Death in a Far Country

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I wasn’t at the match but I hear congratulations are in order, Mr Okigbo,’ he said to the younger man, who grinned with obvious delight at the compliment.

  ‘I was so lucky,’ he said. ‘The goal just opened up for me. The eighty-ninth minute, you know? Unbelievable.’

  ‘And are you connected with the club too?’ he said to the man he knew as Emanuel.

  ‘Oh, just a fan really, but I knew OK’s family in Lagos before he came to this country. We are both Nigerians, and there’s not so many of us in Bradfield, so we made contact again. He kindly invited me to the party.’

  ‘But you didn’t recognise the girl whose picture we were showing this morning at your Social Club? We thought she might be Nigerian.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know her.’ Emanuel was clearly not intending to offer any further information about himself and Thackeray wondered why. OK Okigbo looked puzzled.

  ‘What girl is this?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a police officer, Mr Okigbo,’ Thackeray said, watching the footballer closely for any sign of alarm, which he knew was not unusual and far from incriminating when the word ‘police’ was introduced into casual conversation, but the young man’s cheerfulness did not dissipate. ‘I’m investigating the death of a black girl we can’t identify and I went to the African Social Club this morning to see whether anyone could place her. Nobody did. You haven’t come across a young African girl recently, have you?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ OK said easily. If he was lying he was good at it, Thackeray thought.

  ‘If she was Nigerian we would know her,’ Emanuel said flatly.

  ‘You know all the Nigerians in Bradfield, do you, Mr – erm – I don’t think I caught your name?’

  ‘Emanuel Asida,’ the man said. ‘And yes, I think I probably do.’

  But before Thackeray could pursue his questions two more men joined the group.

  ‘All right, OK?’ a heavily built ginger-haired man in an electric blue suit asked aggressively. He turned his gaze on Thackeray when the young footballer nodded slightly uncertainly. ‘Jenkins,’ he said. ‘Dennis Jenkins. I’m OK’s agent. I keep an eye on his interests, and all that malarky.’ The eyes Jenkins kept on the world were blue and very sharp.

  ‘Steve Stone,’ the other man said. ‘We’ve met before, Mr Thackeray. I didn’t expect to see you here. United is your secret vice, then, is it?’ He held out a hand, which Thackeray ignored as his mind flashed back to the last occasion he had seen Stone: across an interview-room table at the beginning of an ultimately abortive investigation into the man’s connection with several different vices in Bradfield a couple of years before. In spite of what the police reckoned was sufficient evidence for Stone’s financial involvement in a brothel masquerading as a club, the Crown Prosecution Service had not been impressed and Stone had walked away laughing, an episode, Thackeray thought, that seemed to have done nothing to dent his cocky self-confidence. He nodded.

  ‘You’re another football fan?’ he asked.

  ‘In the family,’ Stone said with an easy smile. ‘My sister Angelica’s Paolo Minelli’s partner.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ve seen Mr Minelli at work.’ Stone scowled at that and seemed about to demand an explanation when Jenkins cut in.

  ‘I’ll have to drag OK away now,’ he said, taking the young footballer’s arm firmly. ‘A photo-call for a snapper from London, and we can’t ignore them, can we? Not with OK’s prospects. It was quite a result we had yesterday and OK’s a star now.’

  He and Stone virtually escorted the footballer out of the room, reminding Thackeray of a pair of coppers with their prisoner, but when he glanced at Emanuel Asida quizzically the older Nigerian’s smile was bland.

  ‘He’ll go far, that boy,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Thackeray agreed. ‘He looks as if he’s being well advised.’ And he turned away to seek out Laura again. But his search was interrupted by a sudden shriek from the far side of the room. Peering over the heads of the crowd as it turned in the direction of the continuing noise, he could see two young women, in the regulation stilettos and revealing dresses of the players’ wives and girlfriends, being pulled away from a red-faced young man in a smart Italian suit who appeared to have had a drink thrown over him and was cursing volubly. And slipping through the crowd from their direction, with a broad smile on her face, was Laura herself.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ he asked.

