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

before?’ asked Fisher, and at my side I saw Emma give a tiny, nervous start.
    I looked up and met Fisher’s eyes. They were dark, like his hair. His skin was sallow and his features thin and angular. ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘I don’t live too far away. Very close to the park, actually.’
    He nodded and seemed to lose interest.
    ‘Can you think of any reason why Aamir Chowdhury would have been attacked in the way he was?’ asked Emma. It was the last question we’d planned. We would leave after this.
    ‘He was a black twat,’ said Fisher. ‘Got what he deserved. But the filth won’t pin it on us. ’Cos we weren’t there.’
    We got up to leave, not without handing over cash, and Robert Bailey came with us to the door – more, I think, to make sure we left than out of politeness. Emma went first, I followed, and, approaching from the opposite direction, I saw what had been hidden from view as we had come in. A dark-blue coat, hanging amidst others from hooks on the wall. With a triangular fluorescent patch on the shoulder.

13
    ‘FLINT, WHAT HAVE you been up to?’
    Trouble. When DI Tulloch called me Flint, it meant she was seriously pissed off. I switched my mobile on to hands-free.
    I was stuck in traffic on Holland Park Avenue, having dropped Emma off at her Shepherd’s Bush flat a few minutes ago. It’s a glitzy part of London, Holland Park, and if you stare for long enough at its houses, cars and gilded, gift-wrapped shops, you might forget that the presents in the windows are just empty boxes, and that for everyone who can afford to live and shop here, there will be someone else huddled in the cold, for whom Christmas is nothing more than an aching reminder of a broken life.
    In the meantime, Tulloch was still waiting for me to tell her how I’d spent the last few hours.
    ‘It’s my day off, Ma’am,’ I tried. ‘I met a friend for a drink. Just dropped her off.’
    ‘And, earlier, you hung around Amelia Chowdhury’s school, waiting for her to come out,’ said Tulloch as the traffic lights changed and I pulled forward again. ‘The family have filed a complaint against you.’
    ‘For what, exactly?’ I asked, as a rather soggy Santa Claus ran out in front of the car and raised his hand to thank me for not turning him into road pizza.
    ‘For questioning a vulnerable juvenile without the permission of her parents,’ said Tulloch. ‘Of course, had I let slip you were doing it without the authorization of the Met, you really would be in trouble.’
    ‘Siblings often know more than parents,’ I replied. ‘If Amelia knows something about Aamir that’s important, she’s far more likely to tell us when the parents aren’t around.’
    ‘Flint, can I remind you that the Chowdhury family are the victims here? The last thing we need right now are accusations flying around that we are not investigating this case properly and that we’re trying to suggest Aamir contributed to his own 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