Authors: Patricia Hall
‘Morning, guv,’ Mower said more loudly, closing the office door behind him. ‘A few developments overnight for a change.’ Thackeray swivelled his chair round towards the sergeant, who tried not to allow his concern to show as he realised how ill the DCI looked. His face was ashen and he had dark circles under his eyes, and as he lit his cigarette, Mower could see that his hands were shaking.
‘Health and safety haven’t got you yet,’ he said as lightly as he could, nodding at the smoke that wreathed around the office as Thackeray exhaled deeply. Thackeray merely shook his head irritably.
‘What are these developments then?’ he asked. ‘Have we traced Imran Aziz?’
‘No, not that,’ Mower admitted. ‘But we are getting a clearer picture of what had been going on in that house. Slower than we might like because the spooks took so much stuff away, but they’re feeding the information back to us now. In fact, I get the distinct impression that they’ve lost interest in Imran Aziz as a potential terrorist. There’s no evidence of that, apparently.’
‘I’ll check personally with Doug McKinnon later,’ Thackeray snapped. ‘If he’s not a terrorist they’re just getting in the way of our investigation of his wife’s murder.’
‘That’s what I thought, guv,’ Mower said. ‘Anyway, what they have found are traces of Class A drugs.’
‘Drugs?’ Thackeray could not hide his excitement.
‘Heroin, to be precise,’ Mower said. ‘Just a single wrap hidden in some of Aziz’s paperwork, which suggests a user rather than a dealer. But interesting, even so.’
‘Especially in the light of what forensics say about Faria having narcotics in her bloodstream. Talk to the drug squad, Kevin, and see if they have any knowledge of his involvement and of his most likely source. Did anyone find a syringe or any other paraphernalia?’
‘No, not yet, but I’ll ask for everything to be checked again. It might be worth asking Amos Atherton if he’s found anything further as well. He did say he would have a another look, didn’t he?’
‘I’ll chase him,’ Thackeray said. ‘We could ask the police in Pakistan if there’s any record of Aziz’s involvement in narcotics, though I don’t understand how he would get a visa to come here if anything like that was on record, even if he had married a British woman.’
‘Well, perhaps he picked up the habit after he arrived,’ Mower said. ‘It’s pretty obvious he wasn’t making the success of his life here that he’d hoped. He’d not got a business off the ground, his wife was working, possibly needing to work to keep them going, which doesn’t go down too well in that community, and he’d only had factory jobs himself. Perhaps he was more desperate than anyone’s letting on.’
‘I think there’s a lot going on in that family that no one is telling us,’ Thackeray said. ‘Do we have a photograph?’
‘A couple,’ Mower said.
‘Right, let’s get them on TV and into the press. I want Imran Aziz found. Have you spoken to DC Sharif since he got out of hospital?’
Mower looked at his boss warily for a moment.
‘I thought you didn’t want any contact,’ he said.
‘Come on, Kevin. I know you’ll talk to him if you think he has anything to offer. Have you done that?’
But Mower shook his head.
‘I did give him a bell to see how he was but I got no reply. His mobile was switched off. I might try to contact his girlfriend…’
‘He’s got a girlfriend, has he?’ Thackeray asked. ‘One his parents would approve of?’
‘Almost certainly not,’ Mower said, with a tight smile. ‘She’s called Louise.’
‘Check he’s OK. That’s legitimate enough,’ Thackeray said. ‘That was a nasty beating he took. Any witnesses turned up?’ Mower shook his head.
‘Well, if Omar offers you any further thoughts about Aziz, let me know.’
‘Right, guv,’ Mower said.
‘Is there any further news on Bruce Holden? Any sightings?’
‘Nothing’s come in overnight,’ Mower said. ‘He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘I had David Mendelson bending my ear first thing this morning,’ Thackeray said. ‘The wife is staying with them for the time being, though I told him I didn’t think that was a very good idea. Can you tell uniform she’s there and ask them to keep a close eye? We know he’s made one attempt to break in and he might try again. I’d rather his wife got right out of the area, really, but David says she won’t move until she finds out where the daughter is. She’s in a bad way, apparently.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Mower said. ‘I’ll pass it on.’
When Mower had gone, Thackeray ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray that, according to the rules, had no
place in his office any longer, and sighed heavily. He glanced at the phone, wondering whether he dare call Laura, who had left the flat early that morning with barely a word, and then decided against it. She would, he thought, either come to terms with what he had said the previous night or she would not, in which case he knew their relationship would probably be over. But he felt that there was little he could say to convince her that she should give up the prospect of being a mother for his sake. To ask her to do that, he thought, would be grossly unfair. It was a decision only she could make, and he feared the worst.
