by Rashad Salim
“Face down, shithead,” Billy said and shoved Nigel face down on the floor. He pulled out plastic handcuffs from his coat and tied Nigel’s hands together and then did the same to his ankles. Once that was done, he tied Nigel’s wrists to his ankles with another plastic binding for good measure. When he was finished he walked out into the hall.
Tom followed him out.
“Time to hit the road, mate,” Billy said.
“Thanks for not killing him.”
“Don’t mention it. Besides, there’s always his release date to look forward to.” Billy gave him a wink and opened the front door.
Tom wondered how long DS Barker and the other police officers would take. There was no way Billy could stay to face the police after what he had done to Nigel.
Since Tom hadn’t laid a finger on Nigel, he knew it was easier to claim Billy had been responsible for Nigel’s state. As for himself, he was well aware he had been complicit in the forcible entry into Nigel’s home and subsequent beating but that was something he had been prepared to confess to without any reluctance.
Billy walked down the garden path and headed for his car while Tom stood at Nigel’s front gate.
When Billy got into his car, which had been parked at a safe distance from Nigel’s home, he drove back and stopped outside the house. He unrolled the windows.
Tom walked out onto the road.
“I just wanted to thank you for everything,” Billy said.
Tom smiled. “I did it for Chris.”
Billy smiled back. “And John.”
Tom nodded.
Billy laughed. “You were a lot more help than you realise.”
“Where are you going to go now?” Tom asked.
“Back to where I came from.” He winked. “What about you? Back to Nottingham?”
“Nah.”
“You gonna take that promotion?”
“I don’t know after all this...”
“You should,” Billy said and stuck his hand out.
They shook hands and Billy drove off.
Tom watched him leave and then sat on Nigel’s garden wall to wait for DS Barker to arrive.
While he waited he thought about the week’s events and marvelled at how much had happened so quickly. It might have been a hectic week so far, he thought, but it wasn’t over yet.
As two police cars approached Nigel’s home, Tom prepared himself mentally for whatever struggles lay ahead but for the first time he was no longer afraid.
Book Description
It’s the summer of 1991 and sixteen-year old Asim Patel is enjoying a game of football when he discovers the corpse of a local boy and may have seen whoever dumped him.
DC Barry Cole has been with the Binford Police force for less than a week when he is assigned to the murder investigation team.
News of the boy’s murder sends shockwaves around Binford and Asim experiences notoriety in the local community for his discovery. When another local boy is abducted and later found murdered, the town erupts in mass hysteria.
In a cruel twist of fate Asim finds himself linked to the second victim too. And the third...
Unprepared and guided by an erratic partner, DC Cole must face mounting pressure everywhere from the media and the local authority to stop the killings and catch the serial killer responsible.
Told through the eyes of those at the centre of the investigation, The Binford Snatcher finally reveals the true extent of the panic within the local community during this era in Binford’s history.
For fans of Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick, Harlan Coben’s Mickey Bolitar series, Kevin Brooks, Bali Rai, Chris Carter, Barry Lyga, Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.
Prologue
DC Cole
Can a town be cursed? I’ll let you decide.
Asim
I love Binford.
I want to be clear about that despite everything that’s happened in the town.
When I often think about how it all got started for me I can’t help but wonder what might have been if I knew how to kick a ball.
1
May, 1991
Asim
It was a Saturday night. I was messing around in the front garden with Omar, a classmate and friend I’d known since we were five years old. We were kicking a football about after having spent most of the afternoon fooling around in the local neighbourhood, which was how we spent every Saturday.
My best friend, Maqsood or ‘Max’ as we called him, hadn’t made it because he was busy helping out with some DIY work going on at his house. At least that’s the reason he had given Omar who had passed it onto me to explain why he had shown up at my house alone.
The road outside my house rarely had vehicles pass by and so we moved out further apart allowing us more distance. I stayed in the garden while Omar had moved across the road. My front garden had a driveway where my dad parked his car but right now it was vacant and we made the most of the extra space.
Omar was tubby but quick. He wasn’t as good as Max – since hardly anyone was – but he was a much better footballer than me. I was the worst player ever.
This was something I proved when I kicked the football with too much power and sent it flying towards the end of the road about fifty feet away. That wouldn’t have been a problem if the almost-suburban area where I lived wasn’t right beside a canal because that’s where the football had landed.
Omar and I looked at each other but he was the first to speak.
“I hope you can swim.”
I kicked myself and waved him off as I made my way towards the canal.
It was past ten o’ clock in the evening and I found myself wishing we had stopped messing around way before it had gotten dark. Fortunately the light from the streetlamps was bright enough to give me enough visibility for the canal.
