City of Sinners

by A. A. Dhand

  Son of a bitch had picked the perfect location, perfect time and left them with two hundred witness statements to sift through; a fucking needle in a haystack.

  For the second morning running, officers had been stationed at Bradford Interchange, canvassing the women using the ladies’ toilets as changing rooms, slowly eliminating girls from the CCTV footage they had from Monday morning. Again, it would be weeks not days before they had anything useful.

  By lunchtime, Conway had told Harry he looked like hell and sent him home. Thirty-six hours without sleep was most people’s limit, and Harry had just passed the thirty-hour mark. He was no exception to the rule. With everything delegated, he phoned Palmer, telling him to stop by his house later that evening to update him on the day.

  Sitting in his car in the Trafalgar House car park, Harry closed his eyes and once again ran through events from the night before.

  He had missed something.

  There was always a tiny detail that got overlooked.

  What was it?

  He pictured the killer in the club.

  Moving through the crowd.

  A girl he didn’t like the look of.

  Dancing with a white guy.

  The music, the smoke, the perfect camouflage.

  The strike to Jaspreet’s neck.

  The panic.

  Blood.

  Everyone rushing for the exit, including the killer.

  Outside, amongst the clubbers, he had the perfect opportunity to disappear into the night, unnoticed.

  Unnoticed?

  Harry opened his eyes.

  Unnoticed?

  There was something there.

  ‘Got you,’ he whispered, and started his car.

  THIRTY-THREE

  SITTING ALONE IN her kitchen, Saima turned off the news. She’d heard enough disturbing headlines to last a lifetime. Her horror at what Harry had gone through the night before had not yet abated; he’d given her some of the detail but she’d known there was more to it.

  She held her head in her hands.

  Tired.

  Poor Harry must be a mess at work.

  She was grateful she hadn’t been on shift today. Usually, on her day off, Saima would take Aaron to her sister’s place but, having been awake since four a.m., she had decided against it. She’d hoped Harry would have come home by now – how long could he last without sleep?

  The sound of the doorbell made her jump.

  She heard Aaron run towards the front door, yelling, ‘Postman Pat! Postman Pat!’

  Saima hurried after him and opened the door to find Joyti standing there, a Cornetto ice cream in her hand. Standing beside her was Mandy Virdee.

  ‘Hello, Beti,’ said Joyti.

  Beti. Daughter.

  ‘Three days in a row.’ Saima started to smile, then her stomach dropped.

  Ranjit.

  ‘Is everythi—’ she started.

  ‘Yes, yes. Do not worry. My husband is still waiting for his operation – Friday, they say.’

  Relief flooded Saima’s mind.

  She couldn’t stop a nervous laugh escaping from her lips.

  ‘I-cream! I-cream!’ Aaron had seen the gift his grandmother had brought him.

  ‘I didn’t know what else he liked,’ Joyti said.

  Saima stepped aside to let her mother-in-law and Mandy inside.

  Joyti stopped abruptly in the hallway. She stared down at her slippers. She smiled and touched them gently. Aaron joined her, put his hands over hers.

  ‘Grandma slippers,’ he whispered to her solemnly.

  Joyti ruffled his hair and crouched beside him.

  ‘Only a grandmother could get away with giving him an ice cream at ten o’clock in the morning,’ said Saima.

  As Joyti led Aaron into the living room, Mandy reached for Saima, stopping her from following.

  ‘I … I … need a moment with you,’ said Mandy.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Saima replied coldly.

  ‘Mum’s going to speak with you about a few things. I know she wants change for us all. And whilst I don’t know exactly how that might work, I want you to try and move past what I said two years ago. I’d lost my daughter. My marriage to Ronnie was in a bad place and I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  She couldn’t look at Saima. Her eyes were fixed on Joyti’s slippers and her voice, when she spoke, was cold.

  ‘Fine,’ said Saima. She didn’t believe Mandy. She didn’t trust her.

  ‘Good. That’s really good,’ said Mandy awkwardly. ‘I’ll pick Mum up when she’s done here.’

  Saima turned towards the living room. ‘Close the front door on your way out,’ she said.

  At the kitchen table, Joyti’s face darkened and she reached for her daughter-in-law.

  ‘I cannot miss little Aaron growing up,’ she said, surprising Saima with the force in her voice.

  ‘I know, I—’

  Joyti held up a hand.

  ‘This morning when I woke up, I could not bear it. I could still smell him. I didn’t want to wash my coat with dried ice cream on it because it is the only thing I have which reminds me of him and it made me sad. All of this makes me sad. I am too old to allow this to keep going. I want to see my little Aaron grow up.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing.’

  ‘I have done what I believed was right, I have stood by my husband despite my own wishes, but I … I do not believe I can continue any longer. It will fall to the women to try and save this family.’

  Saima swallowed hard. They were words she had never expected to hear, words Harry had almost given up hope of hearing.

  She nodded, allowing a smile to spread across her face.

  ‘What can I do?’ said Saima.

  Joyti nodded at a pan on the stove. ‘A long time ago, you made me some tea. It was a dark night for my family when my granddaughter Tara was taken from us but your tea warmed my heart. So, now, I want you to put water in that pan, put it to boil and sit here whilst I make you my tea and then we talk about what needs to be done.’