Angrily, he picked up the phone and punched in Amos Atherton’s number, but the pathologist was not available, intent, no doubt, on his delicate dissection of some new and fascinating cadaver. But he did succeed, at the second attempt, in making contact with Doug McKinnon, who admitted, cautiously, that his investigators had found nothing at all to link Imran Aziz with fundamentalism or violence of any kind.
‘He seems to be clean, from our point of view,’ McKinnon said. ‘As far as any of the bastards are clean. He’s all yours. It looks like a simple domestic to me.’
‘We’ll see,’ Thackeray said coldly and made to hang up just as McKinnon spoke again.
‘There was one thing I bet you don’t know, though.’ The man sounded faintly triumphant, Thackeray thought, and his heart sank. ‘Your DC Sharif. What do you call him? Omar? Spent the weekend in Lahore, didn’t he? You might want to ask him what he thought he was up to out there, mightn’t you? Blood being thicker than water with that lot, after all. I’ll let you know if anything else crops up.’
‘Do that,’ Thackeray said, hanging up angrily. He punched
in Mower’s internal number.
‘Find Sharif and get him in here now,’ he said. ‘And don’t take no for an answer.’
Mohammed Sharif knocked at his uncle’s front door before his young cousins had left for school that morning. Faisel let him in without a word, almost as if he had been expecting him to call. Sharif glanced at Jamilla and Saira, coats already on over school navy blue
shalwar kameez
and headscarfs pulled over their hair.
‘I need to speak to you privately,’ he said to his uncle. The girls glanced anxiously at their father but obeyed as he waved them out of the front door before closing it firmly behind them.
‘I’ve been to Lahore,’ Sharif said without preamble as he followed his uncle into the living room. He could hear his aunt in the kitchen but knew she would not interrupt if he closed the door on their discussion. His uncle looked gaunt and distant but he said nothing in reply.
‘I was very disturbed by what I discovered there,’ Mohammed said quietly. ‘I was very unhappy, in fact.’
Faisel stared impassively at his nephew, still saying nothing, his deep-set dark eyes blank, waiting for the younger man to
continue, but Mohammed hesitated himself, unsure where to begin. Finally he decided he had to tackle Faisel head on.
‘Did you know that Imran Aziz was a homosexual when you persuaded Faria to marry him?’
Faisel glanced away but Mohammed could see no sign of the shock that might have been expected if the allegation had come as news to him.
‘Did you know?’ he repeated, more angrily this time. ‘Did you knowingly marry Faria off to a homosexual to get him out of Pakistan? Or what, exactly?’
‘No,’ Faisel said hoarsely. ‘She was married for the reasons I explained to you before. She was married as had been arranged when she was a child, for family reasons. Her grandfather and his brother, my uncle, wished it. She agreed. She met Imran and she agreed to marry him.’
‘So did she discover his tastes later and tell you about them? His previous wife was under no illusions about his preferences when I spoke to her the other day. Though she seems to have been deceived into marriage as well. And abandoned by our family afterwards. I found her in prison after working as a prostitute. Did Faria find out as well?’
‘No, Faria never said anything to me about her marriage. She seemed happy enough.’
Mohammed Sharif got to his feet and walked angrily from one end of the room to the other, his unbandaged fist clenching and unclenching as his uncle watched him apprehensively.
‘But you knew about Imran?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t surprised when I told you?’
‘I found out later,’ Faisel admitted. ‘I was told quite recently by someone from the mosque in Milford. Aziz had made approaches to a young man…he was outraged and told the
imam.’
‘The imam said nothing of this to me,’ Sharif objected. ‘I spoke to him last week.’
‘There is a new imam. He may not have known. It was the previous imam who told me.’
‘And what did you do about it? It’s not illegal in this country.’
‘I told Faria what I knew and then I spoke to Imran privately. I asked him to divorce her. To set her free. God willing, she could start again. We could find her another husband. Perhaps she could go to university, which is what she had wanted earlier…I tried to put things right.’
‘Did you really not know she was pregnant? That would make your plans for her more difficult, to say the least.’
‘No, I didn’t know that,’ Faisel said. ‘Not until Jamilla told me, after her body was found.’
‘Did you tell DCI Thackeray any of this, about Imran?’ Sharif asked.
His uncle shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was too ashamed.’
Sharif flung himself into a chair with a groan.
‘Did Faria agree to this plan? Did she find this acceptable? You spoke to her about it?’
