Turn a Blind Eye. Vicky Newham
wrong bell.’ I step outside the flat into the hall and, smelling tobacco, I scour the darkness for a glowing cigarette end or the light of a torch. My foot knocks against an object on the ground. There’s something beside the doorway. I lean over to feel what it is. A plastic bag rustles in my fingers. In it is something hard, like a cardboard box. I pick up the package and carry it into the flat.
‘Someone left a parcel.’ I place it on one of the kitchen worktops.
‘At the door?’ That tone is back in Mum’s voice. ‘For pity’s sake, Maya —’
‘No-one was there, just this bag.’ I point, although it’s obvious.
‘Give it to me,’ says Mum sternly, moving towards the worktop.
But Sabbir has already begun rummaging in it. He looks at us all in turn, his face excited. ‘It’s candles and . . . you’re never going to guess what . . .’
‘Bagels?’ Jasmina and I shout in unison.
When I got home and closed the front door, relief surged through me. It wasn’t my brother’s photo in the hall that brought the tears, nor the suitcase I’d parked by the stairs when I arrived home in the early hours. It was that, all day, my attention and energy had been on the investigation when what I wanted was to be alone with my grief. Now, I finally had the chance to gather it up so I could feel close to Sabbir; to wade through all the conflicting emotions about how he’d died – and why.
In the kitchen, I lobbed my keys onto the worktop, followed by the soggy bag of chips I’d half-heartedly collected on the way home. In the cold air, the smell of malt vinegar wafted round the room and the greasy mass was unappealing. I flicked on the heating. Next to the kettle, the message light was flashing on the answerphone. Mum had probably forgotten I’d gone to Bangladesh for the funeral.
Through the patio doors, the light was reflecting on the canal water in the dark. When I was house-hunting, I’d had my heart set on this flat as it reminded me of Sylhet and our apartment there when we were growing up. I remembered how sometimes, when he’d been in a good mood, Dad would sit between Jasmina and me on our balcony there and read us the poems of Nazrul Islam. On those rare occasions, the two of us would lap up the crumbs of Dad’s attention, bask in his gentle optimism, oblivious to the stench of booze and tobacco on his breath, and the smell of women on his clothes and skin.
What I remembered most, though, was how yellow his fingertips were; the feel of his cracked, dry skin. And how much I’d loved his burnt-caramel voice.
I headed into the lounge. Last night’s array of mementos littered the coffee table, waiting to be stuck into the journal I’d bought from the market in Sylhet. The fire had destroyed most of Sabbir’s belongings so Jasmina and I had chosen what we wanted from the bits that were recovered. My eyes fell on the book of Michael Ondaatje poetry. He’d annotated it. On the plane home, I’d read every single poem and pored over all my brother’s notes, then wept in the darkness of the cabin. I’d learned more about Sabbir from those poems than all our conversations.
Sometimes the canal outside was soothing. Tonight, although the water was still, I felt it pressing in on me. Unable to shift Linda’s death from my mind, I kneeled in front of the wood burner. As I lay kindling on the bed of ash, my thoughts drifted back to the amalgam of conversations from earlier in the day. I was exhausted. A combination of jet lag, lack of sleep and not eating. I was contemplating having a bath when my mobile rang. It was Dougie.
‘Hey, how are you?’ We’d Skyped several times when I was in Bangladesh but, other than seeing him at the crime scene, I hadn’t had the chance to catch up with him since getting back. He was downstairs, so I buzzed him in and went to meet him at the door, pausing briefly to check my appearance in the mirror.
‘I was on my way home. Wanted to check you’re okay.’ He leaned over and his beard growth brushed my cheek as he gave me a kiss.
I drank in the smell I knew so well, and, for a moment, I longed to sink into his arms. ‘Shattered, but pleased to see you. Come in.’ I began walking away from the door. ‘I was going to call you.’
He followed me along the hall and into the kitchen. Pulled the overcoat off his large frame and draped it over a chair back.
‘Fancy a beer?’ I said.
‘If you’re having one.’
I took two bottles from the fridge and passed him one.
‘You’ve met the fast-track sergeant, then.’ He took a swig of beer.
‘Yeah.’ I sighed, irritated. ‘Briscall must’ve known about this for a while. Nice of him to mention it.’
Dougie’s bushy eyebrows shot up. ‘That man’s a prick.’ He strode over to the window and back. ‘Gather this Maguire bloke’s an Aussie? What’s he like? Have to say, he looks more Scottish than I do.’
‘He seems a good cop. Knows his stuff and he’s pretty sharp in the interview room. Briscall will never change. I had a lot of time to think when I was in Sylhet and I’m done with letting him wind me up. I joined the police to make a difference, and to help people like Sabbir. I’m fed up with Briscall side-tracking me with his petty crap.’
Dougie had one hand round his beer, the other in his pocket. He was taking in what I was saying. ‘How’s it going with the school and the Gibsons? It’s all over the media.’
‘No real leads. We’re waiting to interview two key witnesses. One’s under medical supervision, the other’s gone AWOL.’ I groaned with frustration. ‘We’re still puzzling over the Buddhist precepts. There are five of them. Why the killer has started with the second, we don’t know.’ The cold had reached my bones today and I needed to warm up. ‘Shall we go through? The stove’s on.’
In the lounge, Dougie sank into the sofa, his manner quiet and reflective.
‘As a murder method, what d’you reckon strangulation says about the killer?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He paused to think. ‘It’s quick and doesn’t require any weapons. Silent apart from victim protests. Excruciating agony for a few seconds, depending on the pressure, then the victim slips into unconsciousness. Death minutes after that. It’s certainly different from stabbings and shootings.’
I was nodding. ‘On training courses we’re continually told that murder methods are rarely random or coincidence, except in the heat of the moment. Whoever murdered Linda chose to strangle her, bind her wrists and leave a message by her body.’
Dougie was stroking his chin. Silent for a few moments. ‘It’s certainly symbolic. Whoever did it could’ve simply strangled her and left.’
The material that had been used to bind Linda’s wrists wasn’t expensive, but Dougie was right: for the killer to bother, it must symbolise something for them. And forethought had gone into what they had chosen to write. It wasn’t an impassioned scrawling of ‘BITCH’ across a mirror in red lipstick, for example.
‘The most logical explanation is that the two acts go together.’ I held my forearms the way Linda’s had been positioned. ‘The precept says, I abstain from taking the ungiven. If your wrists are tied, so are your hands.’
‘Bingo. You can work from there. Although, hang on.’ Dougie placed his beer on the coffee table. ‘Did you say there are five precepts? Do you think the killer’s started with the second precept because of its significance? Or do you suppose there’s been a murder before this one?’
The Skype ring tone danced around the small bedroom. ‘Pick up, pick up,’ Dan urged, as he pictured the early morning