She came back with my tea. Her hand was shaking as I took it from her. I was parched; I blew the steam to cool it down enough to drink.
‘Is there any news about work?’
‘No, it’s complete chaos. Jack, he’s the owner, he’s been into the Town Hall and got his pass but he couldn’t even get in to see the place till yesterday. He says it’s a right mess, the stock’s ruined. There’s loads of water damage with the sprinklers going off. The insurance company won’t give him a straight answer yet. I’m laid off, officially. Unofficially…’
‘He’s moving,’ and I hadn’t even had my tea. Talk about inconsiderate. I jumped to my feet. The man had set off towards the main road. ‘I’ll ring you later. Watch and tell me when he’s out of sight, I don’t want him to see me coming out of here.’
She moved up to the net curtains as I went through to the front door.
‘Debbie,’ I called, ‘is the door locked?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She ran through with the keys.
‘You’re best with just the Yale on when you’re in,’ I said, ‘and the chain. If there was a fire…’
She looked at me, her mouth tight. ‘I feel safer.’
And if anyone broke in the back way she’d be trapped.
She ran back into the lounge. ‘He’s gone.’
I opened the door and walked briskly out to the pavement. My stomach was tightening in excitement. He was up ahead. Now I’d got him. Trail him home, get the address, a word with the neighbours or the local shop and I’d have his identity. Get it to Rebecca along with details of the harassment and she could start the proceedings. In the distance he’d reached one of the side roads to the left. He turned into it. I was puzzled. Why wasn’t he heading for the bus stops on the main road at the end? Did he live locally, perhaps? I ran to the corner, slowing as I reached it. There he was, fifty yards down on the left. He’d stopped. Hands in his pockets.
I watched him turn, stoop, open the car door, get in and drive away. A blue car, a Ford – a Fiesta, perhaps. I got part of the number plate. Then he was gone.
Shit, shit, shit.
Chapter Eight
No tantrums, no whining, no bickering. Just good food and good company. The height of luxury. Diane was a foodie, she loved to eat and had the figure to prove it. Big. And was happy to flaunt it. She dressed adventurously and spent a small fortune on haircuts; her current one was a blue-black urchin look.
She’d set out the table in the middle of her studio-cum-living room. The place was chaotic; canvases, paints and inks, screens, sewing machine, headless dressmaker’s dummy, PC, telly in the corner, couch. She lived and worked downstairs and slept upstairs. After twelve years the neighbours had got used to the harmless eccentric in their midst. A couple of them had even commissioned small pieces from her for birthday presents.
‘Sit down,’ she said after I’d handed her the bottle I’d brought. ‘It’s ready.’
We exchanged news and gossip as we demolished a plate of cracked olives, tomato and basil salad and hunks of sesame seed bread. But she saved up the best titbit till we’d wiped the plates clean.
‘I’ve had a date,’ she announced.
‘When? Why didn’t you tell me? Who?’ I was all indignation.
‘A soulmate.’
‘What?’
‘In the Guardian, lonely hearts?’ she smiled.
‘What was he like?’
Her smile faded. “Orrible,’ she sighed, ‘we went for a pizza in town, then to the pictures.’ She made it sound like a trip to the dentist. ‘He’s a teacher, recently divorced, three kids. Oh Sal, it was awful. He was obviously depressed and looking for someone to save him.’
‘Couldn’t you tell, from the ad?’
‘No, or I wouldn’t have gone. It was one of these where you ring them up, listen to a message. He sounded quite perky.’
‘Perky?’ I pulled a face.
‘Well, you know, lively. I left a message and I made it clear, I really did, that I wasn’t looking for anything deep and meaningful, right? Just a bit of pleasant company, no big deal, nothing serious. OK. He rings me up, makes a date. I get there. He wants another wife, virtually said so, probably wants another three kids and all.’ She shuddered. Diane had made her mind up in her early twenties that motherhood was not for her. She’s never wavered from that belief. ‘In fact,’ she scooped the plates up, ‘I reckon he wants the wife he had before, the kids, the lot. Oh, it was miserable.’ She took the plates through to the kitchen.
I filled our glasses. ‘Will you try again?’
‘I expect so.’ She came and sat down again, and took a drink. ‘You ought to have a go.’
‘Oh no!’ I was horrified. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s so…’
‘Obvious? Well, how else are you ever going to meet anyone?’
‘Who says I want to meet anyone?’ I retorted. ‘I might be perfectly happy as I am.’
‘Huh!’ She snorted. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes, most of the time.’ I swigged my wine. ‘There’s a lot to be said for being single,’ I went on. ‘I don’t have to negotiate with someone all the time, I can be as selfish, independent…’
She burst out laughing.
‘What?’
‘Sal, you live with two children, a man, a lodger and a dog. You can’t move a muscle without checking out childcare or whether you’re out of milk. You’re hardly the embodiment of a free spirit.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Whereas I actually am a free spirit. I don’t even have a budgie and I could do with a bit of passion.’ She fetched a newspaper from the corner. ‘Here, look at these.’ Some of the ads had been circled.
‘How do you pick them?’