  ‘Some spat between one of the players and his girlfriend about who else he’s been seeing, as far as I can work out. She threw the drink and he slapped her face.’

  ‘Nothing new there, then,’ Thackeray said, still watching as the two women who had attacked the player pushed and shoved their unsteady way towards the door. One was in tears and the other attempting to comfort her, with an arm around her bony shoulders.

  ‘There’s nothing in it, Katrina,’ the comforter said, as they passed Laura and Thackeray. ‘They’re just effing tarts, those girls, always hanging around to see what they can get their minging hands on, nothing serious, believe me.’

  ‘But I thought Lee and me were serious,’ the other woman said, wiping her eyes and smearing mascara across her cheeks. ‘What’s he doing playing away when we’re supposed to be getting wed next year. What the hell’s he think he’s doing? It’s not as if it’s the first time.’ She waved a hand decorated with a couple of large diamonds in the air wildly.

  When they had gone, Thackeray glanced at Laura, who had watched their departure with a faint smile.

  ‘Enough?’ he asked.

  ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve got the stamina for all this drama. They should put it on TV.’

  ‘I think they already have,’ Thackeray said, lightly, but catching his eye she realised how exhausted he suddenly looked.

  ‘Come on then, drive me home,’ she said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘They were running,’ Karen Wilson said flatly. She was sitting, looking slightly nervous, across an interview room table from Kevin Mower, a slim young woman with nicotine-stained fingers huddled into a black puffa jacket over her lacy blouse and skin-tight jeans. She glanced at her watch, her pale eyes anxious.

  ‘I’ll be late for work,’ she said. ‘I’m on at nine.’

  Karen had finally turned up at the police station at about half past eight that Monday morning to make a formal statement about what she had seen on her way home from one of Bradfield’s clubs very early the previous Wednesday morning.

  ‘I won’t keep you long, but it’s very important,’ Mower said. ‘You seem to be the only person who saw the dead girl. Can I ask why you took so long to contact us. Her picture was in the Gazette on Friday.’

  ‘I don’t read the Gazette, do I?’ Karen said irritably. ‘Any road, me and my boyfriend went away for t’weekend on Friday, to Scarborough. What I saw were a picture of the girl on the telly in our hotel on Saturday. I thought I recognised her but for a while I couldn’t think where I’d seen her.’

  ‘So you were in Metcalfe Street at one-thirty on Tuesday night – Wednesday morning, in fact?’

  ‘Me and Craig were at the Moonlight Club, weren’t we, and we had a row. So I said I were going home. I left him outside t’Club and I were taking a shortcut down Metcalfe Street towards the taxis at the end on t’corner of Kirkgate. You can usually get one there without a great long queue. But I were walking quite fast because it’s right dark down there.’

  ‘It’s not an area I’d want a girlfriend of mine walking down alone,’ Mower agreed. ‘It must have been quite a row you had.’

  ‘He gets a bit above himself, does Craig, when he’s had a few,’ Karen said easily. ‘We made it up next day.’

  ‘Was there anyone else around when you got into Metcalfe Street?’

  ‘No, it were right quiet. But then these two young lasses came running past.’

  ‘Two girls, not just one?’

  ‘Two. A black lass and a white lass. They
passed me under a lamp post so I could see them clear enough. Nearly knocked me over, they did, as they ran past. I shouted at them, as it goes, but they took no notice. And then one of them went over on her ankle, the dark ’un, looked as if her shoe heel had broke or summat. They stopped for a minute and I caught up with them again. That’s what made me remember them so well. She took her shoes off and chucked them into that bit o’waste land at t’side o’t’road, and bloody ran off in her bare feet, didn’t she? They were white underneath, her feet. I never knew that. Like straight out o’t’jungle, she were. I were laughing, it were so funny.’

  ‘And where did they go next?’ Mower asked, struggling not to respond irritably.

  ‘Down that little alley that takes you to the canal, just a snicket, like. I thought that were peculiar an’all. It’s really pitch dark down there at night. I’d not risk it.’

