‘How has she been? I haven’t seen her since … when was it I came over? Gosh, nearly a month.’
A month. And before that it had been two months since Jo had been signed off sick with stress. By now, the tablets the doctor gave her should have started to work. By now, she should be thinking about coming back, even if it was on reduced hours to start with. By now, they should be applying for foster carer status, filling out forms, having home visits. All of these things have been discussed, calmly, and then argued over.
Sam looks up. She can see herself reflected in Lou’s expression, can read the concern in her friend’s eyes. ‘Christ,’ she says. ‘Do I look that rough?’
‘You look like you could use a good night’s sleep,’ Lou says. ‘I’d offer you my concealer but I have a feeling you’d tell me where to put it.’
That at least raises a smile. Lou reaches out a hand and places it on Sam’s. A gesture of comfort at the perfect moment of despair, overwhelming nevertheless. Sam feels hot tears, wipes them quickly away.
‘Come on,’ Lou says. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
‘You’ve got a million things to do,’ Sam replies quickly.
‘Never mind that. It can all wait. Come on.’
It is grey and damp outside but luckily not raining. They walk side by side along the edge of the playing field behind headquarters, listening to the shouts and screams from the school playground which is just the other side of the hedge. Sam is aware that Lou is waiting for her to speak. She doesn’t have long, she’s wasting time being out here. But where to start with something like this? How can you possibly define where things went wrong? In the end, it all comes back to one thing: Jo’s illness, and what has triggered it.
‘She won’t go to counselling. Says it doesn’t do anything for her. I’ve tried to persuade her, but each time she goes she comes back worse.’
‘It gets worse before it gets better.’ Lou says. ‘Isn’t that what they always say?’
‘She goes running every day, it’s the only thing that seems to help. Trouble is, she insists on running through the woods at the back of Baysbury village, where all the addicts and dealers hang out. I keep asking her not to go there, but she goes anyway. And she has bad dreams – that is, on the nights that she makes it to bed. She says she can see him lying dead, even though she wasn’t there, she never actually saw it.’
‘What’s happening with the investigation?’
‘I only know what’s been on the news. They won’t tell me anything. I think that’s making it all worse, really. Jo’s blaming herself when she can’t possibly have been to blame – she was off sick, after all, she wasn’t even there – and since nobody’s telling her otherwise, she can’t seem to … I don’t know … pull herself back from it.’
‘Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with all of this.’ Lou puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, gives it a supportive pat.
‘It’s the people who were on duty at the time I feel sorry for,’ says Sam. ‘With all this press coverage, the management team are going to have to be completely ruthless. And we’ll escape all that, we’ll get through it.’
‘Yes, you will. Of course you will.’
‘I love her so much, Lou. It’s unbearable seeing her like this. We moved to get away from stress, not have more of it.’
‘Is there anything I can do? Take you both out, get you away from the house for a night, something like that?’
‘Thanks,’ Sam says. ‘I’ll ask her. When I can get hold of her, that is.’ Her mobile phone is in her hand, the inert, silent weight of it both comforting and ominous.
JO
‘Oh, Dixie, bloody hell. What have you found?’
The dog stinks to high heaven and he’s looking both guilty and secretly pleased with himself, trying not to wag his tail too hard. It’s obviously poo of some kind, fox probably, and he’s managed to find a nice wet pile of it to roll in. Jo might have known. As if her day wasn’t going to be trying enough, when she gets back she’ll have to haul him into the bath before she does anything else. The thought of it makes her want to cry with frustration. As it is, she’s dreading going home.
‘Come on, then, stinky,’ she says, breaking into a run. Dixie trots beside her and then runs ahead, under the stile and into the field. The path curves around to the left, back into the woodlands.
Something has changed. The minute she gets into the woodland the light seems different, as if the sun has gone behind a cloud. There’s no sun today, it’s uniformly grey and damp, but in here it feels colder.
