Towers of Silence

Chapter Tweleve

Next to the loathsome Mr Jones’ was a classic Manchester corner shop. Grills on the windows, plastered with adverts for cigarettes and the Evening News. Open eight till late. Prices might be higher but if all you wanted was a pint of milk, a loo roll, a can of dog food or ten Bensons then it beat the nearest huge supermarket hands down.

I introduced myself to the middle-aged Asian man at the counter and told him my business. “Very nice lady,” he said. “She got her papers here and my daughters are at school with Martina. We were very sad. Terrible thing.”

I repeated the questions that I’d asked the neighbours but he hadn’t seen her that lunchtime either. “Someone else was asking,” he said.

“The police?”

“No, asking if she’d be home for lunch, the day… you know.”

My neck prickled.

“I said I had no idea. They say the shop is part of the community but I don’t know everybody’s goings on.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Did you tell the police?”

“Oh, yes. But I’d no name. It was a gentleman from her church, passing and wanted to say hello.”

My prickling subsided. “What time was it?”

“Late morning.”

“Before midday?”

“Yes.”

Miriam would still have been at the Whitworth Centre.

“I said she sometimes went down to the community centre and he could try there.”

The bell on the shop door announced two teenage girls. I waited while he served them with cigarettes. If Miriam’s visitor gone to the Centre first instead of calling at her home, how differently might that day have gone? But how was he to know her daily schedule? Who was this man from the church? Wasn’t it more common to ring and see if someone was going to be in before calling on them? I waited till the shop keeper was free and got a description of the caller. Middle-aged black man, grey hair, maybe had a moustache; that was as much as he could tell me. It niggled though, just the fact of him being there the day of her suicide. I needed to check him out, contact the church and see if they could help me identify him.

So I had established that none of the near neighbours had actually seen Miriam return home. That didn’t mean she hadn’t eaten lunch there. But there was a more straightforward way to establish that; by asking Martina and Roland what they had found on their return from school. In doing so I could also find out whether Roland was at home playing his music that day or whether Mrs Boscoe had got it wrong.