Blood of the Innocents

by Collett, Chris

  ‘How does Yasmin feel about that?’

  ‘Kids get angry, you know, especially if they can’t get their way.’

  ‘She said—’ Shanila Akram stopped abruptly.

  ‘What did she say, Mrs Akram?’

  ‘She said we might regret it if we tried to prevent her from doing things.’

  ‘Like staying with her friends. So then, Mrs Akram, you decided to allow Yasmin to go and stay with Suzanne.’

  ‘Yes.’ She addressed her husband. ‘I was concerned that we were being too strict on Yasmin and that she might rebel. I thought that once it had happened, when my husband saw no harm had been done and that Yasmin appreciated the gesture, it would be for the best.’

  ‘For the best? How can you possibly say that now? Look at what has happened. Now we have no idea where Yasmin has gone.’

  ‘Of course I can see that now, but at the time—’ Mrs Akram’s eyes filled with tears. Her husband reacted with a contemptuous snort.

  ‘How did Yasmin react when you told her she could go to stay with Suzanne after all?’ Mariner pushed on, keen to maintain the momentum.

  ‘She was excited, happy. She hugged me. But I know she was mindful of her dad’s feelings, too.’

  ‘Mindful how? Do you think Yasmin really intended to stay with Suzanne, or could she have decided to get back at you for making life difficult for her? Could she have run away?’

  Akram was unequivocal. ‘Yasmin isn’t like that. Even if she was still angry she wouldn’t take it this far. If she decided to punish us it would be a gesture, that’s all. She would go somewhere safe; to someone within our family. I believe Yasmin thought of her duty to me, and was intending to come home. Something prevented her from doing so. Something has happened to her, Inspector, and I really think your time would be better spent out there looking for her instead of dissecting our family life. I don’t understand why you are persisting with this. I told you about the trouble we’ve been having. Why aren’t you talking to Peter Cox?’

  ‘We are following that line of enquiry, but we have to ensure that all possibilities are covered. Tell me about Abdul Sheron.’

  ‘How did you know about him?’

  ‘That doesn’t really matter. Just tell me.’

  ‘Abdul is an old friend.Things have been a little strained because we felt that we couldn’t meet the needs of his youngest child in our school. It can be hard to accept but it is for the good of the child.’

  ‘I understand he was angry about that.’

  ‘At first he was, yes, and that was to be expected. His daughter has lots of problems and it is hard. But our families have known each other for years. Abdul would not do anything to hurt us. It’s out of the question.’

  And on that note, Mariner allowed Millie to take them home.

  ‘What do you think?’ Mariner asked Knox after they’d gone.

  ‘He’s working very hard at trying to steer us towards the racist angle,’ said Knox with rare lucidity.

  ‘And away from anything else? My thoughts exactly.’

  As a follow up, Mariner had suggested a few directions for Millie to take with the ‘informal conversation’ on the way back, and was waiting for a debrief when she returned to the station.

  ‘What else did you find out?’

  ‘About as much as I would if I’d been making a social call. But I do think Shanila is beginning to open up and talk to me more as if I was a friend of the family than a police officer.’

  ‘Surely that can be far more productive.’

  ‘Sometimes. Depends on how much they decide to patronise me and how much they disapprove of my role.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They still hold a fairly traditional view of the female role. Not outright disapproval, but probably not what they’d want for their girls.’

  ‘Yasmin’s older sister lives abroad?’

  ‘Yes, we talked about her; she was married earlier this year, apparently.’

  ‘Fairly recently then. And how often does she see Yasmin?’

  ‘Quite often, according to Mum and Dad. Her husband is a successful lawyer and travels extensively. They were over here just a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Was it an arranged marriage?’

  ‘Sounds like it, in that the two families already knew each other and the match was obviously approved by both sets of parents.’

  ‘Might Yasmin have wanted to escape from that scenario?’

