Weep a While Longer

by Penny Freedman

  ‘Just a minute,’ the receptionist says, and the line goes quiet. I wait. She returns. Her tone is unfriendly. ‘Mrs Hamidi is still being assessed,’ she says. ‘We are giving out no information about her at this time.’

  ‘So, if I ring back later?’

  ‘You’re not family, are you?’

  ‘No, but as I said—’

  ‘Her family will be kept informed.’ She snaps, and cuts me off.

  So that’s that. I’m not done yet, though. In a while, I’ll ring Monica in the International Office and see if she can find anything out. And I’ll try Paula again. In the meantime, I turn to my emails, where I find an application form for the post of Director of the Unit for Specialist English Language and Enhanced Skills Support. Look at it! See what they’ve done? It is, quite literally now, USELESS.

  I print off the form, nonetheless, and I track down my CV document with a view to updating and enhancing it. In the pursuit of this, I find my end-of-year report, just submitted, which reveals, among other things, that the unit had over 2,000 students through its doors in the course of the last academic year – some of them, admittedly, for only one class a week – and that our stand-alone courses raised over two million in overseas student fees. And how much did USLS make, you arseholes? I mutter, as I insert this information into my CV.

  I make myself some coffee, though I know I’ve already had more than enough this morning, and I start to read through the application form. I can’t fill it in. I suppose it’s the combination of the coffee and the sleepless night, but I am seized with an overwhelming urge to scrawl all over it, like spoiling a ballot paper. MY JOB, DICKHEADS is what I seem to want to write, but I don’t. I am distracted by a call on my mobile, which is sitting on my desk. The call is from David and I am not going to answer it. Whatever he may have to tell me, I have vowed not to speak to him and I will keep my word. So, I sit and watch as my phone glows and buzzes and jumps about, pleading eagerly for my reply. When it stops, I pick it up and put it in my bag, and a minute later I hear a message buzz. Well, I haven’t sworn off reading his messages, so I take a look. Jamilleh Hamidi attacked on university campus, it reads. Possible connection with yesterday’s interview. You and Farah should be aware. David.

  I stuff the phone back in my bag and pace the room, fuming. Thank you, David, for your care and concern. Be aware? Is that the best you can do? And Farah? Have you told her or am I supposed to pass the message on? I didn’t ask to be there at Paula’s interview yesterday, did I? You can’t claim this time that I’ve been sticking my nose in and have only myself to blame. You asked me to be there, remember? So if it has put me in danger and all you can manage is Be Aware, I call that dereliction of duty, quite apart from being a totally heartless and inadequate response to the possible peril of a woman you claimed, until quite recently, to love.

  It is a good thing I don’t say any of this out loud because the walls of these offices are scarcely more than hardboard and I would, undoubtedly, have shouted. As an alternative to shouting or breaking things, I decide to leave. I shove the application form into my in-tray, put my copy of Bring up the Bodies into my bag, get on my bike and cycle round to the abbey, picking up a sturdy-looking cheese and coleslaw roll from the The Burnt Cake on my way. It is not really the weather for alfresco reading and eating but it’s not actually raining and I have a windproof jacket and my rage to keep me warm. We have a run-through in costume of Much Ado starting at one o’clock and it is already half past eleven, so I’m unlikely to succumb to hypothermia in the interim. I succumb to the book instead, to Mantel’s lyrical, haunting, spiky, witty, addictive prose.

  An hour or so of this, helped by my cheese roll, restores me enough to face the irritations of a rehearsal in costume. People are so incompetent. They have all had the chance to try on their costumes but the women still turn up without the right bras to go under the wide square necks of their dresses, and I know I shouldn’t make gender assumptions but I do think any woman should be able to do the odd running repair – a bit of hem come down or a seam coming apart – rather than handing the damned thing to me. As for the men: they can’t seem to master the idea of keeping all the bits of their costume together, so they end up fighting over ruffs and people are wearing odd shoes. I almost experience a wince of fellow feeling with our we-in-the–profession director as I mutter so bloody amateur under my breath.

