We turned into a small kitchen-cum-living room which smelt dimly of incense and was decorated in much the same way. The pictures on the wall were larger than those in the hallway, with each one prominently featuring the little boy. It looked like a shrine to him, and it reminded me, uncomfortably, of the homes of bereaved parents. In the dead centre, above the mantelpiece, was a large picture of Amy Burroughs, her boy and a man who dwarfed them both. Where they smiled brightly, he winced into the camera.
Mrs Burroughs and her boy sat on the sofa and I took a seat opposite them. The boy was staring at me, wide-eyed, so I took out my badge and held it out to him. He looked at his mother to see if he was allowed to take it, accepting it with awe when she nodded.
‘As I said, my name’s Aidan.’
‘Amy,’ she said, snapping the word off before it was quite out of her mouth.
‘I’m sorry to intrude on you like this so early, Amy. Can I ask what you do for a living?’
She frowned. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ She went on, answering the question in my face. ‘I’m a nurse practitioner. I think we met a few days ago …’
The woman I’d supposed to be a doctor when I was visiting Ali in hospital. She’d noticed one of the nurses barking at a patient and gone to have a word with him.
She looked like a different person in her own clothes.
‘St Mary’s,’ I said, belatedly. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a very long week.’
‘Can I get you a coffee or anything?’
I shook my head. I was wide awake.
‘May I ask if you were working on Saturday night?’
‘Saturday …’ she said, absent-mindedly playing with her boy’s hair. ‘I think I was on the late …’ She searched inside her bag for a diary, found the date and handed it to me. ‘Yeah, late.’
‘What hours does the late shift cover?’ I said, glancing at the diary before handing it back to her.
She gave a cynical smile. ‘It covers about as many hours as you can stand. I would have started at eight p.m., got home probably about the same time as today, gone six in the morning, when I collected him.’ She rubbed her boy’s head again. He was drawing his fingers back and forth across my badge.
‘And people can confirm your movements?’
‘Patients, nurses, doctors.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, if they have to. You’re starting to make me feel like a criminal …’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Professional hazard.’ I felt wired. Excited. ‘You’re not in any trouble, I just need to establish some facts. May I ask if you’ve ever been to the Palace Hotel?’
‘The Palace …’
‘On Oxford Road.’
‘The one with the old clock tower?’ I nodded and she strained to remember. ‘Maybe. But years ago, there’s a bar there …’
‘There was. The hotel’s actually closed at the moment but at around midnight on Saturday night a body was discovered.’
‘I don’t understand. Someone I know?’
‘We’re struggling to identify the man,’ I admitted. ‘He had no ID on his person but we have recovered his suitcase. There was a book inside it that I’m hoping you can tell me about …’
‘A book?’
‘There was an inscription in what looks to me like your handwriting.’ I nodded at the diary I’d just examined. ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.’
I watched the colour drain out of Amy’s face. She took my badge out of her boy’s hands and gave it back to me. I thought she might ask me to leave but she recovered. ‘So?’ she said.
‘Am I to understand that you gave a copy of this book to a man?’
Her eyes drifted towards the pictures of her family on the wall, then she closed them and nodded.
‘Can you give me the name of that man, Amy?’
She glanced at her boy. ‘I’m not really comfortable talking about this.’
‘Can I ask why?’
A shadow went across her face and she looked at her watch, mainly to buy herself a few seconds, I thought. To look at something besides me, her boy, the man on the wall. ‘Mark’s due home any minute,’ she said.
‘Your husband?’ She nodded. ‘Mrs Burroughs, if you’ve got nothing to hide then I’m sure we can be discreet, but this is very important. A man’s dead.’
‘Ross,’ she said. ‘His name’s Ross Browne.’
A name. The smiling man had a name. It sounded more realistic to me than Robert Sole. ‘Can I enquire as to the nature of your relationship with Mr Browne?’ I said. I was trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.
‘I don’t really know.’ She was twisting her hands around each other. ‘We went out a bit, just dating.’ She frowned at the look on my face. ‘Before I met my husband. I haven’t seen him in years. We were a flash in the pan but he was a nice guy.’ Her eyes softened on the past tense. ‘I’m sorry to hear he’s dead.’
‘How did you meet?’
She looked at me for a moment, then took her boy’s hand and led him to a play box in the corner of the room. She kicked it over, scattering toys across the floor and he immediately fell to them, bored of our conversation. She returned to the sofa and lowered her voice.
I still couldn’t quite get a grip on her accent.
‘It was all very English Patient. Ross was in the army, the King’s Division. He was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.’ She gave another small shrug. ‘We went out a few times.’
‘Was this here in the city?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘And do you know if he stayed in the area?’
‘He couldn’t take the noise. He went down south, to the coast. He thought it might be good for him.’ She said the words with some feeling, as though it hadn’t been so good for her. ‘He said the sea could surprise you. It was always changing …’
‘And when was the last time you spoke?’
‘It’s years,’ she said. ‘I think the last time I saw him we went for a drink in town. That was when he broke it off. He said I shouldn’t waste myself on a long-distance relationship.’ As she spoke both her hands closed into fists, and they looked tiny against her oversized hippy bracelets. ‘It must be five years ago now, because it was before he came along.’ She nodded at her boy. ‘Ross isn’t the father, by the way.’ She said this casually, and I believed her. She went quiet for a moment, thinking about her former lover, until questions began to occur to her. ‘So … what would Ross be doing in the Palace? It’s closed, you said? How did he die?’
‘We suspect foul play.’ I let it sink in for a second. ‘I know this must come as a shock but I have to ask. During the time you knew Mr Browne, was he involved in any illegal activity?’
‘Of course not. He was a young man, shaken up from the war. He was …’ She searched for the right words. ‘Damaged. Sensitive.’
‘I’m afraid as well as a formal statement, we may need you to identify Mr Browne’s body.’ I was talking too quickly now, eager to progress the case, and this caught her off guard. She started to speak then looked at the pictures on the mantle, her boy, like I’d suggested taking it all away from her.
‘I’ve got to get him to school, I’ve got to …’
‘This wouldn’t be until tomorrow anyway, at the earliest.’
She looked about. Swallowed. ‘Fine. I’m off work tomorrow. Look, my husband said he’d be right behind me …’
‘You work together at St Mary’s?’
She nodded, getting up, looking out the window.
‘OK,’ I said, standing. We exchanged details and I made to leave. ‘One quick thing,’ I said in the doorway. ‘Can I ask what the relevance of the book was?’
She rubbed newly tired eyes and leaned on the bright yellow wall. ‘I first read it at a very special time. It’s about escape. Celebrating life. I thought Ross deserved some of that after what he’d been through.’ I nodded and left. As I crossed the road to the car I saw that Sutty was back, sitting on the passenger side. I was tired but buoyed by the news that had upset Amy Burroughs so much. We’d finally put a name, a past, to our unidentified man.
2
As we drove I filled Sutty in on what Amy Burroughs had told me. He nodded along, not really listening. He popped his joints for the entire journey, thinking of something else, and I wondered what they’d found at the Midland Hotel that made the smiling man’s full name a footnote.
The manager crossed the lobby to meet us when we arrived.
‘Detectives, I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time?’
‘What’s up?’ said Sutty.