‘She did not object when I asked her if that was what she wanted. She seemed happy to divorce.’
‘And even then she didn’t tell you about the baby?’
‘No,’ Faisel said.
‘And Imran? Do you know where Imran is now?’
Faisel shook his head and Mohammed sighed.
‘The imam said that under sharia law…well, you know what would happen.’
‘Is that what’s happened?’ Sharif asked, his face betraying
his horror.
‘I don’t know,’ Faisel shouted. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to Imran. He deceived us all but I don’t know what’s happened to him.’
His nephew took a deep breath to calm himself before he felt able to continue.
‘You must go to DCI Thackeray and tell him the truth, the whole truth,’ he said. ‘If Imran was known to be gay there are enough angry young men at that mosque to try to do something about it. To be honest, I think I’ve run into some of them myself.’ He nursed his bandaged hand thoughtfully before going on. ‘We’ve been assuming that Imran disappeared because he was involved in some way in Faria’s death. But perhaps he’s in danger too. Perhaps he’s been murdered. You must talk to Mr Thackeray and be completely honest with him. You could be arrested yourself for concealing information. Do you understand me, Uncle? You must do it and do it now, or you will find yourself a suspect in Imran’s disappearance, or even Faria’s death. They will think the worst.’
‘Will you come with me?’ Faisel asked and Mohammed knew how hard the question was to ask. But he shook his head vehemently.
‘I am not involved in this case,’ he said. ‘I have been told that I can’t be involved. Nor did I know anything about this deception. I don’t want my officers to think that I knew anything about it. You must take the responsibility. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘It is a family matter,’ Faisel Sharif said angrily. ‘
Your
family. You have a duty.’
‘No,’ Mohammed snapped back. ‘I want nothing to do with
it. I’ll tell Mr Thackeray later what I discovered in Lahore. That duty I can’t avoid. But I won’t take any responsibility for what the family did to Faria, and your involvement in it, tricking her into that marriage. It may not have been illegal but it is shameful and I’ve no doubt that it has something to do with her death.’
He got up and moved towards the door. He felt cold and sick and he knew that he would not be forgiven for what he was about to say.
‘I will ask to see Mr Thackeray this afternoon,’ he said. ‘If you haven’t been to see him by then I will tell him everything you’ve told me this morning and everything I discovered in Lahore. I don’t know what the consequences will be for you. But I do know what the consequences would be for me if I remained silent. I have no choice. I’m sorry.’
And he closed the door behind him quietly, and left the house. He was unlikely, he thought, ever to be invited into it again.
Sharif met DS Kevin Mower in a coffee shop close to the central police station that lunchtime. Mower had called him on his mobile soon after he had left his uncle’s house and insisted on the meeting. Sharif had not been surprised to discover that DCI Thackeray wanted to talk to him at two, regardless of his own intentions, and was grateful that the sergeant was prepared to fill him in on what had been happening while he had been away.
‘You look rough,’ Mower said as the younger man joined him at a corner table with an espresso in his good hand and a pack of sandwiches tucked awkwardly under his arm.
‘Jet lag,’ Sharif said dismissively. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Yes, I heard you’d been away. Interesting trip, was it?’
Sharif shrugged.
‘Not the word I’d choose,’ he said. ‘I uncovered stuff about my family that I can still barely believe.’
‘You’ll tell the boss?’
‘Oh yes, I’ll tell him,’ Sharif said heavily.
‘You must,’ Mower said. ‘Your uncle came in this morning and passed on a lot of stuff about Imran that he hadn’t bothered to mention before. Mr Thackeray wasn’t best pleased.’
‘Well, at least he turned up. He wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t threatened to shop him earlier this morning.’
Mower looked at Sharif appraisingly. He knew very well how hard that conversation must have been for the DC.
‘You’ve burnt your boats with the family, then?’
‘I don’t think my uncle will ever speak to me again,’ Sharif said. ‘I don’t know about my own parents. I haven’t seen them yet.’
‘You have to know which side you’re on in this business,’ Mower said. ‘There’s no room for divided loyalties.’
‘I never thought mine were divided until this case,’ Sharif said, still uncertain how far he was willing to go to help locate the men who had assaulted him. ‘I had no idea what was going on with Faria and Imran. I’m appalled.’ He pushed his sandwiches away with his bandaged hand after a single mouthful.
‘You may have difficulty persuading the boss you knew nothing about it,’ Mower said. ‘The spooks are already asking why you shot off to Pakistan so suddenly. They didn’t miss that.’
