by Kia Abdullah
He approached the next house and knocked lightly on its door, recently painted a burgundy brown. He waited as the person inside undid a series of locks and bolts. Finally, a woman in her mid-forties peeked out through the gap. Dexter noted with dismay that she was indeed Asian.
‘Yes?’ she asked haltingly.
Dexter recalled Zara’s instructions. ‘Assalamu alaikum,’ he greeted her.
The woman opened the door a few inches wider. ‘Walaikum assalam.’ She hesitated, then asked, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Afternoon, madam. I’m Detective Constable John Dexter from the London Metropolitan Police. I was hoping to ask you some questions about a party that took place in the area on Thursday the twenty-seventh of June.’
The woman frowned. ‘What about it?’
Dexter was pleased to hear her clear London accent. ‘I’m investigating an incident that happened at the party and would like to know if you saw anything.’ He embellished his glottal stops, hoping to show that he was a local too. ‘May I come in?’
She guarded the entrance. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ She nodded at his badge. ‘Sorry, but those things can be bought on the internet for a fiver. My son got one for his end-of-year school play.’
Dexter broke into a smile. ‘That’s alright, madam. Here’s absolutely fine.’ He was just happy to have someone engage. Notebook in hand, he asked: ‘Does your son go to Bow Road Secondary School down the road?’
A bolt of fear flashed across her face. ‘Akif? Has something happened to him?’
Dexter held out a hand. ‘No, no, madam, he’s fine. This is about something else. Has Akif ever mentioned a girl in his school – a Jodie Wolfe?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘She, uh, has a few facial differences?’ Dexter prodded.
‘Ah, yes.’ She nodded in recognition. ‘That poor girl. She passes this way sometimes.’
‘Do you remember the party? It was Thursday the twenty-seventh of June?’
The woman rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, Akif was in a black mood because I didn’t let him go.’
‘Did you see any of the kids who went to the party?’
‘Ha! See them? I saw them, heard them and cursed them! They were shouting and singing and being fools all night. I can’t think what the parents of these children must be like.’
Dexter nodded sympathetically. ‘Did you see Jodie?’
‘The girl with the face? No, I don’t think so. I can’t think what she’d be doing at a party anyway.’
Dexter persevered. ‘Jodie was dressed in blue jeans and a lacy red top. Did you see anyone fitting that description?’
‘A lacy top!’ The woman threw back her head and laughed. ‘No, I certainly did not see that girl in a lacy red top anywhere. I’m sure I would have noticed it.’
Dexter made a note. ‘Did you see anything that was unusual or out of place?’
‘No. Why?’ The woman grew serious. ‘What happened?’
‘We’re investigating an incident that happened that night.’
‘What kind of incident?’ she asked.
‘I’m not at liberty to say.’
She frowned, annoyed. ‘Well, I didn’t see anything. There were a few kids throwing things around later at night and the noise went on ’til all hours but that’s it.’
Dexter probed her further but discovered nothing more. Finally, he handed her his card and thanked her for her time. Wearily, he moved next door. There, he found no answer. In this community the police brought only bad news. No good would come of helping them, so most didn’t deign to try.
It was three houses later that he saw the woman from the burgundy door again.
She approached him tentatively. ‘Officer, did the girl with the face have her hair tied up?’
Dexter brightened. ‘She did, yes.’
The woman’s jaw fell open. ‘Would you believe that from the back, that girl looks like a model? I did see her that night. I just didn’t realise it was her, though now that I think about it, she did have that strange limping walk.’
‘Where was she? What was she doing?’
The woman gestured at the big warehouse by the canal. ‘They were walking towards there.’
‘“They?”’
She smiled. ‘Your girl was with a boy. They were holding hands and he was leading her towards the canal. I was putting out the rubbish and I saw them. Unbelievable what kids get up to these days. I tell you, I wouldn’t expect it of her. Can’t think who’d want to …’ She paused. ‘Well, you know,’ she said, sotto voce.
