Chapter 7
Nadeeka’s mind is beginning to settle, the buzzing giving way to thoughts that are more coherent – albeit no less perplexing. It’s no longer a list of admin tasks swirling about her head, but questions that are far bigger, far more important.
Why did Jamie bring home a photograph he’d professed to love?
What else had he been keeping from her?
Why had someone wanted him dead?
She processes the questions logically. Maybe Jamie only told her he liked the photo, and hid it here to save her feelings. Maybe his office has introduced a clear-desk policy. Or maybe, a voice whispers, maybe he was having an affair and couldn’t bear seeing the face of the woman he was betraying.
Nadeeka has read every scrap of paper in Jamie’s desk. She’s searched the pockets in his trousers and the boxes of odds-and-ends in the bottom of the wardrobe. She has found nothing. No secret phone, no love letters.
See! part of her thinks. You were worrying about nothing.
But you heard a woman’s voice, comes the immediate retort. He lied to you about where he was.
She wonders why she even cares, given what happened next, but she needs to know that her relationship with Jamie was everything she’d believed it was. She needs to tether her grief in something real and true.
Jamie had told Nadeeka he was finding the relocation harder to handle than he’d expected. She had wondered – either through intuition or paranoia – if perhaps he’d really meant he was finding her harder to handle. That he had made a mistake moving in with her.
‘The girls are at Scott’s this weekend,’ she had said a couple of weeks ago. ‘We could take a drive out – maybe go up to the Peak District?’
Jamie had paused for a second too long. ‘Sure,’ he’d said, but the smile he’d offered up hadn’t reached his eyes.
He hadn’t asked which day they should go, or looked up restaurants the way he normally would, and when Nadeeka didn’t mention it again, nor did he.
The weekend had arrived, and they had stayed home, Nadeeka casting surreptitious glances at Jamie as they sat on the sofa, watching a film.
As the credits had rolled, she had reached for him.
‘Bedtime?’ She had run her fingers suggestively across his thigh.
‘Good idea. I’m exhausted.’
He had gone straight up, and by the time Nadeeka had locked up he’d been in bed, his slow, even breaths suggesting he was asleep. Or pretending to be.
This was not Nadeeka’s first rodeo; she knew the signs of cheating.
The emotional detachment, the waning sex life, the evasive answers to straightforward questions.
Nadeeka hadn’t wanted to see them in Jamie – she had wanted so badly to believe that things would be different this time – but in the weeks prior to his murder they had all been there.
She tries to pinpoint when it had been that Jamie had started keeping his phone in his pocket instead of leaving it on the side. Not as far back as the summer, certainly. A month, perhaps? Six weeks, at most. Late October. That must have been when it started.
Downstairs, Nadeeka directs her restlessness into moving the sofa and hoovering the already spotless floor, then goes to make a cup of tea, before discovering there’s no milk in the fridge.
She contemplates abandoning the idea – she didn’t want it anyway – but the girls will want cereal in the morning, and maybe a breath of fresh air will do her good.
A couple of streets away from Cedar Walk is what everyone locally calls the corner shop, even though it’s slap-bang in the middle of a row of buildings.
Jamie had always preferred to go to one of the big supermarkets on the outskirts of town, but Nadeeka tries to shop with independents when she can.
The corner shop recently fell victim to an arson attack which almost set the whole building ablaze, and she imagines they need all the support they can get.
The shattered windows at the front of the shop have been replaced now, and the facade has fresh paint, but the brickwork either side of the door is still streaked with black.
As Nadeeka walks in, a bell jangles and Surinder comes out of the stock room, carrying a crate of fizzy drinks.
He stops short when he sees her and, although he doesn’t do the head tilt, it’s obvious he knows about Jamie.
‘I heard what happened.’ Surinder uses the crate to prop open the stock room door. He straightens and looks at Nadeeka. ‘How are you?’
Nadeeka takes a litre of milk from the fridge.
‘All over the place, to be honest.’ She feels suddenly exhausted, her limbs too heavy for her body.
Does everyone know about Jamie? She’ll have to talk to the girls tonight before they hear from someone else.
God knows how: there’s no chapter in the parenting manuals for how to tell your kids their mum’s partner has been stabbed to death.
‘This used to be a nice area,’ Surinder says. ‘I don’t know what’s going on lately.’
