Authors: Patricia Hall
‘You mean I could become a suspect?’
‘I hope not,’ Thackeray said. ‘But it’s possible, isn’t it? Tell me honestly what the traditional reaction might be if the circumstances of your cousin’s marriage to a homosexual man became widely known in your community? Would anyone feel bound to take some action, and if so, who? And what action would they feel impelled to take?’
Sharif gazed at the DCI for a moment in silence, aware that his whole career stood on a knife-edge and there was very little he could do to influence the course of events one way or the other. He had walked out on his uncle, and by implication, the rest of his family, but even that might not save him, he thought bitterly.
‘You must talk to me, Mohammed,’ Thackeray insisted. ‘I know it’s difficult.’
‘Yes,’ Sharif said. He took a deep breath. ‘You have to understand that it is all a question of family honour and traditional values,’ he said reluctantly. ‘There seem to be two problems here. Imran is evidently gay. That is a sin in Islam, but it is tolerated here and in the big cities in Pakistan like Lahore, so long as it is not flaunted in a way that brings disrepute on the family. He seems to have kept a low enough
profile, but ran into problems in Milford where there are some zealots at the mosque who seem to have discovered his tastes and taken exception to them.’
‘Would they kill him?’ Thackeray asked. Sharif shrugged, hesitated and then made his decision.
‘I think the same people took exception to my lifestyle,’ he said. ‘I have an English girlfriend. When I was attacked someone called on Allah as they hit me. I don’t think white racists were involved at all.’
Thackeray looked at the younger officer for a moment in silence, his mind racing.
‘Now you’ve remembered that, perhaps you can add it to your statement?’ he said carefully.
‘Sir,’ Sharif said.
‘So let’s get back to these zealots from the mosque, now we’ve one more reason to interest ourselves in them. Would they kill Imran Khan when they uncovered his homosexuality?’
‘They might not kill him, but they might well threaten to expose him to the rest of the community.’
‘And that would upset your family?’
Sharif swallowed hard, and nodded.
‘That would upset my family,’ he said quietly. ‘Very much.’
‘And Faria? Who has she upset? We’ve been concentrating our attention on Imran as a potential suspect for her murder, but maybe that’s all wrong. Maybe he’s a victim too, and someone else entirely hated both of them enough to kill.’
Sharif ran his hands over his face and shrugged.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said.
‘You do know,’ Thackeray insisted, not unsympathetically. ‘And I need to know. Is the baby Faria was carrying likely to be Imran’s? I’m having DNA checks done but I’ve not got the
results back yet, so tell me what you think. Is the reason she wanted a divorce because she was carrying a baby that was not her husband’s?’
‘A divorce?’ Sharif said, evidently shocked. ‘
She
wanted a divorce? I knew nothing about that. I thought that was my uncle’s idea.’
‘She made inquiries some months ago, apparently. Did your uncle not know that?’
Sharif shook his head wildly.
‘He said nothing to me, but then he would not be broadcasting the news. Divorce – for a woman – is difficult in our culture. Not forbidden but difficult. My uncle said he was considering the possibility of divorce because of Imran’s…predilections. But he implied it was his idea – and a very recent one.’
‘And he still says he didn’t know she was pregnant before she died?’
‘Jamilla says she never told him,’ Sharif said.
‘But if the baby is not Imran’s? Would that make a difference to what he thought about her marriage, or a divorce?’
‘That would create a huge scandal,’ Sharif said very quietly. ‘You must know that.’
Thackeray sighed.
‘So could she have had a boyfriend, do you think? Could the baby be another man’s? An Englishman’s perhaps? I know this is all speculation but I need to know how likely that is.’
‘His former wife in Lahore thinks it’s unlikely Imran would sleep with her,’ Sharif mumbled. ‘So if there was a baby coming…’ he shrugged.
Thackeray took a deep breath.
‘You were obviously very fond of your cousin. Did it go any
further than that?’
Visibly shaken, Sharif shook his head, his eyes full of tears.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Thackeray said. ‘You understand why I had to ask?’
Sharif swallowed hard and nodded.
‘So, do you know anyone she might have been having a relationship with?’
‘No,’ Sharif said again, this time letting his anger show. ‘You don’t understand how horrified I am by all this. I try to be modern, western, all that, but the old ways run deep. I’ve lost my beautiful young cousin and now it appears her reputation is to be ruined too. It’s unbearable.’
‘I’m trying to understand,’ Thackeray said. ‘That’s why I’m taking the time to fill you in on what’s going to happen next. The forensic results will clarify some things, but in the meantime, I’m going to have to interview most of your family to discover who knew what about Imran and Faria’s relationship. In Milford, I’m going to want to know who knew what at the mosque about Imran’s activities, and we will have to look at Faria’s possible relationship with someone else. All this will, I’m sure, be very upsetting, but it has to be done. You understand that.’