  ‘Harry always told me my tea was as good as yours. Now I’m tasting it, I can see he was lying,’ said Saima.

  Joyti smiled. She was sitting on the floor in their living room, cross-legged, Aaron by her side, helping him with a puzzle.

  ‘I have over fifty years’ experience,’ said Joyti.

  ‘What is the secret?’

  Joyti smiled. ‘Leave it on the stove on gentle simmer for twenty minutes. Makes the tea thicker and sweeter.’

  ‘I knew there was something I was missing.’

  ‘Can I tell you a story?’ Joyti asked.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Saima, taking tiny sips of her tea, savouring every mouthful, as Joyti began to talk.

  When the Virdees had first taken over their corner shop, it had been hard work, she explained. They had been the first Asian people to move into the estate and were met with huge suspicion.

  ‘My husband never panicked. He would say, “They’ll see that we’re just like them.”’

  There was a group of teenagers who used to throw bricks through their windows. They had a regular routine worked out. Ranjit would call the police and one of the boys would be arrested. On their release, the Virdees’ window would be smashed again with renewed hostility, and Ranjit would pick up the phone once more.

  ‘One evening, some of them were sitting on the low wall opposite our store, drinking beer. The shop was closed, we were sitting upstairs in our flat, but we could hear them. Shouting. Singing. Threatening. My husband was sick of the games. He told me to stand by the window and watch. If it became violent, I was to call the police. I had Harry on my lap, he must have been about eight years old. I’d begged Ranjit not to go outside but he didn’t listen. I kept the phone in my hand, clutching it tight, ready to call the police.’

  Aaron had completed his puzzle and wanted to do it again. Joyti broke from the story to help him reset it before continuing.

  Ranjit had gone
outside, carrying a can of beer he’d taken from the shop. He cracked open the can and asked if one of the boys on the end would move over.

  ‘My window was open, I could hear everything. My husband, wearing his turban, was sitting in the middle of a group of hooligans. I had never been so frightened.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ replied Saima, focused on every word.

  Ranjit had chatted with them, swapped his expensive beer for a cheap cider which made him grimace. He made them laugh with a dirty joke.

  ‘Do you know what happened then?’ said Joyti.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One of them stood up, told the boys that our shop was okay. He and Ranjit shook hands and the bricks stopped coming through the window.’

  Saima sat back on the sofa, unsure what to say.

  ‘He made them see that he was not whatever it was they had assumed him to be. He was just a man. Like them.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Saima uttered.

  ‘And now, we need to do something similar.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have already done it. When Ranjit was brought in and you saw who he was, you saved his life. And he needs to know this.’

  Saima finished her tea and placed the empty mug on a side table, sighing.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I know. As am I. All night I was thinking of this story, of all the changes we made when we first came here. Eating meat, my husband drinking alcohol, hiding it always from the religious community. And I realized: with you it is the same. As my husband used to say, we need to adapt.’

  Saima came across to Joyti and sat on the floor by her side.

  She smiled weakly at her mother-in-law. She wanted to believe they could change things for the better.

  ‘Are you working tomorrow?’ Joyti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time do you have your lunch?’

  Saima shrugged. ‘Depends. We don’t really get regulation lunch breaks.’

  ‘Can you meet me at Ranjit’s room at one o’clock?’

  ‘I’m sure I can. What are you going to do?’

  Joyti reached a hand to Saima’s face.

  ‘Not what I am going to do. What we are going to do.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  HARRY COULDN’T GO home and sleep now.

  Not until he knew what he was dealing with.

  He arrived at Cliff Lane in Holme Wood, the largest council estate in the city, run-down, overcrowded and out of the way. More often than not, criminal activity in Bradford was traced back to this area.

  Not today, though.

  Today, Harry was here for something else entirely.

  Help.

  He hurried up the steps of the semi-detached house and rang the doorbell. He could hear the TV on loud.

  When nobody answered the door, Harry peered through a window and saw a boy, maybe ten years old, watching a Harry Potter movie. He tried the doorbell again and waited.

  Nothing. Harry went around the back. In the garden, he found Dawn, the hooker from the previous night, hanging out clothes on her washing line. Harry had contacted his colleagues in Vice and given them Dawn’s name, a description and the details which located her on the police database; the devil tattoos on her breasts had helped identify her. Dawn had a record going back two decades. Theft as a teenager, drugs in her twenties and a stint in jail for drunk-driving. Nothing in the last three years, though.

  She stared at him, took a moment to register who he was and then came charging towards him, fists clenched.

  ‘What the fuck, yeah,’ she said, dropping her voice and nervously glancing up at her back door. ‘You some kind of freak? Do you know who I know? Who I can get here like this?’

  She clicked her fingers and carried on.

  ‘I get my people here, yeah, and they’re gonna knock the brown off you. Time they’ve finished, you’ll be in hospital for weeks.’

  She stopped as abruptly as she’d started.

  Harry held up his hands, innocent. ‘All I was looking for was a little help.’

