Dead Reckoning

by Patricia Hall

  The union official nodded and left the office as Michael Thackeray came in. If he was surprised to find George Earnshaw there as well as his son he disguised it well.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry to bother you when I know you’ve got other things on your mind but there’s a couple of things I need to discuss with you.”

  “You’ve made some progress?” Frank Earnshaw asked quickly. “Have you found out who killed Simon?” Thackeray was conscious of the old man’s eyes glittering from beneath half-closed lids.

  “No, I’m afraid we haven’t,” he said. “There’s still a lot of routine work to do before we even have a clear picture of who the likely suspects might be. But we have confirmed the identity of his elusive girlfriend. He’s apparently had a fairly long-standing relationship with a young woman called Saira Khan. She’s a fellow student at the university and, as I suggested might be the case last time I saw you, she’s an Asian Muslim. Did either of you have any idea that Simon had an Asian girlfriend?”

  George Earnshaw was wide awake now, leaning forward in his chair, his cheeks flushed, but it was his son who spoke first.

  “We had no idea,” Frank Earnshaw said.

  “I don’t believe it,” his father added angrily.

  “Would it have bothered you?” Thackeray asked, knowing the answer already but wanting to hear it confirmed by George Earnshaw in person. “Would that be why he didn’t introduce her to the family?”

  “As I told you, it’d not bother me. His mother and I take as we find,” Frank Earnshaw said quickly, but he glanced sideways at his father as he spoke and Thackeray caught a glimpse of something more than anger in George Earnshaw’s eyes, something closer to hatred.

  “And you, Mr. Earnshaw?” Thackeray faced the old man squarely. “Would you have objected to a Muslim coming into the family? Was it on your account that Simon kept his relationship with Saira quiet?”

  “How do I know?” George Earnshaw shot back with surprising venom for one so frail. “I’ve not seen him for years and I’ve certainly heard nowt about it from anyone else. But then anyone who knows me knows I don’t like Pakis. It’s no secret in this town. I’d not have given them the time of day in the mill if I hadn’t been pushed into it by Frank so it doesn’t take a degree in bloody detection to work out I’d not want them in the family. So I’d not expect Simon to tell me if he was carrying on with one of them, would I? What do her family make of it any road? They’re not keen on mixed marriages, any more than I am. It’s not a crime, is it? There’s good reasons to stick to what you know in this world.”

  “The world’s changing, Dad,” Frank Earnshaw said, glancing at Thackeray as if to seek sympathy which he certainly didn’t find in the policeman’s chilly eyes.

  “Do you have something specific against Muslims, or is it just a general dislike of immigrants?” Thackeray asked George.

  “Saw too much of the beggars when I was in the RAF at the end of the war,” Earnshaw said. “They should have stayed at home. They went to enough trouble to get their bloody independence.”

  “Then it looks as if Simon and Saira deliberately kept both families in the dark about their relationship,” Thackeray said quietly.

  “If there was a bloody relationship,” the older Earnshaw put in, his face flushed again. “Who says there was? I don’t believe Simon would get serious with any lass without telling the family — his mother and father at least, even if he wouldn’t tell me. He was a good lad, was Simon, worth ten of that shiftless brother of his.”

  “Simon was always my father’s favourite,” Frank Earnshaw said. “Matt never got much of a look in there.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Thackeray said. “None of the family knew about Saira? Simon hadn’t told anyone and no one had seen them together and mentioned it to any of you? As you say, Mr. Earnshaw, the world is changing but not so fast that people who knew Simon might not comment if they saw him out with an Asian girl. You know as well as I do that we’re not as liberal in Bradfield as they are in Leeds and London yet.”

  “We didn’t know,” Frank Earnshaw said flatly.

  “If it happened at all,” his father added. “Are you sure it’s not just some little gold-digger looking for the main chance? He’d be a catch in the long run, would our Simon.”

  “I doubt it, Mr. Earnshaw,” Thackeray said sharply. “Saira Khan is a very bright girl who was expected to get a good degree. But she hasn’t been seen herself since Simon was killed. We’re looking for her urgently.”