  As Ursula, I’m on and off throughout the play but I do get a chance to watch quite a lot and I think it’s going to be all right. It’s difficult to wreck it completely if you have a decent Beatrice and Benedick, and our B & B are doing a good job. They are well cast – young enough to have a life ahead of them but old enough to know this is probably their last chance. They are both wary and warm in equal measure and you hope the audience will cheer, or at least sigh with satisfaction, at the final kiss. There was a time when I liked to think of David and me as a Benedick and Beatrice couple, our spiky exchanges masking an attraction we were too wary to acknowledge. In recent months, though, when David has been working in London, our weekends together have been more Elyot and Amanda in Private Lives, our rows, I freely admit, generally started by me. There was too much pressure of expectation about those weekends, too much drinking on Friday nights for quick relaxation, too much hung-over disappointment and ill-temper, too many apologies and regrets. It’s a good thing, really, that David has decided to call it a day; if we had stayed together much longer we would have morphed into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

  When the run-through is over and I have restored some order to the men’s dressing room, I go back to the campus to pick up Freda. Nico’s ear infection is not clearing up and Ellie has an appointment for him at the doctor’s. In the car park at Acorns I encounter, of all people, Andrew, the man I was once married to. He has come, he says, to pick up Arthur because the news has got round about the attack on Jamilleh and he doesn’t want Lavender on the campus while there’s some maniac on the loose. This is, you will have to agree, a whole order of magnitude more caring than Be aware. I consider Andrew, taking in the details. He has just jumped out of the green Range Rover I saw Lavender in this morning. This will not be Andrew’s usual car; he will always be driving something zingier, more sporty. But you can’t get a baby seat into one of those, can you? I see from Andrew’s clothes – lightweight silver-grey suit, gleaming with a hint of silk, and polished Italian shoes – that he has been at work today, so he must have left his law chambers, driven to his gracious Georgian home in Marlbury’s rural hinterland, exchanged whatever the latest sports model is for the Range Rover and returned to pick up his son

  Would Andrew ever have gone to these lengths for me? Been this protective? Not a chance. Lavender is young, of course, and a more obvious candidate for protection than I ever was. It would be a pleasure to look after Lavender, wouldn’t it? She would be so grateful, blush so prettily. And me? Tough as old boots, that Gina. Woe betide any man who tries to look after her.

  I seek around for something unkind to say to Andrew, and I find it.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘what a model father you’ve become, Andrew. Quite hands-on. Don’t forget that you’ve got a couple of daughters too, though, will you? You are going to see Annie’s play at the Aphra Behn, I assume?’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, feebly, ‘babysitters, you know, with the two boys. Tricky.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to drag Lavender along. I’m going to the matinée on Saturday. Why don’t you join me? Annie’s boyfriend’s coming too. Jon. Remember him from Elsinore?’

  ‘Ah,’ he says again, and I see a faint blush rise under his permatan. ‘Weekends – family time, you know.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I say, smiling sweetly. ‘It just depends which family you’re talking about, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Annie’s a grown woman,’ he protests, summoning up his adversarial skills. ‘The boys need me.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘But Freda’s not a grown woman, is she? Remember Freda? Your granddaugh
ter? She’s four now, five soon. Come into Acorns now and I’ll introduce her to you. You’ve probably forgotten what she looks like. They change so fast at that age, don’t they?’

  I tuck my arm into his and start to propel him towards the entrance. There are a number of other parents around and he can hardly resist without making a scene. ‘Of course,’ I say conversationally, ‘it’s rather ageing being a grandparent, as I know, especially if the image you’re aiming for is groovy, ever-youthful, second-time-around dad, but it has it’s rewards, I can assure you, and Freda is a delightful child when you get to know her.’

  ‘I know her,’ he growls. ‘Don’t talk as if I never see her.’

