by Iain Cameron
‘So, Saunders joins them after being out of work for a long time, perhaps leaving him bitter and low in funds. Could he have been stealing from them?’
‘Irene didn’t know, but if she was forced to put her finger on something, she would say it was there.’
‘It doesn’t stack up somehow. They might be turning over a good profit manufacturing clothes, but I don’t see it being enough for Saunders to steal a big chunk of it, so much so they’d send a couple of hit men to kill. It would make more sense if he worked in financial services or IT.’
‘I guess.’
‘Are you all right there, Vicky? Have you lost something?’
‘No, the name Carol mentioned rang a bell,’ she said as she searched through a file. ‘Ah, here it is.’ She placed a document in front of her and put the rest of her papers on the floor.
‘Mrs Nazari gave us the names of two of her husband’s largest customers, but as all the records of his business were in her garage, we decided to take a look. The company mentioned, S&H Oriental Fashions, were one of Nazari’s customers, but judging from the number of invoices raised, not a big one. However, when we looked at the man’s desk diary, it told a different story. He visited their offices in Haringey almost every week.’
**
Henderson drove to Hove. After leaving the office, he’d hurried home where he showered and changed. He wanted some time to collect his thoughts and do a bit of background checking on Gohar Cheema and his company, but it wasn’t to be. He would do it in the morning, but he found it suspicious how both victims had connections with Cheema, and yet each man was making good money on what sounded to him like a low profit margin business.
Henderson was only ten minutes late when he arrived at Hove Park and parked outside Claire’s house. He picked up the flowers and the bottle of wine he’d bought at lunchtime and knocked on the door.
It was opened by a teenager wearing an expression that could curdle milk. If he could think of a joke to tell to try and crack the scowling appearance, he would, but nothing came to mind.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello Daisy, I’m Angus. I’m here to see your mother.’ It sounded lame, but he didn’t expect her to answer the door. He stuck out his hand for her to shake, but instead she turned and shouted, ‘The filth’s here!’ in the direction of what he assumed to be the kitchen, before running upstairs.
Seconds later, the kitchen door opened and Claire came out, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Did Daisy leave you standing at the door, Angus? I’ll have a stern word with her afterwards. Come on in.’
He walked into the hall and closed the door. When he turned, she threw her arms around him and gave him a long kiss. ‘It’s good to see you again, even if my daughter’s welcome wasn’t too warming.’
‘Don’t worry, you’re making up for it. It’s good to see you again too.’
A loud buzzing split the air. ‘Oops,’ Claire said, breaking away from him. ‘It’s the timer on the oven. I must go and see to it. Go in there, Angus,’ she said, pushing a door open as she passed, ‘and make yourself comfortable. I’ll join you in a few minutes.’
Henderson walked into the lounge. It was a large room with curved windows overlooking Hove Park. The floor was of polished light wood, while the choice of furnishings betrayed a woman’s touch: a fawn settee with pastel-coloured scatter cushions, the wall below the dado rail painted a light shade of yellow and vases of flowers dotted around on many surfaces. He wondered where she would put the ones he’d brought.
Henderson walked over to the bookshelf for a nose. He wasn’t being the investigative copper, looking for clues hidden between the tightly jammed titles, but interested to find out more about Claire. He expected to see thick medical textbooks full of heart and valve diagrams, of which there were many, but was also surprised to find a number of popular medical memoirs. He’d seen them in bookshops: diaries of nurses working in A&E, accounts of junior doctors thrown in at the deep end, and the anecdotes of surgeons after a lifetime of brain or heart surgery.
Away from the medical section, he spotted a selection of crime novels and, thumbing through a few, could see a pattern to Claire’s selection. In the main, they had been written by women and featured women as the principal character. The blurb on the back of one called it a ‘Women’s Psychological Thriller’, a better summary he couldn’t imagine.
He knew many police officers read real-life crime books, and some the more traditional crime novels featuring a fearless detective and his wise-cracking side-kick, but he didn’t. While working a big case like this one, he didn’t want the distraction, and in between cases, he didn’t want to be thinking about work in his spare time.
He was about to move to another bookcase on the other side of the fireplace, this time containing DVDs, when Claire came into the room, minus the apron, carrying two glasses of wine. She handed one to him.
‘Cheers,’ she said, chinking her glass against his. ‘To us.’
‘To us,’ he said with feeling.
They took a seat together on the settee. The cushion was soft, and he sank deeply into it, almost spilling his wine.
‘Sorry, Angus,’ she laughed. ‘I should have warned you.’
‘The fabric was never in danger. A Scotsman never wastes his drink.’
‘Just as well, red wine and a light-coloured settee could never be jolly bedfellows. What do you think of the room?’
‘It looks great, and the window there captures the setting sun.’
‘On a nice sunny day, we have to shut the blinds, or we would bake. I can’t take all the credit, I had a project manager design everything. It was she who brought in the builders, plasterers, electricians, and anyone else the project required.’
