A yearning
Errol
slammed the car door and hunched himself against the slanting rain. He crossed
the bleak car park towards the lobby of the hotel, which was modern but not
very, the brickwork streaked and the concrete grubby. There was a receptionist,
a thin pale girl with spots.
“Can’t come
in here today,” she said. “You asylum-seeker people got to stay out, coppers
say.”
He showed her
his warrant card. He did not wait for a reply.
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| Wikimedia Commons/Safa Daneshvar |
An officer
waited at the top of the stairs. “Detective Inspector Errol Brown,” he said,
showing his warrant card.
“Good
afternoon, sir,” she said. “Constable Lewis. I’ll take you to the room.”
Scene-of-crime
officers in white protective coveralls were working in the corridor. “SOCOs
here then,” he said. “Have they been
in?”
“Yes, but
Dr Hakim’s in there with the body at the moment.” Her hair was blonde and
scraped back severely, drawn together behind her cap; her voice had a gentle
Welsh lilt that he found pleasing. Her stab jacket was a mass of radio and camera
gear. Glad I’m not with Uniform any more, he thought. Festooned with all that
junk. He followed her into one of the rooms, where Dr Hakim was completing his
examination. He looked up.
“Ah, Errol.
Multiple stab wounds,” he said. He eased a sheet over the body. “You can tell
the media it was a frenzied attack. They do like frenzied attacks.”
“’Frenzied
attack brutal murder by asylum seeker’, I expect,” said Errol.
“Actually
it’s the murder of one.”
“It’s both
but we know which will matter, don’t we.” Errol looked down at the bloodstained
sheet. “I take it the other resident was an asylum seeker?”
“Yes.” This
was Lewis. “The guests all are. Two of them said the bloke had gone a bit weird
before, accused people of being Satan and that. Said he knew himself he wasn’t
all right, he’d tried to get help at the hospital but was on a waiting list.”
“Paranoid
delusions then. At least he’s safely in custody.” Lewis walked over to the
small desk in the corner of the room. There was a pile of paper on it; she
sifted the handwritten pages.
“Looks like
Arabic,” she said. “Like, in verses. I wonder if it’s poetry. Is poetry a thing
in Arabic?”
Dr Hakim
chuckled. “Yes. I have heard Arabic poetry described as some of the best in the
world.” He stood up, and stretched. “Indeed there is some from the Dark Age,
before the coming of the Prophet. But that’s mainly about war between tribes.
And camels. Classical Arabic has 49 words for camel. There is for instance a
special word for ‘a well-tempered she-camel’.” He looked down at the papers. “Actually
I wonder if I can…” Then he frowned. “No, that is not Arabic. It is Farsi. It
is the same script but there are differences – look, that’s the Arabic faa, or F, but
with three dots above it instead of two, so it’s the Farsi letter V. Arabic
does not have a V.”
“Do you
understand it?” asked Errol.
“No. There
are a few words in common, but it is a different language.” He reached for his
case. ”You can move the body when the SOCOs are finished. I’ll be in touch re
the autopsy.” He left.
“I think
we’re done for the moment, I’ll let the SOCOs back in,” said Errol. But Lewis
was looking down at the paper.
“Look sir,
he’s written something in English beside one of the poems.”
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| Wikimedia Commons/Chemipanda |
He picked
it up. The Persian script was in fine calligraphy. The English, by contrast,
was in block letters, in a childish, uncertain hand.
Our
light is clear; the air sparkles
The
breeze is like silk
The
hills rise snowy topped above the city
Apricot
we have
Almond
Walnut Tangerine All Fruit
There was
nothing more.
“I think he
missed home, sir.”
Together
they reached the stairs to the lobby. “The
sunsets we had were incredible,” said Errol.
“I beg your
pardon, sir?”
“In the islands. And when you came by ferry the wooded top of the island was bright green, but sometimes it was capped by white clouds.”
He buttoned his coat.
“Goodnight, Lewis.”
But as he went down he heard her say
something. He stopped and looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Hiraeth.”
“What?”
“Hiraeth,
sir. It’s a Welsh word. My Welsh is a bit crap really, be honest with you. But
it means a sort of longing for somewhere or someone, something that’s gone,
maybe won’t come back. Wonder if they all feel a bit like that, really.”
“Hiraeth,” he repeated. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
He nodded to her, and went down the stairs across the lobby. He did not say goodnight to the girl at the desk.
More flash fiction:
Cold
Everything is cold here
Homecoming
A sort of love story
Solitude
A Cold War story
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
On human geography
Strange Places
A spirit in the sky
A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different
Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street
Belonging
Do you? Where?
Leaving Home
A house has memories
