Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “I’ve decided to get a divorce,” he said. “It’s time.”

  “Is it?” she asked, turning away, not meeting his eyes. “You’ll divorce her on paper, I expect. But how long will it take you to divorce her in your head?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Vicky Mendelson had taken Laura in with her usual imperturbable good will, presented her with her baby daughter to bathe and asked no questions until she and Laura and her husband David had slumped into comfortable chairs close to the open french windows after dinner. Outside in the lush mid-summer garden birds exulted in their evening recital as they swooped amongst the sheltering treetops. David Mendelson looked at his unexpected guest quizzically.

  “Michael Thackeray tells me I have to read you the riot act,” he said. “You’ve been bending the law to suit your prejudices, is more or less how he put it.” Laura smiled faintly.

  “Did he now?” she said. “And as a crown prosecutor I suppose you’re bound to agree with him.”

  “Not necessarily,” David said mildly. “You know the Prosecution Service doesn’t always go along with police perceptions. Do you want to tell me about it? Between these four walls?”

  Laura held out her empty glass for a refill vodka and tonic and when she had taken a comforting swig she told Mendelson everything that had happened since the night she had witnessed murder on the Docklands Railway. He did not interrupt. He could see that in the emotional state she was in even a friendly interrogation was the last thing she needed. But when she had finished he nodded.

  “Hiding an illegal immigrant is an unlawful act, though I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that.”

  “If I could be sure the immigration service wouldn’t lock him up and the police would take proper care of him I’d persuade him to give himself up,” Laura said.

  “You can’t be sure of that,” David said. “They’ll make their own judgement. But have you considered that if the people who wrecked your flat were looking for this boy, he might be safer locked up?”

  “He’s safe enough where he is,” Laura said.

  “I hope you’re right,” David said sombrely. “Do you seriously think that it’s the London business catching up with you? Not just a burglary at your flat?”

  “I called Sally Neill in London before I came over. She said she may have mentioned to a couple of people that I had come back north. Detective Inspector Wesley for one. She said she thought he probably knew anyway. And the young man from the immigrants’ advice centre came round looking for me, apparently. I’d asked him to keep in touch and he’d lost my mobile number…”

  “So half of East London could have found out you’d gone back to Bradfield.”

  “I suppose so. I never actually asked anyone to keep it secret,” Laura said, draining her glass and feeling the warm glow of the alcohol spread through her. “I suppose it could be someone looking for Ahmed, or someone looking for me. Who knows? We’re both witnesses to the murder of his brother. He’s seen something much worse.”

  “You mustn’t put yourself at risk for this boy,” Vicky said suddenly. She had sat silently listening to her friend as she had told David her story but now looked indignant. “Let the police handle it.”

  “There’s another factor you don’t seem to have taken on board,” David Mendelson said slowly. “What you’re also doing is putting Michael’s career at risk.”

  He and Vicky had known Laura since they had all been students together at Bradfield University, but they had also grown to like and respect Michael Thackeray during the couple of years he had been working in the town. And David was acutely aware that if it came to a choice between Laura and his job Michael would choose with his heart, not his head.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Laura said indignantly, her face flushed by more than the drink.

  “If you’re expecting him to keep quiet about you and Ahmed Barre, then you’ve already done it,” Mendelson said. “You’ve put him in an impossible position.”

  “Oh, sugar,” Laura said putting her glass down and going out through the french windows into the garden where the westerly sun had turned everything to gold. It was Vicky who followed her, as flowery and sunny as the garden itself in her light summer dress, her golden brown hair hanging loose to her shoulders. She put a tanned arm round Laura’s waist.

  “You never learn do you?” she asked affectionately. “You can’t put the world to rights all on your own.”

  “I know, I know,” Laura said. “At the moment I’d give anything just to put things right between me and Michael. If it hadn’t been for that I’d never have gone to bloody London in the first place and got involved in all this. And been offered a job down there.”

  “Ah,” Vicky said quietly. “And does he know about that?”

