Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “That depends on how well I’m fed,” she said picking up the menu. They ate, each of them drinking in the other as much as the subtly aromatic dishes which made up their talis, meat for him, vegetarian for her. She drank foaming white lassi while he opted for Kingfisher beer. But they were abstemious. It was almost midnight when they finished their meal and they both knew that the question he was bound to ask and the answer she was bound to give were critical.

  Later, at his flat, she let him stand behind her and unpin her hair and run his fingers through it as it fell down her back like a raven’s wing. He let his hands slide forward under her arms to cup her breasts for a second and then begin to loosen her sari.

  “I’ve never taken one of these off before,” he whispered in her ear.

  “It’s quite easy,” she said encouragingly and then turned and raised her face to his and kissed him fiercely. The fire they lit was all-consuming and afterwards as he glanced down at her oval face and delicately pointed breasts beneath him he smiled triumphantly.

  “No Kama Sutra?”

  “You don’t need a guide book, do you,” she asked, laughing. “You seem to be doing very well without.”

  Not far away in a much bleaker flat Michael Thackeray lay on his bed fully dressed watching the smoke from his cigarette drift to the ceiling. He had been listening to a Billie Holiday CD but the plaintive voice had been silent for more than an hour now and he had not moved. He felt as if the very act of shifting his position would crack the thin veneer of his self-control and he would disintegrate into he knew not what excess.

  He was haunted by the face of Majeed Haque’s mother which had crumpled into a terrible despair when he had told her that her remaining child would not be coming home that night, or any other night for a long time if a conviction followed the charge of murder with the inevitability which he anticipated. The old-timers’ advice, dished out with the boots and the baton to probationers, never really worked, he thought sourly. Keep your distance, don’t get involved. With most villains, the weak, the venal, the despairing, the deceitful and occasionally the downright vicious, the advice was hardly necessary. And when it was most needed it was least likely to work. Occasionally even the least sensitive could see the law bearing down oppressively on those who least deserved it.

  He had watched Rita Desai’s distress as she had stumbled as much through sympathy as tenacity into Majeed’s confidence and had hated what she found. Even Kevin Mower, he thought wryly, whose conscience he had not yet clearly located, had disliked what they had done that night.

  And Thackeray himself felt dissatisfied and tainted. If they had made more effort to find Safi Haque, he thought, Imran Hussain might still be alive and Majeed Haque would be at home safely asleep in his own bed instead of lying in a police cell.

  Thackeray leaned over to the bedside table to stub out his cigarette and for a moment his eye rested on the phone next to the over-full ash-tray. He glanced at his watch. It was half-past two and far too late, he knew, to call Laura. In any case, he thought, perhaps he had suffered enough accusing glances from women for one day. It sounded as if Ahmed Barre was another person for whom the law would turn out to be less than just and he did not think he could handle that argument again tonight. Tomorrow though, he thought as at last his eyes began to feel heavy enough for sleep. Tomorrow he must find time and courage to talk to Laura and work out if they had a future together.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Laura sat on the floor in the centre of her living room dividing her scattered possessions into two heaps: those which were damaged beyond repair and those which, with a bit of tender loving care, might survive. The police had long finished with her burglary, or written it off, more likely, she thought, leaving only faint traces of their finger-printing exercise here and there. But the sense of violation which the break-in had provoked was still fresh and raw in the air like a smell which had soaked into the fabric of the house. She did not think it would ever go away. Nor would her conviction that this was not just a random attack.

  She picked up a CD which seemed to have escaped being stamped on and looked at the sad dark eyes of Billie Holiday, a tragic face cheapened by the performer’s flowers in her hair, and she shivered. The recording belonged to Michael Thackeray and she put it on one side. Perhaps she would find the opportunity to give it back to him. She knew that she would never bring herself to play it. She always found the almost instrumental timbre of that haunting voice painful to listen to. Now, she thought, it would be more than she could bear.

  She went into the bedroom and compulsively stripped off the sheets and pillow-cases, bundled them into the washing machine and switched on the longest and hottest cycle. But she was not sure whether she was trying to eliminate the taint of the intruders or the memory of the last time she had been swept into the bed by Thackeray. The knowledge that the last time might have been the final time panicked her for a moment and she sat down again, trying to remember exactly how dismissive she had been when he had dropped her at Vicky’s house. Terminally, she thought, and she knew that was not what she had really intended.

  Why didn’t she and Michael just relax and enjoy their relationship for what it was, without commitment, Vicki had asked that morning over breakfast. Vicky, enviably content in her comfortable home surrounded by her family, was not the best person to ask that question and Laura had not replied, though she knew the answer. She and Michael were both, in their different ways and for their different reasons, afraid of the thing they craved.

  Fear, she thought, looking around the flat which had been her home for five years and shuddering, was insidious. It had invaded what she had regarded as her sanctuary and she knew that she would have to move. The prospect of the job in London hovered at the back of her mind, a tantalising temptation to break free and launch her fragile ship onto a fresh sea.

