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‘Could I have a word?’ Steve’s stomach was churning. He slid to the floor. No. I can’t throw up here. Not in front of everyone.
Slow breaths.
‘Yes. Of course.’ The older woman’s eyes narrowed with concern. She stood over Steve. Waiting.
‘It’s Mrs Gibson . . . I think she’s dead.’
Wednesday – Maya (#ulink_677998b7-e565-564d-8924-26e8dcbb27fd)
The sound wrenched me awake. Trilling. Vibrating. Sylhet dreamscape was still swirling, and I had no idea where the noise was coming from. Fumbling for the alarm clock on the bedside table, my clumsy fingers sent objects crashing to the floor.
It was my mobile, not the clock. Why the hell hadn’t I switched it off?
‘Rahman.’ I cleared my throat. My body clock was still adjusting after Sabbir’s funeral and a day spent travelling.
A woman’s voice came through. ‘This is Suzie James from the Stepney Gazette. There’s been a suspicious death at Mile End High School and —’
‘A what?’ Suzie’s name was all too familiar. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘A suspicious death. It’s your old secondary school so I was hoping for a quote for the paper.’
The groan was out before I could catch it. ‘Who’s dead?’ I was wide awake now, synapses firing. I groped for the light on the bedside table.
‘It’s the head, Linda Gibson. Would you like to comment?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. This is the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘The thing is, I’ve got parents asking questions and —’
‘Okay, okay.’ I flung the duvet back and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. A whoosh of cold air hit my skin. Suzie James would always write something, regardless of how much she knew, so it was better to give her the facts. ‘Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the school and find out what’s going on.’
‘Ta.’ The line went down.
I threw the phone down on my bed and moved across the room to open the blinds. From the window of my flat, the canal was serene and green in the afternoon light and ducks weaved through the shimmering water. A jogger shuffled along the tow path from Johnson’s Lock. In the distance, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf loomed against a thundery backdrop. I rested my forehead against the glass. What was I doing? I was on compassionate leave until tomorrow. Then I remembered the poem I’d read at Sabbir’s funeral; how much my brother had suffered. Wasn’t this why I did my job – to bring justice to people who should never have become victims? Nostalgia flooded through me as I recalled my first day at the school in year seven, and how the place quickly became my lifeline. Just as it would be now for other kids like me. There was no way I was going to let the school’s reputation nosedive. I had to find out what was going on.
Wednesday – Maya (#ulink_13dfb94d-5df1-5580-b188-3a2b3fc2ae83)
On the main road, a few minutes later, the traffic was solid in both directions towards Bow. In front of me, a lorry, laden with scaffolding, clattered along behind a dirty red bus, while a shiny black cab sniffed its bumper. Ahead, at Mile End tube station, the carriageway snaked under the Green Bridge, from which school pupil Haniya Patel had hanged herself in the small hours four weeks earlier. Driving under it, I held my breath.
Soon I was off the main drag, and the grey fell away. Yellow brick houses lined the streets in elegant terraces, holly wreaths on their ornate door knockers. In the afternoon light, Christmas fairy lights twinkled in bay windows. They were so pretty. I’d left for Sabbir’s funeral in such a hurry I’d not put my own lights up, and it was pointless when I got back. Outside the Morgan Arms, the beautiful red brick pub, smokers and vapers huddled beside the window boxes of purple pansies, sharing the chilly air. Up ahead, flashing blue lights cut through the slate grey sky.
When I pulled up, uniformed officers were struggling to contain members of the public within the outer cordon. Family members scurried about, indiscriminately seeking information and reassurance from anyone who could give it; others stood in huddles, no less anguished, simply shell-shocked and immobilised. The outer cordon covered an enormous area, far bigger than I remembered the school being. Round me, engines droned and vehicle doors slammed.
I’d clocked Suzie as I was parking and told her to wait for me. I headed over to a uniformed officer who was standing at the main entrance to the school. I’d met PC Li several times.
‘Hi, Shen. Who’s the SIO?’
‘DCI Briscall, but he’s not here. DS Maguire’s over there.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s new. That’s him.’ She pointed at a man with ginger hair and urgent movements.
‘Okay, thanks.’ I surveyed the area outside the cordon. ‘Could you get me a list of everyone here, and their connection to the school?’
‘Sure.’ Shen took out her notepad.
I approached the man she’d gestured to. ‘DS Maguire?’
