‘My daughter,’ he explained, ‘she has just finished her Finals.’
‘What’s she doing?’
He indicated a chair, Regency I think, stripy anyway. ‘Optometry.’
Oh. I couldn’t think of any useful small talk to make about that; I wasn’t even certain what it was, though I knew it had to do with eyes. ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ I said. ‘I’ve been employed by Mr Wallace, as I explained.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s convinced of his son’s innocence and, as you know, Luke is pleading not guilty.’
‘There were witnesses,’ he said sharply. The light reflected off his glasses as he straightened in his chair
“Witnesses can make mistakes.’
‘That will be for the jury to decide. This is not pleasant for me. If you will come to the point.’
‘I’m sorry, I realise it must be difficult having to go over it again. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was important. I’m trying to establish exactly what happened. I’ll be talking to everybody I can find, if you can tell me the sequence of events that night?’
He cleared his throat softly. Leant forward, arms resting on his thighs, hands clasped between his knees. ‘Ahktar and his friends went to the party at the nightclub.’
‘You knew he was going?’
‘Yes, he was a good boy, he’d been working hard, we were happy to see him have fun too.’ He swallowed.
‘You knew his friends?’
‘Yes, they came here sometimes, they seemed nice enough.’
Our drinks arrived. I’d been half-expecting cups and saucers with all the threat of slops in the saucer and the problem of how to write whilst needing two hands for the crockery, but she’d brought mugs. I took mine thankfully. As she closed the door Dr Khan resumed his story.
‘The hospital rang about half past three. They wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, they just said Ahktar had been hurt. I imagined that there had been a car crash. I don’t know why, it was my first thought – the taxi home…’ He took a deep breath, pressed his fist to his mouth, released the air slowly through his knuckles.
‘At the hospital I was taken into an anteroom. I knew as soon as I saw the doctor’s face. He was so young, he looked as if he had some guilty secret. “I’m very sorry,” he said, “Ahktar was admitted here earlier this morning, we tried to revive him but we weren’t able to. I’m sorry.” I asked then if it had been a car crash. He told me Ahktar had been stabbed – a single blow. They had no other details but the police had been involved; they wanted to see me after I’d-’ Dr Khan jumped to his feet; he took a couple of steps away, his back to me, and stood facing the gallery of miniatures on the wall.
