Psychologist VICKY NEWHAM grew up in West Sussex and taught in East London for many years, before moving to Whitstable in Kent. She studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University. Turn a Blind Eye is her debut novel. She is currently working on the next book in the series.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Vicky Newham 2018

Vicky Newham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008240684

Version: 2018-09-17

PRAISE FOR TURN A BLIND EYE

‘A remarkable portrayal of a crime investigation in modern, multi-cultural Britain’

Paul Finch, Sunday Times bestselling author of Ashes to Ashes

‘A clever, gripping debut with a courageous DI at its heart’

BA Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors

‘Maya is wonderfully complex and human’

James Oswald, Sunday Times bestselling author of the Inspector Mclean series

‘A sensational debut; a current, timely police procedural featuring a DI like none you’ve ever seen. I loved this book!’

Karen Dionne, author of Home

‘Perfectly recreates the melting pot cultural atmosphere of East London; punchy and twisty. A terrific start to an important new series’

Vaseem Khan, author of the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency series

‘Assured and beautifully crafted, with a tempting array of clues to keep crime lovers glued to the pages’

Amanda Jennings, author of In Her Wake

‘DI Maya Rahman is the heroine I’ve waited a lifetime for’

Alex Caan, author of the Riley and Harris series

‘A fresh and enthralling read which smacks of authenticity. A different take on the usual, tired detective story, too. I loved it’

Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

‘Slick, fresh and current’

Mel Sherratt, author of The Girls Next Door

‘Stands out from the crowd. Filled with cryptic clues, this will keep you entertained throughout’

Caroline Mitchell, author of Silent Victim

For my father, who believed in kindness.

‘You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.’

—WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1791)

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Kala Uddin Mosque, Sylhet, Bangladesh Thursday, 21 December 2017 – Maya

Wednesday, 3 January 2018 – Steve

Wednesday – Maya

Wednesday – Maya

Wednesday

Mile End High School, 1989 – Maya

Wednesday – Dan

Wednesday – Steve

Wednesday – Maya

Wednesday – Steve

Wednesday – Maya

Wednesday – Steve

Wednesday – Dan

Wednesday – Steve

Brick Lane, 1990 – Maya

Wednesday – Maya

Wednesday – Dan

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Steve

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Dan

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Steve

Mile End High School, 1995 – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Limehouse Police Station, 2005 – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Dan

Thursday

Thursday – Maya

Thursday – Dan

Thursday – Maya

Mile End High School, 1991 – Maya

Friday – Maya

Friday – Steve

Friday – Steve

Friday – Maya

Friday – Maya

Friday – Steve

Friday – Maya

Friday – Maya

Friday – Steve

Friday – Maya

Friday – Steve

Saturday – Maya

Saturday – Dan

Saturday – Maya

Saturday – Maya

Sunday – Maya

Monday – Steve

Monday – Steve

Monday – Maya

Monday – Steve

Monday – Maya

Monday – Maya

Monday – Maya

Monday – Maya

Tuesday

Tuesday – Steve

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Steve

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday

Tuesday – Steve

Tuesday – Maya

Tuesday – Maya

Wednesday – Maya

Acknowledgements

Extract

Friday 5th April, 2019, Brick Lane, East London – Rosa

Q&A with Vicky Newham

About the Publisher

Kala Uddin Mosque, Sylhet, Bangladesh Thursday, 21 December 2017 – Maya

No amount of crime scenes and post-mortems could have prepared me for seeing my brother’s charred remains, wrapped in a shroud in the mosque prayer room. Out of the casket, and on a trolley, his contorted limbs poked at the white cloth like twigs in a cotton bag.

Since receiving the news of Sabbir’s death, I’d teetered on the water’s edge of grief. Imprinted on my mind were images of him burning alive in his own body fat, skin peeling away from his flesh. I imagined the flames using his petrol-doused clothes as a wick. And here, now, beneath the camphor and perfumes of the washing rituals, undertones of burned flesh and bone lingered.

In the dim light, surrounded by Qur’an excerpts, it was as though the walls were leaning in. My legs buckled and I folded to the ground, knees smashing on the concrete beneath the prayer room carpet. Tears bled into my eyes, and my hijab fell forwards. All I wanted was to curl into a ball on the floor and stay there forever because my kind, sensitive brother was nothing more than a bag of bones and a handful of teeth.

Burned alive in his flat in Sylhet.

My sister was beside me now on the floor, kneeling. ‘Get up,’ Jasmina muttered in my ear. ‘Remember what the imam said.’ She slotted her arm through mine. Hauled me to my feet and turned me to face the mihrab for prayers.

‘In the name of Allah and in the faith of the Messenger of Allah,’ said the imam.

His words rang out like bells from a far-off village.

In front of us, his back filled my view. I had a sudden image of standing behind white robes at the hospital in London twenty years ago when thugs beat Sabbir into a coma. Hadn’t that started it all? Sent him scuttling back to Bangladesh?

I scanned the room for an anchor. Took in the bulging bookcases, and the carved wooden screen which separated my sister and me from the four local men who’d carried in the casket. It was the medicinal smell of camphor that returned me to familiarity: when we were children, and had a cold, Mum would put a few drops on our pillow. Yet, despite the memories, Bangladesh hadn’t been my home for over thirty years.

The imam was asking for Sabbir to be forgiven and I felt the storm of anger swell.

‘Sssh,’ Jasmina hissed into my hair. ‘Maya. Look at me.’ She straightened my hijab and pinned it back in place. Licked her thumb and dabbed at my tear-streaked face.

But he hasn’t done anything wrong, I wanted to yell.

Five minutes later, and despite the humidity, it was a relief to be in the open air of the cemetery. How tiny the grave looked for my big brother.

The imam’s face was tight, and his cheek twitched with the misgivings he’d relayed to us over the phone. It will mean a woman positioning the bones in the grave, he’d said.

I removed my shoes and clambered down the rope ladder into the pit. The sweet smell of freshly dug soil filled my nostrils. It squished, soft and yielding beneath my toes, cold on my skin.

From above, Jasmina passed me Sabbir’s shrouded remains.

The imam’s cough was urgent.

I’d forgotten the dedication.

‘In the name of . . .’ I couldn’t say it.

He took over. ‘In the name of Allah, and by the way of the Messenger Allah . . .’

I carefully positioned my brother’s bones on the soil.

Femur.

Pelvis.

Laid his skull on its right cheek to face Mecca, the way the imam had shown me.

Then, in my periphery, something small scampered across the mud, brushing my foot. The scream was out of my mouth before I could muffle it and I hurled myself at the ladder. A man appeared at the graveside. In one swoop he raised a spade and sliced it down into the pit, on top of the animal and inches from my feet. Spats of fresh blood speckled the white shroud and my bare toes.

The imam raised his hands to either side of his head. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ he chanted. Then recited quietly, ‘You alone we worship. Send blessings to Mohammed.’

I imagined Sabbir’s clothes pulling more and more of his body fat into the orange, red and yellow flames as he burned alive.

‘Allahu Akbar. Forgive him. Pardon him. Cleanse him of his transgressions and take him to Paradise.’

His muscles drying out and contracting, teasing his limbs into greasy, branch-like contortions.

The imam gave the signal for the wooden planks to be placed on top of the shroud. Then the soil.

Beside the grave now, I pushed damp feet into my shoes. Took out the poem and, with Jasmina’s arm round my waist, read it aloud. Sabbir’s favourite: about the boy who waits for his preoccupied father to come and give him a hug before bed.

As the words of the poem echoed through me, I felt my brother’s suffering as though it were my own. I saw, more clearly than ever, how kind Sabbir had always been to others and how events over the years had eroded his faith that the unkindness that others had shown him would stop.

I closed the paperback and held it between my palms.

Dignified sorrow, the teachings stipulated.

And three days to grieve.

Yet Sabbir had endured a lifetime of anguish and was gone forever.

Wednesday, 3 January 2018 – Steve

Steve sat back in the plastic chair, squashed between two colleagues. Today was the start of the spring term at Mile End High School and he’d managed to turn up for the first day of his new job with a hangover.

‘Good morning, everyone. Welcome back.’ Linda Gibson, the petite head teacher, stood at the rostrum and surveyed the hall with an infectious grin. Her blue eyes danced with energy. ‘First of all, apologies for the lack of heating. I believe the engineers are fixing the boiler as I speak.’ She raised crossed fingers. ‘They’ve promised to perform miracles so we can all get warm and have lunch.’

Laughter ricocheted round the hall where the hundred-strong staff sat in coats and scarves, the room colder than the chilled aisles at the supermarket.

‘I hope you all had a lovely holiday,’ she continued. ‘I’m delighted to share good news: Amir Hussain, the year ten boy who was stabbed on Christmas Eve, is out of intensive care and doing well. In the sixth form, offers of university places have begun to trickle in.’ She paused. ‘Two final updates. Kevin Hall sadly had a stroke on Boxing Day, and Talcott Lawrence will step in as chair of governors until the end of term. Lastly, OFSTED notification could arrive any day.’

Nervous chatter skittered round the room.

‘There’s no cause for concern.’ Linda quickly raised her hand to reassure. ‘The inspectors will quickly see what a brilliant school we are.’ She gestured to the awards that hung proudly on the walls of the school hall.

Linda’s words floated over Steve’s head. All he’d been able to think about since arriving at the school that morning was when he’d be able to get to a shop for some Nurofen – but, despite his befuddled mental state, optimism began to tickle at him for the first time in months. After his last school in sleepy Sussex, he’d longed to escape mud and meadows and return to the vibrancy of East London, where he’d grown up. Hearing Linda speak, he felt sure he’d made the right decision – even though his head was swimming with information and everyone’s names were a blur. What an idiot he’d been to start drinking last night. After the long flight home from New York, the plan had been to have an early night. Why the hell hadn’t he stuck to it? To add to his regrets this morning, he’d read through his drunken texts to Lucy while he waited for the bus and cringed. What a twat. Hadn’t he promised himself he wouldn’t plead?

Linda was still talking. ‘We were all devastated by the suicide of Haniya Patel last term, and her parents have asked me to convey their thanks for our support.’

Steve’s phone vibrated in his pocket. His heart leaped at the thought it might be Lucy replying – and then sank. That was never going to happen. He had to focus on getting through today without making a prat of himself. This job was the new start he needed.

‘It’s a tragedy we’re all still coming to terms with.’ Linda’s voice was solemn. ‘In your e-mail you’ll find details of her memorial ser—’

A loud click sounded and a cloak of darkness fell on the hall. Stunned, the room was silent for a second, followed by whispered questions and nervous speculation.

‘We seem to have hit another problem.’ Linda’s voice came from the front of the room. ‘Can I suggest we all reconvene to the staffroom? I’ll find the caretakers.’

*

An hour later, the staffroom resembled the late stages of a student party. Gaping pizza boxes lay empty on every horizontal surface, and the room honked of warm fat. The engineers had got the heating working again, and although the lights were back on, the power cut meant they’d had to order in pizzas for the whole staff.

Most people were still eating chocolate fudge cake when the assistant head, Shari Ahmed, stood up and tapped on her mug with a biro. ‘Sorry to disturb you, everyone. Could we have a volunteer to nip along and tell the head we’re waiting for her? She must’ve got held up with the caretakers.’

‘I’ll go.’ Steve’s hand shot up. Result. Senior managers delegated everything in schools, which usually pissed Steve off, but it was a chance to get some air. And hopefully a fag.

‘Thanks,’ said Shari.

From the main corridor, Steve made his way through the ante-room where the head’s secretary worked, and approached the door to Linda’s office. He knocked and stuck his ear to the opening. Couldn’t hear anything. He knocked again, pushed the door open and walked in. ‘Mrs Gibson? Are you there?’

The room was in complete darkness. After the brightly lit corridors, he couldn’t see a thing. Disorientated, he stumbled into the room, right hand groping ahead for the lights. The tips of his shoes, and his knee caps, butted against a hard vertical surface, propelling him forwards. Arms flailing, he fell, landing on his front on something soft and warm and—

His senses exploded.

Hair was in his mouth and on his tongue. In the black of the room, the smell of human skin filled his nostrils, and he could taste sweat and perfume and – ‘Christ.’ Adrenaline spiked into his system as he realised it was a person underneath him. His limbs struck out like someone having a seizure, wriggling and writhing. With a push from his legs, he raised his trunk but his arms struggled on the shifting mass beneath him. Soft skin brushed his cheek. Hair forced its way from his tongue into his throat. Instantly his bile-filled guts retched, and his pizza shot over whoever was beneath him. ‘Oh my God.’ It was a low moan. Propelled by revulsion, his hands scrabbled, finally gained a hold and he heaved his core weight upwards and back onto his feet. Straightened his knees and stood up. His head was spinning.

Whoever it was, they were still warm. And if they weren’t dead, every second was critical.

Eyes adapting to the darkness, he made out the door nearby and lurched over, drunk with alarm. One hand landed on the architrave while the other grappled for the lights. Nothing that side. Ah. He flicked the switch.

Squinting in the brightness, he absorbed the scene.

The curtains were shut. An upturned chair. The desk surface was clear and objects littered the carpet. And on her back, on a deep sofa near the door, lay Linda. Her wrists were bound with cloth, and were resting on her belly. Hair – the tangle he’d had in his mouth – lay like a bird’s nest over her forehead. Steve’s vomit speckled the cream skin of her face and gathered at the nape of her neck. Hold on. Were those marks round her chin or was it the light?

And her eyes . . .

What the hell should he do? He knew nothing about first aid. And schools were sticklers for procedures. He’d have to get Shari.

Steve stumbled through the door into the office and corridor, aware every second counted. He traced his steps back to the staffroom, careering round corners. Relief swept over him when he saw the room was just as he’d left it: pizza boxes and people.

Shari frowned when she saw Steve arrive back alone. She scuttled over to meet him at the door, adjusting the hijab round her flushed face as she moved. ‘Is everything . . .? Where’s Mrs Gibson?’

‘Could I have a word?’ Steve’s stomach was churning. He slid to the floor. No. I can’t throw up here. Not in front of everyone.

Slow breaths.

