Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set

by Tony Hutchinson

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Would you mind stepping into that office over there,’ Sam said.

  She pointed to a glass window on the platform. She had walked into the British Transport Police base as soon as they’d arrived at the station and asked for an office in the event Mrs Bhandal got off a train.

  ‘Why?’ Bhandal demanded, taking his wife’s arm and supporting her.

  ‘We want to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Can’t it wait? My wife’s had a busy day and you’ve just caused her to fall to the ground.’

  ‘We want to ask her about her day,’ Sam said. ‘Specifically, we want to ask her where she’s been and what’s she’s been doing?”

  Bhandal’s face twisted with rage.

  ‘This is outrageous! Harassment, that’s what it is. Harassment. We are peace-loving people.’

  Sam held his glare. ‘Mr Bhandal, can we go into that office please?’

  ‘Racists!’ he shouted, and spat at Sam’s feet.

  Sam leaned in close, bent down a little, and whispered into his ear.

  ‘I’ve asked you nicely, now if you want to make a scene and get arrested for a public order offence, be my guest. Your wife can either come voluntarily, or she can be arrested.’

  He stepped backwards and spoke with aggression, but there was fear drifting like smoke in his voice. ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Suspicion of theft.’

  Mrs Bhandal had not moved or even looked up when her husband shouted. Her head was still bowed and she was still staring at the ground.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sam said. She took a step forward and everyone followed.

  Bhandal began talking in Punjabi. Under normal circumstances Sam would tell him to use English but knew his wife didn’t speak any. More importantly, she knew Ed spoke enough Punjabi to understand them.

  ‘What did he say?’ Sam whispered, standing in the corridor next to the open door of the office where Aisha’s parents were sitting.

  ‘Told her to say nothing,’ Ed said. ‘He asked her where the card was but she never answered.’

  Sam’s phone rang, a call from Bev. She listened then put the mobile back in her coat pocket.

  ‘Everything Sanderson said about the sofa is true,’ she told Ed. ‘Bhandal bought one on Saturday and another on Monday morning, which he insisted was delivered straight away. Right, let’s arrest him on suspicion of assaulting Aisha and her for theft of the bank card.’

  ‘Do you want another car to take them back separately?’

  ‘Let’s keep them together,’ Sam said after a moment’s thought. ‘If they talk, you’ll know what they’re saying. I’ll drive, you concentrate on them.’

  Sam walked into the room. Both of them had ignored the wooden chairs. ‘Would Mrs Bhandal like a glass of water?’ Sam asked.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Mr Bhandal, I am arresting you on suspicion of assault.’

  ‘What?’ His speech was measured. He was back in control of his emotions. ‘How dare you.’

  ‘I dare,’ Sam told him. ‘Interestingly, you never asked who you allegedly assaulted.’

  Bhandal stared at her, lips clenched, his eyes burning into hers. If a portrait artist had wanted to paint raw hostility, Bhandal, in that electric moment, would have been the perfect muse.

  Sam was speaking again.

  ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of assault on Aisha Bhandal. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Bhandal’s hands were by his side, fists clenched tight, upper body stiff, the veins running like power lines down his neck.

  ‘Outrageous,’ he said, voice thick with venom. ‘What is the nature of your evidence? Racist, that’s all you are, that’s what your organisation is... honour crimes indeed. We are grief-stricken parents, nothing more. Your actions today will haunt you for the rest of your career.’

  ‘Is your car in a car park?’ Sam asked him, calm and unmoved.

  ‘What? No.’ Bhandal’s voice had dropped in volume. ‘My son brought me. We were going to get the train home.’

  Sam nodded once.

  ‘Tell your wife she is arrested on suspicion of the theft of Aisha’s bank card.’

  Like a Bonfire Night rocket the aggression was back, as was the volume.

  ‘On what grounds?!’

  Sam knew the best way to hold the upper hand with someone shouting the odds was to keep her own voice normal and conversational.

