Dead in Time (The Sara Jones Cycle Book 1) Page 8

  Carol nodded as if she understood, then said, ‘What are you saying?’

  Sara leaned towards her, feeling a wave of empathy for the girl. She was unused to police interrogations, and was probably embarrassed to be talking about these delicate matters in front of her boyfriend. It was obvious that Brett was not providing the comfort and reassurance she had been hoping for.

  ‘Sometimes, Carol,’ Sara said gently, ‘people who’ve been harmed by men don’t always want to tell the police about it –’

  Suddenly, Carol gasped. ‘You think he raped me!’

  Brett jumped up. Instinctively, Jamie rose to his feet.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ Brett cried. ‘Didja, Carol? I mean, did he? Were you ever ...?’

  ‘No!’ Carol shouted at him, tears of embarrassment welling in her eyes. ‘I sold him cigarettes, that’s all!’ She started to cry. ‘I barely ever spoke to him!’ she wept.

  Sara moved to Carol, and put an arm around her, muttering calming words in her ear. ‘Hey, it’s okay, calm down ...’

  Brett tried to rush towards them, and Jamie shot out a restraining hand.

  ‘Anyone done that, I’ll fuckin’ do him,’ Brett spat, seemingly unaware that the man in question was already dead.

  ‘You calm down, too,’ Jamie muttered under his breath. ‘Let’s leave Carol alone for a moment, okay?’

  ‘Shhh,’ Sara went on, ‘everything’s all right ...’

  ‘I will, Carol,’ Brett went on. ‘I fuckin’ will.’

  Navid Kapadia and his family had lived in the town for nearly two years, yet their rented house – a semi-detached box with salmon-coloured brick cladding in the Waunfawr district above the university – looked as impersonal as the day they had moved in. The Kapadia family had been allowed back by police to gather their possessions, but they had little to pack. Other than a few decorations – a brass wall plaque of the Kaaba, an onyx tea-set, a rug – the furniture had come with the house, and had a cheap, makeshift quality that was no fit setting for Fatima Kapadia’s complex beauty.

  She was a young-looking woman with intelligent, mournful eyes. Her sombre brown-and-grey dress and matching head-scarf only accentuated her striking appearance. Fatima sat on the sofa blinking away tears, while her twelve-year-old daughter Jamila dutifully laid cakes and biscuits on the table next to Sara, and her eight-year-old son Yusuf sat quietly on the floor next to his mother.

  ‘It is intolerable that they have only now released Navid’s body,’ Mrs Kapadia whispered with restrained bitterness. ‘It is a duty for us to bury our dead quickly. I told the police as much – it has been impertinent of them to keep us waiting.’

  This was the most awkward of Sara’s three meetings, worse even than Carol Elliott’s embarrassed hysteria and her boyfriend’s Neanderthal ranting. She realised that, to Mrs Kapadia, the actions of the authorities must have been indistinguishable from cultural insensitivity. Today, as a representative of everyone who had inconvenienced the family since Navid Kapadia’s horrible death, Sara had felt on the defensive from the time she entered the house. To find out what she needed to know, she was going to have to risk alienating Mrs Kapadia further.

  ‘What will happen to your husband’s body now, Mrs Kapadia?’

  ‘We will accompany him from London to Karachi tomorrow evening. After burial, I am to return here, to put the last of our affairs in order.’

  ‘You’re moving back to Karachi?’ Sara asked.

  Fatima closed her eyes. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Well, please be assured that the police are doing everything they can to find your husband’s killer. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there is almost certainly a link between his death and those of the two most recent victims.’ She hesitated, then plunged forward. ‘In order to try to establish connections, we need to ask questions that probably aren’t relevant, but need to be eliminated from our thinking.’

  Mrs Kapadia’s dark eyes stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Sara’s gaze fell to the floor, where Yusuf watched her with wide eyes. Awkwardly, she said, ‘Do you think perhaps the children ...?’

  ‘Go to your room,’ Fatima snapped.

  Jamila reached down to Yusuf and took his hand. They moved away silently.