  She gathered up the crimson silk petals which still lay scattered by the fireplace, crumpled them fiercely and put them on the top of the pile of belongings she had to discard. They lay there, moving slightly as they struggled to resume their shape, almost as if they were resisting their fate.

  “Hush now, don’t explain,” Laura murmured the Holiday lyric. “You’re my joy and pain.” Why, she wondered, did cheap music so often touch the most exposed of nerves. She got up and piled her damaged possessions angrily into black rubbish bags and stacked them by the front door. The rest she arranged in a rudimentary sort of order before she locked the flat up again and went out to her car. Her life seemed to be full of unfinished business but the only part of it which she felt that she could address was the fate of Ahmed Barre.

  She drove quickly across the town and parked in her usual place outside the offices of the Bradfield Gazette. Walking into the newsroom, casual in jogging trousers and T shirt, she met the surprised eyes of the editor, Ted Grant, on one of his exhortatory patrols around his reporters’ desks.

  “I thought you were sunning yourself on the Costa,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing’s up,” Laura said. “I’ve had a few days in London with friends. I just want a couple of things I left in my desk, that’s all.” Grant shrugged, his beer belly rippling and straining the buttons on his shirt, his interest waning immediately.

  “Feel free,” he said dismissively. Laura was happy enough with that. She wanted no questions about just what she had been doing in London on her busman’s holiday. She crossed to her desk, attracting no more than nods of acknowledgment from her colleagues, who seemed to be even more harried than usual.

  “What’s going on,” she ventured to Jane Archer, who occupied the desk next to hers. “A big story?”

  Jane was a thin, pale young women, of a spectacularly nervous disposition, who had just completed her training with the Gazette and had, to her own and everyone else’s surprise, been rewarded with a permanent job on the paper. Laura’s own theory was that Grant had been told by the management to employ a reasonable proportion of women, in the teeth of hi
s own barely-concealed prejudice against female reporters, but had deliberately opted for an unassertive representative of the gender. And the reason for that, she thought wryly, might be her own flamboyant relationship with her boss which veered between the contemptuous and the frigid.

  Jane glanced towards the glass cubicle of Grant’s office, satisfying himself that he was safely occupied on the telephone before she replied.

  “Councillor Hussain is playing hell with the police,” she said. “Complaining about harassment over his brother’s business affairs. I don’t think your friend Michael is going to be too pleased.”

  “He’s not my friend,” Laura said irritably, although she allowed herself a small smile at Jane’s incredulous look.

  “Not this week, anyway,” she said.

  “Been playing away?” Jane asked, with more daring than she usually showed.

  “Get stuffed,” Laura said amiably.

  “What happened to your face?” Jane asked, full of concern as Laura turned towards her, revealing her yellowing bruises. Laura touched her cheek a probing finger and shrugged.

  “I had a slight argument with a wall,” she said. “Nothing serious.” She changed the subject quickly, sure that Jane, who concealed a sharp intelligence beneath her diffident exterior, would know exactly what she was doing but would be too polite to pursue it.

  She logged onto her computer and called up the day’s front-page lead story and skimmed through it quickly. Michael Thackery was not mentioned by name but she guessed that it would have been his decision to go through the books of the Hussain companies which had provoked Councillor Sayed’s angry accusations of racist and insensitive interference in his family’s affairs at a time of tragedy. And she knew Hussain was a big enough figure in local affairs to make his accusation stick unless the police were very sure of their ground indeed. The guarded nature of the police authority’s official response confirmed her fears.

  “That looks messy,” she said.

  “It’s just the sort of thing which could have the hot-heads on the streets again,” Jane said. “They’ve not even buried Imran Hussain yet, which I gather is also causing some grief. Muslims like to bury their dead quickly.” In the absence of an Asian reporter on the paper – Ted Grant had not yet been convinced of the desirability of moving quite that far towards political correctness - Jane had made something of a specialism of reporting on local Asian affairs.

  “Where would you go if you wanted advice on an immigration problem?” Laura asked. “Is there an advice centre?”

  “Not as such, I don’t think,” Jane said. “But there’s a solicitor called da Silva who specialises in that sort of case. Or you could get help at the mosque, I should think, if you were a Muslim. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just something I was working on for the Sunday Extra,” Laura said truthfully.

  “You want to watch it,” Jane said, glancing in Ted Grant’s direction again. “You know Tyranosaurus Rex wasn’t too pleased with your last effort for them.”

  “He got a bloody good news story out of it for the Gazette. The Extra couldn’t run what turned into my obituary of John Blake till a week later,” Laura said, recalling an exercise in profiling which had brought her very much closer to her subject than she had expected and closer to an unpleasant death than she ever wanted to be again.

  “Anyway, this is entirely in my own time. I’m on holiday, for God’s sake.” Though Laura wondered if provoking Grant to sack her might not in any case be the easiest way to resolve the dilemmas which plagued her.

  “Which reminds me I shouldn’t be here,” she said. She flipped through the phone book to find the solicitor da Silva’s number, took her contacts book out of her desk drawer and slipped it into her bag, and with a wave she was gone.

