The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  Lane took a drink from his lemonade and lime. Then he asked, ‘So did he bid you a fond farewell?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Far from it. But he did tell me how Sofia died.’

  Alan didn’t want his friend to think the meeting had been completely fruitless. At least he’d managed to salvage something.

  ‘Really? So, who did it, Abdul or Mehmet?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Alan quietly. ‘It was an accident. Like you said, cock-up, rather than conspiracy.’

  Alan registered the shock on Lane’s face. He took a moment to let the news sink in.

  ‘Ali said she was in the old depot building. She told her granddad she was going to marry Indajit. He looked angry…’

  Alan could visualise the moment so clearly, he could hear those screams echoing through the air. It was a struggle to finish the story.

  ‘Then she stepped back – and fell straight over the edge, down into the stairwell.’

  ‘D’you believe that?’

  Lane asked the question as a factual problem. He didn’t seem to have views himself.

  ‘Yes, I do. With the rails and banisters gone, that staircase was a deathtrap. Bloody lethal.’

  ‘But a crime was still committed,’ said Lane quietly. ‘They didn’t report her death, and they unlawfully buried a body. How and why do you think they did that?’

  ‘I don’t know the precise date when Sofia died, but it was a cold February, and they could easily have hidden the body somewhere, where nobody would find her. Then, when Paul took over on his shift he either found the body, or more likely, overheard the Kabuls making plans. Maybe they asked him outright? I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ll never know.’

  ‘But whatever happened,’ Alan continued, ‘he agreed to get rid of the corpse somewhere in the excavation. Come to think of it, he did go back there after the last day to empty the sheds and arrange for the Portaloos to be collected. That sort of thing. Maybe he stayed overnight, I honestly can’t remember. But that was when he would have buried her. The rest of us had finished. And all the wet sieving had been done.’

  ‘Do you think Paul tried to blackmail the Kabuls?’

  ‘No, his mind didn’t work like that,’ Alan replied, ‘he would have seen it as a business opportunity. And it was, a very profitable one.’

  ‘So you think they then paid him a fat cheque and that was the money he used to buy Priory Farm and set up Reference Collections and those grisly tanks.’

  ‘Yes. The thing is, they were always there and could be used as and when required. And at short notice, if needs be. It was ideal for a developing “business”, if that’s what you want to call it.’

  ‘And it was disposing of Sofia’s body that gave him the idea,’ Lane added.

  ‘Yes, he realised there were easier ways of doing it.’

  Lane paused for a moment, obviously thinking about the implications of what Alan had just said.

  ‘That all makes plenty of sense, but I still can’t understand why they pretended Sofia had gone abroad. Surely they must have known that eventually they stood a good chance of being found out? And besides, it had been an accident so why not come clean in the first place?’

  ‘That question’s the key to it,’ Alan replied. ‘They couldn’t just “come clean”. Nobody would have believed them. Put yourself in their shoes: the daughter comes running in, having accepted a proposal from a Sikh. The next thing the world knows is that she falls into a stairwell, having just confronted her father and two brothers. And all of them Muslims. Would any British jury accept that?’

  ‘But surely…’

  ‘OK, if you don’t accept that, just look at the way an English jury lapped up Ali’s fake confession. They simply accepted he was a fanatic, and because nobody on the defence side offered witnesses to the contrary, that was how matters were allowed to rest. In my view the judge should have intervened. But he didn’t, presumably because he also shared the view that a high proportion of Muslims are fanatics, or religious nutters, who treat their women like chattels. So he was convicted. And quite quickly. The trial didn’t last very long, did it?’

  ‘Two or three days, as I recall.’ Lane replied. ‘So what do you think would have happened if the family had tried to come clean?’

  ‘That’s simple. It’s nearly always the head of the family who does these things, so Mehmet would have been accused of her “honour killing”.’

  ‘And do you think he’d have been convicted?’

