Inside the office a young Asian man and an older, grey-haired, bull-necked white man, both in crumpled suits, glanced up at the new arrivals from a desk where they were poring over what appeared to be lists of names.
“Bloomin’ heck, I didn’t know planning a strike ballot were a hanging offence,” the white man said, the belligerence in his voice almost mocking, but not quite. “What can we do for you, Chief Inspector?”
“You have the advantage, Mr … .?” Thackeray said.
“Jim Watson, regional organiser. We met at your nick once when I came in to complain about a bloody silly arrest one of your colleagues had made down in Arnedale. Some conspiracy theory or other, when Queen Maggie were on t’throne. You were nobbut a sergeant then as I recall.”
“Yes, that’s right, I do remember you now,” Thackeray conceded. It had been a brief encounter about an arrest which had certainly been overzealous, but Thackeray also recalled his failure to warm to Watson then any more than he did now.
“This is Mohammed Iqbal, the convenor at Earnshaws,” Watson went on, waving to his colleague who nodded to the two officers without any welcome in his dark eyes. “So what can we do for CID now then? Nowt to do with industrial relations, I hope.”
“Not directly, Mr. Watson,” Thackeray said. “And I think it’s Mr. Iqbal we need to talk to anyway.” Did he imagine a flash of anxiety cross the younger man’s face, Thackeray wondered, although the convenor’s response was bland enough.
“If I can help …” Iqbal said, hands in a gesture of openness.
Thackeray glanced behind him at the door which had just been pushed open by a couple of the men outside who obviously sought attention.
“Is there anywhere quiet we can talk?” he asked.
Iqbal shrugged slightly.
“There’s only a little kitchen and a toilet out back,” he said uncertainly.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Watson said expansively. “I’ll go an’ put t’kettle on, if you’re not going to be long. Tea wi’milk an’sugar all round do you?” He lumbered to his feet and pushed past Iqbal towards the back door without waiting for an answer.
“Give us a shout, lad, if they get too heavy for you,” he said to Iqbal as he closed the kitchen door behind him, leaving Thackeray to speculate on how well their voices would be heard through the woodwork. Pretty clearly he guessed, feeling irritated and outmanoeuvred.
“Have you worked at Earnshaws long, Mr. Iqbal?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice as low as he dared.
“Since I left school,” Iqbal said. “Fifteen years now, I suppose.”
“And in the union all that time?”
Iqbal nodded again.
“Earnshaws didn’t recognise us then but, wi’t’new law, they have to if we can get t’vote out. We got it out all right, no problem. Overwhelming support, we got.” He shuffled his papers into a neat pile as if to give Thackeray his whole attention. “So are you going to tell me what all this is about?”
“It’s about the death of Mr. Simon Earnshaw — indirectly at least,” Thackeray said. “You’ve no doubt heard about his murder.” There was no mistaking the fear in Iqbal’s eyes now, and Thackeray wondered what was causing it. They had not come to see Iqbal with any idea that he might be a suspect.
“I heard about it,” Iqbal said quietly.
“Did you know Simon Earnshaw when he was working at the mill?”
“Oh, aye, we used to see him about. He weren’t involved in production so we didn’t see him day to day, like, but I’d know him to look at if not to speak to. All t’ family for that matter. Even t’old begger.”
“George Earnshaw, you mean.”
“Aye, him. Bill can tell you some tales about him.”
“He doesn’t like old George?” Thackeray asked, not greatly surprised that George Earnshaw might have disliked trades union activity in his mill.
“No one round here liked George Earnshaw,” Iqbal said with complete certainty.
“Anti-union, then, was he?”
“Anti-union, anti-negotiations, but most of all anti-Asian, as I hear it. I’m told it weren’t until the old boy retired that Earnshaws employed a single Asian worker. And even then it were only because t’union threatened legal action, and there were a spell of full employment making it hard to recruit anyone at all, that his son began to take some Asians on — for t’night shift, of course. Nowt else at first. Now, of course, we’re in t’majority here, because no one else is fool enough to work for Earnshaws’ wages, day or night, are they? You’ve got to be that desperate.”
Iqbal’s voice was full of bitterness and behind them Thackeray heard the door from the kitchen open and an ostentatious clink of cups as Jim Watson edged his way back into the room with a tin tray loaded with mugs and swimming in milky tea.
“Racist beggars, all the Earnshaws,” Watson offered. “But we sorted them out in the end. Wi’t’mill right here, surrounded by Asian families, they didn’t have a bloody leg to stand on, did they?”
“Simon Earnshaw wasn’t a racist,” Iqbal said unexpectedly.
“How do you make that out?” Watson asked. “He were no different from t‘rest o’t’beggers in that family, as far as I know.”
“Yes, he was,” Iqbal said. “After he left the mill, he was, any road.”
“You had contact with him after he left the mill?” Thackeray asked quickly.
“He came to see me a couple o’months ago,” Iqbal said, aware that the eyes of all three men were fixed on him in varying degrees of surprise. “If I don’t tell you, you’ll find out some other way, I dare say. It were nowt bad, but he wanted it kept quiet around here, especially in t’mill. He were right scared his father would find out.”