  “Are you still looking for anyone else for this murder, then, chief inspector?”

  The voice was familiar and Thackeray turned to face Bob Baker, the Bradfield Gazette’s eager young crime reporter with the angry denial already framed. But he was also curious to know what had prompted the question.

  Baker had waylaid Thackeray at the top of the steps of the magistrates’ court where he had just sat morosely through the brief commital proceedings which had seen Majeed Haque remanded in custody for a week. The boy had looked haggard as he responded almost inaudibly to the brief questions he was required to answer. His solictor had not asked for bail and the hearing had been over within minutes, leaving his parents, who had sat not far away from Thackeray, looking stunned.

  “I’m told there was someone else in the car with Imran Hussain before he was killed,” Baker persisted, as Thackeray had not responded to his earlier question. Thackeray did not disguise his dislike of Laura’s colleague as he looked him up and down from his gelled hair to his Timberlands and back to a face which might have appeared boyish and innocent had it not been for the cold, sceptical eyes. But he knew Baker was intelligent as well as unscrupulous and would only have asked his unwelcome question if he was fairly sure of his ground.

  “If that’s what the defence are saying then you know I’d want to interview such an important witness,” he said, guessing that Baker’s information had come from Majeed’s family.

  “Such an important missing witness?” Baker persisted, only those sharp eyes betraying his excitement. “Isn’t he vital to your case? Or is it she?”

  “My case is in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service,” Thackeray said curtly. “You know I can’t discuss it.”

  “But is it closed?” Baker persisted.

  “Talk to the Press Office at County,” Thackeray said, turning on his heel. But Bob Baker had built his short career on dogged persistence and was not about to give up so easily. He fell into step beside Thackeray as he headed towards police headquarters on the other side of the Town Hall Square.

  “What about these allegations of harassment Councillor Hussain is making?” Thackeray looked at Baker coldly. It was the first he had heard of such allegations and he hoped that his expression did not give any sign of his surprise.

  “Talk to the Press Office,” he said again and finally Baker shrugged and turned away though not without a final barb.

  “You must be worried about getting a reputation for racism after what’s been happening in London, chief inspector?” Thackeray ignored him. But when he got back to police headquarters he wasted no time in seeking out Jack Longley.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Thackeray asked. “I’ve just had Bob Baker on my back, going on about racism.” Longley put the phone down and scowled.

  “I wish I knew,” he said. “I’ve just had Ted Grant on. They’re running some story this afternoon about Sayed Hussain. The gist of it seems to be that he’s claiming racial harassment because you’ve been investigating his brother’s business affairs when all along the murder was a random attack by some little toe-rag. I warned you to be careful on this one, Michael. I could see it blowing up in our faces.”

  “Looking for a motive for the murder in Imran Hussain’s affairs was a perfectly legitimate line of inquiry. I don’t believe for a moment the killing was a random attack by a little toe-rag,” Thackeray said. “Majeed Haque claims there was much more to it than that.”

  “Aye, well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

  “We’ve still no lead on the other man he says was in the car with Hussain. If it was all so random why hasn’t Azul Sharif come forward to tell us what happened?” Thackeray protested.

  “Because he’s a figment of young Haque’s imagination, I reckon,” Longley said dismissively.

  “We’ve still not found his sister,” Thackeray said quietly. “That’s real enough.”

  “So you can make that your top priority again now, can’t you,” Longley said sharply. “Have you found anything untoward in the computer files you took from Hussain’s companies, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Thackeray said. “Though they’ve not finished yet. I got them to look at the travel agency first but they c
an’t pin down any irregularities.”

  “Aye, well, you can leave them alone now, can’t you? Then we’ll have summat to say in a Press statement for this bloody story in the Gazette. It was a necessary evil, but it’s all over now. After all, with the lad remanded the case is sub judice and there’s damn all else we can comment on.”

  “That goes for Hussain too,” Thackeray said. “Ted Grant wants to take care.”

  “I told him that,” Longley snapped. “He knows the law. But we don’t want Hussain going to the Police Complaints Commission if we can avoid it. Ted Grant says that’s what he’s threatening. So just play it cool, will you, Michael?”

  “Sir,” Thackeray said, suppressing his deep misgivings with difficulty.

  Ben da Silva, young, dark, attractive and informal in a shop front office on Aysgarth Road, was not unwilling to help his unexpected visitor from the Press, but he could only shrug helplessly when she got to the point of her inquiry.

  “Of course we get illegals coming in for advice occasionally,” da Silva said. “You know they’re supposed to apply for asylum as soon as they get here now, but of course some of them don’t - or can’t. For one thing they may not come in through a recognised port of entry. For another, they’re so traumatised that they can’t cope with bureaucracy straight away.”

  “Anyone recently?” Laura asked.

  “Not recently, no. It’s unusual in Bradfield. We’re so far from the major ports and airports. Most of the immigration cases we get are people over-staying, people misinterpreting the rules - and that’s not difficult - or families upset by decisions taken on the sub-continent. It’s one of the more opaque areas of law, you understand?”