Post Mortem (10 page)

Collins said, ‘She was doing well.'

‘Very well, yes.'

‘You were proud of her.'

‘Yes.'

Collins hesitated. ‘You're angry.' There was a pause. ‘And sad. Yes, of course you are. I would be too.'

Miss Wilson exhaled. She muttered, ‘Well . . .' She sat down opposite Collins. There was a brief silence. ‘What I don't understand is the bit about her taking the child. That's what I read in the press. Can that be true? Are you absolutely sure she took him?'

Collins avoided the question. ‘Why would you say that?'

‘Farah was lonely, troubled even, but I never saw her cruel. Quite the opposite. There's a girl in her year with learning difficulties and Farah was one of the few children who was ever kind to her. I just can't believe that she took a child. What would make her do that?'

Collins allowed herself a moment to think. Then she said, ‘Well, I suppose it's my job to find that out – to find out exactly what happened and why. And I don't have the answers yet.'

Miss Wilson looked her in the eyes. ‘OK.'

‘You're deciding whether to help?'

Miss Wilson smiled. ‘No, I think I have decided. What did you want to know?'

‘Tell me about Farah.'

‘What about her?'

‘You said she was troubled?'

‘Yes, but I don't want you to think that explains—'

Collins reached her hand forward to interrupt. ‘It's all right. I don't.'

Miss Wilson smiled. ‘I'm sorry.'

Collins smiled too. ‘That's OK.'

‘So, OK. Farah was a troubled girl. That's definitely true, yes. She was shy, sat at the back of the class, hardly ever spoke. I'd noticed she'd been cutting. Her wrist . . .'

‘Yes, I saw that too.'

Miss Wilson looked up, curious. ‘How did you see it?'

‘At the post-mortem.'

Miss Wilson's face closed in sudden horror and Collins remembered too late how unfamiliar and distasteful her profession must sometimes seem.

‘I'm sorry. I should have thought . . .'

Miss Wilson smiled in a friendly way. ‘No, no. That's OK. Of course, yes. Of course you did. How horrible that must be for you.'

‘It's OK. It's just my job.'

There was silence. Then Miss Wilson said, ‘I'd referred Farah to the school's counsellor but they hadn't met yet. Farah's mother is dead, of course. Died back home, I think, before she arrived in the UK.'

‘And her father?'

‘He always came to parent evenings but he was one of those parents . . . how can I say? I never really knew exactly
why
he was there. There was no dialogue. He didn't seem to understand any of it, just sat there. Hard to feel you ever made contact with him.'

‘Did she have any friends?'

‘None in particular. She was a lonely girl, I think.'

Collins' phone started ringing. She reached it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen.

‘I'm really sorry. I'll have to take this.'

She went out into the corridor. A man was mopping down the far end and she took a few steps away from him. A young woman in flared jeans and a checked shirt was coming towards her. Afro haircut, pale brown skin, pretty, with a wide face. Late twenties probably. She walked past Collins and into Miss Wilson's classroom.

Collins took the call. ‘Steve . . .'

‘The car pinged twice last night in St Leonards – once on the approach, the other time right on the seafront. Nothing since. They're quite well served for ANPR cameras. It's probably still there.'

‘OK. Let's get over there. I'll pick you up in half an hour.'

Collins went back into the classroom. Miss Wilson was standing beneath one of the high Victorian windows. Her friend was perched on a desk, leafing through an exercise book.

Collins said, ‘I'm sorry for interrupting.'

Miss Wilson said, ‘No, no, come in. This is my girlfriend, Patti.'

Patti turned and smiled, and Collins felt a sudden pang sweep through her. The two women seemed so happy together, so optimistic, believing in the future and making the world a better place, all that stuff. And then she told herself that this imagining of them was just fantasy, of course. What did she know of them?

She said, ‘I'm really sorry, I've got to go. Something urgent's cropped up. I can come back . . .'

‘No, no, that's all right, if you've got everything you need.' Miss Wilson smiled. ‘Good luck, Sarah.'