“Find out what?” Thackeray persisted.
“He were doing some research on regeneration,” Iqbal said. “Taking mills over, doing them up for other things, like they’ve done wi‘some o’t’old warehouses an’that. He wanted ideas for Earnshaws if it ever closed down, wanted to know what the local community would think about different uses for t’building, putting in workshops and space for small businesses, community space, that sort of thing. He wanted me to help him talk to people round here, introduce him to folk, make contacts and all that.”
“And did you?” Watson interrupted angrily. “Did you go round talking about that sort of stuff while we’re still fighting to keep the lads’ jobs?”
“No, I didn’t,” Iqbal said fiercely. “He were going to contact me again, but he never did. I never heard from him again. Next thing I know, he’s dead, isn’t he? Murdered. And now I don’t know what to think.”
Chapter Nine
A dozen solemn little girls with large dark eyes under their severe white hijab looked curiously at Laura as they filed from their prayers to their classroom the next morning. Laura was waiting for Amina Khan in the cramped hallway of the Muslim girls’ school which had been converted from a former political club in one of the bleak terraced streets close to Earnshaws mill. Amina, dressed in a long grey coat and hijab, looked harassed.
“I don’t have much time,” she said. “I have to take a class in fifteen minutes. They come in on Sunday mornings for religious studies.”
“It’s good of you to see me. I won’t keep you long,” Laura promised. She had been surprised when Amina had suggested meeting at the school that morning, but sufficiently worried by what Fatima Achmed had told her to spend an hour of her precious Sunday following up the disappearance of Saira Khan. Thackeray had come home the previous night so late and so tired that she had not yet told him about the apparently missing student, preferring to check it out thoroughly herself before presenting him with what would inevitably prove to be another sensitive police investigation if what Fatima feared proved to be well founded.
Amina glanced at the small group of girls of about ten years old who were evidently waiting for her.
“Go to your room and read quietly until I come,” she said, and the girls trooped off
dutifully, although not without the odd curious backward glance which Laura guessed was directed at her uncovered and glowing red hair. “Come in here,” Amina said, waving her guest into a small office where the desk and computer were unattended.
“Our secretary doesn’t come in today, when we’re just here for the religious classes,” she said. “So what can I do to help you?”
“Your friend Farida’s sister contacted me,” Laura said. “She’s worried about an Asian friend who is on her course at the university. Her name’s Saira Khan and she seems to have disappeared. Obviously as the name’s the same I thought she might be a relation of yours …” Amina nodded, her face strangely impassive and nun-like beneath the hijab.
“She’s my younger sister,” she said. “I think if this friend of Saira’s had contacted her family instead of the Press it would have been better.”
“She said she tried that,” Laura said quickly. “She said she went to your parents’ home in Eckersley, is it? But she was still worried about Saira.”
“Saira’s fine,” Amina said. “Saira’s gone on a family visit. She’ll be home soon and back at her studies. There’s no problem.”
“Has she gone to Pakistan?” Laura asked bluntly. “That’s really what Fatima seemed to be worried about, and as I’m doing these programmes for Radio Bradfield, the ones I told you about, I was interested too.”
“I suppose you think she has been sent to Pakistan to marry against her will,” Amina said angrily. “That’s the stereotype you all have of us, isn’t it? Well, if you just thought about what you’re saying for a moment you’d realise what nonsense that is. My parents have encouraged us all to get an education in this country, my sisters as well as my brother. It isn’t cheap putting children through university these days, as you know. Why would they interrupt Saira’s course in her final year, do you think? Just as she is coming up to her final exams? Wouldn’t that be a very stupid thing to do? Or do you think that because we’re Muslims we are by definition stupid?”
“Of course not,” Laura said, irritated herself by Amina’s outburst. “But you give the impression of belonging to a very traditional family …”
Amina laughed.
“I’m afraid you are not quite right there either,” she said. “My parents are about as Westernised as you’ll find in our community. Even my grandparents speak English. I chose to go down a different road and they dislike it very much. They are not very observant Muslims and they are the last people who would force me to dress like this. This is my choice. I do have the freedom to choose, you know, and this gives me lots of freedoms you don’t have — to be taken seriously without men constantly being distracted by my attractions, for a start. And though in my family our marriages may be arranged they certainly won’t be forced. We will have the right to say no to any man our father proposes for us. Why else do you think I’m still unmarried at twenty-five? I haven’t met the right man yet. My father would be the last man to send Saira anywhere against her will. He’s very keen for her to qualify and have her profession, just as he was for me when I chose to become a teacher.”
“So she’s quite safe, and her friends don’t need to worry? Is that what you’re saying,” Laura pressed, not totally convinced by this fierce defence.
“Of course she is,” Amina said.
“Is she in this country? Fatima says she’s not answering her mobile.”
“I didn’t know she had a mobile,” Amina said quickly with, Laura thought, just the faintest flicker of doubt in her eyes. “Maybe she’s switched it off?”
“Maybe,” Laura said. “Is it possible to contact her by phone, wherever she is? Fatima is very anxious about her. It would be a good idea to reassure her, if you can.”