  “Not yet,” Laura said. “There’s a few things Michael doesn’t know about, but I think that’s the one he’s going to like least of all.”

  Detective sergeant Kevin Mower and WDC Rita Desai were deep in conversation when Michael Thackeray walked into the main CID office next morning and he could tell from the way they drew apart and stopped talking that he was probably the subject of their discussion. Either that or the sergeant was making more progress with the object of his lust than Thackeray thought he deserved.

  “Sergeant,” he said curtly, nodding Mower into his office ahead of him.

  “Right,” Thackeray said when Mower had closed the door behind him. “There’s been enough pussy-footing around this case. We’ve got nowhere with the weapon, nowhere with eye-witnesses in Aysgarth Lane. I think it’s time to find out why Imran Hussain was such a worried man in the days before he died. And as his wife and his brother either don’t know or won’t tell us, we’ll have to try another tack. I want to get into his business affairs. Somewhere in there I guess there’s a problem, and if we find the problem, we’ll maybe find the motive for the shooting.”

  “Right, guv,” Mower said, wondering what had happened to transform Thackeray from the lacklustre figure whose mind had seemed only to be half on the case over the last few days to the human dynamo who had turned up unusually early this morning.“You’ll need a warrant to look at the books. And the accounts are probably computerised. But if we can get access, I could ask the computer unit at county to help. They’ve got some machine which effectively sucks a hard disc dry.”

  Thackeray raised an eye-brow at that. He accepted ruefully that Mower was several times more computer literate than he was himself, but this was the first time it had even been suggested to him that such a device existed.

  “I thought you could just delete things from the hard disc?” he said.

  “You can, but very often it leaves traces. Files that people think have vanished are still lurking there in the undergrowth. There are people at county who have ways of winkling them out. You have to go to some trouble to clean the disc completely and most people know too little about what’s going on in there to even think it’s necessary, never mind getting hold of the tools to do the job. Leave it to me, guv. I’ll see what the experts suggest. But as I understand it you can effectively copy everything you could possibly need, and then search through it at leisure - leaving the suspects to carry on as normal while you take your time studying their affairs. A damn sight easier than the days when you had to go in with a removal van and bring the filing cabinets out bodily. You don’t even need to bring the computers away now.” Thackeray nodded.

  “You sort that out then. And as far as a warrant is concerned, has Rita Desai made any progress with the other line of inquiry I put her onto,” Thackeray said. “She told Ray Roberts from immigration she was sure that there were families anxious about the late arrival of people who were not necessarily coming through legitimate channels. Ray says Bradfield isn’t the only place they’ve picked up rumours like that.”

  “I was checking that out when you came in,” Mower said easily, although that had been by no means all he had been checking out with Rita Desai. “Do you want
to see her? I think she may have come up with what you’re looking for.”

  Rita looked nervous when she slipped through the DCI’s door a few minutes later and she was startled to be met by one of Thackeray’s rare smiles.

  “Sir?” she asked cautiously.

  “The Haque family,” Thackeray said. “You’ve got as close as anyone to them, which is what you were supposed to be here for, of course. Fill me in, will you? Especially about the brother who was supposed to be arriving.”

  “I dropped in to see Mrs. Haque again last night,” Rita said. “I’ve been trying to keep in touch. Getting a relationship going.” She tried not to make too obvious her conviction that this was the very least she thought the police should have been doing for the Haque family over the last few days.

  “Mrs. Haque’s still desperately worried about Safi and the fact that nothing much seems to have been happening since this other murder…” She hesitated, knowing she was getting in too deep for her own good. “I realise that has to take priority….”

  “But you think we’ve been neglecting the Haques? I think you’re right,” Thackeray said unexpectedly. “There’s a fine line to be drawn when a missing person could be more than that and I’m sure we’re on the wrong side of it with Safi. It’s something this force has got wrong before. So you’ve kept in contact? That’s good. But have you actually learned anything new?”

