Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  He still knew this track, he thought wonderingly, as if it had only been yesterday that he had climbed it as a skinny lad in the short trousers that primary school-boys had still worn then. He had come up as a child to be alone, scrambling as high as he dared above the farm with a book and a couple of apples to lose himself in fictional adventures far from the daily grind of life below. He had come again later with Aileen, when he was home from university, to find sunny heather-scented hollows where they could make love to the delirious sky-lark’s song well away from his father’s watchful, sin-seeking eyes. He had come now, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, in something near despair.

  When he could walk no further he stood panting on a rocky outcrop from which the moors spread out in all directions. There was no sign of human life here, just a handful of sheep amongst mile after mile of heather, bilberry and moor grass, purple, brown and gold, rolling like a gently heaving ocean to the great grey bulk of the mountain on the far horizon.

  Exhausted by the climb, he flung himself onto a patch of heather as springy as a mattress and closed his eyes. For more than ten years he had closed himself up to all emotion, locking away the loss of his son in a tight compartment at the centre of himself so successfully and for so long that he had thought himself safe from all invaders. He had worked hard at his job and made a success of it. He had kept his promise to himself to avoid the booze which had destroyed his family and almost taken him down with them. He had fulfilled his obligations to the wreck that was all that was left of Aileen, who could have no notion whether he visited her or not. He had watched his mother die in the low stone house in High Clough and helped his father close up the farm where there was no longer a living to be made.

  All this, he thought, he had survived through a mixture of bloody-minded determination and a sense of duty which he had inherited from his parents in spite of himself. Only in the end to be undone by an exuberant red-head ten years his junior who had flounced into his affections and made him smile and feel young again. And after all that, he had blown it, and the taste of his failure was like bile at the back of his throat.

  He lay on his back smoking a cigarette and gazed into the hazy sky above him. There was a skylark up there, just as there had always been, a tiny shape fluttering and swooping against the translucent blue, with that clear liquid song, a small miracle still in the sparkling air. He had never brought Laura up here, he thought, and now perhaps he never would.

  When he had set off that morning he had considered not coming back. He had hesitated for a moment in the bathroom, scanning the medicine cupboard for something which might help him fall asleep when he got to his destination and never wake up. But there had been nothing there which he regarded as infallible. He had lived for too long with the consequences of a botched suicide to risk waking up in intensive care himself to face the accusing eyes of a hard-pressed nurse. If he took that road, it had to be quick and absolutely certain. But as he lay on his rough bed of heather with the rays of the warming sun playing on his face and the wind running gentle fingers through his hair, he grew calmer at last, the cloud of depression which had almost engulfed him lifting slightly. There was, he thought, one last throw he could make to mend the rift with Laura. And with that thought at last bringing a faint smile to his lips, his eyes grew heavy and for the first time in days he fell into a dreamless, restoring sleep.

  He woke to find the sun high in the sky, his body stiff and aching and a couple of wandering sheep nibbling the grass at his feet. He sat up, startling the animals which bucketed off down the hill complaining loudly, and looked at his watch. It had just gone noon.

  But the sleep had clarified his mind and he knew now what he had to do. He brushed sprigs of heather out of his hair and off his clothes and set off back down the path towards High Clough with a new determination. He drove back to Arnedale almost as quickly as he had come, but instead of taking the bypass towards Bradfield he went into the town and stopped outside a gaunt modern church where the congregation was just coming out of the bleached wooden doors. He sat waiting for a moment until the crowds began to thin and he was able to see the person he was looking for, a small wiry elderly man standing in the porch deep in conversation with the black robed, white haired parish priest.

  “Dad,” Thackeray said by way of acknowledgement to his father as he approached. “Frank,” to the priest.

  Father Frank Rafferty took his former parishioner’s hand with a smile of genuine warmth but the older man merely nodded at his son, tight-lipped, his creased face taut with suppressed emotion.

  “How are you?” Thackeray asked his father.

  “Nobbut middling,” Joe Thackeray said bleakly. “I daresay I’ll not be owt else the time I’ve got left.” Joe had buried his wife, sold his sheep, had his dogs put down and left his farm in a mood of bitter resentment. It did not seem he had come to terms with his new situation during the months he had been living in a bungalow close to the Sacred Heart church he attended every Sunday, rain, shine or howling blizzard.

  “It’s not often we see you in Arnedale, Michael,” the priest said. “I dare say you’ve not come for a blessing.”

  “I’d have thought you could find it in you to light a candle for your mother,” Joe said, nodding towards the church door stiffly, and glancing away so as not to be caught in anything so demeaning as entreaty. “Or for your Ian.” Thackeray bit back a sharp retort and simply shook his head.

  “I’m glad I caught you both together,” he said. “You both have a right to know what I’m planning to do.” The priest took his arm companionably.

  “Are you sure you want to talk here?” he asked. “Come into the presbytery…”

  “No,” Thackeray interrupted him brusquely, pulling away. “There’s nothing to discuss and I should be at work. There’s a young girl missing. I have to get back to Bradfield. But I’ve made a decision that you both should know about. I’m going to divorce Aileen, and when that’s done, I shall ask Laura Ackroyd to marry me.” The sound which burst from Joe Thackeray was halfway between anger and pain.