  His protestations are belied by Freda herself, however, who comes hurtling towards me, brandishing sheaves of yesterday’s potato print designs, now dry enough to be taken home. She stops when she sees Andrew, says, ‘Oh, hello’ with perfect coolness and then tugs me by the hand. ‘These are for Mummy and Nico,’ she says, ‘and we have to take them home very carefully so they don’t get crumpled.’

  We walk away and leave Andrew to collect his boy.

  When I’ve dropped Freda and her artwork and enquired after Nico, who has been prescribed a second round of antibiotics but raises a cheerful smile, I cycle home with the troubles of the morning crowding in on me once again. Jamilleh, David, the job. Where to start? With a glass of wine, I decide, but the phone is ringing as I walk into the house so I dump my bag and run to it, forgetting to consider that it might be David. It’s not David. In fact, it appears to be nobody and I’m about to put it down, assuming that it’s one of those automated phantom calls, when I hear my mother’s voice, fainter than usual, but still with its crisp edge.

  ‘Virginia?’

  ‘Mother. Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s just …’ how should I put it? It’s just that you never ring me.

  ‘I just wondered,’ she says, ‘if you were in need of refuge again.’

  ‘In need of refuge?’ I ask, bewildered.

  ‘Yes.’ She sounds irritated. ‘Last time I saw you, you were taking refuge from Annie and her friends.’

  I remember now, Sunday’s white lie. ‘Oh yes, I say. They’re all still with me.’

  ‘So, I thought you might like to come here at the weekend.’

  She wants to see me. The invitation is not for my benefit but for hers. My white lie has become her face-saver, because heaven forbid that she should say I’d like to see you. Why do our dealings have to be so complicated?

  ‘On Saturday,’ I say, ‘I’m going to see their play in the afternoon, and then we’ve got a dress rehearsal for this production of Much Ado About Nothing that I told you about, but on Sunday Annie and the others will be packing up to leave for Edinburgh and the house will be chaos. How would Sunday suit you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Shall I bring food?’

  ‘Food?’

  ‘Yes. Lunch. Or will you—’

  ‘Yes, better bring something,’ she says, and rings off.

  15

  27.07.12: 09.00

  Team Meeting

  Jamilleh Hamidi’s passport photo was now up on the whiteboard alongside the pictures of Karen and Lara Brody. Scott pointed at it. ‘Paula has the latest on her,’ Scott said, and stood aside to let Paula take the floor.

  ‘You all know,’ she said, ‘that early on Wednesday morning, Jamilleh was attacked on the university campus. We’ve now pieced together her movements before the attack. She had left her child at the day nursery and was walking across the campus to the multifaith centre, where a Muslim women’s meeting of some sort was taking place. She took a route along a path behind the drama studio and someone attacked her. Tried to strangle her. It was a serious attack. No sexual assault. It looks as though someone was trying to kill her. Her larynx and windpipe were badly damaged and she was unconscious when the paramedics got to her.’

  ‘Who raised the alarm?’ Darren Floyd asked.

  ‘A guy working in the dance studio next to the drama studio. Justin Smyth. He had the windows open to get rid of the previous day’s sweat. Heard the scuffle, looked out and shouted, and the attacker ran off.’

  ‘Any description?’

  ‘Not much. Thickset, youngish man, he thought, wearing a hoodie. He only saw a back view.’

  ‘Anything from Jamilleh?’

  ‘A bit. She regained consciousness quite quickly but she can barely speak and we were allowed only a few minutes with her yesterday. She recognised me, though, and she must have remembered our conversation. When I asked about her attacker, she said, “His eyes were the same.” I asked if she meant the same as the “woman” in the niqab, and she said yes.’

  This was new information to everyone except Scott. She waited for the buzz to die down. ‘One other piece of information. Jamilleh was talking on her mobile when she was attacked. She was talking to her husband, who was working in one of the physics labs. He heard her gasp and drop the phone and then nothing more. When he tried to phone her back and her phone was dead, he went over to the multifaith centre to check that she was all right and got there in time to see the ambulance arrive. The area of the attack was searched and no phone was found. We have to assume that the attacker took it with him.’

