A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  “That seems to point to family involvement,” Nelson said. “It may not be honour-related, but it’s being covered up for some reason. Perhaps our perp is a wayward son or husband who’s been abusing his sister or daughter for a prolonged period, and things have come to a head. The family take the decision to protect one at the expense of another.”

  “She’s school age, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s ever been to school,” Sanne said, not looking up from her scribbling. One of these days she’d teach herself shorthand. “You would hope that a teacher or friend would have spotted her malnutrition, or that her behaviour or sickness record would have triggered concerns about abuse.”

  “They don’t always see it, San,” Nelson said.

  “I know.” As a child, Sanne had noticed the bruises that Meg regularly sported at school, though the teachers had turned a blind eye. “But they are more attuned these days to the warning signs. This child could have been a family friend shipped here for a better life. I mean, look what happened in Salford with that lass in the cellar. She was about the same age when she was brought over, and the couple who enslaved her kept her hidden for…twelve years, was it?”

  “Yes, about that,” Eleanor said. “We’ll have to speak to border agencies at Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds Bradford airports.” She threw up her hands at the massive scope of the task. “And who the hell knows, we might as well chuck in Heathrow and Gatwick. She could’ve entered the country from anywhere.”

  Fred cut through the murmurs of disquiet. “On the bright side, boss, the Pakistanis are a pretty tight-knit bunch, and so are the Bengalis. If this lass was from one of the larger communities, someone outside the family loop might recognise her. Photos of dead kids do tend to prick the conscience.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Eleanor said. “Okay, I don’t need to tell you that we have a lot of people pushing for a speedy and satisfactory resolution to this one. DCI Litton has approved my request to keep things within EDSOP, for the preliminary investigation at least. We’ll be getting unis to help with the door-to-doors and the fingertips, but nothing from outside agencies unless we choose to involve them. I appreciate that most of you have ongoing cases, but this has to be everyone’s absolute priority. I’ve got your briefing notes here with your initial assignments. So,” she folded her arms and looked at each of her team in turn, “let’s try not to fuck it up.”

  A smart rap on the door sent her across to answer it. She returned with a middle-aged Asian woman whose traditional salwar kameez, rendered in shades of turquoise and pale green, stood out like an oasis among the crowd of grey and navy suits.

  “This is Meera Ahmad, our community liaison,” Eleanor said. “She’s here to assist with any language or cultural issues we may encounter within the Pakistani communities, and she’ll be with Sanne and Nelson today, so radio them if you need to speak to her. Any problems with those who speak Bangla, you’ll have to use Language Line.”

  Sanne caught Nelson’s raised eyebrow and returned it with interest. While someone fluent in Urdu would undoubtedly be useful, given that they’d been tasked to the Sharcliffe area, having to babysit a civilian on a ride-along would be a pain in the arse. She caught Fred’s shit-eating grin and mouthed “fuck off” in response. Then she fixed a smile on her face and went over to meet the civvie.

  *

  Indicating left, Sanne pulled the pool car into the filter lane and braked for the lights. Heavy rain had forced the traffic to a crawl, and the driver of the bus three cars in front seemed disinclined to exceed fifteen miles an hour. Behind her, Nelson wriggled, trying to find a comfortable position for his long legs. She usually navigated while he drove, but, chivalrous to a fault, he had insisted Meera take the passenger seat and surrendered the car keys to Sanne for once. Having a third party in the car put Sanne and Nelson on their best behaviour. Their usual rock-paper-scissors battle to choose the radio station had been forsaken in favour of no music at all, neither of them had so much as sniggered when they passed a pub called “The Dandy Cock,” and the conversation had erred on the side of polite “getting to know you” exchanges with Meera.

  “Were you both patrol officers before EDSOP?” Meera asked. She spoke perfect English, clipped by a Pakistani accent, and had surprised Sanne by spending most of the journey chattering in Urdu on her mobile phone.