  “Thi mother would never forgive thee,” he cried.

  “Aileen’s gone, dad,” Thackeray said, more gently. “Nothing’s going to bring her back. The rest of us have to go on living.”

  “If she’s gone anywhere, it’s where you sent her,” the old man said.

  “No, Joe, no, that’s enough,” Frank Rafferty broke in quickly, taking Joe’s arm. “Michael’s right. He has a right to the rest of his life.”

  “The Church…,” Joe began but the priest hushed him again, impatient now.

  “There are times when the church is right,” he said. “And there are times when she’s wrong, though we’re not supposed to notice that. I can’t help thinking that what Michael is planning to do is right for everyone except Aileen, and she can neither know nor care.” Thackeray took the old priest’s hand gratefully.

  “Thank you,” he said, before giving his astonished father a clumsy hug and turning on his heel.

  “God bless,” Frank Rafferty said softly, knowing he would not be thanked for the prayer. “And now, Joe,” he said with a warning gleam in his eye. “Come and have that drop of Irish I promised you and I’ll tell you what I’m going to preach next week about Christian charity.”

  Jack Longley had been up early that Sunday morning too. He had been driving up the steep hill to Broadley by eight, ready for his regular game of golf at the course which meandered from the edge of the village in a series of swooping moorland fairways surrounded by stands of bracken and gorse.

  The great advantages of Broadley golf club as opposed to the more urban alternatives Longley could have frequented were sharp moorland air and spectacular views across miles of open country. Its unique disadvantage was the frequent intrusion of wandering and inquisitive sheep which presented obstacles which even the most perverse creators of bunkers and water hazards could not have dreamed of. Longley was still searching the rule book for enlightenment o
n the problem of balls deflected by sheep shit on the green. He suspected that it was not a hazard which preoccupied players on better regulated links.

  Longley was not a fanatical golfer. His handicap was modest and he knew it was unlikely to improve on the basis of the couple of weekend games he allowed himself. But he liked the open air and the feeling of self-righteousness which came from long hikes across springy turf and from his hefty, uninhibited swing which usually took his ball roughly in the right direction if not always as close to the target as he might have wished.

  But this morning his outing had gone even less well than usual. He was playing with Dickie Robinson, the club’s honorary secretary, and not only was his opponent unequivocally winning, he was also proving intractable on the issue on which Longley had chosen to bend his ear, not for the first nor, it now seemed, for the last time.

  “It’s got to come, you know. You can’t go on resisting it forever,” Longley remarked as he weighed up the chances of lifting his ball from a narrow strip of sandy rough onto a green inconveniently situated two feet vertically above it.

  “I dare say,” Robinson conceded. “But I’ll not stick my neck out on it, personally. I’ve told you that, Jack.”

  Robinson, a plump middle aged accountant, would be unlikely ever to stick his neck out on anything, Longley told himself as he thoughtfully selected a sand wedge and weighed up the angles for his shot. And without Robinson’s backing he was unlikely to be able to fulfil the promise he had made to Imran Hussain in a weak moment when the businessman had expressed a mild interest in playing golf.

  Hussain’s visit to the club as a guest had not been a great success. A sudden silence when he had taken him into the bar had told Longley all he really needed to know about the prospect of Broadley accepting its first Asian member. There had been another imperceptible shudder of collective disapproval when Hussain opted for an orange juice rather than a Scotch. The omens, he should have realised then, were hardly auspicious.

  “You’ll not help me find a seconder, then,” Longley asked, as he scooped his ball awkwardly and watched in mock despair as it rolled merrily past the flag and came to rest in another small sandy bunker on the far side of the green.

  “Time’s not ripe,” Robinson said. “It’ll come, I dare say. But the members won’t wear it yet. It used to be the same with the Jews. They got accepted in the end, but it takes time. I reckon it’ll take another generation with the Pakis. Especially out here. He’d do better trying to get into Southfield. There’s plenty of ‘em living up there now, I hear, and not short of a bob or two neither.”

  “We haven’t got another generation,” Longley said. “I know that in my job. It’s time the rest of you came into the twentieth century before you get pushed arse over tip into the twenty first. You want to hear my chief constable on the subject.”

  “Aye, well, I dare say you’re at the cutting edge, Jack,” Robinson said, as he neatly holed his ball and stood with a satisfied smile waiting for Longley to take three wild putts to complete his play. “Golf clubs are never at the cutting edge of owt, are they? You can put him up if you like, but he won’t get in, you can take my word on that.”

  Longley scowled as he slid his putter into his trolley. He suspected that Robinson was right and cursed himself for half promising Hussain what he could not deliver. But before he could tee off again the pager in the pocket of his golf shirt began to bleep.

  “Bloody hell,” he said. “No peace for the wicked.”

  “I can call that a win, then, can I?” Robinson asked as the superintendent stared angrily at his message.

  “Aye, I suppose you’ll have to,” Longley conceded, knowing that he had lost in more ways than one.

