Night Angels

Just the bathroom to do now. Anna had left the bathroom until last. She looked at the white painted door off the narrow entrance lobby to the room. It was shut tight. Guests usually left the bathroom door open, the steam drifting out into the room with the smell of soap and shampoo, or less pleasant smells; towels carelessly dumped on beds, on carpets, on chairs. She put her fingers on the door handle. She didn’t want to open that door. Stupid fancies! She pressed the handle down and pushed. The door stayed shut. She frowned. Locked? Now she came to listen, there was a trickling sound and the sound of water running in the pipes. She knocked. Silence. Surely, if there was someone in the bathroom, they would have come into the room and told her to leave the cleaning until the room was free. She checked her watch. She had lost all the time she had gained earlier. She was running late again. Mrs Fry would be down shortly to find out what she was doing. The thought galvanized her, and she pressed the handle down harder and pushed against the door. This door stuck sometimes, she remembered now. But there was a feeling of sick anticipation in her stomach. Something in her mind was trying to make her turn away. Don’t look! Forget!

The door resisted for a moment then flew open. She was suddenly in the bathroom, in the hot, steamy air, and the smell was there, heavy like the smell in the meat market at home. Sour. Cloying. Unclean.

The drip, drip of the water as she creeps through the bushes. The smell of burning is still in the air, but it is a smell of old burning. Ashes, the remains of a fire. Fires mean warmth and parties and music and voices. Voices! She stops, listens. Silence, just the dripping of the water. But coming through the smell of burning is something else, heavy, sweet, rotten.

She can see the house, now. It’s just outside the village, on the edge of the trees. The burning must come from the village, of course, not from her house. She peers through the leaves. She listens for the sound of her mother calling to the children, or her father laughing with the men as they took a break. They’ll all be worried. She’s been gone, what, two nights? Three nights? ‘I’m back…’ she whispers, looking through the leaves at the shell of her house, at the bundle lying half in and half out of the door, tiny on the ground, with the sole of a shoe pointing towards the bushes where she is hiding. The rain must have put the fire out. She can see the water dripping from the eaves and the remains of the roof.

Her foot squashed in something and she looked down, recoiling instinctively, mechanically wiping her foot on the carpet. The floor was wet. Something dripped on to her neck and she jumped, turning round. Condensation was dripping from the ceiling, and the walls glistened. A steady trickling sound came from the bath as though the shower was running, just a bit, turned down very low. The shower curtain was pulled across, pink and translucent. The water ran and trickled, gurgling in the pipes, making the plughole of the basin echo.

Someone was in the shower. That was her first thought. Someone in the shower who ran the water in a slow dribble, someone who ignored the sound of movement, the vacuum, the banging and knocking attendant on cleaning. Someone…The broken door in front of her now. Through there, mother, father, the table where they all sit to eat and talk and the little ones running around and the smell of… Sour, rotten.

Slowly, she put out her hand and pulled the curtain back.

She thought it would be her mother.

The woman – it was a woman, she could still tell that – was slumped in the bath. She looked…broken, like a toy that had been dropped and crushed. Her face – Krisha…? – her face, like Krisha’s doll, they’d trodden on Krisha’s doll and the doll’s face was distorted and smashed, the eye sockets and eyes not quite aligned, the mouth cracked into a feral grin. Krisha’s doll! Water dripped from the woman’s hair as it trickled from the shower. Ribbons. It’s like… Her first thought was that there should have been more blood. Then her legs felt weak and she was cold all over. Her mouth was full of saliva and she was dizzy. She couldn’t stop herself. Her knees thumped on to the floor. She felt the wetness on the floor seeping through her stockings on to her legs. Her hands slipped on the side of the bath, trying to keep her from falling down into it. Don’t let it touch me!

She pulled herself to her feet, turned on the basin tap full blast, splashing water on to her hands and face, on to the floor again and again and then again, trying to make the place clean, restore order, do her job. She pulled the towel off the rack, felt wetness on her hands, let it fall to the floor. There was something floating in the toilet. She flushed it, and again, and again. Her eyes jumped frantically from towel rail, to basin, to tooth glasses, to the bath…No! She stared at the floor, concentrated on the pattern of cracks on the tiles.

There was something on the floor between the lavatory pan and the bath. A piece of paper, no, a card, like a business card, stuck to the wet floor, something that could have fallen out of the pocket of someone sitting there, sitting next to the bath, maybe talking to the person who was having a shower, who was…the sound of the water as she creeps through the bushes… There was a stench of burning in her nostrils. Her stomach heaved. Litter on the floor. Mechanically, she reached down, picked up the card and looked at it.

