By Death Divided

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Has his family been informed?’ Thackeray asked Mower, and the sergeant nodded.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ he said. ‘I called them myself.’

  ‘Right, we’ll get back and see if we can find any witnesses to this.’

  ‘Uniform are already up there, going door-to-door,’ Mower said.

  ‘I want CID up there too,’ Thackeray almost snarled. ‘If this is a racist attack I want someone hung out to dry.’

  ‘There’s no evidence of any motive yet,’ Mower said. ‘He had his wallet on him and it wasn’t touched. Nor his car keys and phone. He was found right beside his car, as if he was going somewhere. He’d only just called me and I think he was at home then. He must have gone straight out to the car. But it obviously wasn’t a robbery, unless they were disturbed before they could grab his stuff.’

  ‘That level of violence isn’t a mugging,’ Thackeray said flatly. ‘There’s no need for it. This was targeted, either because he’s Asian or because he’s a copper.’

  ‘Or for some reason we don’t even know about,’ Mower said. ‘He walks a thin line, does Omar. Maybe he overstepped it.’

  As they left the main hospital entrance Thackeray recognised the Asian man and woman approaching from the street and moved over quickly to greet them, holding out his hand, which Sharif’s father took without enthusiasm.

  ‘Mr Sharif, I’m incredibly sorry about this. Especially at a time when you’ve just lost your niece. We’ll find out who’s done this, I promise you. It will be a priority for all of us.’

  Sharif nodded dully, and his wife gazed at the ground, not meeting the eyes of Thackeray or Mower.

  ‘Mohammed is an excellent young officer,’ Thackeray said. ‘Believe me, this won’t go unpunished.’

  Sharif pushed past the DCI without a word and his wife followed close behind, her eyes full of tears. Mower glanced warily at his boss and away again. He had felt the full force of his superior’s anger once or twice during his own somewhat chequered career and did not envy Sharif’s assailants if they ever came face to face with it themselves.

  ‘I’ll roust out the usual suspects,’ he said. ‘The raving right. They’ve been pretty quiet recently, but this has to be racist. What else could it be?’

  ‘Something to do with his cousin’s death, maybe,’ Thackeray suggested quietly. ‘Something we don’t know about, maybe, and may never know about? I thought I’d done the best thing taking him off the case, away from it all, but maybe he’s the man I should have been talking to. He’s our best link to that community and I’ve let him go. And now where are we? One member of the family dead, and another half-dead, and no lead in sight.’

  It was on the tip of Mower’s tongue to advise Thackeray not to blame himself but he checked himself in time. He knew he would be wasting his breath.

  Mohammed Sharif regained consciousness that afternoon, struggling up through swirls of mist into a world of confusion and pain that made him crave the oblivion that had cradled him safely in its arms for most of the day. He opened his eyes tentatively, knowing instantly that he was in hospital and guessing that he was lucky to be alive. There was no one close to his bed but further down the small ward he could see nurses clustered around another bed where someone else was hooked up to the same monitoring devices that he became aware surrounded him too. He groaned slightly as he tried to move and a pain stabbed viciously through his chest. His head throbbed unbearably beneath what seemed to be a helmet of dressings and he could feel an oxygen feed strapped to his nose. He took a deep breath and felt slightly more alert as the life-giving gas did its job. But he closed his eyes again.

  He was slightly surprised that there was no uniformed figure at his bedside, keeping watch and waiting to question him about what had happened. For a moment he felt an urge to weep, and fought hard to contain the tears that welled up behind his eyelids. Perhaps his worst nightmares were true, he thought, and he, the outsider, was expendable, his fate of no concern to his colleagues or superiors, prey to any mad racist who took a dislike to the colour of his skin. Where were his brother officers when he needed them? Or even a sister, one of the women he had made a special effort to accept as his equal, or even sometimes his superior, after a lifetime of tacitly denying that possibility. Had they made a similar effort to accept him? he wondered bitterly.

