Authors: Patricia Hall
‘But you got there in time?’ Laura asked Baker.
‘Oh yes, we’ve got some good pics of them breaking the door down, and forensic officers going in. We got damn all out of the inspector who seemed to be in charge, but judging by the stuff they were taking out this is a whole lot more than a murder inquiry. It looked to me as if special branch was involved, or whatever they call themselves these days. It looked like a terror raid, if a bit low key. And it was certainly annoying some of the bearded weirdies who came cruising down from the mosque and hung about outside. They didn’t seem like happy bunnies, I can tell you.’
‘So, what’s your take on it, Laura?’ Grant asked. ‘Have you heard anything on the grapevine? You’ve been looking into this on your own account, the death of this man Aziz’s wife, haven’t you? Is it just a case of domestic problems gone too far? A domestic? Or is there more to it? You must have picked something up from your boyfriend, surely? Don’t tell me you don’t discuss what you’re working on with him, because I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, I was going to tell you where I’d got on that when I’d finished this piece for tomorrow,’ Laura said. ‘But you know I was coming at it from a completely different angle, from the possibility she’d been forced into a marriage she didn’t want and had been desperate afterwards, desperate enough maybe to kill herself. That possibility certainly stands up. I discovered she wanted a divorce from Imran Aziz. You can read my notes if you like. But I got no hint of any terror connection, if that’s what you think’s been going on in Milford. Not a breath of that. And as it happens, I did have
to talk to Michael Thackeray about it because I actually got a step ahead of the police at one stage yesterday. I discovered where Faria Aziz worked before he did.’ She grinned slightly at the surprise that neither Grant nor Baker could hide.
‘It was pure chance,’ she said. ‘I had to tell Michael, obviously. But he gave no hint that he thought Faria’s death was any more of a mystery than we already supposed. He gave me the impression that he was beginning to think she might possibly have been murdered, rather than killing herself, but he didn’t elaborate. I didn’t ask him, either. We can’t get into each other’s pockets as far as work is concerned. You know that. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Right, well, Bob’s doing a front page splash on the raid, so liaise with him, will you, as you’ve picked up some of the background,’ said Ted, taking on the demeanour of a Second World War field-marshal rallying his troops. ‘I’ll get on to the police press office and squeeze some sort of comment out of them. They’ll be a bit more cooperative if they know we’re going ahead with a story anyway. I can’t imagine why they think they can cover something like this up. Bloody stupid, if you ask me. You’ve got thirty minutes max to get this onto the front page, not a second more. Right?’
‘Right,’ Baker said, as Laura nodded her acquiescence. Grant, in full London tabloid mode, was unstoppable.
DCI Michael Thackeray decided that it was in everyone’s interests for him personally to interview Faria Aziz’s family at this stage of the investigation. When the anti-terrorist officers had concluded whatever they eventually concluded from their forensic examination of Imran Aziz’s home, he guessed they would turn their attention to the rest of Faria’s relatives, but,
in the meantime, he still had a specific inquiry to conduct into her death, and he had no intention of waiting for McKinnon’s permission to pursue it. He took DS Kevin Mower with him because the sergeant had made some effort when he transferred from London to Bradfield to learn Punjabi, the most common language used by the town’s Asian community. They drove slowly through the narrow streets around Aysgarth Lane until they found the right address amongst the long terraced rows of stone houses with only the tiniest strip of garden between the front door and the street.
Faisel Sharif opened the door to the two officers himself. He was a tall man, dressed in a dark-coloured western suit, his neatly bearded, aquiline face haggard and his eyes
red-rimmed
. He nodded with little apparent interest at the officers’ identification and held open the door to allow them to follow him into the cramped living room, where the curtains were drawn and his wife was sitting alone, slumped in an armchair, evidently finding it difficult to move. She glanced at the two visitors with heavy eyes, pulling her scarf around her to shield her grief-stricken face, then struggled to her feet and left the room. Sharif shrugged slightly and made no comment.
‘Tell me, Chief Inspector, when I will be able to bury my daughter?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Sharif,’ Thackeray said. ‘I can’t tell you that. There are still tests being conducted on her body to try to determine exactly how she died. The coroner will release the body as soon as he can but I have no idea when that will be. We’re not yet able to treat this definitely as a murder inquiry, but I have to tell you that we are increasingly sure that is what we are dealing with. I’m very sorry.’