  ‘You want to get sucked off? Piss off back down Manningham.’

  She turned to go back into the house. ‘Fucking prick,’ she spat.

  ‘Hey!’ said Harry, moving towards her.

  Dawn slammed the door behind her.

  ‘Christ,’ said Harry, hurrying after her. He couldn’t have her calling in some lowlife pimp and complicating matters. ‘Hey,’ he said again and held his police identification up to the glass pane in the door.

  Dawn had her phone to her ear. She stepped closer to the window, squinted her eyes and hung up.

  Breathing heavily.

  Face flushed.

  Finally, she opened the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, again lowering her voice.

  ‘I want your help,’ said Harry.

  Dawn had invited him in and closed the door to the living room.

  ‘Can we start over?’ asked Harry, extending his hand.

  She didn’t take it.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, retracting it. ‘You know what happened at the club last night?’

  ‘Some girl got done in. That’s what I heard.’

  ‘Somebody killed her, that’s right.’

  ‘So?’ she said, crossing her arms defensively across her chest.

  ‘Well, I’m wondering; you’d gone before it all kicked off and everyone ran outside. I’m guessing you went back to your post over the road. Did you see anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody running away? Leaving in a hurry? Anything that caught your attention?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘No.’

  She’d seen something.

  They always pause before they lie.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was a copper last night,’ said Harry.

  ‘Why would I care?’

  ‘I need your help, Dawn. A girl was killed last night.’

  ‘Girls die every day in Bradford,’ she said with a scowl. ‘This is no different.’

  ‘Actually, this one is. And I reckon you might have seen something.’

  ‘Last night you wanted something and made it worth my while.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I’m not a cash machine, Dawn.’

  ‘Then I didn’t see nothing.’

  Harry pointed to the bruises on her arms. ‘Pimp? Or punter?’

  ‘What does it matter to you?’

  ‘Because maybe you help me out here and, in return, I can help you out.’ Harry glanced at the bruises again. ‘Pimp?’

  Dawn nodded.

  ‘You want me to give him a headache?’

  Dawn thought on her reply.

  ‘Come on. I’ll owe you. And in this city? In this neighbourhood? That’s a favour worth having.’

  When the chaos had hit and the club had started to empty, Dawn had seen the flood of people leaving, the girls crying, the boys consoling, everyone using their mobile phones.

  ‘And there’s this one guy,’ she said, ‘alone. He walks hard away from the club. Head down. Crosses the road. Walks right past me, moving like the devil’s on his ass.’

  ‘Did you get a good look at him?’ said Harry, leaning forward.

  She shook her head. ‘He comes out the club, puts a beanie on his head and just flies right past me.’

  ‘You must have seen something, though?’

  ‘Asian fella. Maybe five eight. Stocky.’ She paused. ‘I followed him.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You work the streets long enough, you know when someone’s dodgy. He might as well have had a neon sign above his head.’

  Harry wanted to reach out and shake her – for being such an idiot and for being such a genius. If his team had half her initiative, his job would be much easier.

  ‘Go on,’ said Harry.

  ‘Damn heels make so much noise. So, I took them off. Walked on the road. I wasn’t going to follow him all nig
ht. Just wanted to see if he got in a car. I’d add it to the blacklist, let the other girls know. But he didn’t. He went into the Lister Mills complex, off Manningham, and I left it at that.’

  ‘Lister Mills? Which part?’

  Lister Mills was one of a handful of new developments with over a thousand apartments, shops and office spaces. It was a labyrinth.

  ‘Shit, I don’t know. He walked into the complex where all those fancy apartments are. I figured that’s where he lived.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell me?’

  ‘No. Swear down, that’s all I know.’

  Harry’s phone rang. A call he needed to take; it was Angus Moore, the senior prison warden at Armley and an old friend of Harry’s. He stepped away from Dawn to answer it.

  ‘Angus, tell me,’ said Harry.

  ‘Couple of your boys came down here wanting an audience. The governor sent them packing. Paperwork not in order. Is it urgent? They left a message it was.’

  ‘Critical,’ said Harry.

  ‘You need a one-to-one with Gurpal Singh’s cellmate? That about right?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Right. Then get your ass over here. I’ve got a window for you.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE LAST THING Harry needed was to interview Gurpal’s cellmate. His mood was sour, his vision blurry and his head pounding. It was approaching thirty-six hours since he had slept and he didn’t have a lot left in him. But Angus had done him a favour and Harry wanted to get this done with; the paperwork would take an age.

  He met Angus in the cramped reception area of Armley prison.

  ‘Cheers for this,’ said Harry, noticing a glowing red patch on the side of Angus’ neck. Another new tattoo; Angus was obsessed with them. Looked like a vampire bat, angry, possibly breathing fire.

  ‘I’ll bank the favour for down the line. You okay, Harry? Look ready to drop, mate,’ said Angus.

  ‘Did an all-nighter last night. Was planning on getting my ass to bed before you called me.’

  ‘Must be important.’

  ‘It is.’

  Harry followed him down a network of dimly lit corridors, heading into the belly of the prison. Eerily quiet, just the men’s shoes squeaking on the floor.