Smile of the Stowaway

by Tony Bassett

  I had to agree with her. But at the back of my mind was a growing realisation that the police might be thinking of including Yusuf on their list of possible murder suspects. Because of our knowledge of the man and our trust in him, I tried to dismiss this from my thoughts. The idea seemed completely preposterous.

  However, the mystery of how Sharp met his death continued to intrigue me. I was particularly fascinated by the symbols that had been scratched on the car door.

  Over the past few days, on the rare occasions when I had woken in the early hours of the morning and been unable to sleep, I had wondered to myself what these strange hieroglyphics could have meant.

  So. a day or two later, it was fascinating to discover the symbols were not, as initially thought, Chinese. They were from a language called Tigrinyan, which is an Afro-Asiatic language mainly spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Together, the letters meant “Devil” or “Satan.”’

  This new information came to light when Prunella Ball phoned Anne to discuss the interview she wanted to conduct with Gemma.

  Prunella disclosed that the police were unsure whether the word had been left on the car door because the killer was associating himself with the devil - implying the devil had struck at Lilac Cottage - or whether the killer was trying to suggest Sharp was the epitome of evil.

  We were also privy to new information about the firework. Anne and I had been speculating about how the killer had been able to set off the device indoors without, it seems, damaging the cottage ceiling. But this was easily explained by Prunella.

  She told Anne: ‘Graham’s spoken to an Army explosives expert. He’s been shown photographs of what remained of the mortar tube. He believes the firework was a cylinder shell or canister shell which was placed upside down in the cardboard mortar tube. This meant, instead of soaring into the ceiling, the firework exploded at the back of the victim’s head. His head received the full force of the explosion and explains why there was no massive hole in the ceiling.’

  I listened into the conversation on speaker-phone as Prunella added : ’I don’t know if you’re interested in the results of the post mortem, but the pathologist, Dr Harryman, has given the cause of the death as severe head trauma. Hang on, I’ve got the full statement here. He told me: “It’s believed there’d have been a struggle in the kitchen for a few minutes before the victim succumbed to the chloroform fumes. The perpetrator’s likely to be a strong man. Mr Sharp was 175.26 centimetres tall. He weighed eighty kilograms, which equates to twelve stone eight pounds.

  ‘“When the fuse was lit, the explosion would’ve blown the plug out of the bottom of the mortar and the blast would then have killed the victim. The victim sustained extensive blast injuries to the head and upper torso that caused death through shock and haemorrhage. Death would have been instant. The victim had to be identified by fingerprints, his wristwatch and his clothing. I’m putting in my report he died from a lethal cranial trauma sustained as a consequence of an explosion.”’

  There is an old song. It goes: ‘No shadow, no stars, no moon, no care, November.’

  I recalled those words as I hurried back from school after an exhausting day. The hedgerows in the lane were brown and bleak with little sticks poking impudently into the cold evening air, while the fields opposite our home were gradually losing their green hue for the russet of winter.

  Autumn had finally embarked upon its long holiday, leaving behind as an after-thought just the pink blooms of our camellias, a rare glimpse of colour in the barren garden. I could understand now the negativity implied by the song, but I would suggest an extra verse: ‘No light evenings, no break from bitter winds, no visitors, no doctors’ appointments, November.’

  I remained for a while in a quiet, thoughtful mood. But it did not last long.

  Anne arrived back at the cottage ten minutes after me in an agitated state. She had been reading through some local news stories on her tablet computer.

  ‘Oh, Bob. It’s awful,’ she screamed. ‘Police are looking for Yusuf. They think he might have had something to do with Sharp’s death!’

  ‘You’re joking!’ I replied. I struggled for a few minutes to calm her down, then, as she sat down on the living-room settee, she clicked again on the news report.

  Unmistakably, there was a photograph which had been taken at the farm of our friend Yusuf on the online news page under the caption ‘Wanted.’ There was a brief description and then it said he was wearing ‘a dark-green check shirt, black jeans and a dark-blue coat.’

