Comply or Die

by Tony Hutchinson

  ‘We need to go now ladies,’ the paramedic in the back of the ambulance said.

  Sam climbed inside and shut the door.

  Bev watched as it pulled away, all sirens and flashing lights.

  The only female member of the search team walked over to Bev.

  ‘Will Ed be okay?’ she asked.

  Bev’s eyes never left the ambulance. ‘Hope so.’

  ‘The boss seemed upset.’

  ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘More partner upset than boss upset.’

  Bev’s turn was snappier than anything she had ever managed on the parade square at training school all those years ago. Her tone was acid.

  ‘Watch your mouth. You haven’t earned the right to speak like that. Now fuck off and keep your mind on the job and your stupid thoughts to yourself.’

  Mia looked relieved when Bev reached the car and slid back behind the wheel.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ she asked.

  ‘Hope so,’ Bev told her, the image of Ed unconscious still hanging like dark art in a gallery in her mind. ‘Come on, let’s find somewhere for you to stay tonight.’

  ‘What will happen to my parents...my brother?’

  Bev said they would be interviewed, asked some questions.

  ‘About Aisha?’

  ‘About many things.’

  ‘Do you think Aisha is dead?’ Mia asked now, her voice small, frightened.

  ‘Do you?’

  Mia waited long seconds before she answered.

  ‘I didn’t, but I’m not so sure now. There’ve been funny things going on since she left. They all rushed somewhere this afternoon. I don’t know where. We’ve got a new shed, never had one of them before, and a new patio and I don’t know why. And my suitcase has gone missing and I know Aisha didn’t take it. She would have taken her own.’

  Bev was trying to process what she was hearing, trying not to make reflex conclusions. You should be here Sam.

  ‘Let’s go to the office. We can talk there.’

  Bhandal was shouting into the custody office telephone - his legal advice call.

  ‘They’ve taken Mia! My wife and son have been arrested! My wife was beaten up. I was thrown to the pavement and handcuffed like a common criminal.’

  Jill Carver listened.

  ‘Don’t allow them to interview you,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak with the custody sergeant. You all need to be medically examined before anything else. I will make sure that happens. Who were the arresting officers?’

  ‘Parker, Whelan and some other man and woman,’ Bhandal said. ‘It was that man who threw me to the ground. Kicked me as well.’

  ‘Well just sit tight,’ Carver sounding calm. ‘Put me onto the custody sergeant.’

  Sam jogged alongside the trolley, the small, squeaky wheels turning faster and faster as it gained speed along the straight corridor before crashing through the double doors.

  A small, squat nurse appeared from behind them and stepped in front of Sam.

  ‘Now love,’ she said, placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘There’s nothing you can do for him here.’

  She combined a small smile with a look of concern in the way only nurses seem able to do and gently closed the doors.

  Sam stood and watched them slowly come together, acknowledging what her feelings had left at stake.

  Head reeling, stomach churning, she turned and walked rapidly through the hospital and down the pedestrian ramp away from A and E. At least twice she thought she would collapse.

  In the cold air she bent over and put her hands on her knees. Ed’s dried blood was on her hands and her trousers. Her tears splattered onto the concrete.

  There had been a hospital on this site for generations, its elevated position overlooking the sea once considered a health benefit for those suffering from tuberculosis; patients wheeled out onto the lawns to breathe in the clean coastal air.

  How many tears have been shed here, Sam wondered.

  She stood up and shivered and reached for a Marlboro. Thank God they weren’t in her blood sodden coat still lying like a voiceless extra at the Bhandals. She saw a security guard wandering around the car park, making his way towards her. She shivered again.

  You’ll need balls of steel to tell me this is a non-smoking site.

  Sam inhaled and launched into a coughing fit, the reason she never heard the high heels clip-clopping behind her.

  ‘I should have guessed you’d be here.’

  Sam didn’t turn around but the security guard made a hasty about turn, not prepared to referee a female fight on minimum wage and a zero hours contract.