  ‘Forgive me for being personal,’ Sara continued, ‘but my colleagues and I have been wondering if everything was ... well, all right between you and your husband?’

  Fatima’s eyes seemed to grow even darker. ‘Everything was normal,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Then, your relationship was a good one? Your husband got along well with the children?’

  Her voice began to waver with the beginnings of anger. ‘As I have said.’

  Sara nodded, trying to appear empathetic, but feeling as though she were committing an assault against this gentle, restrained woman. ‘Did your husband have any friends or contacts at the university who showed an unusual interest in your welfare?’

  ‘My welfare? What do you mean?’

  Sara realised that she had been holding her breath. She released it slowly through her mouth. ‘I’m not certain exactly. Someone who might have witnessed an exchange between you and Mr Kapadia, perhaps, and taken it the wrong way –’

  Without warning, Fatima slammed her hand into the side of the sofa, and shouted, ‘I have answered your question! There was no reason to show any interest in my welfare!’ She caught her breath, and fought for dominance over her emotions. At the edge of the doorframe behind her, Jamila stood silently. When Fatima spoke again, her words were carefully controlled and precisely chosen.

  ‘Navid met a lot of people, and I was not in the habit of socialising with them. He has been dead for two weeks, and the authorities have done nothing but hold his body against my wishes and ask me a series of intrusive questions. I am tired of it.’

  At her feet, Yusuf began to weep, more frightened by the new, deadly calm of his mother’s tone than by her outburst. Jamila crawled towards him, and put an arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Mrs Kapadia, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you –’

  ‘I wish we had never come to the United Kingdom,’ Fatima said quietly. ‘There is nothing more I can tell you.’ Her tone softened. ‘I sincerely hope you capture the man who has done this ... but please understand, I have answered so many questions.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sara said, grateful for being allowed to conclude the conversation with dignity. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’ She rose, but Fatima did not join her. Jamila emerged quickly from the doorway. ‘I will see our guest to her car,’ she told her mother, then nodded to Sara. Fatima followed their progress to the door with dark, hollow eyes.

  Outside, Jamila walked with Sara down the line of paving stones that bisected the small, manicured lawn, to the smooth, new road on which she had parked her car. The killer’s drawing had been washed from the pavement, but Sara wondered if she had chosen the exact spot where Mr Kapadia had been murdered. If that thought had occurred to the young girl, she masked it well.

  When they reached the car, Jamila spoke quietly. ‘Why did you ask my mother those questions?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sara said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset her.’

  ‘No ... I mean, why did you want to know about my parents’ relationship?’

  The girl’s eyes were bright, burning with an intelligence and sophistication that Sara was not used to seeing in someone so young. She tried to give her a warm smile, to indicate that her previous questions had not been important. ‘We’re following up a few lines of enquiry, that’s all.’

  Jamila nodded and licked her lips nervously, as if waiting for Sara to ask her something. Sara did not know what Jamila expected to hear, and remained silent.

  Finally, the girl hung her head. ‘He used to hit her,’ she whispered.

  Sara blinked in surprise. ‘He did?’

  ‘Not all the time – sometimes, he would get frustrated.’ She glanced nervously at the door to her house. ‘Lately, it had been gettin
g worse. My mother was never happy here; she wanted to return to Pakistan. They would argue when Yusuf and I were in bed. She threatened to take us home herself, to leave without him. Her family has become very important in Karachi, much more so than his. He said she was trying to humiliate him.’

  Jamila bit her lip and choked back her sobs. Sara reached for her hand and made sounds of comfort. Such emotion seemed out of place in this sterile neighbourhood of white plastic fences and trellises still awaiting vines from the garden centre. Eventually, she asked, ‘Did your father ever hurt you or your brother?’

  ‘What?’ gasped the girl. ‘No, never!’ She swallowed hard, trying to rein in her tears. Sara noted how much she looked like her mother.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sara said, ‘you’ll be home the day after tomorrow.’ She looked towards the house, and saw Fatima staring out the window, watching them.

  ‘You’d better go in,’ she whispered. ‘Your mother needs you.’

