By Death Divided

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Maybe you should take a break,’ she said, but then wished she hadn’t as Laura looked stricken.

  ‘Maternity leave, you mean?’ she said. ‘In your dreams.’ She did not tell Vicky of the few days she had spent recently wondering whether her carelessness had led in that direction anyway, sleepless and unwilling to confess to Thackeray why she was tossing and turning all night. It had been a false alarm but had confirmed what she had known in her heart for years: if she and Michael were to have children she would have to persuade him first, and she was not at all sure that she would be successful.

  ‘I meant a holiday,’ Vicky said lightly.

  ‘Yes, of course, that might be a good idea if I can prise my overworked copper away from his job for a while,’ Laura said. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘You were right to tell Kevin, and Kevin was right to insist that you pass it on,’ DCI Thackeray said, taking in both the officers who had come to see him together that morning. ‘It may be nothing, but it may be something. No one should take chances in the present climate.’

  ‘And no one’s free of suspicion,’ DC ‘Omar’ Sharif muttered resentfully.

  He had gone to Sergeant Kevin Mower that morning to ask for his advice but had been hustled into the DCI’s office against his better judgement when Mower heard what he had to say. Sharif had been up early and had driven quickly against the commuter traffic back to Milford to knock again on his cousin’s front door. When once again there had been no response, he had headed into the centre of Milford and parked outside the mosque, which was housed in a converted Victorian chapel. As he arrived he could see a few men leaving after attending morning prayers but by the time he had taken off his shoes and gone inside he found only a handful still present, surrounding a heavily bearded man who was talking to them in Punjabi. Abdel Abdullah, the new imam who preached only in Urdu, glanced at Sharif, clearly taking in his jeans and bomber jacket without approval, and greeting him in the traditional way.

  ‘Can I speak with you privately?’ Sharif asked, in English first, to lay down his own ground rules, and then repeating himself in Punjabi. The imam nodded and the other men moved away.

  ‘I’m trying to make contact with Imran Aziz, who’s married to my cousin Faria,’ Sharif had said bluntly. ‘She’s not been in contact with her family for a couple of months and they asked me to visit her. But there’s no one at their address, and I wondered if her husband had been to the mosque recently. I am told he is very devout.’

  ‘I do know our brother Imran,’ Abdullah said in Punjabi. ‘I have not been here very long but I think it is true he is very devout. But I have not seen him at prayers this week. Not at all, which is a strange thing.’

  ‘Did he say they had plans to take a trip? A holiday in Pakistan perhaps? Maybe Faria has travelled out in advance. He answered the phone a couple of nights ago but simply said she wasn’t there.’

  ‘As I say, I am new here,’ Abdullah repeated. ‘So I know nobody very well. I have heard nothing about his plans. But if you like, I can ask some people who might know him. Do you have a telephone number?’

  Sharif reached automatically for one of his cards, but then hesitated, and pulled a pen and notebook out instead, transcribing his mobile number carefully and handing it over. He could not explain the sudden hesitation to let this man, who was watching him with unsmiling intensity, know he was a policeman. He just guessed that he would get more cooperation if he kept his profession private.

  ‘I’m sure there is an innocent explanation for my cousin’s silence,’ he said. ‘If they have gone to visit his family I know it can be difficult to make international calls sometimes from parts of Pakistan. But it is strange she didn’t let her parents know and they are concerned.’

  ‘She is part of her husband’s family now,’ the imam said flatly. ‘He will decide these things.’

  Sharif opened his mouth and then thought better of contradicting this version of a wife’s status, but he was surprised at how much he was repelled by it. It brought to mind images of burkas and the Taliban and reminded him of the outrage of one of his girlfriends years ago, a North African woman who had lived many years in France, when film of women in Afghanistan had been appearing on television screens every evening.

  ‘I hope to hear from you, then,’ he said, swallowing down the urge to argue with this man, every inch of whom radiated self-righteousness. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and spun on his heel and left the mosque quickly, knowing he was being watched all the way by some of the young men who had moved away when he came in.

