Those People Next Door, page 18
Sato was outraged. ‘They can’t behave that way. Let me call Matthew. He’ll know what to do.’ She reached for her phone, making a show of calling her husband who worked in corporate law.
‘No, stop it.’ Willa was aware that she had embellished her story somewhat, making Salma and Zain more aggressive and intentional than they actually were. ‘I just want to move on.’
Sato rapped the table. ‘But you can’t just let this go!’
‘I don’t think it’s worth pursuing,’ said Willa. ‘The healthiest thing is to move on.’ She did not tell them that she had already retaliated. Her friends were cynical and even a little spiteful, but even they would think her extreme.
Amelia cut in. ‘Hon, you process this how you need to, okay? Don’t let anyone tell you what is and isn’t right.’ She threw a look at Sato.
‘And how are you feeling now?’ asked Sophia.
Willa traced the tines of her fork. ‘I’m fine. It was a shock obviously, but at least I have Jamie.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘And I can fucking drink again!’
Her friends tittered, but their laughter was shallow and hesitant; clearly designed to humour her. Sato beckoned a waiter and ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Willa tried to stop her to no avail. With Tom’s job gone, it seemed obscene to spend so much on drink – but Willa couldn’t admit this, so she smiled instead and said, ‘What the hell.’
They were dithering over dessert when Willa got the phone call. Her friends fell quiet, but she waved them on and took her call to the corner of the restaurant. Tom’s voice shook as he ordered her to Barkingside Police Station, then paused, and directed her to the hospital instead.
‘The A&E at King George,’ he said. ‘Ask for Zain Khatun at the desk.’
The figure on the grass was clear now: Zain, inanimate, his skull braced by large red blocks. The purple of his hoodie against the dark green formed the colours of Wimbledon, a fact that Salma registered even as her mind unhinged itself. The sound she made wasn’t shrill like a scream queen’s but a guttural wail – low and ferocious. Bil pelted out of the room. Seconds later, he appeared in their garden and moved through the gate into Tom’s. In her daze, Salma was awed by her husband: by his quickness and decisiveness as he fought his way to their son. He moved to different vantage points to give the medics space, then shouted up to Salma.
‘He’s breathing!’
Salma moved to join him, but her limbs were slow and unwieldy. She stumbled downstairs and into the garden. She felt queasy when she saw him. His skin was pallid as if death had already begun to claim him.
The paramedics worked with a quiet efficiency. They spoke in muted tones, but Salma caught an appalling pair of words: spinal injury. She backed away and Bil caught her in his arms. She tried to pull free, squirming back and forth to throw him off, but he held on firmly. Salma didn’t want a harness on her madness; she wanted to rage and roar; to stamp violence into the soil.
Bil tightened his grip as the paramedics lifted Zain onto a yellow stretcher and manoeuvred him into the house. Salma spotted Tom in his kitchen window, surrounded by four officers. He looked at her with glazed exhaustion. He seemed on the verge of calling to her but the officers drew him away. Questions fired in her head: Why is Zain in Tom’s garden? Did he fall? Did he lose his footing or…?
Bil bundled her through their own house to meet the paramedics on the other side. The ambulance was leaving already and they followed in their car. Salma snapped at Bil for lagging too far behind and he skated past the speed limit to try to keep up. This small infraction made Salma quail with shame. How cruel that in a crisis, her instinct was to turn on him. Bil touched her knee, a brief brush, granting her forgiveness before she had even apologised.
In the hospital, they sat for hours in A&E as sounds and shapes moved around them. In this place of decay, motion was a lifeforce: the pump and hiss of a ventilator, the steady green beats on the screen of a monitor. Stasis was a killer – so what did that mean for Zain?
When the news came, she received it with a strange civility, as if collapsing in the corridor might inconvenience the doctor. Zain was in a coma, he said. The trauma to his brain was severe and while most patients recovered within a few weeks, they couldn’t say more at this stage.
‘Do you have any questions?’ asked the doctor.
