Death in a Far Country

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I think he had some shares in the club at one time,’ Joyce said slowly. ‘I’ve no idea if he still has. He wouldn’t tell me owt like that. But if he thought he could make a bob or two he’d be in there like a flash. And that time United got into the second division and won that Cup – what was it? The Milk Cup? I think that’s when he was making up to Sam Heywood, jumping on his bandwagon, was even a director of the club for a while. As he would be if it looked like yielding a profit.’ Joyce’s incomprehension of her successful businessman son’s money-making activities masked one of the major disappointments of her life. She had put her only son, whom she had brought up as a widow, down to become the socialist prime minister she would have liked to have been herself but, as sons do, Jack had gone his own way and made a fortune in business and broken his mother’s heart. Joyce looked forlorn for a second.

  ‘I don’t remember all the details, love,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

  ‘I might do that,’ Laura said. ‘As I hear it, there’s a few predators circling United, aiming to buy Jenna Heywood out.’

  ‘Oh, well, your dad’ll be interested in that,’ Joyce said. ‘If he’s still got any shares and there’s money to be made out of them, he’ll be in there like Jack Flash.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Michael Thackeray parked his car outside the Victorian stone house where he shared the ground-floor flat with Laura Ackroyd and sat for a moment after he had switched off the engine, going over an exhausting and unsatisfactory day in his mind. As he had supervised that afternoon’s briefing of his detectives he had felt somehow detached, as the well-oiled wheels of a murder investigation had rolled into motion once more. Evidence, such as it was, had been reviewed, lines of inquiry delineated and tasks allocated, but while the rest of the team had seemed well-focused, he had found his mind only half on the matter in hand, and it was only partly because the supposedly healed wound close to his spine had begun to throb with an intensity he was becoming all too familiar with.

  The months he had been off work had distanced him from the day-to-day routine of CID and he was not finding it nearly as easy as he had expected to take up where he had left off. He was desperately tired tonight, as he often was these days, but he knew that the malaise which afflicted him was not simply, or even mainly, physical. The surgeons at the infirmary, he thought, had saved his life three months ago, for which he could only be grateful. But they had left him facing this intermittent fierce pain, a confusion of emotions that he had hardly begun to come to terms with and, worst of all perhaps, a sense of futility rooted in the knowledge that so often his best efforts could not stave off disaster of the most brutal kind.

  It had not been the first time Laura had put herself in danger, but it was the first time he had felt impelled to throw away years of professional training and his own natural caution to put himself so comprehensively in the way of harm on her behalf. He knew that the formal inquiry into the mayhem that day would probe that impulsive moment remorselessly and, when it came to it, he would be very reluctant indeed to admit that he had done the wrong thing, that he had taken an unacceptable risk, that he should have left Laura as a helpless hostage until back-up arrived. Would the outcome have been any different if he had acted in some other way, he had asked himself relentlessly ever since that night. He would probably have escaped injury himself, but the rest of the night’s events would probably still have played out with the terrifying logic of a Greek tragedy. He did not think that any life that was lost could, with any certainty, have been saved if he had taken another track. He just hoped he could convince the inquiry of that. And that eventually he could convince himself.

  But what filled him with anxiety even more than his own situation was the knowledge that Laura would be interrogated too. Information which should not have reached the newspapers had leaked out from the police inquiry, with tragic consequences, and she had played a part in that disaster. Thackeray believed her role had been innocent, but he was not so sure his senior colleagues would come to that conclusion. He did not think that Laura really understood how culpable she might seem to the members of the inquiry, nor how unpleasant their conclusions might be for her.

  Thackeray shook himself irritably and slammed the car door behind him with some force before making his way to the flat. He found Laura in the kitchen stirring something in a large pan. He took off his coat and came up behind her quietly, put his arms round her waist and kissed her on the neck.

  ‘That smells good,’ he said.

  ‘A bit exotic, maybe?’ Laura said. ‘Risotto? Can you bear that?’ Thackeray’s stolid preference for traditional British food had become a joke between them.

  ‘Foreign muck again? What’s wrong with meat and two veg?’ he mocked her gently.

  ‘Boring, is what’s wrong with that,’ Laura said firmly. ‘This is mainly for you, as it goes. I’m not very hungry. I had a very nice lunch at that country club up at West Royd with the new football impresario, Jenna Heywood. She’s invited me to go and see the big match on Saturday afternoon. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘I dare say I’ll be busy. I have this unidentified black girl lying in the morgue.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Laura said quietly. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’ She turned to Thackeray, putting down her wooden spoon and looking into his blue eyes. They had discussed this moment interminably while Thackeray had been off work, but never reached any conclusion. He had been determined to get back to work as quickly as he could, and nothing she had said about less stressful alternatives had moved him in any way.

  ‘Another murder,’ she said. ‘This is the crunch, isn’t it? Can you cope with another murder?’

  Thackeray did not answer immediately. He turned back into the living room and slumped into an armchair, his expression unreadable. Laura followed him and sat on the arm of his chair, one hand touching his shoulder gently.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Can you? Are you sure?’