‘Yes. Of course.’ The older woman’s eyes narrowed with concern. She stood over Steve. Waiting.

‘It’s Mrs Gibson . . . I think she’s dead.’

Wednesday – Maya

The sound wrenched me awake. Trilling. Vibrating. Sylhet dreamscape was still swirling, and I had no idea where the noise was coming from. Fumbling for the alarm clock on the bedside table, my clumsy fingers sent objects crashing to the floor.

It was my mobile, not the clock. Why the hell hadn’t I switched it off?

‘Rahman.’ I cleared my throat. My body clock was still adjusting after Sabbir’s funeral and a day spent travelling.

A woman’s voice came through. ‘This is Suzie James from the Stepney Gazette. There’s been a suspicious death at Mile End High School and —’

‘A what?’ Suzie’s name was all too familiar. ‘How did you get my number?’

‘A suspicious death. It’s your old secondary school so I was hoping for a quote for the paper.’

The groan was out before I could catch it. ‘Who’s dead?’ I was wide awake now, synapses firing. I groped for the light on the bedside table.

‘It’s the head, Linda Gibson. Would you like to comment?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. This is the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘The thing is, I’ve got parents asking questions and —’

‘Okay, okay.’ I flung the duvet back and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. A whoosh of cold air hit my skin. Suzie James would always write something, regardless of how much she knew, so it was better to give her the facts. ‘Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the school and find out what’s going on.’

‘Ta.’ The line went down.

I threw the phone down on my bed and moved across the room to open the blinds. From the window of my flat, the canal was serene and green in the afternoon light and ducks weaved through the shimmering water. A jogger shuffled along the tow path from Johnson’s Lock. In the distance, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf loomed against a thundery backdrop. I rested my forehead against the glass. What was I doing? I was on compassionate leave until tomorrow. Then I remembered the poem I’d read at Sabbir’s funeral; how much my brother had suffered. Wasn’t this why I did my job – to bring justice to people who should never have become victims? Nostalgia flooded through me as I recalled my first day at the school in year seven, and how the place quickly became my lifeline. Just as it would be now for other kids like me. There was no way I was going to let the school’s reputation nosedive. I had to find out what was going on.

Wednesday – Maya

On the main road, a few minutes later, the traffic was solid in both directions towards Bow. In front of me, a lorry, laden with scaffolding, clattered along behind a dirty red bus, while a shiny black cab sniffed its bumper. Ahead, at Mile End tube station, the carriageway snaked under the Green Bridge, from which school pupil Haniya Patel had hanged herself in the small hours four weeks earlier. Driving under it, I held my breath.

Soon I was off the main drag, and the grey fell away. Yellow brick houses lined the streets in elegant terraces, holly wreaths on their ornate door knockers. In the afternoon light, Christmas fairy lights twinkled in bay windows. They were so pretty. I’d left for Sabbir’s funeral in such a hurry I’d not put my own lights up, and it was pointless when I got back. Outside the Morgan Arms, the beautiful red brick pub, smokers and vapers huddled beside the window boxes of purple pansies, sharing the chilly air. Up ahead, flashing blue lights cut through the slate grey sky.

When I pulled up, uniformed officers were struggling to contain members of the public within the outer cordon. Family members scurried about, indiscriminately seeking information and reassurance from anyone who could give it; others stood in huddles, no less anguished, simply shell-shocked and immobilised. The outer cordon covered an enormous area, far bigger than I remembered the school being. Round me, engines droned and vehicle doors slammed.

I’d clocked Suzie as I was parking and told her to wait for me. I headed over to a uniformed officer who was standing at the main entrance to the school. I’d met PC Li several times.

‘Hi, Shen. Who’s the SIO?’

‘DCI Briscall, but he’s not here. DS Maguire’s over there.’

‘Who?’

‘He’s new. That’s him.’ She pointed at a man with ginger hair and urgent movements.

‘Okay, thanks.’ I surveyed the area outside the cordon. ‘Could you get me a list of everyone here, and their connection to the school?’

‘Sure.’ Shen took out her notepad.

I approached the man she’d gestured to. ‘DS Maguire?’

He whirled round and I was struck by his milky white skin, all the more pronounced by a crew cut.

‘I’m DI Rahman. I was expecting DCI Briscall…’

‘He’s at a meeting with the Deputy Assistant Commissioner. He’s sent me.’ His vowels had a twang, and his sentences rose at the end.

I was trying to think of a polite way of asking how he’d got on the team. ‘I don’t think we’ve met?’

‘I’m a fast-track officer.’

‘Ah.’

‘Don’t worry. I know we aren’t popular. I’m all up to speed.’ He waved his warrant. ‘Done a three-month intensive in West Yorkshire, a sergeant rotation, and passed my exams.’ He stopped there. ‘Aren’t you meant to be on leave?’

‘Until tomorrow, but never mind about that.’ This was a shock, but now wasn’t the time to debate the merits of the Met’s fast-track programme. ‘I’ve just had a call from a local reporter. She said the head’s dead.’ I used my eyes to indicate Suzie, who was holding court with a bunch of parents and locals. ‘If she doesn’t get some facts soon, she’ll make them up. If Briscall’s not coming, you’d better fill me in.’

*

Twenty minutes later, I’d dealt with Suzie James and was in the school canteen with the Murder Investigation Team. With its swimming pool acoustics and tortoise-slow broadband, it wasn’t ideal as a temporary incident room but it was a vast space with plenty of tables and chairs. Twenty-four hours ago I was on a long-haul flight home, and now I was perching at one of the tables by the serving hatch. The surface was sticky and I longed for a decent chair to sit on, rather than the plastic kiddie seats that were bolted to the floor. Round me, the investigation team was gearing up. Colleagues were installing our technology, setting up the HOLMES connection and erecting partition boards. DC Alexej Hayek stood, muscled arms folded and legs apart, bellowing instructions and gesturing, as though he was directing traffic. His clipped Czech accent lent authority to what he thought should go where. With DS Barnes suspended, and Briscall more interested in hob-nobbing with his seniors than covering my post, I wasn’t surprised when he accepted my offer to curtail my leave and appointed me SIO. If any of my colleagues wondered why I was back early from compassionate leave, they knew better than to ask.

I’d been mapping out our main lines of enquiry in my notepad. We were in the golden hour of the investigation, so these were organised round evidence gathering, witness interviews and suspect identification. Our quickest evidence source was going to be social media ring-fencing: once we found out from Facebook and Instagram who was in the school area between 12 noon and 1 p.m., we could target-interview those individuals.

As I surveyed the room, I remembered standing in line at that exact serving hatch, as a nervous eleven-year-old. The room seemed so much bigger then. Now, I imagined the cohorts of hopeful kids who, like I had, came here to learn, their lives ahead of them, their dreams in their hands. They’d be anticipating the first day of school now. For many, that would mean end-of-holiday blues. But not for everyone. I remembered how desperately I’d longed for the gates to open again after the lonely stretch of the holidays. Had any of today’s students come from the same part of Bangladesh as us?

On my laptop, I was watching Linda on the school video. I’d met her at a number of community events, and found her warm and engaging.

‘At Mile End High School we’ve achieved something unique.’ Linda’s eyes shone with pride, and passion radiated in the muscles of her face. ‘Since the school opened in 1949, we’ve made it our mission to welcome all pupils from our continually changing community. We value all ethnicities and creeds equally, so you can be confident that your sons and daughters will learn and thrive in an atmosphere of wellbeing and safety.’

‘I suspect that’s going to come back to haunt her.’ The Australian accent yanked me back into the present.

I jumped. ‘Jeez . . . Do you always creep up on people?’ I paused the video.

Dan Maguire stood in front of me, holding out a packet of chewing gum. ‘Are you always this jumpy?’

Touché.

His pale skin and ginger hair were unusual. When he’d joked earlier about not fitting the bronzed Australian stereotype, he wasn’t wrong. Irish heritage, he’d said. Hated water and had a sunlight allergy.

I waved the gum away. Recalibrated. ‘Sorry. It’s this place. Weird being back here after all this time.’

‘I’ve been reading up on Haniya Patel. Doesn’t seem she felt safe either.’

I heaved in a breath. ‘No. Her death was a tragedy but nothing suspicious.’ I shivered and pulled my woolly scarf round my neck. ‘I don’t remember this place being so draughty. Don’t they have the heating on?’

Dan’s face was blank. ‘You think you’re cold? I went from summer in Australia to winter in the North of England. Back home my kids are swimming at Coogee Beach every day.’ He zipped up the neck of his jumper as if to support his point. ‘Dr Clark is downstairs at the crime scene with the CSIs if you’re ready to conduct a walk-through. And I’ve put the teacher, who found the body, in an office.’

‘Yup.’ I got up. Bundled my notebook and pen into my bag. Questions shot through my mind about Dan’s appointment but they’d have to wait. ‘I’m officially back off leave. I’ve told Briscall, who was delighted to hand over the SIO baton so, hopefully, we can get cracking.’

‘Good.’

I followed Dan across the canteen to the door, pushing down the awkwardness that was circling between us. A few minutes later, we were walking along the main corridor on the ground floor towards Linda Gibson’s office. My mobile rang. It was Alexej from the incident room.

‘Until we have a media liaison officer, put all press calls through to me,’ I replied. ‘The last thing we need is a sensational headline splashed on the front page. I’ll compile a holding statement.’ I rang off. ‘So much for sorting Suzie James out,’ I said to Dan. ‘She’s interviewing parents and the national news teams are on their way.’

‘It’s inevitable.’ He shrugged.

It was strange having a new team member. DS Barnes had been careering towards Professional Standards for years, but I’d got used to the way he and Alexej worked.

‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s make a start on this crime scene.’

Outside Linda’s office, Dan and I reported to the guard, pulled on forensic clothing and followed the common approach path. It was a large room with floor to ceiling windows, and thick brown curtains pushed to the side. The first thing that hit me was the smell of vomit. Dotted round the room, crime scene investigators were quietly dusting for fingerprints, bagging up evidence, taking measurements, drawing plans and taking photographs. Objects had been knocked over. So, there’d been a struggle.

I headed over to Dougie McLean, the crime scene manager.

A grin darted across his features when he saw me. ‘I thought your flight only arrived back last night? You look shattered.’ He reached towards me, but he must’ve caught my frown as he retracted his arm quickly.

‘It did. You know me. Can’t see my old school in trouble, can I?’ I tucked my hair behind my ears and shifted into work mode. ‘What’ve we got?’

‘No sign of forced entry.’ He gestured to the windows. ‘The killer must’ve walked straight through the door.’

‘Prints?’

‘Lots. As you’d expect for a school. But a high cross-contamination risk. The guys have found some footprints and are still checking for blood and saliva. There’s a good chance of exchange materials, particularly fibres, hair and skin.’

‘Have we got a cause of death?’

‘Strangulation.’

I cast about. Objects were strewn round the room. The computer monitor, keyboard and telephone were in a tangle of cables on the floor, surrounded by several silver photograph frames. Soil, from a dislodged pot plant, was sprinkled over the cream carpet like brown sugar, and Linda’s office chair lay on its side several yards from the desk. It was as though someone had made an angry sweep of the desk surface or even hauled Linda’s petite frame over it.

Swarms of photographs adorned the walls: year groups, award ceremonies, openings, school plays, and sports days. Hundreds of lives in one room, all brought together by the school and Linda. What a terrible loss this woman was going to be.

Over by the corpse, the photographer was packing away his equipment.

‘Maya?’ Dr Clark, the pathologist, signalled for me to come over.

It was my first look at Linda’s body. Close up the rancid smell of vomit was more intense. A watery pool of it had collected at the bottom of her neck, with lumps of food speckling the white blouse on her chest. The perky face I’d seen on the video was barely recognisable; her delicate features had already swollen and her skin was blotchy. But it was her eyes that caught my attention, bulging from their sockets, bulbous and staring, the whites bloodshot. Beneath each socket, in a semi-circle, broken veins and congestion were forming dark channels. It was as though the killer had wanted to squeeze the life from her; to squeeze the eyes out of her head while they watched her suffer; to squeeze the last breath from her throat and lungs so she could never utter again.

‘Where’s the vomit come from?’ I was absorbing the scene in front of me.

‘Unless it was our killer, my guess is that whoever found her threw up over her.’ He moved closer to the body. ‘D’you see here?’ His gloved finger pointed at the reddish marks that were creeping through the surface of the skin on her neck. ‘I’ll be able to tell more after the post-mortem but these’ he pointed at fingernail gouges beneath her jaw ‘are probably defence wounds. The CSIs have taken nail scrapings. It’s likely the killer was squeezing her jugular vein and carotid artery, and crushing her windpipe, so she would have been gasping for breath immediately, and probably trying to pull their hands off her.’

Seeing Linda’s bloated face, with broken blood vessels and bruising spreading by the second, what struck me was that she would’ve known she was going to die. And that her last few moments of life weren’t going to be with her family but with someone who wanted her dead. She would have died while looking into the eyes of her killer.

‘You can see the swelling in her neck. Her tongue is engorged and has been bleeding where she’s bitten it.’ Dr Clark faced me. ‘There’s a good chance she scratched her killer’s face or pulled their hair. Even poked them in the eye.’

‘Any signs of sexual assault?’

He shook his head. ‘Not that I’ve seen. She has a small frame. Wouldn’t have taken much to overpower her.’ He moved closer to the body. ‘My guess is there was a struggle over by the desk, and she was killed on the floor or on the sofa, but Dougie’s team will know more.’

Had there been an argument and things had escalated? Or was this premeditated? One good thing was that strangulation involved high levels of contact: combined with the struggle, there was a good chance that fibres and hair from the murderer had transferred onto Linda.

On the cushion beneath her head, dark brown hair splayed, ruffled in places. Below her waist, her wrists rested at her solar plexus, bound together with a piece of white cloth. If the killer had simply wanted her dead, why had they tied her wrists?

‘Yes, the forearms are interesting.’ Dr Clark must’ve seen me looking. ‘She has numerous scars. See, here?’ He pointed to Linda’s wrists, which had been positioned so that the left one faced upwards and the right one crossed it. On the inside, at angles across the veins, cut marks had healed into white scars, some thinner than others, now almost blended into her pale skin. Others were jagged and thick, raised and pinker in tone.