Salma just stared at him, her horror so profound that sound could not escape it. The doctor understood; told her gently that she would have other chances. It was only after he left that her legs buckled beneath her. The tears came in low, pathetic sobs – her grief leaking slowly lest it drown them all. For a long time, she wept but Bil made no effort to comfort her and when she reached for him, his embrace was stiff and mechanical. That small disloyalty felt like an unmooring. In all their time together, Bil had been her constant: strong, cheerful, generous. And kind when she couldn’t be. Now he just stood there, pallid and bare. Salma dug her nails into his body in a bid to rouse him, but he didn’t seem to feel it, or her, or anything.
Tom sat in the muggy interview room and listened to the drone of a generator. His underarms felt sticky and he raised his elbows at an odd angle to try to avoid the moisture. The room smelled of McDonald’s and he wondered if some coppers had sneaked their lunch in here.
The door opened and two officers walked in. The man was white, grey-haired, gym-toned but with a slight paunch, on the short side with a meaty nose. When he sat down, Tom caught the reek of smoke. The woman was Black, younger but frumpy with shoulder-length hair and a fringe she kept blinking off. She wore an ill-fitting suit that sagged around her chest and smelled of cheap detergent.
‘Are you comfortable?’ she asked. ‘Need anything? Tea? Coffee? Water?’
‘No,’ said Tom.
‘I’m DC Martin,’ said the man, ‘and this is DC Rayner.’
Tom wished that the woman wasn’t here. He knew how to bond with men like Martin. Unlike his colleagues at Sartre who would drop their t’s around tradesmen and awkwardly call them ‘mate’, Tom was comfortable around working-class men. Rayner, however, threw him off with her sloppy manner but critical gaze. She ran through some formalities and Tom tried hard not to fidget in case it signalled guilt.
Rayner smiled at him kindly. ‘Can you tell us in your own words what took place today?’
Tom tried to order the pieces in his head. It had happened in a matter of minutes.
‘Tom, we’re not trying to catch you out, okay? We’re trying to put together a picture of what happened and we very much need your help.’ She planted her elbows on the table. ‘Let’s start simply: you told officers on the scene that you found Zain Khatun unconscious on your lawn. When was the last time you spoke to him?’
Tom told himself to deal with this one answer at a time. ‘He lives next door so I see him a few times a week.’
‘Okay, and when was the last time you had a conversation with him?’
‘A couple of weeks ago.’
‘Can you tell us what that was about?’
Tom urged himself to be calm. ‘We had a bit of a tiff. We’ve lived in that street for seven years and never had any problems, but since the Khatuns moved in, it’s been constant.’
‘What do you mean by “constant”?’ asked Rayner.
‘Normal neighbour stuff, but…’ He sighed to signal exhaustion. ‘They started getting aggressive: posting about me and my family on social media. They even filmed me once and put it up on Twitter.’
‘How did that make you feel?’
Tom realised that no one had asked him this before – not his colleagues, his friends or even Willa. ‘It felt like a violation,’ he said.
‘You felt violated?’
He squirmed at the phrasing but said, ‘In a way, yes.’
‘Were you angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you confront them about it?’
He paused, weary of a trap. ‘No. I wanted to stay out of their way.’
‘So how did you come to have a tiff with Zain?’
Tom explained what had happened that Friday when Salma came to take Lola. He tried to stick to the facts, knowing that showing his anger would not serve him well. Rayner was clearly sniffing for a motive and he was damned if he were to hand her one.
‘Did you report any of this?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but the police didn’t do anything.’
Rayner blew out her cheeks. ‘That must have been hard on you.’
‘Yes, but I understood.’
‘Oh?’
‘A thing like that is hard to prove.’
She eyed him curiously. ‘So you still thought Zain was at fault?’
‘Wouldn’t you? If it weren’t for him, we’d still have our baby.’
‘I sense some anger,’ said Rayner.
Is that a question? he wanted to say. ‘You would be right,’ he said instead.
‘Do you want to tell us about that?’