  ‘Just tell her.’

  Bhandal spoke quickly. Ed listened.

  ‘We are being arrested,’ Bhandal told his wife in Punjabi. ‘It’s ridiculous. Say nothing until I get Jill Carver to see you. They will have to get an interpreter. Don’t speak until Carver is there. Have you got the bank card?’

  Her eyes were still fixed on the floor. She shook her head.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sam hung back as they all walked to the car and rang Bev Summers.

  ‘Get round to the house and arrest the son for theft of a motor vehicle. Take Paul with you. Get the sister to a Place of Safety. See what Social Services can do but good luck with that on a Saturday. We’re bringing the mother and father down. Son dropped father off so you’ll probably have to park up and wait for him.’

  Ed was leaning against the driver’s wing, head turned, watching his rear-seat passengers who were both staring straight ahead, saying nothing.

  ‘You keep an eye on them while I talk to you,’ he told Sam, ‘I don’t want them seeing my lips move.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘He asked if she had the bank card. She shook her head.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ Ed said. ‘So it’s either in London, on the train, or in this station.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about the train or London at the minute. Let me go back into the station. You sit with them.’

  Sam walked back into the British Transport Police office, closing the door behind her. She contacted Technical Support and told them what she wanted, that it had to be done as soon as Bev had the son in custody and the younger daughter out of the way.

  On the platform, she went to the information centre, obtained authority to get through the ticket barriers and walked to Platform 1.

  She stood there, looking up to the bridge. Could Parkash Bhandal have seen her and Ed? Possibly, but she didn’t recall the woman looking up. She walked the route Parkash had walked towards the ticket barrier, kept her eyes on the ground. Nothing.

  She walked to the coffee stall and replayed the fall, the bag sliding across the floor, Bhandal retrieving it for his wife. She remembered Mrs Bhandal had her purse in her hand. Sam closed her eyes and saw her falling, feet nearest her and Ed, her head further away, her hands six feet from the coffee store.

  Sam dropped to lie flat on her stomach, ignoring the stares she was attracting, and switched on the torch in her phone. The beam shot like a laser underneath the stall.

  Bev had her head against the side window staring out of the windscreen. Sitting around was always boring, often futile. People weren’t robots; they had their own thoughts, didn’t always go where you thought they would.

  They’d been there 40 minutes and were now attracting the curtain-twitchers. Another 10 minutes and they’d have to move. Someone was bound to call the police and there was nothing better at drawing attention than a marked police car pulling up alongside.

  ‘Here he comes,’ Paul said, shuffling in his seat, using the steering wheel to haul himself upright.

  Baljit drove into the street and stopped outside the family home.

  Bev and Paul were out of the car before he had switched off the engine off and by his open door before he put a foot on the pavement.

  ‘Baljit Bhandal,’ Bev said, ‘I am arresting you for theft of a motor vehicle.’

  ‘What you on about?’ he
said, climbing out of the car.

  She cautioned him. ‘Right, let’s go.’

  Bev took his arm but he jerked it away, ‘Get your hands off me, bitch!’

  Bev looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Don’t like being told what to do by a woman, is that it? An affront to your manhood?’ She grabbed his arm again, tighter this time. ‘Your sort doesn’t frighten me. The car’s over there. Let’s go.’

  He yanked his arm away again but walked towards their car, hands in pockets, silent. Once he was in the back seat, Bev walked to the house and knocked on the door.

  ‘Hi, are you Mia?’

  A nod.

  ‘My name is DC Bev Summers.’

  Bev knew the girl was 15 but she was tiny and looked about 12.

  ‘Your parents and brother have been arrested.’

  ‘Why? What have they done?’ She put her index finger to her lip.

  ‘I can’t tell you that, but we’ll look after you.’ Bev didn’t want to sound too official, talking about duty of care and places of safety. ‘We can’t leave you alone. We don’t know how long your parents and brother will be, so we’ll take you to the police station and take it from there. Don’t worry. You’re not in any trouble.’