‘The other one’s the same.’ He raised her hands gently so I could see. The right one had fewer scars, but they were more jagged. ‘I would imagine she was right-handed.’ Dr Clark placed her arms at rest.

I gulped. The cut marks upset me. Shocked me, even. They seemed unexpected in a head teacher. Or perhaps they were simply at odds with the smiling face I’d seen in the school video. ‘How old are those likely to be?’

‘Twenty years or so. No new ones. I’d put her as mid-to-late-forties. Extinguished while she was in her prime. Shame. She did well for this school. My brother-in-law is on the board of governors. It was heading for special measures when Mrs Gibson was appointed. He said she was a nice lady.’

As my eyes drifted back to the sofa, I noticed two evidence spots had been marked out. ‘What was here?’

‘I’ve checked the exhibits register.’ Dan came over. ‘One was a Chanel lipstick. The other was a piece of white card, with lettering on it. I’ve got a photo of it here.’ He passed me the image.

‘Some sort of ancient writing.’ I inspected it more closely. ‘And it was left by the body?’

‘Correct,’ said Dan. ‘Her handbag was knocked on the floor. The lipstick probably came from that.’

I studied the image. Passed it back. ‘Thanks. I want to know what it means. Can we get a translation ASAP?’

‘Sure.’

‘Before you head off, Doctor, anything else I need to know?’

Dr Clark took a final glance at the body and let out a long sigh. ‘Not really. It’s tragic. A scandal of this sort could send the school’s reputation plummeting.’

‘Not if I can help it. This place will be a source of stability for hundreds of kids.’ My attention travelled round the room. ‘And Linda clearly cared a lot about it.’

‘Ah, yes. I’d forgotten you’re a local.’ He chuckled. ‘Good to see you back. Dougie was worried you’d stay in Bangladesh.’ Dr Clark and I weren’t too far apart in age but his avuncular manner had become a habit we indulged.

I laughed. ‘Doubt that. Dougie knows better than anyone, if anywhere is home for me, it’s here.’ I changed tack. ‘When can you do the post-mortem?’

He checked his watch. ‘Unlikely I’ll get it done this afternoon. I’ve got two others to do tomorrow morning but I’ll bump yours up the queue. I’ll call you when I’ve finished.’

I returned my attention to Linda. On her back on the sofa, her petite frame and height made her resemble a young girl. Slender limbs and tiny hands created an impression of vulnerability that, in the flesh, was at odds with the vitality that exuded from the photographs and the school video.

‘Poor woman,’ I said to no-one in particular. Protectiveness had begun to stir in me. Who had crept into this woman’s office and strangled her while the staff were having lunch? What had Dr Clark said? Chopped off in her prime. The only way we could help her now was to find her killer, and try to soften the blow for her family and friends.

By Linda’s desk a CSI was documenting the photographs, which had been flung round the room. These were the first hint of Linda Gibson’s personal life. They showed her with a man, both swathed in hats, woolly scarves and padded mountaineering jackets, smiling together on a hill, arms round each other.

‘Presumably this is her husband?’ I turned to Dan. ‘How is he?’ It wasn’t just the greying hair. The man’s clothes and mottled skin tone suggested he was a good ten years older than Linda. Next to this was a close-up of the same man. Kindness emanated from his features. Soft, intelligent eyes and a warm demeanour.

‘Still in the Royal London Hospital. They’re monitoring his heart and blood pressure. He hasn’t taken the news well. Not long retired, apparently. Medical grounds.’

I took a closer look at the man in the photographs. Perhaps ill health accounted for him seeming older? It was hard to tell when Linda radiated so much energy and strength.

I was keen to get cracking with the investigation. Lines of enquiry were settling into place in my mind. The writing on the card was likely to be the killer’s signature, and it was a good place to start while the forensic data were being processed.

Beside me, Dan was swiping at his smartphone.

‘What d’you reckon that writing is?’

‘I can tell you.’ He enlarged the text and showed it to me. ‘It’s Pali. Part of a system of ethics. From a set of five ancient Buddhist precepts.’ His pale face was alight. ‘This one is the second precept and translates as: I shall abstain from taking the ungiven, whatever that means.’ He screwed up his face, clearly no wiser than me.

Buddhist precepts? Bound wrists and strangulation? It looked like this was a ritualised killing – and rituals always held enormous significance for the murderer. They also involved careful thought and planning.

What was Linda’s killer trying to tell us?

Wednesday

The precept says:

adinnadanna veramani sikkhapadam samadyani

I shall abstain from taking the ungiven

A Buddhist would say that where coercion is used, whatever is obtained hasn’t been freely given. That includes manipulation and exploitation. Instead, we are encouraged to do the opposite of taking: to give without any desire for thanks or benefit.

I know you believed that your role gave you the right to make decisions, but surely someone in your position should have exercised discernment? Shouldn’t you have put the needs of the vulnerable before your own selfish desires?

Mile End High School, 1989 – Maya

All summer I’ve been wondering how this moment would feel. With each step along the corridor the knot in my stomach tightens. Lockers line the walls ahead like a metal tunnel, so much bigger than the ones at primary. All the classroom doors are closed. Everyone else has arrived on time and they’ve started without me.

A tired ceiling light flickers. The corridor of scuffed linoleum yawns ahead. Today it’s the rush and hurry that I feel in the small of my back, pushing me on, but for a moment it reminds me of Heathrow airport, the day we arrived. Of being herded along endless tunnels with the others from our plane, in the wrong season’s clothes. Past faceless officials shouting things we couldn’t understand, as we left one world behind and were jostled into another.

Muffled voices bring me back to the present.

Giggles ricochet off the metal lockers and excitement bubbles up. New things to learn, new people. But anxiety soon dampens my eagerness: I knew my class at primary school but I’m not going to know anyone here.

Sabbir is a few steps ahead of me, his gangly legs striding forwards. He tugs the arm of my hand-me-down blazer with one hand, carrying my bag in the other.

‘Come on,’ he keeps urging. ‘You aren’t the only one that’s late.’

I’m glad my brother’s with me. Not Mum, whose spokesperson I always have to be. Or Jasmina, whose poise and beauty means I may as well be invisible.

‘Here we are,’ Sabbir announces finally when we arrive outside one of the closed doors. He checks the room number, peers in and hands me my bag. ‘I’ll meet you at the front entrance at 3.45 p.m. Okay?’

My guts crunch again, and I screw up my face to say don’t leave me, attempting to swallow down the panic that’s creeping into my chest. ‘How do I know what subject they’re doing?’ It’s a croak. My throat has dried out on the silent walk to school.

Taller than me, he ruffles my hair with his hand.

‘Don’t.’ I dodge out of reach, smoothing the everywhere hair that I’d brushed and brushed this morning to try and get under control.

The classroom door opens inwards, and suddenly a frowning face is in front of us, all lipstick and powdery skin. ‘Can I help you?’ The woman glances from Sabbir to me and looks me up and down.

She’s seen the pins in my skirt. The floor draws my gaze like a magnet.

‘Sorry she’s late,’ Sabbir mumbles. ‘Our mother isn’t . . .’ His voice dies out.

Inside the room I hear chatter swirl. And giddy, first-day-of-term laughter. The sounds are amplified like when we go to the public baths to have our showers.

‘And you are?’ The voice has an accent.

Sabbir nudges me and I raise my head.

She’s peering at me, as if she’s used to having her questions answered immediately.

And now I wish Jasmina was here and then the woman would look at my sister and not me, and ask her questions instead of me. I swallow hard. You’ve practised this. Come on. ‘Rahman.’ Then louder, ‘Maya Rahman.’

‘Oh yes.’ The frown’s still there beneath a thick fringe. ‘The Bangladeshi girl. I wasn’t sure whether to expect you.’ She steps back. ‘You’d better come in.’ She leads me into the classroom with a swish of her patterned skirt, and Sabbir fades away as I’m swept in front of a cascade of faces, and rows of tables, not like the individual desks at primary school.

Everyone freezes the moment they see me, halting their conversations and their carefree laughter to stare.

‘Now, year seven,’ the woman announces, with a chirpy lilt, ‘this is Maya Rarrrman.’ She presents me with a flourish of her hand, like I’m a stage act.

There I stand, weighed down by dread, swamped by my sister’s old uniform, with my raggedy hair and my funny surname. And the fear leans in: you aren’t the same as them.

On the giant pull-down board there’s writing. I can’t read it. It’s not English and it’s not Maths.

‘We’ve just started to introduce ourselves in French,’ the woman says, as if she read my mind. ‘Je suis Madame Bélanger. Bonjour May-a.’ Her pasted smile does little to reassure me, and all I can think about is that everyone’s still staring at me and I can’t take in a word she’s saying and I haven’t a clue what she said her name is.

The room smells like stale crisps. I’m searching for a free seat.

‘Do you want to sit on the end there, next to Fatima?’ The teacher points to a grey table, wagging her finger. ‘Fatima, bougez-vous, s’il vous plaît? Voilà. You can have my chair.’ She picks up her seat, sets it down next to the wall and pats the back rest. ‘You can be friends, you two, n’est-ce pas?’

I take my bag over and perch.

‘Alors, on continue,’ the woman says as she glides back to her desk and surveys the class.

All the sounds merge together now. My senses swim and I eye the door. I can make it if I run. Throat tight, my eyes fill up. I blink and blink, determined not to dab them, and wipe my nose rather than sniff conspicuously. All the time I’m thinking, it wasn’t meant to be like this.

And I’m wondering whether I would feel different if Mum or Dad had come with me.

Wednesday – Dan

As soon as Dan entered Roger Allen’s scruffy office, two things struck him: Allen was out of favour, and was at the bottom of the management pecking order. Scuffed walls were crying out for a lick of paint, and two of the ceiling lights were on the blink. It gave a very different impression from the showroom of Linda Gibson’s office and the swish reception area.

Steve Rowe cut a dejected figure in a chair behind the desk. Trackie top. A face full of stubble. Mid-to-late twenties. A rookie.

Maya took the lead. ‘Mr Rowe? I’m DI Rahman and this is DS Maguire.’

It was a small space and there wasn’t much choice about where to stand. On a dusty cork notice board, a newspaper article was two years out of date, and someone had pinned a flyer for a new breakfast club next to a leaflet on pregnancy advice.

The guy was leaning over the desk, a blanket pulled round his shoulders. Dan got a waft of stale booze mixed with tinges of sick. He looked rough. All the staff were in civvies for training day but this guy could’ve just got out of bed.

‘I understand you found Mrs Gibson.’ Dan stood back and watched his new colleague at work. Maya’s manner was gentle. You wouldn’t mess with her, but she cared. That was obvious. ‘What made you go into her office? Weren’t you all eating lunch?’

‘Yes, we were, but I’d finished and I wanted to get some air. Today is my first day here and I was feeling a bit . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Overwhelmed. When Mrs Ahmed asked for a volunteer to go and fetch Mrs Gibson, I jumped at the chance. Thought I’d nip out for a fag.’

‘And why was Mrs Gibson not with you all?’

‘I’m not sure. She left the hall when we had the power cut. Said she was going to find the caretakers. I got the impression she was planning to join us in the staffroom straight after. But it took a while for the electricity to come back on and someone suggested ordering pizzas.’

‘I see. How well did you know Mrs Gibson?’

Rowe frowned. ‘Hardly at all,’ he said. ‘I met her a few months ago at my interview. Would’ve been October. Then again when I came into the school for my induction day in December. And obviously today. She kicked off the staff meeting before lunch.’

‘What was your impression of her?’

‘She seemed friendly. And passionate about the school. I got the feeling the staff liked her.’ Rowe took a swig from the mug in front of him. ‘Is Mrs Gibson . . .?’ His words petered out and he swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry. I’m shattered. I got about an hour’s sleep last night and had a couple more drinks than I intended. I keep seeing her eyes. Bulging. And her face was all swollen. She’s dead, isn’t she?’ The words came out in a splutter.

‘We can’t say at the moment, I’m afraid. There has been a very serious incident. You’ve had a nasty shock. Have you got someone at home this evening to look after you?’

‘I’m staying with my sister. She should be home after work.’ His complexion looked pale and clammy.

‘You might want to lay off the drink this evening.’

It would’ve been easy for this to sound patronising but it didn’t. And it was true: he looked dreadful.

Rowe blushed. Glanced at Dan in embarrassment. ‘I’m sure I come across as a right numpty, getting drunk the night before starting a new job.’ He paused, as if he was thinking about what to say. ‘I’ve just got back from visiting my fiancée in New York – she dumped me. My own stupid fault.’ His voice trembled and his hands were shaking.

Dan felt sorry for him. It had seemed odd to turn up for a new job with a hangover.

‘We all make mistakes,’ Maya said, then shifted gear. ‘Was it you who vomited — ?’

‘Ugh.’ Rowe covered his eyes. ‘Yes. Sorry.’

‘When you went to fetch Mrs Gibson, did you see anyone?’

‘No. I walked from the staffroom and along the main corridor. There was no sign of anybody.’

‘After you found Mrs Gibson, what did you do?’

‘I went straight back to the staffroom and told Mrs Ahmed.’

Maya’s phone vibrated. She indicated to Dan to take over the interview and shifted towards the door, reading the message and watching the teacher from the corner of her eye.

Dan moved over and sat in the chair in front of the desk. ‘Going back slightly,’ he said, ‘did you think Mrs Gibson was dead?’

Rowe nodded. ‘She felt warm. Sort of soft. But she didn’t move. I thought dead bodies went stiff?’ He shivered in his seat, the unpleasant memory beckoning to him. ‘It was the expression in her eyes. Staring.’ He covered his mouth, shaking his head. ‘Why would someone bind her wrists?’

‘That’s what we need to find out.’

Maya tucked her mobile in her pocket and hurried back over to the desk. She lowered her voice. ‘We need to get back to the incident room. Urgently.’ She faced Rowe. ‘A uniformed officer will escort you back to the staffroom. All personnel are required to stay on site. Please let us know if you remember anything else you think could help.’

‘I will.’