18

W
ith the expanse of sea as her only map, Lizzie walked. Her mind and the terrain were a blankness to her from which only the occasional object emerged: a lifebuoy on a stand, a level crossing that made her change her stride. The sun was suddenly low on the horizon and for a brief moment she did not know what to do as she stood alone on a darkening country road. With some effort she began to retrace her steps towards the car. That was her plan, she reminded herself; that was where she would sleep. She turned her mind towards her memories as if towards a difficult task, one avoided all day. Cars sped past, flashing at the lonely figure, their lights on full beam and their horns blaring.

Her mobile had rung with an unknown number. The voice had been faintly accented – one of those hybrid voices that could only belong in London.

‘Hello. PC Griffiths?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's Farah Mehenni.'

‘Oh, Farah, yes . . .'

‘I spoke with my dad. He's going to come in to the police station in an hour or so. Will you be there?'

‘Yes, of course, I'll get freed up.'

‘PC Griffiths?'

‘Yes.'

‘Remember, you promised me. You remember? If my father came down you would look after him. You said that thing . . . a caution . . .'

‘Well, I'll be there to deal, but I didn't—'

‘You said it was serious but not the end of the world.'

‘That's right.'

‘If he came down you would sort it out.'

‘Well, if he comes down it will get sorted, but I didn't promise—'

‘We'll be there in an hour.'

‘Farah, hang on . . .'

The line went dead.

Glancing through the glass of the station office counter, it had been immediately obvious which one was Mehenni: he was the dark-skinned man raising his voice and jabbing his finger.

‘I came to this country because I like this country. English police, they are famous. Everyone tells me: English police are
fair
. They do not even carry guns. Now this man, Officer Matthews. He abuses my daughter. How dare he? I will not repeat what he said to her. And I? I am certainly not Bin Laden. He knows nothing about me . . .'

Farah was standing behind her father and she put her hand on his arm as if to hold him back. She looked embarrassed, self-conscious. The other people in the station office were staring openly and exchanging glances. An old lady pulled her bag close to her. The station officer raised his eyebrows at Hadley and Lizzie.
A right one
.

Lizzie approached cautiously. ‘Mr Younes Mehenni?'

He turned on her. ‘PC Griffiths?'

‘Yes. Thank you for coming in—'

The man was immediately so angry that it was hard to get a word in edgeways. ‘How dare you come to my house and speak to my mother—'

Lizzie interrupted. ‘Mr Mehenni, there's been an allegation . . .'

But he was not listening. As he looked beyond her to Hadley, Mehenni's face had that elsewhere cast of someone deaf to all reason. He lunged forward, saying something guttural and unintelligible in his own language. Hadley, moving surprisingly gracefully for a man of such bulk, stepped to the side. Mehenni lost his balance.

Someone must have put up for assistance, because other officers were piling into the station office. Her team were there – Inspector Shaw and Arif and Sergeant Thompson. There was no room to move and these other officers, through sheer physical strength, were taking charge. The urgency of restraint had taken over all other considerations. Lizzie had her cuffs in her right hand. She glanced to her left. Hadley was standing well back, watching, and Lizzie thought, momentarily,
that's not like him
. And then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Farah looking at Hadley with unmistakable hatred.

The old lady, still clutching her handbag, was hedged up against the wall. Mehenni was on the floor, face down. His arms were being forced behind his back. He was squeezing out words but they were mainly not in English. The only thing she heard clearly was
racists
. Kneeling, she slid the first cuff on to his right wrist. Sergeant Thompson pushed his left wrist towards her and she snapped the cuff over it. Shaw glanced at her, prompting her to say the words. ‘Mr Mehenni, I'm arresting you on suspicion of criminal damage and malicious communications.'

She looked up at Farah, who had pressed herself back against the wall. Her face was knotted into a tight, angry frown behind which, Lizzie suddenly realized, tears were probably being held back.

Mehenni sat in the interview room barking out a furious discourse on the failings of the British police in general and PC Hadley Matthews specifically. The interpreter translated in a loud but neutral tone,
automatically and indifferently processing words from one language to the other, like a driver switching lanes on the motorway.

‘I like this country . . .'

