Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (26 page)

Back on the pavement outside the Jacksons’ house, Jessie breathed in the silty city air.

Nightmare.

Nightmare to work with?

No. He said that the man’s name meant ‘Nightmare’ in Dari.

Her mind sought out Miss Appleby, perched primly on the cream linen sofa in that huge, panelled library at Bearwood School, a place, a moment in time that felt so far from here, from now, that it could have been in some parallel universe.
I can’t remember how to pronounce his name but Nooria said that it meant ‘Nightmare’.

What the hell was going on? She had no idea, but whatever it was, she sensed that Nooria was the link. And now that she had more pieces to the puzzle – not that she felt any of them were actually slotting together – she wondered if Gideon Duursema was going to be proved right.
You need to give the child the benefit of the doubt.
The child
, not the parents.

She had given Nooria and Scott the benefit of the doubt. Had she put Sami at risk by doing so? Had she consigned him to living in terror of the Shadowman,
whoever that was, for longer than he needed to, purely out of professional pride – out of determination to get to the bottom of his psychological problems – herself.
Jesus
, she would never forgive herself if that was true.

And what about Scott? Where did he fit?
The Shadowman? Surely the Shadowman is me.

Colin Starkey had been driving him to a rendezvous with an Afghan government official when they were flagged down in a street in Kandahar, Scott was doused in petrol and set alight. Who was that governmental official?

She glanced at her watch. She was in Wandsworth. Ten minutes’ drive and she’d be in Battersea, at the Royal College of Art, Dyson building. Nooria’s exhibition started tomorrow – she was bound to be there.

As Jessie reached her car, her telephone rang. For a self-delusional millisecond before she pulled it out of her bag, she thought that it might be Callan. Then reality kicked in and she felt the familiar lump that had settled in her stomach since DI Simmons had called sink lower, so heavy that she felt as if she might crack through the paving stones under her feet with its weight. She didn’t recognize the number. It wasn’t DI Simmons or Gideon Duursema.

‘Yes,’ she snapped.

‘Oh, uh, Mrs Scott, it’s Susie Wingrove.’

Fuck.
She had consigned her phone call to Soraya’s children’s home to the back of her mind. Readying herself for a return call from Susie Wingrove hadn’t been anywhere on her radar.

Pinching the end of her nose with her fingers, so that her voice was muffled, full of cold, she said, ‘I’m sorry if I sound muffled. I have the worst cold.’

‘Mrs Jamieson mentioned that you were sneezing.’

‘It’s so freezing at the moment. I always get sick in the winter.’

She felt ridiculous, standing on the pavement clutching her nose – playing a trick that belonged in primary school – sure that Susie Wingrove would see straight through it.

‘Mrs Jamieson mentioned that you might come down on Sunday. Shall we expect you at the usual time?’

The usual time.

‘Yes,’ Jessie replied lamely. A pause. Now that Susie Wingrove was on the phone, she needed to use the opportunity to get as much information as she could. ‘Mrs Jamieson also said that Soraya’s dad might come down again on Sunday.’

‘Yes. He was here earlier today and said that he would try to visit again on Sunday afternoon. Is that a problem?’ Susie Wingrove’s voice was tentative.

‘No. I was just wondering what time he was planning to come.’

‘Mr Starkey said around two p.m.’

The phone almost slid from Jessie’s hand; she tightened her freezing fingers around it.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Around two p.m., he said,’ she repeated, raising her voice.

‘Right,’ Jessie managed.

Starkey?
She must be losing something in the translation. Soraya’s father couldn’t be Colin Starkey. A door slammed, stiletto heels clicking on paving stones, and a woman in tight black jeans and black jacket tottered past, a small, fluffy white dog clutched in the crook of her arm.

‘Mrs Scott?’

‘Yes. I’m here.’ Jessie held her breath, willing Susie Wingrove to continue.

‘I know you’re not together any more, so I just wanted to let you know what time he’s coming to see Soraya, in case you didn’t want to bump into him.’

‘Bump into Mr Starkey?’

‘Yes.’ Susie Wingrove’s voice had a nervous lilt, as if she was wondering whether she’d overstepped the mark, strayed too far into personal territory. ‘Yes,’ she repeated.

Mr Starkey,
not Sergeant. Jessie had never met another Starkey, but that didn’t mean that the name was uncommon. You could hardly spit in Ireland without hitting a Flynn, she remembered her father telling her, and yet she’d never met anyone who shared her surname, despite a significant proportion of Irish youth decamping to England for work. It couldn’t be Colin Starkey, surely? That would make no sense. She forced herself to smile, hoped the smile conveyed itself to her voice.