‘Did the fire cause a lot of damage?’ She wanders purposelessly around the tiny shop. Does she need anything else? Does she care?
‘No stock lost, fortunately, but I had to close for three days. That’s a lot of business.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘People have been very kind, though,’ Surinder says. ‘A neighbour cooked food; a friend of ours took the boys to school. We even had money pushed through the door. It’s not a bad neighbourhood, really.’
Nadeeka feels a pang of guilt at not having offered to help. She takes her milk to the till. ‘Do the police know who did it?’
‘Kids, probably. They found a bottle of lighter fluid dumped in the bin at the end of the street.’ Surinder pushes the milk towards her. ‘No charge.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Nadeeka feels in her pockets for change she can leave on the counter.
‘It’s nothing.’ Surinder’s eyes are full of compassion. ‘And please: if we can do anything to help—’
‘And if I can help you!’ Nadeeka cuts across him, embarrassed by the man’s generosity, when all she had done in response to his own crisis was to say, God, how terrible, and take the girls elsewhere for their baking ingredients.
‘With the boys, or . . .’ She tails off.
An empty offer, made too late. ‘Such a terrible thing to happen to your lovely shop.’
‘No one was hurt, and that is all that counts. If the phone hadn’t woken me up, it might have been another story, but . . .’ Surinder presses his palms together and dips his head.
‘Well, thank you for the milk. You’re very kind.’ As Nadeeka turns to go, a thought strikes her. ‘Who was calling you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The fire was in the early hours of the morning, right? Who was calling you at that time of night?’
‘No one.’ Surinder shrugs. ‘A wrong number, perhaps? My guardian angel, I think. Without that call, we could all have died.’
Nadeeka thinks about this as she walks home.
She wonders about the anonymous call that alerted the police to Jamie’s murder.
Is it possible it’s connected to Surinder’s arson?
Could someone be setting up crimes, then calling the authorities so they can watch the chaos unfold?
She’ll mention it to DI Burton. He said to pass on anything she thinks of, no matter how insignificant it seems.
At home, Nadeeka puts the milk in the fridge but doesn’t bother making tea.
Instead, she gets changed – she’s still wearing the clothes she wore to work yesterday – and gets in the car.
Jamie rarely went out without Nadeeka, except to pop to the shops or to go to work.
If he really had started seeing another woman, it was very possible he’d met her in the office.
ATP Construction is based on an industrial estate, between a tyre manufacturer and a cake factory which render the air between them a cloying mix of sweetness and hot rubber.
Nadeeka waits in reception while a young blonde woman finishes a call.
They are in the headquarters of the company, a UK-wide business putting sprawling housing developments on previously green fields.
‘Sorry about that.’ The receptionist has tortoiseshell glasses, pushed up by her cheeks when she smiles. ‘How can I help you?’
Nadeeka’s throat tightens. ‘I . . . my partner works here. Jamie Golding.’
‘Of course. Health and safety, right? You must be Nadia.’
‘Nadeeka.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Could I speak to Jamie’s line manager? Or to someone in HR?’
The receptionist’s eyebrows rise. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘I just really need to speak to someone.’
‘Carrie Finder’s head of People and Culture, but she’s on leave today . . .’ The receptionist is tapping long glossy nails on her keyboard. ‘But Adam Bennington’s in. He’s Jamie’s boss’s boss.’
‘Great. I’d like to talk to him, please.’
The receptionist lifts the phone. ‘What shall I say it’s regarding?’
‘Just tell him it’s important.’
Adam Bennington is close to retirement age. His eyes crease with compassion as Nadeeka haltingly tells him that Jamie won’t be back at work; that he died yesterday.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says.
‘I wondered how Jamie had been getting on at work,’ Nadeeka says. ‘Whether he was performing well, if he got on well with his colleagues, that sort of thing.’ Whether he was sleeping with one of them. She digs her nails into her palms.
‘Jamie had settled in very well. He was managing his workload well, and although he was quiet, he seemed to get on with every—’ Adam stops suddenly. ‘Nadia—’
‘Nadeeka.’
‘Nadeeka, I don’t want to pry, but these questions . . . Had Jamie been struggling? Did he take his own life?’
‘No!’ It’s so loud it hangs in the air for a split-second.
Adam looks mortified. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘He was murdered.’
The phone on Adam’s desk rings and he reaches out to silence it. His mouth has dropped open.
‘It’s possible the police will want to speak to you.’