  “Mrs. Haque is just as worried about her son Ali as she is about Safi, though she obviously doesn’t want to talk about him. In fact she won’t if her husband or the other boy, Majeed, is there. But they were obviously expecting him to arrive some time ago and there’s been no word. He’s twenty years old and stayed in Pakistan with his aunt when she came here with the other children. I asked her if he had the necessary papers, because he’s too old to come in as a dependent child, and she wouldn’t answer, so I assume he hasn’t.”

  “Did the family make the travel arrangements?” Thackeray said.

  “Yes, I think so. She wouldn’t give me any details, but when I mentioned a name to her she became very upset.”

  “A name?” Thackeray said sharply.

  “I picked up a name when I was talking to people in Aysgarth Lane. I was asking who could make those sort of arrangements for me - pretending I had a cousin who wanted to come over.”

  “And?”

  “The person who will apparently fix these things is called Azul Sharif. And it seems to be widely assumed that he has some connection with Imran Hussain’s travel agency.”

  “Well done, Rita,” Thackeray said. “Give me a written report. I need it to get a warrant sworn out to search Hussain’s offices. I think we’ve just found a way into a whole pile of unpleasantness that the Asian community had much rather we didn’t disturb.”

  “And Safi?” Rita Desai said quietly.

  “Keep in touch with the family. Make that your priority. Though I hope the disappearance of Safi Haque has nothing to do with all this,” Thackeray said sombrely. “I really do.”

  Ray Roberts turned up in Thackeray’s office after lunch looking smug, his moustache bristling with self-righteousness, his pale blue eyes cold.

  “I thought someone had been leading you up the proverbial,” he said, without preamble.

  “What do you mean?” Thackeray asked warily.

  “Bodies on rubbish tips is what I mean,” Roberts said, taking the seat opposite Thackeray’s desk without its being offered and pulling up his trousers carefully before crossing his legs and revealing purple and green Argyle socks. “I’ve had a posse of lads up to their elbows in the smelly stuff down on the Thames estuary and they haven’t found as much as a couple of unwanted puppies in a plastic bag. Nothing, zero, zilch, a complete bloody blank. So much for your reliable source. I’m about as popular down there as a constipated mule-load of heroin, I can tell you.”

  “Are you sure you got the right place,” Thackeray asked mildly.

  “According to your instructions we did,” Roberts said. “I think I’d better have a word with your informant myself, don’t you? I want to hear this story from Miz Ackroyd in person. I also want to know where her Asian boy-friend is hiding himself. There’s a lot more questions I want to ask that young man.”

  “I’m up to my eyes in a murder investigation, Ray,” Thackeray said.

  “I only need her address, man,” Roberts said shortly. “I don’t need you to bloody chaperone me.”

  “She’s not at her address,” Thackeray said reluctantly. “She had a nasty burglary and moved out to stay with a friend. I’ll find out where for you, if you like.”

  “Aye, well, I do like.” Roberts glanced at his watch and frowned. “I’m due at a meeting at county HQ in twenty minutes so I’d best be on my way. Ask one of your people to contact me on my mobile, will you, when you’ve got hold of the address? I could get back into Bradfield early this evening and catch her then.”

  “Right,” Thackeray said, knowing that further prevarication would only antagonise Roberts in ways which were unlikely to help Laura. “I’ll be in touch,” he said as the immigration officer gave him an ironic salute and closed his office door behind him.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Thackeray said, flicking open his personal diary to find David and Vicky Mendelson’s phone number. But before he could punch it in, the phone rang and he found himself having to fend off another assault on Laura, this time mercifully from much further away. The distinctly unfriendly voice this time belonged to DI Steve Wesley at Deadman’s Row police station in Docklands.

  “I need a favour, Mike,” Wesley said, oblivious to the effect his familiarity was having over two hundred miles of phone line. “That reporter woman you were looking for a couple of days ago? Ackroyd? Laura Ackroyd? Did you find her?” Thackeray hesitated.