‘Sir,’ Sharif said, his expression impassive now. ‘And what do you want me to do?’
‘Firstly, I want you to make a formal statement about your trip to Pakistan. Naturally, we’ll want to check with the police there officially, to find out as much as we can about Imran Aziz at that end. Then I want you to take some leave, go away somewhere if you like, but keep me in touch with where you are. Special Branch may want to talk to you. They were
jumping up and down yesterday when they discovered you’d flown out, but before they could set up any sort of hue and cry they found out you were already on the plane back. You know how twitchy they are.’
Sharif got to his feet and moved towards the door but before he opened it his anger got the better of him.
‘It’s just not tenable any more, is it?’ he said. ‘You try to integrate, you try to do a useful job that needs doing, you make every effort, but then suddenly you’re under suspicion, your kids go to the wrong mosque, your wife has the wrong relations in the wrong country, you take an unexpected trip abroad, and suddenly you’re a suspect; your face doesn’t fit, all your efforts go for nothing because you’re the wrong colour and the wrong religion. Do you want me to resign now, sir? Or should I wait until someone finds a reason to charge me with something? I’d just like to know.’
Thackeray winced as his back wrenched his body with pain but he got to his feet anyway.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want your resignation. I want you to come through this unscathed and continue what looks like a very promising career. I know how difficult this must be for you, but give me the help I’m asking for and I promise you, if you’re honest with me, I’ll do my best to protect your position. You have my word on that.’
Sharif took a deep breath.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Laura Ackroyd found it almost impossible to concentrate that morning. Thackeray had not come home the previous night, retreating, she supposed, as he sometimes did, to the small flat on the other side of town that he resolutely refused to sell. He saw it, she thought, as a bolt hole, and this time she feared he might have bolted there for good. She sighed as she gazed blank-eyed at her computer screen. She had precipitated this crisis, she thought, and now she had got her answer she was not sure what to do. She needed to talk to someone else, she decided, and she dialled Vicky Mendelson’s number in the hope that she might be able to go up to her house for lunch and some friendly counselling. Naomi would be home from nursery school and she guessed that seeing a child she loved would crystallise her feelings and make some sort of decision easier. She had always adored Vicky’s children and she simply could not decide whether living without children of her own was possible. But nor could she get her mind round the equal impossibility of living without Michael. She knew why he could not commit to starting a new family with her, but she
resented it bitterly just the same.
To her surprise, a voice she recognised as Julie Holden’s answered her call.
‘Is Vicky there?’ Laura asked, only to be told that she was out collecting Naomi from nursery.
‘I was thinking of inviting myself to a quick lunch,’ Laura said, irritated by the other woman’s presence when she wanted some time alone with Vicky.
‘I’m sure she won’t mind,’ Julie said. ‘She’ll be back soon. Daniel is off school with a cold so I’m baby-sitting. Have you heard anything more about Bruce and Anna? The police haven’t been in touch for a couple of days.’
‘I don’t think there’s been any trace of them,’ Laura said, slightly impatiently. ‘You should ring Janet Richardson. She’s supposed to keep you informed.’
‘Yes, maybe I’ll do that,’ Julie said, her voice dull, and Laura felt guilty about her impatience.
‘I’ll see you in about half an hour,’ she said. ‘We can talk about it then.’
Less than half an hour later, Vicky Mendelson opened the door with her daughter in her arms, and for a second Laura struggled to hold back her tears as she kissed them both.
‘You look rough,’ Vicky said, taking in her friend’s pale face and the purple circles under her eyes. She led the way into the kitchen, where the table was laid for three adults with a high chair for Naomi, and Vicky strapped the child in with a plate of vegetable and fruit fingers in front of her. Julie was already sitting at the table waiting for them.
‘No turkey twizzlers, then?’ Laura said, with a grin. Vicky’s passion for feeding her children healthy food was becoming a joke amongst her friends.
‘You must be kidding. Could you take this in to Daniel for me?’ She handed Laura a plate of sandwiches. ‘He’s in the sitting room with the latest Harry Potter. But keep your distance. He’s got a streaming cold.’
Laura did as she was asked and was rewarded with an attempt at a smile from the Mendelson’s elder son, who was huddled under a duvet with his nose in his book.
‘Hi, Laura,’ he said between snuffles.
‘Good book?’ she asked.
‘Yes, great,’ he said. ‘Better than school.’
To Laura’s frustration, but not her surprise, lunch turned out to be a silent affair, at which neither she nor Julie raised their burning concerns over tuna salad and wholemeal bread. But when they had finished, Julie seemed to become more aware of the long silences between the three of them and left the kitchen to sit with Daniel.
