Never Tell (41 page)

Huriyyah Rihad, dead at twenty-four, Christmas 1994, two years after the implosion of Society X. I would have been in India by then, sweating in Goa, planning my trip up to Rajasthan, newly graduated. I was busy finding myself, setting out on my new adventure … and she was lying cold in a morgue.

Peggy jabbed at the page again with her cerise fingernail. ‘They tried to cover it up, but it was suicide or drug overdose, I’m fairly sure of it. I remember it now from the
Express
news-desk.’

‘Really?’

‘No one really covered it, though. If you look at this,’ she handed me a photocopy of that week’s headlines, ‘Lord Higham announced the changes to Poll Tax that week, I think. Then he resigned.’

I shivered in distress.

Huriyyah ‘Angel’ Rihad. The girl in Dalziel’s house. The girl on the divan. I looked back at the smiling couple, obviously besotted. I looked at the group of people in the background. I thought one might be Higham.

She had been Ash Kattan’s girlfriend all the time.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I was climbing into the bath when Jen came home. ‘I got ravioli and Häagen-Dazs,’ she called. ‘There’s a letter here for you, by the way.’

She handed me an expensive cream envelope with my name handwritten in thick black ink. I opened it with wet hands, trying not to smudge it. The note inside read:

Like David, line 1, Psalm 32.

I hope this is enough, Rose. You deserve more.

From a friend

When I turned over the postcard, it was a picture from the British Museum of William Blake’s
Albion Rose
, the pale figure slightly plump and girlish before the flaming sun.

I climbed out of the bath and sat, dripping wet, wrapped in a towel in front of Jen’s battered old PC. I looked up Psalm 32. The first line read: ‘Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.’

The handwriting of the postcard was unfamiliar. I turned it over in my hands, searching for another clue, and then I made a call.

* * *

‘You back then? Doing a Russell Crowe?’

Pat and I hadn’t spoken in over a year, but he sounded unsurprised to hear from me.

‘A what?’

‘You know. A maverick truth-seeking journalist on a quest.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I grinned. ‘I’m slightly more svelte than him, I hope. No, I’m just trying to help my husband.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ He sounded uncomfortable.

‘You still in Miliband’s office?’ I changed the subject.

‘By the skin of my teeth,’ he laughed ruefully. ‘So what can I do for you?’

He gave me the address I needed, a road near the Oval Cricket Ground. ‘Just don’t let on it was me,’ he murmured. ‘All right, sweet pea?’

‘Would I?’ I murmured back. ‘Same bank account, is it?’

‘Don’t bother. Save it for something bigger. I might need it one of these days, the way this lot are going.’

‘You are a star, lovely Pat. Thank you.’

‘Cocktails on you, though, all right, Langton?’

‘Soon, Pat, I swear. Soon as I move back.’

I waited outside the great house in the Oval for what seemed like eternity. I used to love this side of my job – the inexorable journey to the centre of the story – but now it just felt depressing, sitting here in the car with a cup of cold coffee. A Filipina maid left and returned with a shopping trolley that she could barely get up the front stairs, just as a group of hooded black boys swaggered down the road. The handsome leader caught my eye, his eyes narrowed, his diamond studs flashing beneath the streetlight. I debated getting out to save her. Then he turned to the small puffing woman and carried the trolley up to the top stair for her in one hand.

There was hope here, somewhere, I felt it. These shores were wide enough for all of us, weren’t they?

A black Mercedes pulled up outside the big house on the end of the row. I got out of my own car now and moved into the shadows.

A slim woman, all long hennaed hair and high heels, got out – and then a man.

‘Ash,’ I stepped forward. ‘Do you remember me? I wonder if we could have a quick chat.’

‘I’m busy, Mrs Miller. I’ve got to get back to the Commons in an hour.’ His handsome face was set grimly – he didn’t look pleased to see me at all. Gently he pushed the woman towards the house. ‘I’ll see you inside, Laila.’

Out on the pavement in the humid street, we eyed each other carefully. I took a deep breath.

‘Please, Ash. I need to know what’s going on.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said diffidently. ‘Where?’

‘I know about Huriyyah,’ I said quietly.

