Chapter 3
The efficient heater in DI Burton’s car is drowning out the -buzzing in Nadeeka’s head.
Her shoes crinkle a piece of paper; the sort left by mechanics after your car’s been serviced.
Nadeeka’s own car is a Petri dish of reusable shopping bags and hair bands; snack wrappers discarded between school pick-up and gymnastics.
Craft projects carried between class and home shed glitter and flakes of paint on the back seats.
DI Burton’s car is spotless. There is nothing inside, not even an empty water bottle or a packet of chewing gum.
He doesn’t have children, Nadeeka thinks, before she remembers that he is a police officer, and so this is a police car, and the reason she’s in a police car is because her boyfriend is . . .
She screws up her face, trying to block out the image of Jamie lying in a pool of blood. ‘Was he stabbed?’ she says, and it comes out abrupt, and too loud for the distance between them.
DI Burton isn’t thrown. ‘There will need to be a post-mortem to establish the precise cause of death, but yes, he was stabbed.’
Nadeeka takes a sharp inward breath but then it’s trapped, pressure in her chest building along with the buzzing in her head. She forces it out and it escapes with a sob.
‘I’m so sorry,’ DI Burton says again. The spine on his black notebook cracks when he opens it.
It will fill up with other -people’s tragedies, Nadeeka thinks, but Jamie’s death will always be on the first page.
She imagines how the notebook will end up, scuffed and bulging with words, filed in a cabinet with dozens of others.
‘How long had you been in a relationship with Jamie Golding?’
‘Since February.’ Nadeeka does the maths for him. ‘Ten months. I know what you’re thinking.’
‘No judgement here.’
‘My ex said it was too fast. But when you know, you know.’ It’s what Jamie always used to say, and Nadeeka’s voice cracks on the last word.
She can’t tear her eyes away from her house, from the paper-suited officer carrying exhibits to his van.
Two grave-faced men in black suits are walking towards the house, and the uniformed officer with the peach-fuzz cheeks lifts the blue and white tape as the men duck under it.
More detectives, Nadeeka supposes. She pictures them swarming over her house, picking up her things, and she can’t imagine how it will ever feel like home again.
‘We’ll give you a receipt for everything we need to take.’ DI Burton follows her gaze. ‘You’ll get it all back.’
‘I don’t care,’ she says dully.
‘So you met in February,’ DI Burton prompts.
‘Right. Jamie was at a conference locally, and we matched.’
‘Matched?’
‘On a dating app.’
‘I see.’ DI Burton’s phone is vibrating. He cancels the call without looking at it. ‘And he moved in with you . . .’
‘At the start of June.’ Across the street, the man at No.
17 is winding Christmas lights around the tree in his front garden, and Nadeeka wonders if he’s doing it simply so he can gawp at her house.
‘Jamie was still in Sheffield when we met. It was a 150-mile round trip, and with me having the girls it was really hard. Jamie always came here, to save me the drive, but then in the middle of April he was made redundant.’
‘He was a health and safety inspector, you said?’
‘Yes, that’s right. A job came up in a construction company on the edge of town about two weeks afterwards. It seemed like fate, you know?’
Nadeeka can still hear the trepidation in Jamie’s voice when he’d told her. Trying but failing to be casual; the unspoken suggestion like a baton in an outstretched hand. Their offices are about twenty minutes from you. I could get there by bus. Jamie didn’t have a car.
Nadeeka had taken the baton and run with it. You could move in with me and the girls.
Is it too soon?
I don’t know. Is it?
It was – of course it was – but it didn’t feel too soon.
They missed each other so much during the week.
They’d taken to video-calling each evening while they cooked tea, and, when Nadeeka had gone to answer the front door one time, she had come back to find Jamie testing Maya on her times tables.
Nadeeka had hovered in the doorway for a minute, revelling in the easy relationship Jamie already had with her elder daughter.
Jamie had applied for the job. He didn’t have to take it, they reasoned, but he should at least try for it.
He got it. And Nadeeka had sat down with the girls and said, ‘You know how Jamie stays at weekends? How would you feel if he stayed in the week, too?’
There had been lots of questions.
‘Will we have pizza every night?’ Nish had said, with great excitement. Jamie always ordered pizza on Fridays.
Nadeeka had laughed. ‘Not every night, no.’
Maya had been quieter. ‘Are we supposed to call him Dad?’
‘Definitely not. You have a dad already. Jamie is just Jamie.’
