by A. A. Dhand
‘Which twenty-year-old girl does? I meant what can you tell me about what she was involved in?’
Nash shrugged.
An ambulance pulled up, sirens screaming. Blue lights bounced off the buildings as it flashed past the men.
‘How long were you watching her?’ asked Harry, his concentration unbroken by the drama.
‘It wasn’t like that. Sentry duty wasn’t my thing. I just checked in on her a couple of times a week. Ronnie was taking his own shit out on me this morning. He knows I did my damn job.’
‘Haven’t seen him like that before.’
‘He’s getting worse.’
‘Tell me.’
Nash shook his head. ‘He’s got a year, maybe eighteen months before Bradford becomes too much for him. And he’s drinking again.’
‘Fuck off,’ said Harry, incredulous.
‘You didn’t smell it on him this morning? I thought you were supposed to be sharp.’
Harry cast his mind back eighteen hours. Doubt began to creep in.
‘Don’t be surprised. Never met an alkie who could fight the thirst.’
Nash finished his cigarette, stubbed it out on the bench and slipped the stub into his pocket.
‘You know something about Tara,’ said Harry. ‘You might not think you do, but it’s there.’
‘In …’ Nash looked at his watch ‘… three hours, I’m on a train out of here. Contractual obligation. This isn’t my problem any more.’
‘I could stop you—’
‘No, you can’t,’ said Nash, laughing and turning to face Harry. ‘You’re as guilty as anyone. But unlike me, someone is foolish enough to trust you with safeguarding this city.’ He spat on the floor.
‘You want to tell me something,’ said Harry, ‘or you wouldn’t have started talking. What is it? You owe me.’
A couple of doctors, stethoscopes bouncing around their necks, hurried out of the main entrance, running past them towards the ambulance bay.
‘Seems the shit’s hitting the fan everywhere tonight,’ said Nash, looking after them. He struggled to his feet, yawning widely. ‘Almost makes me feel lucky.’
‘Come on, Nash.’
‘Argh, it’s probably nothing,’ he said, searching his pockets for something. ‘You got a tenner?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘You got any cash? Need a taxi to the station. No way I’m catching the bus like this.’
Harry found his wallet and withdrew a ten-pound note but didn’t hand it over.
‘Used to be a time information was paid at decent rates,’ said Nash.
Harry removed another note. ‘You don’t need it, Nash. I know what Ronnie was paying you.’
‘Yorkshireman always likes a good day’s pay for a good day’s work, you should know that.’
Harry put his wallet away but kept the notes in his hand.
‘He tell you why she left home?’ asked Nash.
Harry nodded.
‘Which part?’
‘She found out what he really does.’
Nash sniggered. ‘Right.’
Harry stood up. ‘She didn’t know?’
‘Oh, she knew,’ said Nash. ‘You ask the boy wonder how. But that’s not why she wanted to leave home.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Come on, Nash,’ said Harry.
‘You know what? I think I will get that bus.’
Harry put his hand firmly on Nash’s broken arm, just above the plaster, squeezing hard.
‘That’s low.’ Nash winced. ‘Even for you.’
‘Why’d she leave?’
‘You like to go out on Friday nights, Harry?’ he asked, easing his arm free of Harry’s grip.
‘Not really.’
‘Tara did.’
‘OK,’ said Harry, not seeing where this was headed.
‘Can’t be easy for a dad, or a granddad like hers, when the lady of the house wants to go to the Candy Club every Friday night.’
‘Candy Club?’
‘Don’t know your city quite as well as you think, do you, Harry?’
Harry ran a search on his phone.
‘Friday nights, Harry,’ said Nash.
Harry brought the screen closer to his face.
‘Question is,’ said Nash, grinning shadily before walking away, ‘who knew about it – and was it worth killing for?’
TWENTY-FIVE
HARRY WAVED DOWN the seven-seater Peugeot as it arrived outside the entrance to A & E, his mind bursting with questions. The tinted window of the passenger side was lowered and Harry confirmed the booking name with the driver.
