Dishonour

by Helen Black

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Now go.’

  As Lilly and Taslima got into their car, a delivery van screeched to a halt outside the butchers.

  ‘Didn’t Mohamed say a delivery man was involved?’ hissed Taslima.

  Lilly nodded. They watched as he jumped out and made his way inside.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Taslima.

  ‘Ouch indeed,’ said Lilly.

  The man had three strips of tape stuck to the bridge of his swollen nose and both eyes were black.

  ‘How’s the boy?’ The chief super’s tone was gentler than during their last encounter.

  Jack had got up at six and spent two hours at Ryan’s bedside before coming to the station this morning. He couldn’t get Ryan’s face out of his mind. His nose and mouth were nothing more than purple pulp, his eyes completely closed. The rhythmic wheeze of the ventilator mocked the boy this living corpse had been.

  ‘He’s still unconscious, sir.’

  The chief fiddled with his cuffs. They were starched, white, perfect.

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘No sign,’ said Jack.

  The chief puffed his cheeks and blew out the air. ‘I don’t need to tell you, Jack, that this hasn’t gone quite the way we would have liked it to.’

  No, thought Jack. You would have loved it if Ryan had been at fault and I could have returned Aasha to her loving family. The police could have been publicly seen solving a crime against a Muslim girl—conveniently offsetting the case they were pursuing against a Muslim boy.

  ‘I don’t think anyone wanted it to turn out this way,’ said Jack.

  ‘No.’

  The chief looked at Jack expectantly. Jack didn’t know what he wanted. There was nothing to tell. No leads. No clues. Just a half-dead kid and a missing girl.

  ‘You’re sure the family had nothing to do with this?’ asked the chief.

  ‘Alibi,’ said Jack.

  The chief looked relieved. Two honour attacks might just finish him off.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean they’re not behind it,’ said Jack.

  He enjoyed watching the chief squirm.

  ‘Then do whatever you have to do.’ The chief straightened his tie. ‘Double check, then triple check those alibis. Speak to everyone and anyone who had contact with these children during the last week.’

  ‘That’ll take a while, sir,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’ll assign a couple of bodies to you,’ said the chief.

  Jack was astonished. He’d assumed the case would immediately be handed over to a DI.

  ‘Are you putting me in charge, sir?’

  The chief gave a curt nod. ‘Let’s find this girl.’

  As Jack left the chief’s office he shook his head to clear it. An attempted murder and a kidnapping. His time had come. In different circumstances he would have been over the moon, called up Lilly to crow and taken a bottle of wine home to celebrate. But Ryan’s mangled features robbed the moment of any pleasure. Jack knew what he had to do. He would find whoever had done this to Ryan and Aasha and put them away, for a very long time.

  When he reached the car park and unlocked his car his mobile bleeped. It was a text from Mara.

  What happened last night? I thought we had a date.

  Funny, Jack hadn’t given Mara a second thought yesterday night or this morning. In the light of everything that had happened, his infatuation was beginning to look pretty juvenile.

  He’d need to speak to her, explain that though he was flattered by the attention of such an attractive woman, their relationship was purely business.

  He deleted her text. He’d call her later when he got a chance.

  Aasha lies down on the floor of the van, hovering somewhere between asleep and awake.

  The stench of the rotting birds is now mixed with urine. Aasha hung on for as long as she could, her bladder aching as she tried to hold it in, but hours ago she wet herself.

  When the doors are finally opened, she’s blinded by daylight flooding in and puts her hands over her eyes.

  ‘Get out,’ a man shouts at her.

  She lifts her head slowly. She feels weak with fear and thirst. She hasn’t had anything to drink since she left Ryan’s and her tongue is thick in her mouth.

  ‘Get out now or I’ll shut the doors again,’ he orders.

  Aahsa pulls herself onto her knees. She still can’t see his features, her vision is too blurred, but she crawls her way to him.

  When she gets to the open door she feels a cool breeze on her face and the damp patter of rain. Without thinking, she sticks out her tongue, desperate for any liquid.