  He glanced at his watch as he walked back to his car, and wondered if there was time to try to discover where Faria worked. But he was due in the CID office at nine, and guessed that the various travel agents who had offices in the town centre would not be open so early. He would have to come back another time.

  All the way back to Bradfield he wondered whether he had over-reacted. But it was crazy, he thought, for small mosques like Milford’s to still be recruiting imams from Pakistan. Surely the Muslim community in Britain was big enough to be able to train its own teachers and scholars and ensure they had a reasonable grasp of English. By the time he got to police HQ in Bradfield he had worked himself into such a suppressed fury that Kevin Mower soon spotted his abstraction and crossed the room to ask him what was wrong. And when Sharif told him, he offered neither comment or advice, but insisted that he repeat his story to the DCI.

  ‘It may be nothing, Omar,’ he had said, leading the way to Thackeray’s office. ‘But report it to the boss and then if this imam turns out to be dodgy they can’t accuse you of failing to act.’

  ‘Cover my back, you mean?’ Sharif muttered, not hiding his bitterness.

  ‘You’d be a fool not to,’ Mower said, looking grim.

  But then, face to face with the DCI, Sharif felt foolish. Part of his strategy for success in the police service had always been to play down his difference from any other officer and this sudden catapulting of his private concerns into the official arena bothered him more than his colleagues could have been aware.

  ‘There was nothing there to pin down, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s odd that Imran and Faria are not around, but not unheard of for people to go on long visits in our community. She may have gone ahead and now he’s gone to join her.’ The other alternative that haunted him, that Faria might have run away from an intolerable marriage, he did not want to raise in this company. The shame and embarrassment that would cause his family was too personal to be broached to non-Muslims of even the most sympathetic kind. And sympathy only went so far in the police service before suspicion inevitably kicked in.

  ‘As for the imam, Abdel Abdullah,’ he said, ‘it was just a feeling. A few bearded young men hanging about and an obviously pretty traditional imam. But a fanatic? No, I’ve got absolutely no evidence for that at all. It would be a travesty to say I had.’

  ‘I’ll pass your impressions on to special branch,’ Thackeray said. ‘They may want to talk to you. It may well be an overreaction but you know how it is. We all need to be ultra careful.’ He shrugged slightly wearily. Like everyone in Yorkshire, he was appalled that young suicide bombers could have emerged from the tightly packed streets of a local Asian community without any serious suspicion beforehand.

  ‘And as far as your cousin is concerned, if you can’t track down her or her husband soon, I suggest you or her parents try to make contact with her husband’s family in Pakistan before you panic. As you say, there could be an entirely innocent explanation.’

  ‘Sir,’ Sharif said. ‘It would be embarrassing for us all to report a missing person when there is nobody missing.’

  But if Faria was in Pakistan, he thought, why had her husband not told him that when he had spoken to him a few nights previously? Even so, he had to admit that Thackeray was right in principle. The family had not done enough investigation itself to locate Faria. His mind flew back to the hot and humid days he had spent in the family’s ancestral village
in the Punjab at her wedding and he wondered whether the marriage he had witnessed had been arranged, in the traditional way, or actually forced on the young woman who had certainly not looked particularly happy as the ceremonies proceeded. Nothing had been said by his own parents, but he recalled his own slight sense of surprise that Faria had agreed to marry her distant, and much older, cousin. But he had never raised the issue. Notorious for his more relaxed lifestyle, he hesitated to be seen to be questioning such a sensitive area within the family. He had no reason to suppose that his uncle did not have Faria’s best interests at heart, nor the slightest real evidence that she had objected to the match. If she had done, surely her ambitious young sisters would have known and had some views on the matter. But they seemed content with what had happened.

  He sighed heavily as Thackeray turned back to the paperwork in his desk. But as he followed Mower back to the main CID office, the sergeant stopped and turned to face him.