He climbed into the back and searched for the driver’s ID on the dash.
Bilal Musa. Billy.
‘Cheers, boss,’ said Harry, keeping the hood of his raincoat over his head to conceal his face, ‘pissing it down.’ Harry felt for the knife he’d borrowed from Sarah’s hotel room, tucking it up the sleeve of his jacket.
Billy glanced in the rear-view mirror with narrow eyes and nodded. His frame was packed into the seat, meaty, thunderous. ‘Others?’
‘Sorry,’ said Harry, brushing water on to the floor from his coat, ‘things changed inside with my grandma.’ He pointed towards the hospital. ‘My brother needs to get home to bring my mother here. He’s got a car full of relatives and is waiting next to the M606 on the Euroway Trading Estate. Can we collect them from there? Saves time.’
Billy looked apprehensive.
Harry passed £140 over Billy’s shoulder. ‘They said this would cover it?’
That eased Billy, who took the money and pulled away.
Harry slouched into his seat, his mind overloaded with noise. The Candy Club was a notorious gay bar in Bradford.
Was that why she had been so desperate to leave home?
For now, he was forced to push Nash’s new information from his mind and focus instead on what Sarah had said about Billy.
Harry engaged him in bullshit chat, the usual about his car and the taxi firm. He carefully established that this was Billy’s personal car, one he had purposely bought because the seven-seater gave him a niche in the market.
Harry could see a simple tracker wired into the GPS and radio. As soon as they were unplugged, Billy would be all Harry’s.
Billy looked a little older than Harry, maybe forty. He had a neatly shaven head, spoke with a Bradford accent, and was wearing a traditional black shalwar kameez and a jacket.
Harry’s attention turned to a piece of string hanging from the rear-view mirror, a tiny cylindrical container swaying at the end.
A taweez; an Islamic necklace to ward away evil. It held a scroll on which protective Arabic words were written. Over the years, Saima had paid a holy man to create several; to protect her pregnancy, to watch over Aaron, to keep their home safe.
Billy, it seemed, was afraid of something.
An Asian radio station was playing Bollywood tracks from Harry’s youth and his mind was briefly taken back to his parents’ living room above the corner shop, aged twelve. A Saturday-night ritual; two Indian movies from the local rental shop for a quid. They were always cheap copies and Harry had to get up every half-hour to adjust the tracking on the VCR. He and Ronnie would lie on the carpet, arguing over whose turn it was next.
Simpler, happier times.
Now nothing more than nostalgia.
Harry directed Billy into Bierley, the estate in front of Euroway.
At the bottom, he told him to head towards the warehouses. Harry removed the knife from his sleeve, then his phone.
The Euroway estate housed several cash-and-carries, none of them Ronnie’s but Harry knew the area well. He had spent his youth traipsing around here with his father and had been given his first unofficial driving lesson by him in the car park.
Now the estate had been left to rot, the buildings abandoned and disintegrating. Seemed to be the same story right across the city.
Harry directed Billy to the far end,
where the streetlights were out and he knew the warehouses were empty. Putting the phone to his ear, he pretended to talk to his brother, organizing a pick-up location. As instructed, Billy pulled over outside the metal gates of an abandoned warehouse.
The second Billy engaged the handbrake, Harry leaned forward and put his arm around his neck, the blade of the knife across Billy’s throat. ‘One fucking wrong move.’
Billy tried to struggle and Harry put his weight into the sleeper hold.
‘Hey, hey!’ Harry pushed the blade up Billy’s nose until he hit bone. ‘You want to try me?’
Billy stilled. Harry told him to remove the GPS tracker and radio from its power source and turn it off. He twisted the knife so Billy got a shock and frantically obeyed.
‘Turn the car off. Throw the keys into the passenger footwell.’ Billy did as he asked.
Harry told him to put his hands on the steering wheel. He tightened his grip around Billy’s neck, removed the knife from his nose and grabbed his handcuffs, perfectly placed at his side. With the fluidity of a seasoned pro, Harry slapped one half across Billy’s left hand then told him to thread the other side under the steering and secure his right, trapping Billy where he sat.