‘Thank you for the consideration, but Colin and I get on well, even though we’re not together any more.’

Colin.

She waited. Waited for the correction.

It didn’t come.

Colin Starkey was Soraya’s father? It wasn’t possible.

‘He’s a lovely man, Mr Starkey, and so good with Soraya. Anyway, take care, Mrs Scott. Stay warm and get better and we’ll look forward to seeing you on Sunday at the usual time.’

The Royal College of Art was buzzy, students cutting through the foyer, jogging up the stairs clutching folios, chatting to each other, shouting into mobiles. In the cavernous space, with this confident swirl of activity around her, Jessie felt caged in loneliness. She hadn’t heard any more from DI Simmons, who had promised to keep her abreast of Callan’s condition. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she checked that the volume was on high and slid it back into her bag.

Ignoring the woman standing behind the reception desk, Jessie bought two takeaway coffees from the shop, a double-shot latte for herself – liquid adrenalin – and a straight black for Nooria. Clutching the coffees, she crossed to the stairs, walking as if she belonged, not as an outsider. Her clothes didn’t fit, but her attitude could.

Jogging up the first flight of stairs to Level 1, she stopped at the top and turned to a young man in black Levis and a black shirt who had followed her up.

‘I’m looking for Nooria Scott.’

The young man shook his head. ‘Sorry, I don’t know her.’

‘She’s on the Fine Art master’s. She’s putting final touches to her exhibition.’

‘Fine Art studios, top floor.’

On the top floor, Jessie found someone else to ask and was directed along a steel-and-glass walkway that hung over the foyer a hundred feet below. The suspended corridor ended in a steel door, which opened into a vaulted industrial-looking space two storeys high, flooded with light from huge glass panels set into the pitched roof. Big metal tulip lights that looked as if they belonged in a World War II bunker hung at intervals from beams that supported the sloping glass-and-steel roof. There was something incredibly dramatic about the space, and Jessie could understand how it would inspire people to paint.

Her eyes grazed across the eight students dotted at intervals around the studio. She found Nooria at the far end, standing in front of a huge painting, four metres tall and a half again wide. She was clutching a paintbrush in her hand, but didn’t seem to be painting, just standing, staring at the enormous canvas looming over her. It was a nightmarish image: thick streaks of oil paint in black, white and shades of grey. A man pinning a woman to the floor, the woman’s mouth torn and bleeding as she screamed. The man’s face was visible, but his features were indistinct, as if the observer was looking at his face through frosted glass. There was a little shape curled in the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas. It took Jessie a moment to realize that the shape was a cowering child, eyes clamped shut, hands pressed over his or her ears.

Looking at the canvas, one word filled Jessie’s mind.

The Shadowman.

Nooria had painted the Shadowman.

Slowly, she crossed the wooden floor, her gaze fixed on the canvas. It cast a spectre over the whole gallery, like a stormy grey sky.

The Shadowman. Whispering, whispering. Make Mummy sad.

Nooria didn’t realize she was there until Jessie was almost close enough to touch her. She suddenly spun around, eyes wide and frightened. For a second, there was no recognition.

‘Nooria, it’s Jessie Flynn.’

Her gaze focused. It took a few moments longer for her to formulate words. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Dr Flynn.’

Jessie held out the coffee.

‘What’s that?’ Nooria asked warily.

‘Straight black,’ Jessie said. ‘Otherwise known as a cheap bribe.’

Unsmiling, Nooria took the coffee. ‘If I had any pride, I’d throw it in the bin, but I could really do with the caffeine hit.’ A pause, then a grudging, ‘Thank you.’ Looking down at the cup in her hand, she added, ‘But I still have nothing to say to you.’

She looked as if she had lost half her bodyweight and all of her spirit in the twenty-four hours since Jessie had last seen her at Bradley Court, feet planted wide apart in her sky-blue combat trousers, humming with manic energy and paranoia. Her movements now were slow, uncoordinated, as if each move of her arm, each tilt of her head took an enormous surge of willpower.

‘Can we go somewhere to talk in private, Nooria?’

‘I already said that I don’t want to talk to you.’

Jessie sighed. ‘We’re beyond that, Nooria. You have no choice. Not unless you want the Military Police Special Investigation Branch all over your family like a bad smell.’

