“Anyway,” he says after a while, “enough about me.” He gives a quick shake of his head, as if to say “I’m being boring,” though I am not finding him boring.
“Ania Dudek,” he says abruptly.
A ringing starts up in my ears, a surge of panic. I feel guilty. I had forgotten this was about her, as well as me. I have managed to put her out of my mind for a bit. “Ania Dudek,” I repeat, waiting for something inside me to still.
He pushes his plate to one side, reaches into his pocket, and stops, brings his hands out again. Cigarette-less. “Now there’s a conundrum. From what I’ve picked up, hanging around out there, she was a hardworking Polish woman, training to be a teacher at Froebel College in Roehampton, doing jobs all hours of the day to make ends meet: nannying, dog walking, babysitting. She was learning ballet and had applied for British citizenship: get that. She was intelligent, making something of herself, putting down roots, and she ends up dead, strangled with a narrow ligature in her own flat and dumped a few feet away in the middle of Wandsworth Common. Pregnant,” he adds, as if the fact needs its own pause around it.
I just wait. Sometimes I close my eyes when I think about her being pregnant.
“And the police think you did it.”
I let out a small involuntary noise because the juxtaposition of that is hard to hear.
Hayward has moved the cheese wrappers and the bowls of salad farther down the table, as if clearing the decks. “Word is it’s an
idée fixe
with Perivale.”
“An
idée fixe
?” I say, raising an eyebrow.
He gives me an old-fashioned look. “An
idée fixe
. Mickey Smith of the
Mirror
—he’s a proper crime reporter, been around the block a few times—says DI Perivale has got a handful of facts and is determined to slot them into place. The policewoman—what’s her name?”
“Morrow. PC Morrow.”
“PC Morrow is not happy with the way the investigation is going. Mickey overheard her in the pub talking to one of the other coppers about how ‘blinkered’ Perivale is. Most people are killed by someone close to them—husband, wife . . . The big question is Ania’s boyfriend. I don’t know why they’re not looking at him. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s the boyfriend.”
“He wasn’t in the country when she was killed,” I say. “Perivale told me that.”
“Ah.”
I laugh. “So there goes your theory.”
He looks thoughtful. “Odd, though, his obsession with you. Mickey thinks it goes back to the morning you found the body.”
“That was my big mistake,” I say, “finding the body.”
“Your DNA all over the place . . . didn’t look good.”
“I fixed her bra and I forgot to tell him. I touched her hair . . .”
“A simple explanation. Then there are these other clues. The soil—I’m sure if we did a survey along every street round here we’d find traces of Italian mud on the front path of every other house. Anyone could have trodden it in: the milkman, the postman, someone delivering pizza flyers.”
He has been busy. He seems to know
everything
. “What about the other connections?” I ask, intrigued. “The cuttings . . . the physical resemblance between us . . . The police think maybe she was stalking me.”
“Here is what I think. She told her neighbor that she was going to apply for a job as your nanny. She was excited, nervous. She’d seen you on the television.” He catches my expression. “You have no memory of this?”
“None. I promise you. She didn’t come for an interview. I would remember, even though it was a bit of a hard time for me. I can remember everyone I saw and I didn’t see her.”
He is looking at me expectantly. “Hard time?”
I’ve slipped up. “My mother had been taken ill. She died that week.” I say it as flatly as I can, but of course anything with death in it is loaded.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “Cancer?”
“Something like that.”
“Nothing prepares you, does it?”
“You’re right.” I smile, a woman coming to terms with the loss of her mother, but he is wrong. I could tell him how prepared I had been, how for years I had known it was coming, but I won’t.
He leans back in his chair, the pose of someone at ease with his own body, who has had enough to eat and is quite enjoying stretching his muscles. Where his shirt parts from his trousers, between two buttons, is an arrow of bare flesh.
He sits forward again. “So you were distracted. Maybe you did interview her, or she turned up and there was no one here? Either way, I can understand why she might have become intrigued by you, cut out the occasional article to send home to her mother.” He shakes his head. “The clothes, the pizza receipt, on the other hand: baffling.”
