‘Anything I need to see in there?’ Lane nodded towards the General Office.
‘No,’ Alan replied, ‘it can wait. This is far more important.’
He turned round and headed across to the BCA and the maggot tank.
In the background they could see the flashing lights of another ambulance crossing the apron.
‘Wait,’ Lane restrained him. ‘We’ll need penguin suits.’
‘Just getting them, sir.’ SOCO left them and returned a few minutes later with the white paper suits and overshoes, which they carried across to the door labelled Biological Cleansing Area. Outside they all pulled on their suits. Mindful of the way Abdul had passed out the night before, at the sight of Sofia’s remains, Alan didn’t want Lane and SOCO to do the same. He thought it best to warn them.
‘Before we go in, gentlemen, I should warn you that what’s inside this room is pretty upsetting. Please be prepared.’ He undid the padlock. ‘I know you’re both used to grim sights, but there are at least two bodies in here and many thousands of maggots. You will need strong stomachs. And I mean it: I’ve already been sick myself once.’
This short statement had a big effect. The two men looked grim.
They had put on their paper overalls about three paces back from the door. As they approached it, and as if to forewarn them, they caught the stench of putrefaction. It was nearly overpowering, as they stood waiting by the door. Then Alan asked:
‘Are we ready?’
His two companions nodded. He opened the door. The severed ear was still lying on the floor. Outside, the first light of dawn was visible behind the trees. Alan suddenly felt very tired. Maybe the adrenalin was wearing off. He hadn’t slept a wink for two nights. The rat had probably returned to its run for the day. It wouldn’t be back for several hours. Rats didn’t like daylight.
While they slowly walked towards the tanks, Alan explained what he had discovered and how he had moved through the room. As he did so, SOCO held out a small sound recorder. They needed an accurate record.
They walked to the maggot tank and looked in. Alan pointed out the foot at the bottom, and as he peered at it more closely he also thought he saw long strands of dark, straight human hair.
By this point both policemen were silent and very pale. Alan then walked over to the freezer and lifted the lid. Paul was not a pretty sight, especially as his half-eaten eyebrows had frozen on contact with the lid and were ripped off when it was opened. SOCO had to turn round rapidly, his hand to his mouth. Lane placed a comforting arm on his shoulder.
‘Hang in there, son, we’re nearly through. But you must warn the others. And choose the team carefully. Who’ll be in charge?’
There was a pause while he recovered.
‘I’ll be working with Sergeant Thackeray, sir.’
‘He’s a good man. But make sure he sees me first, before anyone else comes in here. This is not for people with weak stomachs.’
Back in the main hangar the light was steadily improving. They closed the BCA door behind them and walked a few paces more to escape the stench. DCI Lane was the first to speak:
‘I’d be grateful if you could bring Sergeant Thackeray to see me here. And thank you for what you’ve just done. It couldn’t have been easy. Well done.’
SOCO headed towards the apron, where a mobile incident room had just parked-up. Lane turned to Alan:
‘How many people used those tanks?’
‘Paul was the only animal bones specialist working here. He set the tanks up and was the only one to use them, so far as I know. It’s actually quite difficult to service them. Specimens have to be kept separate and clearly labelled. And Paul was a perfectionist. He’d never let anything out of the BCA without checking every bone to see that all were present and correct.’
‘No,’ Lane replied thoughtfully, ‘and it would seem that perfection wasn’t his only motive.’
* * *
Alan was desperate for a coffee and he sucked the warm sweet liquid down, as if it were a pint of the very best bitter. He was just finishing, when Harriet’s car pulled in. She had, as the old phrase went, a brow of thunder as she got out. She released Alaric from the back and put him on a lead. By now, and to Alan’s considerable relief, Lane had rejoined them.
‘I’m delighted to see you, Harriet,’ Lane said with his customary well-mannered charm, ‘but I admit the circumstances are somewhat unusual. Do you normally start work this early?’