Then she was back in the bedroom, her legs shaking, holding on to the door, the walls, anything to help her get out of there. She had to find someone, she had to get help, she had to…had to…

She had to think.

She opened the vacuum cleaner and took out the bag she’d put in before she’d cleaned the room. The old bag was full to bursting, but she managed to get it back in without tearing it or spilling too much of the contents. She refolded the new bag and pushed it down into her overall pockets. Her hands were shaking. She scooped up the bedding and the towels and carried them to where the laundry basket was waiting at the top of the basement stairs. She listened. The distant sound of traffic. Footsteps along the corridor overhead. Quick. She had to be quick.

She pulled out some of the bedding and shoved her load down into the bottom of the basket. She piled the dirty linen on top, keeping back a set of sheets and towels. Back down the stairs. She dumped the linen on to the floor where the sheets she had moved had been minutes before. Shut the door or leave it open? Her bag and coat were in the back kitchen. She dithered for a moment, then stepped back into the room, closing the door behind her. She went over to the French windows and pushed down the bar. She wouldn’t be able to close it behind her. Then she was in the yard, past the bins, along the road to the next yard, past another set of bins to the back door. She pushed it open. No one. She grabbed her coat and her shopping bag, and, not waiting to change into her outdoor shoes, hurried down the road towards the bus stop. She flagged down the first bus that came along, and didn’t relax until it was around the corner and heading along the main road.

The woman’s face formed itself in her mind. And Krisha’s doll, smashed on the floor. Soldiers’ toys. The air seemed to smell of old burning. Got to run, got to run.

3 (#ulink_1a9a886e-82dd-52e8-94ab-7d24f36cdb16)

Despite its importance, Roz found the meeting tedious. She was interested in the research side of their work, and though the funding was crucial, she didn’t share Joanna’s taste for the politics and the dealing that the money side generated. She suppressed a yawn and glanced across at Luke, who was leaning back in his chair, his eyes veiled, occasionally jotting something on the notepad in front of him. He looked distracted as well. Roz watched Joanna do her stuff, outlining the financial and the research projections for the team, putting forward her staffing proposals, neatly turning away from anything that strayed into areas where the picture was less rosy. Joanna was good. She was better than good. No one, watching her now, would believe the state of tension she had been in before the meeting started. She had arrived at five to nine, held up because she had been round to pick Gemma up – something they had agreed on Wednesday, apparently, so that Gemma could brief Joanna on the outcome of her trip to Manchester before the main meeting started. Only Gemma hadn’t answered her door, and Joanna had wasted time trying to rouse her before she had concluded that Gemma must not be there.

Roz frowned. It wasn’t like Gemma to be unreliable. What was worse, she hadn’t phoned but had sent an e-mail some time the previous evening. Joanna had found it when she checked her mail before the meeting to see if any last-minute changes or apologies had arrived.

Please accept my apologies for tomorrow’s meeting. The car has broken down and I will have to stay in Manchester tonight. I will contact you as soon as I get back to Sheffield.

Gemma

Joanna had gone thermonuclear. Then she had put it all away for later consideration and taken Roz briskly through the meeting strategies.

Roz let the voice of the representative from the university grants committee fade into a background drone as she studied the other delegates. There was Peter Cauldwell, Joanna’s nominal line manager, who was watching her with a sceptical smile. Whatever Joanna proposed, Cauldwell would oppose. He and Joanna had clashed too many times in the past to be a good team now. One of Joanna’s more urgent plans was to take her group out of Cauldwell’s sphere of influence as soon as she could. There was the grants committee representative. He was the one who could stop Joanna now, today, if she failed to convince him. There was the representative from the Academic Board, whose support was crucial in these early stages, and there was a representative from the vice-chancellor’s office. As Luke had said the other day, ‘All the university brass out to watch Grey nail Cauldwell’s scrotum to the table.’ She caught his eye across the table, and felt a childish impulse to laugh.

Peter Cauldwell was speaking now, his voice that of modulated reason as he explained why Joanna’s plan for autonomy for the Law and Language Group was a waste of time and of valuable resources. ‘There are small departments all over the country who pick up the forensic work,’ he said. ‘And there are a few private firms. We’re an academic institution. We need to use this money’ – the grant money Joanna had managed to get for the group – ‘to build on the research we’ve carried out so far. I’ve no desire to end our forensic work, but I think we can accommodate it within our existing structures.’

