by Paul Gitsham
‘Can we block the funeral?’
ACC Naseem snorted. ‘That’d be political dynamite. Can you imagine the reaction – “Police block grieving family’s funeral”? No, that’s a decision well above the pay grade of anyone in this room.’
‘Home Secretary?’ asked Grayson
‘You’d think, but we’re less than a year away from a general election, I wouldn’t bet on a speedy decision. Nevertheless, Mrs May has let it be known that she is following events closely.’
Warren’s head spun. He’d known the repercussions of the previous day’s murder were likely to be significant but he’d had no idea what was at stake. And he really wasn’t happy about the Home Secretary taking an interest. That sort of interest could end an officer’s career pretty quickly.
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘We need to know who was responsible for the murder as soon as possible to manage the fallout. If it was one of the protestors, it’ll be bad enough. If it turns out it was a member of the local Muslim community seizing an opportunity, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.’ He paused. ‘Without wanting to pre-empt DI Sutton’s briefing, are we treating the fire as arson?’
‘From witness reports, it’s looking that way.’
‘Great, that’s all we need.’
Naseem removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Warren watched him carefully over the top of his coffee cup.
At first glance it seemed strange that a small, first-response unit like Middlesbury would be taking the lead in such a politically sensitive operation, but it didn’t surprise him. Ostensibly, Middlesbury was most suited to coordinate investigations on its own turf; the CID unit’s intimate local knowledge made it ideal for dealing with crimes taking place at this end of the county, miles away from the Major Crime Unit’s headquarters in Welwyn Garden City. But there was more to it. Yet more cutbacks to the policing budget were making Middlesbury CID’s special status harder and harder to justify. A successful resolution to such a big, high-profile case would do wonders for the unit’s long-term future. The question was, were they being given an opportunity to prove themselves or handed enough rope to hang themselves?
Naseem’s face was unreadable. Beside him, Grayson looked similarly impassive, but his knuckles were slightly white as they gripped his coffee mug. Naseem turned to Grayson. ‘Blank cheque, John.’ His mouth twisted in disgust. ‘This needs sorting in the next ten days or we’re looking at the Brixton riots all over again.’
So there it was: make or break time for Middlesbury CID – and the career of John Grayson. Solve the murder quickly and efficiently and Grayson was one step closer to his next promotion; mess it up and it was the end of Middlesbury CID’s independence and perhaps John Grayson. And, quite possibly, Warren Jones.
Chapter 3
DI Tony Sutton dropped wearily into the comfy chair opposite Warren’s desk.
‘The fire at the Islamic Centre is almost certainly arson; I’ll be meeting the fire investigators later today.’
‘Is there a final casualty count?’
‘There were about thirty in the centre at the time, almost all women and children or older folk. They managed to get upstairs, where the fire service rescued them. A total of eight were treated for smoke inhalation, with two remaining in hospital. An eighty-nine-year-old woman already in poor health is in intensive care alongside a three-year-old boy.
‘Fortunately, lunchtime prayers had finished a couple of hours before and it wasn’t a Friday. Karen and I will be visiting the imam in charge later, but he’s already said that ironically they were in there because of the trouble brewing in town. The centre has invested heavily in security in recent years.’
‘Speaking of security, do we have any CCTV?’
Sutton smiled humourlessly. ‘It’s funny you should ask that. The CCTV at the front of the building wasn’t working.’
Warren sat up slightly straighter. ‘Really? Can I guess what happened?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘It was broken by a brick on Thursday evening.’
‘Half right, Wednesday evening.’
* * *
Tommy Meegan’s body had been found almost eighteen hours ago, but this was Warren’s first opportunity to visit the crime scene. Even in a small, specialist CID unit like Middlesbury, with its unique role as a first responder to local crimes, most of the legwork was performed by those with the rank of Inspector or below. Warren’s immediate superior, DSI Grayson, seemed to only leave his office to play golf or schmooze with the senior ranks at the force’s headquarters in Welwyn Garden City.
At Warren’s last appraisal, it had been suggested that he needed to practise delegating more. His wife, Susan, had certainly been pleased; Warren’s first few cases at Middlesbury had placed him – and his loved ones – directly in the firing line and she had questioned on more than one occasion why he needed to be so hands-on.
The problem was that Warren missed the excitement that came with solving a case. When he’d moved to Middlesbury three years previously, it had been to further his career. There were precious few DCI opportunities on the horizon in the West Midlands Police and the sudden vacancy at Middlesbury had seemed too good to be true. He’d applied and then accepted the post immediately.
The unit’s unusual position would provide Warren with a perfect mix of both smaller, community-style policing and management, with the safety net of a senior officer directly above him. A couple of years in that sort of environment and he would be ready to move on.
It hadn’t quite worked that way. Even assuming he hadn’t permanently blotted his copybook after the Delmarno case two years ago, he’d realised that he liked Middlesbury. His predecessor, Gavin Sheehy, had once described leading the unit as the best job he’d ever had. Warren had disagreed with Sheehy over much – but he was being won over on that score.
It had been made clear that solving the death of Tommy Meegan was to be Warren’s number one priority and he had interpreted that to mean ‘leave the office and get your hands dirty’.