Nooria’s eyes widened. ‘Jesus. We really opened Pandora’s Box when we referred Sami to you, didn’t we?’

‘I have no choice either, Nooria. I have to do my job, and my job is to make sure that Sami is mentally and physically safe and well. At the moment, I have no confidence that he is either of those things.’

Nooria didn’t respond.

‘We need to talk, Nooria. Let’s go somewhere quiet.’

Nooria gave a dispirited nod. ‘The art storeroom,’ she murmured. Raising a listless arm, she pointed to a door set into the wall a few feet from where they were standing.

Jessie waited, watching Nooria’s clumsily anguished movements as she put her brushes back in their pots, straightened her stool, rubbed her paint-streaked hands down her tunic, activities that looked more designed to delay the inevitable than essential. Walking over to the storeroom, Jessie held the door open.

‘Nooria. Come on.’

Another dispirited nod. ‘Yes.’

The art storeroom was a quarter the size of the main studio, half its height, filtered light from a Roman-blind-covered window casting stripes of light and shade across the artwork stacked against the walls. It only took a moment for Jessie to find Nooria’s stack of canvases, their absence of colour stark against the other artwork, drawing her eye immediately.

The first picture in the stack was a small canvas of a young child – Sami – unmistakably Sami, with his wild black hair and huge dark eyes. The child, Sami, was cringing in the corner of a room, staring at something – something out of frame – his face frozen in terror.
The Shadowman is here.
The painting, a visual record of Sami’s tormented trips to hell.

Jessie bowed her head, feeling hot tears flood her eyes. She couldn’t cry now, not in front of Nooria – had to keep it together for Sami’s sake, if not for her own pride. She heard the click as Nooria pulled the door to the storeroom closed behind them, wiped her sleeve quickly across her eyes. Twisting around, she went straight for the throat.

‘Your daughter didn’t die, did she, Nooria?’

For a fraction of a second Nooria hesitated, then her face found an expression approximating shock. ‘Of course she did, years ago now. She was only a few months old.’ A hard light flashed in her eyes. ‘Anyway, what the hell has my dead daughter got to do with you? That part of my life is my business.
My private business
.’

‘I spoke to Susie Wingrove about an hour ago. Nice woman. She said that Soraya is looking forward to seeing you on Sunday.’

Nooria’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. How dare you! How fucking
dare
you!’

‘I dare to do anything, Nooria,
anything
to ensure Sami’s safety.’

‘His safety,’ Nooria hissed. ‘His
safety
. I’m his mother. He’s safe with me.’

‘Safe? Don’t make me laugh. And don’t bullshit me either, because I know far more than you realize.’ It wasn’t true. She had a fistful of random jigsaw pieces that didn’t slot together. A fistful of jigsaw pieces, and bluff.

Nooria’s hand remained pressed to her mouth. ‘What right do you have to go snooping around behind my back?’

‘You refused to tell me the truth. You left me with no choice.’

‘You were supposed to treat Sami. Just Sami.’

‘What did you expect?’ Jessie asked incredulously. ‘That I would be able to treat Sami with no understanding of where his condition came from and with no likelihood that I would unearth any of the other skeletons that are hidden in your closet?’ Turning to the stack of paintings, she pointed to the first. ‘He’s looking at his father here, is he? The Shadowman. Major Scott?’

The Shadowman. Surely the Shadowman is me?

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Jessie continued. ‘That’s what you both told me.’

Nooria’s breath sucked in on a sob; she didn’t reply. Lifting the painting of the cowering Sami, Jessie laid it carefully to one side. Underneath was a canvas of the same size, a close-up of the Shadowman’s face, Jessie presumed. Except that the features again were blurry, as if out of focus. The impression was hideous, of a ghastly, faceless tormenter.

‘Your husband again?’ Jessie’s voice was full of scorn.

She moved that one aside, saw the one underneath, the silhouette of a child crouching on a beach, the beam of his torch illuminating a rough black sea.

‘Be careful of them … my exhibition,’ Nooria whimpered.

Jessie spun back to face her. ‘Fuck your exhibition,’ she snapped.

She felt like slamming her fist through each of the paintings in turn, except that even she could see that they had been painted by an exceptional talent. And because it would be an insult to Sami, to what he had been through.

‘Shall I tell you what else Susie Wingrove told me? She told me that Colin Starkey is Soraya’s father. That he comes to visit her frequently.’

