Turn a Blind Eye

Wednesday – Maya

After the staff briefing, Dan brought Neil Sanderson to the ground-floor room they were using for interviews. Off the stairs and with no natural light or ventilation, the room was cold and dingy. All it contained was an old wooden table, which looked like it had been rejected from all other locations, and four plastic chairs. On the table was an empty tissue box with a lidless biro popping over the edge.

Neil shuffled into the room with his hands in his pockets. His lowered gaze betrayed not hostility so much as frustration and impatience, eyes glancing sideways.

‘Have a seat.’ I pointed at the chair opposite Dan and watched the man get settled. I introduced myself. ‘You’re the school bursar. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was Rich Griffiths at the staff briefing you’ve just had?’

Neil hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I was concentrating on what we needed to tell the staff. Why?’ I felt him searching my face for clues.

‘Why wasn’t he with the rest of the staff at lunchtime?’

‘I didn’t know he wasn’t. He may have helped Linda with the power cut. She said she was going to find the caretakers.’

‘Could you tell me where Roger Allen is today?’

‘He’s not well.’ Neil’s hairline and forehead were damp, and the sweat under his arms hadn’t dried out. ‘He rang me this morning.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Stomach upset.’

‘Where was he ringing from?’

‘Home, I imagine.’

‘A police officer has been round to Roger’s house and his wife said she hasn’t seen him since yesterday.’

Neil rubbed his chin and was silent for a few moments. ‘I don’t know anything about that. He just said he wasn’t well and wouldn’t be in. It was a one-minute conversation.’

‘Why did he call you?’

‘I’m the person staff report absences to. I do the personnel register each day, and the staff cover. Plus, Roger and I are mates.’ He glanced down at his hands and examined his palms.

‘Was his absence mentioned this morning when you met with Mrs Gibson for your first meeting of the new term?’

‘I told her he wasn’t well and wouldn’t be in today. That was it. We had a lot to get through.’

‘I wonder why his wife doesn’t know where he is. They’ve got two children.’

He shrugged. ‘No idea.’

‘In that meeting this morning, how did Linda seem?’

‘Fine. It was the first day of the new term. She was busy, and keen for things to go well. We all were.’

‘She didn’t seem preoccupied, anxious?’

‘Not at all.’ Neil leaned forwards in his chair and sighed loudly. ‘She was her normal self.’

His sigh made me curious. ‘Did Mrs Gibson have any enemies? Any fallouts?’ My phone vibrated in my pocket.

‘I’ve worked here for Linda’s entire headship. She was a popular and inspiring leader. She regularly had to deal with staff, students and parents who were unhappy, often angry. But she had good people skills. I don’t recall any of those occasions getting nasty or being left unresolved.’

I got up and walked across the room. ‘Can you run through what you think the school’s challenges are? Issues? Anything that might give us an idea why someone might want to harm Mrs Gibson?’

‘Well . . . the language and literacy levels of a lot of our students are lower than we’d like. We have many students with English as their second language.’

‘But aren’t a lot of the kids who come here born here?’ I had a feeling I knew what Neil was going to say.

‘Yes. But a problem for many of them is their parents don’t speak English fluently, and some not at all. At home they speak their mother tongue and they tend to mix with others of their own culture. Understandable, but it can cause difficulties.’

It pained me to hear this. Had things not moved on at all since we arrived in the 1980s? Mum popped into my mind, how she would insist on talking to the three of us in Sylheti when Dad wasn’t around. Jasmina and I had quickly become fluent in English but Sabbir hadn’t. By the time Jaz and I left home, Mum still couldn’t speak English and barely could to this day.

‘What prevents parents from learning English, do you think?’

‘Lack of government funding for language classes for older family members. And parents and grandparents have learned they can get by without having to learn English. When they need a translator, they take one of their children along. We often see it at parents’ evenings. We talk to the students, and they relay what we’ve said to their uncle, dad, grandparents, whoever has come along with them. They do the same for medical appointments and ones with social services.’

‘But doesn’t the problem stop when the current generation are proficient?’

‘It should. But often the kids only develop their English to a certain point.’ He looked genuinely upset about this.