  ‘That’s the winter coat we bought him,’ said Anne, who was close to tears. ‘How can they believe Yusuf could’ve had anything to do with it?’

  I had to agree with her. We had grown to know him. He was gentle. He was kind. He was honest. You couldn’t imagine a less likely culprit.

  Shortly afterwards, there was a knock on the door. Anne got up and peered through the window.

  ‘It’s that detective again,’ she said. ‘You’d better let him in.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Shaw,’ Sergeant Kirwan said. ‘I won’t take up much of your time. As you know, we’re looking for your former lodger and wondered if you’d any idea where he might be?’

  ‘No,’ said Anne. ‘You’re welcome to search the house, but, as you know, he lives at the farm.’

  ‘We’ve checked there already. D’you have any idea at all where he might be?’

  We both genuinely had no knowledge of his whereabouts - although it gradually dawned on me there was one possible place he might have gone.

  As the sergeant stood in our hallway, looking at two blank faces, my wife, calmly but passionately, launched into a detailed explanation as to why -- in her opinion -- Yusuf could not have been involved in any way in the tragedy at Lilac Cottage.

  ‘Yusuf’s totally harmless’ she said. ‘He spends all his time at the farm working or with his girlfriend Kristina. He doesn’t even know where Chivingden is. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  The sergeant responded by saying: ‘We know that’s untrue. There was a fight at the Pilgrim’s Rest with witnesses who say punches were thrown. Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He’s only a suspect at this stage.’

  ‘You yourself would’ve been upset after someone told lies and put your job at stake with false theft claims!’ Anne insisted.

  I found it difficult to give any credence to the suggestion Yusuf could have been implicated in the murder.

  ‘Sergeant, I’ve got to tell you -- you’re making a mistake,’ I said. ‘I’ve watched him in the garden. If a caterpillar fell off a leaf, he’d help it back on again. If there’s no rain and the birdbath’s empty, he fills it. If a crow swoops down to eat bread left out for the birds, he scares it away so the little birds can feed.’

  The sergeant told us weeks later that, at this moment, he had quietly reminded himself of the Birdman of Alcatraz. There was a man who had rescued injured sparrows, raised three hundred canaries and learnt how to cure bird diseases. Yet he had brutally murdered a barman and a prison guard, the sergeant recalled to himself. However, because we were so concerned about our friend, he decided this was probably not the right time to point this out to us.

  Instead he simply said: ‘I’m sure your ex-lodger was a gentle guy. It’s very laudable to be in harmony with nature. It’s just we need to eliminate him from our inquiries.’

  I could see there was little point in trying to take my argument further. The sergeant had apparently already made up his mind Yusuf could have played a part in causing the death of Lucas Sharp.

  As he left and walked back down the drive, I believed he and the other senior detectives would eventually manage to find Yusuf. Once that happened, they would interview him and they would come to the same conclusion as Anne and me. Yusuf was no murderer.

  However, over the coming days, Anne began to lose confidence Yusuf would be
cleared of any involvement. She was beginning to share my deep-rooted suspicion of the police. And she had never had much faith in the traditional concept of British justice. She reminded me of cases in which the wrong men and women had been convicted; she had avidly watched television programmes about the struggles of justice campaigners to gain the release of the innocent.

  Meanwhile, I had a quick task to perform. As Anne wanted to carry out more online research into the police investigation involving Yusuf, I left her at the cottage.

  I walked down the lane until I reached the entrance to the footpath that leads through the woods. I passed a dog walker amid the trees, crossed the stream and eventually came to the clearing that overlooks a series of fields.

  I had half-expected to see Yusuf there, lounging on the bench. But he was not there. No one was sitting on the brown wooden bench. I was alone, standing beneath a canopy of trees and staring across the open ground.

  18

  As Anne and I gradually recovered from the initial shock of hearing Yusuf was a murder suspect, I quickly realised there might be serious implications for us as well.