  She turned to look at Scott. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Thanks, Paula.’ He looked round the room. ‘Any comments or questions?’

  Sarah Shepherd raised a hand and Scott wondered, not for the first time, how she always managed to look like an overgrown schoolgirl.

  ‘Yes, Sarah?

  ‘I know it’s probably just coincidence but did anyone else think it was odd that both Jamilleh and Karen were attacked while they were on the phone?’

  ’It’s a good point. In both cases we think the women were attacked because of something they knew. Seeing them on the phone would have emphasised the need to silence them.’

  ‘Do we think they both had the same information?’ Mike Arthur asked.

  ‘Possibly, but probably not. All Jamilleh said was that her attacker was the same man as she had seen wearing the niqab. If he was Karen’s killer, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that he killed her because of something she knew about him. We know she had some information that worried her – worried her enough to call the Samaritans.’

  ‘And her father said she seemed worried about something,’ Paula put in, ‘and he doesn’t seem like the most observant person in the world.’

  ‘So we need to find out what it was Karen knew. Paula, do you think there’s more information to be got from the Samaritans? With what we’ve got now, I’m prepared to go in for a search.’

  ‘The director claimed that she had destroyed the notes on Karen when they knew she was dead, but that may not be true. Someone spirited the notes away before we got down to the call room. And anyway, we can insist on talking to the volunteers who spoke to her, can’t we?’

  ‘That’s a grey area. We’ll go for the search first. I can get a warrant this morning. And I’ll talk to Malcolm Burns again – the volunteer she was speaking to when she was attacked, we believe. I’ll get him …’ he glanced at Paula ‘… on his own this time, and see what I can squeeze out of him. I’m not pussyfooting around this any more.’

  ‘I think we can get in without a warrant,’ Paula said. ‘Sarah did a great job last time we were there. Search warrants mean screaming police cars and flashing lights – bad PR for a confidential service. If we can take them by surprise before they’ve got time to hide anything, I think we’re in.’

  ‘OK. We’ll apply for the warrant as back-up then. We’ll also have another go at Doug Brody. He didn’t want to talk before, but he was still in shock. Let’s see how he’s feeling now. Sarah, get onto The Scrubs, will you? Find out when Karen last visited Brody, and find out if they keep a record of phone calls the inmates make. They’ll be allowed a fixed number of calls per week from a payphone and you’d expect the prison auth
orities to want to know who they’re phoning.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve got a question, though. Whoever killed Karen, if he did it because of something she knew, why did he kill Lara and the dog as well?’

  Scott looked round the room. ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘Panic?’ Steve proposed.

  ‘Are we losing sight,’ Paula asked, ‘of the possibility that the attacker was after the loot from the petrol station raid? We put that on the back burner because the house hadn’t been ransacked, but suppose he believed that it was hidden somewhere else? Suppose he wasn’t wanting to shut Karen up but to make her talk? He starts by killing the dog but she won’t tell him what he wants. Then he threatens Lara, and carries out the threat when she still doesn’t tell. Can’t tell, we assume, because she doesn’t know. Because she would have told rather than let her daughter be killed, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘And then he disposes of her,’ Sarah said, ‘because he knows she can’t tell him anything. We didn’t think of that when we said the killer couldn’t have been after information because he didn’t torture Karen. He would know, wouldn’t he, that if she hadn’t talked to save Lara then it was because she couldn’t. She didn’t know?’

  ‘Except,’ Steve said, ‘the autopsy on Karen showed no real signs of a struggle – no defence wounds, did it? I mean, I’m not a parent, so I don’t know, but wouldn’t she have fought tooth and nail to save Lara? And there were no signs that she’d been tied up, were there?’

  ‘So we put that back on the back burner, I think, Paula,’ Scott said, ‘though we don’t rule it out.’

  ‘I had one more thought,’ Sarah offered.

  ‘Red hot today, our DC Shepherd,’ Darren Floyd murmured to Mike Arthur in a perfectly audible aside. Paula shot him a warning glance. Sarah pressed on.