  ‘I’ve got a mate in special branch,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get any hint of what’s going on in Milford if you like. They’re keeping a close eye on comings and goings to Pakistan, obviously. They may even have your cousin’s husband under surveillance.’

  Sharif froze, the anxiety gnawing again at his stomach, like a hunted animal alert to the slightest hint of danger.

  ‘You mean he might have used the marriage to get into the country for all the wrong reasons?’ he said, his horror apparent in his eyes. ‘But that would have meant my family being involved. That’s inconceivable. My father and my uncle were incandescent after the London bombings, especially when it turned out that the bombers were local boys, from Yorkshire. You have no idea how betrayed most people in the community felt. Suddenly all the yobs in town felt they had good reason to abuse us, spit at women, provoke young men…’ His voice trailed away, close to despair.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ Mower said grimly. ‘But these people don’t go around wearing little labels saying ‘I’m a Terrorist’. Or at least, the successful ones – in their terms – don’t. If the imam in Milford’s a bit dodgy, as you obviously think he might be, your cousin’s husband may be a suspect too. And you’ll get nothing back through official channels, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Because I’m Asian, too,’ Sharif said bitterly.

  Mower looked at him with some sympathy in his eyes.

  ‘You know the way it is now,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sharif said. ‘I know the way it is.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Laura Ackroyd waited for Michael Thackeray to come home that evening with increasing impatience. She had left the office early and driven back up to Southfield after Vicky had telephoned her to give her Bruce Holden’s mother’s address, but when she had knocked on the door of Mrs Holden’s neat Victorian house she had got no reply. Standing back from the front door she realised that the curtains were closed on all the downstairs windows but upstairs she thought she saw the faint shadow of a movement at the window. Never one to give up easily, she rang the bell again, more insistently this time, and eventually she had heard a shuffling movement behind the door and a voice asked who was there, without any attempt being made to undo the locks.

  ‘My name’s Laura,’ she said. ‘I’m a friend of Julie’s.’ She knew she was stretching the truth but only, she thought, in the interests of Julie and Anna themselves. And when Vanessa Holden eventually opened the door, with much unbolting and unbarricading, she felt vindicated as she took on board the elderly woman’s bruised face with a long line of stitches down the cheek.

  ‘Mrs Holden?’ she asked gently. ‘Can I come in? I don’t want to intrude but I did see Julie and Anna yesterday for an article I’m writing about violent relationships and I thought you might be able to help me too. And help Julie, as well, maybe. You do know her husband – your son – has been hitting her?’

  Vanessa Holden shuffled backwards into the shadows of the hallway, offering no objection to Laura following her, and allowing her to close the front door behind her.

  ‘Pull the bolts,’ she said, her voice faint, and Laura did as she was told although she did not think that the cheap bolts on the door, top and bottom, would resist a determined intruder for very long. When Vanessa opened the sitting room door, allowing a little more light into the hall, Laura could see that she was in her dressing-gown, as if she had just got out of bed when she had disturbed her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘If you’re not well…’

  ‘Come in,’ Vanessa said, her voice slightly firmer. ‘I was just resting. As you can see, I’ve had a little accident. They only sent me home from hospital this afternoon. It’s nothing serious but I still feel a bit shaky.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said again, accepting the chair the woman waved her into. Vanessa put on the lights, though she did not pull the curtains open, before lowering herself down on to the edge of an armchair, with a wince of pain.

  ‘Did you have a fall?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Vanessa said. ‘My memory’s a bit hazy, but I think I was pushed. I went out for a walk, to get away for a bit, and I know there was someone else there when I fell over. I’m not sure who it was. I can’t walk very quickly these days. My knees are bad. But I do like to get out for some fresh air when I can. I don’t like to use the car all the time.’ She glanced away and Laura could see that her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Do you live here alone?’ Laura asked.

  ‘I did,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m a widow. My husband died some years ago and I thought I’d got some sort of life back together. You never really get over it after a long marriage, but I was coping.’ She hesitated.