  He shook his head slightly, a mistake as it intensified the throbbing, but the action at least forced him to open his eyes again and banish the incipient paranoia that threatened to overwhelm him, and suddenly he was no longer alone as a nurse and DS Kevin Mower approached his bed, both of them smiling some sort of a welcome as he struggled to offer a grimace of recognition in return.

  ‘You’re awake then,’ Mower said cheerfully. ‘Thank God for that.’

  The nurse began to check the monitors that surrounded Sharif’s bed and then nodded.

  ‘You seem to be fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the doctor to come and check you out but I should think we’ll be able to move you down to a normal ward later on. They’ll want to keep you in overnight, maybe longer.’

  ‘Your parents were here,’ Mower said. ‘They just went home to get something to eat.’

  Sharif tried to say something but his voice seemed to be reduced to a mumble. Mower took the chair alongside the bed.

  ‘What’s the damage?’ Sharif whispered.

  ‘A nasty gash on the head,’ Mower said. ‘That’s what the doctors were really worried about. A few cracked ribs. And your hand – some bones broken. You were lucky, by all accounts. Can you remember what happened?’

  Sharif glanced at the bandages on his left hand and winced as he tried to flex the fingers. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘They came up behind me as I was opening the car door.’

  ‘More than one of them, then?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t get a sight of them?’

  ‘No,’ Sharif said. ‘No, I didn’t.’ he closed his eyes again, the effort of speaking redoubling the pain in his head. ‘Can you get the nurse,’ he said. ‘I think my head’s going to explode.’

  ‘We’ll talk later, mate,’ Mower said getting to his feet. ‘I’ll get back and tell them you’re back in the land of the living. Everyone will be pleased.’

  And after his pain-killing injection, Sharif was grateful to close his eyes and allow himself to drift back into sleep. But as he did so he could hear an insistent cry somewhere in the farthest recesses of his fuddled brain. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ it came repeatedly. ‘God is great.’ And the more he tried to drive it from his mind the more insistent it became and he knew he had heard it quite clearly before the first blow that had beaten him to the ground. He knew he had not been attacked by white racists, as his colleagues had no doubt instantly assumed. He had been attacked by members of his own community. And that filled him with overwhelming dread.

  Laura Ackroyd was surprised at how soon her freelance efforts to track down Bruce Holden bore fruit, though it was not exactly the fruit she had anticipated. On Saturday she had called the offices of the local evening paper in Blackpool and spoken to the newsdesk, and then to a reporter, who listened sympathetically and then promised to write a short item about Holden’s disappearance from Bradfield with his daughter. She had given him Julie’s mobile number and emailed a photograph of Holden to the Lancashire paper, in the hope that the newspaper might flush him out where the police had proved so reluctant to do so.

  By lunchtime on Monday, Julie had phoned her, almost incoherent at the other end, to say that Bruce had already been in touch, incandescent with rage himself, and threatening to kill himself and Anna if she did not leave them alone, promising to jump off the end of the pier with the child if his cover was blown.

  ‘He’s mad enough to do it,’ Julie sobbed. ‘Believe me. He’s crazy. And Anna can’t swim.’

  ‘This is all because the paper published his picture, presumably?’ Laura asked.

  ‘That’s what he said. He said he’d
have to get out of Blackpool now, before someone recognised him. He said a lot more, about what he’ll do to me when he catches up with me. It sounded as if he was heading back here…’ Julie broke off and Laura waited patiently until she began to sound coherent again.

  ‘You’d better talk to Janet Richardson at police HQ,’ she said. ‘Will you do that now? Straight away? He’s threatening Anna now and she needs to know that.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Julie said. ‘Straight away.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Laura asked.

  ‘At home. I moved back into the house.’

  ‘Well, I should move out again if I were you,’ Laura said. ‘It’s far too easy for him to find you there. Let me know where you go.’

  When she had rung off, Laura gazed across the busy newsroom without taking in any part of her colleagues’ intense concentration as they came up to their deadline for the day’s paper. Then she picked up the phone again and punched in Michael Thackeray’s direct line. Unusually she got an instant response.