  ‘They say you should get back on a horse immediately after you’ve fallen off,’ Thackeray said slowly. ‘I didn’t have the chance to do that, did I? Perhaps I won’t be able to manage it now. We’ll have to wait and see.’ He could barely admit to himself, and certainly never to Laura, how close he sometimes felt these days to disintegration. The pain in his back jabbed viciously and he turned his face away so that she could not see him wince.

  ‘Who is she, this girl?’ Laura asked.

  ‘We still don’t know. She was very young. She was pregnant. And she was black. That’s it, so far. There’ll be a picture for the Gazette tomorrow morning, an artist’s impression, so we’re hoping someone will identify her from that.’

  ‘Nobody’s reported her missing?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Laura shivered.

  ‘How awful,’ she said. ‘Where’s the boyfriend? The baby must have a father somewhere.’

  ‘She may not have known herself that she was pregnant, Amos Atherton says. So the boyfriend, husband, whoever, certainly may not have been aware.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Come on, Laura. Let’s leave all that and taste this Italian concoction you’ve cooked up. I’m sure it’ll be delicious. And you can tell me all about your football woman. How’s she going to survive among all those testosterone-fuelled blokes? It’ll be even harder than in the police force, won’t it? All those highly paid lads in love with themselves. Will she love it, or will they gobble her up and spit out the pips?’

  Laura laughed, although she could see from the strain around Thackeray’s eyes that this attempt at cheerful normality was forced. ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to gobble Jenna Heywood up. She’s as tough as her father, I reckon, and that’s as tough as old boots – and a damn sight more attractive. Which reminds me. I saw Joyce on the way home and she thinks my father still has an interest in United. I’ll call him later and find out what he thinks. He’s far enough away not to be involved in any in-fighting that’s going on at Beck Lane.’

  ‘
I wouldn’t bank on that,’ Thackeray said. ‘If I know Jack he’ll be in there scrapping with the best of them, particularly if there’s a hint of a profit involved.’

  ‘Jenna Heywood reckons that the only way to make a profit out of United would be to close the club down and sell off the land for redevelopment. She’s desperately trying to avoid that, and I’m not sure that even my dad would go along with such a drastic solution. I think he’s still got a bit of affection for poor old Bradfield United.’

  Thackeray raised an eyebrow at that but said no more. A fiercely competitive rugby player as a boy and young man, he knew little of soccer and cared less, but was quite sure that if there were vultures gathering around the club, Jack Ackroyd could well be one of them. He had liked Jack on the couple of occasions he had met him briefly on his rare visits to the UK, but he did not underestimate his businessman’s edge, still keen even after all these years in the sun. He did not think Jack had mellowed, and if he still had any financial stake in the club he would want it maximised.

  ‘I’ll call him after the match tomorrow, and tell him the result,’ Laura said. ‘He’ll be interested in that at least. Now let’s eat, shall we?’ She looked at Thackeray, slumped in his chair, and her heart tightened.

  ‘You look tired out,’ she said.

  But he just shrugged as he got up to join her at the table. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. But they both knew that was a lie and when they went to bed later, Laura could see just how exhausted he was as his eyes closed almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. She put an arm round him, curling her body round his and aching for something more than the companionable hug he offered in return before he fell asleep, and she wondered where the downward slide that their relationship seemed to have entered would end.

  Sergeant Kevin Mower walked up the hill to Bradfield University the next morning in a sour mood. He had the typical Londoner’s aversion to ever walking more than an urban block if he could avoid it, but the parking problems around the town’s academic quarter meant that even he had to accept that taking his car the half mile from police HQ to the university made no sense. He glanced up at the utilitarian modern blocks that towered over the Victorian technical college, from which the university had directly descended and grunted in recognition. It reminded him of the former polytechnic he had attended himself, and he knew it attracted the same degree of contempt from those who had attended more prestigious institutions. But he knew the strength of these places, willing to offer those, like himself, from troubled or poverty-stricken backgrounds, the chance to succeed at something for the first time and, as he pushed his way through a polyglot and multiracial crowd of students milling about the entrances, he smiled faintly. He felt at home here.

  But his inquiries were frustrating. Without a name to attach to the artist’s impression of the dead girl, the registry officials could do no more than promise to circulate copies of the picture to all their departments, which kept photographs of their own students. They would let him know, they promised, if any members of staff recognised the girl as one of theirs. And the students’ union was little more help. The young black woman in charge of the union office readily agreed to put copies of the sketch on the noticeboards and ask people to get in touch with the police if they thought they knew her. But she gazed at the picture for a long moment, her expression troubled.

  ‘If she was a student here, I’d probably know her,’ she said. ‘There are not so many black students here. More Asians, obviously, in this part of the world.’

  ‘Do you reckon she’s African or Caribbean?’ Mower asked. ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘I’d say African, though I wouldn’t be sure. She looks very like a friend of mine from Sierra Leone. But younger. In fact, she looks too young to be here at all, really. Most overseas students are a bit older, you know? Especially the Africans. They take extra time to learn English or retake their A Levels. Quite often they have children of their own. This looks more like a schoolgirl, don’t you think? She can’t be more than seventeen. Are you sure she’s a student?’