  “Yes,” Sanne said. “We worked North Sector, but Nelson’s far older than me, so we didn’t know each other back then.” She lurched into the steering wheel as Nelson kicked her seat. Catching his eye in the rearview mirror, she poked her tongue out at him. “Careful. You’ll put a hip out, bending like that.”

  Meera indulged them with a smile. “You’ll know Sharcliffe quite well, then.”

  “We used to get up here a fair bit.” Sanne inched the car forward a couple of yards, missed the green light again, and swallowed the tirade she’d been about to launch at the bus driver. She only realised how much she normally swore when she was doing her utmost not to. “The usual stuff, mostly—domestics, burglaries, car theft—but the last few years have seen an upsurge in drug offences and drug-related violence.”

  “The young men,” Meera said. “I would always worry about bad influences on my sons. They’re at university now, though. They’re good boys, very bright.”

  Sanne accelerated and sped through the light on amber. Stuck behind the bus again, she turned to Meera. “Have you just got the two lads?”

  “No, we have a daughter as well, Saeed’s twin. She should be marrying in spring. It was difficult to find a husband for her. She’s very fussy.”

  “Right.” Sanne didn’t know what else to say. The decision to get wed might well have been the girl’s own, but Sanne was curious as to whether she’d shown any desire for a university education or resisted the notion of an arranged marriage. Propriety, however, made her bite her tongue.

  Nelson broke the awkward silence. “Any news from Keeley yet, San?”

  Back in familiar territory, Sanne relaxed her hold on the steering wheel. “Not yet, but she’s due any day now. That’s my sister,” she added for Meera’s benefit. “She’s pregnant with her fifth. God only knows what she’ll call this one.” She didn’t mention Keeley’s sterling efforts to vary the Halshaw gene pool by procreating with a different bloke each time. Keeley’s idea of commitment was producing offspring numbers two and five with the same fella.

  “Do you have any children yourself?” Meera asked.

  “Uh, no. I think being an aunt will be enough for me.” Sanne could feel herself getting hot as she sensed Meera checking her finger for telltale rings, and she waited for the inevitable follow-up question. She loathed coming out to strangers, not because she was ashamed of being gay but because she hated making people feel uncomfortable. She had seen the shutters come down too many times during polite conversations with little old dears after they’d given witness statements, or with people at university she’d thought were friends, or with her family doctor when he’d broached the subject of birth control. For all she knew, Meera’s sons were raging queers and Meera herself a fully paid-up member of FFLAG, but she doubted it.

  “Sanne has enough to do growing veg and keeping her hens in line, don’t you, San?” Nelson said, leaning between the seats and holding out a bag of Werther’s Originals.

  “Yes, I do.” She took a toffee and unwrapped it. “Cheers, mate.”

  “Any time.” He showed Meera his wallet, the leather folded back to display a small photo. “These are my two terrors. That’s Nemy, she’s ten, and the little one, Tia, is five.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Meera said. “They look so much like you!”

  With their guest successfully distracted, Sanne sucked her sweet and concentrated on weaving through the outskirts of Sharcliffe. A maze of narrow, tightly packed terraced streets, Sharcliffe was identical to all the other dirt-poor, rundown neighbourhoods in Sheffield, except that the pound shops, Chinese chippies, and payday loan suppliers gradually
gave way to supermarkets selling catering-sized sacks of onions and barrels of cooking oil, the butchers were halal, and there was scarcely a white face to be seen.

  “First right, second left,” Meera said, not realising Sanne had memorised the route before setting off. “I grew up around the block, on Calder Street.”

  “Do you still live local?” Sanne asked. Not many of Sharcliffe’s young people went to college, let alone university, but Western materialism was creeping in, largely funded by drug crime.

  “No, we moved to Broomhill when my father expanded his business, but I still have relatives here.”

  Sanne pulled into the car park of a Cash and Carry whose owners had agreed to its use as a rendezvous point. A police van was already there, and the uniformed officers beside it were drawing curious glances from passersby. One of the officers, standing blond head and shoulders above her colleagues, waved as she saw Sanne parking the car.