A siren wailed in the distance. Ash stared at me.

‘What do you know?’ he snapped after a long minute. ‘Another scoop?’

‘That you and she—’

‘That your stupid society ruined her?’ He took an infinitesimal step towards me. ‘That she was drugged and raped and that she never was the same again? That she became a junkie afterwards, that she never regained her honour.’

‘It wasn’t my society,’ I said, but I felt my skin burning with shame. ‘And I only ever saw her once. She looked like—I didn’t think it was rape.’

‘Oh, didn’t you?’ he spat. ‘And what does rape look like exactly, Mrs Miller?’

‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled. ‘But at the time, she looked like she was … ‘ I couldn’t say enjoying it exactly, ‘ … complicit.’

Had she though? At the time, maybe, but I remembered my doubts afterwards. My hesitant enquiries into her welfare, enquiries that had come to nothing.

‘A little heroin can help a lot, can’t it, Mrs Miller?’ He glared at me.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘And then a little
becomes
a lot.’

‘But what has any of that got to do with James, Ash? He didn’t give her heroin, I swear. He didn’t have sex with her. I know that for a fact.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He slammed the car door so violently that I flinched. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, your husband’s mess.’

‘It
must
be linked. The coincidence is too great.’

‘All I know, Mrs Miller, is –’ and I felt him set his teeth – ‘all I know is I need to be back in the Commons for a vote at ten – and you need to go. I don’t know anything about your husband, and Huriyyah, well, she died a long time ago.’

‘You must have been very sad. I hadn’t realised she was your girlfriend.’

He glowered at me. He was imbued with utter rage, I could sense it, palpable in the air between us. But I stood my ground. ‘Is your father here?’

‘My father?’

‘Yes.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Mr Hadi Kattan.’

‘No. He’s in Iran. And I wouldn’t believe anything you hear about my father, you know. He’s a chameleon. A shape-shifter.’

‘Really? You sound angry with him.’

‘Mrs Miller, I really am not going to discuss the complexities of my family with
you.’
He was disdainful, rattling the keys in his hand impatiently. ‘So if that’s all—’

‘It’s been adjourned, you know. My husband’s trial,’ I said.

‘Really?’ His surprise was unconvincing. ‘Why would that be?’

‘I’m not sure yet. You wouldn’t know anything about it, I suppose?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he spat. I took a deep breath. I had to press on.

‘So, you buried Huriyyah? Poor girl.’ I was emboldened by his rudeness.

‘Much as I esteemed her, she was weak in the end. Weakness never pays. Look at your great friend Dalziel,’ he sneered.

Unconsciously I clenched a fist. I remembered the Lucifer debate, I remembered the crackling animosity between the two boys.

‘And you, Rose Miller, you need to decide what your path is.’

I was surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you trying to save the world? Or are you just trying to find a story, a headline where there is none?’ He pocketed his keys and stepped towards the house. ‘A terrorist – or an innocent Muslim? A sad drug addict – or an imprisoned daughter?’ He turned away from me, so I could see the beauty spot on his cheek, the elegantly curved nose. ‘A true reporter – or latching on to a
cause célèbre?
Go home, Mrs Miller. There’s nothing for you here.’

He was so angry that he no longer looked handsome, his face so taut, pale eyes wide, and I suddenly realised who he reminded me of. I thought of the first cutting in Peggy’s office. I thought of Lord Higham standing behind Alia Kattan in that early photo, their hands brushing.

I stood watching him as he climbed the front stairs. At the top he turned. ‘You may feel guilty about Huriyyah, though, peace be with her. You may feel that guilt for ever.’

‘But I—’

He slammed the front door in my face.

Wearily I drove back to Jen’s for the night. Crossing the river, Parliament silhouetted against the night sky, I supposed it was Lord Higham who had sent the note, although I guessed I’d never know for sure. Atoning finally for his sins.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Long is the way
And hard,
that out of Hell leads up to the Light
.

Paradise Lost
, Milton

I was sitting in my mother’s garden when Ruth rang to tell me the news. As quickly as it had started, it was over. Three days later, a mistrial was declared. One of the jurors alleged he had been approached by an anonymous source to sway his verdict. At the same time, Saquib Baheev had apparently confessed that he had been coerced to point the finger at James – and suddenly, all charges against James were dropped.

