by Jo Bannister
Although he was only fifteen, Rachid expected Oliver Ford to seek an interview with him in order to formally ask for his sister’s hand and settle the arrangements. Safora assured him the Englishman would visit shortly. But somehow it never happened. Of course, Oliver Ford was an important man and a busy one, and Rachid Iqbal was a fifteen-year-old boy who attended school for part of every day and also now worked in a small leather-tanning establishment. It proved difficult to find a time when both were free. Safora assured her brother that all was proceeding as it should, that Oliver Ford was as anxious as she to formalise arrangements for the wedding, and next week he would visit Rachid at home; or, failing that, the week afterwards. But he never did.
Then the happy couple left Istanbul, for a few days that turned into several weeks. Rachid never thought his sister had been kidnapped. He was sufficiently acquainted with the world by now to know that there were parts of it where marriage was seen not as the start of a relationship between a man and a woman but more as an afterthought, to be squeezed in (preferably though not necessarily) before the birth of the first child.
This was not how things were done in Syria, or even in Turkey, and Rachid was not comfortable with the situation. He might have remonstrated with his sister about the gossip she was fuelling, if he had been able to talk to her. But all he got were postcards of various monuments to the Ottoman empire.
Safora returned five weeks later. She came home late at night, and did not light the lamps, and woke Rachid with a hand over his mouth. His first thought was that he was being robbed. There were people here with even less than he had, though usually they did not smell so sweetly.
‘Safora?’
Outlined against the uncurtained window, he saw her nod.
‘What’s the matter? Put the light on, I can hardly see you.’
But she didn’t. ‘Forgive me for waking you, brother. But I need your help.’
He was wide awake now, sitting bolt upright on his bed. ‘What has happened?’
Again she evaded the question. ‘I need money. Whatever you can spare. I have to get away from here.’
‘But you’ve only just come back!’ Rachid frowned. ‘Safora, you have to tell me. What has happened?’ And he reached for the light.
What shocked him most of all was not her split lip. It was not her black eye. It was the fact that the bruises despoiling her face were of different hues, because some of them were only hours old, and some of them were days old, and some of them had faded almost to nothing. His beautiful sister had been struck, repeatedly, forcefully, and on numerous occasions.
Rachid stood up, gathering the sheet about his modesty. With restraint beyond his years he said quietly, ‘Tell me where to find him, and I will kill him.’
Safora managed a little broken laugh at that. ‘Rachid! You cannot touch him. Men like him take what they want and cannot be made to pay the price. We are here on sufferance: remember that. If there is trouble, we are the ones – you and I – who will be made to pay. Mr Oliver Ford is an important man with many friends. We have no friends except one another.
‘He will come here,’ she said with absolute conviction. ‘He will come looking for me. I cannot be here. Have you any money, for I have none?’
‘Such money as we have is yours,’ Rachid said simply. ‘You earned it. If there is not enough, I will sell my schoolbooks. If that is not enough, I will sell my shoes. Where will you go? Back home?’ It had been years since he’d referred to Damascus as home.
His sister shook her head. ‘There is nothing for us back there. Also, he would find me. I will go somewhere I have never been, and when I find it I will tell only you.’
Rachid was working his way systematically around the room, turning out coins and small notes from drawers, boxes and pockets – anywhere he might have left funds for an unexpected emergency. He would never have greater need of them than now.
In the end there was more than he had thought. Still he doubted it would be enough to take his sister somewhere safe; but if it wasn’t she was careful to keep the fact from him. Tears glittered on her bruised cheeks. ‘Thank you, my brother. I do not know when I shall be able to repay you.’
‘You repaid me years ago,’ said Rachid.
She kissed him, and she left.
‘I never saw her again,’ whispered Rachid Iqbal. His dark head was bowed; a tear glistened like a diamond stud in the crease of his nose.
Gabriel Ash had sat with him, transfixed, all through the long telling, his heart aching for the young man’s tragedy. Later he would be appalled by how close Hazel had come to sharing Safora Iqbal’s fate, but for this one moment he had entirely forgotten the events that had brought him here. The account of the abused girl, and the boy left to manage his grief alone, filled his mind entirely.
‘You don’t know what became of her?’
But there was something in the way Iqbal glanced at him, a hunted quality that he hid by immediately dropping his eyes, that suggested the bitter tale was not yet told to its end.
Ash leaned closer. ‘You do? Rachid, if you know where she is, I can help her. She may need money. She may need something else I can help with.’
But Iqbal shook his head. ‘There is nothing she needs.’
Ash’s eyes slid shut over his sorrow. ‘She’s dead?’ Iqbal nodded. ‘Was it Ford? Did he find her? Rachid – did Oliver Ford track your sister down and kill her?’
Iqbal drew in a long breath. These were deeply personal matters he was speaking of, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he was sharing them with this tall stooping stranger when he had refused to explain to the policemen who had had every right to ask. He thought it was because Ash knew how it felt to lose someone he cared about to Oliver Ford. Neither of them could help Safora now, but perhaps they could help Ash’s friend, the kind girl with the yellow hair.