When I reached the edge of the canal and looked down at the shallow waters, which couldn’t have been deeper than four feet where the ball went in, panic came over me and it had nothing to do with getting the ball back.
From where I was standing I could see something under a few planks of wood dumped in the canal. It was hard to believe but there was no doubt about what I was looking at.
There was a body laying face down in the canal. A male I guessed due to the short hair.
It had been wrapped around a large plastic sheet which had come loose.
“Hurry up, Ass-im!”
I moved around to get a better look. I had to slide down the side of the canal and although I didn’t want to get my trainers dirty I slid down to get closer. I was less than ten feet away from the body when I decided what to do about this.
“What’s takin’ you so long?” I heard Omar say, he was walking towards me now.
“I found somethin’!”
“What?”
“There’s someone down here! Go get help!”
I watched the body. It didn’t move. I thought it might have been a boy around my age.
“What you talkin’ about?”
I turned around and saw Omar standing at the edge of the canal. Before I could shout my instructions again I saw the look on his face that told me he had spotted the body. He spun around and took off towards my house shouting ‘help!” over and over again.
My heart beat faster and harder as I listened to Omar’s voice, knowing he was going to alarm anyone that heard him. I looked at the body and wondered if the person was dead. I hoped not but even then I knew that was likely.
I felt a sudden need to get away from the body and climbed back up until I was back on the ground beside the canal. I was staggering to my feet when a white van nearby started up and drove past me slowly. I looked at the driver’s window but it was dark inside the van and I couldn’t make out anything except that the driver had been wearing a hat.
I watched the van drive away and wondered if I should have tried to stop the driver and told him what I had found but the van was too far away for that by the time I snapped out of it. Besides, I thought,
Omar had alerted plenty of people with his shrieking. I saw a few of my neighbours accompanying Omar towards me.
He ran up to me and told me an ambulance was on its way. My neighbours caught up with us and asked me lots of questions and took a look at the body for themselves but I didn’t take any notice of them. I wasn’t paying attention to them because I was too focused on the white van that had passed me by so slowly. Two things were on my mind in that moment I stood surrounded by all those people.
Did it mean anything that the van didn’t have its lights on? And had the driver seen me?
2
DC Cole
I had been with the Binford police department for less than a week when I got assigned the case.
I was at the station going over some paperwork at my desk when DI Richardson called me from his car phone.
“Cole, get your arse down here ASAP.”
At that point all I knew was a body had been found.
“Right,” I said and stood up. “Be there soon.”
Up until then I had only met DI Richardson a few times and didn’t know what to make of him. He seemed like an alright bloke – pleasant enough when introducing himself during my orienteering – but I didn’t get any clues about what he was like to work with.
He was the senior officer I would be working alongside during my time with the department and had showed me around, helping me to settle into the team as best as he could but there was something about that felt out of place with him.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it and dismissed it. I figured whatever it was, it wouldn’t be a problem. In time I got to know how wrong I’d be about that.
When I reached the crime scene with a uniformed officer, it was being handled routinely: cordoned off and being analysed by the forensic team. A large crowd of local residents had formed on Oakland Place. The local gossiping was in full swing by now. I wondered how many of them knew anything important relating to the case.
“Cole!”
I looked around and saw DI Richardson waving me over from the other side of the road. He was beside the cordon and when I reached him he lifted it up so we could enter the crime scene.
“Glad you could join us,” he said and led the way towards the edge of the canal.
Dr Booth, the pathologist from the police department I had seen in the corridors once or twice, emerged from the canal. He wore waist high waterproof overalls and made his way towards us. Behind him, two members of the forensic team dressed in white body suits preserved the area around the body with a tent.
“Who found the body?” I asked.
“Local boy,” Richardson said and nodded in the direction of an Asian teenager who was talking to some uniformed officers near the cordon.
“Any idea who he is?”
Richardson shook his head.
“How long’s he been dead?”
“We’re about to find out now,” Richardson said as Dr Booth reached us.
“What can you tell us, Dr?” Richardson asked him.
“Just the usual. I’m afraid, not much at this stage.”
“Cause of death? Time of death?” I asked.
“The boy was strangled and I would say he’s been deceased at least half a day.”
“He wasn’t killed down there was he? Dragged down and finished off?”
Booth shook his head. “There aren’t any signs of a struggle and no foot tracks belonging to him. Just those of the lad who found him and a much bigger print. Most likely of the person who left him here.”
Richardson and I thanked the doctor and he left us.
“So what do you reckon?” I asked Richardson.
“Too early yet. Don’t wanna jump to any conclusions.”
“Mugging?”
Richardson said nothing.
“Attempted rape?”