  ‘Can’t I just stay here?’ She looked like she might cry.

  ‘No. Really, don’t worry. We’ll look after you.’

  ‘Is it about Aisha?’

  Bev was silent.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Mia said in a rush. ‘Do you know where she is? Do they?’

  Bev saw Mia’s eyes fill.

  ‘It’ll be okay sweetheart.’

  Bev looked away, rang the HOLMES room, and asked for someone to come and collect Mia.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Bev said. ‘Let’s get a cold drink while we wait for my colleague. Where’s the kitchen?’

  Every member of the family who’d been arrested requested Jill Carver when the custody sergeant asked if they wanted legal advice.

  Sam was in the CID office having a cup of coffee when the solicitor’s call came through.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Sam said to Ed. ‘Not bad.’

  Forget the pleasantries. Carver, no surprise, was straight down to business.

  ‘You have my clients in custody. They will not be interviewed unless I am present. You will need an interpreter for Mrs Bhandal.’

  ‘Clients,’ Sam repeated. ‘Am I to take it you will be representing all three?’

  ‘Correct.’ The voice glacial.

  ‘Clearly that won’t allow us to deal with them expeditiously,’ Sam said smoothly. ‘We can only interview them one at a time.’

  ‘They understand that,’ Carver replied. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘What about a conflict of interest? You’re representing all three.’

  Sam heard a long, scornful sigh.

  ‘Inspector Parker, let me remind you it is a matter for me to decide whether there’s a conflict of interest, not you. And besides, I understand that my clients have all been arrested for different matters, so how can there possibly be a conflict of interest? Unless, of course, you’re suggesting that everything is linked.’

  ‘Time will tell,’ Sam said, side-stepping the trap. You’re not daft. You know they’re all linked. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you in the interviews.’

  ‘I’ll be there within the hour. You decide who is first.’

  Sam replaced the receiver and met Ed’s questioning look.

  ‘Right,’ she told him. ‘We’ve got an hour.’

  Sam and Ed showed their ID at the gatehouse. The guy who should have been living on his state pension looked at their warrant cards, checked their names against a list on his clipboard, made a quick phone call and directed them to an allocated parking space. This was not a police-owned building. It was a secure site, manned 24 hours, and certain branches of the police rented office space: surveillance teams, source-handling teams, and technical support. All covert policing was housed here but even the vast majority of police officers had no idea of its existence.

  Sam and Ed spoke with Detective Sergeant Gary Ross.

  ‘We’ll provide the majority of the officers for the listening post,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll be guided by your staff, but my thoughts were a probe in the living room and kitchen.’

  The DS nodded. ‘When do you want them putting in?’

  ‘Tonight,’ Sam told him. ‘Three suspects are in custody. The daughter is the only member of the household who will be at liberty. We’ll find a place for her to stay, but that’s not to say she won’t return to the house.’

  Ross was making notes.

  ‘The surveillance team will provide an outer cordon,’ he said. ‘They’ll notify those in the house if she’s coming back, give them time to get out. We’ll need a photograph of her.’

  Sam said that was no problem, she would have one emailed across.

  ‘I’ll leave the entry to you and your people,’ she told Ross.

  He stood and studied the blown-up street map of the area where the Bhandal family lived.

  ‘We’ll go in after dark,’ he said, breaking the short silence. ‘Put a surveillance cordon around here.’

  His index figure drew an imaginary circle on the map.

  ‘There are only so many ways on to that street. You go ‘live’ whenever you’re ready. We can talk about a strategy around removing them as and when.’

  ‘That’s great, thanks,' Sam said.

  Outside, she and Ed stood by the car, enjoying the relatively warm weather.

  ‘What do you want to do about the girls?’ Ed asked. ‘We were going to get them in tomorrow.’

  Sam acknowledged their hands had been forced with the Bhandals, who would still be in custody the following day.

