If Snow Hadn't Fallen (A Lacey Flint Short Story) (3 page)

I sighed. A cast-iron case that couldn’t be proven. ‘No other witness accounts at all?’

‘Not one,’ said Tulloch. ‘Only the street you live on is close enough to see anything and everyone had their curtains drawn and their TVs turned up.’

‘We did find the masks,’ said Stenning. ‘Just as you described.’

‘Where?’

‘Waste bin at the end of the road where one of them lives.’

‘Well, then …’

‘Smells bad,’ said Anderson. ‘Karim is on record as making no mention of the gang running across the field wearing masks. On the contrary, he talked about five white men, but how would he know they were white if they’d been wearing masks? It means if he did see what he claims he saw, they must have ditched the masks before they reached him.’

‘Or they just took them off,’ I said.

‘So if they all took them off and hung on to them, what are the chances of them all ending up in one bin, at the end of the road where only one of them lives and which three of them do not have to go anywhere near to get home?’

‘Well, not good,’ I admitted. ‘Unless they went to that house first, maybe to agree stories.’

‘There wasn’t a lot of time for that,’ said Tulloch. ‘We picked them up pretty quickly. And how likely is it that they got rid of every other bit of physical evidence, but the masks got dumped in a bin where they should have known we’d find them?’

‘You think the masks were planted there?’ I said. ‘That it’s a set-up?’

No reply.

I shook my head. ‘No, come on, it’s still too soon. You can’t have had the forensic reports back yet. Or the full post-mortem findings. There could be any number of hairs and fibres that weren’t obvious to the naked eye.’

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ said Tulloch. ‘In the meantime, given the mood on the streets, I’m going to have to keep this lot locked up for the maximum time for their own safety.’

I stopped to think about that. An inability on the part of the police to get justice for an aggrieved minority was the time-honoured path towards mass anger and civil unrest.

‘Thank God it’s cold enough outside to freeze a witch’s tits off,’ said Anderson, and we all said a silent
Amen
. Riots happened in summer, when it was warm enough to hang around on street corners and stir each other up to throwing the first stone. In winter, when the rain came down from the heavens, the mist from the Thames and the wind from the North Sea, even the most aggrieved campaigner for racial justice was more inclined to turn up the radiator than stoke up rebellion.

‘You think we’ve got enough to get the full ninety-six hours?’ asked Mizon. Even in murder cases, suspects could normally only be held for a maximum of thirty-six hours without charge. But the police could apply to the courts for an extension of up to ninety-six hours.

‘If there’s any argument, we just say the two magic words,’ said Tulloch.

‘Those being?’

‘Stephen Lawrence.’

Nods of agreement around the room. We all lived in fear of a repeat of the murder in 1993 that precipitated what is generally considered to be the Met’s darkest hour. Eighteen-year-old student Stephen Lawrence had been on his way home when he was set upon and beaten to death by a gang of white youths. People had known who the white kids were. Names had been given to the Lawrence family, the police, the media, within hours of the teenager’s death. A racially motivated hate crime with tragic consequences, it had seemed an open-and-shut case.

Except, without substantial cause to search flats, the police had to play it safe and potentially evidence was lost. The resulting investigation went on for years. Nobody wanted a repeat of that. We just had to hope that the evidence was there and that, in the coming days, it would rise to the surface.

5

IT WASN’T, AND
it didn’t. The best and most careful scientific brains in the country couldn’t find any physical evidence that established a direct link between the five suspects and the crime. Tulloch had no choice, once the ninety-six hours had passed, but to release them.

As November grew old and the last month of the year champed at its heels, the threat of violence hung over London like the sour wind that precedes a plague. The five suspects, named on the internet if not in British newspapers, lived in a state of siege, with windows broken, walls graffitied, even a car torched. We had to give each of them police protection, which did nothing to increase our popularity in the city. Our officers were harangued on the streets. Retaliations started. A pig’s head was left on the minaret of a mosque. A veiled woman was pushed on to the line of an underground train. Luckily, she was pulled off again before she came to any harm.