‘No I don’t,’ Harriet replied tetchily. ‘But when you’re worried sick because somebody has gone AWOL after unearthing a human corpse and has been too obsessed to think of giving you so much as a single call, then sometimes you do odd things. At least I do…’
She paused:
‘But then I’m normal.’
Alan intervened, trying to ease the tension. He gestured towards the dog.
‘Richard, this is Alaric. He’s here to help us with the investigation.’
‘Good heavens, really?’ Lane asked Alan.
Harriet turned to Alan, her grip on the lead tightened.
‘And are you going to tell me how, exactly, or do I have to guess at that too?’
‘I think,’ Alan replied quietly, suddenly feeling very tired, ‘we may have found the other evidence we were looking for. It’s over here, in the Out Store.’
The Out Store was exactly as Alan had left it. The lights were still on and one long-bone box was lying on the floor, its contents partially spread over the sheets of newspaper beside it.
‘Right, Richard,’ Alan said to Lane as they entered: ‘Watch this.’
The others stood back, just inside the door, as Alan took a cranium from a skull box on the shelf and placed it gingerly on the floor in front of the dog. Alaric turned his head away. It was written all over his canine face: they were going to play that strange game again.
Alan pretended to encourage him:
‘Go on, lick it boy!’
But he got no response from the dog. He put the skull back in its box.
‘Right,’ he said to his small audience, ‘that skull was medieval. No response from the dog, because all the fats had been leached out. Shall I continue?’
Lane nodded. Alan then turned to the bones in the larger box and selected two broken pieces of skull. As he carried them towards the dog, Harriet spoke sharply.
‘That’s cranium. What the hell are they doing in a long-bone box?’
‘Exactly, Harriet,’ Alan said, ‘I fear Paul is the only person who knows the answer to that – and he’s dead.’
Harriet stared open-mouthed, trying to grasp what he had just said – almost casually. Alan was so tired he’d become oblivious. He continued, as if conducting a well-rehearsed conjuring trick.
‘Now let’s see the dog’s reaction to these two skull bones.’
As he approached with the bones, Alaric strained forward on his lead, his nose quivering with anticipation. There were flecks of spittle around his mouth, and his tongue was hanging out, drooling.
‘You’ve made your point, Alan.’ Lane said, ‘that dog would eat those bits of skull if you let him. So presumably they’re not very old?’
‘No. I doubt if they’re more than five years old.’
‘Or less,’ Harriet added, her academic mind overriding her emotions. She was focusing on the facts. ‘In acidic soils you can lose fats in half that time.’
‘Alan,’ Lane said in a firm voice, ‘you’ve made your point very well. So are we right to assume that many of these boxes contain modern bones?’
‘Yes. I think Paul was processing modern bodies at an alarming rate. And had been doing so for several years.’
Lane was now looking very serious.
‘Right,’ he said, still looking down at the floor, ‘we’ll discuss all that later.’ He paused and looked up: ‘Right now I’m mor
e concerned that Ms Webb has not been properly informed about Paul Flynn’s death. I think you had better leave that to me, Alan. I suggest you go and fetch yourself something to eat from our canteen trailer.’
He summoned a constable on his walkie-talkie. When he arrived, he gave instructions that this storeroom was also a scene-of-crime. It must be taped-off immediately. They would also need to conduct a full forensic survey. Meanwhile it must remain locked, sealed and guarded.
Alan withdrew. He had more sense than to argue with Lane, who seemed to understand and handle people rather better than he did.
In fact, as Lane put a comforting arm around Harriet’s shoulder, Alan felt a short stab of envy. And behind that, an uncomfortable, nagging question. He’d got his answers now. He’d found Sofia. He’d exposed the Kabuls’ corruption. But Paul was dead and he’d lost Harriet. Had it all really been worth it?
Wearily, Alan turned his back on the scene and slowly walked away.
