The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  ‘Especially with that confession,’ Indajit added. ‘In retrospect I’m not at all happy with it, either. As my Scottish colleagues might say: I think it’s almost certainly a “Case Not Proven”. No, having thought about it at some length, I now honestly don’t think Ali was ever guilty of Sofia’s death.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ Lane replied, clearly impressed at his frankness. ‘But do you think she was murdered, at all?’

  ‘No, I agree with Alan. Ali’s account seems far more plausible.’

  Alan needed to be quite clear.

  ‘What, accidentally falling down the stairwell?’

  ‘Yes. That makes real sense. I suggest we go with it.’

  Lane nodded in agreement.

  ‘What about Kevin?’ Alan asked.

  ‘It’s pretty straightforward,’ Lane replied. ‘When we told him we’d got Abdul, he broke down and admitted everything. He did booby trap your Land Rover – on a timer – and he admitted he was carrying the gun to kill you.’

  ‘And the bungalow?’ Alan asked.

  Lane shook his head.

  ‘No, he was adamant he knew nothing about it.’

  ‘D’you believe him?’

  ‘Yes. On the whole I do.’

  ‘Oh, well, accidents do happen…’ Alan shrugged his shoulders. Then he asked, ‘But what about Paul – did he kill him too?’

  ‘Sort of. He confessed he dumped him in the maggot tank…’

  ‘On Abdul’s instructions?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lane replied. ‘Kevin was keen to offload blame in that direction, but he didn’t administer the opiates.’

  ‘Opiates?’ Indajit asked surprised.

  ‘The lab identified them from his stomach contents – or what was left of them. A hefty dose.’

  ‘But not quite big enough,’ Alan added grimly.

  ‘No,’ Lane agreed.

  ‘So I was right. The poor bastard did come round in the tank…’

  For a moment Alan relived the horror of that discovery.

  ‘Presumably somebody gave him a jab at the board room meeting?’

  ‘Again, yes. Abdul has confessed to that. We also found the syringe chucked into the hedge outside.’

  ‘Well done, I bet that took some finding?’ asked Alan.

  ‘It did. But it’s got Abdul’s fingerprints on it.’

  Alan was still dwelling on Paul. He sighed, then said,‘Poor bastard. What a way to go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sorry for him, Alan. Thanks to you, we now know just how unpleasant he was.’

  Indajit looked puzzled.

  ‘What, that business Alan discovered? The modern bones and the faked-up reburials?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lane replied. ‘The results of our own tests show that most of the bodies came from Eastern Europe and western Asia with a smaller number from the Indian subcontinent – even a woman from China. Then we went back through the records and disinterred one of the previous Christian reburials.’

  ‘How many were there?’ Indajit asked in astonishment.

  ‘What, bodies or burials?’ Lane replied.

  ‘Both, I suppose.’

  ‘The records that you put me onto…’

  ‘The ones held by PFC,’ Alan added for Indajit’s benefit.

  Lane continued, obviously keen to get all the information across as efficiently as possible. ‘They are very meticulous notes of everything. Well, they show six separate episodes of Christian reburial, over three years. We’ve only decided to examine one, and so far that’s produced eight modern individuals.’

  ‘Are they all non-British?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Yes, entirely. Most were young adolescent females.’

  ‘Like the body in the tank, beneath Paul?’ asked Alan quietly. That image, of the small foot with the painted toenails still haunted him. Like Sofia’s scream, he suspected it always would.

  ‘Yes,’ Lane replied quietly, ‘like many of the others, in her early twenties, although the bones were mostly disarticulated.’

  ‘Presumably her bones got disturbed when Paul was dumped in, and slightly later when he came round and started struggling?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Certainly that’s what our forensic people now think. Anyhow, she was eastern European and we have a record of her on our missing person files. Her name,’ he pulled a small notepad from his pocket, ‘was Anna Petrova. She can be linked to a Romanian people-smuggling gang, active in Birmingham and the West Midlands. She was thirteen when she arrived here. Soon after she was arrested and warned several times for prostitution. A sex slave, poor girl. No other way of putting it.’

  ‘So this wasn’t about “honour killings”, then?’ Indajit asked.

  ‘No. Far from it. That was a huge assumption on our part, in both cases.’

  Lane paused to take a sip from his cup, then resumed.

  ‘Using that café “Mehmet’s” as a central point, the Kabuls had established a network which provided a vital service to the sex trade and the general criminal underworld, across most of England…’

  ‘Ali called it “the family business”,’ Alan added. ‘I’m not sure how much he knew, exactly, but he was clearly very angry that Abdul was using his vans at PFC.’