  “There goes the neighbourhood,” Nelson murmured, in a voice low enough that Meera didn’t hear him.

  Sanne waited until he got out of the car on her side. “I forgot to tell you, Zoe texted me this morning and asked me to wear something gorgeous.”

  Nelson considered her attire. “That shirt is a very fetching blue.”

  “Why, thank you,” she said, though she vaguely recalled her original choice being quite different. “I’m officially off her hook, at any rate. She’s dating a bloke from Tactical Aid, and she sounds totally smitten. They go to boot camp classes together.”

  “Really? How sweet.”

  Zoe Turner had set her sights on Sanne around the same time that Luke Fielding had beaten the living daylights out of Meg, throwing the proverbial spanner into a situation that hadn’t needed additional complications. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to something out of Norse legend and with a personality to match, she had eventually taken no for an answer and then surprised Sanne by sticking around and becoming a good mate.

  “Morning, all,” Nelson said, once the officers had gathered within earshot. “Thanks for your patience. I know the weather’s not been the best. Detective Jensen here has a grid breakdown of our sector showing your assigned streets. A colour photo of the victim’s face in profile, an artist’s impression of her entire face, and a shot of her clothing are also attached.”

  “People are obviously going to have questions,” Sanne said, handing out the paperwork. “Try to keep your answers as nonspecific as possible for this initial door-to-door, and use your instincts. If someone is a little too interested or knowledgeable or raises alarm bells in any way whatsoever, note the name and the address and give us a shout on the radio. We have Mrs. Ahmad with us as a liaison today, so direct any general questions or concerns to her.”

  “Right, then.” Nelson rubbed his hands as fat drops of rain began to splatter the tarmac. “Let’s get cracking.”

  While the group checked their maps against their allocated streets, Zoe strode over to Sanne.

  “Why, Detective Jensen, the black in your coat really brings out the brown in your eyes.” She held out an umbrella for Sanne to duck beneath.

  Sanne batted her eyelashes, mainly to get the rain off them. “Oh stop, you flatter me. I did contemplate a swanky pink number, but it didn’t go with my boots.”

  “Pink is so last season, darling.” Zoe studied her list. “Where’ve you ended up?”

  “Over near the market. There’s a school, two mosques, three or four residential streets. If we’re lucky we’ll be done by midnight.”

  At the edge of the car park, she saw the lone remaining officer look pointedly at Zoe and tap his watch. Zoe groaned.

  “I better get going. My old mate went off to Firearms, and they’ve paired me with someone new and enthusiastic.” She took a step and then paused. “Married life agrees with you, San. You’re all aglow.”

  Sanne kicked the heel of Zoe’s boot. “We’re not married, you silly sod.”

  “Not yet.” Zoe waggled a finger. “But your Meg’s a keeper.”

  “Aye, she is. You can be my flower girl if we ever get hitched.”

  “Lunch will do for now, one day when we’re all off. Y’know, after you’ve solved this case.”

  Sanne left the cover of the umbrella as the patter of rain grew more sporadic. “Oh, I’m not solving this one,” she said, raising her coat collar. “I thought I’d let someone else do all the hard graft. Speaking of which…”

  “Sharcliffe awaits,” Zoe said. “Be careful out there, Scrapper. I know what you’re like.”

  Sanne refused to dignify that with anything but a single-fingered salute, which she swiftly turned into a scratch of her nose when she saw Meera waiting with Nelson.

  “All set?” he asked, his face admirably straight.

  “Yep. Milton Street’s closest. Do you want to take the evens with Meera, and I’ll do the odds? We can meet back up for the school before we go to Crooke Road.”

  “Sounds good. There’s a mosque just off Crooke. What time are we best going there?” He kept the question general, but it was Meera who answered.

  “Most mosques hold evening classes. Tajweed, Fiqh, some segregated, others mixed. You should be able to find the times online, and speaking to the imam would be a good place to start.”