He whirled round and I was struck by his milky white skin, all the more pronounced by a crew cut.
‘I’m DI Rahman. I was expecting DCI Briscall…’
‘He’s at a meeting with the Deputy Assistant Commissioner. He’s sent me.’ His vowels had a twang, and his sentences rose at the end.
I was trying to think of a polite way of asking how he’d got on the team. ‘I don’t think we’ve met?’
‘I’m a fast-track officer.’
‘Ah.’
‘Don’t worry. I know we aren’t popular. I’m all up to speed.’ He waved his warrant. ‘Done a three-month intensive in West Yorkshire, a sergeant rotation, and passed my exams.’ He stopped there. ‘Aren’t you meant to be on leave?’
‘Until tomorrow, but never mind about that.’ This was a shock, but now wasn’t the time to debate the merits of the Met’s fast-track programme. ‘I’ve just had a call from a local reporter. She said the head’s dead.’ I used my eyes to indicate Suzie, who was holding court with a bunch of parents and locals. ‘If she doesn’t get some facts soon, she’ll make them up. If Briscall’s not coming, you’d better fill me in.’
*
Twenty minutes later, I’d dealt with Suzie James and was in the school canteen with the Murder Investigation Team. With its swimming pool acoustics and tortoise-slow broadband, it wasn’t ideal as a temporary incident room but it was a vast space with plenty of tables and chairs. Twenty-four hours ago I was on a long-haul flight home, and now I was perching at one of the tables by the serving hatch. The surface was sticky and I longed for a decent chair to sit on, rather than the plastic kiddie seats that were bolted to the floor. Round me, the investigation team was gearing up. Colleagues were installing our technology, setting up the HOLMES connection and erecting partition boards. DC Alexej Hayek stood, muscled arms folded and legs apart, bellowing instructions and gesturing, as though he was directing traffic. His clipped Czech accent lent authority to what he thought should go where. With DS Barnes suspended, and Briscall more interested in hob-nobbing with his seniors than covering my post, I wasn’t surprised when he accepted my offer to curtail my leave and appointed me SIO. If any of my colleagues wondered why I was back early from compassionate leave, they knew better than to ask.
I’d been mapping out our main lines of enquiry in my notepad. We were in the golden hour of the investigation, so these were organised round evidence gathering, witness interviews and suspect identification. Our quickest evidence source was going to be social media ring-fencing: once we found out from Facebook and Instagram who was in the school area between 12 noon and 1 p.m., we could target-interview those individuals.
As I surveyed the room, I remembered standing in line at that exact serving hatch, as a nervous eleven-year-old. The room seemed so much bigger then. Now, I imagined the cohorts of hopeful kids who, like I had, came here to learn, their lives ahead of them, their dreams in their hands. They’d be anticipating the first day of school now. For many, that would mean end-of-holiday blues. But not for everyone. I remembered how desperately I’d longed for the gates to open again after the lonely stretch of the holidays. Had any of today’s students come from the same part of Bangladesh as us?
On my laptop, I was watching Linda on the school video. I’d met her at a number of community events, and found her warm and engaging.
‘At Mile End High School we’ve achieved something unique.’ Linda’s eyes shone with pride, and passion radiated in the muscles of her face. ‘Since the school opened in 1949, we’ve made it our mission to welcome all pupils from our continually changing community. We value all ethnicities and creeds equally, so you can be confident that your sons and daughters will learn and thrive in an atmosphere of wellbeing and safety.’
‘I suspect that’s going to come back to haunt her.’ The Australian accent yanked me back into the present.
I jumped. ‘Jeez . . . Do you always creep up on people?’ I paused the video.
Dan Maguire stood in front of me, holding out a packet of chewing gum. ‘Are you always this jumpy?’
Touché.
His pale skin and ginger hair were unusual. When he’d joked earlier about not fitting the bronzed Australian stereotype, he wasn’t wrong. Irish heritage, he’d said. Hated water and had a sunlight allergy.
I waved the gum away. Recalibrated. ‘Sorry. It’s this place. Weird being back here after all this time.’
‘I’ve been reading up on Haniya Patel. Doesn’t seem she felt safe either.’
I heaved in a breath. ‘No. Her death was a tragedy but nothing suspicious.’ I shivered and pulled my woolly scarf round my neck. ‘I don’t remember this place being so draughty. Don’t they have the heating on?’