‘Oh God,’ Nooria said weakly.

‘Except, I don’t get it. Because he’s not, is he? He can’t be.’ She indicated the picture behind her. ‘This man is Soraya’s father, isn’t he? The man who still comes and torments you and Sami. The man Sami calls “Shadowman”. The man that you call “Nightmare”.’

At the mention of ‘Nightmare’, a tiny sob erupted from Nooria’s lips.

‘And this man – the Shadowman – Nightmare – it isn’t Colin Starkey.’

Nooria’s shoulders shook. She looked as if something inside her was going to burst, had already burst. Jessie went over and laid a hand on her arm.

‘Tell me, Nooria. Then perhaps I can help you.’

A single tear spilled from her eye, wound its way down her cheek. ‘Nobody can help me.’

Seeing the torment that had twisted Nooria’s features out of shape, thinking back, a light came on suddenly in Jessie’s brain. Jigsaw pieces clunking together, slotting into place.

‘You thought Scott could help you. Protect you.’

Nooria covered her face with her hands.

‘Take me back to the beginning,’ Jessie said gently. ‘Right right back. How did you meet Nightmare?’

‘I met him in a restaurant,’ Nooria murmured.

‘Where?’

‘In the West End. London. I was sixteen, doing my A-levels.’

‘Were you living at home?’

She shook her head. ‘I was in a bedsit, working as a waitress to pay my way through the rest of school.’

‘Why weren’t you living at home?’

‘I fell out with my mother.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Nooria said wearily. ‘Does it matter?’ A heavy sigh. ‘She didn’t like my choices, that’s all.’

Jessie waited for her to continue, watching her, the pain written into her features.

‘Kheial, he was called,’ Nooria muttered. ‘It means “Nightmare” in Dari and, yes, he lived up to his name. He was an Afghan diplomat. I fell pregnant within six months of meeting him, an accident. I had Soraya when I was seventeen.’

‘And she was born severely disabled?’

Nooria nodded. ‘After I had Soraya, Kheial left me. I didn’t see him that much anyway, as he lives between Afghanistan and England. He couldn’t stand the thought of having a disabled daughter. A daughter is nothing to many Afghan men – meaningless, an irrelevance. A severely disabled daughter …’ She shook her bowed head. ‘Beneath contempt. He suggested that we drown her. He had diplomatic immunity, of course. He was happy to do it himself.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jessie said, the words meaningless in the face of what Nooria had told her. Whatever she said, empty, not enough.

Nooria lifted her shoulders. ‘My fault.’

‘You were sixteen.’

She gave a bitter half-laugh. ‘Sixteen and stupid.’

They stood watching each other across the space, the zebra stripes of dark and light from the window casting an almost physical barrier between them on the floor.

‘Colin Starkey helped you, didn’t he? Why?’

‘Because his mother was in the same situation as I was twenty-seven years ago. She had a severely disabled child, Colin’s younger sister. The dad ran – of course – and she was left with nothing. No money, no support. No one to help her. Colin was only five when his sister was born – half-sister, actually – and he grew up with that impact every day. And a fury that his mother had to cope with all that alone. One of the reasons he joined the Army was to have a stable job so that he could support his mother and sister.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘At an art gallery in Guildford, seven or eight years ago now. We got chatting—’ a rueful shrug – ‘arguing, actually, over some paintings. He loves fine art too. We ended up going for a coffee and stayed in touch. I didn’t even realize that he was in the Army at first.’

‘Why didn’t you marry him?’

Nooria looked down at her hands and sighed. ‘I loved Colin. I still do.’

The door to the storeroom opened and a woman of about their age came in clutching a watercolour of Albert Bridge. She must have felt the charged atmosphere in the room, because she hesitated, her hand on the door handle.

Nooria forced a smile. ‘We’re just chatting, Tracy. Do come in.’

Head down, eyes lowered, Tracy hurried to her stack of paintings, laid the watercolour gently against the others and left as she had come, silently, eyes cast to the floor.

‘I didn’t marry Colin because Colin is gay,’ Nooria said, looking up and meeting Jessie’s gaze.

‘Gay?’ Jessie thought of Colin Starkey in the interview –
the truth will set you free.
The overt sexual aggression he had displayed towards her in that room and later, in the car park. An act to destabilize her, she realized now. Clever.

‘He offered to marry me, but I couldn’t make him live that lie. He’s done enough for me, continues to do so much. I couldn’t destroy his life too.’