Dexter ignored this. Instead, he asked, ‘They were holding hands?’
‘Yes.’ The woman arched her brows in judgment.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, completely.’
Dexter made a note, his features knotted in a frown. ‘What happened after that?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just saw them go off and disappear. That was it.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ Dexter took the woman’s details and warned that he’d be in touch. He turned the corner and called the office.
Zara held up a forefinger. ‘I just need to finish this section.’
Erin pulled out a chair and took a seat opposite. She stretched out her long legs and propped one ankle on top of the other. The silver buckle of her sturdy boot glinted in the sunlight and though it made her squint, she watched it while she waited.
Zara turned the page. As she skimmed the lines of text, a memory rose in her mind: she and Safran in chambers, him laughing at her because she always preferred to stop reading on a round page number. He thought it superstition, but it was another way to bring order to her mind. Like lines instead of curves, forty was neat and thirty-nine was not. She smiled faintly at the memory and finished reading the page.
Erin shifted in her seat. ‘Well?’
Zara gestured outward. ‘I believe Jodie,’ she said.
Erin arched a brow. ‘I think this is the first time it’s happened: you and I on opposite sides.’
Zara laughed drily. ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.’ She and Erin disagreed often, usually on a point of strategy or a bending of the rules: Erin, the breaker and Zara, the stickler. What she didn’t realise was that they had never fundamentally disagreed on the truth.
‘I pre-empted this,’ said Erin. She ripped a sheet of paper from her pocketbook and wrote out a name. ‘I need to find a way to convince myself, and hence our future jury, that the four boys are lying.’ She slid it across the desk. ‘I think she can help.’
Zara read the elegant scrawl. ‘Who’s Barbara Grant?’
‘She’s a teacher at Bow Road Secondary. I’ve had a look at the boys’ school records and there are scores of complaints against them – mostly from this teacher.’
Zara frowned. ‘What kind of complaints? We can’t put her in the witness box if it’s just poor punctuality and a little bit of backchat.’
Erin shook her head. ‘Vandalism. Bullying. Theft.’ She leaned her elbows on the desk. ‘Maybe you’re right about Jodie, maybe you’re not. Either way, I think there’s more to the boys than meets the eye. Maybe this teacher can show us what it is.’
Zara thought for a moment. ‘Okay, but vet her properly, will you? I don’t want to find out later that she’s a raging racist with a vendetta or something.’
‘Of course.’ Erin made a note in her pocketbook.
Zara watched the pen glide in high peaks and deep lows, Erin’s milky white hand graceful and slow. Above her wrists, she wore buckled leather cuffs and it occurred to Zara that she had never seen her without them. For the first time, she wondered if there were scars underneath, but knew better than to ask. Erin had known pain she was sure – the sort not easily shared – but Zara would not push for intimacy. She had seen first-hand what happened when you told someone too much.
Even he couldn’t stand you by the end.
She swallowed the sting of Luka’s words and watched as Erin stood. ‘Hey,’ she
said. ‘Is this really the first time we’ve disagreed like this?’
Erin paused by the door. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One of us is wrong.’ She raised a hand and parted.
Zara pressed at a knot in her shoulders. She picked up the document and turned to page forty-one.
Jodie paced the length of her room, head pounding from the relentless stench of nicotine. She felt boxed inside the walls, by the stained brown carpet and the yellow floral print, now faded to a pale and sickly lemon.
Compulsively, she thumbed through the apps on her phone. She scrolled through Snapchat, taking in all the sexy self-portraits; her female classmates in short shorts, backcombed hair and dark red lipstick. All of them doing a pouty pose they saw on a TV screen, exaggerated to the point of caricature. She clicked on her own profile and looked at her only picture – even her silhouette was freakish with its jutting forehead and sagging chin. She touched her face and pinched the folds of excess skin. People often asked if it hurt. It didn’t. Not physically.