“I’ll talk to my father, tell him that Saira’s friends are concerned,” Amina said.
“Does Saira share your religious views?” Laura asked. “Does she wear hijab?” Amina’s eyes clouded for a moment.
“She’s a Muslim, of course she is,” she said. “But no, she doesn’t wear traditional dress at all. She prefers designer clothes. That concerns my father a bit, but he accepts her choices so long as they are modest.”
So there are tensions, Laura thought to herself and it was as if Amina had read her mind.
“Saira will be home soon,” she said. “I must go now, Miss Ackroyd. I have children waiting for me.”
“Are you still considering the radio interviews I’m planning?” Laura asked as she got to her feet. “I’m hoping to start doing the recordings in the next week or so if I can.”
Amina shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
There were parts of Bradfield where white faces were not welcome, “no go areas”, enforced by defensive and defiant young Asian men, which the Gazette’s editor Ted Grant fulminated against regularly in his columns. It was equally true that there were pubs on the mainly white housing estates like Wuthering where Asians would not venture. DC Sharif was well aware of this and fumed quietly in his car that lunchtime as he watched Ricky Pickles park outside the Grenadier and disappear inside.
Omar Sharif was on a freelance expedition of his own, driven by the carefully concealed anger which consumed him. On the pretext of “sussing out” Asian views about the acid attack on Soraya Malik, which he knew without a scintilla of a doubt was a particularly vicious skirmish in the race war he believed was being waged in parts of Bradfield, he had taken his own car to the British Patriotic Party’s offices, which were open and seemed unusually busy for a Sunday morning, to conduct a bit of informal surveillance on his own account. He was rewarded when Pickles had emerged and driven off in the direction of the Heights, ten minutes up the steep hill to the west of the town, and had parked his Escort outside a pub well known for its extravagant display of union flags and its clientele of football hooligans and assorted criminal thugs. Omar knew better than to go inside alone. His warrant card would not protect him at the Grenadier if he ventured in without backup, especially after a Saturday when United had played at home and lost five-nil. Tempers would be running high. So he discreetly parked fifty yards away, with his mobile phone switched off, and waited and watched.
It was more than an hour before his vigil was rewarded. Just before two o’clock Ricky Pickles emerged from the pub again, deep in conversation with three other men. Sharif regretted not bringing a camera with him but he concentrated on memorising Pickles’ companions’ faces and making a note of the registration number of the silver Mondeo they all piled into after taking an obviously friendly farewell of the BPP official. For a moment Sharif thought of following the Ford, but knew he was already pushing his luck with sergeant Kevin Mower so he contented himself with following Pickles back to his office at a discreet distance and then returning quickly to police headquarters to report back in for his overtime shift.
Mower seemed happy enough with Sharif’s conclusion that there was no evidence Soraya Malik was anything other than a devout and obedient young Muslim girl who had run foul of racist thugs, unaware that this was a conclusion Sharif had reached on the basis of chatting to his own younger brothers.
“Yes, well, I thought it was a long shot,” Mower said. “You’d better report back to the murder room now. We’ve wasted enough time on that line of inquiry.”
“Right, sarge,” Sharif said. But before obeying Mower he took a detour by way of the books of mugshots where the photographs of known criminals were stored. One of the men he had seen with Pickles at the Grenadier had looked vaguely familiar but in the end it was the other two he identified quite quickly, checking on the computer database for their personal details and extensive, violent and frequently racist criminal histories. He had never believed Pickles’ claim that he was nothing more now than a legitimate politician and given the company he had been keeping that lunchtime Sharif felt more than justified in his scepticism. A check on the car registration number he had noted down gave him a name and address and an equally lurid criminal reco
rd for the third man. He took this information back to a surprised Kevin Mower and, by the end of the afternoon, Sharif’s freelance endeavours had filtered up to the office of Superintendent Longley who had foregone a round of golf to check up on the murder inquiries.
“He says he was driving past the Grenadier when he noticed Pickles coming out,” Michael Thackeray told his boss non-commitally, knowing as well as Kevin Mower did that driving past the Grenadier on the way to anywhere required a detour half way round the Heights estate. Longley was not slow to pick up the hint.
“But you think he was watching him as part of some agenda of his own?” Longley said.
“Mower thinks it’s possible.”
“You want to watch that young man,” Longley said.
“He’s not been here long enough to get to know well, but he seems to be a good enough officer,” Thackeray said.
“But not a team player, evidently? And his loyalties may be getting stretched in this case. Any road, what do you want to do about Pickles? Sharif’s not suggesting that these thugs are the ones who chucked acid at the Asian lass, is he?”
“No, the Malik sisters are adamant it was ‘boys’ who ran past them. There’s no way you could mistake these three for boys, or Pickles for that matter. Jackson is at least six foot tall and Smith must be about twenty stone.”
“A full surveillance on Pickles is an expensive option. Do you really think it’s necessary?” Longley asked.
“I’ve got no evidence to justify it except this one sighting of Pickles with known violent associates. There’s no crime they’re immediate suspects for, except in the sense that all four of them are top of the list of the usual suspects for anything racially motivated,” Thackeray said cautiously.
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