Jo runs, increasing her pace to make up a little for the stops and starts, keeping an eye on Dixie who is ahead of her, dipping in and out of foliage in pursuit of a scent. She runs faster and faster, her heart pounding, head down, which is why she doesn’t see the boy until she’s almost on top of him.
‘Shit!’
He appears in front of her without warning and it’s hard to tell who’s more scared. Jo stops abruptly, turning her ankle in the process. Dixie crashes out of a bush up ahead, trots up to them with interest.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘you made me jump.’
It’s only a matter of seconds; she has just a moment to take in the dirty parka jacket that’s too big for him, his skinny legs in mud-streaked jogging bottoms and a pair of trainers with no socks. She looks up into eyes that are green, pale, almost khaki-coloured in a grubby face, wide with fright. Jo has seen eyes like that before.
And then he’s off.
He turns and runs, not back along the path, but off into the bushes, thrusting aside branches and clambering up the slope to get away from her.
‘Wait!’ she says, following him. ‘Stop, hold on a minute!’
She pushes her way through the undergrowth, although it’s harder because she’s so much bigger than him, and even though it’s late autumn and there are no leaves on the trees the ground is slippery and muddy, the branches spiky and unyielding. Ahead she can hear twigs snapping, the sound of his feet running, and then she reaches the top of the slope.
She’s out of breath now, her legs burning with the effort. She stops and waits, listening. There is silence in the woods now. He must have got away, he was so much faster than her. She debates her options: she should go home and phone 101 and report it. And say what, exactly? There’s a boy in the woods. He could be anyone. Just because he was a bit scruffy, just because he should have been at school and he’s in the woods, on his own … What can they do about it? Nothing, probably. It’s not a crime, is it? She can talk to Sam about it, tonight, ask her what to do.
Something catches her eye, a reflection, a movement, and she sees it: a dark shape in the undergrowth, hidden in a tangle of bindweed and evergreen. When she gets closer it’s a navy blue tarpaulin, caught in the branches of a bramble. She crouches down and looks into the blackness. She can hear him breathing. He is huddled at the back of the makeshift shelter, a dirty blanket around his shoulders as if this will offer some sort of protection. A pair of green eyes, wide with fear, stare back at her.
‘Hassan,’ she says. ‘You’re Hassan, aren’t you? Mohammed’s brother?’
SAM
Sam gets home as early as she possibly can, leaving emails unanswered and paperwork incomplete. This is not like her. She does not, ever, leave work without finishing things off. She likes to be able to go home and shut the door on the day, knowing it’s been dealt with to the best of her abilities. It’s her way of coping with the stress: standing between people who are off their faces on something or other, determined to ‘sort it out’; catching a glimpse of the look on the face of a child, waiting patiently in a doorway while her parents scream and swear at each other; listening to a young girl explain why her boyfriend beating her up is okay, really, because he doesn’t mean it and it’s only because he’s got anger management issues and she said the wrong thing and wound him up.
Today she spent an hour in a house with two small children, waiting for social services to turn up. Their mother, a heroin addict, wa
s dead from an overdose on the bathroom floor. The children were young – the youngest a crawling baby with a massively swollen nappy, the elder of the two a little boy with enormous blue eyes and bruises on his arms. They had been in there, on their own, for some time. A neighbour had heard them crying. After a day of it she’d had enough and called the police, because after all who else was there to call?
Sam has decided that tonight, as promised, she and Jo will talk about fostering. Talk about it properly. For the past two years they have gone through phases of discussing their future together; a civil partnership, maybe, although Sam would prefer to wait until the government decides to allow them to get married properly. The possibilities of Jo using a donor to get pregnant and have a child herself has been considered, although Sam has always found this idea hard to take. And why bring another child into such a world? Jo argues that having a child is not like getting a pet. After that, they adopted Dixie from a Spanish rescue charity and Sam had thought that might be it. It was not. The discussions shifted to adoption, and then, when that was deemed potentially too difficult in the Met, a move to Eden where the waiting list of children exceeded the list of potential adoptees was swiftly brought to fruition. Less stress – apparently – a better quality of life, somewhere nice and rural to bring up a family.