As for me, well, I still hadn’t been reassigned following the big case, so I drifted on to the Chowdhury investigation and no one objected. We talked to the victim’s immediate family and his extended one. We talked to his friends and his colleagues. We found fresh suspects and brought them in: other young men in the area with a history of violence. We combed their bodies and their flats for a droplet of petrol, a discarded match-head. We compared footprints in the mud of the park to shoes we found in cupboards. We checked alibis and then we checked them again. For ten days we threw resources at the case. We got nowhere.

In the meantime, London pulled its Santa Claus outfit from the box in the loft and its citizens started asking each other how preparations for Christmas were going. The night sky above Regent Street was hung with vast crystal cobwebs, whilst statues, which could have been carved from diamonds, appeared on rooftops and peered down at us. At street level, icicles gleamed from window ledges and you had to get close and watch for drips to know whether they were real or not.

The daily castigation of the Metropolitan Police went on. The attack had been our fault, because we’d fostered a climate in which society believed black lives meant little; the failure to bring justice to the Chowdhury family was similarly our fault.

And throughout it all, I couldn’t help feeling that the blame lay primarily with me. That there’d been some detail I’d missed: a scar, a tattoo, a distinctive item of clothing. Something I’d heard, something I’d seen. Anything that would provide a direct link between what I’d witnessed
that
night and those who were suspected of the crime. It didn’t help that I had a feeling at the back of my mind that there really was something; but at the back was where it was staying.

There were two people I could have talked to about it. One was on remand in Holloway prison, waiting for a trial that would probably result in a twenty-year prison sentence for multiple murder. The other was in a hospital bed, trying to recover from a near-fatal bullet wound. Two very tricky sets of circumstances, both entirely my fault.

So it was just me, alone, with some very disturbing pictures in my head. And then, one Monday night, some ten days after the attack, I saw the woman in black.

6

ALL DAY, YELLOW
clouds had mustered over London, getting thicker, heavier and lower with each hour that passed. Some time in the afternoon, the canopy had collapsed under the strain. It didn’t so much splinter into a million tiny fragments of white as burst open and release the waiting onslaught. For the following few hours, snow fell like fog, thick and all-encompassing, masking everything. People who ventured out did so with heads down and eyes half closed. Offices closed early. Traffic slowed, cars skidded, buses relentlessly turned the snow to brown slush.

By early evening, the onslaught had calmed, but there were several inches of snow on the ground. I was in the top flat of a house in my street, interviewing the elderly couple who lived there in the hope that they’d seen something on the night in question. I wasn’t overly hopeful, because they’d been interviewed once already and memories fade with every passing day. On the other hand, their back windows directly overlooked the park. Had they been so inclined, they could have had a ringside view.

Twenty minutes in, it wasn’t going well. They’d argued that visibility at the back of the house was very poor, especially at night, and said that neither of them had great eyesight. I’d maintained that if they’d switched off the lights they’d have had a close-to-perfect view, and pointed out that they both wore spectacles. They humoured me by switching the lights off. Ah, yes, they agreed, a very good view, and didn’t London look lovely in the snow? But, you see, they never walked round their flat in the dark, and on winter evenings they always drew the curtains.

It was hopeless. I thanked them for their time. They turned away, the man to switch the lights back on, the woman to answer the piercing call of the kettle she’d insisted on filling. I remained at the window for one last second.

And there she was. Unmistakable against the backdrop of white. A solitary figure in the park, wearing long, loose robes of black, on the exact spot where the man had died. I only saw her for a few seconds before the lights flicked on, but I could tell that she was both tall and slim, and, even standing statue-still, she gave the impression of both poise and grace. At the same time, her bowed head, her clenched hands, spoke of terrible sadness.

I don’t believe in ghosts. The world we know has more than enough to scare us, without us conjuring up imaginary fears of our own. But there was something about the sight of her that
struck
me hard, causing an almost physical reaction. I was conscious of a constriction in my chest, a trembling in my hands, the slightest feeling of breathlessness.

