DC Mohammed Sharif faced his uncle, his jaw clenched. He felt deeply sorry for him but Faisel Sharif was not a man to show his emotions or make any attempt to ease the younger man’s own deep discomfort. He gazed at his nephew, mouth a thin line of distaste above the greying beard, his eyes opaque, as if he was being asked to compromise his deepest beliefs.
‘It may not be Faria, God willing,’ Sharif said. ‘But unless they are able to do a DNA comparison we’ll never know. Imran Aziz is still not at his house, so I can’t ask him. There has to be something here of Faria’s, or something of my aunt’s or the other girls’ which she’s handled recently. That would be enough for a match. Believe me, it’s much better to cooperate. They will get a sample one way or another if they think there’s foul play involved, which we hope there wasn’t. But we all need to know, one way or another.’
‘This DNA is on her clothes?’ Faisel asked sceptically.
‘It’s on everything you touch,’ Sharif said flatly. ‘It’s becoming so sophisticated that you only have to breathe in a room or glance against someone for the forensic people to know you were there. But we’re not trying to find suspects. We’re trying to identify this poor woman who’s not going to be identified any other way. It is possible to make an identification from a family member’s DNA if it’s necessary. Mine, for instance. But they’ll want to try for hers first. And if it is Faria, we need to know, Uncle. This is my cousin, your daughter we’re talking about. God willing, the body isn’t hers, but we need to know.’
‘You told your officers all about our family problems, then?’ Faisel Sharif’s face was closed tight, his eyes angry.
‘I told you I had to tell them about Imran Aziz’s strange behaviour. I had no choice,’ Sharif said quietly. ‘Inevitably, I had to mention Faria’s absence as well. Now we have an unidentifiable body pulled from the river that runs no more than half a mile from her house.’
Mohammed Sharif stared at his uncle, baffled and angry at his attitude.
‘There is no hiding this,’ he said at length when his uncle did not reply. ‘However painful it is for the family, there will be an investigation and you will have to answer questions. The best course is to help identify the body as quickly as possible. It may not even be Faria. God willing, it’s not. But if you hinder the inquiry now it will only cast suspicion on the family if it turns out that it is. You have to assist the police with their inquiries. You know that.’
‘It cannot be Faria,’ Faisel said. ‘She must be in Pakistan. Let me speak to your grandfather and discover the facts of the matter. I’ll do that, I promise you.’
‘It’s too late for that now,’ his nephew shot back. ‘They want a DNA sample. If necessary they will break down Imran’s door to get one, whether he’s there or not. This could be a case of murder.’
He knew he had to be brutal as his mind shot back to the traumatic interview he had just had with a grim-faced Michael Thackeray when the DCI had broken the news that the unidentified, and almost unidentifiable, body of a possibly Asian woman had been found. He hoped that his boss had not noticed the uncontrollable shaking of the knees that he had tried to conceal by sinking uninvited into a chair in Thackeray’s office and burying his face briefly in his hands.
‘My family will want to know quickly whether or not it is Faria,’ he had said, raising his head only when he thought he could control his voice adequately, and knowing that what he said was not necessarily true. The breath of scandal, especially if it impinged on the honour of a woman, was not something his family would welcome in any guise. But equally he knew that in this other world in which he worked, delay was not a possibility, and could only fuel the worst sort of suspicion.
‘Let me try to locate something of Faria’s from her parents’ home if her husband is still away,’ he offered Thackeray. ‘If not, you can use my DNA. Would that be a close enough match?’
‘A first cousin?’ Thackeray had said. ‘I’m not sure. But I can’t wait long. The full PM report will be here tomorrow morning, the samples have already gone to the lab. There’s no one on the official missing persons’ register who immediately fits what limited description we have of this woman. We need to rule your cousin in or out quickly, Mohammed. I’m sorry. You can have until tomorrow morning to come up with something. Otherwise we’ll have to make it more official.’
