Chapter 18
‘That’s not possible.’ Nadeeka looks at Lauren, then at Fraser, as though he might offer a different explanation.
‘There must be some mistake.’ They’re sitting in her living room at Cedar Walk, the uncarpeted floor a stark reminder of Jamie’s murder.
Nadeeka has covered the dark stain on the floor with a rug from upstairs, the edge folded up against the wall where the skirting board used to be.
‘Without taking fingerprints directly from Jamie, we can’t be conclusive,’ Lauren says, ‘but the fingerprints on the bottle of lighter fuel match the ones we took from Jamie’s glasses case.’
‘But it was me who told Jamie about the arson. He was as shocked as I was.’ Nadeeka’s face screws up in confusion.
‘None of this makes sense. If his fingerprints are on the lighter fluid, they must have got there by accident. Maybe he picked it up to throw it away – that’s the kind of man he was.
He hated seeing rubbish chucked on the ground. ’
‘Fire investigation have confirmed the lighter fluid is the same type used to start the fire at the convenience store,’ Lauren says quietly.
A pale line forms around Nadeeka’s lips, as she presses them tightly together. Lauren glances at Fraser.
‘Nadeeka . . . the owners are Pakistani. Did Jamie ever express any racist views?’
‘Racist?’ Nadeeka’s eyes widen.
‘Any concerns over people he perceived to be foreigners?’ Fraser says. ‘Strong views about immigration perhaps?’
‘No! Jamie wasn’t like that.’ She shakes her head as though trying to dislodge the very idea. ‘I mean, I’m Sri Lankan – it was literally in my dating profile when he matched with me. Even if he hadn’t seen it before he swiped, my profile pic was right there.’
‘What do you know about his previous dating history?’ Fraser says.
‘You mean had he had a Sri Lankan before?’ Nadeeka’s tone is deliberately harsh.
‘Some men intentionally target women who come from . . .’ Fraser hesitates, and Lauren knows he’s trying to find a politically correct term ‘ . . . specific groups,’ he finishes.
Lauren backs him up. ‘Unfortunately we do sometimes encounter men who use dating sites as a way to meet people from certain backgrounds, or with particular characteristics – disabilities, for example – and their intentions aren’t always honourable.
’ Lauren thinks of the cases she’s been involved with over the years: mercifully few, but memorable for all the wrong reasons.
The guy with a fetish for asphyxiating overweight women; the homophobic trucker who sought out his victims on Grindr. Could Jamie have deliberately targeted Nadeeka?
Got close to her in order to hurt her? If so, losing his own life could well have saved hers.
‘Jamie loved me,’ Nadeeka says, so fervently that Lauren wonders whether she’s trying to convince them or herself.
‘The photograph Jamie brought home from work . . .’ Lauren treads carefully, knowing how fragile Nadeeka is right now. ‘Could it be that Jamie didn’t want his colleagues to see it?’
Nadeeka’s jaw tightens. She’s trying not to cry, her face working against itself.
Neither Lauren nor Fraser fills the silence.
‘You think he was ashamed of me?’ Nadeeka says eventually. ‘Of my skin colour? Of Maya and Nish?’ Her voice rises. ‘You think he was embarrassed to be in a photograph with us?’ A single tear runs down her cheek.
‘I don’t know,’ Lauren says. ‘I’m trying to figure out if taking home that photo has anything to do with the arson.’
‘I couldn’t help but notice that Jamie didn’t have a lot of possessions,’ Fraser says. ‘A few clothes and books, but not much else, right? No furniture?’
‘He sold most of his stuff. Said there was no point hiring a van and trying to fit it all into an already furnished house. Who needs two sets of saucepans? That’s what he said.’
‘I suppose I’m just wondering . . .’ Fraser hesitates ‘ . . . whether Jamie felt the arrangement might only be temporary.’
‘Arrangement?’ Nadeeka stares at him. She shakes her head over and over, seemingly unable to find the words to respond.
Lauren puts a hand out to comfort her, but Nadeeka pulls her own away.
‘How dare you? Do you not think this is hard enough for me already? Every second of every day I’m questioning whether Jamie was having an affair – what he was up to behind my back that got him killed.
And now you’re telling me he never intended to stay?
That all the plans we made for the future were some kind of sick joke? ’
‘I’m so sorry to upset you,’ Lauren says.
‘Believe me, we want to know the truth as much as you do.’ As soon as she says it, she wants to take it back – there can be no one more desperate for the truth than the woman in front of her – but, just as she’s bracing herself for more defensiveness, there’s a sudden change in Nadeeka’s expression.
Her jaw slackens; her brows tighten. Lauren stiffens. ‘What is it?’
There’s a long pause.