  If our friend was to face questions, the police would not simply focus on his whereabouts at the time of the murder.

  There might also be far-reaching questions covering his past life, his entry into Britain, his immigration status, his accommodation and his job.

  Would he tell them he arrived in England clinging to the chassis of our motor-home? If so, would they believe him?

  Sergeant Kirwan already realised Yusuf had spent two months lodging with us. Could we get into some kind of trouble because of that? Would they accuse us of harbouring him?

  Did our friend have a secret past of which we were ignorant? These were the sort of questions streaming through my mind. I had to talk to Anne about our situation. We needed to get our story straight.

  However, at this moment, she was confused and distressed. She had some firm ideas of her own. She took her fawn winter coat from the hall cupboard. She began sliding her arms into it.

  ‘I want to go to the farm,’ she said. ‘I must find out what’s been going on.’

  I agreed to drive her there, although the working day had nearly ended. Within five minutes, the Mondeo had arrived in the car park at Finch & Davies. It was virtually empty, but Sue Wickens’ silver Mazda sports car was still in its normal place, next to David Finch’s green Jaguar.

  Anne rushed into the reception area. She could hear the sound of rattling keys. Mrs Wickens was in the process of locking up and leaving.

  ‘Anne!’ she said. ‘There’s no English class tonight, is there?’

  ‘No, I’ve come about Yusuf. The police have been round to the cottage. They’re looking for him.’

  ‘Yes, I’d been thinking of giving you a call. He’s in a spot of trouble.’

  ‘We can’t understand why,’ said Anne, as I joined her by the counter. ‘D’you know where he is?’

  ‘No idea. No one’s seen him since this morning. We’d a convoy of police cars here this afternoon. This detective inspector - Woods, I think his name was - was demanding to know where Yusuf was, but no one had seen him since lunch. Someone remembered seeing him in a dark green check shirt, a brown jacket and black jeans.

  ‘Then his colleague, a sergeant, appeared in the office, telling Woods that Yusuf wasn’t in the caravan and all his clothes had gone. They checked the cycle shelter and his bike was missing. The inspector shouted: “ Damn it! Looks like the bird’s flown the coop.”

  ‘Then he went onto say they would have to get a message to all units to keep an eye open for him. They were going to contact the media and he talked about issuing an All Ports Warning in case Yusuf tried to flee the country. Then I heard him say: “If this doesn’t suggest guilt, I don’t know what does.”’

  ‘We just can’t understand what could’ve happened,’ said Anne.

  ‘Well, the police are looking for someone with a grudge against my nephew. Of course, he’d caused poor Yusuf a lot of distress. But it’s rather unfortunate Yusuf was the last person to obtain chloroform from our poisons’ cabinet.’

  ‘I’ve heard this about him getting chloroform. What reason did he give for wanting it?’

  ‘Well, he claims they were bothered by a rat at the caravan, although I’ve not heard about this from anyone else,’ said Mrs Wickens. ‘The police also seem to think a tracking device delivered here was used by Yusuf to follow Lucas to the cottage where he was murdered.’

  ‘I know Yusuf was upset at the way Lucas acted, but we can’t believe he’d kill someone,’ said Anne.

  ‘Well, there’s more,’ said Mrs Wickens.

  ‘There’s more?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s a rumour going round the farm the pair were in a fight at the Pilgrim’s Rest three weeks ago and Yusuf threatened to kill him. Yusuf then made a Guy Fawkes dummy that looked exactly like Lucas and pushed a firework into the dummy’s shoulder.’

  ‘Oh God! So you’ve heard the same as us,’ wailed Anne. I had to admit a mass of potentially damning evidence against Yusuf appeared to be mounting higher and higher.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to help him, haven’t we?’ Anne declared, turning first to look at me and then to look at Mrs Wickens.

  The secretary was the first to respond. ‘Yes, of course. The company will do all it can,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got to do everything in our power to help him,’ I concurred. ‘We all know what kind of man he is. Even if he’d been driven by spite to seek revenge against a man who caused him trouble, he’d not have intentionally wanted to bring about Lucas’s death.’