  EIGHT

  Sara and Ceri stood in the stable amidst cobwebs and cardboard boxes, trying to sort out some of Sara’s possessions. The boxes were full of things that had been of no immediate use to Sara when she had first moved to Penweddig: books by the score; old files; and assorted bits and pieces from her office and flat in London. Now that the house was assuming a semblance of order, she felt freer to unpack, and find places for them. The moving company had done a fine job packing, but had failed to label anything. On this Saturday afternoon, after Sara had conducted her interviews, she and Ceri stood in the dank stable with a kitchen knife each, slitting open boxes and peering at their contents.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Ceri said, pulling open a box filled with medical and psychology texts, ‘this whole area is absolutely terrified. Every time someone hears a noise at night, they ring the police headquarters. The few tourists who still wander into town get suspicious looks from nearly everybody.’

  Sara lowered a large box from the top of a stack onto the stable’s uneven cement floor, and wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead. ‘Fewer people are visiting the Drop-In Centre, too,’ she said breathlessly. ‘We might as well close the place until this character is caught.’

  Ceri nodded glumly and squinted through the small, square panes of dirty glass in the stable’s double doors. ‘Have you ever watched the seafront on a foggy night?’ she asked. ‘The clouds of fog roll in from the bay and swamp absolutely everything, until you can’t see clearly. That’s what the fear in this town is like. It’s rolling in huge clouds and blinding everyone.’

  She frowned, removing the last few books from the cardboard box and flipping it over. ‘Do you ever feel it? Alone out here?’

  Sara shrugged. ‘Only when I don’t keep busy.’

  Picking up a kitchen knife, Ceri slit the packing tape that held it together, and pressed the cardboard flat. ‘What breaks my heart most is the kids,’ she muttered. ‘Since Aled Morgan’s death, there just aren’t any children on the streets. Have you noticed the playground next to the castle? It’s deserted.’

  She cut the tape from another box and pulled open its flaps. ‘I’ll tell you one thing: if that Morgan woman had only kept a better watch on her son, he would still be alive.’

  Sara looked up with an expression of uncertainty mingled with distaste. ‘Come on, Ceri,’ she said, ‘it’s not really fair to blame Aled’s mother.’

  ‘Oh hell!’ Ceri snorted, ‘I think it’s more than fair. What was that woman doing, letting him run all over town, stealing from people and getting high?’

  ‘That woman worked hard to support the two of them,’ Sara said. ‘She couldn’t always be around.’

  ‘Face it, Sara,’ Ceri huffed, ‘Problems like these don’t happen overnight. She created that kid’s personality. She’s got to take some responsibility.’

  Sara shook her head obstinately. ‘It’s not always easy for parents to control a child who’s determined to go his own way,’ she said. ‘I know. Think of what my parents went through with Rhoddo.’

  Ceri looked up at her, her mask of self-righteous intolerance slipping.

  ‘I know it was before you knew him,’ Sara went on, ‘but my father was about as stern with him as he could have been. It didn’t help – if anything, it only made him worse.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ceri mumbled. She looked away, unwilling to challenge her friend on such a delicate topic. ‘Now, what do you want to do with these books?’

  When Rhodri Jones junior was nine months old, he had caught meningitis and nearly died. Although doctors eventually pronounced the baby fully recovered, his mother, Kay, was never convinced. She had read up on the disease, and discovered that it could have troubling after-effects, often much later in life, including epilepsy and learning disabilities. Throughout Rhoddo’s childhood, she had treated her first-born as if he’d been fashioned from porcelain.

  Such over-protectiveness had always irritated Rhodri Jones Senior, who saw in his son a normal, healthy lad who could only be damaged by the clucking ministrations of his mother. This disagreement had simmered throughout Rhoddo’s childhood, becoming particularly intense when there were other problems in the Joneses’ marriage.

  Despite being the cause, or excuse, for his parents’ occasional battles, Rhodri had grown up to be a bright – some said brilliant – boy. By his mid-teens, he was surprising teachers at his local school with the complexity of his responses to their questions – on those occasions when he chose to answer them. More often, he had sat at his desk with darting eyes and tapping feet, observing a vital inner world that his classmates did not see and could never have imagined. Teachers left him to his own devices because his marks remained at the top of the class.