‘So?’ Vicky asked quietly. ‘You look as if you’ve lost the crown jewels and found a Ratner’s ring. Is Michael being difficult again?’
Laura managed a smile at that.
‘I may have lost not just a wedding ring but a whole future,’ she said, and told Vicky the gist of how her partner had rejected any prospect of having another child.
‘Bloody man,’ Vicky said, lifting her own daughter down from the table so she could run off to see her brother. ‘Bloody, bloody man. Why couldn’t he have told you this before? It seems wickedly late now.’
‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘And I don’t know whether I can bear it.’
‘Oh, Laura,’ Vicky said, putting her hand over her friend’s. ‘It’s difficult to talk now with Julie here. Officially she’s moved back to the hostel but this morning I asked her to come
and keep an eye on Daniel while I did some shopping and fetched Naomi from nursery. She was glad to make herself useful and that refuge she’s staying in is like a prison. But she’s going back later. Why don’t you come back to supper tonight and we’ll have a proper talk. If Michael’s not coming home, that is.’
‘I don’t know whether he is or not. He’s up to his eyes in a murder case, as you know. And I don’t even think he should be at work at all. He’s still not really fit. He’s still getting a lot of pain. Oh, Vicky, I really, really don’t know what to do.’
At that moment Julie came back into the room, holding her bag and her mobile phone in her hand.
‘Are you OK, now, Vicky?’ she asked. ‘I really want to go up to my house to get one or two things and then I’ve an appointment with my solicitor at four.’
‘Yes, thanks, Julie, it was very good of you to help out.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ Julie said dryly. ‘I’ve nothing else to do but sit and worry myself sick.’ She turned to Laura. ‘I took your advice but Sergeant Richardson had no news,’ she said. ‘They seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’
‘Where are you going now?’ Laura asked. ‘I’m going back to work but I can give you a lift if you like.’ She knew that Bruce Holden had disappeared in the family’s only car.
Julie took up the offer with alacrity and Laura drove quickly the half mile or so from Vicky’s house to the Holdens’ and parked outside.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ she asked as Julie made to get out of the car.
‘No, you get back to work,’ Julie said. ‘Bruce is obviously not here. There’s no sign of the car. Anyway, he’d be a fool to bring Anna back to Bradfield, let alone home. The neighbours
must know now what’s been going on from what appeared in the
Gazette
. He’s miles away by now, with no intention of coming back.’
‘If you’re going into town, I’ll wait for you,’ Laura said.
‘Can you? Are you sure?’ Julie hesitated but she looked relieved. ‘I’ll be ten minutes, maybe. I’ll try to be quick. I just want to collect some stuff from my bedroom.’ She slammed the car door and Laura watched her walk slowly to the front door, open it and close it behind her.
The ten minutes passed slowly as Laura wrestled with her own dilemmas, which her lunch had in no way resolved, and when she next glanced at her watch she realised that Julie’s ten minutes was more than up, and she began to worry about getting back to work herself on time. She locked the car up and went to the front door and rang the bell. There was no response and, after waiting for a minute or so, she tried the handle and was surprised to find that the door swung open. Hesitantly, she stepped inside and called out to Julie.
At first there was no reply, but then she heard a sort of
half-strangled
gasp coming from the back of the house.
‘Julie?’ she called again, walking very quietly down the hall to the door that she guessed opened into the kitchen. ‘Julie, are you there?’
The door was not closed and when Laura pushed it swung open and she found herself face to face with Bruce Holden, who had an arm round Julie, pinning her arms to her sides, and was holding a large kitchen knife to his wife’s throat.
‘You again? Come in, why don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Let’s make a party of it.’
‘He called me on my mobile,’ Julie gasped. ‘He said he had Anna here and I could see her if I came round. What else
could I do?’
‘Come in, I said. Come bloody well in!’ Holden’s voice was harsh and Laura could see his grip tighten on the knife as he pressed it harder against the flesh underneath Julie’s ear. She swallowed hard and closed the kitchen door behind her and stood leaning against it, one hand in her pocket clutching her mobile phone, wondering whether she could dial 999 without his noticing.
‘Where’s your daughter?’ she asked quietly. ‘We’ve all been very worried about her.’ Holden responded by moving Julie at knife-point towards Laura and pushing himself and his wife between her and the door to the hall, effectively closing off that escape route. Close up Laura could see that Julie was not only white-faced but that there was already a smear of blood on her neck where the knife had creased the skin. Laura felt herself shivering and could see that Julie was in much the same state. But she could think of no way to remove the knife from Holden’s fist without his finding the seconds it needed to cut Julie’s throat before she could pull him off.
‘Sit over there at the table,’ Holden instructed, and Laura did as she was told, knowing that the worst possible thing would be to provoke him. But with one hand still in her jacket pocket she ran a finger gently over her phone keypad, trying to work out which was the number 9.