  ‘We’ll have to put the girls on the back burner,’ she said. ‘We’re spread thin as it is. We can only do what we can do.’

  She fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes.

  ‘We’ve already got three in custody,’ she went on. ‘They’ll need interviewing and we’ll need bodies to complete any actions that come out of the interviews. We’ll also use a boat-load of staff in the listening post.’

  She lit a cigarette, guilt fighting a losing battle with gratitude, and continued: ‘Granted we’ll not have anything to listen to until they’re released, but it needs covering 24 hours a day, so whoever is doing the night shift Sunday can’t work days as well…nightmare this. Maybe I should ring Westminster, see if they can spare some bodies from the Home Office.’

  Ed leaned against the bonnet, stretched out his legs, and mimed a pair of moving scales.

  ‘Politicians? Real life? Not what you’d call comfortable bedfellows. Best just crack on.’

  Sam smiled. ‘You’re right, and you know what… that’s the bloody tragedy. Policing on the cheap and the only loser is Joe Public.’

  Ed shrugged and watched Sam take another deep draw on the cigarette.

  ‘We can only do what we can do,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about things that are beyond your control. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to getting in an interview room. I just need to see how Bev got on, then I’m off to see Fatty Sanderson. Tell you what, drop me off. His place is only round the corner from the nick.’

  Sam found the CID office at Seaton St George empty. She sat down in the DI’s office, pulled the swivel chair close to the desk, and began doodling with a biro on the desktop blotting pad.

  If Aisha and Sukhi were dead, where were the bodies? Her family weren’t gangsters, they hadn’t fed them to the pigs. Where would they dump two bodies?

  Her phone snapped her out of the trance.

  ‘They’ve done the checks you asked for on the drowners,’ she heard Bev begin. ‘Looks like they all knew each other to varying extents, a decent bet with them all going to university, but during freshers’ week last year every one of them wore one of those hashtag T-shirts. Apparently there were loads of the student lads wearing them, not
just the group we’ve been looking at.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ed negotiated the creased and discarded lager tins in the overgrown front garden, stepped over the rusty trike and hammered on the front door. The music was blaring, but he still heard Joey 'Fatty' Sanderson shout ‘door!’.

  The greasy-haired brunette who appeared was holding a child against her left hip. Ed couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl... the infant was naked save for a disposable nappy and two lines of bright green snot were running from its nose to lip.

  ‘Give him a shout, Lizzie,’ Ed grinned.

  Lizzie Makepiece, mid-20s and about the same in stones, turned away. ‘Joey!’ she screamed. The child started to howl; perforated eardrum, Ed imagined.

  He heard Sanderson before he saw him.

  ‘Will you shut that fucking kid up and wipe his fucking nose.’ Sanderson appeared at the doorway. 'Now what?’

  ‘Just a quick one,’ Ed said. ‘Well, two quick ones. Firstly, Karan Singh no longer wants to employ your security company and neither do any of his business associates on that street.’

  ‘Says who?’ Sanderson growled.

  ‘Says me, Fatty,’ Ed grinned again. ‘Which brings me nicely on to the second thing? If I hear that your security company is still doing business with Mr Singh, I’ll tell Billy Wilson if he wants to pay you a visit, he can feel free.’

  ‘He’s paid me a visit,’ Sanderson snapped back. ‘I’ve had to buy him a new fucking settee. You know when I told you people in my world called you a twat but it was a sign of respect. Forget it. You’re just a twat.’

  ‘I love you too.’ Ed pursed his lips, blew him a kiss, and lowered his voice. ‘Remember you were the one providing information to the police to save your skin. Now that wouldn’t go down too well if it got out. So leave Mr Singh alone, understood?’

  Sanderson stood there, eyes wild, glaring.

  ‘And don’t go in there and take it out on Lizzie,’ Ed hissed. ‘If she calls the cops because you’ve beaten her up, I’ll let it slip you’re a grass.’