  ‘And I suppose,’ Indajit asked, ‘that the Kabul Centre at Impingham was going to be its lavish, but logical successor?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Lane replied. ‘We’re still working on it, but there’s good anecdotal evidence to suggest that some of the back rooms at “Mehmet’s” were used as knocking shops. I don’t see why the “corporate facilities” at Impingham couldn’t have been for something similar, either.’

  Indajit was frowning.

  ‘So they made money from the poor girls’ bodies when they were alive, and then when they had no further use for them your fellow archaeologist…’

  ‘Please don’t call him that,’ interrupted Alan.

  Indajit nodded in apology and pressed on.

  ‘So, how much did they make?’

  ‘Our forensic accountants are hard at it,’ Lane replied, ‘but it looks like each body disposal was worth somewhere around a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand.’

  ‘And collection was organised by Abdul, using Ali’s van service?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Lane replied. ‘That way they could keep the location of the facility secret, while controlling what was coming in and going out. The entire operation was remarkably well planned and organised.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Yes,’ Alan remarked, ‘as Ali said, it was quite a family business.’

  For a moment or two they sat quietly digesting what had been said.

  Alan was the first to break the silence.

  ‘But I still wonder about the underlying motive. What was it that drove… that was so… so… compulsive for Mehmet? I can understand why he wanted to be a big man within his family. And I also understand how competition and rivalries can develop between and within families. That’s all fairly standard anthropology. But why did he go so far?’

  Alan was thinking of AAC and the Victorian family at Scoby Hall.

  ‘Yes, what made him to do it?’ Lane asked.

  ‘I believe,’ Alan continued, ‘that he was being driven by something beyond him. The only thing I can suggest is some form of internal family dynamic.’

  He tailed off, aware that the anthropological jargon didn’t say much. Both his listeners were frowning. They didn’t follow him. Indajit came to his rescue:

  ‘Is that another way of saying that Abdul wanted to run things? Abdul could see that Ali was brighter than him, but he lacked his ruthless streak. He also realised that his grandfather’s great weakness was vanity. So when the opportunity to move into an entirely fresh line of “family business” arose in 2002, thanks t
o Paul and Flax Hole, he grabbed it with both hands. From the very outset he was the brains behind the body disposal enterprise. But he concealed what he was up to by encouraging Mehmet to pose as the big family man.’

  ‘So,’ Lane added, ‘it was old man Mehmet who held everyone’s attention.’

  Alan leant forward, deep in thought:

  ‘Presumably, Abdul believed that if they were ever found out, then Mehmet would be seen as the obvious boss man: the gang leader?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Indajit replied.

  ‘But tell me,’ Alan asked again, ‘what was Abdul’s attitude when you started nosing around in the family’s affairs all those years ago… Was he obstructive?’

  ‘Now you mention it, he wasn’t. I won’t say he welcomed my attentions – that would be going too far, but he never once warned me off, nor threatened me. I remember thinking it odd at the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan continued, ‘it suited him. And of course the agreement the three of them came to…’

  Lane, who by this point was taking notes, needed to be quite clear.

  ‘What, the thing Ali told you about. The formal family agreement witnessed by his grandfather?’

  ‘Yes that,’ Alan replied.

  ‘So as soon as it became clear that Sofia’s death would end up in court, they came to a deal that Ali who had just turned eighteen when the “crime” had been committed, would “confess” and in return Abdul would run his van enterprise for him.’

  ‘Exactly, Richard. It seems to me,’ Alan continued, ‘that Mehmet’s motive had to have more behind it than the simple desire for control. After all, I’m sure he did want to impress the local Turkish community with the strength of his convictions, and an “honour killing” was as good a way to do it as any…’

  ‘And of course,’ Indajit broke in, ‘Abdul was there, encouraging him all the time.’

  ‘But even so,’ Alan said, more to himself than the others, ‘to persuade a young member of the family – and somebody at the start of his life – to confess to a crime he didn’t commit – a crime that never even happened… I still can’t get my head around that.’

  ‘I think I can,’ Indajit said quietly. ‘Families are about structure and certainty, which you either welcome, or you don’t. Personally I find formality can help me relax. You don’t need to worry about what happens next, because you know the rules.’

  Alan broke in.

  ‘But can’t those rules also get in the way?’

  ‘That’s for people to decide for themselves.’

  ‘Yes, but surely you would admit that certain rules are rather rigid?’

  ‘Are they? It depends on whether you’re inside or outside the system. I don’t think there are absolute values here.’