Forty
Alan slept for a straight twenty-four hours. Somehow Grahame had managed to get him into bed upstairs, washed and undressed. He was like a sleepwalker. When he awoke on Wednesday morning, Grahame was busily preparing breakfast below in the kitchen. Then he could hear the phone, ring and Grahame called up the stairs. It was Norman Grant, Governor of Blackfen Prison. Alan stumbled downstairs, bleary-eyed. He took the phone.
The Governor told him that Richard Lane had contacted him informally, in advance of an official response to the events of the weekend, which would be released by the Home Office very shortly. He thought it likely that Ali would be transferred to an open prison any day now, pending a full reassessment of his case. In view of this, did he want the opportunity for a final interview, as his next Lifers’ Club session would not be happening until the second week in July? Alan leapt at the chance and agreed to be in the Governor’s office the next day.
* * *
They’d arranged to meet mid-morning, but Alan didn’t arrive until closer to noon, as the loss adjuster had telephoned, with yet another interminable query about the Land Rover explosion. This time, on the Governor’s instructions, Alan parked in the small car park reserved for visitors to the Administration Block. This was very much more select than the general car park. It was overhung with lime trees, which Alan noted would shortly be covering all cars beneath them with a sticky, sugary mist of sap.
He walked straight into the lobby, where there was a reception desk, like in an estate agents or lawyers. And also like them, it was unmanned. He rang a bell. The woman who answered lacked the glamour of Indajit’s Asian lady, but she was warm and friendly. Just what a prison needed, Alan thought. He fully expected her to offer him a hot buttered teacake, as she pointed the way to the Governor’s office.
Norman Grant was dictating a letter to his PA in her anteroom, when Alan entered. He rose to his feet and shook Alan’s hand warmly. Then he arranged for Ali to be brought to his office.
The young man, with an officer in attendance, arrived some fifteen minutes later. His hair was still short, but he had shaved off his beard. The Governor then asked the officer to wait in Reception. Meanwhile his PA was collecting up various papers and files. That done, they both withdrew into the main office, leaving Ali and Alan, plus two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits, in the anteroom.
Alan began the interview.
‘Well, this is a bit different, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
This was said without much enthusiasm.
Alan had expected him to be looking better. After all, he was almost certainly about to be released. But, if anything, he looked worse than at the previous Lifers’ Club session. He was tired and listless; on edge.
‘You’ve heard what’s been happening?’ Alan asked gently.
‘Yes, the Governor told me last night. They’ve got granddad and Abdul.’ He went silent, looking down at his hands. Then he raised his head, looking Alan in the eyes: ‘And it was you that did it, wasn’t it?’
There was more than a hint of menace in the way he asked this question.
It was not the response Alan had anticipated. He knew he shouldn’t expect gratitude, but not this. It took him a moment to collect his thoughts.
‘How do you mean “did it”? I just drew attention to the fact that you’d been unjustly imprisoned. Most people would have been grateful…’
Alan tailed off. He could see this person most certainly wasn’t grateful. Not even slightly.
Anger was now replacing resentment.
‘Why didn’t you leave me alone? Why did you have to stick your sodding oar in? I didn’t ask you to poke about.’
Alan sat back in his chair. Stunned. But Ali hadn’t stopped.
‘Can’t you get it into your thick head that I’m here because I wanted to be here? I’m here because I love my granddad. I love Abdul. I loved Sofia…’
He was stopped by a cascade of sobs. He fell forward, his face in his arms. Slouched over the table, his shoulders shaking.
Maybe it was a way of escaping the young man’s distress, but Alan found he had skipped back a hundred years, to Tiny’s final scene with AAC, her father and her only ‘lover’, if that was the right word. Alistair had told him he’d heard a family legend that she had ‘wasted away’ after ten years of progressive illness, which became much more severe for the final six months. Alan reckoned that her final ‘illness’ could only have been pregnancy. So how would Tiny have responded to the man, who had brought her into the world, had used her so cruelly, and then had caused her to die a horrible, lingering death? How would she have reacted when that man entered her bedroom for the very last time?