‘Bastards,’ Sharif said. ‘What do they think I went for
after being beaten to a pulp? A bit of weapons training in Afghanistan? They’re idiots.’
‘Just be careful,’ Mower said soothingly. ‘I’m sure you can put their minds at rest.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’d better get over there. The boss looked as if someone had pissed in his cornflakes this morning. And believe me, when he’s in a strop he takes no prisoners. Personally, I think he came back to work much too soon after he was shot, but there you go. Be warned.’
Anna Holden began to despair that morning. She and her grandmother had slept fitfully under the blankets her father had flung down for them for a second night, but they were barely adequate in the dank chill of the cellar and Anna knew that her grandmother’s constant shivering was not good for her. She tried to keep herself warm by singing and dancing around until she ran out of songs that she could remember, then spent some time trying to scramble up the coal chute and hammer on the the metal grille in the roof until she was exhausted.
‘He’ll be back soon, won’t he, Nan?’ she asked. But her grandmother, huddled under the blankets, simply shrugged.
‘He said he’d be back soon,’ Anna said firmly. ‘I’ll get us something to eat. We’ll have a picnic.’ But by now, as they had consumed the two cans of soup that opened with a ring pulls, she had to be content with dried out sliced bread, and the last of the cheese and a swig from their almost empty bottle of water. She offered food to her grandmother but she shook her head at the bread and took only a sip from the bottle.
‘You must eat, Nanna,’ the child said, pushing her
disheveled hair away from her battered face. But Vanessa merely turned away from the light and pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders.
‘What he really should have given us was that little camping stove we used to take on picnics,’ Anna said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Then we could have made hot drinks.’ Her voice faltered slightly as she realised that her grandmother’s eyes were closed and she did not appear to be listening. ‘Wouldn’t you think he’d have let us make hot drinks, Nan?’ she insisted. ‘I would be very careful with the stove…’
When they had first been left alone in the cellar her grandmother had taken charge of the situation but now she had subsided beneath the blankets, and this morning, as a little daylight penetrated the cracks at the sides of the boarded up area window, she seemed barely able to make the effort to speak. Anna gazed up at the single light bulb and wondered again how long it would burn for. If it went out, they would be in almost total darkness and that thought frightened her even more. She glanced at the spiders’ webs and shuddered. She went back into the small coal cellar, where the bucket her father provided was beginning to smell, and looked around her desperately for something solid to bang against the grating above her head. But someone had emptied and swept out the confined space and there was not so much as a broom handle that would allow her to push upwards. She tried shouting again but her voice sounded thin and outside there was no sound at all. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was not yet eight in the morning, and she wondered what her mother was doing now she was not there with her, getting ready for school, and the thought of the normality she had been swept away from brought tears to her eyes again.
‘Daddy, where are you?’ she cried. ‘You said you wouldn’t be long.’ At that moment the single light went out and in her sudden panic to get back to her grandmother Anna kicked over the toilet bucket and burst into tears. Finding her way blindly back towards the cushions on the floor she scrambled under the duvet beside Vanessa, but when she cuddled up against her for warmth there was no response and, rigid with shock herself, she began to wonder if her grandmother would ever wake up.
Michael Thackeray listened to Mohammed Sharif’s description of his trip to Lahore and what he had discovered there in silence. His head ached and he was distracted both by thoughts of Laura and by occasional jabs of pain from the scars his brush with death had caused so recently. But he fought off the distractions determinedly, knowing that what his anxious looking young DC was telling him was crucial not only to the murder investigation but to Sharif’s future in the police force. When he had finished Thackeray said nothing for a time and Sharif himself felt impelled to break the heavy silence.
‘Did my uncle come in to see you as I advised him to?’ he asked, his mouth dry.
‘Yes, Kevin interviewed him,’ Thackeray said. ‘You were right to encourage him to come in.’ Thackeray hesitated before going on, knowing that what he had to say would be unwelcome.
‘I asked you in for a word in private,’ he said at length. ‘That, rather than taking my worries higher, which is where they will inevitably go very soon. I can’t protect you from the implications of what you’ve done by dashing off to Pakistan like that, even less from the fact that your close family will
inevitably become the focus of this inquiry now, and however much you think you’ve distanced yourself from them, you are still part of that family.’
‘You mean my uncle is a suspect?’ Sharif asked, his mouth dry.
‘Inevitably,’ Thackeray said. ‘He hasn’t been frank with us and his response to what seems to have happened will be a line of inquiry we have to follow. But he’s not the only person we will need to investigate. You must know that.’