By Death Divided

by Patricia Hall

  Thackeray was on the phone when DC Sharif opened the door of his office but he gestured for him to come in and sit as he finished his call abruptly and slammed the receiver down.

  ‘I told you to take time off,’ he said, his tone harsh. ‘That was for your own good, Mohammed. You look like death warmed up.’

  ‘Sir,’ Sharif mumbled, knowing from his own inspection of the dark circles beneath his eyes in his shaving mirror early that morning that the DCI’s comment was more than justified.

  ‘So why are you here?’ Thackeray demanded, slightly more gently.

  ‘I needed to know what was going on,’ Sharif said. ‘My family need to know what’s going on.’

  ‘They’ll be informed,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ve appointed a family liaison officer to keep them informed. You know how these things work and you know you can’t be involved in any way.’

  ‘You’ve upgraded the inquiry…’ Sharif muttered. ‘Is there a reason?’

  ‘Two reasons, as it happens,’ Thackeray said sharply. ‘Firstly additional forensic information, which came in late yesterday. And secondly the sudden interest the security services have taken in Imran Aziz. Since you saw our friend McKinnon from Manchester the other day they say they have intelligence from Pakistan that makes them wonder why he was so desperate to get a visa to come to this country that he divorced one wife and married another.’

  ‘You mean…’

  ‘I don’t know what they mean, Mohammed. Apparently he hadn’t crossed their radar until now. I think what you told McKinnon about Aziz and the new imam in Milford was genuinely news to them, but since then they’ve obviously been talking to their friends in Islamabad. You know how it is. Any hint of suspicion is enough.’

  ‘I think the Muslim community’s got that message, loud and clear,’ Sharif said, his voice bitter. ‘Break the door down, why don’t you? Smash the place up. Shoot us by accident. We’re all suspects now. Even me, I suppose.’

  Thackeray looked at the younger man wearily.

  ‘I’m sorry it seems that way,’ he said. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘So what’s this new forensic evidence?’ Sharif asked.

  ‘The toxicology report. They’ve found traces of narcotics,’ Thackeray said. ‘Have you any reason to believe that your cousin might have been taking drugs – legally or illegally?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Sharif said. ‘Are you saying she was an addict? I can’t believe that for a moment. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I’ve asked Amos Atherton to take another look at the body, in case there’s anything he missed. Puncture marks for instance, in the unlikely event they might still be visible after she’d been in the water so long. Though Amos isn’t given to careless mistakes, I have to say. But whatever the cause, it is possible that your cousin was in a disoriented state when she went into the river, whether it was by accident or design. It offers us another line of inquiry. Puts the whole thing in a more sinister light.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Sharif said, his already haggard face taking on a slight sneer. ‘I don’t think I’ll pass that suggestion on to my aunt and uncle.’

  ‘I don’t want you telling your uncle, or anyone else, anything you pick up here about this investigation,’ Thackeray said sharply. ‘Which is why I want you on leave until I tell you you can come back. I mean that, Mohammed. It’s not in your interests to be here at all. Go home and see what you can do to help your family in what must be a terrible situation.’

  ‘So do I have a career left when this is over, sir?’ Sharif asked, getting to his feet slowly.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Thackeray said. ‘This is unpleasant for you, but it will pass. You did the right thing bringing your initial suspicions to my attention. No one can fault you as a police officer in any way. But now you must take my advice. Go home, stay away, probably until this is resolved. That way your integrity remains intact. Believe me, it’s for your own good. If it goes on too long I’ll see if I can get you a temporary transfer to another division. But in the meantime, take a holiday.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Sharif said, hoping Thackeray could not see how reluctantly the words were forced from him. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Thackeray said as DC Sharif turned away. ‘I really am.’

  As soon as he was sure that DC Mohammed Sharif had obeyed his instructions and left police headquarters, DCI Michael Thackeray went upstairs and knocked on the door of Superintendent Jack Longley’s office. As he expected, he found the super at his conference table with Doug McKinnon of the anti-terrorism unit in Manchester, flanked by two officers he did not know and Chief Inspector Bradley Smith, a young high flyer who had recently taken charge of the uniformed wing of the force in Bradfield. Introductions to McKinnon’s colleagues made, Thackeray slipped into the vacant chair next to Longley as all eyes swivelled in his direction.