Despondent as this information made me, it rang true. Dad had been insistent that we spoke good English. He knew Mum spoke to us in Sylheti. It was something they’d quarrelled about regularly. ‘What implications does that have for their education and for the school?’

‘The weaker their English, the more difficult the children find learning. You can then see behavioural problems and absenteeism.’

‘Any of the students have a grudge towards Mrs Gibson?’ With her being strangled, it seemed unlikely but we needed to rule it out.

‘A few. It’s inevitable. I’ll get you a list.’

‘Thank you. As soon as you can, please.’ My brain was assimilating Neil’s information. Was his testimony reliable? I was keen to hear whether Shari would tell us anything different. ‘Two last questions for now. I want to make shure we know about everyone with a link to the school. Take me through them all, can you?’ He scoffed. ‘In a close-knit community such as this, pretty much everyone has been connected with the place at some point. Teachers, kids and parents, obviously. Past and present. Governors. Support staff. You name it!’

‘And does the school or LEA have any policies around file storage and deletion?’

He frowned. ‘Other than the legal requirements of the Data Protection Act, no. Why?’

Wednesday – Steve

Steve had never been good at being told what to do. The paramedic who’d checked him over had suggested an early night, but Steve couldn’t resist accompanying Andrea and their colleagues to the Morgan Arms. He was aware this was more to delay his sister’s inevitable lecture than it was to extend the time spent with his new work mates, dissecting what might have happened to Linda Gibson.

‘What d’you want to drink?’ Andrea asked as they entered the busy backstreet gastro-pub. ‘I’m having a pint of this.’ She pointed at the Bow Bells hand pump.

Steve swallowed down a surge of nausea. The place reeked of warm goat’s cheese and garlic. He’d resolved to have a soft drink but his colleagues were all ordering bottles of wine and double vodkas, so he felt a bit of a wimp asking for a Coke. Besides, after the events of the day, and with his hangover lingering, a livener seemed appealing.

‘I’ll have the same.’ He knew how good the local ale was, having sampled it after his interview a few months ago. In the pit of his stomach, dread was bubbling up in anticipation of the grilling his sister was going to give him when she got home. Even if she had already heard what had gone on with Lucy, and how the Christmas holidays had ended, she would insist on knowing every detail. And he wasn’t looking forward to having to explain quite how spectacularly he’d cocked everything up. He adored Jane but at times she took her big sister role too seriously, and delighted in giving him a hard time when she thought he’d behaved badly.

Steve glanced round the vast, open-plan bar, taking in its trendy décor. After the cultural homogeneity of Midhurst, and his last school, he was still acclimatising to how much East London had changed since his school days here. The contrasts seemed so much more obvious now. They’d just walked past a boarded-up social housing block with a demolition order, and now they were in a gastro-pub that sold packets of cracked pepper flavoured crisps for two quid, and which had a dedicated wine menu with separate pages for white, red, rosé and sparkling wines. In reality, though, with the high bar, made of what was supposed to look like old ship beams bolted together, the trendy music and shabby chic décor, they could be in New York, Hamburg or Liverpool.

Andrea was waiting to order.

‘Nice place,’ Steve said. ‘I wonder what the old East End dockworkers would make of it.’ He pointed at the bar, stroked the grain of the wood. ‘Bet it’s never seen a dock, let alone a ship.’

Andrea laughed. ‘It was probably imported from Central Europe.’ She waved her twenty-pound note at the barmaid. ‘I grew up in Cardiff so this part of London reminds me of home. For years, Tiger Bay – that’s where I’m from – exported coal. I gather this area specialised in wool, sugar and rubber. A bit like Cardiff: lots of tight-knit communities, all with their own distinctive cultures and dialects.’ She ordered their drinks.

‘My grandmother says there’s always been a strong community spirit here. And a survival instinct.’ He told Andrea that he’d grown up in East London. ‘The Luftwaffe bombed the shit out of the docks during the Blitz, and lots of them had to be re-built. My gran was one of the thousands of families who lived in the slums until they were cleared.’ Steve thought about the port in NYC that Lucy had taken him to for dinner. Container ships had brought changes there, she’d told him. Apparently, the salt marshes of the estuary had originally been occupied by Native American Lenape people but they’d been pushed out when ocean liners and prison ships moved in.