  ‘Michael,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to like this.’ And she told him what she had done and Holden’s response. There was a long silence at the other end of the line and Laura guessed that Thackeray was torn between an angry personal reaction to her initiative and a professional one to the threat to the child.

  ‘Right,’ he said at length, his voice as chilly as she knew his expression would be. ‘I’ll talk to Janet Richardson and see what her assessment of the threat is. At first glance it’s serious and we’ll very likely put out a call for the two of them, starting in Blackpool, of course. Is Julie Holden back at her own house?’

  ‘At the moment,’ Laura said. ‘I suggested she move out again.’

  ‘Well, that’s one sensible thing you’ve done. I just hope she’s taken your advice,’ Thackeray said flatly. ‘But we’ll talk later. Right now I need to set things in motion here.’ And he hung up without saying goodbye.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next morning, Faisel Sharif sat uncomfortably, his beard resting on his clenched fist, across an interview room table from DCI Michael Thackeray, who had deliberately chosen to conduct this interview himself, with Kevin Mower at his side, rather than leave sensitive questions to less experienced officers.

  ‘I have to ask you this, Mr Sharif,’ Thackeray said. ‘Do you know any reason why Imran Aziz might feel justified in killing his wife? A reason of honour in your culture, maybe?’

  Sharif winced, as if the very question was insulting, and shook his head heavily.

  ‘I know nothing of that sort,’ he said. ‘No reason.’

  ‘So tell me, how traditional a Muslim is Aziz? Are his expectations stricter than your own, for instance, coming as he did more recently from Pakistan?’

  ‘He too is a member of my family,’ Sharif said. ‘He and Faria are cousins. We are not fanatics, Mr Thackeray, and Imran certainly was not. But we do wish to maintain our traditions in a culture where I understand very well that they are not usual. I see it for myself all around me. I do not want my daughters staggering around the town on a Friday night half naked and under the influence of alcohol. I do not want them being tempted by young men of loose morals. That is not our way.’

  ‘So you have brought up your daughters traditionally and Faria accepted an arranged marriage? You chose her husband for her?’ Thackeray asked, his voice even, giving nothing away.

  ‘Her grandfather and I suggested a match,’ Sharif said coldly. ‘Faria accepted our suggestion. It is not permissable to force a young woman into marriage in Islam. Families can suggest, young women decide.’

  ‘But Imran Aziz was older than she was, and had been married before?’

  ‘He was divorced. There had been no children of that marriage. Divorce is not difficult in Pakistan, for a man.’

  Thackeray checked himself from putting the obvious question in response to that. ‘Wasn’t it rather that Imran divorced his wife so he could marry a British citizen and gain entry to the UK that way?’ he asked sharply instead.

  ‘Not at all,’ Sharif insisted. ‘His first marriage had not been successful. His business dealings were not going well. He wanted to make a new start in a new country with a new wife. There is nothing sinister in that.’

  ‘Did you discuss politics with your son-in-law?’

  ‘Imran was in business in Lahore. He was a very busy man. I am not aware that he took any great interest in politics.’

  ‘You realise that his disappearance is bound to attract the notice of other sections of the police force, times being what they are?’

  ‘If you knew Imran Aziz as I do you would know that he would be a very unlikely terrorist,’ Sharif said, his lips tightening with distaste. ‘His interest in coming to this country was to restore his fortunes, not blow people up. He had been successful at home, but ran into difficulties. He thought there would be more opportunities here.’

  ‘And have there been? More opportunities? Was he making a success of life here?’

  Sharif hesitated for a moment and then shrugged.

  ‘It’s not as easy as it used to be,’ he said. ‘I think he found it hard. I think perhaps that is why he did not keep in touch and seemed to be trying to keep Faria apart from her mother…He was not doing as well as he had hoped, not making enough money. He felt shamed by that. It was a difficult time for us all.’