  ‘It depends on how strictly they follow it through. Arranged marriage is not always a bad thing. Usually these days, the son or daughter has the right of veto. This couple are a mix, like their dress: her in traditional, him in Western. On the one hand, Shanila Akram seems very Western and liberal, but at the same time I get the impression that Mohammed likes to keep Yasmin on a tight rein.’

  ‘By not allowing her to stay overnight with her friend,’ said Mariner. ‘Although I can see why Suzanne would be a less than ideal playmate.’

  ‘It’s not that uncommon, of course. Yasmin’s parents want her to have all the advantages of growing up in Western society, as they so successfully have, but within the confines of their religious rules. Problem is, the two are not always compatible and it’s hard to find a balance. It can present quite a tension. To Yasmin, at her age, it probably seems as if she gets the worst of both worlds. She gets to work hard to achieve what her parents want her to, but without the social life enjoyed by her friends.’

  ‘So they limit her.’

  ‘They’d say they’re protecting her. Family life is important to them.’

  ‘Doesn’t make it any easier for Yasmin.’

  Millie shook her head. ‘You have no idea.’ She spoke with feeling, and Mariner realised for the first time how little he knew about his colleague’s own background.

  ‘I asked them again about Abdul Sheron too,’ Millie said. ‘Neither of them believes he’d be involved but they have at least agreed that we can go and talk to him.’

  ‘No time like the present.’

  Millie pulled a face. ‘Sorry, sir, I’ve a few calls to make.’

  ‘That’s OK. Knox!’

  Chapter Seven

  Sheron’s address turned out to be a hardware store down the Stratford Road from Allah T’ala, between a shop selling wedding sarees, and an Indian sweet shop. At ground-floor level was a family-run hardware business that flowed on to the pavement outside, with stacks of plastic buckets and storage boxes arranged in neat rows alongside mops, brooms, cleaning cloths and tubs of cheap batteries. The family lived in the flat above the shop. Mariner’s opening words established that Sheron didn’t speak English, so one of his brothers agreed to interpret for him. Mariner kicked himself that he hadn’t waited for Millie instead of bringing Knox, who was chewing grimly on some menthol-smelling gum.

  They followed the two men through the shop and up a flight of dark, narrow stairs. The flat at the top was grubby and dismal, the floor uncarpeted and strewn with piles of newspaper and a few broken toys. From one corner, a huge wide-screen TV dominated the room, the sound turned down so as to be virtually inaudible. A long sofa was arranged directly opposite and beside the sofa, on the bare floorboards, sat a child of about three or four: pretty, with dark curls framing a delicate face. Her head wobbled as she balanced uncertainly and her limbs occasionally twitched violently. As they went in, their footsteps echoing on the wooden floor, she seemed to look up at them and smile, but Mariner could tell that her eyes were unfocused. Transparent tubes were taped under her nose, the other end connected to a tank that leaned against the wall. Sheron and his brother completely ignored both the child and the elderly matriarch who sat at the end of the sofa, her eyes fixed on the giant screen, and the conversation was conducted with all four men standing in the corner of the room. Most of the communication was with the man who introduced himself as Hasan, Sheron’s brother.

  ‘I’d like Mr Sheron to tell us about his involvement with the school, Allah T’ala,’ said Mariner.
r />   The brother spoke and for a few minutes, they jabbered an exchange in their native language. Then for the first time Hasan acknowledged the child. ‘This is his daughter, Shebana,’ he said. ‘He put her name down for the school two years ago. His other children went there and he has given them money. Now it’s time for Shebana to go they are saying that they can’t help her. It’s because she has problems, but they say they haven’t got enough teachers or enough room for her oxygen. All her siblings and cousins have gone to the school, but not Shebana. Now you see she is here, she will have no school to go to and it’s the fault of the Akrams. They have been unfair and it made him angry.’

  Still muttering, Sheron walked across the room and retrieved something from a drawer. It was a glossy magazine, a prospectus. He thrust it in front of Mariner, rapping a forefinger angrily down on the page.