  Sam took a deep breath and at last turned slowly to face Sue Whelan.

  ‘Sue.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  An origami master couldn’t have put as many folds in Sue’s twisted, contorted face.

  ‘Surgery.’

  ‘Well there’s no need for you to hang around is there? His wife’s here now, and she doesn’t want you around when our daughter comes. And if anything happens to him…’

  She saw the blood on Sam’s hands and ran up the ramp.

  ‘Tell me about your suitcase?’ Bev said.

  Mia was in Sam’s office, a bottle of Pepsi on the desk, a bag of cheese and onion crisps in her lap, salt already on her fingertips.

  ‘It just vanished,’ Mia said. ‘Aisha was locked in her bedroom when that settee came on the Saturday. I don’t know how she escaped, but it wasn’t on the Friday like my dad told the police and TV. My suitcase was there the day the settee came. I know that because I keep old clothes in there and I was looking for a headscarf when the settee came. My mother said I could go in the room and look for it. My uncle let me in. He was guarding Aisha. Aisha was on the bed. She was naked.’

  Mia stared at the wall and put a handful of crisps into her mouth without moving her eyes. The crunch was loud, aggressive.

  The crunching stopped. Mia was thinking of something.

  ‘Aisha’s little case…the pink one. I’ve just remembered. It wasn’t there. They were next to each other, under the bed…I can’t remember seeing it when I was looking for the scarf. Maybe Aisha did take mine. Maybe she did get away.’

  Bev needed to be careful. Interviewing a juvenile without the presence of an appropriate adult, even though Mia was a witness, was not best practice. That said, she could justify it if she needed some vital information and she needed it quickly.

  ‘What does your suitcase look like Mia?’

  ‘Red with brass buckles,’ she told Bev. ‘Hard…and it had a leather label holder attached to the handle and my name and address written on the paper inside.’

  ‘What size?’

  Mia held her arms wide.

  ‘Oh it’s big. One of the big ones we take when we go to India.’

  ‘And the shed and patio you told me about,’ Bev asked now. ‘When did they appear?’

  Mia thought for a moment.

  ‘The Sunday afternoon after the settee was delivered,’ she answered. ‘My dad, brother and uncle put it up and laid the patio. I’d never seen them work so hard, especially Baljit. Lucky for me it wasn’t considered women’s work. Where will I go tonight? Can I go back to the family I stayed with the other night?’

  Mia put the last of the crisps in her mouth, scrunched up the bag and reached for the Pepsi.

  ‘I’m sure we can arrange that with social services.’

  Mia drank, giving something some thought.

  ‘Okay, but whatever happens please tell them I don’t want to go with an Asian family.’

  ‘Any reason?’ Bev asked, thinking of Ed’s words.

  ‘They’ll ask me loads of questions about my family,’ Mia said. ‘And when they realise I’m from the family on the TV with the missing daughter they’ll tell me how important it is to do what my parents say. They’ll say I have to show my loyalty to them, not to Aisha and certainly not the police. I’ve heard it all before. From my own family, from peop
le at the Gurdwara.’

  Bev said she would make the arrangements and offered Mia more crisps.

  ‘I know I’m setting a bad example, but one more bag won’t hurt, as long as you don’t make a habit of it.’

  Mia nodded.

  Wednesday 23rd April 2014

  Sam was onto her third cigarette when Monica Teal strode past the hospital Pay and Display machine. As the on-call Chief Officer she had been notified about Ed.

  ‘You okay Sam?’ Monica said.

  ‘I’m fine thanks, just a bit shaken. Ed’s not great.’

  ‘Why don’t you go home? Get some rest. There’s nothing you can do here.’

  Sam shook her head, told her she still had staff working, that Bev was with the Bhandal’s youngest daughter, Paul Adams was sorting the arrests, and the search team was at the house.

