Until It's Over (3 page)

Chapter Four

I had a cool, very quick shower and pulled on loose-fitting clothes over my bruises and grazes, wincing. A light skirt, because outside the May evening was balmy and soft; a shirt that would cover my arms; sandals. I had a date with three old friends in Clerkenwell, and I wasn’t going to get on my bike again but travel on the top of the seventy-three bus. Dario came with me, because he, too, was going out. The police were still there. There seemed to be even more of them than before, and now there was also a yellow metal sign on the pavement, just a few metres from the taped-off area, asking anyone who had witnessed anything unusual on the evening of Thursday, 10 May, to contact the police.

‘Do you really think someone’s been murdered?’ I asked Dario.

‘Definitely,’ he said, with enthusiasm.

‘It just says “serious incident”. That could mean all sorts of things. Maybe a car crash. Or a mugging.’

‘There’s an awful lot of police for that,’ said Dario.

We were quite used to muggings in Maitland Road, and to yellow signs asking the public for help, which rarely came. Maitland Road backed on to a rough estate. Gangs of youths roamed the street and hung out in the park, bored and belligerent, trousers dropping off their arses and cigarettes dribbling from their lower lips. They broke windows, threw bins across the road, did their drug deals in the bus shelter where we were standing now, had scuffles that could turn nasty. Where we lived was one of the roads that formed a kind of border between the well-off and the desperately poor.

When Miles, Pippa and I first moved in, many of the houses were crumbling and boarded-up. Gardens were rank with weeds, the only shops were twenty-four-hour news-agents and strange outposts of a previous civilization that sold Crimplene slacks and long johns. The sandpit in the park was full of needles and litter. It was an area that felt abandoned and unloved. Now it was being gentrified. There were still run-down terraced houses and dilapidated squats, but others had been renovated and decorated, inappropriately smart now between their dowdy neighbours. There were Volvos and BMWs as well as beaten-up old Rovers and Fords. Estate-agents’ signs peppered the front gardens, builders’ vans and skips squatted outside gutted houses. The brutal grey and pink blocks, with names like Morris and Ruskin House, were now grim, stubborn, neglected islands.

The bus came and I climbed up to the top deck to stare out as Hackney ended and I was into more genteel Stoke Newington, then more-genteel-still Islington, where lights glittered in terraced houses and all the expensive restaurants were full. I didn’t think about the Maitland Road incident for the rest of the evening. I met my friends and we had a drink, standing outside the pub in the ebbing warmth, then going on for a cheap meal, and back to Saul’s house for coffee. Everyone was tired, but because it was Friday night we lolled about, chatting idly, not willing to leave.

It was late by the time I took the night bus home. The air was cool on my skin now. I thought about sleeping late the following morning, then maybe going with Pippa to the flower market and out for lunch. And I thought, too, about the need to find a new place to live. Three months wasn’t long, just until the end of the summer.

Two police cars remained in Maitland Road. Several teenage boys were standing around the first; as I passed, one kicked the front kerbside tyre, trying to be cool. When I grinned at him, he blushed, suddenly appearing much younger than he wanted to.

‘Hi,’ I shouted, as I pushed open the front door.

Everyone except Dario and Owen was downstairs, sitting round the kitchen table with a couple of empty wine bottles between them. Miles’s girlfriend, Leah, was there as well: the cause of our eviction from the house. I would have expected there to be a certain chilliness in the air, but instead I sensed excitement

‘You missed all the drama,’ said Miles.

‘What drama?’

‘The police were round here, asking us whether we’d heard anything unusual last night.’

‘Really? Did they say what had happened?’

‘Mick was right,’ said Miles. ‘Someone was murdered.’

‘In Maitland Road,’ added Davy, as if that was good news.

‘No!’

‘Yeah.’

‘God, how awful. Who was it? We don’t know them, do we?’

‘No,’ said Pippa. She sounded almost disappointed.

‘Someone called Margaret Farrell, apparently,’ said Davy. ‘We don’t know a Margaret Farrell, do we?’

‘I don’t, anyway,’ I said. ‘Did she live near here?’

‘That’s the thing,’ said Pippa. ‘She lived just a few houses up. Number fifty-four. She was a neighbour, kind of.’

‘Number fifty-four?’ I said. I tried to remember which house that was and who lived there.