She reached forward to scroll just as a banner slid across her screen. Her blood surged when she read the words, ‘Amir sent you a chat’. Fear bubbled in her stomach, her hand frozen in mid-air. With a wince, she clicked and a chat window appeared on screen.
‘Hi Jodie, how are you?’
She froze. She knew she shouldn’t talk to him. She knew she should call Mia or Zara and report the contact immediately but part of her needed this conversation, yearned for explanation. Barely daring to breathe, she typed ‘hi’ and pressed enter.
‘Haven’t seen you since the party,’ he replied, then continued after a beat, ‘Jodie, the police took me and MY DAD to the station. What have you said? You KNOW I didn’t do ANYTHING.’
Jodie’s hands hovered by the screen. Her heart raced in her chest and sweat pooled in the hollows of her body: under her arms and the crease of her knees. With a snap of her wrist, she quit the app entirely. A whorl of emotion rose around her: fear, anger, shame, and beneath it all, a cold and curling dread of what she had set in motion.
She resisted the urge to open the camera app. It was her favourite form of self-flagellation: spending hours examining her ugly face, almost bringing herself to tears over the injustice of it all. If she were beautiful, would Amir have respected her, protected her instead of just discarding her? Did her subhuman face make him think her subhuman? Something to be procured like a slab of meat, then stripped of its value, and thrown out like garbage?
Her experience that night felt like scarring inside, an indelible streak that ran from her throat down her chest to a knot of tissue between her legs, dry but sticky like sealing wax. She felt it sting inside her, hot and yellow like a wound, salted by words of disbelief: first her mother’s, then Nina’s, and now Zara’s too? Their mistrust was crippling. She, like everyone, had finite ties; moorings that held you in place as you struggled your way through life. All she had was her mother and Nina, and now with those moorings severed, she felt worthless and adrift.
Was it her fault for believing that for just one night, for a few short moments, she could experience what it was like to be normal? To be selfish and desired and wanton? She – usually so wary of being targeted, her senses fine-tuned to threat – chose to let her defences down, chose to follow Amir that night. Was it all her fault?
The questions circled in her mind, conjuring visions of the night it happened. Jodie raised her fingers to her hair to prove to herself it was clean. I’m right here, everything’s okay and my hair is washed and clean. There was no vomit clumping the strands, only shampoo that smelled of lilies. Ninety-nine pence it cost in Qessar’s cornershop, which meant if she had a twenty-pound note she could buy her mother’s cigarettes and a bottle of shampoo and have enough left over for a chocolate bar. She pictured the selection in Qessar’s shop and combed through everything in it, from the Freddos and Fudges at the front to Fry’s Peppermint Creams at the back, which always sat next to the Flakes and Galaxys. She focused hard on the colours and prices, adding and subtracting to maximise her money, only half aware that her brain was talking her gut into not collapsing. Because her gut was saying help me, help me.
Zara stripped off her light navy blazer and slung it over the back of her chair. Behind her, Mia coaxed open a window and wedged it up with a box of cheap printer paper. There was not a whisper of wind and the office was hot and airless in the sapping afternoon sun.
Zara glanced at her watch, a slimline Piaget that fit smartly around her wrist. Its rose gold bezel was too gaudy for her liking but it had been useful in her days in chambers; an important part of the mise en scène. It felt garish in this room with its Formica tables, five shades of grey and harsh fluorescent lights that were always on whatever the time of day. She suspected that the police officers resented these meetings – saw it as undue meddling – but she had to ensure that Jodie was a priority. She knew all too well how caseload stunted progress.
A cursory knock drew her gaze to the door. DC Dexter bundled in with an apology and slumped heavily into his seat. ‘I found something while canvassing in Bow this morning.’ He pushed a thin manila file across the table.
Mia opened it and read the first few lines, her lips parting in disbelief. ‘Two witnesses?’ she said, scanning down for detail. One witness had seen Jodie being led to the warehouse, contrary to Amir’s insistence that she had ‘just turned up’. Moreover, an elderly lady across from the warehouse had seen Jodie leaving.