  ‘He’s saying, “Look at this. See what it says here,”’ Hasan told them. ‘It’s written in this fancy book but the words don’t mean anything.’ Sheron was becoming angry and more agitated as his brother spoke.

  Mariner looked. The brochure talked about welcoming all children of all different abilities. He turned the booklet over in his hand. At the bottom of the last page was the name of the printer, presumably the one Akram had been to see on the day when Yasmin disappeared.

  ‘It is an insult to his whole family. That’s why he’s so angry.’

  ‘Angry enough to damage Mohammed Akram’s car?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘He knows nothing about that,’ said Hasan immediately, and Mariner suddenly wondered if the deed had been carried out on Abdul’s behalf. It was pointless to pursue it further, though. It would be impossible to prove. The significant thing was that this was clearly still an open wound, the situation unresolved. The question was: how far would Sheron’s demonstrable anger drive him? The Akrams had made a victim of his daughter, would he want to do the same to the Akrams?

  ‘Does Mr Sheron know Yasmin Akram?’

  ‘Of course we do. She was friends with my daughter,’ said Hasan.

  ‘Was?’ Mariner picked it up straight away.

  ‘Going to that school has corrupted her. Now she thinks she is better than her old friends.’

  ‘Does he know anything about her disappearance?’

  Hasan spoke to his brother. The response came back immediately: more anger.

  ‘How would he know that? He doesn’t really care. Now they can know what it feels like to fear for their child.’

  Hardly the same thing, but Mariner hadn’t really expected anything different. ‘Where was he on Tuesday afternoon at around four forty-five?’

  ‘Abdul was here in the shop. You can see we have a business to run.’

  Thanking Sheron and his brother for their time, they walked back out on to the busy street to the sound of voices raised in Urdu; the discussion continuing beyond their departure.

  ‘Akram certainly seems to have got up his nose,’ said Knox.

  ‘Yasmin herself doesn’t seem that popular with them, either. I thought “corrupted” was an interesting choice of word.’

  ‘He just meant she’s got too big for her boots. Yasmin goes to a posh school. Maybe she flaunts it.’

  ‘Another reason to wipe the smirk off Akram’s face,’ Mariner pointed out.

  ‘But if they’ve abducted her, where is she and where are the demands?’

  ‘There might not be any. The Akrams’ distress might be enough.’

  ‘But Yasmin disappeared a good six or seven miles away from here, near the university.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. Sheron would have had to be highly organised to operate in a part of the city that he’s not familiar with. Where would he get the means?’

  ‘That’s where,’ said Knox. His eyes were on the opposite side of the street as they watched Hasan Sheron emerge from the shop and climb in behind the wheel of the private hire vehicle that was parked on the kerb outside. ‘How convenient is that?’

  Impulsively, on their way back, Mariner asked Knox to wait in the car while he called in on Colleen. The house had had a sparkling new coat of white emulsion since his last visit, and the rotten windows had been replaced with uPVC, ill-disguising the fact that the house was basically structurally unsound and riddled with damp and should have been condemned years ago.

  The front door was open so he called out, ‘Hello. Anyone about?’ She came to the door, her hair hanging lank and unwashed, the inevitable cigarette on the go. Her face, when she saw him, was a mixture of hope and fear. It was a mistake to have come.

  ‘I’ve no news,’ he said straight away.

  ‘So why are you here?’ She was dressed unflatteringly in a loose white T-shirt over faded black leggings, her bare feet in cheap velour slippers, worn through at the toe. ‘To tell me that you’ve found that missing girl?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you about other cases that we’re handling.’

  ‘How come her parents get to go on the telly? All they’ve done for my Ricky is put up a few posters. Why can’t I go on to ask him to come home?’ The belligerence in her voice belied the desperation.

