Dead Men's s Boots

‘I thought he was trying to do what was right for Rafi, but he’s just railroaded us. That cow is going to take Rafi away to the MOU tomorrow and then she can do what she likes to him.’

‘Over my dead body,’ I promised.

But that was the kind of knee-jerk response you have to be wary of. It only took a few moments of sober reflection before I thought better of it.

‘Better yet,’ I amended, ‘over hers.’

13

I was staring down the barrel of another long night, and I knew it. I had the ultimate ordeal of dinner with Juliet and the lovely Mrs Juliet to look forward to. But first I was† th going to get some errands run.

I got to the Paragon at about six, which according to the desk clerk, Merrill, was when Joseph Onugeta’s shift began. Merrill was sitting at the desk reading the Evening Standard when I walked in. He gestured with his thumb, backwards over his shoulder. ‘He’s in the cupboard,’ he said, and went back to his paper.

The cupboard turned out to be a room on the ground floor, the same size as the bedrooms or at least the same size as the one I’d seen, lined with shelves and stacked with boxes of cleaning materials. Joseph Onugeta was changing into his work overalls when I knocked and entered. I was seeing Onugeta as an East African name, but his skin was the rich, near-violet black of the Orissa Dalits. He had a frizz of ash-grey hair, so tightly curled that it almost looked sheer, which came down to a widow’s peak above intense, brown-black eyes with heavy lids. His mouth was set in the dour line of someone who’s seen a lot of shit and expects to see a lot more. But then again, I have that effect on a lot of people.

I introduced myself and told him what I was there for – that I was interested in what he’d seen and heard on the day of the murder. He listened with gloomy indifference, his mouth tugging down at the corners as though it made him very sad to have to listen to me.

‘I told the police already,’ he pointed out.

‘I know that,’ I agreed. ‘I’m just checking the details. Especially this thing about you hearing a woman’s voice from the room . . .’

At the word ‘woman’, the man’s whole demeanour changed. A tremor went through him, which he seemed to still with some difficulty, clenching his hands into tight fists.

‘Can you tell me anything about her?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t see her go into the room?’

Silently, he shook his head.

‘Can you remember anything she said?’

Another jerk of the head, which I took to be a negative, but before I could throw another question at him Onugeta was speaking, in a tense, urgent monotone. ‘I hate you,’ he muttered. ‘I fucking hate all of you. If I could kill every rat bastard of you, one after another after another, I’d do it.’ It took me a second to realise that he wasn’t talking to me but quoting from memory. ‘I want it to fucking hurt you so bad, so bad. I want to see in your eyes how much it hurts. And when you’re dead, I wish I could bring you back and make it hurt some more.’

He fell silent, turned his back on me and took down a pair of marigold gloves from one of the shelves. ‘Like that. On and on like that. And the one man, he was saying you don’t mean that, you don’t mean that. Scared. Really scared. And then the other man said “Make her stop.”’

I had to be careful with the next question: careful not to let it sound like an accusation. ‘You didn’t think of going into the room?’ I asked.

Joseph shot me a bitter look. ‘I hear worse than that every day,’ he said. ‘Much worse. I-love-you-I-hate-you-I’ll-fuck-you. Everyone says that here. Or thinks it. I kept on walking. None of my business. All I do is empty the waste bins. There’s nightmares enough for anyone right there.

‘But then when we turned the key and looked into that room . . .’ He was staring at nothing now, and his face was set hard, the gloves dangling forgotten in his hand. ‘It wasn‹821tha217;t any kind of love that did that,’ he muttered. ‘Love can turn into a lot of things, but – there wasn’t a square inch of him that hadn’t been-’ He gave up on that sentence, shaking his head rapidly like a dog trying to get itself dry. ‘It takes a lot of hate to do that. To keep on hating someone after he’s already dead.’

Joseph discovered the gloves in his hand, put them on and wriggled his fingers into them one at a time with repetitive, robotic care. His eyes were hooded, his mouth twisted slightly as if in pain. I got a glimpse of the truth then, about what had made him too sick to come into work. He was talking about a sickness of the soul.

‘Joseph,’ I said, although I wanted to stop now and get the hell out into the fresh air. ‘You didn’t see her? You never got a glimpse of her, going into the room or coming out?’ It was a question I’d already asked, but given his state of mind it was worth one more throw of the dice.