Back in the corridor, Maya filled Dan in. ‘The deputy head, Roger Allen, called in sick this morning. Now no-one can get hold of him. Not even his wife.’

Wednesday – Steve

The staffroom atmosphere was completely different when Steve arrived back. The heating was working and everyone had shed their scarves, jumpers and coats. They sat in huddles, wide-eyed and dazed. As he walked in, was he imagining it, or were there a few nudges and stares? Steve scanned the room for somewhere to sit down. Despite the heat, he was still shivering and felt light-headed. The sense of Linda’s body kept coming back to him: her softness beneath him; the smell of her skin; her hair in his mouth… how he’d thrown up over her.

He spotted a chair by the window, slunk over and slumped down on it, relieved to be out of the deputy head’s office and among other human beings, even if he didn’t know any of them yet. He wanted to reflect on the police interview. He’d burbled about Lucy. How embarrassing. Otherwise he thought it had gone okay but he wasn’t sure. Was he a suspect? After all, he had found the body.

Near the door, a woman was firing out questions, repeating them hysterically to anyone who was in the vicinity. ‘Why is no-one telling us anything? Is Mrs Gibson dead’ Her voice trilled out. ‘Has she had a heart attack? Oh my God, she hasn’t been murdered, has she?’

Her voice grated. Steve felt like snapping at her to shut the fuck up. But this was a new job. He had to be on his best behaviour. Having a row with a colleague on the first day was not the way to go.

Steve could hear the two people nearest to her doing their best to calm the woman down, while a couple of other staff members stared, panicked into inertia and silence. It was as if they had all been plunged into an existence that was cut off from this morning. Set adrift into a new reality that none of them could quite accept.

Then the woman blurted out, ‘He must know.’ She pointed at Steve. ‘He found her, didn’t he?’

Steve’s stomach did a somersault.

‘Is she dead?’ the woman asked in his direction, staring at him expectantly.

Shit. What should he say? The police had told him not to discuss what happened. He looked away, tried to tune out, and a few of the people nearby shushed her.

His thoughts drifted to Lucy and he wondered how she’d felt after she’d seen him off at the airport. And over the next day. Perhaps she would forgive him if he gave her time? He’d just have to be patient. Except he’d been patient over the last few months and it hadn’t made any difference. Cheating was the one thing she’d told him she’d never accept in a relationship. And his stupid pride had got in the way. When she’d told him she wanted to go back home to America, he’d reacted childishly. And now he had to suck up the consequences.

Someone coughed and cleared their throat. Neil Sanderson, the school bursar, was standing at the counter by the kitchen area. He wiped his forehead with his palm. ‘Could you gather round, folks, please?’ His cheeks were mottled, and patches of sweat stained the armpits of his mauve shirt.

Mutterings flew round the room, some of complaint, others of curiosity and dread.

Neil adjusted the rimless glasses on his nose. ‘As you all know, there’s been a serious incident involving Mrs Gibson. At the moment the police aren’t giving out much information. They have a number of teams here carrying out forensic work. We don’t know yet whether the school site will be closed tomorrow, but there will be no lessons or students in school.’ He reached over to the counter and took a swig of water from a plastic cup.

A few people put their hands up and he gestured them down. He checked his notes. ‘Mrs Ahmed and I have been liaising with the police, the LEA and our governors, and we’ve produced a . . . a . . .’ He looked round for Shari.

‘Media and community strategy,’ she prompted.

‘Yes. With a close community such as ours, word travels quickly. We have contacted all parents to inform them there will be no school tomorrow. The police request that you do not tell anyone what has happened. Not even close friends and family.’ He mopped his forehead again, and faced Shari. ‘Is there anything else we need to cover?’

Shari came to his aid. ‘It’s a bit tricky as parents are already gathering outside the police cordon to find out what’s happened. One of our parent governors is here trying to smooth things over.’ She scanned the room, as though trying to gauge the mood. ‘Everyone needs to stay on site until we dismiss you. Before you leave, we will inform you of the plans for tomorrow. The police are trying to speak to everyone as quickly as possible. Any urgent questions, please ask either Mr Sanderson or myself.’

Voices flared up again as soon as she stopped talking and people darted across the room to join groups of colleagues.

Steve felt disorientated. He surveyed the room and saw similar feelings mirrored in his colleagues’ faces. Some were pale and wide-eyed, staring into the distance in a daze. Others were flushed and agitated. On the soft chairs round the coffee tables a group of people surrounded a young woman wearing a silver and black headscarf. Steve recognised Rozina, the head’s PA, who was dabbing at her eyes and adjusting the pin on her scarf. When Steve had come for his interview, Rozina had been kind when he’d forgotten to bring his training folder and needed to print out the details from his e-mail. Poor girl. She had black panda rings round her eyes from crying through make-up. Steve could hear snatches of what Rozina was saying. She could have got help for Mrs Gibson if she’d been at her desk. She felt responsible. If Mrs Gibson died it would be all her fault.

‘Stop being such a drama queen, Rozina,’ said a fierce-looking woman with long white hair, which was parted in the middle so that it hung like two curtains on either side of her face. She was flicking through the latest Times Educational Supplement, licking her finger before each page turn.

‘Moira, that’s not necessary,’ said a girl who was sitting next to Rozina. ‘We’re all extremely concerned and upset.’ The gaggle of people surrounding Rozina stared at the woman.

‘I was just saying.’ Moira spat out the words as though she had bitten on a lemon.

‘Well, perhaps it would be helpful if you didn’t “just say”.’

‘Suit yourself.’ The woman shrugged and flounced away from the group.

Feeling self-conscious with the ambulance rug wrapped round him, Steve pulled it off and got up. He was still shivering so he headed over to the kitchen area and flicked the kettle on to make himself a hot drink. The usual first day of term activities had been eclipsed. The whole day felt unreal, and he wanted to go home. He shuddered, though, at the grilling he was going to get from his sister.

Especially when she found out that, on top of blowing his engagement, he was now a potential suspect in a murder investigation.

Wednesday – Maya

‘Let us know when he is,’ I said to the family liaison officer. She’d rung to inform us that Peter Gibson had been discharged from hospital but still wasn’t fit to be interviewed. ‘Thank goodness his GP was on the ball.’ On top of a serious heart condition, the news of his wife’s death could’ve been fatal.

I crossed the incident room, leaving Dan with a telephone receiver clamped to his ear, and Alexej in front of a large monitor with a laptop screen either side. Uniformed officers were helping with house-to-house enquiries and staff interviews. Minutes later, I was in reception and had begun compiling the victim profile part of the investigation. With a crime like this, I wanted to get a sense of the school.

Photographs hung proudly on the walls, not a speck of dust on any of their frames. The very first one, dated 1949, showed the celebrations that had taken place the day the school opened. In the autumn sunshine, to a background of bunting and post-war jollity, grinning boys stood in long shorts and knee-length socks, while girls folded their hands over calf-length skirts. As I took in the expressions, I wondered, had life been more innocent then? Or was it just different?

There was a gradual progression in the photographs from monochrome to colour. There were changes in the ethnicities of both the children and the staff as increasing numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers arrived. I could see my compatriots in the images, others from Somalia, China, Pakistan, and from a number of African-Caribbean countries. I knew the reasons off by heart. The need to flee war, famine and oppressive regimes. Could quote the statistics from memory. After all, I was part of them, and I’d seen the demographics of Tower Hamlets printed in dozens of reports and booklets over the years. Like so many Bangladeshis in the seventies and eighties, my own family had fled Sylhet in 1982. As we all crammed into unheated one-room lets in Brick Lane, Whitechapel and Stepney, with outside toilets and no baths, it was no wonder the population of Tower Hamlets had burgeoned in the space of forty years.

As the decades progressed, the photographs showed how Mile End High School had acquired buildings to accommodate the increasing numbers of students. Annexes were constructed, including what was now the sports hall. I realised my eyes were searching the walls for a photograph of my year group in 1989. And there I was, in year seven, eyes bulging with fear, swamped in Jasmina’s over-sized blazer and the skirt that Sabbir had helped me pin. My sister stood, tall and elegant, with her year nine form.

From the school’s reception area, I continued along the main hall, past the science labs and the music rooms, along the corridor past the walls of metal lockers that had seemed like monsters on my first day of school here. I made notes in my pad as I walked; recorded and analysed impressions; took snaps on my phone. The display boards didn’t fool me. I knew they were designed to portray a positive image to whoever saw them, but they somehow seemed too perfect. Who were all the smiling faces, and messages of progress and harmony, aimed at? And where was the information for the people who passed the boards the most often? The information for pupils on internet security, bullying and drugs? It all prompted two conflicting impressions: the place had clearly benefitted from the stewardship of Linda Gibson, but underneath the cheery faces and camaraderie, something wasn’t right . . . I could feel Linda’s murder reeling me in. Her legacy and achievements were all around me, vying for my attention, but very much at odds with the fact that she was now dead, with parents outside the school, desperate for information about what’s happened to the head teacher.

When I returned to the incident room, I hurried over to where I had been working earlier. A few seats along, Dan was hunched over the table, checking off numbers on a printout with a ruler and yellow highlighter. He was facing me but had his head down, engrossed in what he was reading. Through his number one shave, his white scalp was visible.

At that moment, Alexej arrived, a bunch of papers in his hand. ‘Shen dropped these off for you.’ He handed them to me. ‘Still no trace of Roger Allen. And Linda’s post-mortem is scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow.’

I scanned the list of names Shen had brought. I cross-checked these with the information on HOLMES. Rich, the school caretaker, had arrived late this morning after a delayed return flight from Spain. With all the commotion about the power cut and lack of heating, he’d got distracted and forgotten to switch the school’s CCTV back on after the electricity was restored. Wait. His name was on the list of people outside the school earlier. If he wasn’t in the staffroom with his colleagues, he might’ve had the opportunity to kill Linda. I scanned the records. Uniform had interviewed Rich after Linda’s death but it needed following up.

‘Any luck locating CCTV?’ I asked Alexej. Without any, we were reliant on eye witnesses and forensics.

‘Still trying to establish what’s in the school vicinity. I’m heading over there in a minute to have a chat with one of the parent governors, a man named Talcott Lawrence, and re-interview the caretaker, Rich Griffiths. Rich swears no doors were left open this morning and all of them are entry-code protected, but given he forgot to switch on the school’s CCTV, I don’t know how reliable he is.’

‘I was just reading about the caretaker. Can you grill him on where he was when Linda was killed and how he managed to get outside the school? Check his alibis. Also, find out who the heating engineers were and where they went?’

‘Will do.’ He put his pen in his jacket.

‘And ask him why the power went off, can you? Was someone helping the killer, or did the killer switch it off so there would be no lights and no CCTV?’ Crime scene photos were scattered over my desk. ‘This wasn’t a frenzied, spontaneous attack. A strangulation of this sort suggests a quiet rage, don’t you think? It was meticulously organised. The killer would’ve had to print the precept onto card, bring it with them – and the cloth for Linda’s hands – strangle her, position the body, tie her wrists, then leave.’

‘Exactly. That takes planning.’ Alexej was shaking his head. ‘I’ve checked the staff register. Only Roger Allen was absent today. Theoretically, Allen and Steve Rowe had the opportunity to kill Linda. And Rich, depending on where he was.’

‘Yes, they’re our obvious suspects. But we also need to consider the possible involvement of Linda’s husband – however unlikely – and a student with a grievance. Unfortunately, we don’t have any motives at the moment.’ I added these to the list of suspects on the board. ‘I’ve been reading the interview summaries. No-one has uttered a bad word about Linda. Good at her job. A competent leader. Nice person. Cared about the kids and staff. Passionate about education.’ It made me think about the display boards and the school video. ‘It always arouses my suspicions when no-one has anything negative to say about a person who’s been murdered. No-one is so nice there’s nothing negative to say. It’s the British thing of not wanting to speak badly about someone who’s died. And I respect that. But it only takes one person with a grudge.’

After Alexej left, I laid out several images of Linda on the table in front of me, alongside the staff photographs from the school data management system. I was keen to add pictures of Linda’s family and friends to get a grasp on the people in her life. I was struggling to get a sense of what Linda’s death might be about. In Tower Hamlets, in East London as a whole, it was mainly stabbings, shootings and beatings, and invariably to do with gangs, grudges or honour.

Seconds later Dan was back in front of my desk, clearing his throat. ‘The parent delegation is growing and they’ve assembled next to the reporters.’ He was holding out a paper cup of steaming liquid.

I took it. ‘Thanks.’

‘And your pal, Dougie, has just called. The technicians have given their initial reports. Linda Gibson has been wiping stuff off her computers on a regular basis.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘I wish I was. The techs are trying to recover the files but they wanted to warn you: she’s used a professional programme to overwrite them.’

‘What’s the programme?’

‘PermErase.’

‘Argh. That’s a pig of a piece of software.’ The news sent my thoughts reeling. ‘Why’s she been doing that? You don’t use PermErase to delete a few photographs and draft emails.’ I still wasn’t sure about Dan – I wasn’t used to sharing my investigations with someone so pro-active. But the hot drink was a friendly gesture. I took a swig.

Dan’s expression was thoughtful. ‘Course, it could just mean that she’s extremely organised or security conscious?’

‘Until we know what she’s deleted, there’s no point speculating. But I definitely don’t know anyone who uses professional software to overwrite blurry photographs.’

Dan tilted his head but didn’t comment. Presumably it was his way of agreeing. ‘Is there any chance it could be a school policy? Or a – what d’you call it here? – local government thing?’

‘Local education authority. Can you find out? Shari and Neil should know if it’s a Tower Hamlets policy.’

He tapped into his phone.

‘Has Dougie’s team got Linda’s mobile phone? I want to know what’s on it. Her contacts, texts, photographs. We need her call records, and details of her social media accounts, so we can assess the passive data for gaps and patterns. I want to know who she’s been in touch with recently.’

‘Already requested these. Her mobile was part of her handbag contents. I’ve been going through her call records.’ He pointed at the printouts on his desk. ‘The technicians are running checks on her handset, then we can have it. Once we have her passwords, Alexej can check any Facebook and Twitter accounts she uses.’

‘Well done.’

