Bleeding heart yard, p.9
Bleeding Heart Yard, page 9
‘Did Gary tell you what had occurred to him about David Moore?’ says Harbinder.
‘No. Just that he was bothered by something.’
‘And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning yesterday?’
‘I didn’t want to bring it all up again. David’s death was a terrible time for the school.’
And a worse one for his parents, thinks Harbinder. She brings the conversation to an end, partly because the chief forensics officer is standing in the doorway.
‘Hi, Mac. Have you got something for me?’
His name isn’t really Mac, it’s James Macintosh, but the station nickname culture is getting to her.
‘Something potentially interesting.’
She can tell by his tone that it’s very interesting indeed.
‘We found an empty syringe at the crime scene.’
‘Where was it?’
‘In a rubbish bin about forty metres outside the inner cordon.’
Going through the rubbish is an occupational crime-scene hazard, thinks Harbinder. Mac has sent the syringe for fingerprint analysis and, by the afternoon, they have the results back. There are fingerprints on the plastic casing and, luckily, they belong to someone already on the database.
Cassie Fitzherbert.
16
Cassie
It felt very strange, knowing that a major investigation was going on but not being part of it. The team all had that absorbed, slightly self-important expression that I remembered from previous cases, not that I had ever been involved with anything as high profile as the murder of Garfield Rice MP. I saw the words ‘Operation Wilson’ on the whiteboard every time I walked past the incident room. There were names underneath: Henry Steep, Chris Foster, Isabelle Istar, Anna Vance. It seemed wrong not to see my name there and, for a second, I felt the same stab of loneliness I experienced at school every time The Group met without me or talked about something I didn’t understand.
Did I tell The Group about David to make them feel sorry for me, to make them like me more? I’ve often asked myself that question. I still remember the glow of happiness I felt when Gary said, ‘I’d like to kill him.’ Maybe I thought of that when I put my hand on the cracked leather of David’s baseball jacket and pushed.
I still don’t know why Gary was walking over the footbridge. He was meant to be in the station, ready to march David over to the tracks and say, ‘Now you’re going to pay.’ We had discussed the words one night in the Crow’s Nest after drinking Anna’s mum’s home-made cider and ended up getting quite hysterical. ‘It’s your round, now you’re going to pay’, that sort of thing. ‘David’s notoriously stingy,’ said Chris and it’s true that, even when we went to the cinema together, David didn’t offer to get my ticket. Is it terrible that I think of those evenings in Gary’s teenage penthouse suite with real affection and nostalgia?
But Gary wasn’t at the station. Henry was, as it turned out, but he too kept this from the authorities. Gary was the one who told the police that he’d seen David walking along the edge of the platform, stumble and fall. ‘I called out to him,’ he said, ‘but I was too far away to help.’ The police seem to have accepted his account completely. David’s death was treated as misadventure from the start and no one even interviewed his friends. Now I think that was rather remiss. There were other students in the vicinity. At the very least the police should have considered a teenage prank gone wrong. I think it was Chris who swung it. Chris came forward and said that he’d seen David going down the steps to the station and assumed that he was going there to take drugs. ‘I’m afraid lots of us do it,’ he said. And I can imagine the look of slightly shamefaced candour that accompanied this confession. The police swallowed it like drugs mules and assumed that David had fallen onto the rails whilst under the influence of cocaine. They didn’t examine his body for drugs. But, then, there wasn’t much of it left.
I didn’t see Henry when I emerged onto the platform with David. I know he was there because, minutes after it happened, he grabbed my arm and dragged me away. For weeks afterwards I worried that someone had seen me, some homeless person squatting in the derelict warehouse opposite, some passing carrier pigeon. Thank God they didn’t have drones then. All summer I sat in my bedroom waiting for the knock on the door. My parents thought I was traumatised about David. They knew that we had been out on a couple of dates. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Mum said, ‘it wasn’t your fault.’
