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

Queen,’ I said.
    Eyes stared at me. A couple of people exchanged bemused glances.
    ‘Did he tell you that?’ I asked.
    Some eyes remained fixed on me. The rest went back to Tulloch, who raised an eyebrow at Anderson.
    ‘Mr Karim said nothing about masks,’ he told her. ‘I made a note to double-check when Lacey mentioned it downstairs just now. You’d think it was the sort of thing he would have remembered.’
    Tulloch nodded. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Can we get word to the team down at the recreation ground? If they dumped the masks between fleeing the scene and being spotted leaving the playing fields then they’ll still be down there.’
    Barrett crossed the room and picked up the phone.
    ‘Right, Lacey,’ said Tulloch, ‘as you’re here, why don’t you tell us all what you saw? As much as you can remember.’
    Conscious of all eyes on me, many of them more than half curious about the detective constable who’d achieved such notoriety only weeks earlier, I went through the events of the evening again, from my first taking the call from Control.
    ‘I thought I heard someone running away just before I got to the park,’ I said, ‘but I honestly can’t be sure it had anything to do with the attack. Another thing I’m not sure about is whether they were all men, but my guess is they were. Several of them were tall; the ones who weren’t seemed to be built like men. I’d struggle to guess ages, but they all moved pretty quickly when they had to, so not that old. On the other hand, definitely all adults. Probably all over twenty. They didn’t move like kids.’
    ‘And you think this was deliberate?’ asked Anderson. ‘Not just messing around gone badly wrong.’ He and I had already gone through this, he just wanted the others to hear it from me.
    ‘They all had sticks,’ I said. ‘They surrounded him. As he got near to any of them, they’d push him back with the sticks. They wanted to keep him burning. And they were taunting him.’
    Anderson looked up. ‘You didn’t say that earlier.’
    ‘Sorry, I just remembered. It happened very fast.’
    ‘What were they saying?’ asked Tulloch.
    I took a moment, thought hard, then shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I admitted, ‘I can’t remember any words, if I even heard them clearly enough.’
    Silence for a moment as I dropped my eyes to the ground and they gave me time. I was thinking. I’d definitely heard them taunting him, so why couldn’t I recall what they’d said?
    ‘What is it, Lacey?’ asked Tulloch.
    I looked up. ‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘Just something that doesn’t feel right. Who reported it? Who made the call in the first place?’
    Tulloch looked from one face to another.
    ‘Anonymous,’ said Stenning. ‘A female voice, talking from a mobile. Possibly someone in one of the overlooking houses who didn’t want to get involved.’
    ‘Maybe the person Lacey heard running away,’ suggested Mizon. ‘Anything else you can tell us about him? Her?’
    ‘Tallish, slim,’ I said. ‘Able to run pretty fast. Could have been anyone.’
    They sent me home shortly after that.

3
    I WOKE THE next day to find the country talking of little other than hate crime. Most of the main news sites covered the attack: it was on BBC, ITV and Channel 4 news. The premeditated nature of the murder, the brutality of it and the agonies the man had suffered before death were all grist to the mill of the country’s media, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder, united by collective outrage. Every channel I turned to seemed to carry calls for ‘robust action’ to combat the rising trend of Islamophobic attacks. A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain cited violent assaults, death threats, fire-bombing of mosques and desecration of graves as just a few examples of the rising wave of crime against British Muslims, most of which went unreported or was inadequately investigated.
    A woman in a pink coat standing outside New Scotland Yard told the nation that five suspects had been apprehended the night before and items of property seized. An announcement was expected shortly.
    Everyone wanted a quick resolution, for punishment to be inflicted fast and hard. The five suspects – unemployed local white men, aged between nineteen and twenty-three, all with police records – were named on social media in the course of the day. As the hours ticked by we waited for an announcement that DI Dana Tulloch, already the nation’s favourite policewoman following her