‘A few other things. Neil Sanderson has asked if the staff can go home now.’

‘Has everyone been interviewed? Got contact details and prints for them all?’

‘Almost. Shen is double-checking against the staff lists.’

‘In that case, the staff can go. Except the bursar and the other senior manager. I’d like to interview them myself. If there was something going on with Linda, one of them should know, surely?’

He shook his head. ‘People can be extremely good at keeping secrets when they need to.’

‘True.’ I shifted topic. ‘When the staff leave, they need to go straight off site. I don’t want anyone wandering round the school.’

‘Got it. The CSIs have almost finished. The filming’s done and the virtual tour, and the inventories are almost complete. They haven’t taken her out yet. D’you want them to wait for all the staff to leave first?’

‘Yes. We’ve got no chance of keeping this out of the news with hawk-eyed Suzie James on the case but I’d prefer it if we didn’t have an image of Linda Gibson in a body bag on the front page of the Stepney Gazette, or on the national news.’

‘Of course. I’ll see if the ambo guys can take the body out discreetly. There’s always someone with a smartphone handy.’

‘Thanks. Can you get details of Linda’s bank transactions in the last twelve months?’

‘Done it. She banks with Barclays. One current account, a joint account, a savings account and an ISA.’

‘Good.’ He was certainly more pro-active than Barnesy.

‘Alexej’s requested Linda Gibson’s medical records for any reference to her cutting her wrists.’

‘Those should yield some leads. Was anyone not in the staffroom apart from Roger Allen, Steve Rowe, the engineers and Rich?’

‘We’re still checking. A couple of staff nipped out and came back.’

‘That it?’ He was hovering and I couldn’t help wondering what was to come.

‘Briscall is on the warpath. Two of the school governors are friends of his and something about —’

‘Targets?’ I rolled my eyes.

‘He wants an arrest within twenty-four hours.’

‘And how come you know this and I don’t?’

Dan had his hands raised in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger gesture.

I felt a wave of annoyance. ‘Twenty-four hours? If he wanted to help, he could authorise the fast-tracking of the toxicology and forensic results and get over here.’ I drew breath and took stock. ‘Okay, shall we go through the key staff at the school?’ I re-arranged the photographs, placing the two senior managers next to each other. ‘There’s the assistant head, Shari Ahmed. She’s in charge of the sixth form. And the bursar, Neil Sanderson, who’s in charge of staff and budgets. Do you think they’re involved?’

‘Haven’t noticed anything to indicate they are.’

I was silent for a moment. ‘What about Roger Allen?’ I tapped his mugshot. ‘He’s the deputy head of curriculum. Also part of the school management team.’ I shifted his picture underneath Shari’s and Neil’s. ‘How does he fit into things? Where the hell is he today? You’d think unless he was critically ill, he’d have managed to get himself in for the first day of term.’

‘It’s pretty odd behaviour. Certainly puts him in line as a suspect, but it might be a coincidence. He’s the only person we haven’t spoken to. And Linda’s husband.’

‘Which means when all the staff leave here shortly, unless we get to Allen first, he can get the run-down from someone before we speak to him.’

‘He’s still AWOL.’

‘Where on earth has he disappeared to?’

‘No idea at the moment. We’ve tried to track his phone but it’s switched off.’ He checked his watch. ‘I need to go. Neil Sanderson and Shari Ahmed are about to brief the staff and I want to be there to observe. I’ll bring Sanderson back with me to interview.’ Dan weaved his way round the canteen tables towards the doors.

I rubbed my eyes and rested the palms of my hands on my face for a moment. Frustration was biting. The two people we most needed to interview, we couldn’t.

Wednesday – Steve

The staff were still stuck in the staffroom, waiting for news or to be told they could go home. In the kitchen area, a few people were chatting by the fridge when Steve wandered over.

‘Anyone want a cuppa?’

‘It’s Steve, isn’t it?’ a friendly-faced woman asked.

Steve recognised the person who’d brought him into the staffroom from reception earlier when he arrived.

‘You’re covering for Zoe, aren’t you, teaching psychology? I’m Andrea. In English. I think I saw you at your interview.’

‘Hi. Yes.’ Steve was relieved to have a distraction. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘Oh, years. Nearly seven? Something like that. It’s a great school. Sure you’ll love it.’ She had a Welsh accent and the sort of impish face and choppy, short hair that made her look fun. ‘I started on a temporary contract, bit like you, and ended up staying on. The senior managers are decent and we’ve got a great team of school governors.’

‘I’m glad to get back to London. I grew up here.’

A sneering voice interrupted them. ‘Hope you’re not telling the new boy all our ghastly secrets.’ It was Moira, who was still nursing a sour face and had the staffroom copy of the TES tucked firmly under her arm. ‘He’ll be running back to his training supervisor asking for another job.’

Andrea glanced at Steve and, in full view of Moira, rolled her eyes. ‘What secrets, Moira?’ she simpered patronisingly.

But Moira wasn’t finished. ‘You do know Linda and Roger —’

‘Moira – enough.’ Andrea faced away from the woman and looked at Steve. ‘Don’t take any notice of her. She delights in winding everyone up. Let’s go and sit down.’ She pointed at some chairs on the other side of the staffroom. ‘You’ve gone green. Don’t want you passing out on your first day, do we?’

But Moira was tailing them, muttering to herself. ‘What happened when you went to fetch Linda? Was she —’

‘For goodness’ sake.’ Andrea whirled round. ‘Do you ever stop?’ And to Steve she said, ‘C’mon, let’s go and sit over there.’

They carried on chatting as they walked over to some seats.

‘Training supervisor? Have I got a flashing neon L-plate on my forehead saying I’m a newly qualified teacher?’

They were out of Moira’s earshot now.

‘Don’t take any notice of her. She’s a nasty piece of work. Always tries to intimidate new staff. She’s the staffroom bully and a dreadful gossip.’

‘That’s good to know, I guess.’ Steve managed a tiny laugh.

‘Listen. A few of us are going to the Morgan Arms after school if you fancy it. It’s the pub on the corner as you walk towards Tredegar Square.’

They sat down.

‘What a good idea,’ said Steve. ‘Talk about a nightmare day.’

‘Yes, I don’t remember covering “What to do if your head teacher carks it” on my PGCE. Did you?’ She grimaced. ‘Which is not exactly in good taste. I’m sorry. It’s the . . . Oh bugger. I have no idea what to say so I think I should just shut up.’

They both blushed.

‘Dreadful thing to happen and she was a really nice lady,’ Andrea continued. ‘I’ve been to school social events with her and she was always friendly to everyone and good value. Not hoity-toity and aloof like some heads are. Bizarre to think of someone planning her —’

‘Was she married?’

‘Yes. Peter. He’s a really nice man. Another teacher. Retired now. Something to do with his heart, I gather, and pretty much house-bound. They always seemed really happy. Goodness knows how this is going to affect him. I heard Linda had some kind of a health scare not long ago too. I wonder if she had a heart attack? Shit. Listen to me. I sound like bloody Moira. Shoot me now.’ She pretended to hold a gun to her head.

An unsettled feeling overcame Steve as he remembered how Linda had looked: on her back on the sofa, her wrists bound, and her face all puffy. The image certainly didn’t suggest that she had a stroke or a heart attack. It occurred to him that the killer could be one of his colleagues. As he surveyed the room, he felt his pulse begin to quicken.

The killer could be in here with them. Not only that, but whoever it was could be watching . . . and waiting to make their next move.

Wednesday – Maya

After the staff briefing, Dan brought Neil Sanderson to the ground-floor room they were using for interviews. Off the stairs and with no natural light or ventilation, the room was cold and dingy. All it contained was an old wooden table, which looked like it had been rejected from all other locations, and four plastic chairs. On the table was an empty tissue box with a lidless biro popping over the edge.

Neil shuffled into the room with his hands in his pockets. His lowered gaze betrayed not hostility so much as frustration and impatience, eyes glancing sideways.

‘Have a seat.’ I pointed at the chair opposite Dan and watched the man get settled. I introduced myself. ‘You’re the school bursar. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was Rich Griffiths at the staff briefing you’ve just had?’

Neil hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I was concentrating on what we needed to tell the staff. Why?’ I felt him searching my face for clues.

‘Why wasn’t he with the rest of the staff at lunchtime?’

‘I didn’t know he wasn’t. He may have helped Linda with the power cut. She said she was going to find the caretakers.’

‘Could you tell me where Roger Allen is today?’

‘He’s not well.’ Neil’s hairline and forehead were damp, and the sweat under his arms hadn’t dried out. ‘He rang me this morning.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Stomach upset.’

‘Where was he ringing from?’

‘Home, I imagine.’

‘A police officer has been round to Roger’s house and his wife said she hasn’t seen him since yesterday.’

Neil rubbed his chin and was silent for a few moments. ‘I don’t know anything about that. He just said he wasn’t well and wouldn’t be in. It was a one-minute conversation.’

‘Why did he call you?’

‘I’m the person staff report absences to. I do the personnel register each day, and the staff cover. Plus, Roger and I are mates.’ He glanced down at his hands and examined his palms.

‘Was his absence mentioned this morning when you met with Mrs Gibson for your first meeting of the new term?’

‘I told her he wasn’t well and wouldn’t be in today. That was it. We had a lot to get through.’

‘I wonder why his wife doesn’t know where he is. They’ve got two children.’

He shrugged. ‘No idea.’

‘In that meeting this morning, how did Linda seem?’

‘Fine. It was the first day of the new term. She was busy, and keen for things to go well. We all were.’

‘She didn’t seem preoccupied, anxious?’

‘Not at all.’ Neil leaned forwards in his chair and sighed loudly. ‘She was her normal self.’

His sigh made me curious. ‘Did Mrs Gibson have any enemies? Any fallouts?’ My phone vibrated in my pocket.

‘I’ve worked here for Linda’s entire headship. She was a popular and inspiring leader. She regularly had to deal with staff, students and parents who were unhappy, often angry. But she had good people skills. I don’t recall any of those occasions getting nasty or being left unresolved.’

I got up and walked across the room. ‘Can you run through what you think the school’s challenges are? Issues? Anything that might give us an idea why someone might want to harm Mrs Gibson?’

‘Well . . . the language and literacy levels of a lot of our students are lower than we’d like. We have many students with English as their second language.’

‘But aren’t a lot of the kids who come here born here?’ I had a feeling I knew what Neil was going to say.

‘Yes. But a problem for many of them is their parents don’t speak English fluently, and some not at all. At home they speak their mother tongue and they tend to mix with others of their own culture. Understandable, but it can cause difficulties.’

It pained me to hear this. Had things not moved on at all since we arrived in the 1980s? Mum popped into my mind, how she would insist on talking to the three of us in Sylheti when Dad wasn’t around. Jasmina and I had quickly become fluent in English but Sabbir hadn’t. By the time Jaz and I left home, Mum still couldn’t speak English and barely could to this day.

‘What prevents parents from learning English, do you think?’

‘Lack of government funding for language classes for older family members. And parents and grandparents have learned they can get by without having to learn English. When they need a translator, they take one of their children along. We often see it at parents’ evenings. We talk to the students, and they relay what we’ve said to their uncle, dad, grandparents, whoever has come along with them. They do the same for medical appointments and ones with social services.’

‘But doesn’t the problem stop when the current generation are proficient?’

‘It should. But often the kids only develop their English to a certain point.’ He looked genuinely upset about this.

Despondent as this information made me, it rang true. Dad had been insistent that we spoke good English. He knew Mum spoke to us in Sylheti. It was something they’d quarrelled about regularly. ‘What implications does that have for their education and for the school?’

‘The weaker their English, the more difficult the children find learning. You can then see behavioural problems and absenteeism.’

‘Any of the students have a grudge towards Mrs Gibson?’ With her being strangled, it seemed unlikely but we needed to rule it out.

‘A few. It’s inevitable. I’ll get you a list.’

‘Thank you. As soon as you can, please.’ My brain was assimilating Neil’s information. Was his testimony reliable? I was keen to hear whether Shari would tell us anything different. ‘Two last questions for now. I want to make shure we know about everyone with a link to the school. Take me through them all, can you?’ He scoffed. ‘In a close-knit community such as this, pretty much everyone has been connected with the place at some point. Teachers, kids and parents, obviously. Past and present. Governors. Support staff. You name it!’

‘And does the school or LEA have any policies around file storage and deletion?’

He frowned. ‘Other than the legal requirements of the Data Protection Act, no. Why?’

Wednesday – Steve

Steve had never been good at being told what to do. The paramedic who’d checked him over had suggested an early night, but Steve couldn’t resist accompanying Andrea and their colleagues to the Morgan Arms. He was aware this was more to delay his sister’s inevitable lecture than it was to extend the time spent with his new work mates, dissecting what might have happened to Linda Gibson.

‘What d’you want to drink?’ Andrea asked as they entered the busy backstreet gastro-pub. ‘I’m having a pint of this.’ She pointed at the Bow Bells hand pump.

Steve swallowed down a surge of nausea. The place reeked of warm goat’s cheese and garlic. He’d resolved to have a soft drink but his colleagues were all ordering bottles of wine and double vodkas, so he felt a bit of a wimp asking for a Coke. Besides, after the events of the day, and with his hangover lingering, a livener seemed appealing.

‘I’ll have the same.’ He knew how good the local ale was, having sampled it after his interview a few months ago. In the pit of his stomach, dread was bubbling up in anticipation of the grilling his sister was going to give him when she got home. Even if she had already heard what had gone on with Lucy, and how the Christmas holidays had ended, she would insist on knowing every detail. And he wasn’t looking forward to having to explain quite how spectacularly he’d cocked everything up. He adored Jane but at times she took her big sister role too seriously, and delighted in giving him a hard time when she thought he’d behaved badly.

Steve glanced round the vast, open-plan bar, taking in its trendy décor. After the cultural homogeneity of Midhurst, and his last school, he was still acclimatising to how much East London had changed since his school days here. The contrasts seemed so much more obvious now. They’d just walked past a boarded-up social housing block with a demolition order, and now they were in a gastro-pub that sold packets of cracked pepper flavoured crisps for two quid, and which had a dedicated wine menu with separate pages for white, red, rosé and sparkling wines. In reality, though, with the high bar, made of what was supposed to look like old ship beams bolted together, the trendy music and shabby chic décor, they could be in New York, Hamburg or Liverpool.