I don’t know if it’s the beer, but the way he shakes his head
sends a shiver of relief through me so intense it’s almost delight. To be in the company of somebody who knows so many facts, in such forensic detail, and still believes in my innocence: I could sing. My friends might believe me, but it’s my version they have heard, whereas Jack Hayward’s information is unfiltered. An idea begins to grow.
“Listen,” I say. “How about this. I give you your interview; we agree you can ask me anything you like. But before that, you help me dig about for a few days. You seem to have the contacts. I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’m not saying
investigate,
just do a bit of poking, ask a few questions, look where the police aren’t. Maybe we’ll find something that clears my name, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll just kick-start Perivale. But at least we will be doing the right thing by Ania. I . . . I owe her that.”
Jack doesn’t answer at first. He looks troubled, possibly a little panicked. I wonder if I have made a mistake. All this chat, all these opinions about the case, were they just to win me over?
“But you’ll be back at work on Monday,” he says. “How much time can you really spend on this?”
“I won’t be at work, sadly.”
He makes an enquiring gesture with his head.
“I’ve been . . . suspended.”
A long pause. He seems to scrutinize my face. I’ve almost given up hope, when he says, “All right.”
I breathe out. “Really?”
“Yeah. It’s not like I’ve got anything else on. And I can see how it might work. Two worlds collide, but in more detail, with a bit of investigative journalism thrown in. Might even flog it to the Sunday
Times
News Review.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and brings out a small dictaphone. “Where shall we start?”
The dictaphone makes me feel uncomfortable and I am about to ask him to put it away, when my mobile rings. The phone is on
the table and Jack looks at the screen before I do. It’s Philip. “Oh,” I say, “that can wait,” and I put the phone in my pocket.
“Yes, where shall we start?” I echo. “Well, I have one possible explanation for the clothes and the pizza receipt, which is Marta, my nanny. But don’t tape any of this. It might not be for the article. It’s not that I think she killed Ania, just that maybe she knew her and has some reason for keeping quiet about it. She told the police she had never met her, but she told me she might have seen her a couple of times at church.”
“Where’s Marta now?”
“She’s gone to stay with a friend in Colliers Wood.”
“Colliers Wood.” He deepens his voice, as if I have said Voldemort’s lair. I can feel the whole thing edging from the Gothic to the comic, tensions loosening. “Show me where she sleeps.”
“The police have already been in there. What are we going to find that they didn’t?”
“Fresh eyes, new perspectives. The smallest thing can mean nothing to one person and everything to another. And inconsistent evidence is always suspicious. Come on!” He scrapes back his chair. “Are we going to investigate, or are we going to investigate?”
I make a gesture with my hands to say “I surrender,” and lead the way upstairs. He follows behind. I’m aware of the weight of his steps. I climb the stairs with a sort of self-conscious agility. When I push open the door to Marta’s room, I start. For a moment, I think she is lying on the bed, but it is just the duvet—she has folded it in a strange way, with the pillows on top.
Jack crosses to the window and opens the slats in the blinds. Rain dribbles down the glass. “You can see the common from here,” he says, “over the roofs of the houses.”
I’m still standing by the door. There seems to be a line one shouldn’t cross. But Jack apparently has no qualms. Maybe that’s because he has never met her—does that make a difference to the
ethics of the situation? He is at the wardrobe, flinging open the door, ravishing the room. A roll of brown paper tumbles out.
He looks up. “What are you waiting for?”
“I suppose it’s okay.” I cross the threshold and join him at her closet. Still feeling ill at ease, I go through the shelves at one side, starting at the bottom: various textbooks called things like
English Without Pain,
an
A-Z,
a pile of leaflets—Madame Tussauds and the London Dungeon, a card for a cab company. At the back is a pile of padded brown envelopes, a thick roll of white stickers, and several Scotch tape dispensers.
“Why would she need so much stationery?” I say.
“Hm. Don’t know.”
Jack is flipping idly through clothes on hangers. “How many pairs of leggings does a girl need?”
“That,” I say, “is a matter of opinion.” I have searched a pile of towels and bed linen and a collection of toiletries and have got to the top shelf. I have to stretch up and feel to reach the back of this one. There is a garment bundled up there and when I pull it out I see it’s the pair of jeans I’ve been missing. I stare at them. “I wondered where these had got to,” I say, after a bit. “She must have put them away here by mistake.”