  ‘In that case, go back to the office,’ Monica told her. ‘Freshen up. Get a cup of tea. Wash your hands. Change your trousers if you can. I’ll take care of everything here. If there’s any change in Ed you’ll be the first to know. And it goes without saying Sam, any officer affected by this, and that includes you, Welfare are ready.’

  The Welfare Department and Police Federation did a great job in looking after traumatised officers. Few talked about using counselling services - the I-can-cope syndrome keeping their struggles hidden behind a stubborn wall of bravado - but many did reach out for professional help.

  Sam parked outside HQ, got out of the car and lit another cigarette; she seemed to have one permanently attached to her lips. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ed, emotionally shattered and sickened that she couldn’t stay at the hospital waiting for news.

  She inhaled deeply, tears pooling on her top lip before falling to the floor.

  Bev suddenly burst out of the building.

  ‘Jesus Sam. How’s Ed?’

  ‘Surgery.’ Sam’s cigarette shook as her hand tried to find her mouth. ‘He didn’t look good Bev.’

  When Sam started to sob Bev threw her arms around her.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  Sam trudged into her office and turned on the computer. The room was freezing and emanated the only light on that wing of the building. She had sent Bev home after getting her update on Mia, satisfied she was safely settled with an older couple on the edge of town. She thought she could answer a few emails while she waited to hear from Ian Robinson and the search team’s progress at the Bhandals.

  But all she could think about was Ed.

  She rang the hospital at 1am and was told he was still in surgery.

  It was gone 2am when the search team requested her attendance at the uncle’s house.

  Later, Sam would struggle to remember the journey there. The rest would never leave her.

  She was standing inside a tent in Gurmej’s back garden, suited up, hands in pockets, under bright white lights powered by a generator. Ian Robinson had already apologised to the neighbours. The press had started arriving soon after, a story born and gathering wings. They would be there for the duration.

  Cold and starved of sleep, Sam looked into a newly dug hole in the patio.

  She stared at the writing. The name was clearly visible, printed on the paper inside the leather label. Mia Bhandal.

  ‘Open it,’ Sam said.

  One of the SOCO’s unfastened the suitcase’s brass catches but it remained shut, the two bungee ropes and their end fastenings holding firm. Once they were simultaneously released the suitcase flew open, under pressure like a cork shooting from a champagne bottle.

  The arms and legs were bent at unnatural angles beneath the torso; long black hair was trapped in the sides of the case. The eyes were open but held no light.

  Aisha’s unmarked grave was below her uncle’s shed; Mia’s suitcase was her coffin.

  Sam wiped her eyes. She said a short prayer and then telephoned the control room to request a Forensic Pathologist.

  Jim Melia’s counterpart attended.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Sam arranged for a transit van to come into the alleyway. Screens were placed at either end to block out the telephoto lenses. Aisha was placed in the back of the van.

  Under Sam’s instructions she was still in the suitcase. The van floor was covered in layers of new brown paper to avoid cross contamination with particles of debris on the floor. Aisha would be removed from the suitcase at the mortuary; the clinical environment ensuring not one scrap of forensic evidence was lost. Once she had supervised the removal and arranged for the post mortem later that morning Sam drove home and collapsed in the armchair. There was no point in going to bed.

  Less than three hours after she walked through her door, the shower was again pounding her body.

  With a towel wrapped around her she looked in the mirror. Did the sunken eyes in the gaunt face staring back really belong to her?

  Nothing a couple of days at a spa won’t sort, she told herself.

  Who was she kidding? She needed to get away properly. No phones, no emails, no dead bodies, no human grief, just food and drink, preferably alcoholic.

  She had called the hospital almost before her eyes were fully open.

  Ed was in an induced coma. The official press statement would give his condition as ‘critical but stable.’

  No one needed to tell Sam he had lost a lot of blood.

  Dressed but still only half awake, she grabbed a couple of chocolate biscuits out of the fridge and snatched her car keys.

  Her head was spinning again, her forehead clammy. She had a job to do, but she couldn’t think beyond Ed.

  Induced coma. No guarantees he would come through.