  ‘And did you see anyone else?’ Mower asked.

  ‘Oh yeah, there were a couple of blokes come along just after. They were in a hurry an’all, and I didn’t like the look of ’em. I got a bit scared then and ran to t’corner myself, where t’taxis are, and there were one waiting so I got straight in. I thought there were summat funny going on but I’d no idea anyone would get killed. I can’t believe it, even now – that she were killed.’

  Karen’s pale face crumpled for a moment and then she squared her shoulders and gave Mower a faint smile.

  ‘Funny old world, innit?’

  ‘Tell me what the two girls looked like,’ Mower said more gently. ‘Start with the white girl. Did you get a good look at her?’

  ‘She were only tiny,’ Karen said, screwing up her eyes as if to try to visualise that late night scene more clearly. ‘Shorter than me, any road, and thin. She weren’t much more than a kid really. She had dark hair, but she looked pale, not like a Paki or anything. She were white.’

  ‘What was she wearing? Could you see that clearly?’

  ‘Not the colours so much. She were only under t’street light for a minute. A dark mini-skirt, it looked like, black or dark blue maybe, and some sort of a pale jacket, or cardigan. She were in and out o’t’light so fast it were hard to tell. And the black lass, she were bigger altogether, big hips and bum, but she were wearing a short skirt an’all and a little top, a bit shiny, and short, showing her midriff, you know?’

  ‘I know,’ Mower said softly, recognising the description of what the dead girl had been wearing when she had been pulled out of the canal. That and the fact that she was barefoot clinched the identification as far as he could see. Karen had undoubtedly seen the dead girl alive and running and quite probably afraid for her life. And all she had done was laugh.

  ‘If you had to estimate how old they were, what do you reckon?’

  Karen thought for a moment and then shrugged.

  ‘They were just teenagers, weren’t they? That’s what I thought, any road. I thought they were teenagers just larking about.’

  ‘And the men you saw? Could you describe them?’

  ‘Not really,’ Karen said. ‘I only glanced over my shoulder when I heard them coming up behind me. I didn’t like the look of them so I didn’t hang about.’

  ‘Could you see if they were black or white?’ Mower persisted.

  ‘Could have been either,’ Karen said. ‘I really couldn’t see owt, just two dark shapes.’

  ‘And did you think they were following the girls, chasing them?’

  ‘They were in a hurry, that’s for sure, so I suppose they must have been. But I were thinking more of myself than the two lasses by then. I didn’t like the look of the blokes, so I got out of there as fast as I could.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Mower reassured her. ‘So, going back to the girls, could you see if either of them was carrying a handbag?’

  Karen screwed up her face again and thought for a moment.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘They could have been, but there again they might not. The shoes I noticed, because they stopped, and I were so surprised when she chucked them away, but I didn’t notice bags or owt else. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Right,’ Mower said. ‘I’m going to have what you’ve told me typed up.’ Karen looked at her watch.

  ‘I’ve got to get to work,’ she said.

  ‘Can you come back at lunchtime to sign your statement? I don’t want to get you into trouble at work.’

  ‘It were the dead girl I saw, weren’t it?’ Karen asked as she got to her feet and pulled on her coat.

  ‘I think so,’ Mower said, his tone cautious.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Karen said, picking up her own bag and tugging her coat collar up. ‘They only looked like kids. And where’s t’other one? Is she in t’canal and all?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Mower said, with a feeling of almost painful foreboding. ‘We’ll be looking for her as a top priority, don’t worry about that.’

  He saw Karen out and went back upstairs to the CID office, tapped on DCI Thackeray’s office door and told him what little their first and only eyewitness had reported.

  ‘Find the shoes,’ Thackeray said. ‘And when she comes back at lunchtime ask her to try to describe the other girl in more detail. We might get a photo-fit picture out of it, though I doubt if it’ll be very accurate if it was so dark.’

  ‘She got a good enough look to identify the dead girl pretty definitively,’ Mower said. ‘And she was quite certain what she was wearing.’