‘Why don’t you let Julie go and then you can talk sensibly about Anna. She wouldn’t want either of you hurt, would she? Her mother
or
her father?’
‘Don’t you worry about Anna,’ Holden snarled.
‘Where is she?’ Julie asked, with a sob. ‘What have you done with her?’
‘I told you, she’s safe. She’ll come to no harm with me, you
know that, you bitch. You’ve been telling people I would hurt her, but that’s a filthy lie. I’d never hurt my own daughter.’
‘Don’t you think you’ve hurt her already, putting her through all this stress?’ Laura asked, reckoning that maybe provocation would distract him from Julie and allow her a chance to break free, but he was evidently not to be distracted. He gripped his victim even more closely and screamed back at Laura, his face contorted with rage.
‘Shut up, you interfering cow! I told you I would never never hurt my daughter.’
‘You will hurt her if you hurt her mother,’ Laura said, angry herself now. ‘You must have hurt her, every time you hit Julie.’
‘Fuck you!’ Holden screamed, twisting Julie’s head back so hard that Laura could see that she could barely breathe. ‘You’re all the same, you fucking women – my bloody mother, my bloody wife, my bloody wife’s nosy friends. A man doesn’t stand a chance with you, any of you. You gang up on us, you nag and nag and nag until we go demented…’ And suddenly he seemed to lose control of his thought processes entirely, turning purple and flinging Julie across the kitchen, past Laura, who took the chance to pull her phone half out of her pocket under the shelter of the table and finally punch in three nines.
Julie hit the worktop next to the cooker hard and stood there, apparently stunned, half slumped across the surface with her shoulders shaking. But suddenly she spun round with a knife from the knife block in her hand and launched herself back across the kitchen at her husband to stab him in the chest repeatedly in an eery silence that was broken only by a strangled choking sound as Bruce Holden slid slowly
down the door onto the floor, dropping his own knife from limp fingers with a clatter, leaving a smear of bright red blood behind him.
Laura sat where she was for a moment, too stunned to move or speak, until she realised that someone was calling repeatedly to her on the mobile phone she still held in her hand.
‘Which service?’ the voice asked again. ‘Are you there? Which service do you require?’
‘Police,’ Laura said, her mouth dry. ‘And ambulance.’
DCI Thackeray faced an urgently summoned briefing of his detectives early that afternoon, unable to disguise his weariness. Sergeant Kevin Mower watched him from the back of the room with barely concealed anxiety. Since the incident in which the DCI had been shot, he had rarely looked well, he thought. But now he appeared to be positively ill, his shoulders bowed as if he carried the troubles of the world on them, and his face grey and creased with tiredness, and he wondered, not for the first time, if the DCI was back on the bottle. How many years until he could retire? the sergeant wondered dispassionately. Too many, by the look of it.
‘There have been some developments,’ Thackeray said quietly. ‘Developments from forensics and more information about the relationships between Faria Aziz, her family and her husband. Everything seems to confirm our conclusion that she was murdered and gives us a much clearer picture of the means and the motive for this crime. But they also throw our assumption that her husband is the prime suspect into some doubt. In fact, they leave me wondering whether Aziz himself is not another victim and we should be looking for another
body. However, one lead at a time. Kevin, will you go through the latest forensic reports for us?’
Mower moved to the front of the room while Thackeray sank into a chair, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees.
‘Right,’ Mower said briskly. ‘Following the discovery of heroin in the victim’s body and then at her home, we asked for a further examination of her body on the off-chance that there might be evidence that she was a user. The pathologist has managed to pinpoint a single puncture mark on her arm – not exactly evidence of a habit, but enough to confirm that she might have been under the influence of drugs when she went into the river.’ Mower indicated a photograph of a discoloured area of flesh on the whiteboard behind him, with a circle around a small wound that might easily have been dismissed, as Amos Atherton had initially dismissed it, as an insect bite or the result of damage during the time the body had been swept miles in the waters of the Maze.
‘That, of course, followed the toxicology tests that revealed a significant amount of heroin in her blood stream. Not enough to kill her, maybe, but she might have been
semi-conscious
or unconscious when she went into the water. Of course, it’s a pity we didn’t know this earlier, but no one had any reason to suspect that Faria might have taken – or been given – drugs.
‘That’s the first thing. The second forensic result is even more significant. We knew she was pregnant. What we didn’t know until the DNA results came through this morning, is that her baby was not her husband’s. There’s no match with Imran Aziz. So somewhere out there is a man who is the father of her child. Top priority, obviously, is to find him. This is hugely
significant because it implies she was in another relationship. We have no idea which, if any, members of her family knew about this. But we need to find out. As you know, adultery is seriously frowned on in Muslim families. It could be a motive for murder.’