Faisel Sharif muttered something in Punjabi and Thackeray
glanced at Mower for a translation but the sergeant shook his head slightly, not wanting to antagonise Sharif, who had merely bewailed the Godlessness of his adopted country. Thackeray pressed on.
‘At this stage, I hoped you might be able to help me with some background detail about Faria and her husband Imran Aziz. Your nephew has explained to me the circumstances of your daughter’s marriage to Aziz,’ Thackeray said carefully. ‘But I would like to be reassured that she was not persuaded to marry against her will. You know that is illegal in this country, and she could have had the marriage annulled under British law.’
Sharif’s face flushed.
‘She agreed to the marriage,’ he said thickly. ‘She was a willing party to it.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’ Thackeray persisted.
‘I am quite sure.’
‘But the marriage did not turn out to be a very happy one, I’m told.’
‘Did Mohammed tell you that also?’ Sharif shot back. ‘That boy knows nothing about family loyalty and honour. He is a disgrace.’
‘Was the marriage happy, Mr Sharif?’ Thackeray insisted.
‘I don’t know, Faria told me nothing about her marriage,’ her father said. ‘Perhaps she spoke to her mother or her sisters. Not to me.’
‘Then I will have to speak to your wife and daughters in due course,’ Thackeray said. ‘If they were aware that she was depressed or seriously unhappy that may have a bearing on her death.’
Sharif took a deep breath and did not answer. His outrage
at this invasion of his family space and the inevitable trampling over his traditions was evident in every inch of his rigid posture. ‘You must do what you have to do, Chief Inspector,’ he said at length. ‘I cannot prevent you. But my daughter appeared quite normal the last time I saw her.’
‘So you had no idea she might be unhappy with her husband? No idea that she had sought some advice about a divorce?’
‘No,’ Sharif said, outrage in every inch of him. ‘Certainly not.’
‘Did you know she was pregnant? The post-mortem results made that clear.’
‘No, I didn’t know that either. She did not tell me or my wife before she died. My daughter Jamilla told me last night that Faria had said she might be,’ Sharif could not conceal the anguish that answer gave him and Thackeray paused before resuming his questions.
‘Isn’t it important for you to know what happened to your daughter?’ Thackeray asked more quietly. ‘As we’re beginning to believe that this may be a case of murder, and your son-
in-law
is inexplicably absent from home, we have to suspect that he may be implicated in Faria’s death. Do you have any idea where Imran Aziz may be?’
‘I had very little contact with Imran after he and my daughter moved to Milford,’ Sharif said. ‘He kept his distance.’
‘But he was what? A nephew of yours? Or a cousin? Did you know him well in Pakistan before the marriage?’
‘No, not well,’ Sharif said. ‘He worked in Lahore and was seldom in my village when we visited my parents. His father, my great-uncle, I knew, but not Imran.’
‘So Faria did not know him well either, when she married?’
‘There were good family reasons for the marriage,’ Sharif said sharply. ‘Faria knew that and accepted it. She was not forced.’
‘I have to accept your word on that, as we can’t ask her,’ Thackeray said dryly. ‘But tell me more about Imran. If he was working in Lahore, what was he doing, and why did he suddenly decide that he wished to come to this country? Was it a sudden decision?’
‘He was in business in Lahore, import and export. But the company ran into difficulties. I think he felt that a new start in a new country would be advantageous. He had been quite prosperous for a time, but things began to go wrong. I know no details about this. There were other reasons for the marriage within the family. It had been arranged many years ago. It was not unexpected. It had been planned.’
‘While Faria was a child?’ Thackeray asked. Kevin Mower drew a sharp breath, knowing how close to the edge the interview was straying.
‘You do not understand our culture,’ Sharif said with angry contempt. ‘You know nothing.’
