“So why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know,” Joseph replied.
“You should talk to him again then. Find out what it is about your victim that he saw that wasn’t all bad. Anyway. If you’ve been out playing with dead things all day, you need to go wash up before dinner. Get out of that suit. I’ll make sure it’s cleaned for you.”
*
Joseph washed himself and changed before coming back down and eating a dish whose name he couldn’t pronounce, from a part of the world he’d only read about in books. Exquisite flavours that, growing up, he never imagined existed. That was dinner with Dziko. His life had barely escaped a twenty-five-mile radius of central London, save for childhood trips to Margate each summer with his parents. Dziko had travelled across the globe, from what was now Malawi, but which for most of her life had been the Nyasaland Protectorate, into his small corner of the world. Somehow he had been the one to catch her eye in a library in Woolwich. He had intrigued her enough, as he struggled to juggle his books, that she had wandered over to ask him what he was reading and why. He’d been embarrassed at first to admit to checking out detective novels. Holmes, Marple, Marlowe. All in the forlorn hope that some part of their fictional wisdom would rub off on him as he began his first steps into CID. After they had parted on that first meeting, he had struggled to shake the nagging feeling that she might then think him one-dimensional and work-obsessed. As they parted, he suggested they meet for a drink one day. He never expected her to agree. Even when she did, he never expected she would show.
She had turned up, however. She’d been waiting for him when he walked into the pub two days later. As she walked in, all eyes fixed on them. As they drank, Joseph saw scowls and shakes of the head. He didn’t understand why. It had been his colleagues at work that had told him that, of course everyone was watching them. A white man and a Black woman sharing a drink in a pub. Joseph had been shocked. To his shame, it had never crossed his mind. But, if Dziko had known, then she hadn’t let it show. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. Maybe she didn’t know why they had become the centre of attention. Maybe they didn’t have racism in Malawi? The whole concept might have been completely alien to her.
Three years later, he still didn’t have the answer. His tongue always failed him whenever he’d tried to find the nerve to bring it up. To ask her if their mixed-race marriage, and the attitudes of the people around them, mattered to her. If she even registered it in her daily life. He never asked, because he knew that asking would change things. He didn’t know how. Maybe for the better, but more likely for the worse.
After dinner they retired to the living room. There, they sat together on the sofa, Dziko curling up against him, nuzzling into his side, her eyes closed, though Joseph couldn’t say for sure if she was asleep or not. He let his mind wander to the case. To the track that Dziko had set him on. He let what Dziko had said linger in his mind. About Gerald being seen in different lights by different people. About how he might not have been a bad guy. Or not all bad, at least. But then, what would that tell him? People didn’t kill people because they were good. Murder was a crime almost solely predicated on negative emotions.
He shuffled as he sat.
“Are you okay?” Dziko murmured from his side.
“Just thinking about the case.”
“It feels like you’re struggling.”
“I can’t get it to make sense. I don’t know why I need to think about the good in him.”
“Do good people never die where you’re from?”
“Of course they do.”
“Then it would be silly to ignore the idea that he might also have been a good person.”
“Also?”
“At least.”
“I don’t understand.”
“People can be both good and bad. They don’t have to be exclusive terms. Perhaps if you have people telling you he was a good person as well as a bad person, then he showed different sides of himself to different people. Maybe you need to try and think why.”
“It’s all so muddled up in my head,” he complained.
“Perhaps you need to clear your mind. Why not be a table?”
“A table. Of course,” he nodded.
Dziko slipped away from his side, shuffling away from him. He pushed himself up from the sofa, then bent down onto his hands and knees, turning so his body ran parallel to the sofa. He dipped his head to the floor, waiting. Then he felt the weight of Dziko’s feet being placed gently on his back.
“Ah. Very nice,” she said softly. He could imagine her eyes closing once more as she leaned backwards into the sofa, perfectly comfortable. A comfort he had provided for her. That only he could provide for her. Calm spread across him and he finally he felt as if he could focus.
6.
Daylight remained some way off when Joseph awoke. Winter had started to mark its territory, its icy reach grasping at him through the cold air as he walked the darkened streets that took him toward the station for the start of his shift. He hated it. It felt as if hope was evaporating. The darkness heralded evil. Death. Why couldn’t there just be light?
He let his mind turn back to the case. Already, he had a clarity he hadn’t had yesterday. His time spent at the feet of Dziko had allowed him to focus on what he’d learnt through the day. He’d focused on what people hadn’t said. The people who had talked about Gerald Trainer’s negative side all disliked him. Maybe they had valid reasons for that. Maybe they didn’t. He didn’t want to second-guess a person’s motivation. And yet it hadn’t all been bad. He remembered Cyril. He had had nothing but praise for Gerald. He didn’t yet know which would be the most useful. Joseph told himself that would probably come down to the last moments before Gerald’s death.
He entered the station a little before six with the intention of writing up his notes. The CID offices were on the first floor, in a newly renovated part of the building. Straight lines and smooth surfaces. It may have been clean and functional, but it didn’t mean he liked it.
Ray had beaten him into the office, which came as little surprise. Ray liked to be an early riser, fresh and ready for action. He had a cup of tea in hand, as did the four uniformed bobbies, who sat on plastic chairs against one wall, idly chatting.
“Morning, Inspector. Everything okay?” Joseph asked quietly as he approached the desk Ray hovered over.
“What do you think?” Ray replied, as if Joseph should have known.
Joseph looked at the gaggle of constables assembled and ready to go. It could only mean one thing. “A raid. Where?”
“Trainer’s place.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He lived with three other men. We want to make sure that none of them were involved and, if they were, that they don’t have any chance to get rid of anything incriminating.”
Joseph couldn’t help but be troubled by that. They didn’t raid the address of every murder victim they came across. Far from it, in fact.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” he found himself asking, much to his own surprise. Insubordination wasn’t something he had a history of.
“Not my idea,” Ray sighed, which meant that the order had come from on high. Most likely DCI Claude Banks. Their direct superior.
Banks was a throwback to a different age of policing. Far happier to be cracking heads than slapping cuffs on wrists. Somehow, despite that predisposition, he had somehow managed to not only survive but thrive within the modernisation of the police force. His aggressive nature had got him results and questions had rarely been asked. It made him formidable and, in Joseph’s understanding of the way things worked, the formidable people soon consolidated their power. The only benefit, so far as Joseph could tell, was that DCI Banks had got more and more comfortable behind his desk. Whilst his attitude hadn’t softened, physically, he had. Joseph guessed that the DCI had piled on a stone in the year that they’d worked with each other. The latest of many stones he had gained, going by some of the photos that hung in the DCI’s office. .