Not really. ‘My wife and I were trying for a baby for a very long time. I know what happened was an accident, but it’s hard not to feel bitter. My anger isn’t aimed at Zain but the situation.’
‘I see. And in the intervening weeks, did you see Zain in passing?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were these civil?’
‘We didn’t talk to each other, so they were neither civil nor uncivil.’
‘Okay.’ Rayner glanced at a sheet of paper. ‘You told the arresting officer that you came home to find Zain in your garden at around 5.50 p.m. Where were you when you spotted him?’
‘I was in the kitchen washing my hands and that’s when I saw him. I ran out because at first I thought it was Jamie but then I saw the black hair. I saw that he was still breathing, so I called an ambulance straight away.’
‘Did you go upstairs at any point?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
Rayner laced her fingers. ‘Tom, it’s really important that we get this bit right, okay, so I want you to think about it carefully. You walked into the house and straight into the kitchen. You didn’t go upstairs at any point before the police arrived?’
‘That’s right.’ He looked from Rayner to Martin. ‘Why?’
‘What if I told you that a witness saw you on your top-floor balcony minutes before you called an ambulance?’
Tom’s face twisted in seeming amusement – a nervous tic that he hated. ‘What witness?’
‘Come on, Tom. Tell us the truth. Did you go upstairs?’
‘Is there really a witness?’
‘There is, Tom, and they’re certain that they saw you.’
He searched for a way to explain this. ‘They must be mistaken.’
Rayner was disappointed. ‘Okay, fine, Tom.’ She waved at Martin as if to say I can’t be bothered with this.
Martin took over and as the interview drew on, Tom grew in confidence. There seemed to be no strategy in their line of questioning. It zigzagged from the day of the accident to the weeks before it, bouncing from did you check Zain’s pulse? to how long were you trying to have a baby? Tom settled into a rhythm, certain that he could outwit them.
As the hours drew on, however, he noticed that Martin was repeating certain questions but posing them differently, subtly testing the consistency of what Tom was saying. The realisation perturbed him and he became distracted as he scanned back through his answers, searching for discrepancies. Damn him for getting complacent.
‘I’d like to speak to a lawyer please,’ he said, cutting into Martin’s question. He saw the two coppers exchange a look.
‘Very well,’ said Martin. He stopped the tape and shrugged his blazer back on.
Tom cringed when he saw that he had left the label on the sleeve. ‘You’re meant to take that off,’ he said, unable to help himself.
Martin looked at the offending patch of material with a stricken look on his face.
Tom smiled kindly. ‘I thought it would be helpful to know.’
Martin nodded bluntly. As he guided Tom from the room, he subtly pulled off the label and secreted it in a pocket.
Tom tried to mask his satisfaction. He didn’t enjoy making people feel small, but he did want them to understand the extent of their faux pas. Martin led him into a cell and Tom looked around, feigning nonchalance. The last thing he wanted was for this two-bit cop to know that he was rattled. ‘Not quite the Four Seasons,’ he quipped, but his voice was too loud and jovial, clearly rigged with artifice. He waited for a comeback, hoping they might spar a while, but Martin just shrugged and walked out, leaving him alone in the airless box.
Even then, he didn’t quite believe that he would not be walking out of this, which was why when his solicitor appeared hours later, he greeted the woman brightly. She was white, gauntly thin, with mousy brown hair in a middle parting. She barely wore any make-up, which gave her a harsh mien – not a bad trait in a lawyer.
Tom folded his arms across his chest, then unfolded them straight away. He wanted to appear neutral, unassuming, inoffensive. Not guilty.
‘Tom,’ said the woman. ‘I have some bad news.’
He grew rigid.
‘The CPS are charging you. They think you pushed Zain.’
He blinked dumbly, unable to absorb the news.
‘They’re charging you with attempted murder.’
And just like that, the illusion shattered.
Part II
Chapter 13
Salma sat outside the head teacher’s office, waiting to be summoned. The clock overhead seemed to tick too fast, wilfully intrusive. The door snatched open and George stuck her head out.