  Come on Sam, she said it out loud. What would Ed say? Sort this mess out.

  Who killed Aisha? Who killed Jack and Glen? How was she going to prove it?

  Those thoughts consumed her until she reached HQ. The sight of the black Porsche was her snapping point.

  Sam felt like the water-skier no longer able to grip the towrope, tumbling and skimming across the surface before eventually going under. Snatching up breaths and consumed by raw anger, she leapt out of her car and quick-marched towards Jill Carver who was striding towards her.

  ‘My clients will be making complaints of assault,’ Carver was saying even as she moved closer, her index finger wagging. ‘Their treatment has been appalling and...’

  Sam walked into the wagging finger: the fight in her snarling face, eyes wide-open, matched the venom of her words.

  ‘Before you go any further, Ed Whelan’s in a coma, stabbed by one of your clients last night and Aisha’s body has been discovered in a family suitcase under her uncle’s shed. I suggest you consider your words and your next course of action very carefully.’

  Sam glanced around and saw no one. She bent down and put her mouth to Carver’s ear, lips almost touching the Pandora pearl and silver earring that was firing off chards of watery sunlight.

  ‘Now fuck off, I’ve got work to do.’

  Friday 25th April 2014

  Sam turned off the ignition, lifted the button that applied the handbrake and stepped onto the car park. The bonnet shimmered in the sun.

  It was just after 10.30am; less than fifty-seven hours since she’d been asked to go the uncle’s garden.

  She’d been told to keep away. Ed’s family didn’t want to speak with anybody from the Murder Team. All family liaison had to be done via Monica Teal.

  Sam strode towards the entrance.

  As far as she was concerned some instructions were there to be ignored. This was one of them.

  What did her father used to say? ‘Rules are there for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.’

  Exactly.

  Ed was a colleague, a friend, and whatever Sue Whelan thought of her, she was going to see him. Sleep deprivation always made her belligerent.

  He was in a private room, laid on his back, eyes sunken and shut. She smiled at him; she’d never seen him with stubble.


  There were tubes everywhere, the bleeping and hissing machines and monitors doing the work some of Ed’s organs used to do.

  Sam sat in the brown leather armchair next to the bed. A portable TV was plugged into a DVD player on the small table; her knowledge of football wasn’t great but the commentary and the tinny sound of the crowd told her someone had left Ed with Alan Shearer’s greatest hits. Sam smiled. Ed would like that. She wished she’d thought of doing that for him.

  Sam had no idea if he could hear her, but talking made it seem less real, less threatening, less final.

  ‘I know, I know, you’re right,’ she said, taking hold of his hand. ‘I do look like shit but I didn’t get to bed the night you were attacked and I still haven’t caught up on my sleep. Me and Bev are supposed to be going to a spa this weekend and while we’re away we’re going to sort out a holiday somewhere warm.’

  She stroked the back of his hand.

  ‘They’ve all been to court this morning. Mother, father, uncle and son all coughed their roles in Aisha’s murder.’

  She dipped a tiny sponge on a stick into a plastic jug of water and gently rubbed it across Ed’s lips.

  ‘Mother was the last, evil bitch. Only coughed it after Carver advised her all the others had coughed.’

  Sam poured herself a glass of water and sipped. It was hospital warm.

  ‘Carver represented them all,’ she said. ‘Bhandal, Baljit and Gurmej coughed killing Sukhi.’

  She let her fingers trace a gentle circuit around Ed’s, dropping instinctively into the rhythm of the machines around him.

  ‘You were right of course,’ Sam said. ‘No remorse. Honour was more important than any white man’s law. Izzat before Gora’s law.’

  She leaned forwards, put her ear next to his mouth and imagined he was speaking.

  ‘What did you say? You’re always right? If you insist, sweetheart.’

  She kissed his forehead.

  ‘Sue was pissed off when she saw me the other night,’ she began speaking again. ‘Bev hit the nail on the head. She thinks Sue’s pissed off because another woman got to stab you before she did.’