  ‘Don’t mess me around,’ grunts the man, and pulls her out. She can feel grass under her feet instead of metal and she leans against the man, knowing if she doesn’t she will fall.

  He grunts again and leads her down a gentle slope. The grass is wet from the morning and it slicks her bare feet. She has to force herself not to bend down and lick it.

  They reach a building. Aasha still can’t see properly, her eyes are all grey and fuzzy, but it seems long and made of old-fashioned stone. Everything seems quiet. No traffic rushing past, just the scrape of the man’s shoes on the doorstep and her own panic.

  He unlocks the door and nudges her inside. Without the dazzle of daylight Aasha begins to regain her sight. In the hallway are a couple of pairs of muddy boots. A single waterproof jacket is hung on a peg. Everything else is space and silence.

  Through the hallway and down a corridor the man jerks his head at a door. She sees now he is the man with the strange eye. The one who dragged her from Ryan’s flat.

  ‘Bathroom,’ he says.

  She goes straight to the sink, cups her hand under the tap and brings it to her mouth, sucking it down in noisy slurps.

  After four greedy handfuls she turns to the man, unsure what to do now.

  ‘You stink.’ He wrinkles his nose at the dark stain at her crotch and thigh. ‘Get cleaned up.’

  Aasha looks around the room. It’s empty apart from the sink, a chipped bath and an old toilet, brown with lime scale and worse.

  ‘I don’t have anything to wash with,’ she says.

  He pulls down his lip and surveys the room as though he were half expecting it to be full of scented candles and fluffy bathrobes.

  ‘Wait here,’ he says, then adds with a growl. ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘OK,’ she whispers.

  She doesn’t think she could move if she wanted to. Her head is banging and her arms and legs ache as if she has the worse bout of flu.

  Moments later he returns with a bar of soap and an old towel, ripped at the edges and rough with age. Her mum turns linen in this state into floor cloths. ‘Waste not, want not,’ she says.

  Tears spring into Aasha’s eyes. She wishes Mum were here now, with her tired face and lined hands. She would give her daughter a hug and Aasha would smell the almond oil she uses in her hair.

  ‘Why am I here?’ she asks the man.

  He snorts through his nose. ‘You know full well what you’ve done to your family.’

  She knows how angry her brothers will be. The terrible rage Imran whipped up on the day she ran away will have turned over and over in his mind until he will be ready to kill her. Ismail will join in, like he always does. Imran’s shadow, that’s what he is. That boy can’t think one of his own thoughts.

  What she can’t understand is what she’s doing in this place; why they haven’t taken her home. Is this part of the punishment? And how long will it go on for?

  ‘What happens next?’ she asks the man.

  His left eye spins uncontrollably. ‘That’s not up to me.’ The fingernails were laid in a line across the arm of the sofa. They stood out like tiny crescent moons against the brown leather.

  Mum was always nagging Ismail about biting his nails. ‘What girl will marry a man who wears his worry on his hands?’

  He was tempted to point out that the girls round here were more bothered about the size of a man�
��s BMW then the state of his cuticles.

  ‘Women like a man they know will take care of them,’ she said.

  Ismail shook his head and laughed. Dad was bald, fat and frightened of his shadow. Wasn’t that the reason Imran had had to take charge?

  He tapped each nail with his knuckle and arranged them in a circle.

  Imran sloped into the room and slouched at the other end of the sofa. He was wearing only jeans, his torso and feet naked.

  ‘Are you stressed, bro?’ he laughed.

  Well, of course Ismail was stressed. They’d asked some specialist kind of nutters to grab Aasha and as if that wasn’t bad enough, they hadn’t actually brought her home. Ismail had spent most of last night tossing and turning, waiting for them to arrive. What could have kept them this long? He flicked the nails onto the floor.

  ‘You need to learn to chill,’ said Imran, and rubbed his bare chest. ‘Or you’re going to end up with a haircut like Dad’s.’

  Ismail was in no mood for teasing. ‘Don’t take the piss, Imran. You know full well what the problem is.’

