Don't Let Me In Page 3

  “That fucking bitch. That's all bro.”

  So much for Khalil not having a row with Lauren.

  But a row doesn't make out motivation, does it? And okay so he lied about his alibi, as did his family, and when questioned they just said they didn't trust the police not to arrest a Muslim boy for the murder of a white girl. You may have a view on this, I do, but it's not beyond the boundaries of what a family may do. Khalil, by the way, gave up his alibi the first time the police pulled him in post Chris Brownhill's release. He said he had been walking the streets trying to clear his head.

  But you know what did make out motivation? The results of the second post-mortem that established that Lauren Grey was three weeks pregnant with Khalil's child.

  The motive was born. What if she told Khalil at the party, and he, a Muslim kid who had to keep this relationship secret from his family, snapped after a row with her and in the heat of his anger and frustration, put his hands around her neck and squeezed?

  The police and the CPS thought this was what happened, and even though I know lots of you listening will be thinking “whoa”, there's some way to go here to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, so, eventually, did a jury. The third nail in his coffin, and although you would expect this in his girlfriend's car, was that his DNA matched one of the three sets found on the passenger seat of the car, although not the fingernail DNA. So, motive, no alibi and DNA, the deadly triumvirate of a conviction.

  Khalil Bukhari was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of twenty-five years. That was twelve years ago.

  In my next podcast I'm going to present you with information that I think changes everything and establishes that there was reasonable doubt that Khalil was the murderer.

  I press the mouse button and halt the recording. Podcast 3 of “World’s End” is done and a few seconds later it's winging its way to Jane, my producer at Bulldog Productions, the podcast company I now work for. My colleagues and friends think I didn't return to TV news but instead chose to freelance for online content providers as a conscious choice to embrace new media, but the reality is that it was the only way I could continue to work in any meaningful way and be safe at home. It came as a surprise when this show took off and the downloads for my investigation of a long-dead case, into a seemingly ordinary murder, began to hit the tens of thousands. I guess I should be grateful for my success but I can't shake the feeling that the attention I wished to avoid is being focused on me from out there beyond my front door.

  Behind me, there's a noise. I hold my breath and listen to the sounds of my house, made sinister through my silence. I know I'm being paranoid but then there it is again, a soft release of air. The kind of sound you barely hear but which you know almost instinctively is the sound of a door being gently opened. I wrinkle my nose, as there’s also the hint of an unpleasant smell, something decaying or faecal borne in on the unexplained draught.

  And then I can hear the birds in the back garden singing, which means that the door that has been opened is the door to the basement.

  Slowly, I move my right hand from the mouse and place my finger on the panic button on the underside of the desk.

  I am about to press it when I hear the familiar padding of Lil’Bitch coming down the basement stairs.

  I let out the breath I've been holding and it comes with an added sob. I thought I'd come further than this, being reduced to a wreck by my cat opening the basement door.

  Something is wrong with Lil’Bitch, though – she's making this noise, not a purr, something more akin to a growl, and then I see why. In her mouth is a dead sparrow. No, correction, a nearly dead sparrow, twitching and jerking unnaturally. She drops the gift at my feet. A gift I know that I will have to kill, but it's not that that causes pins and needles to blossom in the back of my head and spread to my arms; it's the fact that Lil’Bitch has been outside and she is never allowed outside because the doors to this house are never left open.

  3

  Fucking Zen

  I don’t check the front door. I would sooner forget to inhale than I would leave it unlocked. Henry and Finn have been trained not to leave the back door unlocked but I didn’t check it before coming down into the basement. It’s possible Henry took something out to the bins before I came down to breakfast. Possible, but unlikely.

  The tingling in my arms makes me feel like I’m going to die. I know, of course, that I won’t. I know the panic is producing physical symptoms that mimic impending death, but this knowledge does nothing to alleviate the sense that I am not in charge of my body, that I am floating above myself.

  I watch myself as I tear off a piece of kitchen roll and wrap the sparrow in it. I know what I must do with the mummified parcel in my hand; even though it’s definitely still alive, the jerking has stopped and been replaced by a slow rhythmic pump. I wish it would stop and leave me without the need to do what I need to do, but its tiny heart clings on.

  Lil’Bitch keeps brushing my legs, nearly tripping me as I head to the floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the back of the kitchen.

  “Lil'Bitch,” I mutter. It’s what I first called her when Henry brought her home from the refuge and her first act was to drag her claws down the expensive leather sofa in the lounge. Lil’Bitch had lasted until Finn started repeating it, and so a new name was required and “Moll” was born, but to me she is always Lil’Bitch, and especially today.

  I caress the back door key that I keep attached to my belt with the other house keys, but already I can see it won’t be needed. The door is very slightly ajar, letting in an icy draught, and I shiver but not with cold. How could I have not noticed? How could they forget? I will need to give Henry and Finn “the security” talk again this evening.