  ‘We’re not sure of anything,’ Mower said. ‘Her picture will be in the evening paper this afternoon but we know students don’t often see that, so we need a more direct approach here.’

  ‘You could try the further education college. Some overseas students take English exams there before they apply to university.’

  ‘We’re circulating the drawing there too,’ Mower said shortly.

  ‘How was she killed?’ the girl asked.

  ‘She was attacked and pushed, or maybe fell, into the canal,’ Mower said.

  ‘Because she was black?’ the girl asked.

  Mower hesitated for a moment before replying as the girl twisted her hands into a knot, the knuckles showing white.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘We’ve no reason to think that, but we simply don’t know at this stage. Until we know who she is…’ He shrugged. ‘Is there much racism on the campus?’ he asked.

  ‘Since the London bombings we have all felt at risk if we’re not white,’ the girl said flatly. ‘We advise students – Asian and black students as well, some people don’t seem to make any distinction – not to go around the town on their own. We’ve got a leaflet we give them when they arrive. You should know what it’s like. We’re all under siege if our skin’s the wrong colour.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Mower said. ‘The registry didn’t tell me any of this, though.’

  ‘They wouldn’t, would they? Their priority is protecting their precious image. This place relies heavily on overseas students. If they stop coming, it might have to close down.’

  ‘You’ll put as many copies of the picture and the police phone number up as you can, then?’

  ‘Of course,’ the girl said. ‘I hope you catch the bastards that did it.’

  ‘We will,’ Mower said. ‘Believe me, we will.’

  The young woman hesitated for a moment as Mower turned away.

  ‘You could try the churches and mosques,’ she said. ‘Most Africans are more religious than the white population. So are West Indians, come to that. But remember, if she comes from West Africa she could be a Christian or a Muslim.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Mower said. ‘Thanks for that.’

  The Sergeant made his way back onto the street feeling more depressed than when he had come in and with none of the confidence with which he had tried to reassure the young woman he had just left. The hilly street outside was buzzing with young people of all races, chattering excitedly in the pale sunshine, but he knew that this was not typical of Bradfield as a whole. Londoners might talk complacently about their harmonious multiracial society but in some of these northern towns different groups kept themselves more clannishly to themselves, and since the bloody arrival of Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism in Britain, suspicion had burgeoned and racist incidents had spiralled almost out of control. There were hundreds of thousands of second- and third-generation immigrants in this part of the world, he thought, and it took only a handful of fanatics from Leeds to jeopardise years of patient work towards racial harmony. He hoped that the girl whose picture he was distributing did not turn out to be the victim of a racially motivated crime, but he knew it couldn’t be ruled out, and the thought made him angry. He was dark-complexioned enough himself, the son of a Cypriot father he had never known, to have felt the lash of racist abuse more than once in his career. It was not pleasant, and as far as he could see it was as far from being rooted out as ever.

  He turned up the steep hill, making his way a little further from the town centre, and pushed open the door of a shop-front with opaque windows and no indication of its business. The room inside was divided by a wooden counter and a couple of people sat on chairs, as if in a waiting room. There was a bell on the counter, which Mower rang, and a pale, fair-haired young woman in a brightly patterned peasant blouse over her worn jeans came out from the back of the shop and offered a slightly nervous smile.

  ‘This is Refugee Aid?’
Mower asked, flipping open his warrant card in the young woman’s direction, at which she looked slightly reassured. She nodded.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. ‘I’m Rosemary Bennet. I’m a volunteer here. There’s no one official in at the moment.’

  Mower offered her the artist’s impression of the dead girl.

  ‘Do you know this girl?’ he asked.

  Rosemary hesitated. ‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked, suspicion suddenly closing her face tight.

  ‘I’m trying to identify her,’ Mower said, keeping his voice level. ‘She’s been found dead.’ Rosemary’s face crumpled slightly and she turned even paler as she shook her head.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘I thought…it’s just that we meet so many people here who don’t want anything to do with the police.’

  ‘And you cover for them, do you?’ Mower snapped.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. But you have to be so careful. We need people to trust us if we’re to help them. So many of them are so very frightened…’

  ‘This girl isn’t frightened. Not any more, anyway. She’s been murdered, drowned in the canal,’ Mower said more quietly. ‘She’s not going to need your help, if she ever did. But we owe her ours. And first, we need to know who she is.’

  Rosemary took the artist’s impression and studied it carefully for a moment, then handed it back to Mower, who took hold of it irritably and slammed it down on the counter with the flat of his hand.

  ‘That’s for you – to keep, to help trace her,’ he said. ‘Have you ever seen her before?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know her. Do you want me to ask my colleagues when they come back?’

  ‘I want you to ask everyone who comes in here,’ Mower said. ‘Colleagues, clients, legal, illegal, everyone. This is a murder inquiry and so far we don’t even know who the victim is. Do you understand what I’m saying?’