Authors: Janice Frost
Anna Foster nodded. “Simon needed to confront his past. He’s always suffered from anxiety and bouts of depression, mood disorders, a kind of PTSD, I suppose. I thought that seeing his sister alive and well might help lay some of his demons to rest, so to speak.”
Neal thought but did not say that, far from being laid to rest, Simon’s demons might just have jumped out of the box with the shock of seeing Nancy and Amy. He realised suddenly that Anna Foster had no idea that Nancy Hill too, was dead.
“I’m sorry to have to give you more bad news, Ms Foster. Nancy Hill took her own life last night.” For a moment, Anna did not react at all and Neal wondered if she had heard him.
“Ms Foster? I’m sorry, that was a bit abrupt. It must be a terrible shock for you. I know that you and Nancy had formed a friendship.”
All of a sudden, Anna Foster’s face crumpled, all her defiance and bravado wiped out by Neal’s news.
Neal felt himself stir, begin to stand; confusingly his feelings for the woman before him were rushing back, urging him to go to her and take her in his arms. With a force of will, he rooted himself in his chair and watched, as Anna Foster wept.
“It’s all my fault,” she said, “I should never have moved here with Simon.”
“Ms Foster . . .”
“No, don’t say anything. I should have told you everything. It’s not true that I didn’t think any of it was relevant. I just didn’t want to make things look worse for Simon, and now two people are dead and it’s all my fault.”
“Please don’t distress yourself. None of this is your fault.”
Neal remembered how he had laid a comforting arm on Nancy Hill’s shoulder when she was bereft over the news of her daughter’s death. Why did he feel the need of such restraint when faced with Anna Foster’s grief? Because he feared that if he touched her, it would not end with a gesture of comfort? Neal did not enjoy feeling conflicted.
He left her then, conscious that she had given him as much information as she could for the time being. She saw him to the door, and closed it without changing the sign. The Big Issue seller looked across, hoping, perhaps, for that cup of coffee at last, but Anna Foster seemed not to notice her.
Hesitating for a moment outside the shop, Neal slipped into a nearby tearoom and bought a large coffee to go. The woman was much younger than she had first appeared in her shapeless long black skirt, headscarf and oversized grey wool coat that had obviously come from a charity shop. She thanked him, her pretty round face glowing with gratitude, and he felt obliged to buy a copy of her paper.
“You are looking for Simon, yes?” she asked, as he was about to walk away. Neal looked at her in surprise.
“You know Simon Foster?”
“Not so well. His mother is very kind lady, and I know his girlfriend a little. She volunteers some evenings helping with English at hostel.” Neal stared at her, in amazement. Why had it never occurred to him to speak with her before? She stood on this patch of the hill every day; of course she would be familiar with all the comings and goings.
“Simon has a girlfriend?”
“Oh yes, Maya. She used work for Ms Foster sometimes.” Neal tried to suppress his excitement,
“Are you positive they are in a relationship?” he asked, “not just friends who work together, colleagues?” The Big Issue seller snorted indignantly, giving Neal a patronising look.
“Is obvious when young people more than good friends: holding hands, kissing, know what I mean? Mrs Anna not know. I think she not like Maya so much. Maybe she worry Maya turn Simon into Goth like her.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” Neal said.
“My name Ileana. Ileana Vasilescu.”
“Pretty name, Ileana,” Neal said and was rewarded with a beaming smile.
“Ileana, what evenings does Maya work at your hostel?”
“Only Wednesdays, but I know where she live. Sometimes she give me extra lessons, help with my English. I want to stay here, find good job one day.” It took only a second for Neal to learn Maya’s address. He said goodbye to Ileana, thinking that for the price of a cup of coffee, he might just have gained the biggest break in the case so far.
Back in his car, Neal texted Ava and requested that she meet him at the address given to him by Ileana. Then he put his car in gear and headed towards it with his first feeling of optimism since the sad discovery of Amy Hill’s body several weeks ago.