  ‘But if he wanted children then this should have been a good time for Imran and Faria, surely? She was pregnant after – what? Two years of marriage? Wasn’t Imran delighted?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to my son-in-law about this,’ Sharif said, glancing away as he spoke. ‘He had not told me that Faria was expecting a baby. Neither of them had told me. She only told her sisters. I only learnt of it after her death. But yes, I would expect him to be pleased. Are we not always pleased when children come?’ Faisel Sharif’s face looked gaunt in the harsh light of the interview room.

  ‘Generally people are pleased,’ Thackeray said quietly, aware of the gulf between a traditional paternalist and a society where sex was often casual and its consequences often unwelcome. ‘But not always,’ he added, uneasy at the turn the conversation was taking.

  He took a deep breath. He knew he was getting nowhere with this bearded patriarch whose values were so different from the norm, though not that different from those of his own father, who had followed a religious path nearly as uncompromising and puritanical as Sharif’s. Neither, he thought wryly, would have welcomed the comparison, though it was a fair one.

  ‘Mr Sharif,’ he said. ‘You must understand that we need to find your son-in-law urgently. Do you have any idea where he might be?’

  Sharif looked at the DCI silently for a moment, his eyes unfathomably dark, and then shook his head impatiently.

  ‘Do you think, if he is the one who has killed my daughter, I would not wish him found and brought to justice? I have no idea where he is. But I pray to Allah that you find him soon.’

  When Sharif had departed Thackeray turned to Mower in exasperation.

  ‘Can he really have known so little about what was going on with this couple?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like wilful ignorance, as if there were things he actually didn’t want to know about.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, guv,’ Mower said. ‘If Aziz divorced his first wife because there were no children, why would he kill Faria just when she had fallen pregnant? Someone’s lying. But who?’

  ‘We need to talk to Faria’s mother and sisters as well, but perhaps we’d better do that in their own home. Arrange to talk to them yourself, Kevin, will you, and take that young Asian PC with you. What’s she called, Nasreem something? We don’t want to upset the community too much at this stage, although I’ll arrest the whole family if I can’t get any sense out of them any other way.’

  ‘This is where we’ll miss Omar,’ Mower said, but his remark met only a stony stare from Thackeray. The DCI followed the sergeant downstairs but then hesitated in the doorway to his
own office.

  ‘The terrorist officers are working on all the stuff they took out of Aziz’s house. I’ll talk to Doug McKinnon later and see if I can get any indication of how that’s going so we know where we stand. If this is anything more than a simple murder case, we need to know as soon as possible. In the meantime, chase up any sightings there may have been of Aziz. One thing I’ll ask McKinnon is whether he has any objection to us issuing a photograph of him if they’ve found one. There’ll be much more chance of finding him if we can get his face onto the front page of the Gazette and onto local TV.’

  ‘Guv,’ Mower said.

  But within ten minutes he was back, knocking on Thackeray’s door and poking his head round tentatively.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know that there’ve been some developments in the Bruce Holden case, the bloke who’s run off with his daughter…’

  Thackeray hesitated for a beat.

  ‘I know he’s been threatening his wife by phone, threatening the child,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Janet Richardson’s been following up,’ Mower said. ‘Two developments. Blackpool police had a call from a landlord who let Holden a flat. Recognised his picture in the local paper, apparently. I don’t know who…’ he stopped, suddenly realising who might have used the local press to such good effect. ‘Anyway, they’ve done a flit, as they used to say. Packed their bags and moved on, according to the landlord. Blackpool say they’ll keep an eye out but they don’t sound too optimistic.’

  ‘And the other development?’ Thackeray asked quickly.

  ‘Fingerprints from the Mendelsons’ place, on the back door. They match Holden’s, which turned up on file. Some road rage fracas a year or so back in Milford. He was arrested but the charges weren’t proceeded with. CPS decided it was six of one and half a dozen of the other after a minor collision. Did nothing about it in the end.’

  ‘Did you tell Blackpool that?’

  ‘Yes, told them we had reason to hold him on suspicion of breaking and entering as well as the assaults. Not to hesitate if they locate him, he could be violent.’