2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms (32 page)

“We’ve got a temporary morgue here now,” she said. “It’s back this way. I’ll show you.” They turned and she led him back towards the Annexe and Portakabin 4.

“Was this the one in the paper?” she said as they went.

“Yes.”

“I’m very sorry. Family member?”

“No. Just a…Just somebody I knew.” He couldn’t keep the catch out of his voice, she noticed, and she glanced back, seeing how nervous he was, how hard all this was for him.

They paused outside Portakabin 4, its refrigerating unit humming audibly from its rear.

She introduced him to the medical attendant and explained that he had to fill in a form.

“Name?” the attendant said.

“Belem.” Then the man gave his address and contact details. Then he was handed a white plastic coat and plastic overshoes.

“Tell you what,” Rita said, feeling sorry for him as she watched him put them on, his face set as if realising for the first time where he was about to go and what he was about to do. “I’ll get you a cup of tea, have it waiting for you.”

“Thank you,” he said and stood up as the attendant swung open the door to the mortuary.

It wouldn’t be easy for him in there, she knew. They had decided to establish a temporary holding mortuary here because every year at Wapping the MSU removed fifty to sixty corpses from London’s river, an average of one a week. Bodies decomposed fast once out of the river and if there had been no identification within a week they were moved to one of the larger city mortuaries where they were kept until the inquest. Some congruence of the tides and the river’s swerving course meant that more than half of all the bodies were found in or around Greenwich, by the big southern loop that the river took around the Isle of Dogs. Often the dead had been in the water for a long time and were bloated and disintegrating, or else they had been disfigured by brutal contact with passing boats and barges, or were eyeless, eyes pecked out by gulls—not to mention any violence that might have been visited on them before they were dumped in the water.

The one body she and Joey had found had been that of a careless drunk. He had walked out at low tide on a sandbar at midnight by Southwark Bridge to urinate and found himself sinking in soft mud, trapped at mid-thigh. He remained stuck there remorselessly as the tide rose, covering him, no one hearing his desperate shouts or seeing his waving arms. He was still there the next morning at low tide when the waters receded, face down. But this one, the one that had been in the papers—DB 23 (the twenty-third body this year)—was different, she knew. She had been knocked about by river traffic—she had a fractured skull and a broken neck, half a leg was missing, raked by a propeller. She thought of the man—Belem—standing by the sheeted body waiting for the face to be revealed. It would not be nice.

She punched the button on the tea and coffee maker and watched the water flow into the plastic cup. She picked up a little cardboard rhomboid of milk, a stirring stick and two sachets of sugar and went back out to Portakabin 4. He was coming out, his face pale, a hand to his lips, looking as if he might faint.

“Come and have a seat for a minute,” she said. “We can sort out the paperwork later.”

They went back into the restroom where he milked and sugared his tea and stirred it with the plastic stick—not saying anything, completely in his own head, eyes staring at the melamine table top. He began to sip his tea and looked up.

“That was her, was it?” Rita asked.

“Yes.”

“Known her long?”

“Not really.”

“Do you know her name? Where she lived?”

“Yes, she was called Mhouse.” He spelt it out and gave her address. “Her son is called Ly-on. A seven-year-old. That explains the tattoo: their names.”

“Right. Mhouse what?”

“Actually, I don’t know…I don’t know what her last name was.” This admission seemed to trouble him, she saw.

“We’ll get all this to the duty officer. He’ll take all the details. Just leave the cup there.”

She walked back with him to main reception where she handed him over for more form-filling and statement-giving. While the duty officer searched for the right documents she held out her hand and he shook it.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Belem.”

“Thanks for your help, you’ve been most kind. I really appreciate it,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

Then he asked her what her name was—she thought he might do that. It was one of her tests.

“Rita Nashe,” she said, smiling at him, thinking: he’s a fit-looking guy—tall, slim, nice eyes. Obviously intelligent. Usually she didn’t like that buzz-cut, close-bearded look, but it sort of suited him.

“I’m Primo,” he said, “Primo Belem.”

“Nice meeting you, Primo,” she said. “I’m off duty now—better run.”

“Just one second, Miss Nashe—” He looked troubled again.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Do they think she was killed?”