  ‘You tell me, Richard. All I can say is, the jury were quick enough to convict his younger grandson – and without a body, too. A victimless murder and seven years after the event?’ He took a pull from his glass, then continued: ‘Normally that would be a tall order, but not when “fanatics” and “Muslims” are involved. And that’s what makes it all so bloody unjust.’

  Lane was now agreeing with Alan’s argument, if not with his invective.

  ‘Yes, and if the trial had happened at the time of the supposed crime, I would imagine that local feelings would have been even stronger than they were seven years later. And that’s saying quite a lot.’

  ‘I agree. I think the family were in an impossible position. A case of a rock and a hard place, if ever there was one.’

  Lane went up to the bar and bought four packets of crisps which he tossed onto the table. Absent-mindedly, Alan opened one. The salt tasted good.

  Then Lane asked, ‘So what did you think about Ali?’

  ‘I think, in his own way, he really believed he was doing the right thing by his family,’ said Alan thoughtfully. ‘And who the hell was I to tell him otherwise?’

  Lane was thoughtful, too.

  ‘OK. So let’s go back to the PFC connection. You think it was disposing of Sofia’s body that gave Paul the idea he could do this on a regular basis using techniques designed for the job. Maggot tanks and so on…’

  ‘Yes, that’s where a horrible sort of genius comes in. He must have made the connection between defleshing museum specimens and disposing of corpses very early on.’

  ‘So the bloke’s a serial killer, a psychopath who made a healthy profit out of satisfying his urges. Then you think that Kevin bloke found out and took a moral stance?’

  ‘I wish. No, I think it was a lot darker than that.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Lane was leaning forward listening intently.

  ‘I believe the Kabuls’ “family business” that Ali referred to, was nothing less than the routine disposal of unwanted bodies.’

  ‘So, do you think we’re back to honour killings again?’ said Lane thoughtfully.

  ‘Maybe. Who knows. You’re the detective, you tell me, why does anyone kill another human being?’

  For a moment, Alan was back in that first Lifers’ Club session, delivering his introductory lecture, with those rows and rows of faces staring down at him. Unremarkable, everyday faces. And yet all of them had committed unspeakable acts of violence…

  ‘You OK, Alan? We finish up another time if you’d rather.’

  Alan looked up to see Lane frowning at him, his face full of concern.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alan answered curtly, forcing himself to follow his theory to its natural conclusion.

  ‘Sometimes Paul would have been able to sell a nicely cleaned skeleton to a reference collection, somewhere in the world,’ Alan continued, ‘but those, I suspect, were the exceptions rather than the rule.’

  ‘So how did they get rid of them?’ Lane asked, ‘they couldn’t just stick human bones in the garbage.’

  ‘That,’ said Alan, ‘is where Paul’s archaeological knowledge and experience came in. Even I can remember, in the old days of the digging “circuit” any bodies we dug up were shoved into boxes and stuffed in museum basements. Sometimes, though rarely, they’d be studied by palaeopathologists, physical anth
ropologists, and the like. But mostly they’d stew in the boxes. Forgotten and unwanted. As good as in a grave.’

  Alan paused to take a sup from his pint. Then he went on:

  ‘Then in the nineties, various native groups in places like Canada and Australia objected, quite rightly, that skeletons of their dead relatives shouldn’t be treated in this cavalier fashion. They didn’t want their ancestors to be seen as mere artefacts, like bits of broken pot, or flint. Many believed too, that their ancestral bones still hosted human spirits and should be allowed to rest somewhere more dignified, than a museum basement.’

  ‘Didn’t those Pagans and Druids make a similar fuss about British bones?’

  ‘Yes they did. Then others joined in. So now it’s routine that Christian bones from archaeological sites are given Christian reburial in sanctified ground.’