Sharif had driven round to his uncle’s house immediately he finished his shift and to his relief found him at home alone. His wife and daughters, he said, were visiting friends. Now Sharif watched his uncle pace up and down the cramped living room before finally turning through the door and up the stairs, where he could hear him moving around in one of the bedrooms. Eventually, he returned holding a multi-coloured bundle of clothing in one hand with an expression of distaste on his face.
‘These are hers,’ he said. ‘She left them for her sisters when she got married but I don’t think Jamilla or Saira have ever worn them. They are still in a cupboard Faria used to use.’
Sharif took the clothes and shook out a couple of shalwar kameez in the bright colours he knew Faria liked to wear and shuddered slightly.
‘Do you have a bag I could put them in?’ he asked, and his uncle disappeared again and came back with a plastic supermarket carrier bag which he handed to his nephew without a word.
‘How long will it take?’ he asked.
‘If they make it a priority, a couple of days,’ Mohammed said, his mouth dry. ‘Nothing much will happen until they’ve got an ID. You can’t start an investigation when you don’t know who the victim is. And apparently there’s no possibility of recognising a likeness from what’s left of the body.’
He walked slowly to the door, having obviously succeeded in shocking his uncle even more thoroughly than he expected. His face had turned to the colour of putty.
‘Believe me, I hope there’s no DNA match as much as you do,’ Sharif said. ‘I want Faria back with us, alive and well. But if the worst has happened, we need to know. Don’t we?’
But there was no answering warmth in the look his uncle gave him as he opened the door, more a blank dislike that he had never seen there before. He walked back to his car wondering slightly desperately whether Faisel knew more about Faria’s fate than he was saying. Was there a family scandal here that he was not being told about because of his job? If so, he did not dare to think what it was or what would happen next.
Laura was shocked at Julie Holden’s appearance when she called at Vicky Mendelson’s home to collect her late that afternoon. She slid into the passenger seat without a word, looking pale and haggard, the dark circles under her eyes suggesting that in spite of Vicky and David’s best efforts, she had barely slept.
‘How are you?’ Laura asked, but Julie simply shrugged and turned away.
‘Have you seen a solicitor?’ Laura persisted.
‘David pulled a few strings to get me an appointment with someone this morning,’ Julie mumbled. ‘But it was a waste of time, really. If we can’t find Bruce there’s nothing much the law can do. If I want to initiate divorce proceedings and make a claim for custody of Anna, we still have to find him. If he’s charged with assault I might get her back temporarily, but again, the police have to find him and charge him.’
‘Have you no idea where he might be able to hole up? If he’s not working he won’t have access to much money, will he?’
‘There’s next to nothing in our joint account, but he does have a small savings account in his own name. We both do. I’m sure he’ll use it if he needs to. He’ll be all right for a while. But the mortgage and the household expenses were already getting to be a problem without Bruce’s salary. I expect we’ll lose the house, on top of everything else. I’d been supply teaching, when I wasn’t black and blue, but I can’t keep that up now. And what I can earn wouldn’t cover the mortgage anyway.’
‘D’you think your mother-in-law will know anything useful?’ Laura asked, appalled at the disintegration of what must have seemed only
a few months ago to be a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
‘I really don’t know,’ Julie said, obviously on the verge of tears. ‘I really don’t know what to think any more.’
Laura drove Julie to her mother-in-law’s house in silence and when Vanessa opened the door the two women embraced, both on the edge of tears. Vanessa waved them into the sitting room, where the curtains were still drawn, just as they had been the last time Laura had visited Vanessa, and again she turned on the lights rather than opening the heavy drapes. Laura could see that her cheek was still an angry red surrounded by purple and yellow bruising that was only just beginning to fade. She had difficulty restraining her own anger at what was happening to this family.
‘I’m sure you want to talk,’ she said quietly. ‘Would you like me to make some coffee or tea?’ Vanessa glanced up at her gratefully from where she had sunk down beside Julie on the sofa, clutching her daughter-in-law’s hand.