  For his sixteenth birthday in the autumn of 1995, Rhodri had lobbied for a motor scooter from his parents. His father had been against it, but Kay Jones had always found it difficult to deny her boy anything. Rhoddo had received his scooter – a 100cc Yamaha – and things had changed. He started playing truant, preferring long rides through the hills to attending those classes that had always bored him. By early December, the school secretary had begun to ring home with unnerving regularity. Sara’s father and Rhodri had begun to argue.

  Sara could still vividly recall one evening at the end of the second week of that December. Sprawled across the living room carpet, she had been doing her homework by the blaze of the fire in the grate. Her mother had already bought the family Christmas tree, and Sara could remember its blinking fairy lights throwing a regular yellow flash across her papers. Mrs Jones had been in the kitchen baking cinnamon bread, and the house seemed to be warmed by its spicy aroma. It was a scent Sara would always identify with her mother.

  Her father sat in his favourite chair, a hardback novel resting unread in his lap. Sara recalled his crimson cheeks, still flushed from the frigid, coal-black night. He had been outside looking for Rhodri. Sara was having trouble concentrating on her homework; she felt a trepidation that was very near dread. There had been a furious kind of concentration in his waiting, a smouldering rage that Sara had seen before, and knew could combust with little warning.

  Outside, the burr of Rhodri’s scooter rose and stopped, and the wooden front door pushed open with a squeak. Sara held her breath as her father closed his book quietly. In the kitchen, the oven fan switched off, and the house was silent.

  Rhoddo entered the room, pulling off his gloves and sniffing from the cold. Rhodri Jones Senior did not look at his son as he spoke. ‘Do you want to keep your birthday present?’ he asked.

  It took Rhoddo a second to register the question. ‘Huh?’

  Sara glanced at him from the corner of her eye. His expression was slightly glassy, his pupils dilated. Please say whatever he wants, Rhoddo, just be nice to him.

  ‘I said, do you want to keep your birthday present?’

  Rhoddo made a perplexed face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘of course I do.’

  ‘Well, you won’t,’ he said. ‘Not unless you start at
tending classes. Rhodri, this is getting absurd – your mother and I are now having conversations with your school every day.’

  Her father’s voice was developing a strained edge. Sara could sense – physically feel – the imminent escalation of the argument, a snowball about to become an avalanche. She forced herself to study the needles of the Christmas tree, to concentrate on the blinking lights.

  ‘Your behaviour puzzles them,’ her father continued. ‘They know you’re bright, and wonder why you can’t seem to take the pace. People say you lack backbone.’

  Rhoddo stared at his father disbelievingly. ‘Who says that?’ he asked. It was a trait of Rhodri Senior to spoil otherwise valid arguments by stretching the truth.

  ‘Everybody,’ his father replied sharply. ‘It can’t go on. You’ve got to start attending classes.’

  Rhoddo shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, and shrugged off his jacket.

  Her father stood. ‘You’re not being serious. You have no intention of changing your behaviour in any way.’

  Rhodri draped his jacket over the arm of the sofa and sighed long-sufferingly. ‘There’s nothing they can teach me,’ he said. ‘They’re doing work I could have handled three years ago.’

  Her father glared. Maybe Rhoddo had exaggerated, but there was truth in his point. When he was younger, he had skipped a year of school, and now he was the youngest boy in his class. His parents were hesitant to allow him to advance any faster, but he did often find his work simplistic.

  ‘Don’t you care about your future?’ Mr Jones asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Rhoddo replied, ‘but if you can’t live life the way you want to, there’s no point in living at all, right?’

  Rhodri Jones Senior started at the boy, annoyance momentarily overshadowed by puzzlement. ‘If you don’t care about your own future,’ he said, ‘perhaps you might think of me. Do you know how it looks to have my son to behave in this way?’

  Rhodri stared at him for a moment, his mouth open, his mind clearly whirring. Then he smiled cunningly. ‘Ahhh!’ he said, wagging his finger at his father as if the older man had confessed to a dirty secret. ‘That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Not me, you.’