‘Come in, Salma. Sorry to take up your lunch. I wanted to catch you before you left.’ She attempted a look of sympathy. ‘How are you?’ she asked, the emphasis on the middle word, a tip no doubt from her leadership training.
‘I’m okay.’ Salma didn’t know what else to say because the truth was that, even after all these months, she still felt short of breath, the slam-bulk of tragedy still pressing on her chest.
‘Zain’s still the same?’
Salma hated this question. It had been five months since his fall and though there were few outward signs of improvement, it didn’t mean he was ‘the same’. He had moved out of a coma into what doctors called a ‘continuing vegetative state’. She didn’t say this to colleagues, however, because they assumed that ‘vegetative’ was worse when in fact it showed progress. ‘More or less,’ she answered.
‘I know the trial starts on Monday and I just wanted to check if there’s anything else we can do.’
Salma searched for something to ask for just so she could leave. George had already allowed her to switch to a part-time schedule and take time off for the trial. She was unceremonious, but also big on mental health. Her own father suffered from bipolar disorder – a fact that she had confided at last year’s Christmas party. Salma gave her a weak smile. ‘The extra leave is more than enough.’
George folded her birdlike hands. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t offer you more.’
‘Not at all.’ Salma knew how hard it was to give teachers term-time leave and hoped that the trial would be finished in the allotted two weeks.
George glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I better let you get to your class. Please know that my door’s always open.’
‘I appreciate that.’ Salma shook George’s hand, feeling a little emotional.
Outside, the halls were busy, the students heading to their post-lunch lesson, drunk on sugar and sun. Unlike other teachers, this was Salma’s favourite period. The children were fed and watered and feeling a little weary, but not so much that they lagged. She walked to her classroom and the pupils filed in noisily.
‘Pop quiz, hotshot,’ said Ritesh.
Salma looked over at him, feeling her mood lift a little. ‘Go on.’
‘There are two doubly landlocked countries in the world. What are they?’
A smile played on her lips. ‘At least challenge me.’
‘Well then?’ he asked tartly.
She shrugged as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Liechtenstein.’
Ritesh smiled. ‘Okay, correct. And?’
‘And the other one’s easy,’ she said.
‘Ah, she’s stalling!’ cried Tara.
‘We got her. We finally got her!’ Ritesh stood and did a little two-step.
‘You did not get me.’
‘Well?’ he said, still dancing. He caught her glance at the map on the far wall of the classroom and moved into her line of sight, even though it was much too far to see.
She leaned back in her chair and laced her hands behind her head. ‘Uzbekistan.’
‘You cheated, miss!’ said Tara.
‘We saw you looking!’ cried Patrick.
Ritesh shushed the class. ‘Okay then, what are those two countries surrounded by?’
Salma swatted the question away. ‘Enough of this. I’ve got a class to teach.’ They roared with indignation but she swiftly quieted them. ‘Come on. Take out your textbooks please.’
This class, these kids, were a glimmer in the murk of her grief, crowding her with their persistent cheer. It was they who had calmed her rage when Tom had been granted bail. It was they who had soothed her nerves when the trial loomed like a spectre: a woman in white at the foot of her bed or a babadook creeping across her ceiling. When she couldn’t move, it was her work that pulled her onwards.
And now she was finally here: at the cusp of a trial in which ‘guilty’ was meant to be a panacea. But would any of that matter if Zain never woke up? In that case, no sentence given to Tom would ever be enough.
Willa chewed the soggy pellet of fish beyond any taste or texture and forced herself to swallow it. She gulped from her glass and winced at the taste in her mouth: greasy fish and vinegar mixed with cheap red wine. She dreaded these evenings. She resented dressing down for Donna lest she comment on Willa’s ‘fancy habits’ despite their struggles with money. She resented eating this food and this gritty wine they brought every week and insist she open for the meal. She thought she would get a respite in the weeks before the trial but the schedule grew more rigid, as if Tom might crumble if he went one week without his mother.