‘No,’ he said at length. ‘He didn’t find her. And yes, he killed her. In every way that matters, he was responsible for my sister’s death.’
Before Ash worked in national security, he worked in insurance, specifically in insurance investigation. It wasn’t an obvious career path, but in fact many of the skills were the same. The ability to listen not only to what people were saying but also to what they weren’t saying. The ability to spot the inconsistencies. The ability to play percentages: to know instinctively when something was odd enough to be true, and when it was just too odd – or just too obvious – to be believed.
All he knew of Rachid Iqbal and his sister was what Iqbal had told him. Except that he also knew something of the culture they came from, and more than he cared to about Oliver Ford. There were enough numbers drifting round for them to start adding up.
There was no tactful way of asking, but he needed to know. Saturday’s future depended on him getting to the truth of this matter. ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured. ‘But, was it suicide?’
The silence stretched for so long that Ash began to wonder if Iqbal didn’t know the word – if it would be necessary to explain its meaning. But then the boy dipped his head again and said, barely loud enough to be heard, ‘Yes.’
It might have been the full story. That, broken by abuse and disappointment, crippled by the loss of her honour, and terrified of being discovered by her tormentor, the girl had given herself up to the only peace she could now conceive of. And yet …
This was a strong girl. She had survived a civil war, the loss of both parents and the breakdown of her society, and she’d got herself and her brother to a place of safety. By means of nothing but guts and hard work she had created for them a life worth having. Was this someone who would cash in her chips early? Or was she someone who would draw the last card and stake everything she had on it? If Ford never caught up with her, what would have made this girl, this strong determined girl, despair of any kind of a future?
Ash bit his lip. ‘Was she pregnant? Was that the last straw that made her turn her back on the world?’
Across the table Iqbal snapped upright
. This was not a thing that anyone from his culture would have asked. Yet he still felt that the big man meant well. That he would have kept his word if something as simple and as difficult to obtain as money could have made things better for his sister.
So he swallowed his anger, and only said, a little curtly, ‘No, Mr Ash. She was betrayed. But that at least was spared her.’
Bewildered, Ash shook his head. ‘Then I don’t understand. She’d been hurt. She’d been humiliated. But she got away from the man responsible, and you say he never found her. You gave her some money to start a new life. I know she was capable of doing that: she’d already done it once. Why didn’t she do it again?’
‘Because …’ The time had come to tell it. It was necessary to explain what Safora had done; if he didn’t, her desperate attempt to salvage some honour from the situation would never be understood. If he didn’t, Oliver Ford would have got away with what he did to them.
Even so, it took two goes for Rachid Iqbal to begin the final chapter of his tale. ‘Because Ford did not catch up with Safora. He caught up with me.’
THIRTY-TWO
Detective Inspector Gorman’s eyebrows jutted alarmingly. ‘You want to do what?’
‘I want to talk to Saturday,’ said Ash. ‘And I want to do it with no one else in the room.’
‘That isn’t possible.’
‘I need you to make it possible,’ Ash said calmly.
‘He’s a juvenile. I can’t interview him without an appropriate adult being present.’
‘I’m not a policeman,’ Ash pointed out, ‘I’m his friend. Actually, I’m yours too. Find a way to do this. I promise you won’t regret it.’
Gorman narrowed one eye at him. ‘You know what happened.’
Ash nodded. ‘I think so. And I think Saturday will confirm it. But only if there’s no one else there.’
The DI shook his head. ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. You know how little discretion I have when it comes to processing a suspect. Even an adult suspect: multiply that by five for a juvenile. I imagine you’re familiar with the Police & Criminal Evidence Act.’ He gave a suspicious sniff. ‘Of course you are – you probably wrote it.’
Seven months ago, along with virtually everyone at Meadowvale – virtually everyone in Norbold – Gorman had thought Gabriel Ash an idiot. Somewhere between then and now he’d gone to the other extreme and started crediting him with powers verging on the supernatural.
Ash sighed. ‘No, that was the week I was reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics. Dave’ – they’d been through too much together to preserve the formalities – ‘I’m trying to help here. I think I can help you and Saturday. I think I can prevent a miscarriage of justice. But I need a bit of latitude, because if we play it by the book, the bad guys are going to win.
‘What have you got to lose? The worst that can happen is that I’m wrong, in which case nothing changes. But if I’m right, it’s important that I get him to tell us what happened. Everything that happened.’
‘Which is?’ Gorman waited.
Ash regarded him steadily. ‘Let me talk to him.’
There was nothing refined about Dave Gorman. He looked as if he’d been chiselled out of a mountainside by a sculptor with a really big hammer and no patience, and his thought processes were more direct than subtle. Catch him at a bad time – early in the morning, or late at night, or any time when the coffee machine in the corridor wasn’t working – and he could look positively simian, as if he hadn’t quite figured out what the opposable thumbs were for and why he felt the urge to bang rocks together.
But he wasn’t stupid. He’d won his promotions by hard work rather than brilliance, but he’d developed good instincts and just occasionally he was prepared to stake more than he could afford to lose on his judgement.
He felt the prickle along his spine that suggested this was one of those occasions. ‘Can I listen in?’