  ‘And those are what’s stored in the boxes in the Out Store?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Alan replied. ‘Paul would personally oversee their storage and transport to the sanctified ground. That is, until the chaos back in April, when a dig was forced to end early. That’s how the mix-up happened.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I think Paul used to introduce modern bones into the Out Store boxes at weekends, when the place was usually deserted. He knew nobody would want to examine them, and they’d all shortly be given official Christian Reburial. And that was permanent. He used to arrange these reburials with the Church, himself. And even then, nobody would check them. And why should they? What’s the point? After all, it’s the very end of the process. And anyhow, how many times did you look inside your granddad’s coffin when they buried him?’

  ‘Quite.’

  They mulled this over for a few moments.

  Lane was the next to speak. ‘So what happened on that weekend, over Easter?’

  Alan was speaking slowly, trying to recall everything. ‘At the end of the previous week I clearly recall extracting all the samples for radiocarbon dating. Then the boxes went back to the Out Store over Easter…’

  He paused, then continued, ‘Then I took the C-14 samples straight to Cambridge. So all those dates are kosher.’

  ‘So Paul “introduced” the modern bones in the Out Store, but after you’d taken the radiocarbon samples?’

  ‘Exactly. We removed the jaws for Saltaire the Tuesday after Easter Monday. Trouble is, I didn’t know it then, but some of the ones I took were modern.’

  For a few moments they sipped their drinks in silence. Lane was the first to speak.

  ‘Well,’ he said, leaning back in his seat, ‘we know it must have been a nice little earner.’

  This time it was Alan’s turn to ask the questions.

  ‘Who for? Paul, or the Kabuls?’

  ‘Oh, mostly for the Kabuls. Mehmet’s bank account is flush. That’s what brought the drugs boys running, of course. ’

  ‘But surely Paul was taking all the risks, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he was. But it seems that he made the mistake that IBM made, when they handed the most profitable side of their business to Microsoft, who then controlled not just the software, but its supply and marketing. All Paul did was offer a body disposal service. The Kabuls handled the difficult and profitable bits.’

  ‘So was that,’ Alan asked, ‘why they wanted to bump him off, d’you think?’

  ‘What,’ Lane replied, ‘get rid of the middleman? No, I don’t think so.’ He was thinking aloud now. ‘No, they wanted both him and you out of the way, as soon as he’d made the mistake of telling them that the CID arrived after the “accident” with the buried cistern that killed your friend Steve.’

  ‘But I thought he’d gone?’

  ‘So did I, at least when you and I were together.’

  ‘So where was he?’

  ‘Back in his flat at Priory Farm. I saw him at an upstairs window when I drove out. He must have seen you and me talking in the yard, getting into my car…’

  Shit, Alan thought, I should have realised that. The lights were on upstairs. But what could I have done?

  ‘So he told the Kabuls all about it. Probably thought they’d be pleased with him, poor fool. After that, you were both dead men walking. Kevin and his merry men made sure of that.’

  ‘Do you suppose,’ Alan asked, ‘that he told them at that meeting on Friday in the hangar Board Room?’

  ‘Seems most likely.’ Lane replied. ‘It certainly fits with what the pathologist has since found out. Trouble is, she says, it’s hard to be certain precisely when he died, because of those maggots and the fact that you stuffed him in the freezer. But sometime in the preceding 24 hours seems the most probable.’

  Alan knew he shouldn’t, as he was driving. But what the hell. He got up and went to the bar.

  * * *

  Lane raised his eyes to the ceiling when Alan returned with a pint and a large Scotch, both for himself. But he said nothing. Instead he kept focus on the events of the previous days. Alan could see he wasn’t going to be happy until every loose end was thoroughly tied up.

  ‘Tell me, Alan, how on earth did you think up that plan and then entice three professional killers into the hangar? It was a triumph and it’s the only bloody reason I’ll be driving you home when you’ve had those drinks – and the next ones, which I’ll pay for, if you don’t mind.’

  Alan was grinning sheepishly.

  ‘That was Grahame’s idea. He’s always looked out for me.’

  ‘But how did you entice them in, and then stage-manage the entire business? Because they all had to be there and you had to have the time to set things up, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well some of it was a bit hit-or-miss, but I knew they’d be there on Sunday evening, for sure.’

