Philip Kerr - January Window

With my back to the room and sitting at a corner table I’d hoped to snatch lunch without being bothered by anyone, but I wasn’t there for very long before Detective Inspector Louise Considine was hovering over me with a coffee cup in her hands and a curious look in her eye.

‘Mind if I join you?’ She smiled. ‘On second thoughts, please don’t answer that. I’m so not up to anyone being aggressive to me today.’

‘Please do,’ I said and for a moment I even stood up, politely. ‘No, really. You’re very welcome.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Hard day?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it.’

We sat down. She was wearing jeans and a tailored tweed jacket with a matching waistcoat. The handbag slung over her arm was old but classic: something her grandmother had given her, perhaps.

‘So I assume they must have drafted you in for your footballing expertise, Miss Considine? Not that you’d know very much if you support Chelsea.’ I frowned. ‘Why do you support Chelsea, anyway?’

‘Because José Mourinho is the handsomest man in football?’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

‘That was obviously before you met me.’

‘Obviously.’ She sipped the coffee and grimaced. ‘This isn’t a patch on the coffee you make at home,’ she said.

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘Who needs a man to be handsome as long as he makes excellent coffee?’

‘It’s a point of view. Every man needs a skill, right?’

‘So, when they sack you from London City, you can open your own coffee shop.’

‘I’ve only just got the job,’ I said. ‘It’s a little early to be thinking about the sack.’

‘Not at City. How many managers has the club had since it came into being? A dozen?’

‘Maybe. I never counted.’

‘You’re number thirteen by my count.’

‘I guess I deserve that after my Chelsea remark.’

‘Yes, you do.’ She smiled and stared out of the window at the pitch. Light filled her clear, perfect blue eyes so that they resembled two matching sapphires. Suddenly I wanted to lean forward and kiss each of them in turn.

‘Then if I might mention manager number twelve, for a moment,’ I said. ‘And the crime scene. Have the forensics people finished down there?’

‘Yes. Who should we return the key to?’

‘You can give it to me,’ I said.

She laid a key on the table. I picked it up and dropped it into my pocket.

‘Find anything interesting?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a thing. But then I haven’t yet had a chance to go crawling over the ground with a magnifying glass.’

‘I suppose you wouldn’t say even if you had.’

‘Walls have tweets,’ she said. ‘Especially around here.’

‘Footballers and their smartphones, eh? I sometimes wonder what they did before them.’

‘Read books, like everyone else. Then again, maybe not. Did you know that one of your players — and I won’t say who — is illiterate. He couldn’t read his own statement.’

‘That’s not so surprising. English is a foreign language for a lot of—’

‘He is English.’

‘You’re joking.’

Louise Considine shook her head.

‘He really can’t read?’

‘That’s what illiterate means, Mr Manson. Oh, and another of the players thought Zarco was Italian.’

I finished eating and sat back on the chair.

‘We have all sorts of nationalities here. Sometimes I have trouble remembering these things myself.’

‘Now that I don’t believe. You being such a polyglot.’

‘I’m half German, remember? And you know what they say: a man who speaks three languages is trilingual, a man who speaks two is bilingual and a man who speaks one is English.’

She smiled. ‘That’s me. O-level French, and that’s it, I’m afraid. I can barely tell my cul from my coude .’

‘Now I know that’s not true.’

‘Maybe.’

‘They’re like children, sometimes, footballers. Very large, very strong children.’

‘And how. Two of them wept like babes: Iñárritu, the Mexican, and the German — Christoph Bündchen.’

‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re sensitive lads. I wept myself when I heard the news.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry for your loss. Again.’

I nodded back at her. ‘You know, it’s been a while since Matt Drennan hanged himself. But the police still haven’t released the body so his poor family can bury him. Why is that, please?’

‘I don’t really know. I’m no longer on that case. At least not that particular case.’

‘Case? I didn’t realise it was a case. What’s taking so long?’

‘These things can take a little time. Besides, the circumstances of Mr Drennan’s death have obliged us to reopen a previous inquiry.’

‘What exactly does that mean?’

She looked around. ‘Look, perhaps this isn’t the right place to tell you about it.’

‘We can go to my office if you like.’

‘I think that might be better.’

We got up from the table and went along to my office in silence. She walked with her bag slung over one shoulder and her arms folded in front of her chest, the way women do when they’re not entirely comfortable about something. I closed the door behind us, drew out a chair for her and then sat down. I was close enough to smell her perfume — not that I could tell what it was, merely that I liked it. In spite of who and what she was, I liked her, too.

‘So. What did you want to tell me, Miss Considine?’

‘I’m sorry to land it on you like this,’ she said. ‘Really, I am. Especially now. But you’ll hear about it soon enough. Tomorrow, probably, when we make it official.’ She paused for a moment and then said: ‘We’re reopening the police inquiry into the rape of Helen Fehmiu.’

I was silent as, for a moment, it was 23 December 2004 and I was back in the dock at St Albans Crown Court, about to be sentenced to eight years in prison for rape. I closed my eyes wearily, half expecting that Louise Considine was going to tell me that I was under arrest again. I lowered my head onto the desk in front of me and let out a groan.

‘Not again.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Christ, why?’

To my surprise she laid her hand on my shoulder and left it there.

‘Look, Mr Manson, you’re not a suspect so there’s no need for you to worry. No need at all. I promise you, you’re in the clear. If anything, this is good news for you. You have my word on it.’

I sat up again. ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘It really is good news, you know. It will completely remove any lingering suspicion that in spite of your acquittal you might have had something to do with it.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why now? It’s been almost ten years. And how does Matt Drennan’s death have any bearing on what happened to Helen Fehmiu?’

‘Well, you see we found a suicide note in Mr Drennan’s pocket. In the note he talked about you. In fact, his suicide seems to have had quite a bit to do with you, Mr Manson.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Rather than me try to explain what I mean, the quickest thing would be if I were to let you read it. The note. I have a PDF of it here.’

She picked up her handbag, took out an iPad and then showed me an image of a handwritten note. I didn’t recognise the childlike handwriting but the signature at the bottom with a smiley face inside the capital ‘D’ of Drennan was familiar, although on a suicide note it struck me as rather strange. Then again, it was quite typical of the man: I imagined him writing the note, then signing it with the smiley face out of sheer habit, as if he’d been signing an autograph for a fan in a pub or outside a football ground. Drenno was never too busy to sign an autograph for whoever asked him. It was one of the reasons why so many people loved the man.