I made my excuses to the elderly couple and ran back down to the street. Whilst I had no real reason to connect the woman in the park with the crime, something about the graceful but slightly shapeless way the robes had hung around her body had made me think of the burka. And her head had been indistinct, as though a loose headscarf covered it. I was pretty certain she was a Muslim woman come to grieve alone at the spot where someone close to her had died. And that might not go well.

Just over a week after the murder, the public mood remained highly volatile. There had been several racially tainted incidents, insignificant in themselves, but worrying in their number. Flowers had been left at the park for the man who’d died. And those same flowers had been pissed on by the less sympathetic. I really didn’t fancy the chances of a Muslim woman on her own, confronted by a few of our local yobs. I stopped at the park gates. After the murder, the Parks Department had increased security to the tune of two heavy-duty chains, secured with padlocks, around the gates. They were still in place.

So how had my quarry got in? Climbing railings wasn’t too tricky – I was about to do it myself – but in an ankle-length robe? And, more to the point, how had she got out? Because she wasn’t there any more.

I stepped closer, almost touching the cellophane-wrapped flowers that lined the railings. Still no sign of her. I found a crossbar on the gates that would give me enough height and scrambled up, swung both legs over and dropped to the ground.

I was probably imagining the smell of petrol and charred flesh that still seemed to cling to the foliage in the park, but the footsteps that I could see ahead of me were real enough. She’d walked through the snow, the hem of her robes trailing wet and sodden, but she hadn’t entered the park via these gates.

Getting edgy now – I really didn’t like this park – I stepped forward on clean, fresh snow until I reached the spot where Aamir Chowdhury had died. The woman had come from beyond the children’s playground. I could see her steps leading towards the spot and away from it again. I could also see the indistinct sweeping marks her robes had made as she walked here.

Should I follow her or not? Her misery had been apparent, even from the top flat of a house yards away. Why would I intrude on the grief of a mother or wife? Except Aamir hadn’t
been
married, and the mother I remembered was much smaller and squatter than the figure I’d just seen. A sister seemed most likely. Or girlfriend. But Muslim women wearing burkas didn’t usually have boyfriends.

And how often did you see a veiled Muslim woman out alone at night? I wasn’t sure I ever had before. These women were protected, guarded closely. Independence of movement, especially at night, was largely denied them.

The park was long and narrow, with dense planting lining its perimeter. To my right, behind a curving wall of laurel bushes, was the young children’s play area. There were swings, a roundabout, a large tree-house complex with slides and stepping-stones. The eastern side of the park was aimed at older children and teenagers. There was a skateboard ramp and a BMX track. Ahead of me was a circular structure of sheltered seating.

Without the snow, it would have been impossible to know where she’d gone. With it, I knew exactly where she must be; I just wasn’t sure whether I was going to follow her.

And as though my thoughts had the power to conjure her out of the ether, she appeared. She must have sidestepped from behind the children’s slide, but to my snow-stung eyes it looked as if she’d materialized from nowhere. I judged her to be taller than me, maybe about five foot eight or nine, and very slim. Her veil was fastened tight to her head by a band around her forehead. Below the band, it flowed out gracefully to her waist. The burka spread out beneath it. I could see fingertips and large brown eyes; my imagination had to fill in the gaps, paint the picture of an oval face, perfect in its proportions, gleaming black hair falling in coils past her waist, soft, slender limbs and coffee-coloured skin. I raised my hand in greeting, and for a second or two we just stared at each other. Then she vanished.

I followed of course – I’m a detective – but I went slowly. There was something about her that – not intimidated me exactly, but certainly demanded respect. She wasn’t someone to be chased and jumped upon.

She’d gone behind the slide again. I reached it and stopped, full of misgivings. There was no way out of this park, which made running a bit pointless. So why had she disappeared, if not to lure me here?