Maybe Pauline had alerted him to my agitated state, because he didn’t warn me or even snap back at me. He just looked at the drawing, and then muttered something under his breath. He looked stunned.
“Where was this done?” he said, looking up.
“How do I know?” It took an effort to slow myself down, to make myself concentrate. “It was just in a pile of schoolbooks. I had it in school last week on Friday when I collected it from the class.”
“Where were they kept?”
“In the classroom. I took them home last Wednesday and brought them back the following morning.”
“Were they ever out of your sight?”
“Of course they were. What do you think? I didn’t sit and guard them all night. Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. It’s just-oh Christ. Sorry. Let me think. Yes, I went out to see a film with some friends. I must have been out for two, nearly three hours, I guess. It was the day I found the letter on my doormat. I told you about it. The first letter-or I thought it was the first letter. I threw it away.”
Aldham wrinkled up his nose and nodded.
“So,” he said. He looked baffled and anxious. He didn’t meet my eye. “When did you return the books?”
“I told you, the following morning. I just had it for that evening. I’m sure. Completely sure.”
“And it wasn’t discovered until today?”
Pauline stepped forward.
“The mother only looked this morning,” she said.
“Have any other books been tampered with?” Aldham asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I don’t know, though. I…”
“We’ll check the other art books,” Pauline said.
I lit another cigarette. I could feel my heart beating fast. My pulse seemed to be everywhere, in my face and arms and legs.
“So what do you think?” I said.
“Wait,” he said.
He took a mobile phone from his pocket and retreated into a corner. I heard him ask for DI Carthy and then begin a murmured conversation. Clearly there were different degrees of being unavailable. I heard fragments of one side of the conversation.
“Shall we talk to Stadler? Right, Detective Inspector Cameron Stadler. And Grace Schilling?… Can you give her a bell? And send an officer along with the file. Send Lynne-she’s good at this kind of thing. We’ll meet her there… Right, see you later.”
Aldham put the phone away and turned to Pauline.
“Is it all right if Miss Haratounian comes with us for a while?”
“Of course,” Pauline said. She looked at me with a new concern. “Is everything all right?”
“It’ll be fine,” Aldham said. “We just need to go through some routine procedures.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pick up Ellie’s art book. “All right?” he said.
It was quite a long drive across London. The permanent traffic jam was even worse on a Friday and a lorry had got stuck turning into a builder’s yard, and Aldham took a shortcut that got caught in a residential traffic system off the Ball’s Pond Road.
“Are we going to the police station?” I asked.
“Later, maybe,” he said, in between cursing other vehicles. “We’re seeing a woman who knows about psycho stuff like this.”
“What did you think of the drawing?”
“Some people, eh?”
But it wasn’t clear whether he was talking about the artist or an old woman crossing the road very slowly. I didn’t follow it up.
After almost an hour we drove along a residential street and arrived at what looked like a school but had a sign outside identifying it as the Welbeck Clinic. A female officer was sitting in reception reading a file. When she saw us she snapped it shut and came forward. She handed it to Aldham.
“You stay here,” he said to me. “Officer Burnett will stay with you.”
“Lynne,” she said to me with a reassuring smile. She had a purple birthmark on her cheek and big eyes. On another day, I would have liked the look of her.
I started to light another cigarette but this really was verboten, so Lynne and I stood out on the step and she had one of my cigarettes as well, like a good girl. She didn’t seem very used to it and kept coughing and spluttering. I think she did it to keep me company. And she didn’t speak, which was a relief. It was just ten minutes before Aldham emerged. With him was a tall woman in a long gray coat. She had blond hair tied up on her head casually. She was carrying a leather briefcase and a khaki canvas shoulder bag. She didn’t look all that much older than me. Early thirties maybe.
“Miss Haratounian, this is Dr. Schilling,” Aldham said.
We shook hands. She looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if I were an unusual specimen that had been brought in for examination.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m already late for a meeting, but I wanted a quick word.”
I suddenly felt crushed. I’d been driven across London to talk to a woman as she accelerated past me on the steps of a clinic.
“So what do you think?”
“I think this should be taken seriously.” She gave a sharp look across at Aldham. “Maybe it should have been taken seriously a bit more quickly.”
“But it could be a joke, couldn’t it?”
“It is a joke,” she said, and looked troubled.
“But he hasn’t done anything. I mean, he hasn’t done anything to hurt me physically.” In the face of her grave attention, I wanted to turn the whole thing back into a stupid prank.
“Exactly,” said Aldham, a bit too enthusiastically.
“The problem with that argument,” Schilling said, more to Aldham than to me, “is that…” She paused and collected herself. What had she been going to say? She swallowed. “It’s not much protection for Miss Haratounian.”
“Call me Zoe,” I said. “It’s less of a mouthful.”
“Zoe,” she said. “I want us to have a proper meeting on Monday morning to go over this in considerable detail. I’d like to see you here at nine o’clock.”
“I’ve got a job.”
“This is your job,” she said. “For the moment. I’ve got to go now but… That drawing, that really is your bedroom?”
“I’ve already said that.”
Dr. Schilling was fidgeting, moving from one foot to the other. If she had been a child in my class, I would have sent her to the lavatory.
“You’ve got a boyfriend, right?” she asked.
“Yes, Fred.”
“Do you live together?”
I forced a half smile. “He doesn’t spend the night.”
“What, never?”
“No.”
“This is a sexual relationship?”
“Yeah, we’ve gone all the way to ten or whatever it is, if that’s what you mean.”
She looked at Aldham.
“Talk to him.”
“If you’re thinking it might be Fred,” I said, “you can stop right now. Apart from the fact that it can’t be him, because, oh well, just because, you know.” She nodded, kind but quite unconvinced. “Well, he was away the night it must have happened. He was in the Dales, digging a garden with several other people. He didn’t come back till the following evening. I think you’ll find he’s even caught on camera by Yorkshire TV to prove it.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Yeah. One hundred percent.”
“Talk to him anyway,” she said to Aldham. Then to me: “I’ll see you on Monday, Zoe. I don’t want to panic you and it may well be nothing. But I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t spend the night alone at your flat for a while. Doug”-that must be Aldham-“look at her locks, all right? Bye, see you Monday.”
Aldham and I walked back to his car.
“That was… er, quick,” I said.
“Don’t worry about her,” Aldham said. “She’s ten percent bullshit and ninety percent covering her arse.”