
Head Case Page 22