‘Yeah. It’s such a shame.’ Andrea paid the barmaid. ‘My dad said the container ships were the end for the London docks. The hulls were too deep. In the sixties, they lost all the trade to ports with deeper water.’ She handed Steve his pint. ‘It’s weird how cyclical it all is. One group of immigrants arrive and move on, and the next wave takes their place. It’s the same in Cardiff and Liverpool. Like how there are hardly any Jews in Brick Lane now. They’ve all moved to North West London and Stoke Newington.’

Scattered round the bar area were tables that had been carefully sanded and waxed to make them look old, legs painted in matt ‘barley’ and ‘seagrass’.

‘Shall we join the others?’

Steve remembered the comments and looks he’d got in the staffroom earlier. He picked his way across the busy bar and chose a seat. Several of his colleagues stopped chatting and acknowledged him as they sat down. Everyone had obviously figured out he’d been the one to find Linda because he’d gone to fetch her. What a mistake that was. He’d have to front it out politely. Presumably the police would find out what happened. It was sod’s bloody law it was the first day of his new job and none of the staff knew him from Adam. They were bound to be curious and – much as it bugged him – suspicious.

He glanced round the group of teachers; everyone looked as dazed as he felt. One guy was talking loudly, not to anyone in particular, and repeating himself. Moira was nursing a gin and tonic, and was staring into the distance, wide-eyed and catatonic, her curtain hair lodged behind her ears. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more outbursts.

‘How are you feeling?’ a girl asked. Steve recognised her from the staffroom earlier. She had her arms round raised legs, the way a child sits. ‘We were all saying, this time last night, if someone told us what was going to happen today, we wouldn’t have believed it.’ She laughed nervously and took a swig of her drink.

‘It’s been a weird one for all of us, that’s for sure. And poor Mrs Gibson. I still can’t —’

‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Andrea’s question made everyone look up.

The room jerked.

A man, in jeans and a thick leather jacket, was weaving his way across the busy bar and heading for their table.

Wednesday – Dan

Dan accompanied Neil to the staffroom and came back with Shari Ahmed, the other deputy head. The Australian education system was very different and he’d used the walk to get Shari to fill him in.

She scuttled into the interview room ahead of him like a frightened animal. Made a dash first for the far chair then changed her mind and returned to the near one, mumbling apologies under her breath. Sweat dampened the headscarf round her forehead and temples, framing anxious eyes.

Maya gave him the signal to commence the interview. He got the feeling she was curious to see him in action.

‘Are you left- or right-handed, Mrs Ahmed?’ Dan studied her face.

‘What?’

‘Left or right?’

‘Right. Why d’you —’

‘Where were you today between twelve noon and one p.m?’

‘In the staffroom with the rest of the staff. I’ve already told your –’

‘Was Rich at the meeting you’ve just had?’

‘I have no idea. I didn’t notice him.’

‘We keep hearing how happy the school is and how popular Mrs Gibson was…’ he said.

‘Ye-es.’ Her manner was jittery.

‘Thing is, she’s currently in a body bag, heading towards our morgue.’

Shari let out a gasp. Her eyes filled up. She took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at them.

Dan felt Maya’s disapproving gaze on him. ‘Apologies. I’m Australian. I don’t have Detective Rahman’s British politeness.’ He avoided her glance. ‘Any trouble with gangs here?’

‘We have a couple but Mrs Gibson introduced a number of effective measures to combat them.’ Her voice was high and breathy.

‘Tell me about the language and literacy issues.’

‘They don’t apply to any one ethnic group. Many of our British students don’t have good literacy levels. Unfortunately, it can result in poor exam results and a low position for the school in league tables.’

‘I guess that’d mean reduced funding for the school, right?’ He’d been wondering whether money was involved with the head teacher’s murder ever since they learned about Linda’s deleted computer files.

‘Indirectly, yes. If league-table ranking drops too much it affects how many students apply for places here. And that affects funding. It’s a vicious cycle.’