“...Like I said, can’t be makin’ assumptions at this stage, can we?” he gave me a stern look. “We’ll get more answers when the post mortem’s done. Right now we’ve got to see if we have any witnesses.”
We walked over to the two boys who discovered the body.
“Did he see anything?” I asked Richardson.
“Let’s find out.” Richardson told me the other officers on the scene had already interviewed the boys separately and managed to get down all the information they could get.
We approached the two boys and introduced ourselves. The boys told us their names. Asim and Omar.
I looked at Asim. “You the one who found the body?”
He nodded.
“How did you find it?”
“I already told the other policeman everythin’.”
I nodded. “I know.” I smiled. “Sorry, I was a bit late to all this. Just wanted to catch up now if you don’t mind filling me in too.”
The boys told us how they were playing football and Asim ended up discovering the body by accident. I thought it was a good thing Asim couldn’t kick for shit. Had it not been for the football, the body may have gone undiscovered for a lot longer.
“I understand you saw a suspicious vehicle right after you came across the body,” Richardson asked Asim. “Is that right?”
The boy looked at Richardson and then at me. “...I don’t know about that.”
His fat friend nudged him in the ribs. “What d’ya mean you don’t know? Tell them what you saw!”
“Look, I told the other officer about that.”
“And?” I asked.
“And I don’t know what I saw.”
I sighed. It was understandable. It was very common for witnesses to challenge what they had seen.
“What do you mean?” Richardson asked him.
“I mean, I saw this white van drive past me but now that I think about it I think I might have overreacted. I was shook up from seein’ the dead body and then the van drove past. It might have been a coincidence.”
I nodded.
We asked the boys a few more questions and when we were about to leave Omar called out to us.
“Was he murdered?”
I looked at him but said nothing.
“This investigation has just begun,” Richardson said.
“But he didn’t fall in, did he?” Omar asked.
His friend shook his head and cursed under his breath.
“Just leave it to us,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about this now. We’ll take care of it.”
“Come on,” Asim said and led his friend away.
Richardson and I walked over to his car. I surveyed our surroundings and all the people we passed, taking it all in and wondered why the boy had been murdered.
I was about to get in when Richardson gave me a look. “Welcome to Binford.”
3
Asim
It was madness. The cops showed up and turned the whole place into a circus. I had the cops talking to me and Omar with all my neighbours and everyone else around us watching, all trying to get some answers from us. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, before the cops left, the press showed up.
“Why did you tell them that?” Omar asked.
“Tell them what?”
“About that van.”
I didn’t answer at first.
We were sitting down by the kerb, watching the festivities around us – there were police cars, TV news crews and another ambulance still around.
I wanted to go to my room and stay there but I had to wait outside with Omar until his dad came to pick him up.
“...I never should’ve mentioned it.”
“Why? You told the cops you weren’t exactly sure what you saw but that wasn’t it, was it?”
I stayed silent.
“Is it ‘cause you’re scared?”
“Fuck no! It ain’t that.”
“Then what?”
“Okay,” I said. “Put it this way: say I told them about the van and they go lookin’ for a van, it’s gonna waste their time. It might fuck up their investigation with me sendin’ them down the wrong path.”
He spoke softly, “I never thought of that.”
“Exactly. Anyway, they know about the white van now. So if they find out anythin’ related to that, it’ll help enough.” Right after the words left my mouth I remembered I hadn’t thought to look at the license plate and cursed myself.
“Hello, is it Asim?”
I looked up and saw a white woman in her late twenties standing in front of me. There was a white man beside her. He had a camera strap around his neck and held a notebook. I looked at them both and swore in my mind.
“Yeah and I’m Omar,” my friend said.
I whispered an insult at him but he took no notice. He was beaming a smile at the reporters and they smiled back. The woman stuck her hand out.
“My name is Laura.” Omar shook hands with her. “And this is Pete,” she nodded in her colleague’s direction.
Pete smiled at us.
Laura stuck her hand out to me and I looked at it. I didn’t want to talk to her or any other reporters but I didn’t want to be rude by not shaking her hand so I took it.
“May I sit down?”
I gestured for her to go ahead. She sat down.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to talk to you boys.”
Although I couldn’t see it I could tell Omar was still smiling that stupid fat smile.
“You’re from the newspapers, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I bet they’re from CNN!”
I punched Omar in the arm for that. “CNN is American, fool.”
Laura told us she was from the Today newspaper. I was vaguely aware of it. It was a national paper I had seen lying around at my cousin’s house.
“I hear that you’re the one who first discovered the body. Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
Omar told her about the football and what a bad footballer I was.
I glared at him and wished his dad would hurry up and take him away.
