by Danuta Reah
The microwave pinged. The coffee was bitter but it was hot. She came alert as the caffeine hit her and her hand reached automatically for the packet of cigarettes that was no longer on the shelf by the cooker.
She pushed a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and did her hair while she was waiting, dragging a brush through the heavy mass and confining it in a clip. The image in the mirror looked businesslike but severe, so she pulled a few curls free. She pulled on a black skirt and a red jersey, and slipped her feet into the Jimmy Choos she’d bought in the sales, all red shiny leather and straps. This would be their first outing. Tart chic.
They weren’t designed for patrolling the streets, but she wouldn’t need to do much walking. For the past six months, she had been on secondment from the elite Serious Crimes Unit, to work on a project dealing with the asylum seekers who had flocked to the city in recent years.
Six months ago, a girl had been found by the river. She had been savagely beaten, then left to die. There was evidence of old brutality on her body, she was HIV positive, and had tuberculosis. She was probably from North Africa, probably in the country illegally. That was all they knew.
“We have to get a handle on these people,” Tina’s then boss, Roy Farnham said. He was speaking to the team who were dealing with the incident but his eyes had been on Tina. He was looking at a problem, and also at a solution. “Think you can handle this, Tina?”
The secondment was Farnham’s offer to her. Get a line in there. Bring back something that will help us solve this kind of crime. She knew the subtext: Clean up your act, get back on top of things. One chance, your only one.
She checked her watch. She had to get to work. She scrabbled in her bag for her lipstick and eye pencil, and concentrated on putting her face together. She painted her mouth red and was brushing a line under her eye when her phone rang, making her hand slip. “Shit.” She scrubbed at the smudge with a tissue as she groped in her bag for her phone. “Tina Barraclough.”
“Tina.” She recognised the voice. It was Dave West, her partner from her days with Farnham’s unit. She and West had started on the job together, started the climb up the ladder together, but Dave was now a DS, with the possibility of promotion to DI on the horizon. Tina, who had been the promising recruit with the glittering prospects, had crashed and burned, and was beginning the slow climb again.
“Dave. Hi. How are you?”She hadn’t seen him – hadn’t seen any of them – for months. She was lying low.
“Fine. You? Enjoying the crossing patrols?”
“Yeah, yeah. And how’s it going at Carnage Central?” She finished her other eye, her mouth distorted into the grimace that the application of mascara seemed to require. She may not have seen anyone on the team, but she couldn’t stop herself from keeping tracks on what they were doing. Currently, they were involved in the long, ongoing and usually fruitless battle against proliferating drugs in the city.
“We’ve got someone in we’re interviewing. Thing is, he claims to know you – looks like he’s one of yours.”
“One of mine?”
“Illegal immigrant. You know.”
“Failed asylum seeker. Who is he?” Tina had met more people than she could remember in the past few months. She slipped her coat on, wrapping a scarf closely round her neck. It was cold out there.
“The name’s Hamade, Amir Hamade. He won’t give us the time of day, but he says he’ll talk to you.” Paper rustled.
Tina was reaching for her car keys. Her hand stopped. Amir Hamade. He had been one of her main contacts within the asylum seekers’ group, one of the few people who was prepared to give her a chance. He had been cautious with her, meticulously polite, but wary, very wary. He was in his thirties, a man who concealed the darkness of his past behind a gentle smile and impenetrable courtesy. “What’s the problem?”
“He was picked up last night. A girl was strangled near Rutland Road.”
“And you think Amir…?”
“We know he did it. A girl saw him before he ran away. His blood’s at the scene, his prints are on her bag, a witness saw them together earlier that evening – said it looked as though they were arguing. Open and shut.”
“We’re talking about Amir Hamade? You’re sure?” There had to be a mistake. The man she knew wasn’t a killer.
“That’s the name he gave, and that’s the name on his ID.”
“If it’s open and shut, why do you need me?”
“You got a problem with it?”
“No. I just don’t get why you need me to talk to him. With everything you’ve got.”
“The boss wants more.”
Roy Farnham. He was a good detective. If Farnham didn’t think it was open and shut, then maybe… “OK. I’ll come in. I’ll have to clear it with…”
“The boss has talked to them. He wants you in now.”
She sighed, not quite concealing her annoyance at the high-handed way Farnham was once again reorganising her life. “OK. See you soon.”
As she left the block, she saw, like a flag calling her in, a pair of trainers hanging from an overhead wire, the sign, supposedly, of gangs marking their territory, though more likely the local kids messing around. Even so, she could feel the familiar buildup of adrenaline, a mix of tension and excitement. It was something she missed, something, in her newly sober state, she needed.
She edged her car out into the rush hour traffic. Amir Hamade. Her instinct – based on more than ten years’ experience – told her that Amir was not a killer, but what she’d heard sounded bad. She didn’t know all the details, and she was in danger of letting her opinion get in the way of hard fact.
The sun was starting to rise as she joined the stop-go shuffle. The sky was cloudless. Across the valley, the wall of Park Hill reflected the dawn light. A tram snaked down the hill and onto the high bridge across the road.
