I think I’d fallen into a cold-induced stupor when she finally appeared. I must have watched her for several seconds before it dawned on me that she was actually there. I pushed myself up from the chimney. My watch told me I’d been waiting an hour. I hadn’t noticed her arrive, or slip into the park between the railings. I just saw her flowing black robes moving over the snow towards the place where Aamir had fallen. She reached the spot and crouched low like someone doubled up in pain. This was grief, plain and simple. This was grief so painful she was having difficulty functioning. This woman, whoever she might be, had loved Aamir Chowdhury, was devastated by his death.
She stayed still for long minutes. Long enough for me to take several photographs, although I had no idea how well they’d come out. Long enough for me to focus the binoculars, although even with their help I couldn’t see much more than I already knew. Young, tall and slim, graceful. I couldn’t decide whether to run down in the hope of heading her off, or wait and see what she did. When I was just about to leave, she moved. Faster this time, but not heading for the way out. She walked to the covered seating area and then to the waste-bin fastened to one wall.
I watched as she peered into the bin. She seemed to be moving the rubbish around, to be looking for something. I adjusted the focus on the binoculars and saw her lift something out. She held it to the light, then raised her veil and pushed it beneath. Movement beneath the veil made it pretty obvious what she was doing. She was eating whatever she’d just taken from the bin.
The woman in black was starving.
11
I WASN’T WORKING the next day, which was lucky, because DI Tulloch would never have given me permission to do what I planned. My first stop was at St Thomas’s hospital. I found Mr Induri, explained that the visit was in connection with my work rather than his, and he was happy enough to walk me to the cafeteria and introduce me to some of his younger colleagues, who’d also known Aamir. I talked to them for as long as they could spare, and as subtly as I could kept turning to the subject of Aamir’s love life. Did he date anyone on the hospital staff? Was there anyone he was particularly friendly with? When I came across a young, good-looking woman, I paid particular attention. Women in love have a habit of giving themselves away.
After three hours, I was getting suspicious glances from hospital security and I’d learned nothing. Aamir had been universally respected and valued as a young doctor, but nobody had befriended him. Not because of anything they didn’t like, they added quickly, but because he had given so little of himself away. Those who knew anything about his background and culture told me that it would have been highly unusual for him to have a girlfriend. There would probably have been an arranged marriage in line for him: a young girl of good family, perhaps born and brought up in Pakistan, waiting somewhere in the wings.
From the hospital, I went to the Islamia girls school that Aamir’s sister Amelia attended. I watched several dozen girls leave the premises and managed to spot her as she walked past me.
‘Hello, Amelia. I know this is distressing, but I really want to find out what happened to your brother,’ I said.
After the first shock of recognition, she refused to look me in the eye. ‘We know what happened to my brother,’ she replied to the air just to the left of my shoulder. ‘And we know at whose hands. You simply do not have the competence to prove it.’
According to the file, this girl was fourteen.
‘I just want to find out a bit more about his life,’ I tried again. ‘Siblings often confide in each other. Tell each other things they wouldn’t tell their parents.’
A shudder seemed to run through her entire body. ‘Dutiful sons and daughters keep nothing from their parents,’ she told me.
‘Can you think of anyone I can talk to?’ I asked. ‘Anyone he was friends with? I’ve been to the hospital, but no one seems to have known him very well, although they all speak highly of him.’
She continued to look past me, as though if she concentrated hard enough I would just disappear.
‘He challenged those men in the newsagent’s shop last year,’ she said angrily. ‘He saw them stealing and he kept them there until the police arrived. His courage got him killed.’
‘We know that he was brave,’ I said. ‘Everyone I’ve spoken to admired him. It’s important to us that we find out what happened.’
‘Just words.’ She tried to push past me.
‘I saw a woman last night in the park where he died. A veiled woman. Was it you?’
Her eyes met mine then. She was shocked, maybe a bit scared, and I pressed home my advantage.
‘Amelia, he was a young man. Cultural and religious constraints aside, he must have had a life.’
‘Amelia!’ The woman pushing her way towards us wasn’t someone I recognized. She was older than the girls around us – someone’s mother, maybe, or older sister. She and Amelia had a rapid exchange in Urdu. Then the older woman faced me.
‘You will excuse us now,’ she said. ‘If you have more questions, you must ask Amelia’s parents.’
Taking Amelia by the shoulder, she steered her away and the two of them walked off down the street.
12
‘YOU’LL BE IN a whole heap of shit if anyone finds out you’ve done this,’ said Emma.
‘I know,’ I agreed, staring at the door with the chipped blue paintwork. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’
We were in my car outside the home of Paul and Robert Bailey, two of the suspects in the Aamir Chowdhury murder. The Bailey brothers, nineteen and twenty-two respectively, lived with their mother and several younger siblings in a council flat roughly a mile from the park where Aamir had died. The woman in the passenger seat was Emma Boston, a freelance journalist whom I’d met in September, when the killer terrorizing London had used us both as pawns in an increasingly disturbing and violent game. Emma wasn’t a friend – I don’t make friends – but she was someone I was learning to respect and trust. More importantly, she wasn’t afraid to break the rules occasionally.
Both Bailey brothers had been in trouble in the past. In addition to the incident in Karim’s shop, the elder, Robert, had spent six months in prison for handling stolen goods and a similar length of time in a young offenders’ institution for selling class B drugs. Paul, the younger brother, was the nasty one. Along with a string of charges and cautions in the five years that he’d been known to the local police, Paul had been the main suspect in the brutal beating of a young Asian man twelve months earlier. No one had any doubts that he’d done it, but the evidence to prosecute just hadn’t been there and he’d walked free.
It took a long time for anyone to answer Emma’s knock. Eventually, the door was opened by an emaciated, wan-faced woman with two inches of grey roots showing in her dyed black hair. She could have been in her early sixties. We knew, because we’d checked, that the boys’ mother was thirty-nine. We explained that we were reporters, working on a story about wrongful arrests, but she didn’t seem to be taking much in. In fact, she’d been about to close the door on us when Emma mentioned the possibility of a fee. The prospect of cash worked like a charm and we were shown along a dark corridor lined with cardboard boxes and into a poky room that smelled of stale beer, smoke and body odours I didn’t want to think too much about. There were three men in the room. Emma showed them her press pass and introduced herself.