  Simon Earnshaw’s father and grandfather looked at Thackeray silently for a moment.

  “She killed him?” Frank asked eventually, his face grey. The old man merely leaned back in his chair, eyes closed and a single tear creeping down his cheek.

  “I’ve absolutely no evidence for that,” Thackeray said. “But obviously I need to speak to her. So if you know anything about what was going on I must know. And I’ll be asking your wife and your other son the same question. Did they know about Saira Khan, and if so do they know where she is now?”

  “You said there were a couple of things, Chief Inspector,” Frank Earnshaw said irritably, as if trying to throw off whatever images of the missing girl had taken root in his mind. “We’ve a lot on our plates this morning as you can imagine. There’s not a production worker on the premises. They’ve all walked out on unofficial strike.”

  “That was the other thing I wanted to raise,” Thackeray said, his face grim. “It’s pretty common knowledge that Mohammed Iqbal is a bit of a thorn in your side. Have you any idea who might have assaulted him last night and put him on a life support machine?”

  “You mean did we put someone up to it?” Frank Earnshaw snapped back, furious now. “We don’t conduct business with baseball bats and iron bars, Mr. Thackeray. We’re in negotiation with the union and I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to be, although obviously not with Iqbal himself for a while. Considering our workers have walked out this morning it would’ve been a particularly stupid move to get ourselves involved in that sort of violence, wouldn’t it? Any fool could see it would be self-defeating.”

  “Maybe someone thought they were doing you a favour?” Thackeray persisted. “Following on the fire-bomb attack on Iqbal’s office, this looks as if it’s anti-union as much as racist violence.”

  “I’d like to meet the idiot who thought they were helping Earnshaws,” Frank Earnshaw said. “I think you’re looking for racist thugs, Mr. Thackeray, and there’s plenty of them about. But those aren’t the circles we move in. I know nothing about the attack on Iqbal, or the union office, and I don’t know anyone who might.”

  “Town’s like a bloody tinder-box,” George Earnshaw said unexpectedly. “Stands to reason someone’ll get hurt. Bloody multi-racial society my backside.”

  “It’s all right, Dad,” Frank Earnshaw said. “I think Mr. Thackeray’s on a fishing trip and that we can do without. If you’ve nothing else to ask us, Chief Inspector, I think we’d like to get on. We’ve enough problems here without you inventing any more for us.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was halfway through the afternoon, when thoughts of home were distracting Laura from her computer screen, that she heard her name bawled raucously across the newsroom by Ted Grant. She glanced up and saw the editor peering out of his glass-walled lair at the far end of the open plan room, caught a few sympathetic glances from colleagues whose eyes quickly shifted back to their work, and got slightly wearily to her feet in response to the summons.

  Grant closed the door ostentatiously behind her and then settled himself back in his black leather chair. He did not invite Laura to sit down. When did he ever, she thought to herself and she took a hard chair opposite the editor anyway.

  “So what’s your dad doing in Bradfield?” Grant asked, bristling.

  “He’s not. He’s in London as far as I know,” Laura said quickly, wondering if that were still true. It was quite possible that Jack Ackroy
d had come back to Bradfield without telling her or his mother.

  “But as I understand it, it’s Bradfield he’s interested in, isn’t it?”

  “I really don’t know what he’s up to,” Laura said, putting all her not inconsiderable acting skills into looking innocent and slightly bored at the same time. “He’s still got business interests in this country but he doesn’t confide in me.”

  “Pull the other one, girl, it’s got bells on it,” Grant said. “Someone I know saw you having dinner with him in the Clarendon the other night. You and your grandma. Don’t tell me he didn’t let on what he was here for.”

  “He didn’t, as it goes,” Laura said. “We had a pleasant family reunion, that was all. He went back to London the next day.” She saw no reason to tell Grant any more than that, and certainly not the vague hints Jack had offered her on his discussions with Frank Earnshaw. The Gazette employed Bill Wrigley, an industrial specialist, whose job it was to ferret out this sort of information and Laura guessed it had possibly been Bill who had spotted her and her father at the Clarendon, which was one of his favourite haunts for chatting up his more prosperous contacts.