How well did she know Amir? Not that well. One afternoon, he and Tina had talked, and for the first and the only time, he had opened up to her. He told her about his childhood when he had seen his friends blown to pieces in the streets by Iraqi missiles during the long Iran/Iraq war, he’d seen his parents arrested and thrown in prison, an experience that had shortened his father’s life. As an adult he’d spoken out against the execution of a teenage boy who had been publicly hanged, accusing the authorities of torture. He’d been beaten and tortured himself.
Men did not always come out of such experiences intact.
The traffic edged towards West Bar. Tina let the car creep forward, lane hopping to gain a car length when she saw an opportunity, cutting up a van as she moved back into the inside lane. The old Police HQ where she had started her time with the force looked derelict, the glass dirty and the concrete stained by the decades. This part of the city had missed the surge of renovation that recession had brought to a standstill.
She tapped her horn to galvanise a driver who was hesitating at the roundabout, then swung across the traffic and into position for the turning to the multi-storey. She was lucky there were no traffic patrols around. She was driving like an idiot, and she was doing it to keep her mind off Amir.
She had to drive almost to the top of the car park before she found a space. She stayed behind the wheel, her gaze fixed on the winter light sandwiched between the concrete blocks. There was no point trying to kid herself. She had been drawn to Amir from the time she first saw him. Despite his courtesy and the meticulous distance he kept between them, she had seen a returned interest in his face, and appreciation of her as a woman.
She would listen to what Amir had to say, and pass on what she found to the investigation team. That was her role here, nothing else.
The new Police HQ was a modern building of red brick and glass. When Tina had been seconded to the community policing unit, the HQ had been in the process of moving from the old 60s block, a massive and forbidding fortress, its cracked window panes and scruffy interior reflecting the role that many people thought the police played: the st
reet cleaners, the people who swept up the dirt that society left behind. She was glad she didn’t have to walk through the familiar door and along familiar corridors. This was new territory to reflect new times.
She was directed to the incident room, where Farnham was completing the morning’s briefing. He acknowledged her as she took an inconspicuous seat by the door. “Barraclough.”
She busied herself with her notebook and pen, aware of curious glances. She ignored them and concentrated on the panels where photographs of the victim were displayed. The woman looked fragile and broken. One of her shoes, a flimsy party slipper, had fallen off. Her toe nails were painted, a colour that looked black in the lamp light. The paint was chipped.
The dead face looked deceptively peaceful apart from the trickle of blood from her mouth. This wasn’t someone Tina had met. She tried to concentrate on what Farnham was saying.
“OK. To summarise. The victim is a Somali woman, Farah Jafari, 19. She’s awaiting the result of an asylum claim. She had some accommodation, a room in a shared house, but the people who live there haven’t seen her for a while. DC Barraclough, maybe you’d like to talk us through this a bit.”
Tina felt the interest in the room shift in her direction. She stood up and moved to the front, realising the short skirt and Jimmy Choos were probably a mistake. She faced the team, registering the familiar faces, and the new ones, and wondering how many of them knew she had left the squad in disgrace, and what kind of disgrace it had been.
“OK. Asylum seekers. A woman like Farah Jafari will have had her claim assessed when she arrived here, then she will have been sent to whichever city they chose under the dispersal programme. She’ll have been given some kind of accommodation and a small allowance, and then she’ll have had to wait for her case to be heard.” She looked at Farnham. “If she left the accommodation, she was in danger of losing it. If she fell out of the system she could lose her status as an asylum seeker. I don’t get it.”
“She’d got what she wanted. She’d got in.” The speaker was someone Tina didn’t know, a new recruit since her day. “Why do they come here? There’s lots of places closer they could go. Somalia? It’s on the other side of Africa. Why was she here in the first place? Didn’t do her much good, did it?” He shrugged. “Just saying.”
Dave West intervened. “I’ve had a call from Vice. They’ve seen this girl a couple of times down Shalesmoor.” This was the area where street prostitutes currently operated. The previous speaker nodded as if his comment had been vindicated. “They tried to take her in, but she did a runner. They didn’t know she was an illegal.”
“She wasn’t. That’s the point.” Tina was depressed to hear her colleagues talking like this, but it didn’t surprise her. “She’d be terrified of being arrested. That usually means they get sent to a detention centre.” She looked at the man who had spoken. “It’s not that simple...”
Farnham cut her off. “We’re not here to debate the asylum laws. We’re here because we’ve got a dead nineteen year old. One scenario we’re considering in the light of what Vice says is that Hamade picks her up, they go down the alley to do business, something goes wrong. She ends up dead, he panics and runs. “West, I'd like you to finish off here.” As he left the room, he caught Tina’s eye. “Barraclough. My office. Five minutes.”
She put her notes away, delaying on purpose. She wasn’t sure what Farnham wanted. A sense of déjà vu settled round her as she walked along the corridor to his office.
“Sit down, Barraclough,” Farnham said without ceremony as she came in. He might as well have seen her yesterday, not six months ago.
He studied her for a moment over steepled fingers. The last time she’d faced him like this, his voice had been mild, his message had been deadly: You don’t fuck witnesses, Barraclough, literally or metaphorically. If he was remembering the same incident, he gave no sign. “So. Farah Jafari. What was she playing at?”