My husband was coming home. I put the phone down and just sat for a while, watching the children finish their tea on the tartan blanket laid on the lush emerald grass. It was a warm, rather sultry evening, given that it was May.

‘You’ve got tomato ketchup on your forehead,’ Alicia was telling Effie. ‘Wipe it off.’

‘Where?’ The little girl put her hand up and smeared the sickly red sauce into her hair. ‘I haven’t. Have I?’

‘Have I got a forehead?’ Freddie said. ‘Where’s my five-head?’

I watched them, feeling such incredible love that I could hardly believe there had been a day when I had even thought I could have run away from them, from my life. The madness had truly consumed me for a while, but now I was calm again.

Calm – but without hope for myself. I had seen hope in Danny, I’d grasped it between my fingers, that was what he had brought me. It kept me going for a while during bleak days, that tiny scrap. But in the end it had got so tattered, so dirty and mauled and torn that there was really nothing left.

My only hope now lay in the children. My one wish now was that their lives would be carefree and easy for as long as I could make them so. They would be enough for me.

I sat numbly in the evening sun, knowing now that James would come home and the children would be ecstatic. Gingerly I pressed the small lump beneath my eye, the lump that had never quite disappeared, vestige of the last back-hander James had given me that cold spring day a year ago. Soon I’d have to tell him that I wanted to leave, that I was taking the children too – and how much longer could they be carefree then?

And all I could think was, tonight is my last night of freedom.

The doorbell rang. My heart leaped. Danny’s final words stayed with me however hard I fought them. ‘I’ll find you, I promise.’ That tiny shred of hope still flickered then, despite my flat despair.

I heard voices, excited, and then my father called out, ‘James is here. Daddy’s home.’ The kids stood as one, screaming with excitement and confusion, and went running inside, tumbling over one another to reach their father first, my mother’s dog barking in frenzy.

For a moment I didn’t get up. I looked down at my hands, at my wedding ring, and I saw the storm clouds reflected in my teacup.

We went back to the perfect house in the country. All this time I had been running, and now I saw there was nowhere left to go. The children were happy here, settled – and I was about to pull their life apart again. For years I had been championing the outsider without realising that I was deliberately making myself one, and slowly I’d begun to realise, too, that it wasn’t the place as much as me. I was rejecting safety, not location. And my children needed safety; so here, for now, we would stay. It finally felt more like coming home; and although we wouldn’t stay in this house, the children and I would stay in the Cotswolds.

From the day we arrived back in Gloucestershire, James and I slept in separate bedrooms. He threw himself into his work and I prevaricated about telling him that one of us had to go. It bubbled unsaid beneath the surface: I figured I’d wait until the end of the long summer holidays, then at least the children could have some time as a family before it was finally torn asunder.

James was different, humbled perhaps. I felt that he too knew that it wasn’t going to work, but he wasn’t going to be the one to broach it. We skirted round the subject of his guilt; I built myself up to confront him finally about it.

And then one morning the phone rang.

‘Let’s just say you’ve got a special friend, darling,’ a woman’s voice said quietly, giving me a time and place to meet. I thought I recognised her but before I could question her, she had hung up.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness
has not overcome it
.

John 1:4, 5

All the way to London, the woman’s words circled round my head like carrion crows. She’d hung up before I could ask more; that silky voice echoing down the years, a voice I was sure I knew and yet couldn’t quite place. One more piece from the nightmare jigsaw the last year had become; one more piece nearly slotted back in.

Off the motorway, the traffic snaked back solid to the Blackfriars interchange. Frantically I watched the clock, creeping forward incrementally, until I could bear it no longer. Abandoning the car on a broken meter I sprinted through the rush-hour fumes, dodging swearing cyclists and the motorbikes that sneaked down the middle, stumbling over the kerb on Ludgate Hill, until I was falling in panic, unable to right myself. A double-decker bore down on me, horn blaring; a builder in a yellow hard hat snatched me from its path in the nick of time, his calloused hand warm on mine. I was too stunned to do much more than blink at him and run on.