Jack closes the cupboard door. “What were we looking for anyway?”
“I don’t know. It was your idea.”
“What’s this?” He points to a shoe box under the bed.
“Should we really poke about?”
“You’re right,” he says. “We shouldn’t, but I’m going to open this anyway. Don’t look at me like that. For Christ’s sake, Gaby.”
It’s the first time he’s used my name.
I stand by the door, already leaving in my head, already downstairs with the kettle on, as he bends and slides the box across the carpet. I suspect Marta is lying to me, but even still, I don’t like
the fact that he is doing this. It reminds me that I don’t know him. He probably shouldn’t be in the house, let alone in Marta’s room. But I’m paralyzed. I don’t do anything. I just watch. He pushes the duvet to one side and sits on the bed to open it. When he removes the lid, a couple of thin slips of paper float out.
“Post office receipts,” he says, flicking through. “Tons of them. Twenty, thirty, all for items posted in the last couple of months. And a stash of money, too. There must be five hundred pounds in notes.”
“Who would need to go to the post office with so many packages?”
“A mail-order company. Or”—he makes a face—“someone sending an awful lot of presents home.”
“Bloody hell.”
I cross the room and sit next to him. I’m intrigued now. A spring deep in the mattress upholstery twangs. I lose my balance, fall into the side of him. “Oh dear, too much lunch,” I say, without thinking.
He looks up. Our faces are close, his arm grazes mine. And then a noise. The rattle of a key, and the creak of the front door, a small vibrating bang as it hits the far wall, the reverberating crunch as it closes. A familiar sequence of sounds. Jack and I stay very still. I feel the pressure of his arm. There are footsteps in the hall. A clatter. A wait and then, coming up the stairs, a slow, heavy tread.
At my feet is a stain on the carpet that Marta has clearly tried to get out. The smooth nap of the carpet has been twisted into drawn fibers like a towel.
I stand up. The floor creaks.
Nora, on the other side of the door, gives a small yelp.
“Sorry, Nora,” I say. “God, I didn’t know you were coming. Did I scare you?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, though one hand is clasped to
her chest. She is wearing her gold lamé slippers and holding a cloth. “I’ve come back because on Thursday it was too difficult to clean.”
“That’s incredibly kind of you.”
“Sorry,” she says.
“No. No, I’m sorry.”
She is holding the cloth out—only it is unraveling. It isn’t a cloth. It’s the missing belt to my dressing gown. “I found this,” she said. “On the coat rack. I take it upstairs. Okay.”
“I wonder how it got there.” All these possessions that keep turning up in odd places. I’m losing control of my own life. “But that’s brilliant. You’re brilliant. Thank you.” It wouldn’t occur to me to be anything but grateful to Nora, but even as the words leave my mouth, I wonder if they are being registered, documented. Behind that door, Jack Hayward is listening.
• • •
That evening, when the house is full of creaks, I run myself a bath. Deep Relax. It doesn’t always work. I lie for a long time, looking down at my limbs, flickering under the water. I raise my hand, trying to be as quiet as possible, listening to the droplets fall. The freckles on my arm look dark against the pallor of my stomach. I think about Ania Dudek. Did she have my coloring? Was her body as white as mine?
Philip left a message—“what news, my darling?”—but I haven’t rung back. I put my head under the water, blocking out everything but the gurgle of the pipes. Out of the window, I can see violet clouds rushing across the street-lit sky. Blue, or gray, or orange: a night sky is never black in London. A splattering of rain. A helicopter whirrs, circling, the scissor-drone louder and softer in sequence. A prisoner escaped from Wandsworth. A drug bust in Brixton. An Al Qaeda cell in Tooting. Nowhere is safe.
After my bath it’s raining properly, and I walk through each
room of the house opening shutters. The journalists seem to have scattered. Rain sees off hacks like it sees off rioters. Jack left by the front door and had a hurried conversation with the man at the gate—Mickey from the
Mirror,
I suppose. Afterward, one by one, they got into their cars, doors slamming, engines starting, and drove off. I should feel relief, but I don’t. They were a buffer, those bodies; they kept something, or someone, that I was fearing at bay.