“Sir?”
“You’ve just told us she had a place, she had some money, she was safe for now. Why was she on the street? Why was she turning tricks?”
“I don’t know. A Somali woman – it’s not something she’d do willingly. She must have been desperate.”
“OK.” He made a note. “Keep your ear to the ground. Now. Amir Hamade. You know him?”
“Not very well. I’ve met him at Nadifa’s House. He works as a volunteer.”
“He’s what? Claiming he’s a political refugee?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s been refused.”
“Yes. I think he’s trying to make another claim, but… yes.”
“OK. Did he have a bad time?”
“Apparently.”
Farnham thought for a moment. “So, if he’s telling the truth – he could be seriously disturbed.”
Farnham’s comments echoed her own thoughts. “Most asylum seekers – they’re more likely to hurt themselves than someone else.”
Farnham raised his eyebrows slightly.
“It’s just – that’s the statistics. That’s all.”
He waited, but Tina decided the hole was deep enough. It was time to stop digging.
When she didn’t continue, he said, “The evidence points at Hamade. He says he met her on the way to this night shelter place and gave her his coat because she was cold. He says he went back to look for her – he’s not saying why. For some reason, he decided to wander along the gennel and tripped over her corpse just around the time our witness nips down there for a pee. How does it sound to you?”
It sounded as though Amir was lying.
“It wasn’t robbery,” Farnham said. “She had £50 in her pocket, and she had her phone.”
“£50? That’s a hell of a lot for… How did she die?”
“She was strangled.”
Close contact, hands round the neck of a struggling victim. Strangulation could happen when an attacker panicked, or it could be a slow, lethal enhancement of a perverted pleasure. “It doesn’t sound like Amir Hamade to me, sir.”
Farnham’s gaze met hers. “I thought you didn’t know him.” It was about as loaded as a comment could be, and Tina was angry with herself as she felt her face flood with colour.
“I don’t. Not well. He just doesn’t seem the type. Sir.”
“OK. Tell me what you do know about him – and this Nadifa’s House thing. I need the background here.”
So this was why Farnham had agreed to Amir’s request. Basically, he wanted to pick Tina dry, and this was the quickest way to do it.
* * *
Dave West was waiting for her outside the interview room. “The boss brief you?” he said.
“Yes. It’s a straightforward interview. If he won’t cooperate, then we log his refusal to talk. Is his lawyer…?”
“He doesn’t want one.”
Tina frowned. Amir was in deep shit. He needed legal advice and he needed it now. She was uneasy as she followed West into the interview room, closing the door behind her.
“Ma’am.” Amir stood up, giving her the slight bow, his hand touching his chest, that was his mark of courtesy. She could see the relief on his face. He thought she was his friend. “Thank you for coming.”
Farnham had made it clear she was here to conduct an interview, no more. She waited as West switched on the recording equipment and went through the preliminaries, introducing himself and Tina, and establishing for the record that Amir knew his rights to legal representation, and had turned this down. Amir listened quietly, responding with a yes or a no when required. She saw his face set into blankness as he realised that Tina was there for the police, not for him. She wanted to apologise to him, to explain, but she couldn’t.
“Amir, do you understand why you are here?”
He bowed his head in assent. “I understand, ma’am.”
“You’ve been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a young woman.”
“I know, ma’am.”
“I want you to tell me what happen
ed. When did you first meet the woman?”
“I meet her on the street. She follow me.”
“That was the first time you saw her?” She remembered West telling the team that both Amir and Jafari had been at Nadifa’s House that afternoon.
“It was, ma’am.” She had run into the barrier of Amir’s unfailing politeness before. He would only tell her what he thought she wanted to hear, or, of course, what he wanted her to hear. She ran her options through her head, quickly.
“Were you at Nadifa’s House yesterday afternoon?”
“I was, ma’am.”
“But you didn’t see the woman there?”
“I did not.”
No explanation, no embellishment, just the minimal facts. “Amir, it’s a very small place. We know she was there for at least 30 minutes. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t…”
Again, he gave her that slight inclination of the head in acknowledgement. “I understand, ma’am. I was in the office for much of the time. I didn’t see her.”
Amir was a volunteer. It was possible he’d been in the office at the key time, and easy enough to check. “OK. So tell me when you first saw her.”
Amir’s story was straightforward, and hard to prove or disprove. He claimed he had met the girl on his way to the night shelter. She had asked him if he knew of anywhere she could stay the night, but the shelter didn’t take women. When he got there, he’d felt bad about leaving her and had gone back to look for her. He studied his hands. “Then I find…”
“Why did you go down the gennel?”
He gave her a look of incomprehension.
“The alleyway.”
“I think she might be sheltering there, ma’am.”
Now she knew he was lying. He had asked for her because he thought she would believe him, but he had forgotten that she was a police officer, she had a role to fulfil, and she was pretty sure she was being manipulated here. She met his gaze. “Amir, I don’t believe you. I think you saw her at Nadifa’s House. I think she propositioned you. Suggested you had sex with her,” she amended when he looked confused. She saw his eyes narrow as he studied her, as if he was reassessing what he was seeing.