Rita paused. “Killed? You’re asking if she was
killed
—murdered? It could have been a fall. She could have been drunk—”

“I don’t know,” Primo Belem said. “I just don’t see how she could have wound up dead in the river. It doesn’t make sense.”

“She could have killed herself. We get dozens of suicides—”

“She would never have killed herself…”

“How can you say that?”

“Because of her son. She would never have left Ly-on alone. Never.”

Rita and Joey walked into The Shaft, heading for Unit 14, Level 3, Flat L, caution informing their every step. Rita had never felt so self-conscious. It was three o’clock in the afternoon but the few people they passed either took off in a different direction or else stopped and stared at them as if they had never seen uniformed police officers before.

“Wow,” she said to Joey. “What country are we in?”

“We don’t want to hang around, Rita.” He looked nervously over his shoulder. “We should call in the Rotherhithe boys.”

“It’s still an MSU case.”

“We’re
river
police, Rita. What’re we doing here?”

“Thanks, Joe. I owe you. It’s a hunch—just have to check something out, for my own satisfaction.”

They had reached the bottom of the stairs. She looked around her—boarded-up flats, a strew of filth, rubbish, graffiti everywhere. Apparently, Rita had learnt, the Shaftesbury Estate was due to be demolished in a year or two—despite its listed status, its twentieth-century architectural heritage. As a little septic, ulcerous dystopia in rapidly gentrifying Rotherhithe its days were numbered. A naked child came round the corner, a little girl, completely naked. She saw the two policemen, screamed and ran off.

“You stay down here, Joey,” she said. “Let me check the flat.”

“I’ll come running,” he said. “Don’t be too long.”

She climbed the stairs to the third floor walkway, looked over the balustrade, saw Joey and gave him a wave.

She knocked on the door of Flat L. Knocked again.

“Who dey be?” came a voice.

“Police.”

The door was unlocked and a tall thin guy in a maroon tracksuit stood in the doorway, smiling broadly. She noticed he had silver rings on all his fingers and his two thumbs.

“Praise the good lord. At last the police. We never see police for here. Welcome, welcome.”

She said she’d like to ask him a few questions. He said, no problem. In the dark flat beyond she could see women and children moving about, and heard a baby crying. Two men appeared in white ankle-length dishdashas and quickly went into another room. The conversation was going to take place on the doorstep: clearly he was not going to invite her inside.

“I’m making enquiries about a woman called Mhouse. This was her flat.”

“She rent it from me. Then she run away. She owe me five month rent. Lot of money.”

“You’re the landlord?”

“Yes, madam. I am also chairman of the Shaftesbury Estate Residents’ Association—SERA.”

“And your name is?”

“Mr Quality. Abdul-latif Quality. This is my apartment.”

“Who is living here now?”

“They are asylums. I am registered for the council. You can check me.”

“Do you know where this Mhouse went?”

“No. If I know, I go find her. I want my money.”

“She’s dead.”

Mr Quality’s expression did not change. He shrugged.

“God is great. Now I never get my money.”

“We believe that her death may not have been accidental. Do you know anyone who might have threatened her, might have wanted to cause her harm?” Rita drew her palm across her brow, finding it damp. Why was she sweating so much? “Do you know any person who might have had a grudge against her? Anybody loitering, watching her?”

Mr Quality thought, pursed his lips, exhaled. “I never see anybody like this.”

Rita frowned. When she had told Primo Belem that she was planning on going to The Shaft he had also asked her to find out about the boy, Ly-on.

“Do you know where her son is?”

“I think she take him when she run away.”

Rita looked about her. An old woman came up the stairs to the walkway, saw her, smiled nervously but broadly enough to show that she had no front teeth, immediately turned and hurried down the stairs again.

“Who’s that woman?”

“I never see her before.” He smiled. “In The Shaft people dey come and they dey go. Are you finished with me, officer?”

“I may want to speak to you again.”

“Very happy to speak to police. Plenty, plenty.”

“Where do you live?”

“I live for here.” He gestured at the dark interior of the flat. “You can always find me here.”