  ‘I still have no absolutely firm evidence that Faria Aziz was murdered,’ he said. ‘But given the latest information, that she had either taken or been given some sort of narcotic before she went into the river and drowned – we’re waiting for an identification on the drug – it looks increasingly likely. On top of that we have evidence that she was considering a divorce, even though she was pregnant. Murder’s certainly a possibility we can no longer ignore, especially as the husband’s nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Any news on his whereabouts?’ McKinnon asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Thackeray said. ‘No sightings. We’ve checked out his car and it’s still parked in the street close to the house with a flat tyre. So wherever he’s gone he’s either gone by public transport or in someone else’s vehicle.’

  ‘Or he’s dead,’ Bradley Smith offered. ‘Isn’t that a classic scenario for a domestic? Murder followed by suicide? Maybe he’s in the river too, and we simply haven’t found his body yet. Isn’t that what you’re looking for?’ He addressed his final question to McKinnon. ‘A reason to search the house? Surely we’re concerned for the man’s well-being, aren’t we? That’s more than enough reason to go in without a lot of fuss. We don’t need to mobilise armed officers and the full paraphernalia of a terror raid, just force the door and have a look round inside, in the interests of Imran Aziz’s safety. For all we know, he may be lying dead or injured in there. It’s much less upsetting for the neighbours if we do it softly softly. All the neighbours.’ He glanced at Longley, who was nodding his head slowly, considering what Smith had said.

  ‘There’s no reason why you can’t go in with my officers,’ he said to McKinnon.

  ‘I need a full forensic search,’ McKinnon said. ‘The works.’

  ‘It’s quite possible we’ll need one as well, dependent on what we find,’ Longley said.

  ‘Look, I know why you may want to pussyfoot about,’ McKinnon said. ‘Community relations and all that. But I’ve got inquiries launched in Pakistan about this man and his unusual determination to get into this country. And you’ve had one of your own officers raising doubts about the mosque in Milford. Where is he, by the way? What’s his name? Sharif?’

  Thackeray glanced at Longley, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘I’ve sent him home,’ the DCI said. ‘The dead woman is his cousin and I can’t have him involved in the investigation.’

  ‘Right,’ McKinnon said. ‘Keep tabs on him, though. I may want to talk to him again.’

  Thackeray nodded, trying to conceal a sudden surge of anger that he knew was irrational, but McKinnon neither noticed nor, Thackeray was sure, would have cared much if he had. He was single-minded in his pursuit of what he wanted in a way Thackeray doubted he would ever be, and that, he thought with a slight sense of shock, was his weakness as a policeman and why he would never go further. He worried too much about what he was doing and it’s effect on the innocent. McKinnon, he realised with a start, was pressing on regardless, as he always would, no matter who got trampled underfoot.

  ‘But as for Aziz’s house, you know we can’t take any chances in the curre
nt circumstances. You may be right. It may simply be a tragic domestic incident. But we have to be sure. We need to go in, straight away, no messing about. I want documents, computers, phone records, the lot. And a full forensic examination of the premises. Whether or not you use armed officers is up to you, how many uniforms you throw at it is your decision, but there’s no way all that is going to happen without any of the neighbours noticing, is there? Let’s be realistic. If there’s a reaction, you’ll have to live with it. Is it a heavily Muslim street?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Thackeray said. ‘All we’ll be doing is confirming the white neighbours’ worst suspicions.’

  Longley nodded slowly.

  ‘Right,’ he said, glancing at Thackeray and at Bradley Smith for confirmation. ‘Go ahead with a raid. Keep me fully informed, please. As far as we’re concerned, this is probably a murder inquiry and CID will proceed on that basis until we hear that there is solid evidence of something worse. Thank you, gentlemen.’

  By one o’clock that afternoon the newsroom at the Bradfield Gazette was in a ferment and Laura Ackroyd felt besieged at her desk. She had spun her chair away from her computer screen the better to confront Ted Grant and the crime reporter Bob Baker, who were standing close to her desk, almost breathing down her neck.

  ‘You must have got some inkling of this, surely,’ Grant said, his face flushed with excitement. ‘We were bloody lucky to hear anything at all about it in time for the final edition. It was only because one of the neighbours had the sense to call Bob that we knew anything was going down. The bloody Press Office didn’t breathe a word. Said they were going to issue something later in the day when the operation was complete.’ Grant, purple-faced, spluttered with such outrage that Laura feared for his health.

  ‘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.’