Half the World Away

CHAPTER THIRTY

The following morning, we start at eight, to catch the rush-hour commuters. Tom and I get the bus and Anthony is waiting for us when we arrive. For once there is a breeze. It snatches at the dust and sends leaves skittering along the pavement.

The crowds of people heading for work stride past us, dressed in either generic office clothes or this season’s casual fashions: sheer fabrics, Breton stripes, cobalt blue, lacy knits and retro prints.

I see two people with surgical face masks on – they must get uncomfortably hot, like when Nick and I sanded the living-room floor before we had the laminate done. Fine sawdust sticking to everything, sweaty and itchy inside the paper mask.

Oliver is on the rota. He still hasn’t replied to us and I wonder if we’ll see him again. Is he being thoughtless or is he avoiding us? Why come to the bar in the first place, then? There’s a knot in my stomach, hard as stone. When he appears, as promised, the lump in my gut burns.

‘Hello – sit down a minute.’ I point to one of the seats we’ve brought from Lori’s. Anthony is there already and Tom comes to join us. ‘We sent you some messages,’ I say.

‘Oh, yes.’ No apology follows. He glances at me through his thick glasses, then down at the table.

‘The photography project, hidden hobbies, you were one of the people Lori wanted to photograph?’ Does he follow me? I add, ‘She wanted to photograph you and your pigeons.’ I look at Anthony and he gives us the word, ‘Gezi.’

‘Yes,’ Oliver smiles, ‘gezi.’

‘Did she come? Did she take photographs?’ I say.

Oliver shakes his head, serious again.

‘On the Monday she texted Shona,’ Tom says, ‘saying she’d started the project. We think she photographed someone either on the Sunday evening after work or on the Monday.’

I’m not sure Oliver understands so I ask Anthony to translate again. He does and Oliver gives a nod.

‘Did she talk to you about the other people? Shona and her jewellery.’ I mime bracelets on my arm. ‘Bradley and his motorbike.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Oliver says.

‘Anyone else?’

‘A neighbour with model animal and a student like money.’

I don’t know what he means about liking money. He talks to Anthony for a minute.

‘Someone who collects banknotes,’ Anthony says. ‘It is a very popular hobby, like collecting stamps. There are antiques fairs and people trade them.’

‘Do you know who this student was, or the neighbour?’ I say to Oliver.

‘No.’ He shakes his head.

‘Dawn might,’ Tom says.

A man walks along with a radio strapped to his arm, playing music. He’s followed by an old couple, tiny in stature, who stop at our table. She wears a traditional cotton top with a mandarin collar, he wears dark clothes and a black Mao cap. Their faces are open, friendly; their smiles show brown teeth, gaps where some are missing.

Anthony explains what we’re doing and the couple look shocked. They refuse a leaflet.

‘Chinese people,’ Anthony says, ‘they do not like to get involved.’

‘Too risky?’ Tom says.

Anthony laughs but he flushes slightly and I sense he is embarrassed.

I think of all the superstitions I’ve read about – perhaps there is a fear, too, that bad luck is contagious. We come trailing misery, reeking of jeopardy.

I want to ring Dawn so I go to the flat where I can hear without straining. I know she’s at work but not when she’s actually teaching. She must get breaks, and admin time. I leave a message on her voice-mail, then sit for a moment on Lori’s couch, letting my eyes roam over the lucky Chinese knot, the photo from home, the bare wires in the ceiling, the plastic basket of bits and bobs, her work folders.

I pick up the files, thumb through them again. I don’t know why, except that there’s comfort in seeing her writing, even though it’s scrappy and hard to read, comfort in imagining her preparing for her students.

I step out onto the balcony. Construction cradles sway up the side of the new buildings. The arrangement of the developments seems to create an echo chamber. I can hear the hammer and whine of drills, and from the occupied towers, the cries and shrieks of children, and the clatter of dishes that sounds different here, as though they’re all made of metal, not pottery. Through it all the drone and rumble of the ring road.

My phone rings. It’s Dawn. I explain about the neighbour. Does she know who it was?

‘Mrs Tang,’ she says. ‘She’s on the second floor. We saw her with this dead bird one day and her son explained she was going to stuff it, for a model. Like taxidermy. Lori did a few conversation classes with her son. I’d no idea she was going to photograph Mrs Tang. But it makes sense.’

‘Do you know which flat it is?’

‘Number three, I think,’ Dawn says.

‘Oliver also talked about one of Lori’s students,’ I say, ‘someone who collects banknotes.’