Joanna smiled, and Roz again caught Luke’s eye. Under the guise of shifting his position, he ran his finger across his throat. Joanna began running her presentation slides, talking briefly to each one as she did so, demonstrating the amount of money and support she had managed to attract in the last six months. Her charts had been put together so that the income Cauldwell’s group attracted overall was also shown, apparently incidental to the figures that Joanna wanted the meeting to study. Her small team had, according to the chart she was using, attracted more grant-based and commercial funding than Cauldwell’s much larger team had managed in a year. Roz knew that these figures didn’t show the true picture. Peter Cauldwell’s group had been involved with a long-term project that was coming to an end, and the new grants that were coming in were either not yet available or were quietly sidelined into different compartments to ensure that the staffing and equipment budgets were properly supported. Cauldwell, like all good heads of department, was a genius at stretching the funding he got to the maximum. But on paper, his figures looked bad, and Joanna knew it.

By one, it was all over. Roz, headed back towards her office, was waylaid by Joanna who was looking pleased. As she had every right to, Roz thought. Joanna’s main problem now was likely to be a knife in the back. She remembered Cauldwell’s sour face. He wasn’t going to forgive Joanna – forgive any of them – soon.

‘It went well. I think I’ve put paid to Cauldwell’s hash,’ Joanna said cheerfully. ‘We’ll get our extra staffing now, or I’ll know why.’ She looked into the distance, calculating. ‘We’ll need more space. This is just the start.’ Her eyes focused sharply on Roz. ‘What about Gemma?’ she said.

Roz was used to Joanna’s abrupt subject switches. She wondered why Joanna should expect her to know any more about Gemma’s absence than Joanna herself did. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘Luke might know something.’

Joanna maintained her intense stare. Roz, used to this quirk, waited for Joanna to formulate her response. ‘Luke?’

Roz sighed. Surely Joanna must at least be aware that some kind of relationship existed between Luke and Gemma. Gemma, academically brilliant, was quiet and self-contained away from her computer and her books. She had come to Sheffield after a spell at a Russian university, and Roz sometimes got the feeling that Gemma – for all she produced work of a high standard – was not committed to what she was doing, had ambitions in other directions. And then she had taken up with Luke.

Though she tried not to, Roz had minded. She and Luke had been friends from the time Roz had first arrived in Sheffield a year ago. They were both unattached, both – apparently – avoiding serious commitment. They had a shared taste in clubbing, in dancing, in music. Luke could be reckless, fuelling his tendency to wild behaviour with bouts of drinking, and his occasional nihilism appealed to something in her. It had been a friendship she valued. And then a few months ago, under the influence of a bit too much music, a bit too much wine, they’d spent a night together, an intimacy that they had always avoided, never talked about, and one she had shied away from afterwards. There had been an awkwardness between them after that. Roz’s promotion to Joanna’s second-in-command had put a further strain on the friendship, and once he became involved with Gemma it had dwindled to almost nothing.

Joanna was still looking at her blankly. Roz shook her head. ‘I’ll see if Luke knows any more,’ she said. Joanna thought about this in silence, then moved on to discuss outstanding projects. Something flickered in Roz’s mind, and she made a note to go and check Gemma’s schedule. There was something…She shelved it and listened to Joanna as she wound up.

‘…and then there’s the report for the appeal court, and that’s it.’ She checked her watch. ‘Peter Cauldwell wants to see me.’ She raised an eyebrow at Roz in unspoken comment. ‘I’m meeting him in half an hour.’

Reports! That was what had flashed into Roz’s mind. Gemma’s analysis of that tape they’d got from the Hull Police. Gemma had said that she was going to phone her report through today, but she’d wanted to discuss something with Roz first. Roz frowned. She couldn’t think what kind of problem Gemma might have had with it. It had seemed a fairly straightforward request, though the tape itself had been…odd. The report would probably be on Gemma’s desk. She could check it to see if there were any obvious problems, then phone it through herself. Gemma could finish off the hard copy and get it in the post over the weekend. If the report wasn’t there…Then Joanna would have to know.

Luke, or Gemma’s report? The report had priority. She turned back down the corridor to Gemma’s room and switched on the computer. She knew the password – she and Gemma often needed access to each other’s files. She scrolled through the list of documents: acoustic profiles; fundamental frequency analysis of…There it was: draftreport hull. Roz opened the file and went over the details, reminding herself of what exactly Gemma had been doing. The tape from Hull was a police interview with a woman who was possibly Eastern European. It had been sent to Gemma to try to ascertain the geographic origins of the woman more closely.