Gary’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the papers. I think his father had something to do with that. ‘An eyewitness saw the deceased standing on the edge of the platform, looking slightly unsteady. As the train approached, he toppled and fell.’ Chris didn’t get into trouble either. His parents were barristers and must have seen to it that he didn’t face any repercussions. The only consequence was that counsellors visited Manor Park for a week-long ‘drugs education’ course although the older students, arguably the ones most likely to be involved, had already left. But the idea stuck. I think the police didn’t pursue the matter for fear of upsetting David’s family – or Gary’s.
‘Now you’re going to pay.’ I remember the push, the rush of air from the train and then, nothing. Sometimes, in dreams, I see David on his knees in front of me, begging for his life. And then – bang – he disappears. Sometimes I see the ‘bang’ like in cartoons, held out on the end of a stick. Crash, bang, you’re dead. In a cartoon, he’d climb back up onto the platform squashed flat, amusingly 2-D.
But what really happened was that Henry pulled me into the dark of the smelly stairs. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go home now.’ I ran all the way. I wasn’t much of an athlete then but I’m sure I clocked a personal best time. I hoped the house would be empty, but Mum was in the kitchen.
‘How was it?’ she said. ‘Traumatic?’
For a moment, I thought she knew. I imagined flinging myself into her arms and sobbing on her shoulder, ‘I’ve just killed a man.’ But, of course, she was talking about the exam.
‘It was OK,’ I said. ‘The Milton question was hard.’
‘No light but rather darkness visible.’
‘I don’t know why they put those gloomy old authors on the list,’ said Mum who, as an ex-nurse, prided herself on being ‘practical not intellectual’. ‘Shall I make you a nice cup of tea?’
What would have happened if I’d told her? She would have been shocked, would have called Dad, cried a lot. But I’m pretty sure she would have insisted that we go to the police. I might have got off with manslaughter. Dad would have paid for a good lawyer. Chris’s mum, perhaps, who specialised in under-age offenders. But, from that day onwards, I would have been a murderer. Instead, I refused the tea and went upstairs to my bedroom. Later, we had supper and watched EastEnders. When Izzy rang to tell me the news, I was able to say, ‘Oh my God!’ so convincingly that both my parents looked up from the television in concern.
17
Anna
Monday
I felt oddly unsettled after the police officers left. They had been friendly enough. I thought that DI Kaur looked at Mum with real compassion though she was sensible enough not to ask about her or her condition. She’s an impressive woman, Cassie’s boss. All I knew about her was that she was younger than Cassie – and therefore younger than me – and her slight build and enviably unlined skin certainly gave her a youthful appearance. But her eyes, which were brown with darker shadows underneath, were shrewd and watchful. The other officer, Kim, was older, with dyed red hair and a husky, London-accented voice. Kim was the friendly one, commenting on the view and the fact that the lift was still working. DI Kaur just watched. She looked around my room, a car crash of my previous and present lives, as if making an inventory. What would she have seen? The desk, with its view over the rooftops, where I had done my homework, now housing Mum’s sewing machine and a cage belonging to a long-dead canary. The marks on the walls where my posters had been: Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet, a reproduction of Tropical Storm with a Tiger, the album cover of Oasis’s ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. The bed with its flowery duvet from the Laura Ashley sale (I had been so proud of this, the only vaguely expensive thing in the room). The embarrassingly druggy sticker on the wardrobe.
I told the police about overhearing Sonoma’s voice but not about Cassie’s strange behaviour, when she had talked about us killing David. DI Kaur did ask about David though. She did it as an afterthought, like Columbo. I’d watched the programme with Mum quite recently. At the door, he would say, ‘Just one more thing . . .’ but that was always the most important bit. Did DI Kaur think that David was somehow important to this case?