  ‘She’d be going partly on the location and partly on the girl’s race,’ Thackeray said dismissively. ‘Describing someone less distinctive she saw for a couple of seconds will be harder. But see what you can get out of her. And in the meantime, start another search of the canal banks – in both directions from where the body was found. It could well be that we’re looking for another body.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ Mower said. He hesitated for a moment. ‘This disciplinary inquiry, do we know when it’s starting?’

  ‘Later this week,’ Thackeray said shortly. ‘They’ll be based at County HQ, not here, so we’ll be summoned down there as and when. As I understand it, they’ll be talking to the Super first.’

  ‘Not what we need with another murder inquiry on the go,’ Mower said. He hesitated for a moment before he went on. ‘Is there anything you or the Super don’t want me to say, guv? Anything you want me to play down?’

  Thackeray looked at the Sergeant for a long moment and then shook his head.

  ‘You shouldn’t have asked me that, Kevin, and I’ll pretend you didn’t. You shouldn’t be threatened personally in any way by this investigation. Just tell them what they want to know.’

  Mower nodded bleakly and closed Thackeray’s door behind him. What he told the inquiry, he thought, would be a whole lot less than he knew in one respect at least and even if the DCI never knew anything about it, he knew he would be grateful. Back at his desk he called the Gazette and asked to speak to Laura Ackroyd.

  ‘Hi,’ he said when she answered her phone. ‘Can I buy you a drink at lunchtime? There’s something we need to talk about.’

  Laura put the receiver down slightly uncertainly after agreeing to meet Kevin Mower in a quiet pub called the Angel, which was not normally a haunt of either the journalists from the Gazette or the detectives from CID. She was not at all sure that she wanted to talk to Mower at all, especially as she guessed precisely what it was he wanted to discuss. Her own involvement in the traumatic case that had almost led to Thackeray’s death, and which was now being investigated by the police themselves for disciplinary reasons, was something she had tried to bury at the back of her mind. She knew it was going to be dragged into the spotlight, and probably very soon, and that would not be a pleasant process. Maybe, she thought with a sigh, she could no longer avoid it. She and Thackeray had always feared that their professional lives and their personal relationship might one day clash and damage them both. Now, it seemed, that had happened and she just hoped that the fallout would be survivable.

&n
bsp; She turned back to her computer screen and carefully read what she had written. That morning’s news conference had brought her into conflict again with Tony Holloway when the sports editor had been over-ruled by Ted Grant, and she did not want to add to the insult by making any stupid mistakes in an article she had not envisaged writing when she came into work that morning.

  ‘Did you enjoy the match on Saturday, Laura?’ Ted had asked when the editorial meeting had turned quickly and enthusiastically to Bradfield United’s unexpected draw against Chelsea.

  ‘I did,’ Laura had said with a smile. ‘Though I still don’t know my offside from my four-two-four. But it was a great afternoon.’

  ‘Why don’t you do us a novice’s eye view to go with the rest of Tony’s stuff?’ Grant asked expansively. ‘We could run it on the front with the main report. Five hundred words or so on your first impressions of the beautiful game? What do you think, Tony?’

  What Tony thought was written in the horrified expression on his face, but he swallowed hard and gave a minimal nod. Anything less might have provoked one of Ted’s cataclysmic rages.

  ‘I’m a bit tight for space,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Bollocks,’ the Editor said, moving into tabloid editor mode as he always did if he encountered opposition to his slightest whim. ‘We need a female angle,’ he said loudly. ‘They’ll be accusing us of being all for the blokes if we run six pages of football coverage. We can put a mug-shot of Laura at the top of the column and encourage the lasses to celebrate along with the lads. It’s a bloody good idea that. Right, Laura?’

  ‘Right,’ Laura said, not displeased with the idea but careful not to let Holloway see the gleam in her eye. ‘That sounds like fun.’ And she had gone back to her desk to hammer out her five hundred words of lighthearted description of her initiation into the mysteries of football quickly enough to make the deadline for the front page of the first edition of the day. But she knew Tony Holloway was not best pleased and she was not surprised when he came to read her copy over her shoulder before she had quite finished.