  ‘Even with something like arranged marriage?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Yes. Take my brother’s marriage. It was arranged by my parents and it works. It always has. They’re both very shy people. I won’t say there’s never a cross word between them, but they’re happy together. In fact it makes me very angry when people routinely condemn arranged marriages without knowing anything about them.’

  To Alan’s surprise Lane came in on Indajit’s side.

  ‘Yes. What’s the difference between a marriage arranged by well-intentioned relatives who’ve known you since you were a kid, and some internet introduction agency? I know damn well which one I’d choose.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Indajit continued, ‘there’s a big difference between arranged and forced marriages. Read Jane Austen, read Thackeray: most of those marriages were arranged. Manipulated. Call them what you will. But there was never coercion: they all required couples to consent.’

  ‘Is it unusual for Sikhs to find their own wives?’

  Indajit smiled ruefully.

  ‘No. Increasingly it isn’t. As you know, I tried…’

  He paused for a moment. Then continued half to himself:

  ‘No, but I’ll tell you one thing. If my mother were still alive, I’d ask her to find me a nice wife now. I certainly would.’

  * * *

  Indajit and Lane rose from their chairs. Alan remained sitting, thinking over what had been said. After a while he glanced up at them, standing over by the window, looking out into the garden and laughing at a grey squirrel on the lawn. For a moment he felt a tinge of envy: they had welcomed change into their own lives, and were both the better for it. But had he?

  Again he glanced down at The Times on Indajit’s beautifully carved Indian coffee table. But it wasn’t a single report that worried him now. It wasn’t like that moment in the site hut when his fag paper slipped through his fingers, onto the wet floor. This time it was the whole of the front page. Most of the stories were about wealth, the rich and the famous. Those pictures said it all. It was the same set of spoiled, primped and perfumed faces, again and again. For a brief moment, the parallels between AAC’s lofty portrait, Mehmet’s ludicrous statue, and the strutting celebrities of his own time, seemed uncomfortably close.

  Then a surge of fury gripped him. Why do these ghastly, self-obsessed people lord it over everyone else – and why do we stand for it? For Christ’s sake, he thought, why don’t we intervene? Do something. Strike back. Make a fuss. Then he thought back to that piercing scream all those years ago at Flax Hole. He’d had the chance then, but he had done nothing. After all that had happened, that thought still haunted him, day and night.

  Epilogue

  A bright morning in mid-July. Alan was standing in a small shrubbery with roses and carefully tended lawns. In the distance he could hear the hum of traffic on the Leicester bypass and the occasional cries of children from nearby houses. Schools were now out and the holidays had just begun.

  He was observing a small group of five men in the distant Muslim area of the Saffron Hill municipal cemetery. They were looking down at an open grave. After a few minutes they raised their heads and stood still. Then the robed figure shook the hands of the two dark-suited men and slowly returned to the small octagonal Prayer House, behind them. The suited men then turned and walked along the path towards the gate into the car park to Alan’s left. The other two men waited a few minutes, then picked up shovels and began to backfill the grave.

  The suited men approached the gate and Alan stood back, deeper in the shadows. Their body language was warm. Sympathetic. Alan couldn’t be certain, but he thought he detected a glint on Indajit’s cheek, of tears. Little Mehmet looked less little now. And stronger. In the car park Indajit produced the keys and unlocked the car as they approached. One car. Alan hadn’t expected that. Sofia had brought them together.

  As the car pulled away, Alan turned to leave, too. Slowly he walked along a mown path, then found himself sitting on a wooden seat, deep in thought. Why, he wondered was he always on the outside, looking in? Always the observer. He remembered sad little Tiny and that hopeless succession of dead babies and shattered dreams. Then he found those expressionless eyes of the psychopath coldly watching him at that first talk at Blackfen. But most of all he couldn’t stop thinking about Sofia’s scream. But what were they all telling him, those spectres from the past: to engage? To meddle? To interfere? No, he despised busybodies and people who thought they knew better than others. But surely there had to be a middle way – or was there? Then he realised that his subconscious knew the answer all the time, and for a moment it was as if he was on the other side of that horrible grille, in Ali’s place, and looking out at freedom.

  Slowly he rose to his feet and headed towards the car park, seeing, feeling nothing, as he allowed the truth to enfold him. He stood stock still beside his mud-spattered Daihatsu, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He knew now that he was not unusual, that he acted as he did because he had no choice: it was the way he was – and there was no escape. The strongest prison walls are in our own minds.

  Like it or not, we are all memb
ers of The Lifers’ Club.

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