lived with her husband Omar, a railway guard currently posted at Archway Tube station. It seemed that Fatima had brought the traditions of her country to England; her reluctance to leave the house during the day prevented her from bumping into her neighbour, and chores kept her from socializing. She had seen Mrs Singh once or twice in the garden, but they had not spoken. Longbright had wondered if her husband was the kind of man who liked his women subservient. She readily acknowledged the importance of domesticity in the hierarchy of Egyptian marriage, but dealing with so many different cultures made her job more demanding.
The door on the other side, number 6, was opened by a woman in a lime-green face-pack and towel-turban. ‘I’m sorry, this is absolutely the only thing that helps a hangover,’ the woman explained in a muscular, penetrating voice. ‘You’re the police, aren’t you? You’ve been going door to door and you don’t look like Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you come in, are you going to get water everywhere? I’m waiting for a little man to come and revarnish the hall floor, and it does stain. I’m Heather Allen.’ She offered her hand and withdrew it, blowing on her nails as she beckoned them in. ‘Your polish is a wonderful colour, I don’t think I’ve seen that shade before.’
‘They stopped making it in the 1950s,’ Longbright admitted, hiding her hands. ‘I have to get it mixed at a theatrical suppliers.’ No one had ever noticed before.
‘How unusual. Can I get you anything? Presumably you don’t drink alcohol on duty, and this lad doesn’t look as if he’s old enough.’ Now it was Bimsley’s turn to be embarrassed. ‘I didn’t really know the old lady-it
‘When did you last run an errand for her?’
Heather Allen tucked a glazed lock of auburn hair beneath the towel as she thought. ‘Before the weekend, it must have been Friday, she told me she needed some bread.’
‘How?’
‘What do you mean?’ Mrs Allen looked alarmed.
‘How did she tell you? Did you call on her?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that. It was a beautiful day, she was standing at the back door and we spoke.’
‘She didn’t say anything else? Other than asking you to get her some shopping?’
‘No, well-no, I mean. No. I’m sure she didn’t.’
Longbright sensed something. ‘For example, she didn’t say she was worried about anything? Didn’t seem to have anything pressing on her mind?’
‘Well, that sort of depends.’ Mrs Allen appeared to have been manoeuvred to the lounge wall. Longbright stepped back, wary of her tendency to be aggressive.
‘On what?’ she asked.
‘I mean, there had been the letters. I presume you’ve been told about those.’
‘Perhaps you should tell me.’
‘It’s really none of my business.’ Mrs Allen’s voice rose as her sense of panic increased.
‘Anything you say will be treated with the utmost confidence,’ assured Bimsley.
‘It seemed so childish-not to her, obviously-some racist notes had been put through her letterbox. It’s not the sort of thing you expect any more.’
‘How do you know about it?’
‘I’ve no idea. I suppose she must have told me, or maybe one of the neighbours, but I can’t remember when. I never saw them.’
‘She didn’t know who’d sent them?’
‘I don’t suppose so. I mean, she didn’t know anyone.’
‘Perhaps you would inform us if any other details come to you.’ Longbright produced another business card, but knew that the unit was unlikely to receive a call. Some people had an instinctive distrust of the police that no amount of goodwill could alter. She enjoyed seeing in people’s homes, though. The decor in this one was far too cool and impersonal, especially for a woman who favoured leopardskin.
‘Come on, you,’ she told Bimsley as they headed out into the rain. ‘Let’s get back. Notes and impressions.’
‘I don’t do impressions. And I thought you took the notes.’
‘Mr Bryant wants to see what you can do.’
‘Nobody can read my writing,’ Bimsley protested, narrowly missing a tree.
‘James Joyce had the same problem. You’ll manage.’
Arthur Bryant knew far too much about London.
It had been his specialist subject since he was a small boy, because it represented a convergence of so many appealingly arcane topics. Over the years he had become a repository of useless information. He remembered what had happened in the Blind Beggar (Ronnie Kray shot Big George Cornell three times in the head) and where balding Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie had been left dead in his Ford Zephyr (St Marychurch Street, Rotherhithe), how a Marks amp; Spencer tycoon had survived being shot by Carlos the Jackal in Queen’s Grove (the bullet bounced off his teeth), and where you could get a decent treacle tart (the Orangery, Kensington Palace). He knew that Mahatma Gandhi had stayed in Bow, Karl Marx in Dean Street, Ford Madox Brown in Kentish Town, that Oswald Mosley had been attacked in Ridley Road before it became a market, that Notting Hill had once housed a racecourse, that the London Dolphinarium had existed in Oxford Street in the seventies, and that Tubby Isaacs’ seafood stall was still open for business in Aldgate. For some reason, he also recalled that John Steed’s mews flat in
But Bryant wasn’t tired, even though it was nearly midnight. He sometimes took a short nap in the afternoon but hardly ever slept before two in the morning, and always rose at six. Sleeplessness had come with age; fear of dying without lasting achievement kept him awake.
Longbright had printed out the Balaklava Street interviews from her Internet-gizmo and had thoughtfully left a hard copy on his desk, knowing that he would work into the night. In return, he had left a pink rose-her favourite, named after the fifties singer Alma Cogan-on her newly erected desk for the morning.
He studied the names before him and rubbed at the bags beneath his eyes. Seven residents interviewed out of ten in the street, two more from the gardens beyond the house, a statement from the brother, no strangers or unusual occurrences seen on Sunday night, all a bit of a dead end. The old lady had no friends, and apparently no enemies beyond the writer of the racist notes only Mrs Allen seemed to have heard about. Finch had been over the body and found nothing except the skull contusion, too small to have caused any damage, and a throat full of dirty water, not from a clean London tap but some other murkier source, hopefully to be pinpointed when the sample had returned from analysis. What other source could there be? Something ingested against her will? Rainwater? It made no sense. He lit his pipe, almost feeling guilty that the No Smoking sign had been pointedly re-pinned above his desk, and tried to imagine what had happened.
Suppose. .
Suppose Benjamin Singh had found his sister drowned in her bath? It happened to small children with depressing regularity, and the elderly could often behave like children. The bathroom was downstairs, along with the kitchen and dining room, below the road at the front, but level with the garden at the back. What if Benjamin had come down the stairs calling for her, had panicked upon seeing her body and pulled her out, dressing her and leaving her in her chair? Shock and grief caused strange behaviour. He might be too embarrassed to admit what he had done. But no, there would have been wrinkling in the skin. Suppose she had been upstairs, soaking her swollen feet, and had gone down to empty the foot-spa-she could have slipped, hitting her head on the stairs, and, in an admittedly awkward fall, drowned in the little bath. Her brother wouldn’t have wanted her to be seen like that. He could have taken the bath away and emptied it before tidying it up. Perhaps he hadn’t mentioned it because he knew he would be in trouble for moving the body.
It was an unlikely explanation, and yet it vaguely made sense. Because, acting on May’s suggestion, Bimsley had found such a foot-spa downstairs, stowed in a cupboard. Finch had already suggested that the case wouldn’t go to jury, who were limited to three verdicts: accidental death, unlawful killing or an open verdict.
He thought about calling May for advice but decided against it.