Sam thinks about the two small children and wonders what life they’ll have now. And suddenly fostering seems like a good idea.
But when she gets inside, all her thoughts and plans disappear. She can hear voices – well, Jo’s voice, and for a moment she’s pleased and dismayed at the same time by the prospect of visitors.
‘Jo?’
‘In here!’
Sam opens the living room door. A boy is sitting on the sofa watching cartoons, his black hair sticking up in tufts, wearing one of Jo’s T-shirts and a pair of yoga pants rolled up at the bottom. He looks at Sam with huge eyes that instantly remind her of a thousand kids she’s dealt with over the years. Dixie, his fur fluffed as though he’s had a bath too, is lying at the boy’s feet.
‘Don’t be angry,’ Jo says.
Sam turns to look at her. She’s in the doorway to the kitchen, her thin arms hugging herself, her head down, dark hair over her eyes. She’s looking at Sam from under her lashes, her eyes pleading. Sam is struck by how tiny she seems, how much weight she has lost in the last few months.
Sam turns her attention back to the boy, sits down on the sofa opposite him so she’s not towering over him. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘My name’s Sam. What’s your name?’
The boy says nothing, looks from her to Jo and back again, clearly not understanding a word.
‘Can we … ?’ Sam says, indicating the kitchen.
Jo has clearly been expecting this. She leads Sam to the kitchen and shuts the door behind her. ‘Don’t be angry,’ she says again.
‘I’m not angry,’ Sam says. In truth she does not know how she feels. ‘I just want to know what’s going on.’
‘That’s Hassan. Mohammed’s younger brother. He was living rough in the woods.’
‘You went into the woods?’
‘Look, it doesn’t matter about that. He’s got nowhere to go, Sam. If we take him to social services he’ll just run away again, he can’t trust anyone. He’s all on his own. He has nothing, nobody.’
Sam takes in her earnest, tearful eyes, the frantic hand gestures. Jo is trembling. She opens her arms and folds her into a hug. Jo sobs into her shoulder. ‘He has nobody,’ Jo says again, her voice high.
‘Jo, this can’t happen, you know it can’t.’
‘Don’t say that! Anyway, what was I supposed to do?’ Jo says. ‘I couldn’t just leave him there. It took me nearly half an hour to persuade him to come with me. In the end it was only because some men came.’
‘Men?’
‘There are lots of them, living in the woods. Hassan’s the only child. How vulnerable does that make him, Sam? He’s living under a bit of plastic in a bloody bush. On his own. He’s only eleven.’
‘There are ways of doing this, for our safety as well as for the child’s. We can’t just keep him. He’s not a stray dog.’
Jo pushes her away. ‘I knew you’d do this,’ she says. ‘I knew it.’
‘We can make sure he’s safe,’ Sam says. ‘We can find him somewhere he’ll be safe, I promise.’
‘No!’
‘Jo, seriously, I’m going to make a few phone calls … ’
‘If he goes, I go too.’
The statement hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud.
‘What?’ Sam says.
‘I mean it. If you ring social services, I’ll leave and take him with me.’
She knows that Jo is not well. She knows she is struggling with coming to terms with Mohammed’s death, that even the pills aren’t helping. But surely she can see that what she’s proposing is madness. There are tears on Jo’s cheeks but she’s defiant, arms folded. She may be close to the edge but right now she is strong, fearless.
‘He’s not your child, Jo. He isn’t your responsibility.’
‘I know he’s not mine!’ Jo explodes. ‘I’m not stupid! And I also know that whoever you call, whoever turns up at the door will only be able to do so much, because procedures need to be followed and although everyone means well and tries their hardest, children are falling through these gaping holes in the system. He’s been in social care. Why do you think they run away as soon as they can?’