‘Yes,’ Ash said immediately. ‘I think you should.’
‘Will you tell him that I’m listening in?’
‘Good grief, no.’
Gorman went on looking at him, his expression unreadable. Then he reached for his phone.
Saul Desmond, known as Saturday, was seventeen. You had to know that because it wasn’t easy to guess. Sometimes he looked about twelve. And sometimes he looked like a little worn-out old man.
In a rare moment of sensitivity, Gorman had opened up the special suite at Meadowvale. Furnished somewhere between an office and a sitting room, it was designed to provide a less intimidating backdrop than the interview rooms for dealing with matters of a difficult and personal nature. He thought it might encourage the youth to relax, and that relaxing might encourage him to talk.
Also, he thought it might help if this went pear-shaped and he ended up trying to explain to the assistant chief constable. It wasn’t an interview: that was the thing to hold onto. It was a friendly meeting between the youth and a concerned adult who was looking out for him. An Almost-Appropriate Adult.
Who just happened to have spent time in a mental institution.
Ash, who’d arrived first, looked up when the door opened and Gorman steered Saturday inside. He tried not to wince. This was one of those days when the boy looked old and tired and scared. He went where the DI pointed him, took the chair indicated and sat, hunched up, waiting to be told what to do next. He’d registered Ash’s presence in the first second, but he didn’t look at him again, as if afraid that any show of hope might be punished.
Ash too was trying not to let his feelings show. He nodded a greeting, and filled two mugs from the electric kettle on the counter, and brought them over to the low table between the comfortable chairs. The one he pushed towards Saturday, the one with three spoonfuls of sugar in it, was inscribed with the legend: It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The other said, World’s best grandma.
Two mugs. This was not lost on Saturday. He cast a furtive glance at Gorman, but the DI was already heading for the door.
‘I’ll try not to disturb you,’ he said as he went. ‘Unless we’re desperate for the suite.’
When they were alone, Saturday loosened up visibly. A decade fell off his face, and he glanced round the room appreciatively. ‘This is nice.’ He looked at Ash. ‘You been pulling strings again?’
Ash shrugged. ‘He owed me a favour. At least, I told him he did. I wanted somewhere we could talk. The interview rooms are about as comfortable as a tin box.’
‘There’s a room at the Young Offenders’ Institution.’ From Saturday’s ironic tone, Ash guessed the residents called it something else.
‘I wasn’t sure I could see you alone there.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘No strings to pull. No one there who might owe me even a very small favour.’
Saturday took a gulp of his coffee. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
Ash blinked at him. ‘Oh, I thought we could discuss the weather, and the price of fish, and the way the dollar exchange rate causes fluctuations in the housing market. Saturday, I want to talk about you! About how we’re going to bring you home.’
Saturday gave a cautious nod. ‘I’m up for that.’
‘The first step is where you tell the truth.’
Saturday raised one thin eyebrow at him. ‘Again?’
Ash hung onto his patience. ‘No, not that truth. The other truth. The way Oliver Ford really got his head beaten in.’
Saturday looked away. ‘I told the cops.’
‘I know what you told the’ – slang still came as naturally to him as the ability to tap-dance – ‘police. And I know, and they know, and you know, that’s not what happened.’
‘How do you know?’ said Saturday defensively. ‘It could have.’
‘It could have,’ Ash conceded. ‘But it didn’t. Did it? Saturday, I am not your enemy. The people out there’ – he gestured towards the door – ‘are not your enemies. We’re all just trying to make sense of this, and if there’s a way that you
walk away from it undamaged, we want to be sure of finding it. But we need – I need – you to be honest and frank. Tell me what happened.’
Saturday shrugged narrow shoulders. They were his own clothes – Hazel had bagged up some things for him – but the stress of the last week had stripped pounds from him and his shirt fitted only where it touched. He looked like a boy who’d been dressed in his father’s clothes for a family funeral.
The story he told was exactly the one he’d told to DI Gorman.
Ash wasn’t surprised. Saturday had spent a long time living on the streets. He’d lost the habit of trust.
Expressionless, Ash nodded and went back to the counter. ‘Top up?’ He added more coffee to both mugs and pressed the button on the kettle.
While he was waiting for it to boil, he let his eye travel appreciatively around the room. ‘They’ve made a nice job of this, haven’t they? A big improvement on the scruffy little room they used to use. It must make such a difference when it’s needed for its designated purpose.’
His story told, and so far as he could judge accepted, Saturday relaxed enough to lean back in his comfortable chair. He thought interior decoration was a safe enough topic for discussion. ‘What is its designated purpose?’
‘It’s the rape suite,’ said Ash.
In the moment he said it he knew, from the way the boy’s whole body stiffened, that he’d been right. The heart lurched within him. This was what he wanted, what made it a formality to get Saturday released and the charges against him withdrawn. At the same time, Ash almost wished he’d been wrong. If the stakes hadn’t been so high he’d have been tempted to let the boy nurse his pain in decent privacy. But the stakes were about as high as they could be, and Ash wasn’t going to let Saturday squander years of his life rather than face up to what had happened to him.