She kept an eye out for the fox, but even that proved no distraction. Had it been real? And if it was, had it been sick? Or worse, rabid? Perhaps she should go home and phone the RSPCA.
She didn’t feel like going home. With the meeting due at her place later, she needed provisions. She counted the change in her purse: if she was careful, she could manage.
It was so humid that her skin was moist with perspiration and her throat raw. She needed water and she needed it now. Since she was just then passing the local Londis, she stepped in.
It was a small outlet, run by one of the Somalian newcomers to the area whose daughter went to school with Lyndall, and it was usually a relaxed place. But what she heard when she stepped in was a voice raised in anger.
‘What the fuck do you mean you can’t?’
She knew that voice and the man who, with his back to her, banged a fist against the counter: ‘You’ve got no right to refuse.’
‘Banji?’
He whirled round, looked at her and then looked right past her.
‘Banji. It’s Cathy.’
‘You think I’m such a fucking muppet I don’t know who you are?’ He turned back to the counter behind which Mrs Sharif was standing. ‘Just sell me a can – I’ve got the money – and I’ll get out of your fucking way.’
Mrs Sharif shook her head.
He slammed both hands down on the counter and pushed on them: he was about to vault over. And would have done so had not Cathy run up to grab him by the arm and pull him away from the counter.
‘What the fuck?’
She could smell his breath, sour and stale. ‘Mrs Sharif can’t sell you alcohol.’
‘Why the fuck not?’
‘Because she hasn’t got a licence.’
‘Oh.’ Fury mutating into something closer to confusion. ‘Hasn’t she?’
She could see Mrs Sharif inching along the counter. She was heading for the telephone at its far end.
The last thing anybody needed was more police. ‘Come on.’ She tugged at Banji’s arm. ‘Come, let’s get some air,’ and to Mrs Sharif: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.’
He let her lead him out of the shop, but once they were outside he shook her off. ‘Call this air?’ He seemed unsteady on his feet.
‘Are you drunk?’ But he’d given up all intoxicants. Or at least he’d told her that he had. ‘Are you?’
‘Are you?’ he said in imitation of her voice.
Walk away, she told herself, and not for the first time.
She did not walk away.
He looked awful. His trousers and dirty white T-shirt were what he had been wearing yesterday, and they were both now so crumpled he must have slept in them. Or not slept at all, which was probably the case: the whites of his eyes were pink.
‘What happened?’ The last she’d seen of him he’d been let off by the police with a caution.
The fury seemed to drain out of him then. In its place: a misery that crumpled his expression as he said, ‘They killed him.’
‘Yes.’ She felt herself relax. ‘They did.’
‘And I didn’t stop them.’
She reached out a consoling hand.
He jumped as if her touch could burn. ‘I was watching out for him.’
‘You did what you could.’
‘Well, it wasn’t fucking good enough, was it?’ His face was screwed up in rage, an unaccustomed sight coming as it did from a man whose manner these days was a non-committal containment that made him seem almost devoid of emotion.
Not so in the past. Then he had been quick to anger. And then he had also drunk a lot and taken other things besides.
‘I lost my phone,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Are you deaf or what? I lost my fucking phone.’
Okay, she thought, so he lost his phone. She took hers out of her pocket. ‘You can use mine.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. Violently. ‘What if she rung back and you answered?’
She must be his wife – his ex-wife. That he’d had an acrimonious break-up was one of the few personal details he had let slip.
‘You could number guard it,’ she said.
He backed away even further. ‘You don’t understand.’ He’d raised his voice again – ‘Nobody does’ – and hardened as he glared at her. ‘I’m all alone.’
Such accusatory self-pity, as if he was so much worse off than everybody else. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Use my phone. Or don’t. Just do me a favour and stop whining.’
There: the end of tiptoeing around him in case something she did made him leave her. Let him go if he wanted to. It would be better if he did. She looked at him, straight, waiting for his bite-back.
He threw his head back and laughed. Long and hard, and he kept his balance while he was doing it. He isn’t drunk, she thought.
A memory of that previous night: Banji held down and unable to get the police to hear what he was telling them – that they were killing Ruben. It must have been unbearable. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’
He took her by surprise again. He reached out and touched a gentle finger against her lips. ‘Don’t be sorry. Be feisty. It suits you, Cathy Mason.’
So many lightning changes of mood: a dance she couldn’t follow.
But then Banji was a man who never would be followed. ‘Catch you later,’ he said. ‘Something I have to do,’ and he walked away.
10 p.m.
‘It’s late,’ the Reverend Pius said. ‘And we’ve had a productive meeting. We are agreed. We’ll set off from the Lovelace tomorrow at three, and others will join us outside the police station. We’ll support the family while they seek an explanation from the police about their actions in relation to Ruben. Once they’ve been given that, we will disperse. Thanks, everybody, for attending and to Cathy for opening her home to us.’ He stretched and tried to conceal a yawn that anyway sounded out.
No wonder he was tired: he’d had to work hard to contain the rage that had at moments threatened to burst out.
‘That was well chaired,’ Marcus said.
Cathy nodded her agreement, although she was distracted. One final look around the room as the crowd that had packed her living room thinned confirmed it. ‘Banji wasn’t here,’ she said.
‘Were you expecting him?’
‘After last night? Yes, of course.’
‘Well, you know what Banji’s like.’ Marcus got to his feet and also yawned. ‘They seek him here, they seek him there, the Lovelace seeks him everywhere.’
He said it so sweetly it made her laugh, but still: ‘You’ve never liked him, have you?’
‘I don’t like him.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t dislike him. I don’t know him. Does anybody?’
Yes, she nearly said. I do. But then she thought back to the way Banji had behaved that afternoon, and then to their more distant past, and she realised