‘He changed my name,’ Nadeeka whispers.
‘He what?’
‘When I went to ATP Construction, the woman on reception called me Nadia. I thought it was a mistake, but then Jamie’s boss called me Nadia too, and so did another colleague. Nadia, not Nadeeka.’
‘Perhaps they misheard him?’ Fraser suggests.
Nadeeka’s voice becomes even smaller. ‘He wanted to make me sound white.’
‘We don’t know that for sure.’ Lauren wants to reassure her, but she can’t think of a plausible alternative to offer. Nadia. One colleague might be mistaken, but three?
‘There’s more.’ Nadeeka presses the back of her hand to her mouth, stays that way for a few seconds, before taking a long, steadying breath.
‘Jamie suggested we take the girls to Lapland to see Santa – he’d found some special deal – but it would have meant them missing their Christmas show, so I said no.
’ She looks at Lauren. ‘I know that sounds ridiculous – who wouldn’t want to go to Lapland, right?
– but I didn’t want the girls to miss out, and anyway, I couldn’t have got away from work. ’
Lauren waits, unsure where this is going.
‘I said to Jamie that with the girls being half-Sri Lankan and half-British, I was really happy about the school doing a multi-faith version of the nativity. Well, Jamie got really funny about it.’
‘Funny?’ Lauren says.
‘He threw out a load of reasons why this Lapland trip was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But when I looked online, we could have booked at that price for any time. We had a row about it, and in the end we didn’t book at all.
’ Nadeeka looks at Lauren. ‘But when I dropped the girls at school the next day, Nish’s teacher came up to me and said she was so sorry the girls wouldn’t be in the show.
Jamie had emailed her and said we’d be away. ’
‘After you and he had agreed not to book Lapland?’
Nadeeka nods. ‘I couldn’t work out why he didn’t want them to do the nativity.’ She starts crying again. ‘But it’s because they’re bringing in other religions, isn’t it? He didn’t like it.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Lauren says again, but it’s all stacking up. The photograph, the anglicized name, the arson attack against the Pakistani shopkeeper, the reluctance to support a multi-faith nativity.
‘I can’t believe I’ve been so blind.’ Nadeeka stares at Lauren blankly. ‘Do you know what he said when I told him about a recruitment drive I’m doing at work?’
Lauren shakes her head.
‘He told me not to focus on the foreign-born workers.’ Nadeeka flinches as though the memory is causing her physical pain.
‘Afterwards he backtracked, saying he’d meant people might give us grief over it, but it was so .
. . odd. God, I feel sick.’ She wraps her arms around herself, leaning forward on to her knees.
‘Knowing I was lying next to someone who was only pretending to be in love with me; knowing I let him spend time with my kids when all the time he was having such vile, despicable thoughts.’
Lauren can’t imagine how that must feel. But then, she can’t imagine Nadeeka not at least suspecting that Jamie wasn’t all he appeared. Had she really not seen the red flags?
‘Did Jamie ever break up with you?’ she asks, thinking of the note she found in Nadeeka’s nightstand.
‘Or threaten to? I’m just trying to get a handle on his behaviour while you were together.
’ She has a photo of the note on her phone, but she’s reluctant to let Nadeeka know the full extent of her snooping.
It’s important Nadeeka feels she can trust Lauren and Fraser.
‘No, but . . .’ Nadeeka starts to cry again. ‘He almost did. He wrote me a letter saying he was leaving me – he wasn’t even going to do it face-to-face! I found it in the bin.’
That explains the screwed-up paper, Lauren thinks. ‘What did he say when you asked him about it?’
Nadeeka doesn’t answer.
‘You did speak to him about it?’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘I thought if I brought it up, it might bring up all sorts of other things too; that he’d decide he really was going to leave. So I just pretended I hadn’t seen it.’
‘You must have been devastated. Angry, even?’ Lauren watches Nadeeka carefully.
‘Devastated, yes. But no, not angry – why would I be angry? I was scared of losing him.’
‘But he stayed?’ Fraser says.
‘Yes. And he would have left, wouldn’t he, if he was seeing someone else?’ Nadeeka looks at them hopefully. ‘I mean, the fact that he stayed – that counts for something, right?’
‘It sounds as though there was a lot going on in Jamie’s head before he died,’ Lauren says carefully.
‘I’d been worrying about him for a few weeks. He didn’t seem happy, and whenever I asked what was wrong, he just said he was finding things hard.’
‘What things?’
‘That’s what I asked. But he just kept saying “things”. I was worried that meant “us”, but then I thought maybe he was having some kind of mental health breakdown. I even asked him to see the GP, though he never did.’ Her face crumples. ‘Maybe if he had, he might still be here.’