Maya had nodded slowly, absorbing the answer.
‘And look, if you don’t want him living here, that’s totally fine. This is your house as well as mine.’
‘No, I think it’s okay,’ Maya said. ‘I like him.’
‘Me too,’ Nish said.
Nadeeka had grinned. ‘Me three.’
A month later, Jamie had arrived with his clothes stuffed into laundry bags, like a student returning home at the end of term.
‘I did have a suitcase,’ he said, ‘but the zip broke.’
They had stood on the drive, Nadeeka feeling suddenly awkward. ‘Come in,’ she said, and then screwed up her face. ‘I don’t need to say that – it’s your home too now. I don’t want you to feel like a guest.’
‘Hey.’ Jamie had put his hands either side of her face. ‘Breathe. It’s going to be fine. Better than fine.’
‘Better than fine,’ Nadeeka had echoed. She was worried about Maya and Nish, who had spent the morning closeted in Maya’s room, refusing to let Nadeeka come in.
Were they having second thoughts? But as Nadeeka and Jamie had turned to go inside, both laden with laundry bags, Maya and Nish had appeared at the door holding a banner.
Maya’s signature bubble letters, enthusiastically filled in with felt-tip pen, spelled out Welcome home Jamie!
Jamie had been too overwhelmed to speak. He had dropped his laundry bags and wrapped Maya and Nish in a bear hug, careful not to crush the banner.
‘Did you bring pizza?’ Nish had said, and they’d all laughed.
‘How were things between you?’ DI Burton says. ‘In general, I mean? Did you have a good relationship?’ Another plastic exhibit bag is leaving her house to be placed in the van, and Nadeeka wonders if the contents arrived in a laundry bag, six short months ago.
‘The best.’ Nadeeka answers so quickly it sounds defensive, and she tempers it with something more truthful. ‘We had a few . . . teething troubles, I suppose you’d call them.’
‘Such as?’
‘Jamie found the relocation hard. He had good friends in Sheffield; he played cricket there in the summer; he’d been at his company for a long time .
. . Here, he only knew me.’ The windows of the police car are steaming up and Nadeeka can’t see her house properly, only misty shapes as people come and go through the open front door. ‘How long will forensics take?’
‘Quite a while, I’m afraid. Do you have somewhere you could stay tonight?’
A part of Nadeeka is relieved she will have to go somewhere else. She doesn’t want to go back, doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to walk into her living room without seeing Jamie lying there. ‘I’ll call my ex-mother-in-law. She won’t mind, and the girls love staying there.’
‘How long have you been divorced?’
‘Three years. Scott has the girls every other weekend, and sometimes after school. If it suits him,’ she adds, under her breath.
‘Sounds like you get on better with your ex’s mother-in-law than your ex,’ DI Burton says.
‘She didn’t cheat on me.’
‘I see. And how did your ex – ’ DI Burton checks his notebook ‘ – Scott, was it?’
‘Scott Hadley.’
‘Thank you. How did Scott get on with Jamie?’
Nadeeka pulls her coat sleeve over her hand and wipes the condensation from the window. ‘They didn’t spend any time together,’ she says, ‘so they didn’t really need to get on.’
The man at No. 17 has laid out an inflatable Santa on the lawn and is slowly pumping air into it.
Nadeeka and Jamie had planned to get a tree this weekend, to decorate with the girls.
They have already made the cake, Nadeeka showing Jamie how she adds puhul dosi and chow chow; how the cinnamon and cardamom gives the fruit mixture an earthy aroma she remembers so vividly from her childhood.
DI Burton seems satisfied with Nadeeka’s answer, even though it didn’t really answer his question at all.
Scott and Jamie hadn’t spent time together because both men had made their feelings about the other absolutely clear from the outset.
Putting them together would have been akin to pulling the pin on a grenade and dropping it into a box of fireworks, and so Nadeeka had worked hard to ensure the two men had as little contact with each other as possible.
Of course, that hadn’t stopped them sharing their respective opinions with Nadeeka.
You’re far too good to have been with a cheating bastard like him, Jamie would tell her, and his eyes would darken, as though it physically pained him to think of Nadeeka treated badly.
Scott had pulled even fewer punches. Who the fuck does the bloke think he is?
Muscling his way into my girls’ home? I’m telling you, Nads, if he puts a foot out of line I’ll fucking kill him.
Nadeeka watches the blurry shapes move inside her house.
How did Scott get on with Jamie?
He absolutely hated him.