  “Is he here to help Frank Earnshaw out?” Grant persisted. “Bill Wrigley says they go way back, those two.”

  “Well, you’d best get Bill to check it out, then,” Laura said sweetly. “I told you. I don’t know anything about his business affairs. I’d be the last person he’d confide in.”

  “What about your granny? Would she know?”

  “You must be joking,” Laura said with a genuine grin of relief as well as amusement. “She thinks my dad sold his soul to the devil years ago. Apparently she had dreams of him becoming a Labour MP in Harold Wilson’s time. She’s never forgiven him for going into business instead.”

  “Can you get him on the phone?” Grant asked. “See if you can find out anything about contacts with Earnshaws and a bloke called Firoz Kamal. Rumour has it they’re in some sort of rescue package together but the murder may have put the kibosh on the whole thing.”

  “Who’s Firoz Kamal?” Laura asked, playing for time.

  “He’s another millionaire who specialises in buying up property and redeveloping it into leisure centres and shopping malls and the rest of it. This could be the biggest financial story Bradfield’s seen for years if what Bill’s heard is true. Now come on, girl, don’t piss me about. Get your finger out and use the contacts you’ve been blessed with. Do you know where your father’s staying in London?”

  “He left me a number,” Laura said reluctantly. “But I’ve no idea whether he’s still there or not.”

  “Try him,” Grant instructed, his bulging eyes cold. “We want this story.”

  Laura shrugged, feeling trapped.

  “Try him,” Grant repeated. “He’s much more likely to talk to you than to Bill. Stands to reason.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” she said. “But don’t be surprised if I get a flea in my ear.”

  She walked slowly back to her desk, dug in her bag and found the London number Jack had given her the last time she had spoken to him. By the time she had dialled she was conscious of Ted Grant standing behind her, a looming presence, his heavy breathing lifting the hair on the back of her neck, listening to every word she said. But when the hotel in Mayfair responded it was only to tell her that Mr. Ackroyd had checked out the day before and had left no address apart from that of his home near Lisbon. She spun round in her chair to relay this to Grant who scowled.

  “Hasn’t he got a mobile?”

  “He doesn’t use one in Portugal,” she said. “And if he’s rented one for this trip he hasn’t given me the number.”

  “Bugger,” Grant said. “I suppose we’ll have to wait until he gets in touch with you then.”

  “He’s quite capable of flying home without telling me,” Laura said truthfully. “He didn’t tell me he was coming over till he got to Heathrow. It’s not as if we’re close.”

  “Find out what you can,” Grant said. “I’ll get Bill to dig around the Kamal lead. You can see who comes up with summat usable first.” Grant was a devoted practitioner of the fear and loathing school of management and saw nothing wrong with setting one of his staff against the other.

  Laura sighed as Grant stalked back to his office and slammed the door. After a decent interval she made her way to the women’s cloakroom and made sure that there was no one in any of the cubicles before using her mobile to contact the Clarendon hotel where she was not entirely surprised to discover that her father had checked back in the previous evening.

  “Dad,” she said when she was connected to his room. “You’re getting me into all sorts of difficulties here. The industrial man has discovered you’re involved with Earnshaws in some way and he’ll be snooping around again as soon as he finds out you’re back in Bradfield. You promised me this story. What exactly is going on?”

  “Nowt,” Jack Ackroyd snapped, at the other end of the phone. “It’s all set up on our side but bloody Frank Earnshaw still doesn’t know whether he has the shares he needs to go ahead. This murder’s buggered the whole thing up because the lad Simon’s shares seem to be floating around in limbo. No one knows whether he’s left a will, where it is or who the beneficiaries are. It’s possible he’s left his property to someone outside the family entirely.”

  “His girlfriend maybe,” Laura said thoughtfully.

  “Did he have one?” her father snapped.