‘Oh, that’d be Mr Du. Lori said he was a bit of a weirdo.’

My stomach twists. ‘Weirdo?’

‘Lori reckoned he was desperate to get married – he kept asking if she had a boyfriend, that kind of thing.’

‘Do the police know about this?’ My voice is shaky.

Dawn sounds taken aback, when she says, ‘I dunno. Well, they went to see him, didn’t they? His lesson was the Sunday evening.’

‘Did you tell the police about him being weird?’

‘Look, Mrs Maddox, it wasn’t anything really heavy – Lori would’ve sacked him if it had been.’ Her voice is doing that singsong rise at the end of each phrase, making it sound like she’s pleading with me to agree.

‘Did you tell them he had this hobby and Lori wanted to photograph him?’

‘No – I didn’t know he was part of her project. But the police must have talked to him,’ she says.

Maybe they didn’t ask the right questions. I think it’s unclear whether they knew about the project at all.

‘You can check with them, right?’ she says, nervousness in her tone.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘we will.’ I end the call, the taste of bile in the back of my throat.

In the kitchen I find a cup, black and white stripes, wonder where Lori got it and pour myself water from the cooler. It’s warm and tastes of plastic.

In my head I’m replaying Dawn’s words, a weirdo… asking if she had a boyfriend… the Sunday evening.

The last person to see Lori.

The jittery feeling grows. It sends me hurrying down to Tom, frantic to share what I now know.

‘So this guy’s hitting on her and the cops weren’t told?’ Tom jabs at his hair, fingers taut. A line of white edges his lips. ‘He was the last person to see her.’

‘Ring Peter Dunne,’ I say. ‘Get him to talk to Superintendent Yin again.’

Oliver looks away, scratches his chest.

‘Write down exactly what Dawn said,’ Tom tells me.

I close my eyes. It’s too hot to think and my throat is dry again already. ‘Can we get a drink somewhere?’ I say to Anthony. The bottled water we brought is long gone.

‘Shop, I go,’ Oliver says, pointing to himself.

‘You don’t mind?’ I say.

‘Yes, I go,’ he says.

‘Tonic water, please,’ I say. He doesn’t understand. Anthony isn’t familiar with it either. Tom looks it up on his app and shows Oliver the Chinese translation. ‘Cola for me,’ Tom says.

‘And more water too?’ I show Oliver the empties.

They don’t sell tonic water but Oliver brings me lemonade. Once we have the drinks I go with Tom back into the flat and he makes the call to the consulate, his phone set so I can hear too. Tom paces as he talks, civil, but his frustration is plain.

‘This Mr Du is the last person to see our daughter,’ he says, ‘and one of the people she wanted to photograph. This could be really important. Has Superintendent Yin come back to you yet?’

‘No, not yet. Look, can I suggest that you email over what you’ve heard?’ Peter Dunne says.

‘Yes, we will,’ Tom says, ‘and please emphasize to him that we think this needs looking into straight away.’

When Tom has hung up, I say, ‘Could Lori have talked about the project with Mr Du? It was obviously on her mind when she texted Shona.’

‘If that text was from Lori,’ Tom says.

‘I think it was. It was so specific, and if it wasn’t Lori it must have been someone who knew her well, knew about the project, knew how she signed off.’

‘So we need to find out if she made a start with him during their lesson and, if not, whether she said anything about who she would photograph first,’ Tom says.

‘We should talk to the neighbour before we leave here,’ I say. We’re meeting Shona to leaflet at the university at three o’clock.

‘I’ll fetch Anthony,’ Tom says.

But there’s no answer from Mrs Tang’s flat on the second floor and no one around to ask.

We’ve put everything away, Anthony has left, and Tom and I are walking to the bus when we are accosted. Three giggling girls approach. They are beautiful, fresh-faced, wearing short-sleeved blouses in pastel colours and miniskirts. They look at us with a mix of delight and fascination. One of them talks to me – I catch the word ‘photo’ but not the rest. I frown. ‘Please, photo?’ she says, gesturing to us, then herself and her pals.

I open my mouth to refuse, ready to wave a leaflet at them, look – nǚ ér, shī zōng – but Tom gives me a warning look, so I acquiesce. We stand together, Tom and I, a girl on either side, while they take turns with their cameras, counting: yi, er, san. Flash. Another. Flash. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

We’ve made their day.

Bizarre. What will they do with them? Show their parents, their friends? Put them on the mantelpiece? Look – me with the foreigners.