Andrea was waiting to order.

‘Nice place,’ Steve said. ‘I wonder what the old East End dockworkers would make of it.’ He pointed at the bar, stroked the grain of the wood. ‘Bet it’s never seen a dock, let alone a ship.’

Andrea laughed. ‘It was probably imported from Central Europe.’ She waved her twenty-pound note at the barmaid. ‘I grew up in Cardiff so this part of London reminds me of home. For years, Tiger Bay – that’s where I’m from – exported coal. I gather this area specialised in wool, sugar and rubber. A bit like Cardiff: lots of tight-knit communities, all with their own distinctive cultures and dialects.’ She ordered their drinks.

‘My grandmother says there’s always been a strong community spirit here. And a survival instinct.’ He told Andrea that he’d grown up in East London. ‘The Luftwaffe bombed the shit out of the docks during the Blitz, and lots of them had to be re-built. My gran was one of the thousands of families who lived in the slums until they were cleared.’ Steve thought about the port in NYC that Lucy had taken him to for dinner. Container ships had brought changes there, she’d told him. Apparently, the salt marshes of the estuary had originally been occupied by Native American Lenape people but they’d been pushed out when ocean liners and prison ships moved in.

‘Yeah. It’s such a shame.’ Andrea paid the barmaid. ‘My dad said the container ships were the end for the London docks. The hulls were too deep. In the sixties, they lost all the trade to ports with deeper water.’ She handed Steve his pint. ‘It’s weird how cyclical it all is. One group of immigrants arrive and move on, and the next wave takes their place. It’s the same in Cardiff and Liverpool. Like how there are hardly any Jews in Brick Lane now. They’ve all moved to North West London and Stoke Newington.’

Scattered round the bar area were tables that had been carefully sanded and waxed to make them look old, legs painted in matt ‘barley’ and ‘seagrass’.

‘Shall we join the others?’

Steve remembered the comments and looks he’d got in the staffroom earlier. He picked his way across the busy bar and chose a seat. Several of his colleagues stopped chatting and acknowledged him as they sat down. Everyone had obviously figured out he’d been the one to find Linda because he’d gone to fetch her. What a mistake that was. He’d have to front it out politely. Presumably the police would find out what happened. It was sod’s bloody law it was the first day of his new job and none of the staff knew him from Adam. They were bound to be curious and – much as it bugged him – suspicious.

He glanced round the group of teachers; everyone looked as dazed as he felt. One guy was talking loudly, not to anyone in particular, and repeating himself. Moira was nursing a gin and tonic, and was staring into the distance, wide-eyed and catatonic, her curtain hair lodged behind her ears. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more outbursts.

‘How are you feeling?’ a girl asked. Steve recognised her from the staffroom earlier. She had her arms round raised legs, the way a child sits. ‘We were all saying, this time last night, if someone told us what was going to happen today, we wouldn’t have believed it.’ She laughed nervously and took a swig of her drink.

‘It’s been a weird one for all of us, that’s for sure. And poor Mrs Gibson. I still can’t —’

‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Andrea’s question made everyone look up.

The room jerked.

A man, in jeans and a thick leather jacket, was weaving his way across the busy bar and heading for their table.

Wednesday – Dan

Dan accompanied Neil to the staffroom and came back with Shari Ahmed, the other deputy head. The Australian education system was very different and he’d used the walk to get Shari to fill him in.

She scuttled into the interview room ahead of him like a frightened animal. Made a dash first for the far chair then changed her mind and returned to the near one, mumbling apologies under her breath. Sweat dampened the headscarf round her forehead and temples, framing anxious eyes.

Maya gave him the signal to commence the interview. He got the feeling she was curious to see him in action.

‘Are you left- or right-handed, Mrs Ahmed?’ Dan studied her face.

‘What?’

‘Left or right?’

‘Right. Why d’you —’

‘Where were you today between twelve noon and one p.m?’

‘In the staffroom with the rest of the staff. I’ve already told your –’

‘Was Rich at the meeting you’ve just had?’

‘I have no idea. I didn’t notice him.’

‘We keep hearing how happy the school is and how popular Mrs Gibson was…’ he said.

‘Ye-es.’ Her manner was jittery.

‘Thing is, she’s currently in a body bag, heading towards our morgue.’

Shari let out a gasp. Her eyes filled up. She took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at them.

Dan felt Maya’s disapproving gaze on him. ‘Apologies. I’m Australian. I don’t have Detective Rahman’s British politeness.’ He avoided her glance. ‘Any trouble with gangs here?’

‘We have a couple but Mrs Gibson introduced a number of effective measures to combat them.’ Her voice was high and breathy.

‘Tell me about the language and literacy issues.’

‘They don’t apply to any one ethnic group. Many of our British students don’t have good literacy levels. Unfortunately, it can result in poor exam results and a low position for the school in league tables.’

‘I guess that’d mean reduced funding for the school, right?’ He’d been wondering whether money was involved with the head teacher’s murder ever since they learned about Linda’s deleted computer files.

‘Indirectly, yes. If league-table ranking drops too much it affects how many students apply for places here. And that affects funding. It’s a vicious cycle.’

‘I see.’ He tapped his biro on his notepad and sucked his cheeks in. ‘Did you get the impression Linda was well off?’

‘I’ve never considered it.’

‘And are you left- or right-handed?’

‘Right. I’ve told y—’

‘Are there any divisions at the school that might have resulted in bad feeling?’

‘There are some tensions between staff groups that we’ve been unable to overcome.’ Shari dabbed at her nose with a tissue. ‘We employ a lot of local people. Some of our staff aren’t happy about this.’

‘Why not?’ He fixed his eyes on hers. ‘Don’t they have the skills for the job?’

Shari seemed taken aback. ‘Yes, but some people complain that it’s positive discrimination. Bumping up minority ethnic quotas and all that nonsense.’ She fidgeted in her seat and tugged at her hijab.

‘Why’s it nonsense? Aren’t there guidelines about who the school is allowed to employ? In Australia the focus is on skills. That’s it.’

‘Yes, but guidelines don’t change how people feel. Linda, Neil, Roger and I all agreed that it’s important for our staff composition to reflect the ethnic mix of our students and community. Unfortunately, not everyone shares that view.’

The prejudices that Shari described mirrored many in Sydney. Dan’s family fought discrimination every day as a result of his wife’s Aboriginal heritage. The girls, at school. Aroona, in her work with the native communities.

‘When do these staff tensions arise most?’

Shari picked fluff off her jilbab while she thought what to say. ‘When we have Muslim speakers, some of the non-Muslim staff object to the hall being gender-segregated. And when we have celebrations, the non-Muslim staff want one thing and —’

‘Is that about alcohol?’ Dan cut in.

Shari blinked and looked at Maya, as though she were hoping for sympathy. ‘Among other things. At Christmas and end of year parties, many of the staff want wine and beer, and to go to the pub afterwards.’

‘And the Muslim staff object?’

‘Some mind less. But others refuse to go anywhere alcohol is available.’

‘Simple, surely? Separate it out?’

‘It’s not that easy. We’ve tried having non-halal food and alcoholic drinks in one room, and halal food and non-alcoholic drinks in another but we ended up with two separate parties. That defeats the object, to celebrate collective hard work and achievement. We then tried having all the food and drink in the staffroom at opposite ends. That worked better but the staff who don’t want to go anywhere where there is alcohol still refused to attend. Linda was convinced she’d find a solution but in the end we came to the conclusion that perhaps there is no way of resolving the situation. A case of necessary segregation for certain occasions.’

Dan could see her frustration. He didn’t know what the answer was either. But how the hell were these cultural tensions and literacy problems involved with Linda’s murder? And how did money come into it? At the back of his mind was a mental image of Linda, eyes bulging, her hands bound. And the Buddhist precept: I abstain from taking the ungiven. Was mousey, dithery Shari a fan of Linda’s or had she ducked out of the staffroom and squeezed the life out of her senior colleague?

Wednesday – Steve

The arrival of Roger Allen at the Morgan Arms set everyone on edge. Steve sensed that his colleagues, who had just begun to relax and talk freely, resented having to watch what they said in front of the senior manager who had been off sick all day.

After three pints of real ale, jet lag and the mother of all hangovers, when Steve arrived back at his sister’s flat, one desire eclipsed all others: to slide under the duvet and stay there. Shaky, and with a crushing pain expanding inside his head, he climbed the two flights of stairs to the top floor of Durkin House. Outside the flat door, he fumbled in his jeans pockets for his keys. Relief swept over him when he hit the dead lock: Jane was out.

Steve closed the flat door behind him. The place was hardly any warmer than outside. Never mind. He’d soon be under the covers. Then his gaze fell on his sister’s gym bag in the hall. ‘

‘Ah, bollocks.’ He’d left his messenger bag in the Morgan Arms. He’d get it tomorrow. He couldn’t face trekking back there now. Carrying a pint of water, he headed straight for the spare room at the end of the landing. This was home for the next few months until he could find a place of his own.

He took his mobile out of his jeans, rang the pub and asked them to hold on to his bag. Then he sat on the edge of the bed. On the floor his rucksack leaned against the wall and his attention fell to the key ring that Lucy had given him, with the letters NYC, when she’d first told him she wanted to return home to the USA.

He felt a dart of pain in his stomach. How long was it going to take until he could think about Lucy, and see things that reminded him of her, and not feel regret?

Just get into bed, you idiot. And stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve only got yourself to blame. Lucy gave you fair warning. Claiming indignation about her going home to the States was never going to cut it, and nursing your pride isn’t going to reverse things.

He exhaled, swung his legs up and lay back on the mattress. Within minutes of head and pillow meeting, Steve’s breathing slowed and he was snoring. Until –

‘Hey. Sleeping Beauty.’

The overhead light flicked on.

‘Wake up.’

Steve’s eyes were dazzled. The abrupt waking jolted him from his boozy sleep.

It was Jane in strident mode, standing over the bed with hands on hips. ‘It smells like a pub in here. How much have you had?’

‘Oh fuck,’ he groaned and pulled the pillow over his face. Dread surged through him along with ripples of nausea. Jane on a rant was bad enough when he was on top form.

‘From what I’ve heard, you already did that. D’you want to explain why I’ve had a call from Lucy first thing this morning, and then one from some DI Rahman woman about your school?’

‘Not really, no.’ He might have guessed Lucy would be on the phone to Jane. They’d been close for several years. ‘Look, do one, will you? My head hurts. I’m not up to one of your inquisitions.’ He replaced the pillow over his eyes.

She yanked the duvet off the bed and onto the floor, leaving Steve naked, except for his boxers and the pillow over his head.

‘Piss off. Don’t do that.’ He lobbed the pillow to one side, reached over to grab hold of the pastel pink duvet cover and pulled it back over him. This was something his sister used to do when they were growing up and it had always infuriated him. As she clearly remembered.

‘Well?’

Steve didn’t answer. He rolled over and tucked the pink duvet under his chin in case she tried to pull it off again, feeling like he was about six.

‘You heard me. What’s going on?’

‘I’m not talking to you when you’re in this mood. The last forty-eight hours have been a pile of crap. Now can you please leave me alone?’

‘The detective wanted me to confirm you’re staying here.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’

‘She said you’ve been involved in a serious incident. What’s happened?’

‘We aren’t allowed to talk about it.’

‘Bit late for that. It’s already on the national news. The head teacher of your new school’s been found dead.’

‘If you know what’s happened, why are you asking?’

‘Oh my God, was it you who found her?’

‘Yeah. Now please leave me alone.’

‘So, you aren’t interested in Lucy’s message then?’

‘What message?’ Curiosity replaced the world-weary, about-to-die tone in his voice. He was facing her now.

‘If you’re showered and dressed and in the kitchen in ten minutes, I’ll tell you.’

Brick Lane, 1990 – Maya

‘In here, you two,’ Mum calls from the kitchen.

Plunged into darkness, Jasmina and I grope our way out of the lounge to join Mum. Illuminated by the blue light of the gas ring, she’s at the stove. Sweet, spicy smells waft round the kitchen, and there’s a pot bubbling on the hob.

Outside, even the street lamps have gone off and the whole terrace is in darkness.

‘I wonder how long this one will last,’ I ask.

Mum has placed a candle on the table. She strikes a match and it fizzes. Smells. The wick catches, casting a ball of light momentarily before shrinking.

‘Sit here.’ She’s pointing to the table. ‘And for goodness sake mind your hair on the flame this time, Maya.’

Jaz and I cram round the tiny Formica table where the five of us sit every evening for tea, knees banging, feet jostling for space against Dad’s work boots and Sabbir’s huge school shoes.

Jasmina and I sit now, side by side on the wooden bench, and the soft light of the candle flickers, casting a spell over the room. Shadows sway around the dingy, smoke-yellowed walls. As the wick waves in the draught, the flame billows and casts looming shapes. Homework forgotten in the excitement, Jaz tickles me and I poke her; we giggle and wriggle in the tiny kitchen.

‘Stop it.’ Anxiety rattles in Mum’s voice. She always gets tense when the electric goes off. And when Dad’s late home. ‘When your father gets in, he can get some more candles. Jasmina, call upstairs to your brother, will you?’

In the chilly air of the flat, steam trails upwards from the saucepan as Mum stirs it. The walls round the cooker shine with condensation.

A few minutes later Sabbir arrives, with bed-head hair and sleep furrows in his bruised cheek. ‘What’s for tea?’ He glances round the kitchen.

We all know the answer, but each day we hope it might be different. We love Mum’s cooking, but after eight years of school dinners, and tea sometimes at friends’ houses, we’ve got used to eating different food. Perhaps Dad will come home with a treat for us all? A bagel each from the shop in Brick Lane, or some red jam to have on sliced bread?

‘Rice and curry,’ Mum says. She always talks to us in Sylheti, and at home my sister and I speak our mother tongue too. Unless, of course, it’s something we don’t want Mum to hear.