  “Oh yes, he had one. But no one knows where she is,” Laura lied, wondering whether by now Amina Khan had told the police at least roughly where to look for her sister.

  “Will you let me know if anything develops?” she asked her father.

  “I told you. You’ll be the first to know,” Jack said. “But it could muck everything up if word gets out now. Can’t you get Ted Grant to hold his horses?”

  “Fat chance, so watch out for Bill Wrigley,” Laura said. “And make sure any colleagues you’ve got called Kamal are careful too. It’s a name that’s being bandied about.”

  She heard her father draw a sharp breath at the other end of the line but at that moment one of her colleagues flung the door of the cloakroom open and went rather quickly into one of the cubicles where she was unable to stifle her sobs completely.

  “I’ve got to go,” Laura said quickly and cut the connection. Ted Grant, she thought, seemed to be having a vintage morning tormenting his female staff.

  Mohammed Sharif hesitated outside Superintendent Longley’s door and took a deep breath. Summonses from superintendents to lowly detective constables were rare and he suspected that nothing but trouble lay behind the panelled wood. He knocked and responded to the muffled summons to find both Longley and DCI Thackeray bent over the conference table with a number of maps spread out in front of them.

  “Come in, Omar,” Longley said with what Sharif interpreted as a moderately friendly if harassed expression. “We need the benefit of a bit of inside knowledge here.” Thackeray moved slightly to make space for the slim young DC at the table and he slid into the space between the tall, burly DCI and the short fat superintendent to get a view of their map of Bradfield, where a crooked line had been drawn in red marker pen across the town centre between the Heights and Aysgarth Lane.

  “The British Patriotic Party have helpfully decided they want to stage a march next weekend,” Thackeray explained. “Part of their build-up for the local elections, they claim. We wondered what you thought the reaction would be on the Asian side of town?”

  “Depends how close to Aysgarth Lane they want to come,” Sharif said, his voice as unemotional as he could make it.

  “Oh, right down the length of Aysgarth — naturally,” Longley said. “There’d be no bloody point in it from their point of view if they didn’t, would there? They seem to regard it as their own personal Garvaghy Road.”

  “Well, if you want a few more business premises burnt down, let them march,” Sharif said, not bothering to disguise his anger no
w. “The community’s seething as it is, what with the attacks on the little Malik girl and now Mohammed Iqbal in hospital half-dead. A gang of racists marching past the end of their streets is just what you need to set a match to the place again.”

  “We have the option of banning it,” Thackeray said. “They’ve applied for permission late, in any case, so we can get them on a technicality. Or so the lawyers at County claim.”

  “Then ban it,” Sharif said. “You’ll get nowt but trouble if you don’t.”

  “Then we’ll get complaints about tolerating no-go areas,” Longley said, resuming his normal place behind his desk. “I don’t want that.”

  “It is a no-go area at the moment,” Sharif said. “And it’ll get worse if this strike carries on. Even I’m keeping my head down up there and uniformed are still going around in vans. They cracked too many heads the other night for comfort. You’d better believe it.”

  Longley glanced at Thackeray and grunted in frustration.

  “I’ll talk to Brian Butler again and to County about banning the BPP,” he said reluctantly. “It’s Brian’s officers who’ll bear the brunt of any trouble, but personally I think Omar’s right. It’s too big a risk. We’d need a bloody army to keep the two sides apart. It’d be like Belfast at the height of the troubles.”

  “You’ll get a furious reaction from Ricky Pickles and his mates,” Thackeray said. “But I agree. It’s too risky to let them loose on Aysgarth Lane. You could suggest they parade around the other side of town, but that’s not what they want, is it? Far too tame.”

  “I need to talk to you about Pickles, sir,” Sharif said to Thackeray.

  “I’ll see you in my office in fifteen minutes,” Thackeray said. “And ask Kevin Mower to be there as well, will you?”

  “We’re going for a ban on the march,” Thackeray told Sharif and Mower fifteen minutes later when he returned to find both younger men standing waiting for him outside his office door.