Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Susie Steiner

thoughts tugged at her: he’s been mugged, he’s in some trouble he can’t get out of, he had his buds in his ears as a car mowed him down. She checked the hospital again.

      He came in carrying his schoolbag, at a calculated 3.45 p.m. – trying to pass it off. Bag by the banister, shoes off, uniform dishevelled.

      ‘Don’t give me that,’ she said, her body shaking, wanting to hit him.

      ‘What?’ he said.

      ‘Look at your phone.’

      He looked at it. ‘Twenty-eight missed calls.’

      ‘So what was that performance all about? I’ve been worried sick.’

      He sniffed. Shrugged.

      ‘Where’ve you been?’

      ‘Home,’ he said.

      It was like a sinkhole opening up beneath her.

      He has gone to watch TV while she puts the pasta on. Endless pasta, endless cooking it, throwing it in the bin, cooking it again, emptying the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher.

      He calls her ‘Mum’ only sporadically – consciously, to please her or as a deliberate expression of connection. When he is unthinking, she is ‘Manon’. They are mother and son by degrees, not innately and not to their core.

      ‘How was school?’ she asks, serving his spaghetti.

      No response.

      ‘Fly, how was your day?’

      ‘Shit, as usual.’

      The truancy took her into the head’s office – a discussion about how to help Fly settle, in-school strategies (greater teacher focus), support at home (in this she read criticism). Fly promised not to do it again, said he understood it was about his own safety. To be fair, he looked shaken by the adult response. Perhaps he’d never been under such intense adult scrutiny before and he found it unexpected. The trouble with this sort of thing, she thinks now, lying in bed with a book flattened onto her chest, is she can’t solve it. She can’t solve Fly, can’t make him better overnight. She must let his feelings granulate over time and often she finds it impossible to summon the patience to back off. She wants to work on him like a case. She should have more faith.

      She’s roused from dozing by the sound of Ellie coming in and by a reawakening anger (she is angry so much of the time and it is exhausting). She must have words. Ellie cannot leave Sol alone with Fly whenever she wants; Fly who is after all only 12, much as he seems older, and not old enough to bear responsibility for a 2-year-old, certainly not when there is the possibility of the Internet within a thousand-mile radius.

       Davy

      Kim has placed the clothes on the table in front of Mrs Cole, saying, ‘So, if you could change out of all your clothes. Your husband has brought you some clean things to wear. Put everything in this evidence bag if you wouldn’t mind.’

      ‘Evidence bag? You want my clothes?’ says Mrs Cole, taking the brown paper bag from Kim with a shaking hand.

      ‘We’ll need to send them to forensics, yes,’ says Davy.

      ‘What, even my underwear?’ she asks, with a brittle laugh.

      ‘Why not your underwear?’ Kim says, looking at her very directly. Eyeballing her, Davy would go so far as to say.

      ‘Just seems a bit …’ Mrs Cole begins. The blood has dried to a crust on her cheek and neck and has made her hair stiff.

      ‘These things can feel intrusive,’ Davy says, ‘but there’s nothing to worry about. Your things will be returned to you in due course. When you’re ready, we’ll start the interview, OK?’

      He and Kim close the door behind them and walk in silence along the corridor. At the turn of the stairs up to the second floor, Kim says, ‘What’s in her undies that she doesn’t want us to look at?’

      Would Kim know the meaning of her clothing, Davy wonders, in the way Manon would? Not the clothing sent to forensics – well those, yes, as well – but her clothing in general: the colours, the price bracket, the shop they came from. These were all markers that Manon could ‘read’. He’s not sure Kim is feminine in that way. Oh Lord, is he being sexist? Not feminine then; judgemental. Manon was master of the snap judgement, which often contained a kernel of truth.

      The clothes Judith Cole has changed into are smart and unadorned: navy cardigan with a funny wavy edge and no buttons, very white T-shirt, so white it could have come straight from the packet. Dark, well-cut jeans. Everything new-looking. The blood-stained clothes, from what he could tell beneath the dark burgundy discolouration, were in a range of colours he would describe as light brownish, though he’s aware that there are more sophisticated words for it. Mushroom? Apart from her jeans, which were white – before she cradled a stab victim, that is.

      Judith Cole is well turned out, that much he can see as he returns to interview room one and sets his pad down on the table.

      ‘Is my husband still downstairs?’ she asks. He hasn’t set the tape yet.

      ‘He is, yes,’ says Kim.

      ‘There’s really no reason for him to stay. Our house is only a five-minute walk from here.’

      Kim remains silent. She told Davy earlier she likes to create discomfort in interviews, said it provides the space for confession. Davy’s acute sense of embarrassment can barely tolerate this.

      ‘I can’t see what help he would be; he wasn’t even there,’ Mrs Cole adds.

      ‘Right, here we go,’ Davy says, as the long beep rings out from the recording device.

      He lists the date, time and people in the room.

      ‘Mrs Cole, you live on Snowdonia Way, is that correct?’

      ‘Yes.’

      She confirms she’s 44 and works in insurance, is married to Sinjun Cole, which she spells more than three times for Davy who cannot understand why she seems to be spelling out ‘St John’. Eventually she does it so aggressively, he drops the subject. The Coles have 12-year-old twin boys attending Hinchingbrooke School, situated opposite the crime scene and adjacent to Snowdonia Way.

      ‘Did you know the victim, Jon-Oliver Ross?’ Davy asks.

      ‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’

      ‘Can you describe what happened when you came across the victim?’

      ‘Yes, I was facing the park and he was walking towards me. I saw him swaying, really weaving from side to side and I thought he was drunk, so I started to think of ways to avoid him but then he fell, right there in front of me. Something about the way he fell – his legs literally went from under him – I knew it wasn’t right. I could see he was ill. I rushed over to him and saw the blood coming from his chest. He was awake but he was panicking. He was really very distressed. I had his upper body in my lap. I called the ambulance on my mobile and I held him, which is why I got so soaked in his blood.’ She puts a hand gingerly to the side of her face. ‘His eyes were rolling back in his head, his chest was going up and down. I was trying to comfort him, saying, “Help is coming, hang on in there, stay awake,” that sort of thing. He whispered something which I didn’t hear so I put my head next to his mouth and he said, “Sass”.’

      ‘Sass? S-A-S-S?’ says Davy, pen poised on his notepad, not wishing to open up another spelling debacle.

      Mrs Cole shrugs. ‘I couldn’t understand it either. Perhaps it wasn’t even a word, more like an exhalation. But he repeated it. I wondered if he was trying to say “mass” if he was religious – a Catholic. But he said it again, “Sass”. A name, perhaps?’