Roz flicked through the correspondence. The officer who had contacted Gemma was a Detective Inspector Lynne Jordan. The request that came with the tape was clear. DI Jordan wanted to know where the woman, who was clearly not a native speaker of English, came from. There was very little information about the tape itself.

Roz had listened to the tape with Gemma, and had found the words, which were halting and difficult to decipher, disturbing. She wondered what had happened to the woman whose voice was on the tape, why DI Jordan was not able to ask her directly where she came from. Was she pretending to come from somewhere else, an EU country, something that would allow her to stay in the UK? Had she run away? Had she already been deported? Had she died?

He [they?] hit…I say no, he [they?] make, he…

Not Roz’s business. She hit the print button and skimmed through Gemma’s draft report on the screen. When the report had printed, she read it in more detail. It was typical Gemma; very thorough, very clear, and, as far as Roz could see, complete. Maybe Gemma had sorted the problem out, whatever it was. She wondered what Gemma had wanted to discuss with her. She tapped the report against her chin, thinking. Wednesday afternoon, late, Gemma had come to Roz’s room to say that she had to go to Manchester in Joanna’s place the following day. ‘Joanna’s only just told me. She said you’d fill me in on the details.’ She’d looked annoyed. She’d dropped her bag, fumbling for her notes, then the pen she was trying to uncap had flown out of her hand across the room.

Roz had explained about the meeting. ‘I think Joanna will want you to pick this one up,’ she said. ‘It’s your area.’ The Manchester team were partners in the grant bid for the analysis of the English of asylum seekers.

‘I’d have preferred a bit more notice,’ Gemma said, with some justification, Roz had to admit. ‘I’ve got that report to do. I told Detective Inspector Jordan that I’d be putting it in the post tomorrow.’

‘Phone your findings through. You can put the report in the post so she’ll get it on Monday. She’ll get the information she wants on Friday, that’s the main thing. Is it finished, the analysis?’

‘Yes. I’ve done what she wanted. It’s just…There was something I wanted to…’ She checked her watch. ‘Oh, God, look at the time. I’ll have to go. I’ll run it past you on Friday. It’ll keep.’ Looking happier, Gemma had left.

Whatever it was that had been worrying her, Roz could find no trace of it. Gemma had identified the woman as a Russian speaker, with language features that suggested she came from East Siberia. She had pages of analysis to support her findings. Roz flicked through them. Everything looked fine. She printed out the transcript of the tape and looked at that. Three of the lines were marked with an asterisk: 25, 127, 204. That was the only sign of something not completed, and there was nothing to show what had made Gemma mark those lines.

With the feeling that her legitimate investigation was now turning into snooping, Roz flicked through Gemma’s diary to see if she had a to-do list that might clear things up. Nothing. Aware that she was now looking at things she had no business to look at, Roz dumped the report on her desk and went to find Luke.

The door to his room was pushed to. Roz opened it and went in. An audio tape was playing, a crackle of background noise, tape hiss and, buried under it all, voices. Luke was standing by one of the computers, looking at the screen display. An acoustic profile appeared on the screen. Luke highlighted a section. He didn’t look up, but said, ‘Coffee’s in the pot.’ He usually had coffee on the go to feed his caffeine habit, and Roz – and Gemma – came to Luke’s room, rather than the coffee bar or, worse still, the machine. He was locked in a war of attrition with Joanna, who liked clear lines of demarcation – coffee in coffee lounges, books in libraries, work done at desks.

Roz looked over his shoulder at the screen. ‘What’s that?’ she said. He seemed distracted.

‘It’s that surveillance thing from Manchester. They want this tape cleaning up. If they’d get some decent equipment it’d save them a fortune,’ he said. He was sampling the background noise to remove it from the tape; a simple job now there was software that could handle the whole process. He pressed a button on the keyboard, and the tape played. This time, the voices were free of the obscuring noise, but they were distorted, wavering and echoey. He hit another key, and the screen cleared. He turned round and looked at her.

‘Have you got the results from our last run with the software?’ she said. Luke was working with her on her analysis of the police interview tapes.

‘I got those on Wednesday. Don’t you ever listen?’ He hit a key and the screen in front of him went blank. He looked across at her now. ‘So. Roz. No coffee, then?’