But not literally. The body might have been removed, but the alleyway was still an active crime scene and Warren wasn’t getting a close look without appropriate precautions. The CSIs were still looking for trace evidence and so gloves and booties weren’t enough, particularly when TV camera crews with zoom lenses were in attendance. The last thing they needed was for some defence solicitor to claim evidence gathering procedures weren’t properly followed and use TV footage to demand that key exhibits be declared inadmissible.
The plastic-coated paper suits were far from ideal attire on a hot July day. The face mask trapped the heat from his breath and within moments he was licking sweat off his top lip. Suddenly his air-conditioned office seemed a lot more attractive…
Stepping out from the police van that he’d changed in, Warren glanced towards the gathered news crews. Thankfully, nobody seemed to have registered his presence. Warren was hardly a celebrity but a few of the local hacks would recognise him and he had no particular desire to have his face splashed all over the Middlesbury Reporter’s online edition, with the attendant excuse to rehash old stories from years ago. Perhaps the face mask had its uses after all.
‘DCI Jones, what brings you out here on such a fine day?’
As always, the jollity of Crime Scene Manager Andy Harrison conflicted with the sombre nature of his job. But given what he saw on a daily basis, Warren figured it was probably a survival mechanism. Naturally, the burly Yorkshireman didn’t offer to shake his hand.
‘I’m here to make sure you aren’t cutting any corners, Andy.’
To Warren’s surprise, the man’s eyes – the only part of him visible above his mask – narrowed slightly.
‘It’s not us who’s cutting corners, sir.’
Warren paused before realising what the man was referring to.
‘DetectIt Forensic Services?’
‘I caught one of them using a box of out-of-date sal
ine swabs to take blood samples from the patch next to the body.’
‘How can a saline swab be out-of-date?’
‘That’s exactly what he said. And of course he’s right, but any defence counsel worth his salt would move to have that evidence ruled inadmissible.’
Warren shuddered. ‘What happened?’
‘Fortunately, the victim bled like a stuck pig so there was plenty of blood to go around and the lad hadn’t started taking samples from some of the tiny specks we found further up the alleyway. I got him to fetch a fresh box and retake the swab.’
‘Shit.’ Warren lowered his voice. ‘Is this going to be a problem, Andy?’
The veteran CSI sighed. ‘At the scene I can keep an eye on the newbies and we’re whipping them into shape, but God only knows what happens when the samples go off to the lab. The Forensic Science Service might not have been perfect, but at least we knew who was doing the testing. Some of these new private companies didn’t even exist eighteen months ago. Their only qualification seems to be that they’re cheap.’
Warren felt a tightening in his gut. The thought that such a high-stakes case could be scuppered by a cut-rate CSI with a box of out-of-date swabs wasn’t worth contemplating.
‘Thanks for the heads up, Andy. In the meantime, talk me through what you’ve got.’
‘The victim was probably standing close to those bins when he was stabbed. There’s some spatter consistent with arterial spurt and from the blade when it was pulled out.’ He picked up a tablet computer with a removable plastic coating and started scrolling through images on its screen.
‘See this picture of that bin over there? The angle of the droplets suggests they were probably flicked off the tip of the blade when it was withdrawn. The droplets then continue in that direction—’ he pointed down the alleyway in the opposite direction to the shop front, where a series of numbered markers had been placed on the tarmac ‘—with a pattern consistent with dripping—’ he turned a half-circle on the spot, gesturing back towards the main road ‘—and our victim appears to have crawled in that direction, presumably away from his attacker. He didn’t get far; that big patch of blood behind that bin is where we found the body.’
The blood smears were no more than three metres in length and thick. Warren pictured the victim dragging himself away from the person who’d just stabbed him. Another few metres and he’d have been visible to passers-by in the high street. Could he have survived if somebody had found him and called for help? Without realising, he’d asked the question out loud.
‘That’s the sort of question that can only be answered by a pathologist, sir. But if I had to speculate… it’s doubtful. I think it’s a miracle he got as far as he did.’
Warren felt a brief flash of sympathy. Tommy Meegan had been a deeply unpleasant individual, but in those last few moments he was nothing more than a human being facing death – and probably terrified. Did he feel any remorse for the life he’d led? Warren shook off the feeling and turned to point back at the waste container with the blood spatter.
‘Is that where you think the murder weapon is?’
Harrison nodded. ‘We’ve finished sweeping the area around it for trace and we’re about to get in and start looking for it. Unfortunately, somebody from the nail bar dumped a load of rubbish in there shortly before the owners of the chippy discovered the victim behind their own bin. If the weapon was dumped in there it will be buried under half a ton of hair clippings and fake nails.’
Warren sighed.
‘Great, that screws the hair and fibre analysis.’
Visiting the scene probably hadn’t told him anything that he didn’t already know, and the high-resolution photographs that Harrison promised to send him would tell him far more than his eyes ever could, but it gave him a sense of what had taken place.
‘What about clothing?’
