This Body of Death (10 page)

“Has she completed her studies for the day?” Azhar asked.

“Her studies?” Barbara gave Hadiyyah the eye. The little girl nodded vigorously although Barbara had her doubts about the cookery end of things. Hadiyyah had not been enthusiastic about standing in someone’s kitchen in the summer heat. “Thumb’s-up on that,” she told Azhar.

“Very well,” Azhar said. “But not in Camden Market, Barbara.”

“Last place on earth, I guarantee,” Barbara told him.

The nearest Topshop turned out to be in Oxford Street, a fact that delighted Hadiyyah and horrified Barbara. The shopping mecca of London, it was always an undulating mass of humanity on any day save Christmas; in high summer, with schools on holiday and the capital city packed with visitors from around the globe, it was an undulating mass of humanity squared. Cubed. To the tenth. Whatever. Once they arrived, it took them forty minutes to find a car park with space for Barbara’s Mini and another thirty to work their way to Topshop, elbowing through the crowds on the pavement like salmon going home. When they finally arrived at the shop, Barbara glanced inside and wanted to run away at once. It was crammed with adolescent girls, their mothers, their aunts, their grans, their neighbours…They were shoulder to shoulder, they were in queues at the tills, they were jostling from racks to counters to displays, they were shouting into mobiles over the pounding music, they were trying on jewellery: earrings to ears, necklaces to necks, bracelets on wrists. It was Barbara’s worst nightmare come to life.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Hadiyyah enthused. “I always want Dad to bring me here, but he says Oxford Street’s mad. He says nothing would drag him to Oxford Street. He says wild
horses
couldn’t bring him here. He says Oxford Street’s London’s version of …I can’t remember, but it’s not good.”

Dante’s Inferno, no doubt, Barbara thought. Some circle of hell into which women like herself—loathing fashion trends, indifferent about apparel in general, and looking dreadful no matter what she wore—were thrust for their fashion sins.

“But I
love
it,” Hadiyyah said. “I knew I would. Oh, I just knew it.”

She zipped inside. There was nothing for Barbara to do but follow.

T
HEY SPENT A
grueling ninety minutes in Topshop, where lack of air-conditioning—this was London, after all, where people still believed that there were only “four or five hot days each year”—and what seemed like a thousand teenagers in search of bargains made Barbara feel as if she’d definitely paid for
every
earthly sin she’d ever committed, far beyond those that she’d committed against the name of haute couture. They went from there to Jigsaw, and from Jigsaw to H & M, where they repeated the Topshop experience with the addition of small children howling for their mothers, ice cream, lollies, pet dogs, sausage rolls, pizza, fish and chips, and whatever else came into their feverish minds. At Hadiyyah’s insistence—“Barbara, just
look
at the name of the shop, please!”—they followed these experiences with a period of time in Accessorize, and finally they found themselves in Marks & Spencer, although not without Hadiyyah’s sigh of disapproval. She said, “This is where Mrs. Silver buys her
knickers
, Barbara,” as if that information would stop Barbara cold and dead in her tracks. “Do you want to look like Mrs. Silver?”

“At this point, I’ll settle for looking like Dame Edna.” Barbara ducked inside. Hadiyyah trailed her. “Thank God for small mercies,” Barbara noted over her shoulder. “Not only knickers but air-conditioning as well.”

All they’d managed to accomplish so far was a necklace from Accessorize that Barbara thought she wouldn’t feel too daft wearing and a purchase of makeup from Boots. The makeup consisted of whatever Hadiyyah told her to buy although Barbara sincerely doubted she’d ever wear it. She’d only given in to the idea of makeup at all because the little girl had been utterly heroic in facing Barbara’s consistent refusals to purchase anything Hadiyyah had fished out of the racks of clothing they’d seen so far. Thus it seemed only fair to give in on something, and makeup appeared to be the ticket. So she’d loaded her basket with foundation, blusher, eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, several frightening shades of lipstick, four different kinds of brushes, and a container of loose powder that was supposed to “fix it all in place,” Hadiyyah told her. Apparently, the purchases Hadiyyah directed Barbara to make were heavily dependent upon her observation of her mother’s daily morning rituals, which themselves seemed to be heavily dependent upon “pots of this and that …She always looks brilliant, Barbara, wait till you see her.” Seeing Hadiyyah’s mother was something that had not happened in the fourteen months of Barbara’s acquaintance with the little girl and her father, and the euphemism
she’s gone to Canada on holiday
was beginning to take on a significance difficult for Barbara to continue to ignore.

