CHAPTER ONE
The first thing the girl did after entering the shop was to spin a graceful pirouette. She was wearing a full length dress — blue bodice, short blue sleeves slashed with red, a yellow skirt that billowed around her, with a red band tied in a bow over her sculpted black curls. The woman behind the till noticed her and smiled. Who wouldn’t smile when Snow White entered their shop? Not that it was her shop really. She was only doing a four-hour shift to eke out her pension, but Mr Patel had gone home at seven p.m. as usual and Miss Rogers had ‘popped out’ to check on her father, so for a few minutes it was Mrs Gupta’s own personal domain.
The girl made a curtsy, not to Mrs Gupta, but to the stack of special offer foods that greeted customers as they walked in. The automatic doors slid shut and then almost immediately open again. A man in a Che Guevara T-shirt, baseball cap and skinny jeans stood there, swaying on his feet.
Mrs Gupta gave a tut of disapproval. Not that the girl’s father — if that was who he was — seemed to notice. His eyes were raised slightly upwards, as if something on the top shelf had caught his eye.
‘What sort of father brings a little girl out shopping at that time of night?’ she told DS Johnson later. ‘She should have been tucked up and asleep long ago.’
‘Quite,’ he said. Johnson’s voice was flat and nasal. From the Midlands she thought, though she was hardly an expert. His suit was off-the-peg and rather too shiny. She noticed things like that because hand-made suits had been the family business until her father had died and her husband had gambled away the profits and then done a runner. The suit was dark grey without even the thinnest stripe and Johnson wasn’t wearing a tie either. Not a very classy detective. Nothing like that posh one on TV who spoke such lovely Queen’s English.
‘Do you have children?’ Mrs Gupta asked. She was a past master at turning a simple conversation into a rambling Odyssey.
‘What happened next?’ said the detective, ignoring her question.
Mrs Gupta frowned. What had happened next? It wasn’t as if it had been that long ago. She had been kept in hospital overnight, ‘just for observation’ as the nurse had said. In the morning, a doctor with bad breath and acne had come and shone a little torch into her eyes and told her she was free to go home. The nurse had called her a taxi, but the detective and a WPC were coming in as she was going out and they had kindly driven her home. That had been lucky. But now, sitting in her own front room with a cup of tea and a custard cream, she was finding it very hard to remember exactly what had happened the previous night.
The detective cleared his throat. ‘Did the man in the doorway, the one wearing the Che Guevara T-shirt, come right into the shop?’
‘It wasn’t him I was watching,’ Mrs Gupta said irritably. She knew it wasn’t very gracious of her, but she did wish the two of them would just go away and leave her in peace. Then she could have a nap on the sofa until she felt better.
‘Why don’t I get you another cup of tea?’ It was the WPC who said this. She took the cup out of her hands without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ll put some extra sugar in.’ The WPC seemed nice. The sort of daughter Mrs Gupta wished she had.
‘Thank you,’ she said automatically. The importance of good manners had been instilled in her from birth. Suddenly she sat up straighter. ‘Of course!’ Something clicked in her brain, a cogwheel had unjammed. Her eyes brightened. ‘Now I remember. How could I have forgotten?’ Her eyes met the detective’s.
‘Yes?’ he prompted.
‘Snow White went to the fresh fruit section and picked up an apple.’
‘An apple.’ His voice was flat with disappointment.
‘Several apples actually. She picked up a green one first. Then she put it back and picked up a red one. And then another green one. Or maybe it was the same green one for a second time?’ She scratched her scalp as she tried to conjure up the precise details. ‘And then a red one again. You see, I was watching her in case she slipped something into her pocket. Kids will try anything these days. Anyway, she stared at this red one for ages and then she turned, did another pirouette and walked over towards me. “Hello, my dear,” I said. “Is that all you want?” And do you know what she said?’ Mrs Gupta paused, waiting for a response.
‘No, I don’t,’ the man said.
‘She said, “This apple is poisoned.”’
‘Really?’
She felt a flash of irritation. Did he not believe her? ‘It was just like the story, as if she really believed she was Snow White. She said, “If I eat it, I’ll fall asleep and I’ll never wake up.”’ Mrs Gupta paused, but the detective merely nodded. ‘And do you know what she did then? She screamed at the top of her voice. Not a word, just a long, ear-splitting yell.’
‘And what then?’
‘Well, of course, I told her to jolly well stop it. I said if she didn’t want the apple, then she should give it to me and go home with her father.’
The detective leant forward, so close that she could smell the pungent scent of stale cigarette smoke through his cheap aftershave. ‘Where was her father?’ he asked.
Mrs Gupta shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I looked around but I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t at the door anymore.’
‘What did the girl do after she screamed?’
The detective’s questions were endless and Mrs Gupta’s head was throbbing. She wished he and the WPC would go away. Trying to remember was making her headache worse. The girl had screamed again. That’s right. Twice, in fact. Then she had started twirling round and round and round. Then the girl gave Mrs Gupta a horrid look, and bit into the apple. And then she starting chanting, ‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’ before running off out of the shop. The apple was in her hand and she hadn’t paid.
‘Of course, I chased after her. I won’t have thieving in my shop. But she was much too fast and by the time I got to the door, she had gone. There was a car driving off. I bet she was in it. Right at that moment I saw Miss Rogers standing on the far pavement. She must have just come back from her father. So I crossed over the road to tell her what had happened, and that was when the shop exploded and I was thrown flat on my face. It was awful. Bo
om! Just like you see on TV.’
She shut her eyes, and waited for the pain in her head to ease, but it didn’t.
‘Here’s some tea,’ the nice WPC said.
Mrs Gupta opened her eyes reluctantly, and took the cup and saucer, cradling them on her lap. ‘I’ve got such a headache.’
‘I’ve almost finished,’ the man said. ‘Just one more question. Do you think you could describe the father for me? I don’t mean his clothes. I mean his face. Imagine he came into your shop dressed in a suit like mine, for example. How would you recognise him? Or maybe you wouldn’t. Sometimes when people go through a trauma like you have, they just don’t remember.’