‘It looks terrific; between the two of you, you’ve done an excellent job.’ He spotted an electronic keyboard in the corner. He nodded towards it. ‘Do you play, or was it an unwanted birthday present, or perhaps the New Year’s resolution you never got around to completing?’
‘I started piano lessons when I was about six and still practice whenever I get the chance which is not as often as I like.’
‘You must play for me sometime.’
‘Do you like piano music?’
‘I would if you were playing.’
‘A very diplomatic response.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘I could play something after dinner and later, maybe serenade you to sleep. You are staying, aren’t you?’
Whoa, he wasn’t expecting this. ‘Is Daisy okay with this…arrangement? She won’t appear in the night, a carving knife in her hand?’
She laughed. ‘If so, it would be more your realm than mine, but this has nothing to do with her. In any case, her room is at the other end of the house. She won’t hear a thing. Tempted?’
‘Try and stop me.’
TWENTY-NINE
Harry Wallop stepped out of the car and began some stretching exercises. It had been a long drive from Sussex, but the traffic made the journey feel twice as long. The fine weather had not only brought everyone out in their cars, but they all seemed to be cruising along with no real purpose in mind.
‘Is this you practicing Pilates exercises, or is your bad back playing up again?’ Phil Bentley asked, leaning against the car.
‘Cheeky bugger. The drive was longer than I expected.’
‘Me too, I nodded off once or twice, but I blame that deejay on Radio 2, he’s got such a boring voice. I would like to know why guys like that are allowed on the radio.’
‘Don’t knock it, son. You’ll be my age in the not too distant future. Then you’ll be turning Kiss FM off for being too noisy and you won’t be able to listen to Radio 1 as they’ll be talking about stuff you don’t know anything about.’
‘It’s not a very salubrious part of London this, is it? And I can’t even understand the graffiti.’
‘That’s because a lot of it’s in Punjabi,’ Harry said, walking in front of the car to the pavement.
&nb
sp; ‘How do you know? Do you speak it?’
‘A bit. A girl I used to go out with a few years back was from Pakistan, and you know how it is, you try and make an effort to fit in.’
‘Somehow, Harry, I can’t see you walking around in flowing robes and sporting a big black beard.’
‘That was the problem, and the reason why she dumped me in the end.’
They climbed the steps and walked into a red-bricked building, the home of S&H Oriental Fashions. Bentley was right about the area not being rich, as large buildings like this, located only a few miles further south in Wapping and Limehouse, were being snapped up by property developers for millions, then redeveloped into expensive apartments for young professionals.
They walked down a gloomy short corridor, emitting the smell and feel of a Victorian council building, and pushed open a set of double-doors. For a moment, Wallop couldn’t get his bearings; it looked like a scene from an Asian travel programme. In front of them, in a large, spacious room the size and height of a small concert hall, perhaps fifty or sixty women were all seated behind sewing and fabric trimming machines. The workers looked to be Asian, from Pakistan, as far as Wallop could tell, and the colours the women wore and the fabrics they were handling dazzling to the eyes.
The noise added to the flavour. Above the clatter of the machines, a sound system was playing Bhangra music, the equivalent of pop music in parts of Asia, but with a thumping bass and drums.
A man in white robes came striding towards them wearing the stern face of a park ranger about to remonstrate with children playing on his newly-cut grass.
‘Can I help you?’ he said in a gentle tone, belying his hawk-like resting face.
‘We’re Sussex police officers,’ Wallop said holding out his ID. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the loud background din. ‘We’re here to speak to Mr Gohar Cheema. He is expecting us.’
‘I see. Come this way.’
They walked past rows and rows of workers, Wallop fascinated to see the dexterity of their fast-moving fingers and the studious concentration. He imagined the reason why few of them looked round wasn’t a lack of curiosity about the new arrivals, but in case they sewed one of their fingers to the fabric.
The building didn’t look much on the outside, the sort of place that changed hands every few years, with an interior that few businesses could fully utilise. It was such a large space, he imagined it once housed a manufacturing plant with heavy machinery. The temperature at the moment was fine, even with the warm day outside, but he imagined it would be hard to heat in winter.
They were shown into an office where a short, beefy man with a huge black moustache, wearing a suit to shame the off-the-peg outfits worn by the two detectives, was sitting. The office was glass panelled giving the incumbent the option, if he could be bothered standing up, of a fine view over the sewing hall. In some respects, the whole set-up, the manual workers, the lack of technology, the old building, reminded him of a period drama he’d seen on television, as this place looked straight out of the 1950s.
Cheema didn’t get up to shake their hands, too much trouble levering up his portly frame from the chair, leaving the detectives to do so over the desk. He did make them feel welcome however, by offering tea. They traded some chit-chat for a few minutes until the tea was brought in and the carrier had left the office and closed the door.
‘Mr Cheema, we are here today as detectives from the team investigating the murder of a former employee of S&H Oriental Fashions, Mr Robert Saunders.’
Wallop was being slightly economical with the truth, as the Saunders case was the responsibility of Surrey Police, but this meeting had been cleared with DI Henderson’s counterpart in Guildford. DI Brady didn’t object to them being there as interviewing Cheema wasn’t high on their priority list, and they didn’t have the spare manpower to do it themselves.