Mehenni wore a loose grey suit, an open-necked shirt and black leather shoes. He had, Lizzie realized, dressed up smartly for the arrest. She imagined that in the street he would merge anonymously into the usual file of London immigrants. In his own home he might well be one of those extravagantly courteous and formal North Africans who offered coffee and sweet pastry. But watching him closely like this, she thought that he also had the thinness of a man who was systematically eating himself into a sack of angry bones.

The solicitor, a young, plump white man wearing trainers, jeans and a shiny Chelsea FC top, caught Lizzie's eye. Lizzie ran her nail down the groove where the plastic box of the tapes opened. The cellophane wrapper wouldn't easily break.

Mehenni had started to speak English. ‘I
like
this country. I respect this country. This country has given me a home.'

Lizzie addressed the solicitor quietly. ‘Are you certain that Mr Mehenni needs an interpreter?'

The solicitor said, ‘I think it's for the best.'

He reached across the table and offered her his ballpoint. She jabbed at the cellophane. It puckered and tore like the fine skin of an onion. Mehenni, now back in his mother tongue, was continuing to talk loudly. Lizzie turned to the interpreter, raising her voice over the continuing diatribe.

‘Would you explain to Mr Mehenni that I'm putting the tapes in now? Only then will the interview start.'

The interpreter was a fat, dark-skinned man with a beard and a plastic name badge hanging from a lanyard round his neck. He had chubby hands with dark hairs on the back of his fingers and thick yellowish nails. He smiled at Lizzie as self-satisfied as the
Cheshire cat – ‘Of course, Officer' – and then switched language, speaking forcefully to Mehenni.

Mehenni stopped talking. He nodded and folded his arms across his chest as if waiting impatiently for an incompetent servant to complete some necessary task.

The tape emitted its harsh long tone. Lizzie read from the prompt.
This interview is being tape-recorded . . .

There was never any question of a no-comment interview. Mehenni was incandescent. He kept interrupting as she went through the formalities, waving his hand impatiently like a member of the aristocracy who wished to be spared the details. No sooner had she finished the caution than he began to talk again in a ceaseless flow, like angry water tumbling over rapids. His tone was that of a man speaking to minions who had badly disappointed him and were about to be fired.

‘My neighbour has been out to get us ever since we moved in. She doesn't like us living next door. We waited one year – one year! – in a bed and breakfast. Now she goes to the housing association. I have to sign a contract – a contract for what? For what? We live peacefully next door. All we want is peace. Why does this woman—'

Lizzie interrupted. ‘Mr Mehenni—'

Mehenni continued, ignoring her, and Lizzie considered him as if a wall of glass were between them. She had given full disclosure to the solicitor, shown him the photographs, told him she would ask for a caution if Mehenni would make a full and frank admission. The solicitor caught her eye and shrugged. Mehenni was continuing, an uninterrupted stream of invective. He was on to Hadley now.

‘And my name is not Mohammed either, or Bin Laden . . .'

Without her willing it, an imagining of the accusations came to Lizzie as real as if she had seen the events herself: she out of earshot in the garden with Mehenni's mother while Hadley was with the girl in the hallway, giving in to a bit of what he would
probably consider harmless frankness. She could almost bloody see him, dammit. Farah in her school uniform, smaller than Hadley, awkward and crowded by his bulk in the narrow space. Hadley hitching up that gut of his and saying, ‘All right, Miss Jihadi, can you tell your dad . . . What's his name now? I forget. Mohammed, is it? Bin Bloody Laden?' She hadn't of course heard him say it but that didn't mean he hadn't. Equally, she reminded herself, these were words that someone could easily make up and put in the mouth of a police officer. Which account you were inclined to believe depended largely on your own point of view. The complaint was a commonplace accusation. Just as plausible surely to believe Hadley's account: Farah's allegation was malicious, made simply to divert attention from the truth, which was, after all, no more than a routine enquiry into a sure-fire charge for a petty offence.

She needed to distance herself from the complaint. It wasn't her problem. It was outside her remit. It was her job to investigate Mrs Stewart's allegation of criminal damage. She raised her voice again.