Comply or Die

by Tony Hutchinson

  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.’

  Ed pulled away from Sanderson’s bloated face.

  ‘You want to sort this garden out, give the bairn somewhere nice to play.’

  He walked, almost skipped, down the scruffy path, smiling so wide his cheeks burned.

  Sanderson remained at the door, watching, silent.

  ‘Carver’s downstairs,’ Sam said, as Ed walked into the office.

  ‘Let’s crack on. Who we doing first?’

  ‘The brother,’ Sam told him. ‘Bit aggressive when he got locked up. Looks like he has a problem with women.’

  ‘But represented by one,’ Ed said.

  ‘That’ll be his dad,’ Sam reasoned. ‘Let’s see if I can rattle his cage.’

  Jill Carver was sitting at the front desk, Paul Smith ‘Kennington’ glasses, a £500 touch with ultra-thin varifocal lenses, perched on top of her head, a loose-fitting blouse fastened to her neck, and shapeless trousers.

  ‘No tight, revealing gear today,’ Ed whispered in Sam’s ear. ‘She must have got changed. Doesn’t want to offend her clients.’

  ‘Ms Carver, if you’d like to come through,’ Sam said when they were close. ‘We’ll interview Baljit first.’

  ‘On suspicion of theft of a motor vehicle?’ Carver was walking behind them.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sam said.

  Sam led Carver into an empty interview room in the cell block and put two tapes into the machine.

  ‘I am now handing Ms Carver a piece of paper on which is written the pre-interview disclosure.’

  Carver snatched it and read.

  Pre Interview disclosure

  A Ford Fiesta motor vehicle was found in a lock-up garage in Plymouth. It had been stripped down. The car was owned by Sukhvinder Sahota. The police wish to interview Baljit Bhandal with regard to his knowledge of the vehicle, to which he is forensically linked.’

  ‘What is the forensic evidence?’ Carver demanded.

  ‘He is forensically linked to the vehicle,’ Sam told her. ‘As for what the forensic evidence is, I’m not prepared to tell you at this stage.’

  Carver shook her head and started tutting, a stroppy teenager who’d just been told she couldn’t go to the all-night party.

  ‘Let me speak with my client.’

  Twenty minutes later, the private consultation between Carver and Baljit finished, Sam and Ed walked into the interview room.

  Sam turned on the tapes, completed the introductions and reminded him that he was still under caution.

  ‘I want to ask you about your knowledge of a Ford Fiesta motor vehicle owned by Sukhvinder Sahota.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Sukhi?’ Baljit asked. ‘Where is he? Top lad.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Course I do. He’s my sister’s bloke.’

  ‘How long have you known him?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Since my sister started going out with him,’ Baljit was almost cocky. ‘She asked me to meet him. Check he was alright. She couldn’t ask my parents… You know what it’s like.’

  He smirked.

  ‘No I don’t,’ Sam said. ‘Tell me.’

  Baljit looked from Sam to Ed as if they were beyond stupid.

  ‘My parents believe in the old ways,’ he said. ‘There’s no way they’d let Aisha go out with a lad she’d chosen. She asked me to check him out. I met him. Decent guy. I gave my sister my approval.’

  ‘Your approval?’ Sam snapped. ‘What gives you the right to...’

  Baljit shot forward in his seat.

  ‘I’m her brother!’ he barked. ‘She’s my responsibility.’

  Sam leaned in to him, their noses almost touching.

  ‘Your responsibility? Can’t she choose for herself?’

  Baljit sat back and looked at Ed.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll understand better,’ he said, holding Ed’s stare. ‘Perhaps if your girls were kept in check, had to seek approval, there wouldn’t be so many unwanted pregnancies. Does nobody in this country want to marry a virgin?’

  Carver, silent so far, took her eyes off the pad on her knee and looked up.

  ‘Perhaps we could stick to the matter in hand, i.e. my client’s knowledge of a stolen motor vehicle.’

  ‘Yeah that.’ Baljit was enjoying himself, lapping up the attention. ‘As I said, Sukhi was sound. We got on. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in his car, I’ve lost count, so you’ll definitely find forensics off me. I don’t know anything about Plymouth, though. Is that where you think he and my sister ran away to?’

  Sam and Ed stood whispering outside the interview room, their conversation inaudible to others above the ringing telephones and prisoners shouting from their cells.

  ‘Convenient, wasn’t it?’ Sam said.

  ‘Of course,’ Ed agreed. ‘Carver’s told him about the forensic. He’s put himself in the car. But, and this is the big but, he knows Sukhi’s not going to contradict him. He knows that because Sukhi’s dead. They’re both dead, Sam, trust me.’

  The custody sergeant looked up from his computer screen and shouted across to them: ‘Interpreter’s here boss.’

  ‘This pre-interview disclosure is a joke,’ Carver said. ‘You want to ask my client about a trip to London and the use of her daughter’s bank card. Have you got the bank card?’

  ‘Let’s just leave it for the interview, shall we?’ Sam said. ‘I have given you what I consider to be sufficient information with which to advise your client.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ Carver glowered. ‘I’ll advise her to go no reply.’

  ‘A matter for you. Now shall we get started?’

  Ed took them into a different interview room, one where he could dictate the seating arrangements. The interpreter was next to Parkash, leaving Carver to sit in the only remaining seat, slightly behind and to the left of her client.

  Ed turned on the tape, Sam again explained the procedure, everyone introduced themselves and the interview began.

  ‘What was the purpose of your visit to London today?’ asked Sam.


  ‘Tell her not to answer that,’ Carver ordered the interpreter.

  ‘Which train did you catch?’

  ‘Tell her not to answer any questions,’ Carver said.

  Sam looked at the interpreter.

  ‘Please tell Mrs Bhandal that she doesn’t have to follow the legal advice offered by Ms Carver. It is advice, not instructions, and it will be her, not her solicitor, who may have to explain her no replies at court.’

  Sam turned to Carver. ‘You’ve given your client your advice. Now I suggest you stop interrupting the interview.’

  Imaginary daggers were flying from Carver’s eyes.

  The interview would last longer than normal; each question translated into Punjabi, any answer then translated into English.

  ‘During the course of the morning a withdrawal was attempted from your daughter’s bank account at a machine in London. Was that you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you have possession of your daughter’s bank card?’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you know her pin number?’

  Silence.

  Carver spoke.

  ‘Did my client have possession of the bank card when she was arrested? When you searched her?’

  Sam looked at Aisha’s mother.

  ‘As you are aware, we did not find a bank card on your person when we searched you.’

  A smug smile appeared on Carver’s face.

  ‘But what you are unaware of is that I went back on to the platform and searched where you fell... ’

  Carver jumped in, the smile history.

  ‘I have not been informed of this.’

  ‘I’m informing you now,’ Sam told her.

  Carver was barely holding back her fury.

  ‘You’re trying to hijack this interview.’

  ‘No,’ Sam answered. ‘I am trying to get the truth.’

  Ed covered his mouth with his hand, thinking it best to hide his smirk as Sam continued, her voice calm.

  ‘Your client has, on your advice, gone no reply. Now I wish to ask her about her fall in the station.’