Would it have been hate? Anger? Fear? Loathing? No, he realised as he looked down at Ali’s still heaving shoulders: it would have been none of these things. It would have been love. Pure and simple. For better or for worse, family love, will always remain the deepest and least rational emotion of all. Strip everything away, right down to our DNA and it’s what makes us, not just human, but animals. Sentient beasts. And we meddle with it at our peril.
Alan focused on the moment. This was his last chance.
‘I know you loved Sofia, Ali. And I know you didn’t kill her. It’s all going to come out in the next few days anyway so…’
‘You really want to know?’
‘How she died. Yes, I do.’
Ali sat back, wiping his eyes. His reply was calm and measured. Almost resigned. He’d had his moment of catharsis.
‘Yes, I’ll tell you what happened. Granddad, Abdul and me were standing at the top landing in the old building. Granddad was showing us the latest architect’s plans and we were all excited about the next stage. He was telling us where my new offices would be. I hadn’t expected it. He was very generous like that. Then a door opened down at the ground floor and Sofia ran in. She ran up the stairs. She was very happy. Smiling. I remember her scarf slipped, but we were family, so it didn’t matter.’
He paused to take a long sip from his now tepid cup of tea.
‘She reached us and blurted out the news. She said she was going to marry that Sikh bloke.’ Alan realised that he still couldn’t bring himself to speak Indajit’s name. ‘Granddad was gobsmacked. She hadn’t asked him first. He looked very angry. Then she stopped. She looked at him, scared like, her hands at her face. Worried. Then she stepped back.’ He paused, tears welling up in his eyes, ‘…stepped back, over the edge. And dropped. Screaming. Screaming so loud…’
He paused, took a deep breath and continued:
‘There was no rail…’ There was a long silence. ‘That’s all that happened.’
There was another silence. Eventually Alan asked:
‘So the family tried to cover it up?’
‘What would you have done? Of course we did. And your mate Paul made us pay for it, too. Then, years later, that smart-arse Indian dreamed-up th
e “honour killing” bollocks. The next we know is that everyone is suspecting granddad. I was young, and would get a shorter sentence, so I said I did it. Nobody would believe it was an accident, would they? Would they?’
‘Maybe if you’d explained, all of you, together?’
‘We were fucking Muslims. All fanatics. Bloody Jihadis. The Daily Sun called granddad “Mental Mehmet”, until I confessed.’ He allowed himself a rueful smile. ‘That shut the buggers up. And that’s how the family stayed together…’
He paused for a moment, then looked up with unconcealed malevolence.
‘Until you came along.’
* * *
Alan drove round to the back room of The Slodger’s Arms. This time he was alone. And he needed a long drink after that interview. Two packets of crisps were his midday meal. He wanted to sort things out in his own mind, before he spoke to Richard Lane. He knew he owed him a few explanations.
So, he thought as he put his pint glass back on the table beside him, the ‘crime’ that started the whole thing off, was no such thing. They couldn’t accuse either Mehmet or Abdul of murder. The drugs business was also rubbish, unless the police’s detailed forensic examination of Priory Farm found anything – and that wouldn’t be finished for at least another week. He suspected it would reveal nothing – just like all the other searches. By now he was thinking hard. So it all came down to the ‘family business’ that Ali had mentioned in some of his interviews. That had to be the crux of it all.
The second body in the maggot tank beneath Paul’s corpse showed that Paul had been in the business of processing human remains. And, Alan guessed, probably on a near-industrial scale. But any industrial process requires input and output. There has to be a source and a market for the product, or else the firm goes bust. And this surely was where the Kabul empire came in.
His thoughts were interrupted by a tap on his shoulder.
‘Thought I might find you here,’ Lane said, as he sat down beside Alan. ‘Norman Grant told me you’d been seeing friend Ali this morning.’
The Lifers' Club Page 43