  Imran kissed his teeth and sauntered to the kitchen. His jeans were so low, the back pockets were almost at his knees. His Calvins glowed white against his hairless hips and back. He said he didn’t wax but Ismail didn’t believe him. Brothers on chemotherapy had more body hair that.

  Ismail followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Where is she?’ he hissed.

  Imran reached for a box of Shreddies, tossed one in the air and caught it in his mouth.

  Ismail’s stomach growled. He hadn’t been able to touch anything for breakfast.

  At last he voiced his main concern. ‘Do you think they’ve hurt her?’

  Imran patted his six-pack and popped another Shreddie in his mouth.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘They’ve done exactly what we asked.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to them?’

  ‘Course I have.’

  Ismail raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘How was I to know you’d been working yourself up into a frenzy?’ Imran shrugged.

  ‘So what did they say?’ Ismail asked. ‘Where the hell is she?’

  For a split second something flashed across Imran’s face. The studied cool returned almost instantaneously. Too late. Ismail had seen the expression. Uncertainty.

  ‘Things went a bit pear-shaped with the boy,’ said Imran

  ‘Ryan.’

  ‘You friends now?’

  Ismail ignored the dig. ‘What about Aasha?’

  ‘She’s fine, bro,’ said Imran. ‘She just needs to lie low while things blow over.’

  ‘I think they should bring her back now,’ said Ismail. ‘She’s probably terrified.’

  Imran slammed down the cereal box and squared up to Ismail.

  ‘Remember why we did this in the first place.’ He stabbed a finger inches from Ismail’s face. ‘That stupid bitch needs to learn a lesson.’

  Ismail sighed. His brother was right. This whole mess was Aasha’s fault. If she hadn’t gone running off with some chavvy English boy none of this would have happened.

  ‘What about Mum?’ he asked. ‘Can we at least tell her Aasha is safe?’

  ‘These people aren’t to be messed with,’ said Imran.

  ‘I know that,’ said Ismail. ‘I just want Mum to stop worrying.’

  ‘We don’t tell anybody anything.’ Imran narrowed his eyes. ‘You understand me?’

  Ismail remembered the size of Abdul Malik’s fists.

  ‘Yes.’

  The smell of disinfectant was hot at the back of Lilly’s throat.

  She loathed everything about hospitals: the harsh overhead lighting, the scratchy orange blankets and, of course, the smell.

  Her mother had worked in a sewing factory for twenty years, the fibres clogging up her lungs. When she could no longer breathe without an oxygen mask she went to St James’s to die.

  Each morning, before she took the bus into Leeds to sit on the edge of her mother’s bed, Lilly sprayed the back of her hand with perfume. When the lifts doors opened and the nurses greeted her with cheery enquiries as to how she was getting on with her exams, Lilly pushed her nose into the skin of her hand and breathed in lavender and lemon.

  Today she had nothing to stave off the stench and, worse still, her sense of smell was heightened by pregnancy.

  A sister with happy eyes and a solid frame approached her. ‘Are you looking for Maternity, love?’

  Lilly was puzzled. Then she saw herself with her bulging lump and swollen ankles.

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Not due yet.’

  The sister placed a firm palm at the point where Lilly’s stomach met her pelvis. The gesture, though intimate, was not remotely intrusive. God, Lilly hoped she would get someone like this at the birth.

  ‘The baby’s head’s down,’ said the sister. ‘He’s just waiting for the right moment.’

  Lilly put her hand over the sister’s. ‘Could you tell him that now is most definitely not the right moment.’

  ‘I can tell him,’ she laughed, ‘but I can’t promise he’s listening.’

  ‘I’ve already got one just like that,’ said Lilly. ‘I don’t need another.’

  The sister let out a low chuckle. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve come to see the policeman visiting Ryan Sanders,’ said Lilly.

  The sister pursed her lips, all humour gone. ‘That poor boy,’ she said.

  She led Lilly down the corridor to a private room at the end.

  ‘Make sure you catch the animals that did this,’ she said.

  Lilly was about to explain that she wasn’t a copper but thought better of it. After all, she certainly did want to see Ryan’s attackers arrested.

