Well, it’s Tuesday again and time for another session with my wives. This afternoon, however, we are to be enlivened by the presence of DS Paula Powell, who is coming to interview my student, Jamilleh, about the mystery woman in the niqab. I have suggested that Paula comes at the end of the class because I don’t want her fluttering my chicks at the start so that we can’t get any work done, but I shall stay around to help with the interview if help is needed. That’s this afternoon, though. This morning I am helping DCI Scott to interview my colleague, Malcolm, about his phone call from Karen Brody. Helping the police with their inquiries. I’ve always liked that phrase: so tactful and so far from the truth. Help is something willingly given, isn’t it? Witnesses aren’t said to be helping the police, nor members of the public who join in those hopeless searches for the missing, and yet that is exactly what they are doing – helping. Instead the phrase is reserved for those who are not feeling particularly helpful, those who have been transported or summoned to a police station, where the voluntariness of their help becomes uncertain at best, and so the use of the phrase is disingenuous, I would say, but also charmingly tactful. I particularly like reports that the police have applied for extra time to question someone who is helping them with their inquiries. I ask myself just how helpful a person can be.
Anyway, today I am not helping the police but being helpful to them. When David finally responded to my phone message yesterday evening, I set up a meeting between him and Malcolm for this morning, and now here we are in Malcolm’s very neat office, sitting on hard chairs and nursing the very strong instant coffee which Malcolm has just proffered. I know what Malcolm has to tell, as he told me all about it yesterday, but I’m here to see fair play and make sure that Malcolm isn’t bullied. David would like me to go away but Malcolm has insisted on my presence, so here I am, being helpful.
‘The thing is,’ Malcolm is saying, ‘our director doesn’t know I’m talking to you. I raised the matter with her but she doesn’t feel our information is specific enough to be helpful and, of course, we do avoid giving information to the police, if we can, because it undermines potential callers’ trust in our confidentiality.’
‘The point is, David,’ I chip in, ‘can’t this be off the record, this conversation, at least? Then if you think—’
‘Gina,’ he says, putting his coffee mug down on the floor, ‘shall we establish some ground rules here? I am a police officer, Malcolm is a witness. This is an interview, not a conversation. We understand the Samaritans’ position but if, when this case comes to trial, we feel that Malcolm’s evidence needs to be heard in court then we will issue a court order requiring the director of Marlbury Samaritans to appear in court and it will not be up to her to decide whether the information is specific enough or not. In the meantime, I am going to ask Malcolm some questions, he is going to answer them and I am going to note anything that may be relevant to our inquiry. I respect Malcolm’s wish to have you here but I’m asking you to keep quiet and to speak only if Malcolm or I ask you to.’
I can feel myself going scarlet and I have to bury my face in my mug and take a scalding gulp of coffee. How dare he speak to me like this, this man who is, occasionally, referred to by me as my beloved? And in front of Malcolm? There is a danger that tears of fury will rush into my eyes so I have to make a performance of choking and coughing in order that they can be attributed to the scalding coffee. ‘God, Malcolm,’ I gasp histrionically. ‘Are these insulated mugs? I’ve taken the roof off my mouth!’
They both watch me in silence. ‘Well, go on,’ I say when I have given myself time to recover my aplomb, and I wave my coffee mug permissively. ’Get on with it. Don’t just sit there.’ I sit back with what I hope is a convincing air of amused insouciance and consider ways of punishing David.
I survey the range of options from keying his car to cutting up his best suit to (favourite at this moment) never speaking to him again, but none of these feel quite right – not exactly fitting for the crime. Humiliation is what I require. I would like some embarrassing photos that I could distribute among his colleagues – something to raise a snigger and demean him in their eyes – but they won’t exist, I know. Look wherever you like, you won’t find a photo of David Scott off his face, dancing with his shirt off or wearing antlers. Just at this moment I can’t decide whether this is one of the reasons why I love him or why I hate him.
When I emerge from this reverie, Malcolm is speaking. ‘I had spoken to her once before,’ he says, ‘and she told me her name was Karen.’
‘What did she ring to talk about?’ David asks.
Malcolm looks uncomfortable and I could intervene but I’m not risking another put-down, so I keep schtum.
‘She’s dead, Malcolm,’ David says. ‘Confidentiality hardly matters, does it?’