  ‘But how?’ Lane was still intrigued.

  ‘Oh that was easy. I knew from that threat Ali wanted me to pass on, that Paul had fallen out with the Kabuls. He had to repair the damage somehow. His whole business, even his life, depended on it. So he decided to sacrifice me. I was the interfering idiot who was asking questions and stirring all sorts of shit with Ali.’

  The drink was starting to go to his head, but he pressed on.

  ‘All I did was phone Paul and arrange to borrow some tools from the Priory Farm Tool Store. I knew he’d then find some excuse to see me when I returned them. Which is precisely what happened. If I were writing a novel I’d describe it as my Invitation to Death. I was certainly aware of it at the time. I must admit, as soon as he asked me over it was bloody obvious he was spinning me a line…’

  ‘Who, Kevin?’

  ‘No, Paul, you idiot. When I phoned, he told me a load of gibberish about repairing a soakaway. It was all bollocks: the drains from his house barely ever get used. I don’t think anyone at PFC had ever seen his septic tank being emptied. What little there was, just sort of soaked away, like it does in old houses. And besides, during the week he’s in his office, and at weekends he’s either sorting bones into boxes, emptying maggot tanks, or away in London or Leicester somewhere. Either way, he wasn’t upstairs in the farmhouse sitting on the toilet.’

  Alan pulled himself up short. He didn’t like Paul, but he hadn’t wanted him to die, either.

  ‘Poor devil,’ he went on, ‘for all that effort, he hadn’t given himself much of a life, had he?’

  Forty-one

  In the last week of June, Richard Lane phoned Alan’s mobile. Could he come over the following week to Indajit Singh’s office in Leicester? Of course he said yes.

  They assembled mid-morning. Indajit’s office was large, but split in two halves: a desk with two chairs and beyond, a lower, more informal area. Here the furniture was more domestic-looking: two easy chairs and a curved sofa around a beautiful carved Indian coffee table, with four elephant legs and delicate ivory inlay. To Alan, the copy of The Times lying on it seemed somehow gross
and intrusive. The room overlooked a surprisingly large back garden, with a stately plane tree at the centre of a lawn, which was surrounded by beds of roses, now in full flower.

  ‘Indajit,’ Alan said, looking out of the double window, ‘what a remarkable garden you’ve got there.’

  Alan would have loved to have had such a garden. The roses were in full, magnificent, flower.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ Indajit replied. ‘Apart from the tree, it was weeds and rubbish when we took the building over. It’s been my pet project. Between you and me, I did it in memory of Sofia. I collect old roses. Most of those are English: Hybrid Musks – they smell superb, especially in the sunshine.’

  Indajit was smiling and relaxed. The discovery of Sofia’s body had indeed proved cathartic for him. Alan looked at the young lawyer closely: he might even have put on a little weight around the middle. But he was too polite to mention it.

  Lane cleared his throat and began the conversation.

  ‘Thank you so much for having us here, Indajit; it’s certainly far more pleasant than my little cell at the police station.’

  Alan nodded his agreement with a mouthful of biscuit.

  ‘But there’ve been some developments I thought you two ought to be told about, before we release details to the press. First, Ali.’

  He began, paused, took a sip from his cup of tea, then continued.

  ‘I think we’re all convinced he didn’t do it. The Home Office now think so too. He’s been moved to an Open Prison, and a full pardon should follow on a Judicial Review.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Alan said, ‘Despite what he said to me, I think jail would eventually have destroyed him.’

  ‘We’re still looking into Mehmet and Abdul’s affairs,’ Lane went on. ‘It should take another couple of months to prepare a detailed case.’

  Then he turned to Indajit.

  ‘I told you what Alan had learned from Ali about the supposed killing, and I’m still inclined to believe it. Whatever the truth, I don’t think we could prove a firm case for murder, let alone establish a suspect. Even with that confession.’