  “I think she’s back in Bradfield,” he said circumspectly at last. “Though I haven’t interviewed her formally yet about the matter I was concerned with. I’ve got a murder inquiry on…”

  “Right,” Wesley said. “The word here was that she’d gone back north. But not just that. She wasn’t alone, apparently. She set off back with an African lad I’m very keen to talk to. A Somali illegal called Ahmed Barre who probably knows quite a lot about routes in from Belgium. It’s him I really want. He’s been pissing me about for a week or more and if he’s up there I want him back down here. Now! Can you check it out for me, or should I send one of my own boys up?”

  “No need for that,” Thackeray said quickly. “Leave it with me. I need to talk to her myself anyway, and I’ll ask her about Barre at the same time. That do?” He wondered why words which were no more than the literal truth felt like a lie.

  “Ok,” Wesley said, a shade reluctantly. “But make it a priority, could you? I’m getting a lot of hassle down here about a so-called racist murder - Barre’s brother in fact, and I want a heart-to-heart with Ahmed before the Yard insist on putting him somewhere too bloody safe by half as a protected witness. You know how bloody sensitive they are about anything where there’s even a sniff of racism.”

  Thackeray put the phone down and found that his hands were shaking. He wanted a drink but lit a cigarette instead and drew the smoke deep into his lungs and waited for the nicotine to kick in and offer a semblance of calm. Then he dialled the Mendelson’s number.

  “Don’t let Laura out of your sight,” he said when Vicky answered. “I’m coming over.”

  Laura herself opened the door to Thackeray with David and Vicky’s baby daughter in her arms. Her smile across Naomi’s silky red hair, just a shade lighter than her own and beginning to curl, caught him so fiercely unawares that he took a step backwards. He had never allowed himself to think for even a second about Laura as a potential mother and her obvious pleasure in the baby brought back almost intolerable memories of another woman and child he had loved.

  “Vicky’s gone to collect the boys from school. It’s the end of term and they finish early today,” Laura said turning away too quickly to notice
the anguish on his face as he followed her into the house. “This little one is keeping me company.” She led the way into the kitchen where she put Naomi into a baby chair on the floor, handed her a rattle and turned to offer Thackeray a fleeting kiss.

  He did not reciprocate. Instead he sat down heavily at the kitchen table and shook his head, annoyed that Vicky had left Laura alone in the house even for half an hour.

  “This isn’t a social call,” he said ungraciously, extinguishing Laura’s tentative smile.

  “I’m sorry?” she said distantly, trying to hide the hurt.

  “Laura!” There was real impatience in his voice now and she took the chair opposite him and looked at him sombrely. “I’ve now got two colleagues breathing down my neck because you have information they need. So far I’ve put them off but I can’t put them off much longer. They need to talk about the evidence you gave me. They need to talk to Ahmed Barre. And they’re going to make your life very uncomfortable if you won’t tell them where he is.”

  Laura looked down at her hands for a moment. She had spent a sleepless night thinking about what David Mendelson had said the previous evening and she knew that for once in her life she was defeated. She could not leave Michael Thackeray in the impossible position she had placed him in.

  “If you wait until Vicky comes back I’ll take you to see him,” she said simply.

  They drove in silence up the steep hill to Wuthering, Thackeray annoyed with himself for not working out the obvious place for Laura to have concealed an illicit visitor and Laura appalled at what she had been persuaded to do. She glanced at the stony profile beside her and she was filled with a sense of loss. She knew that when it came to a choice between the law and justice - which as far as she could see were not necessarily connected - he was bound to follow the letter of the law. He had no choice. There was no scope for him to bend the rules for hard cases. Yet she still felt betrayed and knew that he knew she did. The rift between them seemed to have deepened to a chasm since the passion of the previous wretched afternoon when they had clung together like castaways in the wreckage of her home. Thackeray parked outside Joyce Ackroyd’s tiny bungalow and glanced at Laura.