‘The house with the dark green door and the tidy front garden,’ said Miles.

‘We went out to have a look at it,’ added Davy.

‘What time was it?’ I asked. I couldn’t get my head round the fact that while we had been safe and warm inside someone was being killed just a few feet from our front door.

‘The police weren’t sure about that. They just wanted to ask us if we’d heard anything unusual during the night.’

‘Only the usual unusual,’ I said. ‘Shouts, people running, things being thrown.’

‘That’s what we said.’ Davy tipped the last of the wine into his glass and held it up to the light. ‘And we gave everyone’s names in the house.’

‘What for?’

‘Routine,’ said Miles, vaguely. ‘I said we were all here last night. They just said we should get in touch if we remembered anything that might be helpful.’

‘Margaret Farrell,’ I pondered. ‘Do they know why? Was she robbed – or what happened? Was it in her house?’

‘No,’ Davy explained. ‘Apparently someone found her body where the bins go, outside the basement front. They said the binmen found her.’

‘No! Just dumped with all the rubbish? That’s horrible.’

‘That’s what I heard. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’

‘But why?’

‘I think she was mugged and they killed her by mistake,’ said Miles.

‘They?’

‘It’s probably the husband,’ said Pippa. ‘It always is, you know.’

‘Do you even know she has a husband?’ I asked.

‘We don’t really know anything,’ said Miles. ‘People keep passing on rumours and suspicions and by now they’re flying round the street, getting more and more bizarre. Everyone’s talking to each other at last. Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘Very ironic,’ agreed Leah. I started. I’d almost forgotten she was sitting there, composed and elegant, her hands lying placidly on the table.

‘Scary,’ I said, with a little shiver. ‘Right on our doorstep.’

But then the conversation drifted on to other things. Davy was doing his Portuguese homework, I picked up a magazine and started browsing through it. Miles used the remote control to turn on the TV. We watched a programme in which two experts redecorated somebody’s flat and made it look much worse than before. Then we watched a cookery programme, which featured ingredients I had never even heard of. We were just starting to watch a film, the sequel to something none of us had seen, when there was a clatter on the stairs. Dario burst into the room. ‘Turn the TV on!’ he shouted.

Miles looked round. ‘It
is
on,’ he said.

‘Change channel. I was watching upstairs. No, give me the fucking control.’

He changed the channel. A photograph of a woman appeared on the screen, then the picture cut to a local newsreader. I had only seen the face for a second but it was enough. ‘It was –’ I began.

‘Shut up,’ said Dario, turning up the volume so that the speaker in the television rattled with the sound.

‘… the body of fifty-seven-year-old Margaret Farrell was found yesterday evening,’ said the suddenly booming voice. ‘Police have begun a murder inquiry…’

I heard something about appealing for witnesses and house-to-house inquiries, but we were too excited to stay quiet.

‘Margaret Farrell – She’s Peggy!’

‘Peggy!’

‘We saw her last night,’ said Davy, in a voice of awe. ‘Me and Dario and Astrid. We saw her.’

‘What? When?’

‘Peggy! But it was Peggy who knocked me off my bike.’

And so it was that the following morning, instead of having a lie-in, a hot bath, an hour in the garden tending my vegetables and a stroll down to the flower market, Dario, Davy and I found ourselves sitting in the local police station, waiting to be seen by PC Jim Prebble. The horrified euphoria of last night had died away. We were tired, the reception area was drab and depressing; outside it was drizzling. Davy had a stye under his left eye and seemed to be coming down with a cold. But Dario was in the worst state: he had had only a couple of hours’ sleep and we had dragged him out this morning without even a cup of coffee. What’s more, he had a paranoid dread of the police. They made him feel guilty even when he was abiding by every letter of every law. So he sat there, looking like the accused, pasty-faced and fidgeting with anxiety, his eyes glancing rapidly round him.

And when at last we were called in to see PC Prebble, in a small, square room with chairs for only two of us, and the shutters closed, it was an anticlimax. Prebble was a small, stocky man with a bumpy face, like a potato, and a bristle of grey hair. He took our names and address, and heard our account of seeing – and, in my case, being hit by – Margaret Farrell, known to us as Peggy.

‘What time was this?’ he asked, picking up a pencil.

‘About half past seven,’ said Davy. He was standing behind Dario and me.

