If Snow Hadn't Fallen (a Lacey Flint short story) by Sharon Bolton Page B
Authors: Sharon Bolton
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death.’
‘No disrespect, Ma’am, but the Chowdhury family aren’t the victims,’ I said. ‘Aamir was the victim and you are the last person I’d expect to shy away from questions that need to be asked just because they’re insensitive.’
Tulloch was silent.
‘I apologize,’ I said. ‘That was uncalled for.’
‘No, you’re quite right. Where are you?’
‘Just coming up to Notting Hill Gate.’
‘You can be with me in twenty minutes,’ she said, and gave me an address I recognized. It was the flat where Aamir Chowdhury had lived.
I drove forward a few yards, wondering whether I’d confess about my other unauthorized interview that day. Knowing what I’d done would put Tulloch in a difficult position and for no real gain. OK, Daniel Fisher had seemed to recognize me, but he and I both lived within a mile of each other. True, there’d been a jacket in the hallway just like the one the mysterious man in my street had been wearing, but there were plenty others like it in London. Both facts validated the prime-suspect status of the gang, but neither took us anywhere closer to proving their guilt.
I stopped again outside a chocolate shop festooned with gold Venetian masks. They were rich, gorgeous creations, lavish with feathers, ribbons and diamanté, but each one had eyes that were black and empty. I sat there, waiting for the lights to change, thinking that my woman in black was the exact opposite of these elaborate masks. She was nothing but eyes. And then I remembered the other masks I’d seen recently, the ones worn by Aamir’s killers, and wondered if I’d ever be able to look at a mask again without shuddering.
I fixed my eyes straight ahead on the traffic, the lights, the people scurrying along the pavement, and thought that their pre-Christmas stress was almost visible, hovering above them like warm breath in cold air.
I don’t do Christmas. With no family and little in the way of friends, it’s a bit tricky. If I’m not working, I stock up on DVDs and library books and batten down the hatches. This year, though, I had leave booked. This year I planned to spend the day with someone who by then would be serving a life sentence for multiple murder.
Hey, maybe this year would be different.
‘You have to be like Caesar’s wife in a case like this,’ said Tulloch half an hour later, when I joined her on Aamir’s doorstep and kicked the snow off my boots. ‘We all do.’
‘Whiter than white?’ I suggested. Tulloch glared and then gestured for me to go ahead.
Aamir’s flat was on the first floor of an early-twentieth-century house. At the top of the stairs, I spotted the crime-scene tape around one of the doors and stepped to one side. Tulloch unlocked the door.
The flat was four good-sized rooms – living, bed, bath and kitchen – and was contemporary and Western in style. It did not seem like the home of a scion of the Chowdhury family. The living space was decorated in shades of oatmeal and ivory. Apart from traces of grey fingerprint powder, it was immaculately tidy.
‘Quite stylish, isn’t it?’ Tulloch said.
‘Feels like the sort of place
you
would live in,’ I replied, as I stepped further into the room and peered into a gleaming white kitchen. The stark cooking area bore no resemblance to the crowded kitchen at the Chowdhury family home, where every work surface was crowded with implements and exotic ingredients and gleaming copper hung from every inch of ceiling.
‘I wanted you to see it,’ she went on, ‘because of your theory that Aamir might have been seeing a white woman. I admit this does feel to me like the taste of an educated Western woman.’
She was right. I thought briefly of the young women on the list I’d made at the Baileys’ house, the sisters and girlfriends of the suspects, and simply couldn’t see a woman from that background in this flat.
I began a slow prowl around the room. The bookshelf was busy, but the books seemed to be mainly
‘No disrespect, Ma’am, but the Chowdhury family aren’t the victims,’ I said. ‘Aamir was the victim and you are the last person I’d expect to shy away from questions that need to be asked just because they’re insensitive.’
Tulloch was silent.
‘I apologize,’ I said. ‘That was uncalled for.’
‘No, you’re quite right. Where are you?’
‘Just coming up to Notting Hill Gate.’
‘You can be with me in twenty minutes,’ she said, and gave me an address I recognized. It was the flat where Aamir Chowdhury had lived.
I drove forward a few yards, wondering whether I’d confess about my other unauthorized interview that day. Knowing what I’d done would put Tulloch in a difficult position and for no real gain. OK, Daniel Fisher had seemed to recognize me, but he and I both lived within a mile of each other. True, there’d been a jacket in the hallway just like the one the mysterious man in my street had been wearing, but there were plenty others like it in London. Both facts validated the prime-suspect status of the gang, but neither took us anywhere closer to proving their guilt.
I stopped again outside a chocolate shop festooned with gold Venetian masks. They were rich, gorgeous creations, lavish with feathers, ribbons and diamanté, but each one had eyes that were black and empty. I sat there, waiting for the lights to change, thinking that my woman in black was the exact opposite of these elaborate masks. She was nothing but eyes. And then I remembered the other masks I’d seen recently, the ones worn by Aamir’s killers, and wondered if I’d ever be able to look at a mask again without shuddering.
I fixed my eyes straight ahead on the traffic, the lights, the people scurrying along the pavement, and thought that their pre-Christmas stress was almost visible, hovering above them like warm breath in cold air.
I don’t do Christmas. With no family and little in the way of friends, it’s a bit tricky. If I’m not working, I stock up on DVDs and library books and batten down the hatches. This year, though, I had leave booked. This year I planned to spend the day with someone who by then would be serving a life sentence for multiple murder.
Hey, maybe this year would be different.
‘You have to be like Caesar’s wife in a case like this,’ said Tulloch half an hour later, when I joined her on Aamir’s doorstep and kicked the snow off my boots. ‘We all do.’
‘Whiter than white?’ I suggested. Tulloch glared and then gestured for me to go ahead.
Aamir’s flat was on the first floor of an early-twentieth-century house. At the top of the stairs, I spotted the crime-scene tape around one of the doors and stepped to one side. Tulloch unlocked the door.
The flat was four good-sized rooms – living, bed, bath and kitchen – and was contemporary and Western in style. It did not seem like the home of a scion of the Chowdhury family. The living space was decorated in shades of oatmeal and ivory. Apart from traces of grey fingerprint powder, it was immaculately tidy.
‘Quite stylish, isn’t it?’ Tulloch said.
‘Feels like the sort of place
you
would live in,’ I replied, as I stepped further into the room and peered into a gleaming white kitchen. The stark cooking area bore no resemblance to the crowded kitchen at the Chowdhury family home, where every work surface was crowded with implements and exotic ingredients and gleaming copper hung from every inch of ceiling.
‘I wanted you to see it,’ she went on, ‘because of your theory that Aamir might have been seeing a white woman. I admit this does feel to me like the taste of an educated Western woman.’
She was right. I thought briefly of the young women on the list I’d made at the Baileys’ house, the sisters and girlfriends of the suspects, and simply couldn’t see a woman from that background in this flat.
I began a slow prowl around the room. The bookshelf was busy, but the books seemed to be mainly
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