‘That would be very kind,’ she said. ‘I’m still feeling quite groggy after my…accident.’
‘I know what happened,’ Julie said. ‘Laura told me. And now I’ve been to the police, you must too. This has got to stop.’
Laura left them to find her own way around Vanessa’s untidy kitchen to rustle up a tray of tea and biscuits for the three of them. When she went back into the sitting room it was to find Vanessa crying quietly against Julie’s shoulder. The older woman glanced up as Laura put the tray down.
‘You’re very kind. I don’t deserve it,’ she said, wiping her eyes with a crumpled tissue.
‘Nonsense,’ Laura replied. ‘You can’t blame yourself for what your son has done.’
‘Oh, but I can. I think it’s my fault.’
‘How can that be, Vanessa?’ Julie objected. ‘He’s an intelligent man, responsible for his own behaviour. It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Perhaps I should have seen the warning signs,’ Vanessa said quietly. ‘I think they were there, even before he went away to college. He was unpredictable, moody, given to outbursts that I don’t think were normal even then. He used to fly into rages sometimes when he was here on vacation, not just slammed doors – more than that, worse than that, throwing things around in his room, destructive rages. I should have warned you before you married him.’
‘I knew he had a temper,’ Julie said. ‘But it never appeared to be as bad as that when we first met. It was nothing I found particularly worrying.’ She sighed. ‘It was after we came to Bradfield that the whole thing began to escalate. He seemed less and less able to cope with the fact that there were three of us and I had to give a lot of time to Anna. I wonder now if he lost his job because of his unpredictable behaviour. Perhaps it’s not just at home he goes a bit mad. I just don’t know.’
‘I should have warned you,’ Vanessa said again. ‘But it all happened so quickly, and once my husband got sick so soon after he retired…’ She shrugged. ‘It was a full-time job caring for him. I thought Bruce was settled and you were happy.’
‘Listen,’ Laura said gently to Vanessa, trying to hide her impatience with this breast-beating. ‘All that’s water under the bridge now. What we really need to think about is where Bruce might have gone with Anna. Can you think of anywhere he might have run to, given that he’s not got much money, according to Julie?’
The two women looked at each other blankly for a moment, and then both seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same instant.
‘Blackpool,’ Julie said. ‘He’s not an adventurous man and he’ll go somewhere he knows. And at this time of the year you can get accommodation very easily, at least until the summer season starts. The place is full of DSS claimants living in cheap boarding houses in the winter. It’s obvious when you think about it.’
‘He was talking about Blackpool last weekend,’ Vanessa said. ‘He wondered whether you might have taken Anna there.’
‘It did cross my mind,’ Julie said. ‘I’ve still got my family there. But I thought it was too obvious, guessed he might work it out and come roaring over the M62 to harass my parents.’
‘If you tell the police that Blackpool is a likely place to look for him, I’m sure they’ll pass the message on to the Lancashire force. They do want to interview him, after all.’ Laura offered the comment without huge confidence that the local police would do much about such a request, but it would be a first step, at least.
Julie nodded and turned back to her mother-in-law.
‘Will you talk to the police as well?’ she asked. ‘It’s really important. If they know he’s assaulted you as well it might just stiffen their resolve to find him. With Laura planning to write something in the Gazette, they won’t want it to look as if they’re neglecting battered wives and mothers, will they?’
Laura smiled faintly.
‘I don’t think my partner would like to think you were trying to manipulate CID’s priorities,’ she said. ‘But it’s a good idea. Vanessa, the person you need to talk to is Janet Richardson in the domestic violence unit.’
‘A young officer came to see me in the hospital and I told him lies, said I couldn’t remember how I’d come to be attacked,’ Vanessa said. ‘I can’t go back to them and tell them something different now.’
‘Of course you can,’ Laura said firmly. ‘Just tell them you’ve recalled exactly what happened now. Lots of people cover these things up at first. They’ll know all about that.’
