Extracts

Witness

Something caught his eye. He turned, squinted, waited.
Nothing.
Except…
He peered into the darkness. A shadow, a movement? No, not at this hour, it couldn’t be.
Just the stillness of a Hackney night.
He relaxed and turned back, realised it was almost over and cleaned the knife with a cloth, put it into a polythene bag and slipped it into an inside pocket. From another pocket, unbelievably, even with a touch of pride in his preparations, he took out a camera. Calmly, he focused it on her and started to film.

Twinkling Lights of Hackney

Daniel Hart switched off the hands-free headset and focused on the road back to Clapton where he had to make a final call for the day. It was late, but he worked all the hours he could to keep the business growing. He’d phoned Kathryn but she wasn’t around which made him anxious, not so much that he couldn’t reach her now as that he hadn’t been able to reach her for weeks, emotionally rather than physically. Something was wrong and he wanted to help, but she’d been distant and that hurt him. He was, he knew, over-sensitive to rejection. This might well have been his Jewish background kicking in, he wasn’t sure, only he didn’t feel this was him; this was Kathryn, and because he loved her more than he thought it possible to love anyone and because she loved him just as much, they had to sort this out.

Blackout

He’d done all this, and yet here he was now, by the site of the long gone school, witnessing yet more spite and wickedness. Sometimes he feared he was losing the battle, that no matter what he did or what anyone did, his beloved borough was in terminal decline. Other times he saw the effort ordinary people made to build lives and bridge supposedly unbridgeable cultural gaps and he found renewed motivation. He was determined as he took in this scene of death and desolation to find the madman who had done this. It wouldn’t be easy.

Fallout

He was extraordinarily tired, but he still had things to do, despite wanting to hide away and regain some balance, but he feared he would never be truly balanced again, that something precious and vital had been lost which could never be replaced. He had to try to keep a clear head. He felt that in his tiredness he’d already missed something important but hoped it would either come back to him later or be nothing at all. For the time being, he thanked the warden and his wife, told them he would consider coming back to the service if he could and left them, heading back to the hospital to see Naila.

Retribution

Although he was petulant, he was also frightened. He hadn’t felt comfortable with the detective who he now knew wasn’t a detective at all, just an ex-policemen in disgrace, but to be so close to someone who only hours later would be murdered, this shook him. He didn’t like being afraid and he fought it, but he sensed that everyone in the room was afraid. And Sam had actually spoken to the monster who’d created all this havoc, not voice to voice, but as good as, and that scared him, too. He felt too close to something that shouldn’t have involved him at all, or his family or Feri.

Redemption

Sam felt a little unwanted discomfort here. He’d been a touch jealous himself, but that all seemed like a long time ago. He didn’t want to talk about the dead nurse or anything to do with her; that was all someone else’s world, not theirs, even though it had touched both his and Feriha’s lives in different ways. He was about to say this and not answer the question when his own mobile rang. Thinking it was Jemal checking up on him he was going to switch it off, but when he checked the number he saw that it wasn’t Jemal; it wasn’t anyone he knew. Feriha watched him, amused.
“Not another girlfriend?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Shall I answer?” he asked her.
“Don’t mind me,” said Feriha, kissing him, “you go ahead and talk to all the girls in your life.”
Sam pressed the talk button, but when he spoke, Feriha sensed that he was becoming tense again.