  ‘And then?’ Laura prompted.

  ‘My son, Bruce. Have you met him as well?’ When Laura nodded Vanessa Holden shrugged and gazed silently at a fading bowl of flowers on a side table. ‘When they came back to Bradfield I was really pleased, but it wasn’t long before I realised that his marriage wasn’t going well. Last week, when Julie finally left him, he arrived on the doorstep and announced he wanted to move in with me – just until she came back, he said, though I guessed that she wouldn’t come back. I already knew he’d been hitting her, you see.’

  ‘So your son’s been living here?’ Laura said, surprised. She had had no reason to assume that when she saw him earlier in the day he was not living in his own home.

  ‘Just for a few days. But I don’t want him here. He was out when I came home this morning. Maybe he went back home, I don’t know. That’s why I locked all the doors. I can’t have him here any more.’ A shudder suddenly went through her body. ‘He’s been hitting me, too,’ she said in a whisper that Laura could barely catch. ‘When he loses his temper he’s like a madman. In fact, a doctor might say he is mad, I think. I can’t have him near me any more. If that’s what’s been going on with Julie I can understand why she left with the child. I knew something was dreadfully wrong, but she never told me exactly what.’

  ‘And he’s been hitting you too?’

  Vanessa glanced away and then nodded almost imperceptibly, putting a hand to her damaged face.

  ‘He threw a plate at me, because he didn’t like his meal,’ she whispered, almost as if ashamed. ‘That’s why I went out on my own last night. It was quite late but I thought I had to get away. I think I must have fallen. I really can’t recall. It’s all a bit hazy.’

  ‘But you weren’t mugged?’ Laura asked. ‘It was your son who hurt you?’

  Vanessa nodded silently.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ Laura asked angrily. ‘With you, I mean. Julie’s already told me about her experiences.’

  ‘Oh, only just these last few days. He’s never had the opportunity before, I suppose. It’s so strange. He seemed a normal enough little boy. That’s him there, in a school photograph.’ She waved to a picture of a sunny looking child in school uniform. ‘He must have been about twelve then. Quite a happy child, really, but he became a very depressed teena
ger. Though not unusually so, I didn’t think. All my friends used to say that their teenagers were the same: sulky, long silences, outbursts of fury. He went to college, got a job, and then another job in Blackpool.’ She hesitated before deciding to go on.

  ‘We didn’t see much of him while he was over there. I think there were girlfriends before Julie. And he did say one time that he had been in hospital, though he was a bit vague about why and for how long. But by then my husband was ill and I was preoccupied. I suppose I didn’t have time to worry about him as much as I used to. When he got married his father was too ill to go to the wedding. But I was pleased for Bruce. I thought a wife and family were what he needed. And when they came back to Bradfield I was delighted. I was on my own by then and was anxious to see more of them, Anna especially. We only ever had the one child so there were no other grandchildren. Not like some of my friends, who seem to be surrounded by them.’ As Vanessa went on she seemed to become more and more forlorn, twisting her hands in her lap and occasionally fingering the stitches in their zigzag pattern on her cheek.

  ‘I know it’s difficult,’ Laura said. ‘But you really ought to report him to the police if he’s abusing you. I said the same thing to Julie. He needs to be stopped before he causes someone some serious harm.’ The knowledge that battered wives very easily become murdered wives hovered at the back of her mind like a dark cloud and she wondered if it applied to battered mothers too. But she did not want to panic this frail woman who seemed to be having difficulty in coming to terms with what had already happened to her to blight what should have been an enjoyable old age.

  ‘The police have special units to deal with cases like this,’ Laura insisted. ‘It doesn’t have to go as far as a prosecution if he’s willing to accept some help to control his temper.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Vanessa said. ‘Julie must do what she has to do. She has a child to care for, but I can’t complain to the police about my own son. I’ll just tell him he can’t stay here any longer. He must live in his own house.’