There was a long silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I almost want to say, “Ask me anything but that.” I’ve got a very good memory. Ask me about my first day at primary school, every holiday I’ve ever been on. Next week I’ll remember the colour of the tie you’re wearing. But in that moment when I ran into Mrs Farrell’s car door, I didn’t take in anything at all. I didn’t even know it was her. I hit the door, I hit the ground, I heard someone apologize and I was dragged inside. My memory’s like a faded fax of a bad photocopy. You can use a magnifying-glass, but all you’ll see is a mess and a blur.’
I expected Mitchell to look depressed or cross. I thought he might send me home like a bad girl. But he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bell,’ he said. ‘Compared with some witnesses, you’re like Mr Memory. I’m going to bring in another officer and you’re going to say everything you know, and she’ll write it down.’
‘It won’t take very long,’ I said.
He smiled again.
‘Oh, yes, it will.’
For me the police had always been vague, abstract figures. I saw them in their cars, blue lights flashing in the darkness, or walking along the street, and I felt slightly anxious, as if I might be doing something wrong without realizing it, and that when their eyes settled on my face they would see a furtive criminal. Night after night I saw them on Maitland Road and in Hackney, stopping black youths and searching them, standing in pairs with walkie-talkies crackling, shepherding the violently drunk or the stupefied stoned into the backs of their vans. Before Peggy’s murder I had never been into a police station, except the one occasion when I’d reported a stolen wallet, and then I’d only got as far as the front desk. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, and I was sheepishly surprised to discover they seemed quite normal, not brutal or racist or ignorant or fiendishly clever – just slightly bored and harassed men and women doing their job and thinking about what they would do once their shift was over.
Of the three of us, it was definitely Dario who was having difficulty in talking to them.
‘They’re not interested in you taking drugs,’ said Davy, before we were all interviewed that second time. ‘They’re interested in who killed Peggy. Right, Astrid?’
‘I know that,’ said Dario. ‘But I’ve got this feeling I’ll break out in a sweat and just announce it. I won’t be able to stop myself. I once heard about this guy going through Customs. Nobody was interested in him, and he suddenly started crying and confessed he’d got cocaine in the false bottom to a set of knives and forks he was carrying.’
‘Knives and forks?’ said Davy.
‘Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is, I’m going to confess to something. I can feel it. They’ll look at me and I’ll break.’
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘someone’s been murdered.’
‘I don’t know anything. I’ve told them everything I know.’
‘Tell them again. Then sign your name at the bottom and that’ll be that.’
Of course, it could never be that simple. Someone had been killed a few yards from where we lived, a few minutes after we had spoken to her. It almost felt as if she had been killed before our very eyes, but we hadn’t noticed. I knew her face, her name. Every time I passed the house, I looked down into the recess where the bins had stood, and where her body had been crammed, and imagined her there. After a couple of days, the space started to fill with flowers and messages, and after a week or so the flowers started to rot in the Cellophane wrapping, giving out a sweet stench that made me want to gag. I looked at people in the street, at the gangs of youths who hung around in the balmy evenings, and wondered if it had been any of them, or if they knew something they weren’t saying. I had always thought of Maitland Road as rough and down-at-heel, but it was my home and I felt safe there. What had once seemed normal now took on an air of menace. When I heard footsteps behind me in the dark, my heart beat faster; shadows seemed to move; faces were sinister. The road hissed with rumours: the husband had been arrested and charged; the husband had been released; the police knew which of the gang from the estate had done it but had insufficient evidence; there were drugs involved; it was a mugging gone wrong; it was an accident. She had been shot, stabbed, strangled, hit over the head with a stone, raped. I even heard that one of her hands had been cut off. Everyone knew better than everyone else. Everyone knew Peggy better than everyone else. People remembered conversations they had probably never had with her. People who had never said hello to her missed her. People who had never said hello to me now sought me out because – by slamming into her open car door and landing in a dazed, cursing heap on the road – I had become a star witness, someone to know.
At the same time, another change was taking place closer to home. Suddenly we were just temporary tenants. A few days ago I’d been thinking of the seven of us as my strange rag-bag family. Now the others had reverted to a collection of individuals, and I found myself thinking: Will I still know you in a year’s time? Who would I stay in touch with? I felt sure about Pippa; perhaps I would even ask her to share my next flat. And pretty sure about Miles, too – even if he was the ex-lover who harboured nostalgic desires for me and the landlord who was evicting me, even if he was a well-paid economist who was dating a well-paid architect and who owned a desirable property on the borders of Stoke Newington, while I was just a despatch rider. Dario and Davy I was less certain about. I could imagine gradually drifting apart from them, getting together for quick drinks between more important appointments, the intervals between each meeting becoming longer, the common ground dwindling into a series of anecdotes about our shared past. Eventually, perhaps, they would become people I would bump into in a pub and kiss on the cheek and say hello to and promise to give them a call soon, very soon. It was hard to believe that I would keep in touch with Mick – I didn’t feel in touch with him while I was living in the same house. And as for Owen, I didn’t even know if I liked him, and I was pretty sure he didn’t like me. Or perhaps it was simply that he didn’t see me; he couldn’t even be bothered to look.
Chapter Six
The third time I felt as if I was interviewing Detective Inspector Mitchell. As he made me tell the story all over again, he shifted in his chair, fidgeted with a pen, rubbed his scalp, adjusted his tie, failed to meet my gaze.
‘There we are,’ I said, when I’d finished. ‘The same story. Told in the same words.’
‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Did I get something wrong?’
He reached into a bag on the floor, removed a file and pushed it across the desk. He nodded at me, so I opened it. There was page after typewritten page. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s the physical-traces report from the crime scene.’
‘It looks very detailed.’
‘If you read page four, you’ll see an account of the glass fragments found on Mrs Farrell’s coat.’
‘So?’
‘They’re from a supermarket-brand vodka bottle. The fragments were scattered round her body and underneath it. Hence they became attached to the material of her coat. One such bottle is duly referred to on the receipt found in Mrs Farrell’s car.’
‘Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up,’ I said. ‘I was wondering where the bottle of vodka had got to.’
‘Shut up,’ said Mitchell.
‘What?’
He got up and paced the room. ‘I hate this fucking case,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Everything’s wrong,’ he said. ‘The yobs who stole the property aren’t the people who killed her. And now this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t see…’
He sat down and jabbed a plump finger at me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You remember our scenario?’