Dan’s face was blank. ‘You think you’re cold? I went from summer in Australia to winter in the North of England. Back home my kids are swimming at Coogee Beach every day.’ He zipped up the neck of his jumper as if to support his point. ‘Dr Clark is downstairs at the crime scene with the CSIs if you’re ready to conduct a walk-through. And I’ve put the teacher, who found the body, in an office.’
‘Yup.’ I got up. Bundled my notebook and pen into my bag. Questions shot through my mind about Dan’s appointment but they’d have to wait. ‘I’m officially back off leave. I’ve told Briscall, who was delighted to hand over the SIO baton so, hopefully, we can get cracking.’
‘Good.’
I followed Dan across the canteen to the door, pushing down the awkwardness that was circling between us. A few minutes later, we were walking along the main corridor on the ground floor towards Linda Gibson’s office. My mobile rang. It was Alexej from the incident room.
‘Until we have a media liaison officer, put all press calls through to me,’ I replied. ‘The last thing we need is a sensational headline splashed on the front page. I’ll compile a holding statement.’ I rang off. ‘So much for sorting Suzie James out,’ I said to Dan. ‘She’s interviewing parents and the national news teams are on their way.’
‘It’s inevitable.’ He shrugged.
It was strange having a new team member. DS Barnes had been careering towards Professional Standards for years, but I’d got used to the way he and Alexej worked.
‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s make a start on this crime scene.’
Outside Linda’s office, Dan and I reported to the guard, pulled on forensic clothing and followed the common approach path. It was a large room with floor to ceiling windows, and thick brown curtains pushed to the side. The first thing that hit me was the smell of vomit. Dotted round the room, crime scene investigators were quietly dusting for fingerprints, bagging up evidence, taking measurements, drawing plans and taking photographs. Objects had been knocked over. So, there’d been a struggle.
I headed over to Dougie McLean, the crime scene manager.
A grin darted across his features when he saw me. ‘I thought your flight only arrived back last night? You look shattered.’ He reached towards me, but he must’ve caught my frown as he retracted his arm quickly.
‘It did. You know me. Can’t see my old school in trouble, can I?’ I tucked my hair behind my ears and shifted into work mode. ‘What’ve we got?’
‘No sign of forced entry.’ He gestured to the windows. ‘The killer must’ve walked straight through the door.’
‘Prints?’
‘Lots. As you’d expect for a school. But a high cross-contamination risk. The guys have found some footprints and are still checking for blood and saliva. There’s a good chance of exchange materials, particularly fibres, hair and skin.’
‘Have we got a cause of death?’
‘Strangulation.’
I cast about. Objects were strewn round the room. The computer monitor, keyboard and telephone were in a tangle of cables on the floor, surrounded by several silver photograph frames. Soil, from a dislodged pot plant, was sprinkled over the cream carpet like brown sugar, and Linda’s office chair lay on its side several yards from the desk. It was as though someone had made an angry sweep of the desk surface or even hauled Linda’s petite frame over it.
Swarms of photographs adorned the walls: year groups, award ceremonies, openings, school plays, and sports days. Hundreds of lives in one room, all brought together by the school and Linda. What a terrible loss this woman was going to be.
Over by the corpse, the photographer was packing away his equipment.
‘Maya?’ Dr Clark, the pathologist, signalled for me to come over.
It was my first look at Linda’s body. Close up the rancid smell of vomit was more intense. A watery pool of it had collected at the bottom of her neck, with lumps of food speckling the white blouse on her chest. The perky face I’d seen on the video was barely recognisable; her delicate features had already swollen and her skin was blotchy. But it was her eyes that caught my attention, bulging from their sockets, bulbous and staring, the whites bloodshot. Beneath each socket, in a semi-circle, broken veins and congestion were forming dark channels. It was as though the killer had wanted to squeeze the life from her; to squeeze the eyes out of her head while they watched her suffer; to squeeze the last breath from her throat and lungs so she could never utter again.
‘Where’s the vomit come from?’ I was absorbing the scene in front of me.
‘Unless it was our killer, my guess is that whoever found her threw up over her.’ He moved closer to the body. ‘D’you see here?’ His gloved finger pointed at the reddish marks that were creeping through the surface of the skin on her neck. ‘I’ll be able to tell more after the post-mortem but these’ he pointed at fingernail gouges beneath her jaw ‘are probably defence wounds. The CSIs have taken nail scrapings. It’s likely the killer was squeezing her jugular vein and carotid artery, and crushing her windpipe, so she would have been gasping for breath immediately, and probably trying to pull their hands off her.’