‘Lots of reasons. You know that. They don’t understand what’s happening, they’re scared, so they run. But he’s not old enough to know what’s for the best, Jo. Mohammed was a teenager, this lad – whoever he is – he’s just a child. Surely you can see we can’t let him stay?’
‘He’s a guest, I’m not holding him against his will. He can walk out if he wants to.’
‘You’re an adult. He’s a child. He’s not able to make decisions like that on his own, that’s why he needs trained people to support him … ’
She is weakening, Sam can tell. She looks exhausted, beyond tired, and Sam wonders how much energy this has taken out of her. She sags into one of the kitchen chairs, resting her head on her hands.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I feel like if we hand him over to someone else I’m just leaving him to die, like Mohammed.’
As gently as she can, Sam says, ‘Jo. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘He died because nobody was willing to help him.’
‘He had lots of help. He kept running away from it.’
‘I could have saved him,’ she wails. ‘If I’d only been there. I promised him I’d help, I promised, and I let him down … ’
‘Jo.’ Sam’s arm around her shoulders, holding her close. She pulls Jo around, folds her into an embrace. ‘It’s okay. It’ll get easier, I promise.’
Holding her, feeling the bones in her shoulders through her thin top, at first Sam’s aware of nothing but the girl she loves and how she can possibly make things better. And then, gradually, she realises that the trembling is actually shivering, and it’s freezing in here, a cold draught coming from under the closed kitchen door. She releases Jo slowly, goes to the door and opens it. The front door is open. She goes to the living room to check, but she’s too late: the boy has gone.
Transcript of Interview in relation to Op Jasmine, the death in police custody of Mohammed Reza on 27 August 2010
Investigators interviewing:
William HOLMES
Christine HENRY
Witness:
PSE Joanna LARTER
Interview commences at 11:22
William HOLMES (WH): Let’s talk about the events of Friday 27 August 2010. You were scheduled to work that day, weren’t you?
Joanna LARTER (JL): Yes.
WH: But you called in sick?
JL: Yes. [INDISTINCT]
WH: I understand this is very upsetting for you. Take your time.
JL: You don’t understand, you don’t get it at all. I should have been ther
e when he was brought in. If I’d been there, he might not have done it. He would have had someone to talk to, someone he recognised. As it was, he was all alone, again.
WH: When you were at home on the evening of 27 August, you received a phone call from Sergeant Phil Doherty from his personal mobile phone. Can you tell us how that conversation went?
JL: He rang me to tell me Mohammed had been brought in. I asked how he was, he said he wasn’t happy. They booked him in via Language Line and when he realised he was being kept in, he got upset. He’d been crying and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Phil wanted to ask me if I had any ideas while they were deciding whether they were going to detain him. I told him I was going to come in.
WH: But you didn’t do that?
JL: No, I stayed at home.
WH: Why was that?
JL: Phil told me not to. He said they could manage, that Mohammed would be fine. He said they’d just checked him and he was settling down. I could tell they were busy. He was very quick on the phone. I felt guilty for being off sick.
WH: Did he call you back after that?
JL: No. I didn’t hear anything else until the next morning. Mohammed’s death was on the news, that’s how I found out.
JO
As well as spending most of the night searching for the boy themselves, Sam had called in and reported what had happened. A patrol turned up and performed a search of the area, referring the matter on to social services. Jo heard this particular phone conversation since it took place in the living room.
‘His name is Hassan Reza,’ Jo had said. ‘R-E-Z-A.’
‘Actually,’ Sam added, ‘We’re not sure of that identification. Best go on the description.’
But he had already repeated the name to the social services officer.
‘Oh, you know him, do you?’ the officer said, eyeing Jo as he did so. He was a middle-aged man carrying more than a few extra pounds under his utility belt and Jo took an instant dislike to him. She felt judged. But then, she’s getting used to that.
Sam finally left for work at a quarter to nine.