After they had left (Kaur taking the stairs and Kim the lift), I went into the sitting room. Mum was asleep in front of Bargain Hunt. She was so still that I thought, for one heart-stopping minute, that she was dead. But I touched her hand, bruised from many cannulas and still boasting a swab of cotton wool attached by a plaster, and it twitched. Her skin felt paper thin. I thought, as I had done many times since arriving, about what would happen when I went back to Italy. Mum had already booked herself into a hospice, which she described like someone full of excitement about their upcoming holiday (‘spa treatments, plunge pool, view of the lake’). But I knew that, when I left, there was a real chance that I would never see her again. How could I return to Italy, knowing that? But how could I stay? I had a job and an apartment in Florence and, besides, Mum had already said, ‘I don’t want you and Sophie hanging around waiting for me to die. You’ve got your own lives to live.’
My phone was on silent, but the vibration made me jump. Unknown number. Was it the police again?
I went into the hall so as not to disturb Mum. ‘Hallo?’
‘Anna? This is Chris.’
I felt so many different emotions that it was hard to speak. In the end, I settled on grumpiness, ‘How did you get my number?’
‘Cassie gave it to me.’
Of course. Cassie, the keeper of the records.
‘Anna, can I see you?’
Why? I wanted to say. But instead I said, ‘When?’
‘Now? I could send a car over.’
‘Of course you could.’
‘Well, what’s the use of being ridiculously rich if you can’t give your friends lifts?’
He’d said something like that when his chauffeur brought me home after the reunion. He obviously thought he was being charmingly honest. I just thought he sounded like a bit of a dick.
‘I can’t come now,’ I said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ Bargain Hunt wouldn’t watch itself, after all.
‘Later then?’
‘I don’t want to leave Mum.’
But I’d forgotten about her bat-like hearing and ability to move from fast-asleep to wide-awake in seconds.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she shouted. ‘Anita is coming in ten minutes. And Roxy will be in later.’
Anita was her Macmillan nurse and Roxy her carer. Both much loved.
‘And Sophie will be round after work.’
My younger sister is an accountant, married to an accountant, with two children. Despite this, I still like her.
‘Give your mum my love,’ said Chris.
I pretended not to hear. ‘Haven’t you got some showbiz thing to go to?’ I said. Then thought: who says showbiz?
‘Not tonight,’ said Chris. ‘Can you come around later? I’ll cook for you.’
‘Don’t you have a chef?’
‘No, I like cooking.’
The prospect of a meal cooked by Chris was too much. I graciously agreed that the car could collect me at eight.
Sophie was irritatingly excited.
‘I can’t believe you’re going out on a date with Chris Foster.’
‘It’s not a date,’ I said. ‘We’re probably just going to talk about what happened at the reunion.’
‘I always liked Chris,’ said Sophie. ‘I remember when he used to come here all the time. You know that when he did that concert at the O2 I emailed him and he sent me tickets?’
I did know. I was horrified when Soph told me. What was the point of severing all ties when my sister emailed asking for a freebie? I was also jealous.
‘You’ll have to dress up,’ said Sophie. ‘Put on something pretty.’
‘There’s some of my old warpaint in the bathroom,’ said Mum. One of Mum’s many jobs was as a model in the seventies. Sophie and I used to laugh hysterically at the photographs: flares, stripy jumpers, heavy fringe, Cleopatra eyes. But now I can see that she was gorgeous. That was where she met our dad, Tony, a photographer. He moved out when Sophie was two and I don’t really remember living with him, though I used to pretend I did to annoy her. We’re in touch now, in a distant kind of way. He lives in Somerset with his wife, Anne-Marie, and has a second family.
‘Wear a skirt for a change,’ said Sophie.
After that, I had to stay in my jeans and old jumper. But I did surreptitiously apply some mascara and arrange my hair to hide the grey as much as possible.
‘Give Chris my love,’ said Mum, as I made for the door. I didn’t want to keep the driver waiting although it was apparently his life’s purpose to serve Chris.
‘He sent you his,’ I said.
‘Give him mine too,’ squeaked Sophie.
I didn’t answer that one.