* * *
Around the time that Neal was interviewing Anna Foster, Detective Sergeant Ava Merry was driving northwards in the direction of an estate on the outskirts of the city. Once owned by the Council, it was now partly privatised as a result of ‘right to buy’ legislation, and those properties still classed as social housing were now managed by a local housing association simply named Stromford Homes. Rohina Ali lived in a three bedroom privately owned house that was being rented out as a student let and managed by the university accommodation office. She shared with two other women, both postgraduate students at the university, as indeed, was Rohina herself. All this, Ava had established with a quick call to the station.
It was hard to say who was more startled when Rohina opened her front door to find Ava standing before her holding up her police ID. Presumably Rohina was surprised to see a police officer on her doorstep; for Ava it was the shock of coming face to face with a Rohina who was utterly different from the newspaper picture. So different was this woman’s appearance from the shy-seeming Asian girl in traditional sari and headscarf that, at first glance, Ava was convinced she had the wrong address, or at least the wrong flatmate.
“Rohina Ali?” she asked uncertainly, staring at the spiky pink- haired girl in front of her. If ever there was a classic punk look, Rohina fitted it to the letter: drainpipe tartan leggings and Doc Martens, studded leather jacket, piercings and tattoos; she had the lot.
“I prefer ‘Roxy,’ these days, the girl answered, finally taking her eyes off Ava’s badge and looking her steadily in the eye. If Rohina had appeared reserved and submissive, there was no hint that her alter ego was similarly afflicted. Everything about her was kick-ass.
“Can I come in?” Ava asked, intuiting that Roxy would respond better to a non-authoritarian approach. Roxy shrugged,
“Place is a mess.”
“That’s ok, I’m not here to inspect your domestic standards,” Ava answered, smiling, “You should see my place.”
In fact, the lounge that Roxy led Ava in to was far tidier than she would have expected the average student flat share to be. It did smell of stale cigarette smoke and the carpet looked like it hadn’t seen the vacuum cleaner for some time, but it was otherwise orderly and a bit sparse. Obviously Roxy and her flatmates would spend a lot of time in their own rooms, using this one mainly for socialising.
“What’s this about then?” Roxy asked, guardedly. Ava came straight to the point.
“Roxy, I think it was you who sent an anonymous letter to the police tipping us off that Professor Christopher Taylor was having an affair with Amy Hill, the girl who was murdered and found on the South Common.”
Roxy took out a roll-up and lit it. “Say it was me, would I be in some kind of trouble?”
“Not really. It’s not a particularly serious allegation to accuse a lecturer of messing about with one of his students. Did you send the letter, Roxy?”
“Have you told Taylor about it?”
“He only knows that an anonymous letter was received. He denies any sort of relationship with Amy Hill. I should tell you that he does have a rock solid alibi for the night she died.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Do you have reason to suspect that Taylor was involved in Amy’s murder, Roxy?” Ava watched Roxy closely for signs of hesitation. The girl took a deep drag on her cigarette and the cuff of her long-sleeved tee-shirt rode up slightly revealing a cluster of scars just above her wrist. She must have caught Ava looking, for she tugged her sleeve down, hastily tucking the cuff under her fingers.
“I don’t do that anymore,” she said.
No, Ava thought, you’re tarring up your lungs instead. But you’re still punishing yourself. What for?
“It’s okay. I’m not here to judge or to pry,” she reassured the girl. “If you have any information about Professor Taylor that you think might be relevant to our investigation into Amy’s death, that’s all I want to hear about.”
“How did you find me?”
Ava explained about her enquiries in Sheffield.
“I could walk past the women in the community I used to be a part of and they wouldn’t give me a second glance. Except Rukhsana, of course.” Ava nodded.
“You mean they wouldn’t recognise you?”
“That’s right, just like he didn’t have a clue who I was when I stood right next to him in the queue in the diner in my first week at the Uni.”
“I take it you mean Professor Taylor?”