‘It’s the second power cut this week, isn’t it?’ Sabbir is the eldest of the three of us.

Mum serves out the stodgy rice and curry, and passes bowls over one by one. ‘Careful. They’re hot.’ All seated round the table now, Dad’s chair sits empty, no bowl on his place mat, just cutlery and an empty water glass. ‘We may as well eat. Your father’s obviously got held up again.’ The words ride a sigh.

My socked feet are cold. I like it when I can rest them on Dad’s work boots. Get them off the cold concrete and warm them up.

Just as we’re finishing our tea, we hear the front door bang shut downstairs, and a few moments later the grinding sound of a key in the flat door. Dad comes in, bringing a whoosh of bitter winter air and cigarette smoke, and another smell I’ve noticed before. The draught pulls the candle wick first one way then the other, and Mum jumps up to shield Sabbir from the billowing flame, bashing the table and knocking over her water glass. She uses a tea towel to mop first the water then the gash of wax that’s run onto the shiny tablecloth.

‘While we’ve been here with no power, you’ve been in that pub again. I can smell it.’ The reproach is unmistakeable. ‘This is the last candle. We need more. The children can’t sit in the dark.’

Dad looks at Mum, and then shines his gaze like a torchlight round the table. Pauses.

I’m watching him. Wondering what he’s thinking and what’s going to happen. I grab Jasmina’s hand under the table. He looks over at the hob, then back to the table. The room shimmers with tension and it makes my skin prickle. Every day now, Dad’s late and Mum says the same thing. He must be tired and hungry after working all day, but it’s as though there’s more to him going to the pub than either of them mentions.

Dad lets out a long sigh, like letting air from a balloon while holding on to its neck. In the soft light, his cheek muscles quiver. ‘I’ll go and get some now.’ He and Mum whisper to each other in very fast Sylheti.

My breathing tightens.

As he turns, I get another waft of that smell, the one his clothes so often reek of. ‘Won’t be long,’ he says in English.

I feel a swirl of something in my stomach, pulling at me. I put down my spoon. I don’t want Dad to go out again. He’s home now and it’s cold. I look into his face, with its gentle creases, the dark growth round his face, and his large eyes the colour of conkers.

‘Dad?’ I can’t help saying. I don’t know why.

‘You children be good for your mother,’ he says sternly, and ruffles my hair with his hand. When he stops, he lays his palm flat on the top of my head for a second, and I feel momentarily held in his warmth before he removes it. He gabbles something else to Mum in Sylheti, his voice even lower than usual. A jumble of sounds, noises, tones.

I squeeze Jaz’s thumb. Use my eyes to plead with her, but she shrugs and shakes her head.

Before I know it Dad pulls the flat door behind him and the latch clicks shut. He never even took off his coat and now he’s gone.

Mum’s spoon drops from her hand and clatters on the bowl in front of her. She closes her eyes, sucks in a long breath and lets it out, at first with a low moan, like an animal in pain, then in a full-throated wail.

‘Mum?’ She’s never made a noise like this before. ‘Are you okay?’

Sabbir’s chair screeches on the hard kitchen floor as he pushes it back to stand up. ‘Okay. Let’s all play a game.’

I know something’s happened, but have no idea what. ‘Dad will be back soon with the candles, won’t he? We can finish our homework then. I’ve got English to do and Jaz —’

‘We can play ’til then.’ Sabbir looks over at Mum, and I follow his gaze.

She’s sniffing, dabbing her nose and fanning herself with her hand. ‘I’m fine,’ she says, her voice faltering. ‘Just give me a minute.’

But I can still hear that moan in my ears and I know we can’t leave her.

‘How about we get the blankets from our bedrooms and put them on the floor in here?’ It’s Jasmina. ‘If we push the table over, we can make a camp. Mum?’

Excitement bubbles up. I love camps. ‘We could sleep down here too.’

‘We may have to if the power doesn’t come back on soon,’ says Mum.

Five minutes later, Jaz, Sabbir and I have fetched our bedding from upstairs. Mum has cleared away the dishes and pushed the table against the wall. On the gas hob a pan is heating for our hot water bottles. We pile cushions onto the eiderdowns and clamber on top. Our bottles filled, Mum joins us, but with her back against the wall and her legs under the covers.

‘Tell us about Bangladesh again,’ I ask Mum. ‘What was it like growing up outside the city?’ All three of us love to hear her stories. We’d lived in the city centre of Sylhet so this part of our home country wasn’t something we knew well.

Mum speaks slowly as though she’s combing through her memories and putting them in place. Hearing her speak in Sylheti feels completely natural. Comforting, somehow. It’s like being in our old flat by the river.

‘One of my favourite things was the rolling hills. The land often flooded, especially in the monsoons, and lakes formed on the flood plains. Sometimes your grandfather took us into the swamp forests by boat. They’re magical places where trees grow out of the water. Their branches join up at the top to form canopies and tunnels.’ Mum gestures with her hands.

In the soft candlelight I catch the look on her face, as though the memories bat her back and forth between pleasure and pain.

‘Living here in London, in the cold and grey and the dark, I miss life by the river and the lush green colour. After the monsoons, beautiful star-shaped pink water lilies would float on the lakes. Sabbir, d’you remember the migratory birds? You always loved the swamp hens, didn’t you?’ Her melancholy makes me wonder how she feels about us moving to Britain. ‘The tea estates are glorious,’ she says, making a sloping gesture with her arms. ‘Carpets of green bushes, all trimmed to waist height. My mother and her sisters would pick the tea. I went once to help.’ The soft candlelight melts the ache in her features. It warms her voice for the first time this evening. ‘My father’s family grew rice.’ Energy builds in her voice. ‘I liked to watch the buffalos treading on the rice hay to dislodge the grains. It’s the traditional way of doing it. Afterwards we’d all swim in the Surma, and watch the cattle as they drank in the river. They’re —’

The flat buzzer silences her, and we all jump. Wrenched from the vivid colours of Bangladesh back to our dark kitchen.

‘Who’s that, ringing at this time?’ Mum’s tense again.

‘Perhaps Dad’s forgotten his key?’ It’s all I can think of. ‘I’ll go.’ I get up and feel my way to the hall, my eyes used to the dark. I open the door, expecting Dad to rush in, laden with bags, full of apologies and jokes and stories.

But there’s no-one there.

‘Who is it, Maya?’ Mum shouts through.

‘No-one. Someone must’ve pressed the wrong bell.’ I step outside the flat into the hall and, smelling tobacco, I scour the darkness for a glowing cigarette end or the light of a torch. My foot knocks against an object on the ground. There’s something beside the doorway. I lean over to feel what it is. A plastic bag rustles in my fingers. In it is something hard, like a cardboard box. I pick up the package and carry it into the flat.

‘Someone left a parcel.’ I place it on one of the kitchen worktops.

‘At the door?’ That tone is back in Mum’s voice. ‘For pity’s sake, Maya —’

‘No-one was there, just this bag.’ I point, although it’s obvious.

‘Give it to me,’ says Mum sternly, moving towards the worktop.

But Sabbir has already begun rummaging in it. He looks at us all in turn, his face excited. ‘It’s candles and . . . you’re never going to guess what . . .’

‘Bagels?’ Jasmina and I shout in unison.

Wednesday – Maya

When I got home and closed the front door, relief surged through me. It wasn’t my brother’s photo in the hall that brought the tears, nor the suitcase I’d parked by the stairs when I arrived home in the early hours. It was that, all day, my attention and energy had been on the investigation when what I wanted was to be alone with my grief. Now, I finally had the chance to gather it up so I could feel close to Sabbir; to wade through all the conflicting emotions about how he’d died – and why.

In the kitchen, I lobbed my keys onto the worktop, followed by the soggy bag of chips I’d half-heartedly collected on the way home. In the cold air, the smell of malt vinegar wafted round the room and the greasy mass was unappealing. I flicked on the heating. Next to the kettle, the message light was flashing on the answerphone. Mum had probably forgotten I’d gone to Bangladesh for the funeral.

Through the patio doors, the light was reflecting on the canal water in the dark. When I was house-hunting, I’d had my heart set on this flat as it reminded me of Sylhet and our apartment there when we were growing up. I remembered how sometimes, when he’d been in a good mood, Dad would sit between Jasmina and me on our balcony there and read us the poems of Nazrul Islam. On those rare occasions, the two of us would lap up the crumbs of Dad’s attention, bask in his gentle optimism, oblivious to the stench of booze and tobacco on his breath, and the smell of women on his clothes and skin.

What I remembered most, though, was how yellow his fingertips were; the feel of his cracked, dry skin. And how much I’d loved his burnt-caramel voice.

I headed into the lounge. Last night’s array of mementos littered the coffee table, waiting to be stuck into the journal I’d bought from the market in Sylhet. The fire had destroyed most of Sabbir’s belongings so Jasmina and I had chosen what we wanted from the bits that were recovered. My eyes fell on the book of Michael Ondaatje poetry. He’d annotated it. On the plane home, I’d read every single poem and pored over all my brother’s notes, then wept in the darkness of the cabin. I’d learned more about Sabbir from those poems than all our conversations.

Sometimes the canal outside was soothing. Tonight, although the water was still, I felt it pressing in on me. Unable to shift Linda’s death from my mind, I kneeled in front of the wood burner. As I lay kindling on the bed of ash, my thoughts drifted back to the amalgam of conversations from earlier in the day. I was exhausted. A combination of jet lag, lack of sleep and not eating. I was contemplating having a bath when my mobile rang. It was Dougie.

‘Hey, how are you?’ We’d Skyped several times when I was in Bangladesh but, other than seeing him at the crime scene, I hadn’t had the chance to catch up with him since getting back. He was downstairs, so I buzzed him in and went to meet him at the door, pausing briefly to check my appearance in the mirror.

‘I was on my way home. Wanted to check you’re okay.’ He leaned over and his beard growth brushed my cheek as he gave me a kiss.

I drank in the smell I knew so well, and, for a moment, I longed to sink into his arms. ‘Shattered, but pleased to see you. Come in.’ I began walking away from the door. ‘I was going to call you.’

He followed me along the hall and into the kitchen. Pulled the overcoat off his large frame and draped it over a chair back.

‘Fancy a beer?’ I said.

‘If you’re having one.’

I took two bottles from the fridge and passed him one.

‘You’ve met the fast-track sergeant, then.’ He took a swig of beer.

‘Yeah.’ I sighed, irritated. ‘Briscall must’ve known about this for a while. Nice of him to mention it.’

Dougie’s bushy eyebrows shot up. ‘That man’s a prick.’ He strode over to the window and back. ‘Gather this Maguire bloke’s an Aussie? What’s he like? Have to say, he looks more Scottish than I do.’

‘He seems a good cop. Knows his stuff and he’s pretty sharp in the interview room. Briscall will never change. I had a lot of time to think when I was in Sylhet and I’m done with letting him wind me up. I joined the police to make a difference, and to help people like Sabbir. I’m fed up with Briscall side-tracking me with his petty crap.’

Dougie had one hand round his beer, the other in his pocket. He was taking in what I was saying. ‘How’s it going with the school and the Gibsons? It’s all over the media.’

‘No real leads. We’re waiting to interview two key witnesses. One’s under medical supervision, the other’s gone AWOL.’ I groaned with frustration. ‘We’re still puzzling over the Buddhist precepts. There are five of them. Why the killer has started with the second, we don’t know.’ The cold had reached my bones today and I needed to warm up. ‘Shall we go through? The stove’s on.’

In the lounge, Dougie sank into the sofa, his manner quiet and reflective.

‘As a murder method, what d’you reckon strangulation says about the killer?’

‘I’m not sure.’ He paused to think. ‘It’s quick and doesn’t require any weapons. Silent apart from victim protests. Excruciating agony for a few seconds, depending on the pressure, then the victim slips into unconsciousness. Death minutes after that. It’s certainly different from stabbings and shootings.’

I was nodding. ‘On training courses we’re continually told that murder methods are rarely random or coincidence, except in the heat of the moment. Whoever murdered Linda chose to strangle her, bind her wrists and leave a message by her body.’

Dougie was stroking his chin. Silent for a few moments. ‘It’s certainly symbolic. Whoever did it could’ve simply strangled her and left.’

The material that had been used to bind Linda’s wrists wasn’t expensive, but Dougie was right: for the killer to bother, it must symbolise something for them. And forethought had gone into what they had chosen to write. It wasn’t an impassioned scrawling of ‘BITCH’ across a mirror in red lipstick, for example.

‘The most logical explanation is that the two acts go together.’ I held my forearms the way Linda’s had been positioned. ‘The precept says, I abstain from taking the ungiven. If your wrists are tied, so are your hands.’

‘Bingo. You can work from there. Although, hang on.’ Dougie placed his beer on the coffee table. ‘Did you say there are five precepts? Do you think the killer’s started with the second precept because of its significance? Or do you suppose there’s been a murder before this one?’

Wednesday – Dan

The Skype ring tone danced around the small bedroom. ‘Pick up, pick up,’ Dan urged, as he pictured the early morning scene at home in Sydney: Aroona getting the girls ready for whichever club or friend they were going to today. It was nearly midnight and Dan was wide awake in his Stepney flat-share. Every cell in his body felt as though night-time had been and gone. He lay beneath his crumpled coat, shivering, longing for the unbearable heat of home.

On his phone the pixelated image solidified. ‘Daddee,’ came Kiara’s squeal through the ether, and the video clicked in. She had a huge grin on chubby cheeks, her face still full of sleep.

‘Hey, kiddo. How are you?’ Dan searched her features for tiny signs of change, drinking up their familiarity. ‘I really miss you guys.’

‘Is it cold there? Mum said you’ve got, like, minus twenty or something.’

Dan chuckled. Swallowed the lump in his throat. Her innocent exaggeration was refreshing. ‘Not quite. It is cold, though, and we’ve had a bit of snow.’ It was so good to hear her voice. ‘Did you go to the beach yesterday?’

Another face bombed the picture. Sharna. All soft curls and gappy teeth. ‘Snow? Take some photos.’ A gaping mouth loomed in, and she attempted to point at her gums. ‘The toof fairy came last night, Daddy.’