Billy didn’t flinch. He was either resigned to his predicament or, more worryingly, he wasn’t afraid.
‘Very clever,’ said Billy. ‘What now?’
‘Where’s your phone?’
Billy hesitated until Harry leaned back into his seat, his full weight on Billy’s windpipe.
‘Inside pocket,’ said Billy, wheezing.
Harry relaxed his grip and slipped his hand inside Billy’s pocket, removing his phone.
Billy gritted his teeth. ‘What now, benchaud?’ It was the most vulgar Asian profanity.
Harry got out of the car, walked around to get in the front next to Billy. He put the knife on the dashboard, picked up the keys from the floor and looked towards the driver’s seat. Billy was smiling.
‘Something funny?’
‘You’re making a big mistake.’
‘I hope so.’
Billy shook his head and swore again.
Harry pulled up a recent picture of Tara on his phone, one Ronnie had sent him that morning. He thrust the phone in Billy’s face, watching him intensely.
No reaction.
He was either very good or he’d never seen her.
‘You know this girl?’
Billy kept looking at the screen. ‘I pick up hundreds of girls every week.’
‘I mean personally. Do you know this girl personally?’
‘No.’ Billy looked away.
‘Not what I heard.’
‘You heard wrong. That all this is? Some randi?’
The word meant slut in Punjabi.
Harry grabbed the back of Billy’s head and smashed his face into the steering wheel; his nose gave a sickening crunch.
‘Benchaud!’ shouted Billy, his eyes blinded by tears, blood streaking down his face.
‘This is my niece,’ said Harry. ‘You repeat that word and I’ll break the rest of your face.’
‘What do you want?’
He waited for Billy to stop thrashing.
‘She was found murdered yesterday morning.’ Again, no reaction.
Billy used his shoulder to wipe the blood from his nose. ‘So? In this city, that’s not news.’
‘I heard you’d taken a liking to her.’
‘I told you.’ He was struggling to steady his breathing through a bloodied nose.
‘You’re not lying to me, are you, Billy?’
The use of his name momentarily threw him. His eyes flickered towards the badge on his dashboard.
Bilal Musa.
‘I told you,’ Harry read what was going through his mind, ‘someone said you know this girl.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Last time, Billy. You sure you’ve never seen her?’
He shook his head.
Harry reached for the phone on the central console. He pressed Billy’s thumb into the iPhone’s home button, unlocking the screen.
‘Sure you’ve never seen her?’
‘Fuck off.’ Billy was glancing nervously at his phone.
Harry removed Tara’s phone from his pocket, the one Sarah had given him in the New Beehive, and accessed Tara’s number. He punched it into Billy’s phone and pressed the call button. A selfie of Tara and Billy flashed on the screen.
Billy glanced worriedly at Harry, who nodded slowly. He threw Tara’s phone on the dash, grabbing the knife instead and jammed the tip under Billy’s chin.
‘Your night just got a whole lot worse, benchaud.’
TWENTY-SIX
‘YOU’RE GOING TO tell me you don’t know how you got her number. Right?’ Harry trawled Billy’s call logs and saw two dozen calls over the past week. He focused on Saturday night when Tara had been murdered.
She’d called him six times. All around midnight. He hadn’t answered once.
Billy remained quiet, staring out of the windscreen.
Harry accessed the photographs on Billy’s phone. Hundreds of pictures of young girls – opportunistic shots taken while they weren’t looking. In his taxi, at a playground and several in someone’s living room, but no pictures of Tara.
‘You like them young?’ he said, turning the phone towards Billy, who just smiled back.
Harry scratched the stubble on his face. Billy’s arrogance was causing his anger to rise. ‘We really going to play this game?’
‘Fuck you.’
Harry scrolled to ‘Recently Deleted’ photos on Billy’s phone. He knew what he’d find before he opened the folder: Tara.
Harry’s temper fractured, his face tense, eyes burning.
‘How much do you think this car weighs? Got to be, what, ton and a half?’