‘Knock out all the g.s.o.h.’s – good sense of humour. I reckon it’s a code, means they’re total prats who like practical jokes and toilet humour. And I knock out all the super sporty ones and the very rich ones and the attractive twenty somethings.’
‘Why?’
‘I want a man,’ she swivelled her shoulders, ‘not a boy. Read what’s left.’
While she sorted the meal out I read out the five remaining entries. We got giggly reading between the lines. They all sounded inoffensive; one or two were more interesting. One was a keen gardener.
‘You see,’ she pointed at me with the serving spoon, ‘he might be able to help you with your pruning.’
‘Ha ha.’
She brought in the main course. A glistening Spanokapita, spinach, curd cheese and nuts in a delicate filo pastry, baby new potatoes and a crunchy sprouted salad. Our conversation lulled while we piled up our plates.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I told her.
‘You busy?’
‘Yes, all of a sudden.’ I told her about my week, the gruesome discovery at Mr Kearsal’s, the press follow-up. The bomb.
‘I felt it here,’ she said, ‘the blast. I felt the windows move.’ She shook her head. ‘I hated that building, but…’
We were quiet for a moment, the atmosphere in the room suddenly charged with emotion.
I talked to her about the two cases I now had. I know I can trust her not to gossip to anyone else about my work.
Some more wine, some apricot fool and some fierce coffee, and it was time for home. I cycled back slowly. It was cloudy, no stars to gaze at, but the gardens were full of night scents; sweet stocks, the tang of honeysuckle, heady tobacco plants. Cats were out and about, darting across the roads, creeping under hedges. I passed a dead hedgehog. There wasn’t much traffic on the side roads and I could drop my guard and relish the sensation of the air on my face and the tingle in my leg muscles as I built up speed.
Chapter Nine
The two witnesses who had allegedly seen Luke Wallace stab Ahktar Khan were Sonia and Rashid Siddiq. They lived in Whitefield not far from Prestwich in one of those new townhouse developments. Tall, thin houses with integral garages clustered
round a central courtyard. Two or three-bedroomed properties, twenty of them, each with a tiny spit of land smaller than the old back yards of the redbrick Manchester terraces. There were plenty of olde-worlde features to distract from the economies of scale; mullioned windows, carriage lamps, wood stained fencing, studded doors. But this was the end of the twentieth century, and each house sported a burglar alarm and a satellite dish.
There was a car parked in the driveway of number 18 – a smart white Saab. The lion’s-mouth door-knocker made a frightful din that echoed round the courtyard. Most houses looked deserted, their owners out at work. A woman at the far end was loading small children into a hatchback.
I was about to knock again when the door opened, just a few inches.
‘Mrs Siddiq?’
She was young. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Yes?’
‘My name is Sal Kilkenny, this is my card.’ I passed it to her. ‘I’m a private investigator.’
She examined the card carefully as if it could reveal the nature of my enquiry.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘What’s all this about?’ she snapped.
‘You witnessed an attack on Ahktar Khan.’
She blanched. What else did she think a PI would be calling on her for?
‘I’ve already told everyone about that. The police, the lawyers.’ She made a move to shut the door.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘I need to know what you saw. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.’
She hesitated. I took the chance to keep talking.
‘I’m sorry to ask you to go over it all again; it must have been very traumatic, but your evidence is crucial. And whatever happened, my client has the right to a fair hearing. It’s my job to go over all the evidence and talk to all the witnesses.’
I wasn’t getting anywhere. She tried to close the door again.
‘Has someone been threatening you?’ I asked gently. ‘If anyone’s put you under any pressure not to talk I’d be expected to notify the police.’ Not strictly true but it certainly rang bells for Sonia Siddiq.
She swallowed and stood back. ‘No, nobody has. It’s just so horrible, like you say.’
The lounge was at the end of the small hallway. It was dominated by several intricately designed rugs on both the walls and the floor, and by a large white leather couch and matching armchairs. An old-fashioned elaborately carved sideboard was covered in silver-framed photographs, candelabra and statuettes. One corner of the room held the consumer durables; CD midi system, video and television.
The armchair crackled under me. Mrs Siddiq perched on one end of the sofa. She was slightly built, which added to the impression of youth. She wore shalwar kameez in a soft caramel colour with silver threads around the borders. Her hair was shoulder-length; silver globe earrings hung bright in her ears.
I asked her to tell me everything she could remember from New Year’s Eve.
‘We were going home, we’d been in the club. We’d parked in a side street round the back.’
‘Who was driving?’
I wanted to establish whether the Siddiqs had been sober that evening, how reliable they were as witnesses.
She looked puzzled. ‘I was.’ But she didn’t sound very certain.
‘Had you had anything to drink?’
‘I don’t drink.’
I nodded.
‘As we came round the corner, there were these two lads arguing and one of them, he had a knife.’
‘You could see the knife?’
‘Yes, it was quite big. And the other one kicks out and the lad with the knife screams like he’s hurt, and then he swings the knife up and they both fall over.’ She was disturbed by her recitation; her fingers knotting round themselves, her words breathy.
‘What happened then?’