  “Where the hell is the DCI?” superintendent Longley asked Kevin Mower for the sixth or seventh time since he had been summoned from the golf course at ten.

  Mower looked impassively at the angry face which peered around the CID room door. Mower was as elegant as usual in Chinos and an open-necked Italian shirt, the sleeves carefully rolled up, but Longley was still dressed in his red golfing sweater and the colour clashed with the purple flush of irritation around his heavy jowls.

  “I’ve tried his home number and his mobile again, sir,” he said circumspectly. “No joy so far.”

  Longley glanced around the office which was gradually filling up as detectives responded to the urgent call to come in regardless of any private plans they might have had for the day.

  “Spare me a minute, Kevin,” he said and Mower followed him reluctantly into Thackeray’s office. Longley closed the door firmly behind them and sat down behind the desk.

  “Right lad,” he said ominously. “I’ve warned you about blind loyalty so I want a straight answer to a straight question. Do you know where Michael Thackeray is?”

  “No, sir,” Mower said flatly.

  “But you were expecting him in this morning?” This time Mower hesitated for just a fraction of a second too long before replying and he knew Longley had not missed the pause. He shrugged helplessly.

  “Sir,” he said. “He was going to launch a major search for Safi Haque. And we were going to talk about interviewing the mother again. He wanted me and Rita Desai to have another chat to her without her husband…something Rita picked up yesterday.”

  “Time?”

  “Nine o’clock here, sir,” Mower said reluctantly.

  Longley glanced at his watch which now said five to eleven.

  “Right,” he said. “DI Jackson’s gone down to the scene and I’ll take charge here while Mr. Thackeray turns up. Bring me up to speed on what’s happened?”

  “The BMW belongs to an Imran Hussain, lives out on the Broadley road.”

  “Bloody hell,” Longley said, paling visible. He waved Mower on.

  “We’ve a witness says the car wasn’t there when he went to bed last night but had appeared by eight o’clock this morning when he took the dog out. The body’s a middle aged man, Asian appearance, well built, smartly dressed, no positive ID yet. There was a hell of a lot of blood. Amos Atherton’s preliminary examination indicates head injuries. He’ll do a PM this afternoon.”

  “An accident, does he reckon? Hit the wind-screen but was conscious long enough to wander off?”

  “Amos is non-commital, sir,” Mower said.

  “He’s always bloody non-commital,” Longley snapped. “If this is Hussain we’re talking as big as they get in the Asian community. Tell Amos I need answers fast, will you? Do we have even a preliminary ID?”

  “He was carrying credit cards and other documents in Mr. Hussain’s name,” Mower said quickly. “He didn’t seem to have been robbed.”

  “Bloody hell fire”, Longley said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes briefly as the implications of what had happened began to grow threatening tentacles which he knew would entangle the entire town, if not the county.

  Mower waited patiently. Even as a relative newcomer to Bradfield he knew that the death of Imran Hussain, if that was indeed who had been found in a bloody heap in a back garden, would shake the self-made establishment of the town to its foundations. Where-ever men of substance - and there were few enough women amongst them - met in Bradfield, the Clarendon bar, the Southfield golf club, the masonic lodges, the Rotary Club and the council chamber, Hussain’s name was known as one of the most successful of the newcomers from the East and the most determined to consolidate and make respectable his countrymen’s place in their adopted society. The Gazette had recently been full of his plans to establish an Asian centre which would promote the best of Muslim culture and religion and provide a meeting place for his co-religionists amongst the remnants of the dark Satanic mills of Yorkshire. And Bradfield’s establishment - always ready to pay obeisance to brass, whatever its provenance, if not always overwhelmed by culture - was slowly warming to the notion. Imran Hussain was already a man of substance and was rapidly becoming a man of importance. Mower knew exactly why Jack Longley looked so
sick.

  “We’ve made no contact with the family, sir,” Mower ventured at last. “The house is empty, the neighbours haven’t seen anyone around for a couple of days. He has a wife and kids…”

  “Three sons,” Longley said heavily. “I know Mr. Hussain, damn it. I was at a meeting with him on Friday at the Town Hall.”

  “Councillor, is he, sir?”

  “No, he’s not on the council, but his brother is and Imran’s an influential man in his own right. Not short of a bob. Started wi’nowt in the taxi business and then went into long-distance transport, coaches, travel agencies, that sort of thing. He’s a finger in a lot of pies in the Asian community. Launched this Asian centre appeal himself with a donation of fifty thou.”

  “So if it’s him….?

  “If it’s him, and there’s even a sniff it’s not an accident pure and simple, there’s going to be all hell let loose,” Longley said. “It may not be a Paris underpass job, but there’ll be a bloody great crowd at the funeral, I can tell you. Where’s the body?”

  “It’s been taken to the infirmary, sir,” Mower said.

  “Right, well, I’d better cast an eye over it. We need an identification. We can’t hang about waiting for his wife to turn up. In the meantime, get some of the lads to find out where she and the kids have gone will you. I hope to God they’re not in Pakistan. And get traffic to work out just what happened to the car, whether another vehicle was involved, the lot, and fast.”