‘Around seven o’clock,’ said Dario, at the same time.

‘No, it was nearer eight,’ I said. ‘Five to, something like that. I remember because I thought I’d be late for our house meeting, which was supposed to start at eight, so I was very conscious of the time and in a rush. Which was why I hit the car door so hard.’

‘So. At just before eight you saw Mrs Farrell?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘Yes, well, not really. I think I swore a bit.’

‘You did,’ said Davy, behind me. Dario sniggered.

‘And what did she say?’

‘I don’t really remember. Sorry. She kept saying sorry.’

‘She wanted to call an ambulance,’ said Davy.

‘And she offered to pay for the bike,’ added Dario. ‘She won’t do that now. You can ask her husband instead.’

‘Dario!’ I hissed, but Prebble didn’t appear to notice.

‘And that was all?’ he said.

‘Yes. Sorry.’

‘You didn’t see her after that?’

We shook our heads.

‘You didn’t notice what direction she went in?’

‘It’s a bit of a blur,’ I said. ‘I only remember her shoes clearly.’

‘Her shoes?’

‘I remember lying on the ground and seeing them coming towards me. Sensible brown lace-ups. I think I might have been a bit concussed. I remember I had this vague impression there was someone else nearby, beside Dario and Davy.’

‘Nope. It was just us,’ said Dario, firmly.

‘So it was only the two of you?’ asked PC Prebble. ‘Sure?’

‘Yes,’ said Dario.

‘Yes,’ echoed Davy.

‘Right. You two, then, did you see where she went after the accident?’

‘We were helping Astrid into the house,’ said Davy. ‘I didn’t really pay any attention. We wanted to get her inside so she could lie down. She was quite cut up.’

‘Show him your bruises,’ said Dario.

‘No!’

‘But you’re clear it was around eight?’ Prebble seemed puzzled. There was a deep ridge running between his widely spaced eyes and he ran his hand over his bristle. I watched as it flattened, then sprang back into place.

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm,’ he said.

‘We just thought we ought to report it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s probably not relevant.’

‘No,’ he mused, chewing the end of his pencil and gazing down at the single line of writing. ‘But it’s good of you. You can never tell what will be helpful and what not.’

‘Have you got any idea who might…?’

‘We’re gathering information. Did any of you know Mrs Farrell?’

‘Not really,’ Dario said.

‘I don’t remember even seeing her before,’ said Davy. ‘But, then, I haven’t lived there long.’

‘Ms Bell?’

‘She was just Peggy,’ I said. ‘Part of the street, a bit out of place, maybe, although I think she’d lived there for ages. Much longer than all of us, at any rate.’

‘In what way out of place?’

‘She just looked, well, like someone who should be living in the suburbs or something,’ I said. ‘In a neat house surrounded by orderly neighbours. She seemed respectable, as if she belonged to an old England that’s disappeared. Certainly from round here anyway. She wore what Miles calls coffee-morning clothes.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning clothes to go to a coffee morning in, casual but smart, you know. I don’t think there are many coffee mornings round Maitland Road.’

‘So she didn’t belong?’

I was beginning to understand what it would feel like, being a witness in a trial. The casual, vaguely gossipy remarks we’d made about poor Peggy were being pinned down, scrutinized and given a weight they simply didn’t possess.

‘Maybe none of us belongs. People come and go. Everything’s changing, shifting, all the time. That’s why I like it. It’s like a film, not a photograph. You know?’

Prebble chewed his pencil, then carefully picked fragments of wood from the tip of his tongue. ‘Hmm,’ he said at last. ‘So are you aware of her being a victim of racist attacks?’

‘No!’ I wished I’d stayed silent. ‘I’m not really aware of anything.’ I turned in desperation to Dario. ‘Are you?’

‘Why me?’ asked Dario, shiftily. ‘Why should I know?’

‘She was a neighbour,’ said Davy, ‘but we didn’t know her. That’s London for you, isn’t it? We just happened to see her on the day she died.’

‘Was murdered.’

‘Yeah. And that’s it. We’re not much help.’

Prebble didn’t look particularly surprised or disappointed. Just tired and a little bored. We trooped out and stood on the pavement in the drizzle.

‘Well, we’ve done our duty, for what it’s worth,’ said Davy. ‘Let’s go and have coffee and talk about something else.’