‘Ah yes, Robert. I was so sad to hear of his death. We have known each other since we were children, you know?’
‘Have you?’
‘Oh, yes. We went to the same junior school, not far from here, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t easy being a Pakistani and attending a British school in those days. He stuck up for me against racist bullies when no one else would. It was a real problem in the 60s; everyone blamed me and my people for stealing their father’s jobs. It is better now, but with Britain going it alone when we leave the European Community, who knows?’
Cheema had a booming, loud voice, commensurate with his bulk. Wallop imagined it would prove useful when communicating with his workers over the rattle of the sewing machines, similar to the way his kids started talking louder after a couple of hours of wearing their headphones.
‘What did Robert do here?’
Wallop was keen to ask this question as he was intrigued to know how a white European could work in a business which looked to him to be staffed entirely by Asians, meaning the culture, customs, and language would all be alien to him. Not only this, the company also manufactured a product which he probably knew little about.
‘Robert fell on hard times when the haulage firm he worked for went bust. He was a logistics guy, you see. He started in the industry when he left school, and became an expert on the operations side: scheduling deliveries to make sure they were done in the most efficient manner. I asked him to take a look at our operation and employed him as a consultant.’ He laughed, a deep throaty chortle. ‘He found our systems were in such a mess, I took him on right then. He worked here for over five years.’
‘What is it you do here?’
‘Is it not obvious?’
‘I’d like to hear it from you.’
‘We buy material from all over Asia, bring it here, and turn it into garments. It’s for the discerning woman, you understand, we do not make for the mass market.’
‘So, Robert did what for Oriental Fashions? Organise and schedule the transport?’
‘Yes, but so much more; he overhauled the lot. He changed the shipping and haulage firms we used, saving me thousands, and he streamlined paperwork, the customs and import documentation we use every day.’
‘Didn’t he get a bit bored?’ Bentley asked. ‘When all the changes were put in place, he must have run out of challenges.’
It was a question Wallop hadn’t thought to ask and from the reaction it elicited from Cheema, it was a good one. For once, the super-confident boss looked rattled, and for a moment or two, appeared to be lost for words.
‘It may not look it, but this is a large and complex business,’ he said, ‘he could always find something to do.’
Wallop nodded in agreement, but it sounded to him like flannel.
‘Was Mr Saunders working for you at the time of his death?’ Wallop then added the date of the Leatherhead shooting.
‘Oh no, he had left some months before of his own accord. I was sad to see him go, naturally, but pleased to see him back on his feet and with the confidence to try something else.’
‘Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?’
He turned his palms skyward and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s something I cannot understand. He was a kind, gentle man, always happy to assist where he could, and didn’t upset anyone.’
‘Is the name, Ibrahim Nazari familiar to you, Mr Cheema?’
‘I never forget a face or a name, detective, a prerequisite necessary in my line of work. Yes, I remember Ibrahim. He was in the textiles business as we are, and sometimes he sourced material for us through the many contacts he had all over Asia and the Middle East.’
‘I’m sure you are aware, he was murdered too.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ he said leaning forward in his chair for the first time. ‘That the deaths of these two men are connected?’
‘No, don’t misunderstand me, Mr Cheema, but both Nazari and Saunders had connections with your business.’
‘I’m not sure I like what you’re implying, detective,’ Cheema growled.
‘I’m not imply
ing anything, but simply asking you if you’d like to comment.’
‘Yes, I would like to comment. No comment. How can I talk to you on a subject about which I know nothing?’
‘Did Mr Saunders and Mr Nazari know one another?’
‘Of course they did,’ he spat, the anger palpable. ‘Nazari worked in the textiles business and now and again he would do some work for us. Saunders worked here. Nazari would come here to talk about orders and deliveries. Saunders couldn’t help but meet him.’
‘Do you think there is any connection between their deaths?’
‘Detectives, I think you’re looking for ghosts where there are none. You both should go now.’
THIRTY
It was the end of the working day and several officers in the room looked beat. Those not involved in interviews were updating HOLMES, the system used for sharing information about cases by adding reports and items to files which provided a written record of the investigation, researching suspects, and a whole host of administrative jobs designed to support the detectives in the field. He called them together for a meeting.
‘For one night only, after this meeting I want everyone to go home, unless of course you are working on something urgent. Okay?’ He looked around the room at each individual’s face to make sure they all understood. ‘Right, Harry, update us on your interview with Gohar Cheema.’
Harry Wallop went on to describe the huge sewing hall at S&H Oriental Fashions in Haringey, and the sharp-dressed man who ran it. Henderson would have liked to have seen the inside of the building, as old-style manufacturing plants, textile mills and other industrial sites always fascinated him.
‘So,’ Henderson said when he’d finished, ‘he couldn’t shed any light on why one of his suppliers and one of his key employees are both dead, shot by the same gun?’
‘I didn’t mention the gun connection, for obvious reasons, but it’s clear our two victims had known one another. Nazari would go there as a supplier and Saunders would be there as an employee of S&H.’