‘It was an arterial cut and he would have been pumping blood under high pressure, so I doubt the killer got away without at least some transfer. We’ll be looking for any discarded clothing. Failing that, find me a suspect and give me access to his laundry bin and shoe collection. We’ll find something.’
Chapter 4
Imam Danyal Mehmud’s eyes were bloodshot and the shaking of his hands attested to the adrenaline he was running on. Karen Hardwick and Tony Sutton were seated in the imam’s living room, two streets over from the remains of the community centre. The air in the street still smelled of smoke. The house was a two-bedroom affair with a modest front room whose walls were covered in a mixture of family pictures and framed scripture.
‘Is that the Frozen fan?’ Sutton nodded towards a picture of a smiling infant in a light summer dress. She hadn’t been smiling ten minutes ago when her father had switched the cartoon off and sent her upstairs so they could speak in peace.
‘Yes, that’s Fatima. If I hear “Let it Go” one more time… she’s obsessed.’
‘My niece is about the same age,’ said Hardwick. ‘At least choosing a birthday present was easy this year.’ She paused. ‘Is the little boy in the picture with her the other victim, Abbas?’ Both children were dark-haired, with light brown skin and faces smeared with ice cream.
‘Yes, they’re cousins. My sister’s little boy. They’re almost exactly the same age.’
‘So that means Mrs Fahmida must be your grandmother?’
Mehmud nodded sadly.
‘I’m very sorry, I had no idea.’
The man in front of them was in his late thirties, wearing a white dishdasha over his jeans and trainers. By all accounts he’d been awake for pretty much the entire past twenty-four hours, comforting his congregation and, Sutton now realised, dealing with his own shock and grief. He was clearly running on adrenaline and little else, given that he was still fasting during daylight hours to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
‘Have you heard anything more from the hospital?’ asked Hardwick.
Mehmud shrugged helplessly. ‘Nani is in intensive care. They aren’t very hopeful. Abbas is poorly but stable. We are praying for his recovery, inshallah.’
Mehmud stood up suddenly as if filled with an energy he didn’t know what to do with.
‘I haven’t told Fatima anything yet. I’ll wait to see what happens in the next twenty-four hours or so. If he… well, she’ll be devastated. My sister and I are very close and Fatima and Abbas are like brother and sister.’
‘I realise that it’s been a trying time but could you take me through what happened that day,’ asked Sutton after a respectful pause.
‘We knew all about the BAP march of course, but I’d tried to persuade people to keep their heads down and not get involved.’ Mehmud shrugged. ‘Not everyone listened. We found out that the BAP were due to arrive about midday. It was easy enough to find their plans on the internet. We’d spoken about it the day before at Friday prayers. We had a higher than usual attendance; there were some brothers and sisters that I didn’t recognise.’
‘People from outside Middlesbury?’ asked Hardwick.
‘I think so. Not many, but I got the feeling that they weren’t there by chance.’
‘You think they’d arrived specifically to join the counter-protest?’
‘Yes. I tried to counsel against it – the last thing we as a community need is to be involved in violence, especially with the planning hearing for the mosque and community centre coming soon.’
‘So what happened on Saturday?’
‘There was an informal gathering here after dawn prayers. Some of the more fiery members of the congregation wanted to take part in the protest marches. A few went off to join in, but most stuck around until midday prayers.’
‘What happened then?’
‘A few more went to the protest and about half went back to lock up their shops and businesses. In the end there were about thirty, mostly women and children, who chose to stay here. I decided to lead by example and stick around.’
‘Why did they stay?’ asked Hardwick.
<
br /> ‘They were scared. There were all sorts of rumours on the internet about Muslims being targeted on the street or having their houses vandalised. All nonsense, of course, but I decided that anybody who wanted to remain was welcome.’
He closed his eyes briefly. ‘They should have been safe here. We locked the doors and there was a police car outside.’ His voice cracked and his bottom lip started to tremble. ‘But they weren’t, were they? We were trapped like rats.’
‘Tell us what happened inside the centre.’
‘It was pretty tense. As the protests got more violent the BBC started to cover it and there was loads of activity on Twitter. We moved the older children upstairs with some toys and the rest of us stayed downstairs to watch the telly.’ His voice hardened, and for the first time an edge of anger crept into his tone. ‘We still thought we were safe. There was a police car up the street, and all of the action was happening in the town centre. Nobody told us the police car had…’ He stopped, unable to continue the sentence.
‘We haven’t been able to get inside the centre yet,’ said Sutton, ‘so you’ll have to help us with the layout. Where were you watching TV?’
‘In the kitchen area, out the back. As you enter through the front door there are shelves for footwear and some sinks for ablutions, straight on is the kitchen, to the left the musallah, the prayer hall.’
‘And where are the stairs?’
‘To the right of the entrance.’
‘And what do you have upstairs?’
‘There are several rooms. The largest is a function room, then there is a storeroom, some bathrooms and another couple of rooms that we use for wedding guests to get changed etc.’
‘Did you know everybody?’ asked Hardwick.
‘Yes, the visitors had all gone off to the march.’
‘Did you see anybody strange hanging around outside?’
‘There were a few brothers outside, but they left eventually.’
‘What do you mean by brothers?’ questioned Sutton.