‘Excuse me.’ She rooted in the sideboard and found what she was looking for, a book of matches, a cigarette.
‘Rashid doesn’t like me to smoke,’ she shrugged her shoulders, ‘although he smokes all the time.’ She dragged on the cigarette as if she’d suck all the tobacco out, pulling the smoke in deep and holding her breath before releasing it through her nose. I could recall from my own distant past the gloriously dizzying effect of the nicotine as it charged round the system, the buzzing at the back of the neck, the satisfying hit on the throat.
She took another drag.
‘We went home.’ She spoke with smoke in her lungs.
I stared at her.
She exhaled. ‘It’s shameful, I know. We were…I was frightened to get involved. They were drunk, there was a knife, anything could have happened.’
Anything did. Ahktar died.
‘You didn’t ring for an ambulance?’
‘I wish I could say different.’ She lowered her voice, ‘Rashid said someone else would get an ambulance or call the police. I think maybe the shock…’ She broke off. There could be no justification.
‘But you did contact the police?’
‘The next day, the day after. We heard that he’d died and—’
‘Ahktar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know him?’ I asked.
She stared at me. ‘No, no.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘I didn’t know him. We never knew him.’
‘I thought perhaps from the club…?’
‘No, I’m sure. Neither of us knew him.’ She was rattled. Understandable. Bad enough to walk on by while someone bleeds to death; even worse to think you might have known them.
‘How did you hear?’ I asked her.
‘Sorry?’
‘About the death. There weren’t any papers on New Year’s Day.’
She paused. ‘The radio, there was something on the radio.’
‘OK. So you went to the police on New Year’s Day?’
‘Yes.’ She took another long drag on the cigarette. ‘We told them what we’d seen and they arranged an identity parade.’
‘And you both picked the same suspect?’
‘Yes.’
‘Had you seen him before?’
‘No, only that night.’
They’d been very reluctant to get involved. So reluctant that they didn’t even phone for an ambulance or alert the security staff at the club, but the next day they were contacting the police like model citizens. ‘What made you go to the police?’
She shrugged. ‘We’d seen what happened. We felt obliged…’ She tasted filter and grimaced, ground out the cigarette in a large glass ashtray. ‘Is there anything else?’ She tried to be dismissive but there was no conviction behind the phrase.
‘Just a few points,’ I said. ‘What time did you get to the club?’
‘About ten o’clock.’
Luke and friends had gone early knowing it would sell out.
‘Did you meet friends?’
She looked perplexed. ‘No.’
‘Just the two of you?’ I sounded surprised.
‘Yes, just the two of us.’
‘And you didn’t bump into anybody by chance, no acquaintances, friends?’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘It’s not somewhere we usually go; we don’t know those people.’
‘So why were you there?’
‘I don’t see what this has to do with anything.’ She stood up ‘I’ve helped you all I can, now please…’
‘You didn’t drink. Did Rashid?’
‘A little.’ She shook her head impatiently.
‘I’d like to see Mr Siddiq,’ I said, ‘when’s a good time to catch him?’
‘Why?’ She looked appalled.
‘To hear his version of events.’
‘It’s the same as mine,’ she said urgently.
‘There are always differences in what people notice, what they remember.’
Unless they’re rehearsing a story.
‘We identified the same man,’ she said, ‘we both saw what he did. The police believe us. You’d better go.’
‘OK. Thank y
ou for your time. When can I call on Mr Siddiq?’
‘I don’t know, he’s very busy.’
‘Where does he work? I could call in, perhaps?’
She hesitated. She was behaving like a suspect, not a witness. What the hell was going on? ‘Or I could come back here one evening?’ She paled.
‘Is there something wrong?’
‘No. No,’ she blinked. ‘He’s just…very busy.’
I smiled. ‘It shouldn’t take too long. Where does he work?’
I could see her trying to decide whether she should tell me. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ I pushed her.
‘No.’ She gave a little laugh, brittle. ‘Just he’s busy, you know.’ She gave up. ‘The Asian Cash and Carry on Upper Brook Street.’
‘Thank you.’
She was quiet as she saw me out. Muttered goodbye at the door. If the prosecution were going to use her as a witness she’d need plenty of coaching. I’d found her responses puzzling, veering from guilt to indignation.
Why was she so anxious about my intention to interview her husband? What was she so frightened of? Him? What he might say? What also intrigued me was that some of the seemingly innocuous questions about the evening itself had riled her as much as those about the murder and their inhumane response. Questions about why they were there, who’d driven and who they’d met. Now why would those upset her so?
It would be interesting to see if Rashid Siddiq was as defensive as his wife had been.
Chapter Ten
I’d no doubt that Mrs Siddiq would alert her husband to my interest, and the longer I left it the more time they would have to confer. I was 99 per cent sure that she’d been lying to me, but I still ran through other explanations for her manner; guilt at not reporting the attack, previous unpleasant dealings with the police, or maybe emotional problems that had nothing to do with the case itself. Had I just caught her on a bad day? She’d certainly been mercurial, her reactions running the gamut from hostility to anxiety.
Dead Wrong Page 6