Barbara groused about the excessive expense, saying, “Can’t I make do with blusher by itself?” To this, Hadiyyah scoffed most heartily. “
Really
, Barbara,” she said, and she left it at that.

Once in Marks & Spencer, Hadiyyah wouldn’t hear of Barbara’s trailing off towards racks of anything the child deemed “suitable for Mrs. Silver …
you
know.” She had in mind that staple of all wardrobes—the aforementioned A-line skirt—and declared herself content with the fact that at least as it was high summer, the autumn clothing had just been brought in. Thus, she explained, what was on offer hadn’t yet been picked over by countless “working mums who wear this sort of thing, Barbara. They’ll be on holiday with their kids just now, so we don’t have to worry about having only the pickings left.”

“Thank God for that,” Barbara said. She was drifting towards twin sets in plum and olive green. Hadiyyah took her arm firmly and steered her elsewhere. She declared herself content when they found “separates, Barbara, which we can put together to make suits. Oh, and look, they’ve blouses with pussy bows. These’re rather sweet, aren’t they?” She lifted one for Barbara’s inspection.

Barbara couldn’t imagine herself in a blouse at all, let alone one with a voluminous bow at the neck. She said, “Don’t think that’s suitable for my jawline, do you? What about this?” and she pulled a jumper off a neatly folded pile.

“
No
jumpers,” Hadiyyah told her. She replaced the blouse on the rack with, “Oh, all right. I s’pose the bow’s a bit much.”

Barbara praised the Almighty for that declaration. She began to browse through the rack of skirts. Hadiyyah did likewise, and they ultimately came up with five upon which they could agree although they’d had to compromise each step of the way, with Hadiyyah firmly returning to the rack anything she considered Mrs. Silverish and Barbara shuddering at anything that might draw attention to itself.

Off they went to the changing rooms, then, where Hadiyyah insisted upon acting the part of Barbara’s dresser, which exposed her to Barbara’s undergarments, which she declared, “Shocking, Barbara. You
got
to get those string-back kind.” Barbara wasn’t willing to wander even for a moment in the land of knickers, so she directed Hadiyyah to dwell on the skirts they’d chosen. To these the little girl flicked her hand in dismissal of anything “unsuitable, Barbara,” declaring this one to be rucked round the hips, that one to be tight across the bum, another to be a bit nasty looking, and a fourth something that even someone’s gran wouldn’t wear.

Barbara was considering what punishment she might be able to inflict upon Isabelle Ardery for the suggestion that she get herself into this glamorous position in the first place when deep within her shoulder bag, her mobile phone rang, bleating out the musical equivalent of the first four lines of “Peggy Sue” that she’d gleefully downloaded from the Internet.

“Buddy Holly,” Hadiyyah said.

“I remain gratified to have taught you something.” Barbara fished out the mobile and looked at the number of the caller. She was either saved by the literal bell or her movements were being tracked. She flipped it open. “Guv,” she said.

“Where are you, Sergeant?” Isabelle Ardery asked.

“Shopping,” Barbara told her, “for clothes. As recommended.”

“Tell me you’re not in a charity shop and I’ll be a happy woman,” Ardery said.

“Be a happy woman, then.”

“Do I want to know where … ?”

“Probably not.”

“And you’ve managed what?”

“A necklace so far.” And lest the superintendent protest the oddity of this purchase, “and makeup as well. Lots of makeup. I’ll look like …” She racked her brain, seeking a suitable image. “I’ll look like Elle Macpherson when next we meet. And at the moment I’m standing in a changing room having my knickers disapproved of by a nine-year-old.”

“Your companion is nine years old?” Ardery said. “Sergeant—”

“Believe me, she has definite thoughts on what I ought to be wearing, guv, which is why we’ve only managed a necklace so far. I expect we’re about to compromise on a skirt, though. We’ve been at it for hours and I think I’ve worn her down.”

“Well, effect the compromise and get in gear. Something’s come up.”

“Something … ?”

“We’ve got a dead body in a cemetery, Sergeant, and it’s one that’s not supposed to be there.”