  We left Mrs Wickens to lock up the premises and walked to the caravan site in the hope of finding Kristina. As we strode across the car park, Anne was clearly incensed.

  ‘The whole thing’s ridiculous,’ she asserted. ‘Something you said when Yusuf was cleared over the money has come back to me - strangers will always be blamed first. That’s what’s happened here. The police have just picked on the first stranger they’ve come across while looking into what happened. There’s no way Yusuf would have the nous to track down Lucas to Lilac Cottage - with or without a tracking device. He wouldn’t know where to start if he wanted to buy a giant firework either. And I couldn’t imagine him fixing it to a man’s head with wire and blowing him up.’

  I was equally baffled by the police decision to arrest Yusuf. I said: ‘I don’t think being framed over a theft is sufficient motive for murder. It’s Sharp who lost his job at the end of the day and Sharp who was getting a criminal record. Why would Yusuf go to all the trouble of committing murder? He’d seen his rival punished for what he had done. That was surely sufficient retribution. As you say. the whole thing’s ridiculous.’

  As we approached Kristina’s caravan, I recalled there had been little love lost until now between Anne and Kristina. But Anne had clearly decided to swallow her pride. She needed as much information as she could acquire about the events leading up to the police decision to arrest Yusuf.

  We found the Romanian girl sitting in her caravan with two of her fellow countrymen, listening to some folk music.

  ‘Oh, Anne! Bob!’ she exclaimed as she saw our distressed faces. ‘This is a terrible time. ‘

  Her two friends politely greeted us and then discreetly left.

  ‘Please, sit!’ she said.

  ‘D’you know where Yusuf is?’ I asked.

  ‘Listen. I know you’re Yusuf’s good friends. Kristina will tell you what she knows,’ she said. ‘Yusuf ‘s doing the run.’

  ‘Gone on the run?’ said Anne.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not what the police think. They think Yusuf may’ve done the murder. That’s stupid. Yusuf was here with me. But they must think: Yusuf’s gone, so he’s the guilty man.’

  ‘But he’s gone
for a different reason - not because of the police?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, different reason,’ Kristina confirmed. She explained Sam Tedros and Jaefer Beraki had visited Yusuf’s caravan.

  ‘So this big guy Sam, he say: “Great place you’ve got here, Yusuf. I think I might move in here. Hot and cold running water, and a fridge. Luxury, isn’t it, compared with what we all had before.” He is demanding: “Have you got our money?”

  ‘Then I hear a cracking sound. This big man break our sofa-bed, he’s so big. He say sorry. Then he stands up and pulls it from the wall. It’s like snapping matchsticks. I scream at him. I say: “What’re you doing? You’re not a friend.” Then the big man say: “We want what’s due. Get me money, Yusuf, or you’re dead meat!”

  ‘Yusuf annoys me at first. When the two men are gone, Yusuf say: “I think I can fix it if I get the screws.”

  I had to smile at this point. I thought: ‘That’s so typical of our friend.’

  Kristina went on : ‘I told him to forget about the bloody bed. I say: “What’re you going to do about those big bully men?” But Yusuf just say he’ll run away. He say: “I think I go to London or somewhere - maybe Scotland. Maybe I look for my mother. They’re bad men from my homeland. They want me to give them money and sell drugs.”

  ‘I tell him running away’s no good. Then he say the police have been to ask him about Lucas. The policeman was very shocked when he saw my bonfire doll.’

  ‘So you made the effigy?’ said Anne.

  ‘Yes. I make,’ she replied.

  ‘Why wasn’t it put on a bonfire?’ I asked. Kristina giggled.

  ‘I studied art in my country,’ she explained. ‘Last month I thought it would be nice to make a Guy Fawkes dummy making fun of Lucas. It made Yusuf and all our friends laugh, We never got round to burning it because, in the end, we had a Hallowe’en party instead of a Bonfire party.’