‘Is that right? What’d she bring?’

‘A new toofbrush.’

Both girls dissolved into giggles. It was a typical Aroona present.

Homesickness pinched at Dan. Being apart from his family and missing out on milk teeth and swimming lessons . . . He hoped they’d all be able to join him soon.

‘Mum’s coming,’ said Kiara. ‘I got burned today. I’m all scratchy.’ She rubbed at her neck and face as though needing to make her point.

He’d only been away four months. Living in Sydney, he was used to hearing an eclectic mix of accents, but the combination was different in East London. The familiar Aussie vernacular was comforting but sounded different from the way it normally did. More distinct.

Feet shuffled across the laminate of their apartment. Aroona peered over the top of the girls’ heads, her dark hair a contrast with Sharna’s blonde and Kiara’s red.

‘Hey,’ Aroona said. ‘How come you’re still up?’ She was holding a giant tub of mango yoghurt with a spoon in it, and in the background the TV was blaring out the weather in New South Wales.

‘Oh, you know. Wanted to speak to my girls.’ Around him, magnolia walls were devoid of home touches. On the floor beside his bed, the greasy KFC box reminded him how hungry he was. He brought his wife up to date with Maya’s return. ‘I’m still trying to find a proper apartment.’ He wanted to ask if she’d thought further on when she and the girls would join him, but didn’t want to upset the geniality of their conversation. Things were shifting for the Aboriginal communities and he knew how much Aroona cared about helping them. ‘I’ve heard about the tooth fairy. How did the swimming lessons go?’

In front of him the girls squirmed and giggled.

‘She did very well and —

Her reply was drowned out by a banging on the flimsy party wall of Dan’s room. ‘Trying to sleep here, mate!’ boomed the voice of the flatmate he’d heard but never met.

‘I’d better go,’ Dan hurried, irritation bubbling in his throat. ‘It’s late here. Speak soon, Okay?’

They waved and he cut the call.

Emptiness seeped back into the confines of his tiny room, silence back into the yawning space. And on his phone, from the background image, Aroona and the girls beamed at him.

Thursday – Maya

During the night it had snowed and, when I left the flat at 7 a.m., a dusting of white crystals lay on the path by the canal and on the lock. It was as though the world at the water’s edge had been cleaned. From there, my walk to the car took me past the graffiti tags on the bridge at Ben Johnson Road, and the burned-out shell of a warehouse, with its blackened brickwork and boarded-up windows. Overhead, bulging black snow clouds hung over Mile End like baggy trousers.

All night I’d been unable to shift the idea that there may have been a murder before Linda’s. I’d emailed the team and asked Alexej to check all suspicious deaths from the last three months, involving calling cards or anything ritualistic.

I was soon in Stepney, outside the block of flats where the Allens lived; an ugly, seventies-built, three-storey building. Paint was flaking off tired metal windows. On both sides of the entrance the recent snow was melting on mud, and discarded fag butts were leaking brown into the white slush. I rang the buzzer. Nearby, a yellow crane was lowering a vast steel structure onto what used to be playing fields, and I had to raise my voice over the drone and beeping of the site JCBs.

‘I’m DI Rahman,’ I shouted into the intercom.

Roger Allen buzzed me in and met me at the door of his flat. Stale alcohol fumes wafted towards me. I recognised him from the staff photos but hadn’t absorbed quite how skinny he was. Speckled stubble growth clung to his face. Shirt tails trailed over his trousers and his jumper was lopsided.

‘Did you get the messages to contact us?’ It was more of an accusation than a question. ‘We came round here yesterday and rang several times.’

A startled look swept over his features. ‘Sorry. My wife did tell me. I’ve been . . .’ He broke off; looked over his shoulder into the flat and then back to me.

‘I assume you know that Linda Gibson was murdered yesterday?’ People who wasted police time really pushed my buttons. It was one of my most regular rants to the team.

Roger opened his mouth to speak and closed it, as if weighing up what to say. ‘Yes, I do. But I don’t know anything about it, I’m afraid.’

A draught was making its way down my collar. ‘May I come in?’ I gestured to the flat and moved towards the open door.

Roger glanced at his watch.

‘Got to be somewhere?’ My patience was withering.

He rubbed his balding head and stepped reluctantly back inside, gesturing for me to enter.

Down the hallway a television was blaring. There was something familiar about the output. In the hall, a holdall stood up against the wall and a man’s jacket hung on the bannisters. A pair of pink wellies nestled on the laminate next to an assortment of family shoes. The hall table was cluttered with toys and a toddler’s trike had been parked under the hall table. The smell of toast wafted out from the kitchen. So, he was in the middle of his breakfast – but why did he look like he’d spent the night on the sofa?

Roger led me into the lounge where the television was on.

Of course. It was the school video. I pointed at the source of the noise, and raised my voice over it. ‘Could you mute that?’

He scanned the room for the remote control and zapped the TV off.

‘Do you usually watch the school video before you go to work?’

He jutted his chin in defiance and slid the remote control onto the coffee table. ‘Course not. I was just checking something.’

‘Checking what?’

‘The . . . the sound.’

I stared at him in disbelief. ‘Alright to sit down?’ I perched on an armchair and took out my notepad. I needed to change tack; get Allen off the defensive. Attempting to make my tone of voice less impatient, I said, ‘An officer came round here yesterday afternoon. I called round on my way home last night. On both occasions your wife said you were out.’ I raised my voice at the end of the sentence, to imply the question rather than state it. He was a bright man. He knew what I wanted to know.

‘Yeah, I popped out for some fresh air.’ He cocked his head and stared at me.

‘Both times? Did you get the messages to call us urgently?’

‘I . . .’ He was standing in front of the fireplace, his attention fixed on his hands, pulling at them as if they were lumps of dough.

In that moment, I felt sorry for him. I tried to imagine this man, in his scruffy clothes, conducting management meetings at school, leading working parties and standing in front of assemblies. I changed the subject. ‘Who’s off on their travels?’

‘Eh?’ Roger’s eyes darted round the room.

‘The bag in the hall?’

‘Oh, that.’ He waved his hand in the air dismissively. ‘We haven’t put it away yet. A Christmas trip.’ He was fiddling with his wedding ring now, twisting it round his finger as though he were trying it on for size.

That was about as convincing as his account of why he’d been out when the police came round. I surveyed the room.

Family-worn furniture.

Drinks tables.

Several lamps.

Cheap sound system. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.

Large plasma screen. Telly clearly important to the Allen family.

Wait. ‘Do you normally clean your teeth in the living room?’

‘You what?’ He traced my glance to the toothbrush and tube of toothpaste on the table.

That was it. He’d just arrived home. His wife was out. And he’d been having breakfast. ‘Where have you been, Mr Allen?’

He reddened. ‘Nowhere,’ he snapped. ‘I told you, I wasn’t well.’ He paced the length of the room. Up. Down. Hands in his pockets.

I waited. Let his reply hang in the air, all the while fixing my gaze on him.

‘How did you get on with Mrs Gibson?’

His bored shrug came too quickly – more a nervous tic than a genuine I don’t know. ‘I was less of a fan of hers than lots of other people but I never wanted her dead.’ There was a weight to his quietly spoken words. ‘If you lot did your job properly, you’d find that there are a few people at the school who were keen to get Linda out of the picture.’

My voice came as quiet as an echo, eyes locked on his. ‘Like who?’

Thursday – Steve

Steve was still absorbing Lucy’s news as he walked to Mile End to catch the bus. She’d met someone. Why hadn’t she told him when he was in New York? At least then they could have discussed it. Giving a message to Jane was cowardly. He turned up the collar of his jacket. On the ground, blobs of rain were washing away the recent snow flurry.

At the bus stop, school kids elbowed and shoved their way onto the double-decker bus, before clattering upstairs to claim their position in the pecking order. Steve waited with the workers, the knackered mums with buggies, the pensioners and this week’s reject kids. On the ground floor, an élite group of boys stood in a huddle, too cool to bother with the scrum of the top deck, their voices barely broken and their hormones in a spiral. Steve watched them posture and prance as they sniffed round two girls from another school.

Still feeling delicate this morning, he cursed his decision to get the bus. Had he known he would be cooped up with so much perfume and giggling, he would have walked the mile to school and spared his senses the onslaught.

When he alighted the bus at Bow Road tube station, the cool air was a relief, like stepping into the shade on a summer’s day. Momentarily, it soothed his lungs and cheeks before starting to bite. It was not fully light, and traffic chugged along Mile End Road, headlights glaring, carrying jangly city dwellers and bulging haulage loads to their destinations.

On parts of broken pavement the rain had collected in dirty puddles. Beside the cash point in the station wall, Steve saw a homeless man sitting in a dirt-slicked sleeping bag. Only a piece of cardboard lay between him and the concrete slabs. Desperation clung to his hollowed cheeks. Lowered eyelids kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, as though he doubted life would ever be good again, and even looking people in the eye required too much energy. In his lap, out of his vision, lay a sign. ‘I hope spring comes soon,’ it said.

No request for money, for food or a hostel bed.

What a self-pitying prick Steve was being. Yes, his own life was a mess at the moment. Yes, Lucy had a new bloke, but at least he had a job and somewhere warm to sleep. He looked at the guy’s thin sleeping bag, his filthy, cold-ravaged fingers in mittens, and Steve knew he wouldn’t survive sleeping rough for more than a couple of days. He changed course and strode over. The closer he got, he saw that the man, whose misfortune-bedraggled appearance suggested he was in his thirties, was probably in his early twenties.

‘There you go, mate.’ Steve dropped three pound coins in the pot. ‘I hope spring comes soon too.’

Hearing the chink of change, the man looked up. His eyes were dead but he managed a thumbs-up. A bluey-brown bruise encircled one eye socket and a scabby graze clung to the cheek below.

A few minutes later, Steve was at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights. An empty Red Bull can ricocheted in the wind. On the horizon the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the City boasted of wealth and progress. As he crossed the busy road, the unyielding cityscape seemed such a contrast to the sleepy town of Midhurst. There, the lollipop lady steered school kids safely across the high street, with the castle ruins, the River Rother and Cowdray polo fields in the distance. Had he seen any homeless people there? He couldn’t remember. Threads of panic rose inside him. What if coming back to East London was a mistake? What if he couldn’t settle back into noisy, crowded Tower Hamlets?

Fuck’s sake. Get a grip. Give it your best and if it doesn’t work, you can re-think things. At least you won’t be bored in London. He sucked in a huge breath and hurried in the direction of Mile End High School.

The Bow backstreets, which were quiet yesterday when Steve walked to school, were thrumming with noise. The closer he got, a mêlée of voices floated towards him, increasingly loud. Someone was shouting instructions into a loud speaker. It reminded Steve of a tuition fee rally when he was at university. Over the tops of houses, blue lights sliced through the grey. This was different from yesterday. Something must’ve happened. The police presence at the school had been stepped up overnight. His pulse quickened and his shattered body galvanised itself.

Metres away now, voices bellowed warnings. Vehicle engines roared and their doors slammed. Ring tones rode the bitter January wind, and through the tree-lined streets, satellite connections transmitted the news of Linda’s death into unsuspecting skies.

When Steve neared the school premises, he saw that the cordon had been enlarged. Crime scene tape flapped in the wind. Half a dozen marked cars were positioned at intervals around the area, and several officers huddled round each vehicle, solemn-faced and urgent in their high-visibility jackets. Scattered around the scene were twenty or so other people, some in work suits, others in forensic clothing. Liveried vans had arrived from the BBC and Sky, and people bustled round these hubs, lugging photographic paraphernalia, recording equipment and microphones. A rangy, pale-skinned man with red hair stood in front of a scrum of journalists and reporters. His arms made determined gestures as he tried to silence their questions long enough to be able to speak.

Steve scanned the scene for a colleague, someone he might recognise from yesterday, but saw no-one familiar. Shit. He’d forgotten to check his email this morning. He’d call Andrea. She’d know where they were meant to be. Before he could dial, a woman clocked him and sped over, waving and grinning and calling out. Long tendrils of black hair bobbed as she ran.

Before he had time to escape, she’d pinned him down. ‘I’m Suzie James . . . from the . . . Stepney Gazette,’ she stammered, out of breath from running but still able to flash her teeth, her head on one side in the sort of coquettish pose that Steve’s fifteen-year-old students adopted sometimes when they were late with their homework.

He stifled a groan. This was all he needed. To commit some dreadful faux pas to the press just to make his start at the school even better.

‘Are you staff?’ she simpered.

He got a waft of her minty breath. ‘You need to speak to someone from school management or the police.’ Steve felt flustered and cornered. ‘We’ve all been asked not to speak to anyone.’ He was just about to walk away when –

‘So you are staff then?’

He’d fallen into that one. ‘Sorry,’ he said, using his hand to indicate he wanted her to back off. ‘I don’t want to be rude but . . .’ and he accelerated his pace away from her.

Undeterred, she was running alongside him. ‘Do you know who found the head teacher?’

‘No comment.’

‘Do you think this has anything to do with the Pakistani girl who committed suicide last term? Or the boy who was stabbed on Christmas Eve?’ She was alongside him, almost running now, and puffing as she moved. ‘Thing is . . . if there’s a link . . . we have a duty . . . to keep the community . . . informed.’

Steve heaved in a breath. This woman was testing his patience. She was like a dog with a bloody bone. He was desperate for a fag.

‘Right, that’s enough.’ He wheeled round to face her. Leaned over so he was at her height and pressed his face near hers. ‘I’ve tried to be polite and you won’t take a hint. Now – piss off.’ He sped away, just catching her say, ‘Can I quote you on that?’

He shifted his thoughts to today. And school. He’d been about to ring Andrea.

Suddenly the reporter was at his side again, making him jump. ‘Here’s my business card. If you decide you want to talk to the paper, give me a bell. Yeah? I can make it worth your while.’ She pushed her hand at him.

Freaked out at the arrogance of her renewed approach, Steve stepped backwards and the fancy business card fell to the pavement. ‘Oops. Sorry,’ he said. ‘Clumsy me.’ And this time he thought about Lucy with her new boyfriend, and channelled as much menace into his stare as he could summon.

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