I
SABELLE
A
RDERY DIDN’T
want to think of her boys, but her first sight of Abney Park Cemetery made it nearly impossible to think of anything else. They were of an age when having adventures trumped everything save Christmas morning, and the cemetery was decidedly a place for adventures. Wildly overgrown, with gloomy Victorian funerary statues draped in ivy, with fallen trees providing imaginative spots for forts and caches, with tumbling tombstones and crumbling monuments …It was like something out of a fantasy novel, complete with the occasional gnarled tree that had been carved at shoulder height to display huge cameos in the shape of moons, stars, and leering faces. All this, and it was just off the high street, behind a wrought-iron railing, accessible to anyone through various gates.

DS Nkata had parked their car at the main entrance where already an ambulance was waiting. This entrance was at the junction of Northwold Road and Stoke Newington High Street, an area of tarmac in front of two cream-coloured buildings whose stucco was flaking off in sheets. These sat on either side of enormous wrought-iron gates, which, Isabelle learned, were normally open throughout the day but now were closed and guarded by a constable from the local station. He came forward to meet their car.

Isabelle got out into the summer heat. It came off the tarmac in waves. It did nothing to soothe her pounding head, a pain in her skull that was immediately exacerbated by the
thunka-thunka-thunka
of a television news helicopter that was circling above them like a raptor.

A crowd had gathered on the pavement, held back by crime scene tape that was looped tightly from a streetlamp to the cemetery fence on either side of the entrance. Among them, Isabelle saw a few members of the press, recognisable by their notebooks, by their recorders, and by the fact that they were being addressed by a bloke who had to be the duty press officer from the Stoke Newington station. He’d glanced over his shoulder as Isabelle and Nkata climbed out of the car. He nodded curtly, as did the local constable. They weren’t happy. The Met’s intrusion into their patch was not appreciated.

Blame politics, Isabelle wanted to tell them. Blame SO5 and the continual failure of Missing Persons not only to
find
a missing person but also to strike from their list persons who were no longer missing. Blame yet another tedious press exposé of this fact and a consequent power struggle between the civilians running SO5 and the frustrated officers demanding a police head to the division, as if that would solve its problems. Above all, blame Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier and the manner in which he’d decided to fill the vacant position that Isabelle was now auditioning for. Hillier hadn’t said as much, but Isabelle was no fool: This was her test run and everyone knew it.

She’d commandeered DS Nkata to drive her up to the crime scene. Like the constables at the scene, he wasn’t happy either. Clearly, he didn’t expect a detective sergeant to be required to act the part of chauffeur, but he was professional enough to keep his feelings unspoken. She’d had little choice in the matter. It was either select a driver from among the team or attempt to find Abney Park Cemetery herself, using the
A-Z
. If she was assigned permanently to her new position, Isabelle knew it was likely going to take her years to become familiar with the convoluted mass of streets and villages that had, over the centuries, been subsumed into the monstrous expansion of London.

“Pathologist?” she said to the constable once she had introduced herself and Nkata and had signed the sheet recording those entering the site. “Photographer? SOCO?”

“Inside. They’re waiting to bag her. As ordered.” The constable was polite …just. The radio on his shoulder squawked, and he reached up to turn down the volume. Isabelle looked from him to the gawkers on the pavement and from them to the buildings across the street. These comprised the ubiquitous commercial establishments of every high street in the country, from a Pizza Hut to a newsagent. All of them had living accommodation above them, and above one of them—a Polish delicatessen—an entire modern apartment block had been built. Countless interviews would need to be conducted in these places. The Stoke Newington cops, Isabelle decided, should be thanking God the Met was taking the case.

She asked about the tree carvings once they were inside the cemetery and being led into its labyrinthine embrace. Their guide was a volunteer at the burial ground, a pensioner of some eighty years who explained that there were no groundsmen or keepers but instead committees of people like himself, unpaid members of the community devoted to reclaiming Abney Park from the encroachment of nature. Of course, it wasn’t
ever
going to be what it once had been, the gentleman explained, but that wasn’t the point. No one wanted that. Rather, it was meant to be a nature reserve. One’ll see birds and foxes and squirrels and the like, he said. One’ll note the wildflowers and plants. We aim just to keep the paths passable and make sure the place’s safe for people wanting to spend some time with nature. One wants that sort of thing in a city, don’t you agree? An escape, if you know what I mean. As to the carvings on the trees, there’s a boy doing ’em. We all know him but can’t bloody catch him at it. If we do, one of us’ll let him have it, he vowed.