Chris had told me that he had a flat in Clerkenwell and a house on the south coast. I knew, from my intensive internet stalking, that his ex-partner, Siobhan, and children, Connor and Harriet, lived in Lewes. I wondered, as the car left the Attlee Estate behind it and purred through leafier streets, just how ‘ridiculously rich’ Chris was. The Cubes were now the sort of band who filled the O2 arena and ‘She Doesn’t Know She’s Beautiful’ had been followed by several other number ones.
The flat confirmed my worst fears. It was a penthouse, no less, with vast windows that showed the lights of London spread out like Christmas decorations.
The first thing Chris said was, ‘We’re wearing the same shoes.’
We were too. White Stan Smiths.
‘Do you remember when we used to do that at school?’ said Chris. ‘Accidentally turn up wearing T-shirts the same colour?’
Of course I did. Gary called us ‘the terrible twins’.
‘If you’re going to start the do you remember? stuff,’ I said, ‘I’m leaving.’
‘I promise I won’t.’ Chris pulled me deeper into the flat. It was so artfully lit that I could hardly see where I was going. Were those actual candles burning on the coffee table? Vanilla and jasmine mingled with a delicious smell of cooking.
‘I didn’t know men bought scented candles,’ I said.
‘You have to watch these sexist attitudes,’ said Chris, steering me towards a low sofa. ‘Drink?’
He made us both huge g and t’s with ice and lemon and little sprigs of rosemary. I nearly asked whether he had a mixologist in the other room but it was so nice to be drinking delicious alcohol in this scented eyrie that I allowed myself to relax. We talked about Italy and Clerkenwell and whether gin tasted better in balloon glasses. I’d almost allowed myself to forget the morning’s visit, even the events of the reunion, Gary’s death and the strange conversation with Cassie. It was a shock when Chris said, ‘The police were here this afternoon.’
‘They came to see me too,’ I said. ‘This morning.’ Was I first on DI Kaur’s list? The thought was an alarming one.
‘What did you make of them?’ he asked. ‘Harbinder and Kim.’
‘Are you on first name terms?’ I said. ‘She was DI Kaur to me.’ But Kim was Kim, I realised.
‘She asked me about David,’ said Chris. ‘Did she ask you?’
‘Yes, just as she was leaving. I thought it was a tactic.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Just that it was a terrible shock to us all. I suppose they asked because of the link with Gary. Because he saw it happen.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Chris.
‘It’s weird,’ I said. ‘Cassie mentioned it too. At the reunion. After it . . . after it happened . . . and we were all filing out, she pulled me into an empty classroom and said, “What if they find out that we killed David.”’
‘What did you say?’
‘That it was an accident.’ I looked up and saw Chris looking at me very intently. The candles made it look as if we were in church. I took a gulp of my drink. ‘Gary saw him fall on the line. It was an accident.’
‘But we did talk about killing him,’ said Chris. ‘Don’t you remember?’
18
Anna
What I chiefly remember about the day David died is this: it was the day Chris finished with me.
Chris and I were always meant to be together. Everyone said so and, for once, everyone was right. We didn’t really know each other until sixth form. It was a big school and we were in different classes. I was aware of him as he changed from gawky schoolboy to blonde pin-up. I remember him playing the guitar in assembly, his hair falling over his face as he mastered the chords but, along with everyone else, I was too busy mocking the terrible lyrics the RE teacher had projected onto the walls. ‘Like a bridge over troubled waters I will be your pal.’ Secular schools always have trouble with that sort of stuff. I imagine it’s easier at a convent where you just pray to God to make you a better person. And the music is better.
In sixth form we had two classes together. I was doing English, French and Italian. Chris was taking English, French and Art. It was clear that he was one of the best in the class at French. People whispered that his parents had a house in France and that their au pair did his homework. But Chris just enjoyed the language and, unlike the rest of us, didn’t seem to mind if he got it wrong. He was always the first to volunteer in class, not in an insufferable ‘I know the answer’ way, but in a comradely attempt to get the party started. This made him very popular.