Billy looked perplexed. Harry threw the phone on the dash, an image of Tara blowing a kiss filling the screen, and got out of the car.
Harry’s blood was on fire as he opened Billy’s boot and removed the car jack, all sense of reason lost.
He rolled up his sleeves, ignoring the rain, ignoring the warning at the back of his mind. ‘You want to play, let’s fucking play,’ he whispered.
Ten minutes later, Harry had raised the front of the car a foot off the ground.
He opened the back door and got in carefully, mindful not to jump the vehicle off the jack. Harry wrapped his arm around Billy’s neck and pulled back, choking him until he faded into unconsciousness. The taweez hanging from the mirror caught Harry’s eye again. He ripped it from its perch and shoved it in his pocket.
Outside, Harry opened the driver’s door and unlocked the handcuffs. He pulled Billy’s unconscious body from the vehicle, allowing him to crash to the ground. The car shuddered on the jack.
The impact roused Billy. Harry was caught flat-footed as he scrambled to his feet.
‘Now you’re done,’ said Billy, taking huge gulps of night air and massaging his neck.
Harry calmly lifted the handcuffs from the steering wheel, put them in his back pocket and closed the door. The interior light went off, plunging them into darkness.
They stood a few feet apart, waiting. Harry kept his arms arrogantly folded across his chest. Under the jacket Billy was wearing, his shalwar kameez was flapping against his body, revealing a meaty frame.
Billy inched forward until he was close enough to throw a punch. Instead he grabbed at Harry, who stepped aside, leading Billy away from the car. The punch that followed hit only air, inches from Harry’s face.
Billy lunged again, leaving himself wide open. Harry slapped him; a full palm-strike, a sudden explosive crack.
The ultimate insult to an Asian man: to be slapped like his father would have done.
Billy, enraged, launched himself at Harry, who again moved out of the way.
Another slap.
They repeated the charade, Billy grew angrier and lost all sense of battle-readiness. Harry kept it up u
ntil he heard the one thing he had been waiting for.
A wheeze.
Billy was slowing.
A minute later, Billy was stationary, huffing and puffing like he’d sprinted the hundred. His face showed angry red marks where Harry had struck him, the blood was still leaking from his nose.
This time Harry didn’t slap him. Instead he coiled his body, then threw an elbow into Billy’s face.
Another crack, Billy’s cheekbone imploded before the big man hit the ground.
When Billy came round, the side of his head was trapped under the car tyre. Harry had used the jack to lower the car just enough to hold Billy’s skull firmly to the concrete.
The panic was immediate.
Billy tried to push the wheel but it was futile, the weight of the seven-seater was inescapable. If Harry kicked the jack from underneath the car, it would shatter Billy’s skull.
Harry was sitting beside him, his hand on top of the wheel. He applied sudden downward pressure.
Billy screamed as the impact hit him.
‘Let’s start with an easy question,’ said Harry, and waved Billy’s phone in the air. ‘What’s the unlock code?’
Reluctantly, Billy gave Harry the pin.
‘That’s the kind of cooperation I’m looking for, Billy-boy. Now, let’s try something else. Did you kill my niece?’
He screamed he hadn’t, swore every kasam he could think of.
‘You lied to me. Your kasam, your promise, means nothing,’ said Harry, giving the tyre another shake.
Billy grew angry. ‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with. You’re dead – even if you kill me, you’re dead.’
The confirmation Harry needed. There were others.
He stood up and wound the carjack down a quarter-turn.
Billy’s head compressed into the tarmac, the pressure causing blood to run down the side of his face.
‘No!’ he screamed.
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ said Harry. ‘Not my style,’ he added truthfully. He repositioned himself next to Billy. ‘Everything so far tells me you killed my niece. So start talking or I’m going to keep turning that jack until your skull cracks – which by my reckoning is two more quarter-turns. Bone will pierce your brain, causing it to bleed. Once you’re brain-damaged I’ll drop you at the hospital – you’ll suffer the rest of your miserable life.’ Harry shook the tyre again. ‘We’re not far off, are we?’