Rita felt a strange impotence run through her; everything, good and bad, that she routinely expected that her role as a police officer and her uniform would confer—status, respect, disrespect, disdain, suspicion, lazy assumption, knee-jerk reaction—simply did not apply here, here in The Shaft. She was the alien, not the ‘asylums’. She was out of kilter—they were in kilter. She wanted to run away from Mr Quality and that was not the sort of attitude, the state of mind, she should be experiencing, she knew: she was a public servant, paid to uphold law and order. She had never felt so redundant in her life.

“Thank you, Mr Quality.”

“My pleasure.”

He shut the door and she went down the stairs to rejoin Joey.

“Let’s get out of here, Joe.”

Rita and Primo Belem sat in a coffee shop cum French delicatessen called Jem-Bo-Coo not far from MSU in Wapping High Street. She was out of uniform and her hair was down. He had been waiting at a table at the back by the ranked wine bottles for sale, already there when she arrived, and she had seen his almost comic double-take at her ‘civilian’ persona. He was wearing his pinstripe suit and she noticed for the first time that the jacket and the trousers didn’t quite match. She’d checked the contact details he’d provided to the duty officer and knew where he lived—a flat in the Oystergate Buildings, Stepney—and she knew that he worked as a porter at the Bethnal & Bow hospital, a job he’d only been in for a few weeks. Everything about his demeanour, accent and vocabulary, however, spoke of someone unused to menial, manual work. There was some mystery here—she looked forward to attempting to solve it.

She ordered her coffee, sat down and told him about her visit to The Shaft and what she had found when she’d gone to Mhouse’s flat.

“There was a man there, said he was living in it—Mr Abdul-latif Q’Alitti.”

Primo nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard about Mr Quality. Mr Fixit.”

“Chairman of the Shaftesbury Estate Residents’ Association. I checked him out—they know all about him at the council. Nothing gets done in The Shaft without Mr Quality.”

“Any sign of the boy?”

“No. I’m afraid not. Mr Quality said he knew nothing.”

This seemed to perturb him. “I wonder—” he began and then stopped. “Are you hungry?” he said. “Can I get you a muffin?” She
was
hungry, in fact, so they went back to the counter and agreed to share a blueberry muffin. They took their seats again.

“Why do you think,” she said, picking the fruit out of her half of the bun, “that this Mhouse may have been murdered?”

“I don’t know,” he said, vaguely. “The Shaft is a dangerous place. I lived there for a while,” he added, “which is how I got to know Mhouse…”

“Do you think Mr Quality might have had something to do with it?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not him.”

“Anyone else?”

“No…No. It just seems suspicious to me.”

“We need something to go on.”

“I know…I’m sorry…”

She smiled and leant back in her chair, taking a bite from her half-muffin. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I think I’m still a bit in shock, you know. The other day, getting the news, seeing the body…”

She leant forward now and pointed the remains of her muffin at him. “Explain this to me: what motive could anyone have to kill this Mhouse person?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did she do?”

“Odd jobs.”

“Sex industry? Drugs?”

Primo pursed his lips and exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“If she was a prostitute she might have a record.”

“Why do you think she was a prostitute?”

“Are you telling me she wasn’t?”

He gave her a baffled, weak smile. “I’ll leave all that stuff to you,” he said. “I can’t figure it out.”

“Primo,” she said, her voice changing, a little sterner, smiling then frowning. “Are you telling me everything you know?”

“Yes, of course. God—look at the time. I’d better go, my shift starts in forty minutes.”

They both stood up and dumped their paper cups and the remains of the muffin in the bin.

“You’ve been a fantastic help,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll see if I can track down the boy.”

“There’ll be a post mortem and an inquest,” she said. “We might learn something more.”

“I doubt it,” he said with some bitterness, then added, apologetically, “of course, you never know.” He held out his hand. “Thanks a million, Rita.”

She took his hand and held on to it for two or three seconds longer than she should.

“Listen, Primo,” she said, a little astonished at her own audacity, but she didn’t want their new association to end there and then: she wanted it to have a little more life, see where it might lead. “Do you fancy meeting up for a drink? We could have supper—curry or a Chinese or something. I could give you a progress report.” She sensed him thinking fast—she let his hand go—could see him mentally running through implications, complications, problems, possibilities.