Malcolm compromises. ‘She had worries,’ he says. ‘Single mother, husband in prison, isolated, short of money.’
Nothing you couldn’t read in the paper, I think. Good one, Malcolm!
‘You say you spoke to her once before her last call. Was that it? Once?’
‘I think so.’
‘But she may have spoken to other Samaritans as well?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And did she talk about suicide?’
‘Not to me, but when I first heard about how she’d died I thought it was suicide and so, of course, I felt—’
‘Did you ask her if she was suicidal?’
‘We always ask.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said—’ He shoots a glance of appeal at me; I glance at David. ‘She said she wasn’t,’ he continues.
‘And the last call, when was that exactly?’
‘I checked it in our log. On Tuesday 17th at 17.10 she called, and the call lasted about three minutes.’
I can feel David become instantly hyper-alert; it is as though he is suddenly emitting radar waves. ‘You’re sure of that, are you?’ he asks in an even tone that belies his body language. He is writing stuff down for the first time.
‘Yes. It’s second nature to check the time when we take a call.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she had some information that the police ought to know about but she dared not go to them.’
David has become very still. ‘Did she say what the information was about?’ he asks quietly.
‘No. I think – I think she was going to. She asked me if we could pass it to the police and I started explaining about confidentiality, but she said, “But you pass on bomb warnings to the police, don’t you? This would be like a bomb warning.”’
‘She was thinking of the IRA days?’
‘Yes.’ Malcolm turns to me. ‘Sometimes when the IRA wanted to give a bomb warning they would ring the Samaritans. Because they knew we were there twenty-four-seven. They used a particular form of words – a kind of password – so we would know if they were genuine, and then we would let the police know. It never happened in Marlbury, of course, but it did in some branches.’
‘How did she know about that?’ David asks. ‘It wasn’t common knowledge.’
‘She must know someone who’s a Samaritan.’
‘Or have been one herself?’ I mutter.
‘What did you say to her?’ David asks.
‘I said the bomb warning procedure was an exception and we didn’t pass other information to the police or to anyone else but I could see that she had a difficult decision to make and we would support her in making it.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She got quite emotional – said that was no good – and then she broke off the call.’
‘Just put down the phone?’
‘No. I could hear a dog start barking and then she said to someone, “Go upstairs, go on,” and then she cut off.’
‘Did you get a sense of who she was talking to?’
‘I—’ He gives a puff of frustration. ‘I think she said Lara, but I can’t be sure. I read in the paper that her daughter’s name was Lara and I’m not sure whether I’ve invented that.’
‘When you were talking to her, could you hear a TV in the background?’
Malcolm looks surprised but thinks about it, eyes closed. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘OK.’ David picks up his undrunk coffee, stands up and puts his mug on Malcolm’s desk. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I will probably need to talk to you about this again.’
Malcolm takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. ‘I take it,’ he says, ‘that I was the last person to talk to her before her killer did.’
‘It seems likely.’
‘Well,’ Malcolm says, ‘I thought for a while that I was the last person she talked to before she killed herself and the child, so this is better, I suppose.’
‘Better for you,’ David says. ‘I’m not sure about her.’ And he leaves.
*
It takes a while to talk Malcolm down from the state of agitation David has left him in. I don’t like to leave him because he is a semi-recovered alcoholic and this is the kind of thing that could send him out for a bottle of vodka, so we go to the SCR for a proper cup of coffee and discuss some work issues before I go to my office to deal with emails. The only message of any substance is one from the vice-chancellor’s secretary asking me if I will make an appointment to see the VC at my earliest convenience. This can only be bad news. I have had no trouble from him over the past year; ever since he interfered outrageously in a disciplinary case involving one of my students, succumbing, quite frankly, to bribery by her father, he has been at pains to avoid me. He actually runs away from me. Once he hid behind the drama studio. So, if he is summoning me to his presence it can only mean that I’ve given him a reason to shout at me or that he feels he has got one over on me and he wants to flaunt his triumph. (Got one over on me – isn’t that a wonderful phrasal verb? It’s a very sophisticated non-native speaker who can come up with that one.) I delve into my memory for anything I may have done in the past few weeks that would give him an excuse to yell and I come up empty-handed, so it’s triumphing I have to expect, I suppose. I flag the message but do nothing about the appointment. He can wait.