  ‘It’s not always appropriate. It depends on the circumstances. ’ How could Mariner tell her that she just wasn’t TV material? That the success of a press conference depended on the public identifying and sympathising with the parents, and that neither of those was likely for a single mother on her third partner in as many years. They would make the same assumptions that his DCI had.

  ‘You think that girl’s more important than my Ricky.’

  ‘I think nothing of the sort, Colleen, and you know it.’

  ‘Maybe not you, but the others. Just because she comes from a rich, Asian family. I’m not stupid, you know. I get what’s going on here.’

  ‘We’re doing what we can, Colleen,’ Mariner said. It was true, to a degree.

  ‘So where is he?’ She took a step back. ‘Where’s my Ricky? Come and see me when you’ve found him.’ And then she carefully closed the door in his face.

  If it did transpire that Ricky had simply run away, Mariner would personally lynch the boy when he turned up, for having put his mother through hell.

  The blatant hypocrisy of such thoughts was spelled out immediately he got home, with yet another message from his own mother on the answering machine.

  ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about,’ she said again. ‘I suppose it will have to keep until next time I see you.’ Implying that it ought to be soon. He wondered if this ‘something’ was what he’d been waiting all his life to find out, but then that’s what she’d be hoping he’d think. She was playing games with him again; one of the things she did for fun to get back at him for what he did all those years ago. Not that he could really blame her. He’d once asked her how she felt when, as a fifteen-year-old, he’d run away from home.

  ‘I just wanted you back, unconditionally,’ she’d replied. Only then did Mariner fully realise how much he must have hurt her. It had taken him weeks before he’d contacted her to tell her he was safe. What kind of torture had he inflicted on her in the meantime? It was something else on the list of things that they never talked about. Instead, she had other ways of making him pay. Well, he didn’t have time for her games right now, or time to comply with what would be her excessive demands. He couldn’t face that tonight, but at the same time, he couldn’t help wondering how Shanila Akram would be holding up right now. Had Yasmin run away, for the same reasons he had: because she’d felt stifled by her family, or because she didn’t like what they had planned for her?

  He got through to Anna first time.

  ‘How’s the fund raising going?’ he asked, out of polite-ness.

  His restraint didn’t wilt her enthusiasm. ‘It’s great. People are being so generous, though we’re still waiting for some contributions.’ It was a blatant hint.

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘Yeah, well don’t think too long, eh? How are things going with the missing gir
l?’

  ‘Don’t count on my company for the weekend, will you?’

  ‘Interestingly enough, I never count on much where you’re concerned, but that’s OK,’ Anna said, cheerfully. ‘Good thing we both know the score, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure.’ Mariner’s chest tightened.

  ‘I know you’re not allowed to say, but how’s it going?’

  ‘Even if I could say there’d be nothing to tell. It’s frustrating, to say the least.’

  ‘Mm, well,’ she said slowly, her voice dropping half an octave. ‘We can’t have you frustrated, can we? There ought to be something I can do about that. What you need is a few soothing words to help you relax.’

  ‘How’s Jamie?’

  ‘Jamie’s fine. Glued to the TV as we speak. Want to know what I’m wearing?’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Is that better?’ she asked him afterwards.

  ‘Infinitely,’ he said, although he didn’t like to dwell too much on the fact that this was what their relationship had come to.

  The next morning, Mariner gathered the team to review what they’d got so far. It wasn’t much. The incident board displayed a blown-up version of Yasmin’s photograph; an enlarged section of the street map covering the area where she’d disappeared; and a time line, leading nowhere. Colleen’s complaint about the absence of a press conference for Ricky seemed unfounded. Yasmin’s had yielded little in the way of new leads. Only one call received had produced anything of substance to follow up, and then that had turned out to be a dud too.

  ‘What are the options?’ Since he looked more like his usual lively self this morning, Mariner addressed the question to Tony Knox.

  ‘If we rule out accidents, basically there appear to be three possibilities at this stage, boss: first possibility - Yasmin has gone off of her own accord.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘She’d had a row with her parents,’ said Millie.