‘I see.’ He tapped his biro on his notepad and sucked his cheeks in. ‘Did you get the impression Linda was well off?’

‘I’ve never considered it.’

‘And are you left- or right-handed?’

‘Right. I’ve told y—’

‘Are there any divisions at the school that might have resulted in bad feeling?’

‘There are some tensions between staff groups that we’ve been unable to overcome.’ Shari dabbed at her nose with a tissue. ‘We employ a lot of local people. Some of our staff aren’t happy about this.’

‘Why not?’ He fixed his eyes on hers. ‘Don’t they have the skills for the job?’

Shari seemed taken aback. ‘Yes, but some people complain that it’s positive discrimination. Bumping up minority ethnic quotas and all that nonsense.’ She fidgeted in her seat and tugged at her hijab.

‘Why’s it nonsense? Aren’t there guidelines about who the school is allowed to employ? In Australia the focus is on skills. That’s it.’

‘Yes, but guidelines don’t change how people feel. Linda, Neil, Roger and I all agreed that it’s important for our staff composition to reflect the ethnic mix of our students and community. Unfortunately, not everyone shares that view.’

The prejudices that Shari described mirrored many in Sydney. Dan’s family fought discrimination every day as a result of his wife’s Aboriginal heritage. The girls, at school. Aroona, in her work with the native communities.

‘When do these staff tensions arise most?’

Shari picked fluff off her jilbab while she thought what to say. ‘When we have Muslim speakers, some of the non-Muslim staff object to the hall being gender-segregated. And when we have celebrations, the non-Muslim staff want one thing and —’

‘Is that about alcohol?’ Dan cut in.

Shari blinked and looked at Maya, as though she were hoping for sympathy. ‘Among other things. At Christmas and end of year parties, many of the staff want wine and beer, and to go to the pub afterwards.’

‘And the Muslim staff object?’

‘Some mind less. But others refuse to go anywhere alcohol is available.’

‘Simple, surely? Separate it out?’

‘It’s not that easy. We’ve tried having non-halal food and alcoholic drinks in one room, and halal food and non-alcoholic drinks in another but we ended up with two separate parties. That defeats the object, to celebrate collective hard work and achievement. We then tried having all the food and drink in the staffroom at opposite ends. That worked better but the staff who don’t want to go anywhere where there is alcohol still refused to attend. Linda was convinced she’d find a solution but in the end we came to the conclusion that perhaps there is no way of resolving the situation. A case of necessary segregation for certain occasions.’

Dan could see her frustration. He didn’t know what the answer was either. But how the hell were these cultural tensions and literacy problems involved with Linda’s murder? And how did money come into it? At the back of his mind was a mental image of Linda, eyes bulging, her hands bound. And the Buddhist precept: I abstain from taking the ungiven. Was mousey, dithery Shari a fan of Linda’s or had she ducked out of the staffroom and squeezed the life out of her senior colleague?

Wednesday – Steve

The arrival of Roger Allen at the Morgan Arms set everyone on edge. Steve sensed that his colleagues, who had just begun to relax and talk freely, resented having to watch what they said in front of the senior manager who had been off sick all day.

After three pints of real ale, jet lag and the mother of all hangovers, when Steve arrived back at his sister’s flat, one desire eclipsed all others: to slide under the duvet and stay there. Shaky, and with a crushing pain expanding inside his head, he climbed the two flights of stairs to the top floor of Durkin House. Outside the flat door, he fumbled in his jeans pockets for his keys. Relief swept over him when he hit the dead lock: Jane was out.

Steve closed the flat door behind him. The place was hardly any warmer than outside. Never mind. He’d soon be under the covers. Then his gaze fell on his sister’s gym bag in the hall. ‘

‘Ah, bollocks.’ He’d left his messenger bag in the Morgan Arms. He’d get it tomorrow. He couldn’t face trekking back there now. Carrying a pint of water, he headed straight for the spare room at the end of the landing. This was home for the next few months until he could find a place of his own.

He took his mobile out of his jeans, rang the pub and asked them to hold on to his bag. Then he sat on the edge of the bed. On the floor his rucksack leaned against the wall and his attention fell to the key ring that Lucy had given him, with the letters NYC, when she’d first told him she wanted to return home to the USA.