  The garden is objectively small, but for this part of North London, huge. Henry wanted it modern and minimalist and so it is. Clean lines of teak line the old red-brick walls and long fingers of bamboo weave their way around them. There is a teak decking area surrounded by white gravel and a small water feature that gives out a regular clop, clop sound as the bamboo pipe fills with water and then hits the bucket underneath as it empties. Henry wanted the garden to be a place of relaxation. Right now I feel far from relaxed.

  “Fucking Zen,” I whisper to myself.

  The garden is overlooked, but only just, by the third storey of the house behind the alleyway. I think it’s a rental property because the bedroom window often has a national flag in it and this often changes. Right now, it’s a Brazilian flag but six months ago it was a South African one.

  I take a deep breath and step out into the garden. Almost immediately, my chest tightens and I feel pins and needles sprout in my wrists and crawl like jungle vines up my arms towards my heart, which I know they will strangle.

  “You got this,” I tell myself.

  I take the sparrow bundle and place it on the ground near the disguised enclosure, which is yet more cross-hatched hardwood, this time attempting to hide from sight, I can never work out from who exactly – us or someone else who might be offended by the sight of our waste, the collection of council-issue bins.

  I need a rock. Zen seems to encourage lots of rocks, I think, but looking around all I can see is white gravel, nothing even justifying “pebble” status. Christ, I can feel my breathing getting shallower. I know what comes next if I don’t get inside soon: panic, pure physical and mental loss of me to that fucker inside, waiting on its chance.

  I spin on my feet and look round the garden and am rewarded by the sight of a bright red fire engine. It’s one of Finn’s toys, but one that Henry chose because it reminded him of his childhood, a big chunk of over-engineered metal that I knew would end up crushing Finn’s fingers if dropped. I bet Henry brought it out here because he knew if I came across it I would throw it away. I pick it up and feel its heft, and I know I was right, it can break bones. Just finding it places a temporary pause on the rising fear.

  My heart is beating faster but I don’t feel any sadness abo
ut what I am about to do, and that causes a flash of concern. And then I realise what’s missing, what I need to dampen the fear. I need to take myself out of the moment.

  I place the fire engine next to the sparrow bundle and take my phone out of my pocket. I take a photograph of the bird and the rock and quickly upload it to Instagram. It has to be the Earlybird filter, and I add the caption “Lil’Bitch just put me between a rock and a hard place…”

  One post out of the way; if I do another at six thirty that will be enough for today, save for the comments, likes and other necessities of an online career.

  I take a deep breath.

  OK, better do this, I think, and I prod the bundle with my finger and feel the sparrow’s tiny matchstick chest move. My phone buzzes as comments start coming in. Looking back at the house, I see Lil’Bitch sitting at the window looking out at the drama unfolding. I know I’m anthropomorphising but she seems pleased that I am doing this, that some form of compact or understanding has been reached. I could blog about this later, I think: five ways cats are like your worst bitchy friend.

  I can hear birds tweeting and I look up and see two sparrows sitting on the guttering. Are they the family of this one I wonder? I raise my camera phone and take a picture of them.

  “Don’t be a dick,” I say out loud, but then something strange happens: the air in my lungs disappears and my head fills with what I can only describe as toxic blood, blood that brings fear, anger and confusion.

  I try and raise my hand but I find that I can’t do it. What if there are people in the windows watching me do this? Filming me, laughing as I go pale and surrender to the panic.

  The sound it will make if I kill the sparrow will be like ice cracking. I immediately vomit and all my veneer of bravado comes with it. I rest my hand on the bins to steady myself.

  I can’t do this, so I run back inside, slamming the door behind me. I don’t dare risk a look back at the little bundle.

  My newly decorated phone buzzes and, after wiping my mouth on the back of my jumper and then wiping the vomit from the screen, I check it and see that I have fifteen Instagram likes and two comments already. One of the comments is from an old colleague, Ben Macintyre, who is working out of the BBC’s Kabul office.

  Kabul is tough but nothing on Hampstead – CrazyS

  “CrazyS” was my nickname when we both worked for Sky. I type a quick reply:

  …now if I can just find another bird my work here is done. Stay safe Mac.

  There are six other comments, all enquiring about the health of the sparrow. I quickly apply a filter to the picture of the sparrows on the guttering and cut it so only one sparrow is in the frame – the mate of the murdered sparrow? I wonder – and then upload it with the caption “all safe, garden ICU worked”. No one responds well to negative posts and a happy ending is what we all crave. Journalism taught me that; it doesn’t matter how shocking the news, the death, terror and fear, you have to provide an overarching positive narrative, or we will all end up hunkering down in a cave howling at the moon.

  Lil’Bitch slinks off. I can’t help feel that she is disappointed in me.

  I stand up and lock the door. The little white bundle is still. The sparrow is probably dead, I tell myself, though I don’t really believe it.

  I put my iPhone on the island countertop, white on white. Why is everything so bloody white? Before the incident, when I used to go out, I never noticed the grease marks, the dust caught by sunlight that you see on white surfaces, but we agreed that with the drop in income and my being here all day, I may as well do the housework as well. I fucking hate doing it but guilt is a powerful negotiating tool especially when it’s your own.

  I pick the phone up and check the time. He’ll be here soon.

