Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “Do you have a key?”

  “It’s kept under a stone at the back,” she said. “But Ahmed’s got it now. He let me in last time I came up.”

  “I’ll stay here. You go in the back door. I don’t want him running off.”

  Laura did not argue. She went round the back of the house, knocked lightly on the door and waited. There was no reply and, puzzled, she tried the door handle which gave under her hand.

  “Ahmed?” she said, going into the tiny kitchen where a couple of dirty cups and plates had been left in the sink. There was still no response and it took no more than a minute to discover that there was no-one in the house. Laura opened the front door to Thackeray.

  “He’s not here,” she said. “I told him not to go out, especially in day-light, but he’s obviously taken no notice….”

  “Are you sure?” Thackeray asked angrily, pushing past her, although he knew himself that the question was superfluous in such a small house. Even so, he glanced around the living room and bedroom, taking in the bed which had obviously been slept in and the signs of occupation in the kitchen and bathroom.

  “I shouldn’t think Joyce will be too pleased to have her home disturbed like this,” he said sourly.

  “Joyce won’t mind if it’s in a good cause,” Laura came back sharply and they looked at each other for a moment in total incomprehension.

  “I knew that before I brought him here,” Laura said. “You forget who Joyce is. She got locked up for seven days once after a particularly energetic anti-apartheid demonstration.” Thackeray sat down and ran a hand through his hair.

  “You’ve left me in an impossible position,” he said. “You’re going to have to talk to immigration, and to DI Wesley in London. They both want to talk to Ahmed and they’ll both be furious if he’s disappeared again. Have you the least idea where he could have gone?”

  “No idea at all,” Laura said, not entirely apologetically.

  “Well, I’ll have an eye kept on this place in case he comes back. And put out a call for him. I can’t do any less than that. You’ll have to give me a description. And I’ll give Wesley and the local immigration people your mobile number. OK?” Laura pulled a face at that.

  “I suppose,” she said.

  “Come on, Laura,” Thackeray said. “You have to help me. Quite apart from anything else, the boy might be in some danger if he goes back to London. It’s not only the authorities who are looking for him, is it? Has he got money?”

  “Apparently,” Laura said. “He was supposed to be flying to Canada, he says. It was only the murders which stopped him. I suppose he might still try to get a flight. Or he’ll head back to his mother.”

  “I expect Wesley will keep an eye on her,” Thackeray said. “And I’ll have to alert the ports and airports.”

  “All that for one Somali teenager?” she asked. “Haven’t you got more important criminals to hunt down?”

  “I thought you wanted someone arrested for the murder you saw? Knowing the Met, they’ll only move if they’ve got cast-iron evidence and they need your friend for that.” Laura shrugged dispiritedly.

  “I think if you gave DI Wesley a video-recording of what happened, with everyone holding up a little placard with their name on, he’d still find some reason not to arrest anyone,” she said.

  “Wasn’t there a security camera in the station?” Thackeray asked. “It’s an obvious place to put one.” Laura looked at him, startled.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Wesley never mentioned one but then Wesley never seemed very interested in finding those thugs in the first place. I got the distinct impression that black victims don’t count for much down there. Perhaps when they’ve dug a whole heap of them out of that rubbish tip someone will take some notice.”

  “Yes, well, that’s another thing,” Thackeray said reluctantly. “Obviously the murder of Ahmed’s brother was real enough, but according to the immigration service, they’ve searched the landfill site you sent them to and found absolutely nothing. That’s another reason they want to talk to you.”

  Laura stared at Thackeray in disbelief, her mouth dry.

  “That can’t be right,” she said. “I saw it myself. There was a body there..”

  “A body?”

  “A hand. A dead hand.” She shuddered, remembering more than she wanted to remember.

  “A hand? He told you to expect a dozen or more dead bodies. But you saw just a hand. Could you have been mistaken?”

  “No,” Laura whispered. “I wasn’t mistaken. Ahmed slid down the rubbish and came back with the ring.”

  “Which he could have had hidden in his pocket all the time,” Thackeray said flatly. “But as a means of persuading you to believe his horror story and drive him well away from London it was quite effective, wasn’t it?”

  “But the burglary?”

  “Perhaps it was just that. A burglary.”

  “You think I’ve been conned?” Laura asked bitterly.

  “I don’t know, Laura,” Thackeray said. “But it’s a possibility. There are times….” He hesitated for a moment.

  “Go on, say it.”

  “There are times when you let your heart get the better of your head,” he ventured, and was not surprised when she turned away from him angrily.

  “I’ll take you back to Vicky’s,” he said. “They’ve finished finger-printing at your flat. When you want to start tidying up there give me a call and I’ll come and help you.”

  “That’s OK,” Laura said dismissively. “Vicky and David have offered to come over at the weekend.” She picked up her bag and walked slowly back to the car, leaving Thackeray to lock the back door and put the key back under its stone. He had often wondered whether another man might finally splinter his fragile relationship with Laura, whose beauty he had seen sharpen male expectations where-ever they went together. But never, even in his most distracted nightmares, had he thought that the other man might be a nineteen year old African, where-abouts unknown. Half-forgotten prayers flitted through his mind as he followed her to his car and drove her slowly back to the Mendelson’s house in silence.

