‘Who’s that then?’ Maureen said.
‘Lizzie.’
‘Ah,’ Maureen tapped the side of her nose.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You summoned her. You sent out a temporal vibe and she caught it.’
‘What are you on about?’ Sean said.
‘There was a talk at the library. Some woman who’d written a book about telepathy. It was very interesting. There’s a lot of things we put down to coincidence, which are no such thing.’
‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘Maybe I’m getting temporal vibes from Terry Starkey then. He keeps turning up all over the place. Call it coincidence or whatever you like, but I can’t shake him off. Have you still got the weekly paper? The one with the girl who killed Starkey’s brother?’
‘Outside in the recycling bin. You’re just in time. It’s collection day tomorrow. Now I need to go up and get ready, or I’ll be late.’
He found the paper near the bottom of the box and glanced at the headline. There was the photo of a girl in school uniform, ears sticking out through her straight, dark hair. If only we knew how those terrible school portraits could come back to haunt us, he thought, we’d refuse to have them done.
Back at the kitchen table he read the article carefully, looking for any mention of Terry Starkey or Bernadette Armley, but there was no reference to the family, beyond saying that James Armley was a ‘loving son and brother’. Sean underlined the girl’s name and the year it happened, ten years ago. He circled the words ‘cold-blooded’ and ‘innocent schoolboy’. James was sixteen at the time, which was stretching the definition of schoolboy a little. The same age Saleem was now. Sean went back to the beginning and read more carefully: The victim had been lured to the top of the Eagle Mount flats by jealous Marilyn Nelson, a local girl with whom he’d had a secret love tryst. He saw the word ‘manslaughter’, tucked in the final sentence. So, not a murder then; he wondered why not.
‘I’m surprised Terry Starkey didn’t try to make something of it at the CUC meeting,’ he said, thinking out loud. ‘Wouldn’t hurt his profile to have the sympathy vote.’
His phoned pinged and he remembered he hadn’t replied to Lizzie’s text. He typed his response carefully. Three words. Yes fine thanks. Then he saved her number in his address book. He realised she must have kept his, two years on from their last job together.
Maureen came downstairs in a tracksuit top and leggings.
‘I’m off to Bums and Tums. I don’t like to miss it and I’m going to be late at this rate. See you later!’
She closed the back door and he sat for a while in the silent kitchen, trying to decide what to do next. Nothing. That’s all he could think of. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. He stared at the kettle and wondered about making another pot of tea, but he didn’t move. He looked at his watch and saw it was creeping towards nine o’clock. He didn’t think Jack would be awake yet, but the supermarket on the ring road would be open.
Sean stood up and rinsed out the teapot, leaving it neatly on the drainer. He wished he could stay here, where everything worked and you didn’t feel as if you would stick to every surface you touched, but he knew he had to go back to his dad’s; it had something to do with finishing what he’d started.
He went through to the sitting room and looked around. It was spotless, as usual, with a scent of lemongrass coming from the aroma sticks Maureen had put in a glass vase on the mantelpiece. She’d done away with the plug-in room fresheners when she decided they gave her asthma. He’d tried to suggest that giving up smoking might help with that, but she wouldn’t be told. Maybe this new exercise regime would put her off, although knowing Maureen, she’d probably find time for a fag break at Bums and Tums. He sat heavily on the settee and his head fell back into the soft corduroy cushions. Tiredness crept through every limb, weighing him down. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
He woke up with a crick in his neck and realised it was nearly midday. In the kitchen, he ran the cold tap and poured a glass of water. He downed the glass in one, rinsed it out and put it on the drainer. The newspaper was still on the table with his annotations in blue biro. He rolled it up, tucked it under his arm and pulled the back door shut behind him. As he turned down the side of Maureen’s house and onto Clement Grove, his phone rang.
‘Hiya! How are you doing?’
‘Hi, Lizzie. I’m…’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I’m doing nothing, there’s nothing to do. The high point of my day will be scrubbing the rest of the mould off the bathroom tiles in my dad’s flat.’
‘So you are on the Chasebridge estate?’
‘Near enough, just leaving home.’
‘Really? Brill. Any chance you could get us that coffee you were offering? I’m at the paper shop.’
‘Again?’
‘Got turned away yesterday. It wasn’t safe inside the shop. Something to do with the electrics. Now I’ve got to wait until the fire investigators give it the all clear, and they’re late.’
He was glad she hadn’t been there earlier and seen him going upstairs with Ghazala.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. Lizzie’s stint down south had obviously raised her expectations. This wasn’t coffee bar country, but he had an idea. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
She was sitting in her car outside the parade of shops, window down and one bare elbow resting on the door frame. He thought about creeping up to surprise her, but she was obviously checking her wing mirrors because she waved out of the window as he approached. He leant in and she smiled up at him. The radio was playing Mumford & Sons. It wasn’t his kind of music but it suited her.
‘You after a coffee?’
She nodded.
‘Fresh from my nan’s Thermos!’ He produced the red tartan flask with a flourish.
She laughed. ‘Wow, vintage!’
‘I brought a spare cup, if you don’t mind me joining you.’ He wondered where it came from, his newfound confidence around Lizzie Morrison, but as long as it was just about drinking coffee together, he felt he was on safe ground.
‘Let’s sit in the sun and make the most of it,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’m missing the whole summer. I’m either in the office or sweating it out in a plastic suit.’
She got out of the car and clicked the locks on. Sean sat down on the low wall in front of the library and poured the milky instant coffee into two cups. They were both quiet for a while until Lizzie broke the silence.
‘Sean?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I was in London, I missed all this.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I actually missed Donny, and I missed crappy places like the Chasebridge estate. Funny, isn’t it?’
Sean took a slow mouthful of coffee. Lizzie didn’t notice his lack of response; she was looking at something behind him.
‘What did Mohammad Asaf study at the college?’
‘Media or something,’ Sean said and turned to see what had caught her attention.
In the window of the library, a series of black and white photographs hung from thin steel wires. One was of a tower block taken from below, which made it appear to be toppling forwards away from a cloud-filled sky. In another, a beautiful young Asian woman was on a swing in the playground, her head thrown back and her hair trailing out behind her. Brick walls, concrete, more sky; they weren’t pretty, but there was something moody and artistic about them. A small white sign with black lettering said: Mohammad Asaf, first prize, Chasebridge Community Photographic Competition. Dr Angus Balement might not appreciate Mohammad Asaf’s talents, but someone did.
‘How sad,’ Lizzie said. ‘He made it look beautiful. He didn’t know he was going to die in that very building.’
Sean peered closely, about to correct her that it wasn’t the same block. Asaf had died in Block Two, whereas this was clearly Block Four, but he stopped himself. It would have sounded a bit callous to be that picky and anyway, Eagle Mount Four had its own ghosts. It was the block where the boy had been pushed off ten years ago. He shivered, despite the warmth of the day.