Now.
I pushed the woman in black out across the water. The tide took her, whisking her out towards the centre of the river and off downstream.
Above me, on the bridge, Emma was shouting, convincingly playing the part of a passer-by who’d spotted someone in the river. I saw the beam of her torch on the water, thought that it perhaps picked out swirling robes. Pretty soon she was joined by other people. Someone announced that they were going to run downstream to keep it in sight, and then I heard footsteps banging down the steps.
Closer than felt comfortable, I heard male voices speaking in Urdu, and knew they’d be looking over the wall. I pressed close against the underside of the bridge. I didn’t move until long after the voices and the footsteps faded away, becoming cold as stone, until a second text from Emma gave me the all-clear. Then I made my way back to street level and lost myself in London.
22
I MET EMMA again at midnight. She’d spent most of the intervening time being interviewed by officers of the Marine Policing Unit, who were out, even now, searching the river. She told me the men who’d followed me had stood beside her on Vauxhall Bridge, watching the form they believed to be Hashim disappear on the dark water. They’d left before the police arrived.
‘Where is he?’ she asked me, speaking low as though, even now, people could be listening.
I looked at my watch. ‘Possibly the Channel Tunnel,’ I replied. ‘Or they might have just arrived in France.’
Hashim had joined a coach party from the north of England who were heading for the Christmas market in Bruges. Once I’d distracted the attention of the men watching my flat, he’d slipped out. While I was still hiding under the bridge, he’d sent a text to say he’d safely boarded the coach at Covent Garden.
‘I promised I’d let his mother know he’s safely away,’ said Emma. ‘She’s worried she couldn’t give him much money.’
Earlier that day, Emma, who was unknown to the watching members of the Chowdhury family, had visited Hashim’s mother and told her our plan. The elderly Pakistani lady, half frantic with grief and worry, had given Emma Hashim’s passport and as much money as she could afford.
‘He has enough,’ I said. I’d given him cash too. Several years ago I’d inherited a lump sum that I kept handy, just in case. I’d always expected that I would be the one who’d have to disappear quickly. Increasingly, it was looking as though I wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ said Emma. ‘Aamir’s whole family. Even his mother, his sisters.’
‘I think his sisters were terrified,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother tried to save him. We never did find out who called the police that night.’
For a minute or two we watched the river moving relentlessly on into the night.
‘They’re getting away with it,’ said Emma. ‘The worst crime I can imagine and they’re getting away scot free. Lacey, are you sure you can live with that on your conscience?’
If Emma only knew the burden my conscience carried around, every single day. I smiled at her. ‘I’m good at secrets,’ I said. ‘Merry Christmas, Emma.’ The following story, carrying Emma Boston’s byline, appeared in several national newspapers and online news websites in the ensuing days.
The Marine Unit of the Metropolitan Police is still searching for the body of a woman believed to be from London’s Muslim community, who fell or jumped into the River Thames near Vauxhall Bridge on Friday evening.
The alarm was raised at 8.20 p.m., when passers-by spotted a woman in the water, wearing the long, black robes of the burka. ‘We ran downstream, keeping her in sight for as long as we could,’ said Peter Staines, thirty-two, of Kennington. ‘But the tide was heading out fast and the surface of the river was very choppy. We lost her around Lambeth Bridge.’
Around fifty bodies are recovered from the Thames every year, according to the Marine Unit, most found in the tidal section between Teddington Lock and the Estuary. Many are suicides who leap from one of London’s bridges in a desperate attempt to end their own lives.
CCTV footage provided by MI6, whose London headquarters are directly adjacent to Vauxhall Bridge, shows a woman dressed in the traditional Islamic burka appearing on the embankment from the Vauxhall Bridge underpass and climbing an access ladder down to the beach.
A spokeswoman for London Muslim Women’s Group commented, ‘If this woman was from the Islamic community then her actions reflect the seriousness of her situation and the depths of her despair. Suicide is a sin under Islamic law. We see many young people caught between their desire to lead their own, Western-influenced lives and the pressures of their traditional families. We hear of forced marriages, abductions and imprisonment, intolerance of sexual freedom. For some, sadly, suicide is the only way out.’
Chief Inspector David Cook, head of the Marine Unit, said that whilst his officers would continue searching the river in the coming days, the high water levels and strong currents made him less than optimistic. ‘For all our best efforts,’ he admitted, ‘sometimes a body will simply disappear without trace.’
Despite appeals on television and online news sites, no one from London’s Muslim community has been reported missing, and it is now looking increasingly likely that we will never know either the identity of the woman or the story behind her actions. It seems the traditional Eastern communities that have made their home in our city, like the great river that runs through its heart, will sometimes guard their secrets well.
Snow continued to fall during the days that followed. The shops began to run out of snow boots and the local councils out of salt for the roads. The Marine Unit stood down their search for the woman in black and book-makers shortened their odds on London having a white Christmas.
I had a text message from Hashim, who was safe and well in Belgium. It was the last I ever heard of him.
They say that snow covers everything that is mean and sordid and ugly in the world and I guess that’s true. It covered the scorched grass where a dying man breathed his last. For a while, it even hid the sickening story of why he died. It covered the footsteps of the woman in black, just moments after she’d made them. But beneath the carpet of white, the ugliness remains, and the snow will melt and there’ll come a day when it’s visible again.
At least, that’s what we have to hope.
S. J. Bolton is the author of 5 thrilling novels.
Read on for the opening scenes of…
DEAD SCARED
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Prologue
Tuesday 22 January (a few minutes before midnight)
WHEN A LARGE object falls from a great height, the speed at which it travels accelerates until the upward force of air resistance becomes equal to the downward propulsion of gravity. At that point, whatever is falling reaches what is known as terminal velocity, a constant speed that will be maintained until it encounters a more powerful force, most commonly the ground.