  “Laura,” he said quietly as she got out of the car outside the Mendelson’s front gate. “We must talk. About us.”

  “I’ll call you some time,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Keep in touch with the Haque family,” the DCI had said with that unexpected smile which made him look years younger and three hundred per cent more approachable. Quite dishy, in fact, Rita Desai thought as she followed her boss’s instructions and drove back across the town to Aysgarth Lane that afternoon. But not nearly as beguiling as Kevin Mower who had taken her to the Woolpack for a snatched lunch which she had found rather more satisfactory than the half pints of lager and curling sandwiches on the table in front of them might have indicated.

  She really would have to decide what to do about Kevin Mower, she thought as she parked outside Safi Haque’s home and pulled a conciliatory scarf around her shoulders to disguise her low-cut summer top. So far in her short life as an independent woman she had kept her balance on the tight-rope between her two cultures. She had succeeded in meeting the expectations of both, in public if not in private, except for the major failure, in her parents’ eyes, of not getting married by the age of twenty six to the nice Indian boy of their dreams. But the serious temptations which Kevin Mower had suddenly thrown in her way made her think that the confrontations she had so far skilfully avoided were going to catch up with her very soon. If only she could be sure of just how serious were the intentions behind those mocking eyes and the delicious but so far quite decorous wandering hands.

  Was it sex that lay behind Safi Haque’s disappearance she wondered as she got out of the car and knocked at the door of the neat terraced house. Somehow she did not think so. She could not have put it into words for Michael Thackeray, indeed she would not have tried for fear of being mocked, but all the vibes here felt bad and, if anything, getting
worse.

  Majeed Haque opened the door at her second and more insistent knock. He looked haggard and unkempt and much older than his sixteen years.

  “My mother is at the shop with my father,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t you be at school?” Rita asked, taking in his jeans and Bradfield United shirt.

  “No, I’ve finished my exams. I’m going to the further education college in September.” Majeed looked away and Rita suddenly had a feeling - call it a hunch, or intuition, either way she knew her male colleagues would be contemptuous of it - that the boy wanted to talk.

  “Can I come in,” she asked and was not surprised when he held the door wide for her and followed her into the sitting room with its comfortable armchairs and oriental rugs. Majeed flung himself into a chair and lay back, closing his eyes for a moment. His hair was long and flopped across his eyes and his face seemed thinner than the last time Rita had seen him. She sat close to him, tension knotting her stomach but quite sure that for the first time the Haque family’s rock-solid facade had begun to crack, although why Majeed should be the one to give under the stress of the last week she could not imagine. She waited patiently, not wanting to push him, and eventually he opened his eyes and she was surprised to see them full of tears.

  “I only thought I could help Safi,” he said at last, his voice choking with emotion. “But I think I killed Mr. Hussain.” He broke down then, keeling over into himself, his arms wrapped around his shoulders as they were shaken with great wracking sobs. She let him cry until she felt it safe to take his hand and gradually a semblance of calm returned. She passed him a paper tissue and he scrubbed his face dry, leaving it puffy and red around the eyes. He was obviously mortified by his collapse in front of a woman. He refused to meet her gaze and she knew that nothing he told her could be used in evidence but guessed that if she called for help now the boy would clam up and say nothing. Kevin Mower, where are you when I need you for some good advice, she thought. “Take your time,” Rita said at length, deciding to let him have his say. Every nerve in her body wanted to urge him on, but she knew she had to slow him down. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Ali coming over is the beginning,” Majeed said. “My mother was always very upset because he stayed behind with my aunt when she brought Safi and me to England. She cried a lot when we were first here. Then this year they wanted him to come over but the British immigration people in Pakistan turned him down, said he was too old now. So my father found another way to get him here. He should have arrived a couple of weeks ago. But he hasn’t. And we don’t know where he is.”

  “Your father must have made inquiries,” Rita said tentatively.

  “He did. And Azul Sharif said that it would be fine, everything was being taken care of. But nothing happened. And after my father spoke to him again, then that next day Safi disappeared and Sharif said that if we kept quiet about Safi everything would be OK for Ali…”

  “But your parents reported her missing…”

  “Not at first. They were very frightened of Sharif. But the school knew she was missing, so we had to say something in the end. Her teachers kept asking me where she was, if she was ill. You can’t keep something like that quiet very long, can you?”

  “No, not easily,” Rita said. Not even in a community as tight-knit as Bradfield’s Asians were, she thought. “So how does Mr. Hussain come into this? It is Imran Hussain we’re talking about?” Majeed nodded.

  “I was cycling back from a friend’s house down the far end of Aysgarth Lane,” he said. “I saw this big silver car and I remembered what the police were asking about. Some-one had seen Safi in a big silver car. Two men were getting into it. One of them was Azul Sharif. I recognised him. The other man was older. I didn’t know him. I only found out later it was Imran Hussain.”

  “So? You followed them? On a bike?” Rita did not disguise her incredulity at that.