  I have fifty-four new Twitter messages and five new Instagram comments. I click through the messages whilst I wait. People are pleased to see that the sparrow recovered – heart and smiley emojis abound.

  On Twitter the majority of the messages are about the case and are supportive or asking me for updates about Khalil’s appeal. I give these my standard response: I’m not Khalil’s lawyer, I’m just a journalist looking at this as a human story and I’ve not got a position on Khalil’s guilt. That last bit’s a lie, of course. I have a view.

  And then there’s the abuse. It’s the usual mixture of racism and attacks on Khalil from those who think he did it, or who think that a Muslim boy dating a white girl is worthy of their bile together with the personal attacks on me, my appearance, my shitty career (it’s been noticed I’m not on TV anymore) and the rape and death threats.

  Frenchie has been posting again but this threat, I’m watching you, you bitch, is tame by the standards of the filth I usually receive.

  I sigh. It’s so predictable and such a waste of effort on their part. I know what real fear and danger is and this isn’t it. All they tell me is that the podcast is successful; not that I need them to tell me that. 74,000 downloads for the last episode tells its own story.

  The alarm on my iPhone starts to ring. My rule is to allow ten minutes from the alarm ringing to the doorbell ringing. If it rings outside that window then I reach for a kitchen knife before I go to the intercom system on the wall to check who is standing outside the door.

  But almost immediately, the doorbell rings. I check the video pad behind the door that leads to the hallway and I can see it’s him but I still click the intercom and ask.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mohammed. I’ve brought croissants!”

  I smile and then walk down the hallway where I begin the task of unbolting and unlocking the front door. When I’m finished, I open it, and there is Mohammed Bukhari holding up a bag of croissants. They are in a bag marked “Gigi’s Deli”. In passing, I mentioned what a great deli there was at the end of my street at one of our first meetings and ever since then he brings a bag of pastries to our meetings. This makes me happy.

  We hug and then he steps into my house, following me into the kitchen, all the time keeping up a running commentary on how well I look, how my husband and Finn are doing, his wife Yasmin, his kids (he has two, Alesha and Mohammed – or little Mo as he calls him), what’s going on at the clinic and the weather. Invariably, he is upbeat, and it’s hard not to feel my spirits lift when he arrives.

  Mo takes a seat at the kitchen table and tells me all about little Mo’s latest scrape, hacking into big Mo’s (which is what he calls himself) iPad, and how at six he thinks he has a potential future international criminal mastermind on his hands. His eyes sparkle and his words flow faster when speaking about his son, and I enjoy watching him talk like this, but I have to interrupt him and ask him a favour.

  His eyes flicker to the bundle outside. “Not a problem. You make us some coffee and I’ll take care of it.”

  Before the coffee is made, Mohammed has returned. I can see through the glass that the bundle has gone. He takes a seat back at the table and I place a cup of coffee before him.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “It is nothing.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  He looks away for a moment and when he returns my gaze, I can see tears in his eyes.

  “Not good. I tell my patients often that medicine is an art as much as a science, and only God knows – and you know I don’t believe right? – when our time comes to an end. But I can tell you this, Sarah, she will not see another winter.”

  “I’m sorry, Mo. When my mother was ill I felt like I was strung between two worlds. It was the worst time. If there is anything I can do please let me know?”

  “Thank you, Sarah, that means a lot to me, but you are already doing so much for me and my family.”

  His shoulders droop and he nods and then looks away out into the garden for a moment. When he turns back, the rare vision of sadness has been replaced by his default twinkling eyes, and he slaps the table and smiles.

  “Now tell me, how’s your appallingly named cat? I love that little thing.”


  It’s as though his optimism is toxic to despair and horror and they cannot survive within him for more than a moment. I envy him.

  Lil’Bitch is nowhere to be seen. She is wary around strangers and usually hides whenever there is someone apart from the family in the house.

  “Somewhere around; she was responsible for the fucking sparrow.”

  He frowns at my use of profanity and then smiles again, his large and perfectly manicured hands coming together in delight. I wonder whether his wife does them. I can’t see such a ruggedly handsome man in a beauty parlour somehow.

  “I thought the last podcast was excellent! We got really good press coverage of Khalil’s case in The Guardian. Did you see it?”

  “Yeah, they were chasing me for an interview, but like I said before, I think it’s best I stay out of things until the series ends. I don’t want to become the story.”

  “Sure, sure.” Mo nods but his eyes flick quickly to the side; they always do when he’s lying and he is an appalling liar.

  “I would love to play you at poker,” I say.

  Mo laughs a big belly laugh. “I am too transparent for you! But maybe some more media coverage would be good for both Khalil and your career?”

  How do I explain to him that my career is dead in the water and the last thing I would want to resurrect?

  I sip my coffee and then fill the silence. “So, how is Khalil bearing up?”

  Mo’s expression changes from one of concern that he has offended me to twinkly eyed joy.

  “Oh, so much better, he is so excited about the possibility of an appeal. He is a different person since you started the podcasts. You’ve given him hope and” – Mo waves his hands in the air – “it has transformed him. He has even stopped praying five times a day, thank goodness!”