Seeing Linda’s bloated face, with broken blood vessels and bruising spreading by the second, what struck me was that she would’ve known she was going to die. And that her last few moments of life weren’t going to be with her family but with someone who wanted her dead. She would have died while looking into the eyes of her killer.
‘You can see the swelling in her neck. Her tongue is engorged and has been bleeding where she’s bitten it.’ Dr Clark faced me. ‘There’s a good chance she scratched her killer’s face or pulled their hair. Even poked them in the eye.’
‘Any signs of sexual assault?’
He shook his head. ‘Not that I’ve seen. She has a small frame. Wouldn’t have taken much to overpower her.’ He moved closer to the body. ‘My guess is there was a struggle over by the desk, and she was killed on the floor or on the sofa, but Dougie’s team will know more.’
Had there been an argument and things had escalated? Or was this premeditated? One good thing was that strangulation involved high levels of contact: combined with the struggle, there was a good chance that fibres and hair from the murderer had transferred onto Linda.
On the cushion beneath her head, dark brown hair splayed, ruffled in places. Below her waist, her wrists rested at her solar plexus, bound together with a piece of white cloth. If the killer had simply wanted her dead, why had they tied her wrists?
‘Yes, the forearms are interesting.’ Dr Clark must’ve seen me looking. ‘She has numerous scars. See, here?’ He pointed to Linda’s wrists, which had been positioned so that the left one faced upwards and the right one crossed it. On the inside, at angles across the veins, cut marks had healed into white scars, some thinner than others, now almost blended into her pale skin. Others were jagged and thick, raised and pinker in tone.
‘The other one’s the same.’ He raised her hands gently so I could see. The right one had fewer scars, but they were more jagged. ‘I would imagine she was right-handed.’ Dr Clark placed her arms at rest.
I gulped. The cut marks upset me. Shocked me, even. They seemed unexpected in a head teacher. Or perhaps they were simply at odds with the smiling face I’d seen in the school video. ‘How old are those likely to be?’
‘Twenty years or so. No new ones. I’d put her as mid-to-late-forties. Extinguished while she was in her prime. Shame. She did well for this school. My brother-in-law is on the board of governors. It was heading for special measures when Mrs Gibson was appointed. He said she was a nice lady.’
As my eyes drifted back to the sofa, I noticed two evidence spots had been marked out. ‘What was here?’
‘I’ve checked the exhibits register.’ Dan came over. ‘One was a Chanel lipstick. The other was a piece of white card, with lettering on it. I’ve got a photo of it here.’ He passed me the image.
‘Some sort of ancient writing.’ I inspected it more closely. ‘And it was left by the body?’
‘Correct,’ said Dan. ‘Her handbag was knocked on the floor. The lipstick probably came from that.’
I studied the image. Passed it back. ‘Thanks. I want to know what it means. Can we get a translation ASAP?’
‘Sure.’
‘Before you head off, Doctor, anything else I need to know?’
Dr Clark took a final glance at the body and let out a long sigh. ‘Not really. It’s tragic. A scandal of this sort could send the school’s reputation plummeting.’
‘Not if I can help it. This place will be a source of stability for hundreds of kids.’ My attention travelled round the room. ‘And Linda clearly cared a lot about it.’
‘Ah, yes. I’d forgotten you’re a local.’ He chuckled. ‘Good to see you back. Dougie was worried you’d stay in Bangladesh.’ Dr Clark and I weren’t too far apart in age but his avuncular manner had become a habit we indulged.
I laughed. ‘Doubt that. Dougie knows better than anyone, if anywhere is home for me, it’s here.’ I changed tack. ‘When can you do the post-mortem?’
He checked his watch. ‘Unlikely I’ll get it done this afternoon. I’ve got two others to do tomorrow morning but I’ll bump yours up the queue. I’ll call you when I’ve finished.’
I returned my attention to Linda. On her back on the sofa, her petite frame and height made her resemble a young girl. Slender limbs and tiny hands created an impression of vulnerability that, in the flesh, was at odds with the vitality that exuded from the photographs and the school video.
‘Poor woman,’ I said to no-one in particular. Protectiveness had begun to stir in me. Who had crept into this woman’s office and strangled her while the staff were having lunch? What had Dr Clark said? Chopped off in her prime. The only way we could help her now was to find her killer, and try to soften the blow for her family and friends.