‘I do find it difficult to understand some aspects of your culture, Mr Sharif,’ Thackeray said. ‘And I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I do know that you regard murder as a crime just as I do, and I hope that as her father you may be able to help me understand why Faria has been killed, if indeed she has been killed. If the motive has anything to do with aspects of your culture that I don’t understand, then I would expect you to help me with those. All this is hypothetical, of course, but I think you should understand that if I were to suspect that you didn’t want her killer identified, I would find that very difficult indeed to comprehend. In fact, it
might lead me to conclude that you had some involvement in her death.’
Sharif’s face flushed at that and he sat down as if his legs would no longer hold him up.
‘Faria was the light of my life,’ he said. ‘She was my first born, my beautiful eldest daughter who, I hoped, God willing, would give me grandchildren and be a blessing in my old age.’
Thackeray sighed.
‘I won’t trouble you any more now, Mr Sharif,’ he said. ‘I hope to know very soon how your daughter died and whether we will be pursuing anyone else in relation to her death. But you do need to know that we have entered Imran Aziz’s house this morning in the interests of his safety. He was not there.’
‘Find him, Chief Inspector,’ Sharif said thickly. ‘If he is responsible for my daughter’s death, find him, and keep him away from me because if I find him first I might kill him.’
‘Whew,’ DS Kevin Mower whistled as the two officers returned slowly to their car. ‘You were quite hard on him, I thought.’
‘You know as well as I do where concepts of family honour can lead,’ Thackeray said. ‘If I have evidence there’s anything remotely like that involved, I’ll be hard on her father and her mother and sisters as well, if need be. That’s why DC Sharif needs to be kept well away from this case. It could get very unpleasant.’
‘You don’t think the spooks are on the right track, then?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Thackeray said. ‘My concern is Faria Aziz and why she and her unborn child ended up in the river. That’s quite enough to be going on with.’
Laura Ackroyd and Bob Baker met their deadline and the details of the police search of Imran Aziz’s house in Milford appeared on the front page of the
Gazette
that afternoon. Baker had been left fuming at the lack of cooperation he felt he had got from the press office at County Police HQ, and the story appeared without any explanation from police sources as to why Aziz’s neighbours had seen officers removing large quantities of material from the small terraced house or why officers in forensic protective suits then spent many hours inside the premises.
Laura was not surprised when Thackeray arrived home that evening to find herself the object of a somewhat frosty gaze as he took his coat off, kissed her cheek perfunctorily, and waved a copy of the
Gazette
, with her name prominently displayed on the front page.
‘How did you get involved in Bob Baker’s wilder speculations?’ he asked.
‘Is it speculation?’ Laura said, stirring her risotto with more determination than it warranted. ‘Do you want a salad with this?’
‘Diversionary tactics won’t work, madam,’ Thackeray said with a faint smile. ‘Your piece was not very welcome at a time when we still don’t know for sure whether or not this young woman committed suicide.’
‘So why go into the house with all guns blazing?’ Laura asked. ‘Someone somewhere obviously suspects that something’s been going on there. Are they looking for terrorists, or what? If you don’t tell the public what’s happening there’ll be all sorts of rumours flying around, and that could be dangerous.’
‘You know I can’t tell you anything about it,’ Thackeray said, turning away to get himself a drink of tonic water from
the fridge. ‘Do you want a drink?’
‘V and T,’ Laura said. She turned the gas down under her pan and followed Thackeray into the living room, where he was reading, obviously not for the first time, the results of her day’s work, splashed under a headline,
Milford Terror Raid Shock,
that she had to admit was not entirely supported by the facts she and Bob Baker had been able to glean from the eyewitnesses who had seen the police go in.
‘You know I don’t write the headlines,’ she said, by way of a peace offering. ‘But you can’t hide this sort of thing, especially when people are so jumpy. Someone’s going to let us know what’s going on. They ring in with all sorts of stuff. You know that.’
‘Evidently,’ Thackeray said, putting an arm round her and pulling her onto the sofa beside him, his face serious. ‘You know, there are any number of reasons why people might think we’re not a very compatible couple…’ Laura made to protest, but he put a finger on her lips. ‘Any number,’ he said. ‘And don’t think I haven’t rehearsed them all many times. But the only serious one, I think, is this.’ And he tapped the front page. ‘You know you really must be careful not to give the impression that you’re privy to information that you shouldn’t have. For both our sakes.’