If Snow Hadn't Fallen (a Lacey Flint short story)

‘We’ve actually got another lead,’ she went on.
    ‘Oh? Anything you can share?’
    ‘Let’s just say our prime witness, Mr Karim, isn’t the upstanding citizen he’d have us believe. We think he’s involved in some small-scale money laundering. And he’s very close to the Chowdhury family. It’s not impossible either that Aamir was involved too and they had a difference of opinion professionally, or that Aamir found out and was threatening to blow the whistle. Either way, we’re going to bring him in first thing tomorrow.’
    That certainly was a good lead. There had always been something about Karim’s testimony that had struck me as just a bit too convenient.
    ‘Fingers crossed,’ I said.
    ‘In the meantime, I’m at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital,’ she said.
    ‘How is he?’ I asked.
    ‘Sore, tired, fighting off an infection, can’t stand on his feet for more than five minutes without collapsing, and grouchy as a bear with an axe in its skull. The bad news is, he’s probably going to live.’
    He
was Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury, Dana’s best friend and my – my what, exactly? I was still trying to work that one out for myself.
    ‘I’m sure he’d like to see you,’ she said in a casual voice that was fooling no one, least of all me. I’d known Mark Joesbury just three months, and in that time he’d arrested me on suspicion of murder and I’d got him shot. Last time I’d seen him he’d been minutes away from bleeding to death. As had I. I raised my left hand and the sleeve of my coat fell back just enough for me to see the bandage. The wound beneath was healing; skin is pretty efficient that way. Wounds inside were a different matter entirely.
    See him? All I had to do was walk through the door of the Chelsea and Westminster hospital, ride the lift a few floors and there he’d be, the man who’d spent most of our short acquaintance believing me to be a cold-blooded killer. He could never know just how close to the mark he’d been. So I could not go to see Mark Joesbury. Not now; probably not ever.
    ‘You know what, Ma’am?’ I said. ‘I think the Chowdhury family know more than they’re telling us. When I asked if Aamir was about to get married, there was a definite reaction. Do you think he could have been seeing a white girl? That maybe it was a Romeo and Juliet thing?’
    ‘If he was seeing a white girl, I wouldn’t expect her to be hanging round the murder scene in a burka, would you?’
    Well, there was no arguing with that one. But someone was hanging round the murder scene in a burka, and whilst I didn’t yet know why, I had a feeling it was important.

10
    I DROVE HOME , made a flask of hot coffee, found a waterproof-backed rug, a torch and a pair of binoculars and left the flat again. I live in the basement of a Victorian house with three further floors. I’m the only one with my own front door, but because post for me often gets pushed through the main letterbox, I have a key to the upper part of the house.
    The occupant of the first-floor flat was watching TV and I walked quietly past and up to the second floor. There were two doors at the top of the stairs: the first led to the remaining flat in the building, the other out on to the flat roof.
    I’d only been up here once before, but I remembered the views around this part of London being reasonably good. From my basement flat or my garden I hadn’t a hope of being able to see into the park, but I knew the top floors of these houses offered a pretty good view. Which meant that from the roof would be even better. If my woman in black were to return this evening, I’d see her.
    I stepped out of the roof door beneath a cloud that looked close enough to touch and into air that stung like tiny needles. More snow had been forecast and, judging from what was happening above me, I didn’t imagine it was too far away. I found a chimney block that would offer some shelter from the wind, cleared away the snow around it and settled down to wait.
    Up on the rooftop, I was too high to see the slush, or the footprints, or the yellow pools where animals had urinated. Up here the purity of the snow covering was still complete and the colours of the city, so much richer at this time of year, were intensified as the white background reflected them back.
    Despite the waterproof rug wrapped around and beneath me, it was bitterly cold. Even with regular doses of hot coffee, I soon felt as though even getting up