‘Do it, Vanessa, please,’ Julie said and eventually her mother-in-law nodded.
‘If it will help find Anna,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it will,’ Laura tried to reassure her.
Back in the car, she glanced at Julie.
‘Where now?’ she said. ‘Are you going to stay on with Vicky and David or go back to the refuge?’
‘I’m going to Blackpool to look for them,’ Julie said. Laura grinned, knowing that she would do exactly that even if Julie had not come to the same conclusion. She felt no inclination to let Bruce Holden off the hook if there was anything she could do about it. Julie might be distraught but her own more dispassionate assessment of the situation simply made her angry.
‘I thought you might have that idea,’ she said.
‘Well, what would you do in my situation?’ Julie said, suddenly looking more determined herself.
‘Go to Blackpool and track the bastard down,’ Laura agreed. ‘But look, let’s do this properly. Let me talk to my boss in the morning and tell him that I will be out for the day following up this story. Then I’ll drive you over there and we’ll see what we can see. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ Julie said.
By mid-morning the next day, Laura was driving slowly along the almost deserted promenade at the Lancashire resort, with only a broad expanse of walkway and the electric tram-track between the car and the buffeting gale-driven Irish Sea that swept rain and spray across the steep sea-wall. Each wave seemed to toss itself more furiously against what, from this distance, seemed to be puny defenses, creating huge rippling lakes where in the summer thousands of holidaymakers strolled or sat in the northern sun. No one at all seemed brave enough this morning to be taking a walk, or even venturing as far as the sturdy shelters that dotted the promenade at intervals, allowing less intrepid visitors to look out over the coastline, relatively protected from whatever the elements threw at them. This morning the elements were drenching every corner with driving rain or churning sea-water, and the famous sands, where in the summer thousands of families would play, were invisible beneath foaming rollers, and the piers, top-heavy with amusements of all kinds, looked in serious danger of being demolished by the fury of the tide, their entrance gates firmly closed, flags and bunting reduced to streaming rags in the wind.
‘You mean people come here for fun?’ Laura asked as she slowed to allow a swirl of sea water to subside across the carriageway in front of the car.
Julie Holden shrugged slightly.
‘It can be a bit bleak at this time of the year,’ she said
, without much interest. Laura glanced to her right, where the Pleasure Beach funfair was almost obliterated by the driving rain and on past the tower, a mini-Eiffel with its head shrouded in cloud, and thought bleak, as a description, barely covered it. She drove on until eventually Julie instructed her to stop close to the North Pier, its entrance barricaded against anyone foolhardy enough to think of risking a walk along its sea and rain-soaked decks.
‘I just can’t remember how to get to Richard’s place,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop into the library just over there and see if I can get a look at a local map.’
Laura watched her cross the road and disappear into a building facing a small square that looked more modern than most of the buildings on the famous sea front, and for a second she wondered whether she had been foolish to indulge Julie’s fierce determination to look for her husband and daughter in Blackpool. It turned out to be a bigger town than Laura had anticipated, never having visited the resort before, and finding anyone in the rain-lashed streets of boarding houses behind the famous Golden Mile of entertainments, or in the sprawling suburbs beyond, seemed now to be a more crazy enterprise even than Michael Thackeray had suggested when she had told him what she planned the night before.
‘How can you possibly trace them if Holden doesn’t want to be found?’ Thackeray had asked, exasperated, but recognising the stubborn look in Laura’s green eyes which he knew from bitter experience he would not shift an inch. She was on one of her crusades and his stomach clenched when he remembered how dangerous these had proved to be before.
‘She says he has friends there that he may have turned to for help,’ Laura said. ‘She was brought up there, after all. They all lived there until Anna was five or six. She can’t think of anywhere else Bruce might have gone to ground. She’s planning to look for his former flatmate for a start. She thinks he’s the one he’d turn to if he did go to Blackpool.’
By Death Divided Page 11
