Wrong Place Wrong Time(34)

‘All good,’ he says quickly, crisply, while Jen sips the tea. She thinks suddenly, horribly, of what Mr Sampson will say in the future. The day after the crime, the day after that. Day Plus One. Day Plus Two. Each one an equal and opposite reaction to Day Minus One, Day Minus Two. ‘Good kid, never knew he’d have it in him,’ he will say sadly. Jen can just see it now. ‘Must’ve been unhappy in some way.’

‘You’ve not noticed anything?’ Jen asks Mr Sampson now.

‘Perhaps he is ever so slightly more withdrawn?’

‘Is he? He’s not – he’s not involved in anything, is he?’ she asks. ‘Anything – I don’t know … I sometimes wonder if he’s gone off the rails a bit.’

Kelly turns to her in surprise, but Jen isn’t focusing on him. Mr Sampson is hesitating, just a little. ‘No,’ he says, but it contains an invisible ellipsis that streams out into the air after he’s finished speaking. He sips a coffee. He winces as he swallows. ‘No,’ he says again, more firmly this time, but he doesn’t meet Jen’s eyes.





Ryan





It’s Ryan’s fifth day at work, Friday, and five minutes ago everything changed. He arrived at the station and this man, this Leo, told him he wasn’t working on response today. He walked Ryan into the large meeting room at the back of the station, more of a boardroom, and Ryan had watched curiously as he locked the door behind them.

Leo is maybe in his late forties, slim but jowly, his hairline receding. He speaks with a jaded kind of brevity, as though he’s never not talking to idiots. Similar to Bradford, but not at Ryan’s expense. Not yet, anyway. Unlike Bradford, whose reputation Ryan now knows to be that of an embittered junior, Leo’s generally regarded as a crazy genius. Much worse, in many ways, but much more interesting, too.

They have just been joined by Jamie, who is maybe thirty. These men are not only in plain clothes but in actual scruffs: Jamie is in jogging bottoms, a stained T-shirt and a black baseball cap. Leo looks like he is about to go and coach a football team.

Ryan is feeling fairly uneasy at this point, sitting opposite these men, a giant table between them. ‘Sorry – what is this …?’ he starts to ask.

‘We’ll get on to that,’ Leo says. He has a cockney accent, a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand which clinks against the wooden table. ‘Where did you say you’re from, Ryan?’

‘Manchester …’ Ryan says, wondering if he’s about to get sacked. ‘Can I just ask –’

Next to him, Jamie takes his baseball cap off and rubs at his hair. He puts the cap on the table, very deliberately, it seems to Ryan, over the recording equipment. Ryan’s eyes track to it. ‘Nine nine nine response is pretty boring, isn’t it?’ Leo asks.

‘For sure.’

‘Look. How do you fancy doing something more interesting? We can call it research.’

‘Research?’

‘We need information about an organized-crime gang operating around Liverpool.’





Day Minus Nine, 15:00





That it is Day Minus Nine makes sense to Jen.

She has come to the school. She’s here, the day before parents’ evening, to see if she can get any insight into what was underneath Mr Sampson’s hesitation last night, in private. People are always more confessional in private.

‘He has mentioned a falling-out, I seem to remember,’ he is saying to Jen.

Mr Sampson teaches geography. Behind him there is a wall that seems to be a tribute to the features of the world he likes the most – the white desert in Egypt, a cave of crystals in Mexico. He is leaning back against his desk, facing Jen.

‘When? And with who?’ Jen says. She looks around this classroom which must greet Todd every morning but that she has never seen herself, never had time to, because of her job. Green speckled carpets. White desks that seat two students. Blue plastic chairs. She found out her mother died when she was in a classroom just like this. Called out by the head teacher. She hadn’t returned for several days afterwards. Her father had hardly talked about it. ‘Can’t change what’s happened,’ he’d said once. Repressed, unhappy at times, a very typical lawyer. Jen had been so determined to parent differently. Openly, honestly, humanely, but maybe she’d fucked it up as much as he had. Isn’t that what Larkin says?

Her phone rings in her handbag on the chair. Mr Sampson’s eyes stray to it. Jen checks it. ‘Just work,’ she says, declining the call. It instantly rings again.

‘Do answer,’ he says with a wave of his hand.

Jen picks up reluctantly. This is not what she is here to do. ‘I’ve got someone here for you,’ Jen’s secretary, Shaz, says. Mr Sampson busies himself at his desk.

‘I’ll be in late,’ Jen says.

‘It’s Gina. What shall I tell her?’

Jen blinks. Gina. The client who doesn’t want her husband to have access to their children. Some memory is coming to Jen, some small detail of Gina’s life. ‘Uh,’ she stalls, trying to think. That’s it: the last time Jen saw Gina, she’d turned to Jen, on the threshold of her office, and said, ‘I should’ve seen it coming. It’s literally what I do for a living. Personal investigator. For my sins.’ Jen had nodded slowly in recognition.