Mia read out a part of the statement: ‘Thankfully, I know her from the area or I would have had a fright to look at her. She seemed upset, poor love. It can’t have been easy going to a party looking the way she does … Yes, I remember what she was wearing. A red top. She kept adjusting it. These young girls wear next to nothing and then spend all day pulling down their skirts and pulling up their tops.’
Zara listened with blooming hope. Secondary witnesses in rape cases were exceedingly rare. This was a lifeline for Jodie.
Dexter tapped the table to catch their attention. ‘There is one anomaly I’d like to clear up.’ He pointed at the file. ‘Jodie told us she was looking for her friend and that Amir told her he’d take her to her. The witness here said she saw Jodie and Amir holding hands and being quite cosy, so which is it?’
Zara stiffened in her seat. She had always known that this lie would hurt them.
Mia flipped forward a few pages and then one back to find the portion in question. ‘Huh.’ She frowned. ‘If Jodie followed him to find her friend, why were they holding hands?’ She looked up at Zara. ‘Do you know anything about this?’
Zara swallowed the truth. ‘Jodie’s been clear that Amir led her to the warehouse under false pretences.’
Mia held up the file. ‘So why were they holding hands?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll ask her.’
Mia shook her head. ‘We’re going to need to talk to her ourselves.’
Zara reached for her diary. ‘Okay. I can bring her in on Monday.’ She marked down the date and felt a sense of unease stirring in her stomach. If Jodie came clean now, the lie would undermine her broader credibility.
Dexter leaned forward and caught Zara’s eye. ‘By the way, thanks for the tip about greeting people with assalamu alaikum. I’ll be using that from now on.’
Zara nodded, surprised once again by the collegiate nature of this work. In chambers, she was so often lonely, shouldering her victories and failures alone. At Artemis House, she was part of a collective that worked for a greater good. Gratitude, however small and fleeting, took her by surprise more often than it should.
‘We have more,’ said Mia. She positioned her bulky black laptop next to Zara. ‘So we followed your advice about Jabdam. It turns out our suspects are on the app.’ She tapped the mousepad to wake the screen. ‘There was nothing about Jodie in the app, but there was a mention of Amir and a girl called Sophie. There were some nasty comments posted about her in 2017 and it seems she left school later that year. Maybe something happened. We�
��re looking into it.’
Zara read a few comments and felt a spark of disgust at the cruelty of children. Who was this Sophie who had drawn such ire?
Mia clicked onto another screen. ‘Also, you remember how the suspects conveniently forgot what they were wearing on the night in question?’ She clicked open a photo and pointed to the screen. ‘We’re going to have to pay them another visit.’
Zara examined the image of the four boys at the party. A lanky Mohammed was dressed in a stripy blue shirt and a pair of jeans. Next to him stood a much shorter Hassan dressed in a yellow T-shirt and dark jeans. Amir Rabbani was in a casual white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, also teamed with a pair of jeans. Finally, Farid Khan stood looking awkward in a brown jumper and khaki coloured trousers. His beard was two weeks thinner and his absent-minded gaze was directed just off camera.
Zara glanced up. ‘This was on Jabdam too?’
Mia smiled. ‘Indeed. The privacy settings were a gift to us. We could see everything anyone in East London has ever posted – deleted or not.’
Zara clicked onto the next image, one of Amir leaning close to a girl, whispering in her ear, his hand on the small of her back. ‘This could work for us,’ she said.
‘Or against us,’ countered Dexter. He reached over and zoomed into the girl’s face. It was in profile but you could tell that she was smiling, basking in his gaze. ‘It’s clear that Amir Rabbani is a handsome lad. If he has little trouble with the ladies, why would he risk assaulting someone like Jodie?’
Zara frowned. ‘You sound awfully earnest about that.’
Dexter leaned back in his chair. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that you know it’s not as black and white as sexual desire or availability.’ Zara flicked a hand in the air. ‘Men rape women not because they are sexy, but because they want to exert power over them.’