He felt a dart of pain in his stomach. How long was it going to take until he could think about Lucy, and see things that reminded him of her, and not feel regret?

Just get into bed, you idiot. And stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve only got yourself to blame. Lucy gave you fair warning. Claiming indignation about her going home to the States was never going to cut it, and nursing your pride isn’t going to reverse things.

He exhaled, swung his legs up and lay back on the mattress. Within minutes of head and pillow meeting, Steve’s breathing slowed and he was snoring. Until –

‘Hey. Sleeping Beauty.’

The overhead light flicked on.

‘Wake up.’

Steve’s eyes were dazzled. The abrupt waking jolted him from his boozy sleep.

It was Jane in strident mode, standing over the bed with hands on hips. ‘It smells like a pub in here. How much have you had?’

‘Oh fuck,’ he groaned and pulled the pillow over his face. Dread surged through him along with ripples of nausea. Jane on a rant was bad enough when he was on top form.

‘From what I’ve heard, you already did that. D’you want to explain why I’ve had a call from Lucy first thing this morning, and then one from some DI Rahman woman about your school?’

‘Not really, no.’ He might have guessed Lucy would be on the phone to Jane. They’d been close for several years. ‘Look, do one, will you? My head hurts. I’m not up to one of your inquisitions.’ He replaced the pillow over his eyes.

She yanked the duvet off the bed and onto the floor, leaving Steve naked, except for his boxers and the pillow over his head.

‘Piss off. Don’t do that.’ He lobbed the pillow to one side, reached over to grab hold of the pastel pink duvet cover and pulled it back over him. This was something his sister used to do when they were growing up and it had always infuriated him. As she clearly remembered.

‘Well?’

Steve didn’t answer. He rolled over and tucked the pink duvet under his chin in case she tried to pull it off again, feeling like he was about six.

‘You heard me. What’s going on?’

‘I’m not talking to you when you’re in this mood. The last forty-eight hours have been a pile of crap. Now can you please leave me alone?’

‘The detective wanted me to confirm you’re staying here.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’

‘She said you’ve been involved in a serious incident. What’s happened?’

‘We aren’t allowed to talk about it.’

‘Bit late for that. It’s already on the national news. The head teacher of your new school’s been found dead.’

‘If you know what’s happened, why are you asking?’

‘Oh my God, was it you who found her?’

‘Yeah. Now please leave me alone.’

‘So, you aren’t interested in Lucy’s message then?’

‘What message?’ Curiosity replaced the world-weary, about-to-die tone in his voice. He was facing her now.

‘If you’re showered and dressed and in the kitchen in ten minutes, I’ll tell you.’

Brick Lane, 1990 – Maya

‘In here, you two,’ Mum calls from the kitchen.

Plunged into darkness, Jasmina and I grope our way out of the lounge to join Mum. Illuminated by the blue light of the gas ring, she’s at the stove. Sweet, spicy smells waft round the kitchen, and there’s a pot bubbling on the hob.

Outside, even the street lamps have gone off and the whole terrace is in darkness.

‘I wonder how long this one will last,’ I ask.

Mum has placed a candle on the table. She strikes a match and it fizzes. Smells. The wick catches, casting a ball of light momentarily before shrinking.

‘Sit here.’ She’s pointing to the table. ‘And for goodness sake mind your hair on the flame this time, Maya.’

Jaz and I cram round the tiny Formica table where the five of us sit every evening for tea, knees banging, feet jostling for space against Dad’s work boots and Sabbir’s huge school shoes.

Jasmina and I sit now, side by side on the wooden bench, and the soft light of the candle flickers, casting a spell over the room. Shadows sway around the dingy, smoke-yellowed walls. As the wick waves in the draught, the flame billows and casts looming shapes. Homework forgotten in the excitement, Jaz tickles me and I poke her; we giggle and wriggle in the tiny kitchen.

‘Stop it.’ Anxiety rattles in Mum’s voice. She always gets tense when the electric goes off. And when Dad’s late home. ‘When your father gets in, he can get some more candles. Jasmina, call upstairs to your brother, will you?’