  She peeped through the window to see if she could attract Jack’s attention. What she saw took her breath away.

  The boy lay completely still on the bed, his face like smashed fruit. Tubes snaked up his nose and into his mouth. Jack sat on a chair beside the bed, his hand on the blanket, beside but not touching Ryan’s. The room was entirely still and silent apart from the soft sigh of the ventilator.

  Lilly watched them both, like characters in a tableau, until she felt the warmth of someone behind her. A thin woman with skin almost as colourless as Ryan’s was also watching through the window. She could have been a corpse but for her hand, which fluttered across her bloodless lips.

  Lilly guessed she was the boy’s mother. ‘Mrs Sanders?’

  The woman looked startled, as if she hadn’t noticed all twelve stone of Lilly and her shock of red curls.

  ‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ she asked.

  Lilly had seen enough head injuries to know it was entirely possible.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said.

  The woman raised both hands to the window but she didn’t let them touch the glass. Instead they hovered and shook in mid-air, each finger bloody and raw.

  The movement made Jack look up and he nodded to Lilly. He murmured something to Ryan and made his way out of the room.

  ‘Why don’t you sit with him a while?’ he asked Mrs Sanders.

  Her fingers scraped wildly against her teeth but she didn’t refuse, and let Jack lead her gently to her son’s bedside. Lilly watched as he pressed her into the chair and crouched at her feet to speak to her. It reminded her of why she had fallen in love with this man and she was filled with regret and sadness about what she had discovered.

  No one’s perfect, no one’s perfect, she told herself over and over.

  He left mother and son together.

  ‘Hi.’ His eyes were tired but there was an energy to him that hadn’t been there the previous night.

  ‘How is he?’ Lilly asked.

  Jack shrugged. ‘No change.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about all this,’ said Lilly, ‘and how the family all had alibis.’

  ‘Bloody convenient,’ said Jack.

&nbs
p; ‘What if they didn’t do it themselves?’ she asked. ‘What if they got a group to do it for them?’

  Jack arched his eyebrows. ‘What group?’

  ‘When we were digging around to see if anyone else could have killed Yasmeen Khan we came across a local gang of men calling themselves the PTF.’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ said Jack.

  ‘Nor had I,’ Lilly agreed, ‘but it seems they’ve taken it upon themselves to keep the Muslim girls in the area on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Girls like Aasha.’

  Lilly smiled. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So how do I find this PTF?’ asked Jack.

  ‘That’s been the hard part,’ said Lilly. ‘People haven’t been falling over themselves to finger them.’

  ‘Isn’t that always the way?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Lilly paused. ‘But I have a name.’

  A smile spread across Jack’s face like sunrise.

  ‘Abdul Malik. He delivers halal meat,’ said Lilly.

  ‘You,’ Jack shook her shoulders, ‘are the bloody best.’

  ‘Maybe if I described him to Mrs Sanders she might remember him,’ said Lilly.

  Jack turned to the window. Ryan’s mother sat rocking in the chair.

  ‘I don’t think she remembers anything much.’

  Lilly nodded. Ordinarily she would have agreed that Mrs Sanders would not have made the best witness but this was no ordinary situation.

  ‘He’s very well built, huge really,’ she said.

  Jack smiled but she could tell he didn’t think these details would be enough to have made an impact on someone like Mrs Sanders.

  ‘More importantly,’ she added,‘he’s sporting a broken nose and two black eyes. Even Ryan’s mum couldn’t have missed that.’

  Jack pulled on a white paper suit and tucked his hair into the elasticated hood. He had never understood how SOCO could work in this uncomfortable get-up.

  He dipped under the yellow police tape stuck across the Sanders’ door, and headed into the kitchen, rustling with each step.

  ‘Well, if isn’t Madonna.’ The head of the forensic team carefully lifted shards of smashed glass with tweezers and placed them in a transparent evidence bag.

  Nathan Cheney was an old mate. He and Jack had cemented their friendship on an all-night bender and it had survived the years on a diet of greasy curries and taking the piss. Jack’s current healthy living regime was the source of much amusement.