“He was plain old Mr Taylor when I first knew him. ‘Call me Chris,’ he used to say and we called him, ‘Mr Chris.’ We were so bloody polite. Of course, it had been four years since he last saw me, and my appearance had changed just a bit,” she said wryly. “My own mother wouldn’t have known me. And believe me, compared to how I looked when I was eighteen, I’m a conservative dresser.“
Ava did the maths. Roxy was a postgraduate student, so around twenty-two or twenty-three. “You were fourteen when Taylor was your English tutor?”
“Only just.”
“Did he behave inappropriately towards you?” Ava asked, carefully.
“Yes,” Roxy answered without hesitation. “For a long time I felt — and was made to feel — that what happened was somehow my fault. I know better now.” She looked at Ava defiantly. “Right?”
It wasn’t the first time that Ava had come face to face with a victim of sexual abuse, but it was the first time she had encountered one so defiant. Then she thought of the scars, the makeover, saw the way Roxy was holding herself rigidly against a sudden lapse of self-control. On a sudden impulse, Ava leaned over and touched the thin Asian girl on the arm; just the lightest touch but it dissolved the tension between them. That’s how easy it was then, Ava thought, to be spontaneously compassionate, just like Neal could be.
Roxy asked, “You’re sure his alibi is watertight?”
“He was in London on the night of the murder. With a bunch of students who all testify that he went to the Globe Theatre with them, then on to a nightclub until three in the morning. There’s no way he could have killed Amy.”
“Then why are you here?”
Ava sighed. She had asked herself time and again why she was pursuing this angle, when Taylor’s alibi eliminated him so definitively from guilt. She looked at Roxy. The girl’s eyes were heavily made up with shades of grey and black kohl, two flicks like wings at the outside edge of each eye giving her a look that was both exotic and classically punk. Still, she looked startlingly young. In the photograph of her at fourteen, she had looked prepubescent.
“Even if he didn’t kill Amy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’s involved somehow, and now at least I know he’s guilty of something.”
“You want me to tell you what he did to me, don’t you? You want me to make a statement and go to court and have him charged with being a paedophile.” Roxy’s dark brown eyes challenged Ava to deny it.
“You’re probably not his only victim, Roxy. If you come forward, others might follow. We can get him the punishment he deserves.”
“You’ve fucked him, haven’t you?” Startled by the directness of the question, Ava could only nod.
“Maybe the good professor’s predilection for young girls has changed. Or, maybe he’s still too clever to get caught. He had a girlfriend in her twenties when he was fucking me, just for show, I suppose.”
“He raped you.”
“That’s one way of putting it. There were some who saw it somewhat differently.”
“You were under the age of consent. It was rape.”
“I brought disgrace upon my family.” There was an edge to Roxy’s voice.
“No, Roxy, you didn’t”
Roxy laughed, “You’re fucking right, I didn’t. Do you know how many hours of counselling it took for me to start believing that? And that was after I’d run away from home because my family saw me as unclean and wanted to send me off to a country I’d never visited to stay with relatives I’d never met and marry a half-witted second cousin with a face like a rat’s arse.”
“Don’t you want Taylor to pay for what he did to you, for taking your life away from you, making it so hard for you to find a way to survive? I know I would.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Ava waited for an explanation. It was all she could do to contain her frustration. She wanted results and she wanted them quickly.
“Plenty of people have told me I should do what you suggest, go to the police; expose my abuser for what he is. I never revealed his identity to anyone before. I never thought you’d be able to track me down from an anonymous note. You’re obviously in the right job, Detective.”
Ava accepted the compliment with a nod.
“I could have ruined his career, his reputation, stopped him from getting to other young girls.”
Ava’s patience was tipped over the edge, “Why didn’t you?”
As if provoked to vent her anger, Roxy rolled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and revealed the scars that zigzagged all the way up to her elbow. Despite herself, Ava flinched from the sight of such terrible self-mutilation.