  “Fiqh.” Sanne held her pen poised. “How are we spelling that?”

  “F-I-Q-H.”

  “Okay, got it,” Sanne said, hoping she wasn’t looking as clueless as she felt, and intending to do a spot of research when she got a spare minute. Religion fascinated and appalled her in equal measure, leaving her slightly tongue-tied when conversing with a genuine believer. While she found the traditions, language, food rules, and dress codes interesting, part of her always teetered on the verge of enquiring whether the world would be better off without any of it. It was a debate that had enlivened many a traffic jam and stakeout with Nelson, though they’d never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.

  “I’ve got the number for the mosque here.” He showed her a website he’d Googled. “I’ll give them a call and see if we can arrange something for later.”

  A brief burst of sunshine welcomed them onto Milton Street, not that it did much to improve the general ambience. With no space for front gardens, unkempt patios two paving slabs wide provided the only buffer between each terraced house and the street. A few enterprising spirits had shifted slabs to plant a rose bush or a sickly hydrangea, but most of the entrances had been used as dumping grounds for dead car batteries, derelict toys, and pieces of household junk too large for the wheelie bins.

  Balancing on a wobbly front step, Sanne knocked at the first door, sparking a chain reaction of energetic shrieking and scolding from within. The security chain prevented the door from opening fully, but a woman wearing a headscarf peered out.

  “Yes?”

  “Morning. Sorry to disturb you.” Sanne held up her ID card. “My name’s Sanne Jensen. I’m a detective with the East Derbyshire Police. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?”

  “Police? Why?” The woman’s eyes widened, and Sanne wondered how much she had actually understood. She was in her early twenties, and her traditional dress bore no trace of Western influence. Given her age, she had probably been raised in Pakistan and brought over to England once married.

  She opened the door wider to reveal a baby perched on her hip and a toddler clinging to her tunic. “Jabir!” she shouted, adding a stream of Urdu to the name, and a lad trotted out from the front room to stand shyly by her side.

  “Hey,” Sanne said. “Is this your mum?”

  He nodded.

  “Is anyone else at home? Your dad? Grandma?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got chicken spots, so I’m off school.”

  “Oh dear, I hope you’re not too itchy.” Sanne glanced across the road, but Nelson and Meera had obviously fared better and been invited inside one of their houses. She reintroduced herself for Jabir’s benefit and gave him her ID. He studied her mugshot
, his expression sombre, and then passed it back. Although using a child to translate wasn’t ideal, she suspected this visit would set the theme for the day. She held the first photograph above his eye line. “Jabir, can you ask your mum if she recognises—” She saw Jabir’s nose wrinkle in confusion. “Sorry, ask her if she’s ever seen this girl before? Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said, and he must have gleaned a rough idea because, on his prompting, his mother took the photo from Sanne’s hand.

  After giving her time to study the image, Sanne replaced it with the artist’s impression and then the picture of the clothing. The woman’s lips moved, but Sanne couldn’t catch the words.

  “Does she know her?” she asked Jabir.

  “No.” He tilted his head. “She is saying a prayer for her.”

  Sanne waited for the woman to finish before collecting the photographs. “Thank you both for your time.” She handed Jabir her card. “If your mum needs to speak to me, tell her to call that number.”

  “Sar-ner Jensen.” He sounded the words out, watching for her approval.

  She gave him a thumbs-up. “Aye, that’s not bad for a first try.”

  Wary of the loose step, she let the woman shut the door, so that if she wrecked anything she could repair it in secret. The cement just about held, however, and she waved at Nelson as they all changed houses.

  Progress through to number twenty-seven followed a similar pattern of incomprehension, and eventual apologetic headshakes. No one answered at four of the houses, and the heavens opened somewhere in the mid teens. Consequently, the middle-aged woman who opened the door of number twenty-nine took one look at Sanne’s bedraggled state and ushered her into the hallway.

  “So cold!” The woman clucked her tongue. “Would you like juice? Chai?”