  “No, no, they were stopped when I saw them, getting into the car. I was ahead of them by then. I kept on riding but the more I thought about Azul Sharif the more I wanted him to tell me where Safi was. If she was OK. You know? So I stopped and waited for them a bit further down the road and threw half a brick at the car, made them stop. In fact they crashed into the garden wall. They were furious, grabbed hold of me, but I knew they wouldn’t call the police. Not after what Azul had said to us about Safi. This was between us, just Asians, just Muslims. Nothing to do with you lot. I wanted to sort it out for my family.”

  “So what happened next, Majeed? There were two men in the car, and you? How did someone end up dead?”

  “Azul grabbed hold of me and dragged me into the car and told Mr. Hussain to drive on. He went a little way but there was something wrong. Something was wrong with the wheel, grinding and banging, so he pulled onto the verge and stopped again. Then Azul got out and he was furious, shouting, and Mr. Hussain started shouting too, not just at me, at Azul too. I was frightened.. I thought they were going to kill me. In the end I managed to get out of the car too and I hit him as he tried to follow me. He sort of fell back and hit his head on something and it started bleeding. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him. But Azul tried to grab me and I just ran. I ran right back up the road to where I’d left my bike, and I rode off as fast as I could and went home by the back roads.”

  Rita digested all this for a moment, her mind full of questions which she knew it was not wise to ask here, alone with the boy, who clearly needed and was entitled to legal advice.

  “Majeed, you know what you’ve told me is very serious, don’t you?” The boy nodded, clearly appalled by his own outburst.

  “I’m going to have to telephone my boss now, and ask him to come down to see you. And also get hold of your parents. Do you understand?” Majeed nodded again.

  “There’s just one thing I want to ask you, Majeed, and I want you to tell me the truth,” Rita said. “Do you have a gun? Here? In the house?” Majeed looked at her with such total surprise that she did not think he could be faking it.

  “A gun?” he said. “Of course I don’t have a gun.”

  They did not find the gun. Rita Desai had waited with the boy for ten minutes or so after she had called for backup and watched in horrified fascination as the full force of the law descended on the little terraced house. She had told a grim-faced Michael Thackeray what Majeed Haque had told her and as his mother came through the door he arrested and cautioned the boy on suspicion of the murder of Imran Hussain. The arrival of armed officers had drawn a small crowd in the street outside but their search of the house turned up nothing suspicious.

  As the police cars finally drove away Rita walked slowly back to her own car to follow them to head-quarters. She should, she thought, be feeling elated at her first involvement in a major CID arrest but instead she felt sick and drained and slightly guilty. She jumped more than she should have done at the touch of a hand on her shoulder and she spun round to find that Kevin Mower had followed her.

  “Give me a lift back?” he asked. “I came up in the area car.“She shrugged dispiritedly.

  “Come on, why so glum?” he asked. “You’ll be the blue-eyed girl after this. The brass will be delighted to have this little lot cleared up. Well done.”

  “He’s only a kid,” Rita said. “He wanted a shoulder to cry on and he chose the wrong one. I don’t think for a moment he shot anyone.”

  “He certainly chose the wrong shoulder,” Mower said cheerfully. “As to the rest, leave it to the boss now. There’ll be forensic evidence, I dare say. And the gun’ll turn up eventually. Lie back and enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame. I would.” Rita shook her head doubtfully, but as she started the engine he put a restraining hand on hers.

  “Hey, come on,” he said again gently. “You can’t take these things personally. You’ll tie yourself in knots if you get too involved.”

  “If you don’t like the heat…?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, maybe I’m just not c
ut out for the kitchen,” she said.

  “You seem to be doing fine to me,” he said and pulled her towards him and kissed her and she found herself responding with a passion which took both of them by surprise.

  “That’s better,” Mower said softly, putting a hand on her thigh and feeling her breathing quicken. “Save your emotion for those who deserve it.” Reluctantly he let her go as two small Asian girls stopped by the car and stared unashamedly through the window. This, he thought, was neither the time nor the place.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have to leave it till later. The boss’ll be wondering where we are. And he’s not in a good mood this afternoon. I wonder when he last got his leg over, poor sod.”

  Laura Ackroyd and Ray Roberts from the immigration service were never going to be soul-mates, and Roberts got off to a bad start as soon as Vicky Mendelson showed him into her sun-lit sitting-room where Laura was waiting. He took in her jeans and T shirt, her bare feet, the red hair in loose curls around her pale, bruised face: she looked young and vulnerable, and he made the fatal mistake of trying to patronise her.

  “DCI Thackeray tells me that you’ve been led up the garden path by this Somali lad you’ve bumped into,” Roberts said. “I’m sure we can sort it out if you tell me exactly what happened.” Laura looked at her visitor with guileless green eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said sweetly. “Where would you like me to start? With the first dead body I saw, where the police are making such a complete cock-up of their investigation, or the other dozen or so you apparently can’t find, even though I’ve given you a map reference?” Roberts looked startled for a second, and then his expression snapped shut and his pale blue eyes hardened.