fiddling with his wedding ring now, twisting it round his finger as though he were trying it on for size.
That was about as convincing as his account of why he’d been out when the police came round. I surveyed the room.
Family-worn furniture.
Drinks tables.
Several lamps.
Cheap sound system. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.
Large plasma screen. Telly clearly important to the Allen family.
Wait. ‘Do you normally clean your teeth in the living room?’
‘You what?’ He traced my glance to the toothbrush and tube of toothpaste on the table.
That was it. He’d just arrived home. His wife was out. And he’d been having breakfast. ‘Where have you been, Mr Allen?’
He reddened. ‘Nowhere,’ he snapped. ‘I told you, I wasn’t well.’ He paced the length of the room. Up. Down. Hands in his pockets.
I waited. Let his reply hang in the air, all the while fixing my gaze on him.
‘How did you get on with Mrs Gibson?’
His bored shrug came too quickly – more a nervous tic than a genuine I don’t know. ‘I was less of a fan of hers than lots of other people but I never wanted her dead.’ There was a weight to his quietly spoken words. ‘If you lot did your job properly, you’d find that there are a few people at the school who were keen to get Linda out of the picture.’
My voice came as quiet as an echo, eyes locked on his. ‘Like who?’
Steve was still absorbing Lucy’s news as he walked to Mile End to catch the bus. She’d met someone. Why hadn’t she told him when he was in New York? At least then they could have discussed it. Giving a message to Jane was cowardly. He turned up the collar of his jacket. On the ground, blobs of rain were washing away the recent snow flurry.
At the bus stop, school kids elbowed and shoved their way onto the double-decker bus, before clattering upstairs to claim their position in the pecking order. Steve waited with the workers, the knackered mums with buggies, the pensioners and this week’s reject kids. On the ground floor, an élite group of boys stood in a huddle, too cool to bother with the scrum of the top deck, their voices barely broken and their hormones in a spiral. Steve watched them posture and prance as they sniffed round two girls from another school.
Still feeling delicate this morning, he cursed his decision to get the bus. Had he known he would be cooped up with so much perfume and giggling, he would have walked the mile to school and spared his senses the onslaught.
When he alighted the bus at Bow Road tube station, the cool air was a relief, like stepping into the shade on a summer’s day. Momentarily, it soothed his lungs and cheeks before starting to bite. It was not fully light, and traffic chugged along Mile End Road, headlights glaring, carrying jangly city dwellers and bulging haulage loads to their destinations.
On parts of broken pavement the rain had collected in dirty puddles. Beside the cash point in the station wall, Steve saw a homeless man sitting in a dirt-slicked sleeping bag. Only a piece of cardboard lay between him and the concrete slabs. Desperation clung to his hollowed cheeks. Lowered eyelids kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, as though he doubted life would ever be good again, and even looking people in the eye required too much energy. In his lap, out of his vision, lay a sign. ‘I hope spring comes soon,’ it said.
No request for money, for food or a hostel bed.
What a self-pitying prick Steve was being. Yes, his own life was a mess at the moment. Yes, Lucy had a new bloke, but at least he had a job and somewhere warm to sleep. He looked at the guy’s thin sleeping bag, his filthy, cold-ravaged fingers in mittens, and Steve knew he wouldn’t survive sleeping rough for more than a couple of days. He changed course and strode over. The closer he got, he saw that the man, whose misfortune-bedraggled appearance suggested he was in his thirties, was probably in his early twenties.
‘There you go, mate.’ Steve dropped three pound coins in the pot. ‘I hope spring comes soon too.’
Hearing the chink of change, the man looked up. His eyes were dead but he managed a thumbs-up. A bluey-brown bruise encircled one eye socket and a scabby graze clung to the cheek below.
A few minutes later, Steve was at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights. An empty Red Bull can ricocheted in the wind. On the horizon the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the City boasted of wealth and progress. As he crossed the busy road, the unyielding cityscape seemed such a contrast to the sleepy town of Midhurst. There, the lollipop lady steered school kids safely across the high street, with the castle ruins, the River Rother and Cowdray polo fields in the distance. Had he seen any homeless people there? He couldn’t remember. Threads of panic rose inside him. What if coming back to East London was a mistake? What if he couldn’t settle back into noisy, crowded Tower Hamlets?
Fuck’s sake. Get a grip. Give it your best and if it doesn’t work, you can re-think things. At least you won’t be bored in London. He sucked in a huge breath and hurried in the direction of Mile End High School.
The Bow backstreets, which were quiet yesterday when Steve walked to school, were thrumming with noise. The closer he got, a mêlée of voices floated towards him, increasingly loud. Someone was shouting instructions into a loud speaker. It reminded Steve of a tuition fee rally when he was at university. Over the tops of houses, blue lights sliced through the grey. This was different from yesterday. Something must’ve happened. The police presence at the school had been stepped up overnight. His pulse quickened and his shattered body galvanised itself.
Metres away now, voices bellowed warnings. Vehicle engines roared and their doors slammed. Ring tones rode the bitter January wind, and through the tree-lined streets, satellite connections transmitted the news of Linda’s death into unsuspecting skies.
When Steve neared the school premises, he saw that the cordon had been enlarged. Crime scene tape flapped in the wind. Half a dozen marked cars were positioned at intervals around the area, and several officers huddled round each vehicle, solemn-faced and urgent in their high-visibility jackets. Scattered around the scene were twenty or so other people, some in work suits, others in forensic clothing. Liveried vans had arrived from the BBC and Sky, and people bustled round these hubs, lugging photographic paraphernalia, recording equipment and microphones. A rangy, pale-skinned man with red hair stood in front of a scrum of journalists and reporters. His arms made determined gestures as he tried to silence their questions long enough to be able to speak.
Steve scanned the scene for a colleague, someone he might recognise from yesterday, but saw no-one familiar. Shit. He’d forgotten to check his email this morning. He’d call Andrea. She’d know where they were meant to be. Before he could dial, a woman clocked him and sped over, waving and grinning and calling out. Long tendrils of black hair bobbed as she ran.
Before he had time to escape, she’d pinned him down. ‘I’m Suzie James . . . from the . . . Stepney Gazette,’ she stammered, out of breath from running but still able to flash her teeth, her head on one side in the sort of coquettish pose that Steve’s fifteen-year-old students adopted sometimes when they were late with their homework.
He
