Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “It’s been thirty-six hours then,” Mower said. “Long enough for her to have gone where-ever she was going and to have got in touch.”

  “I talked to a couple of her school-friends, sarge. Those who live close. No-one knew of any other reason why she might have gone away. She’s in the sixth form, working hard. Wants to be a lawyer. Didn’t have a love-life that anyone knew about. I think we should begin to take it more seriously.”

  Mower looked at her, and wondered about Rita Desai’s love-life, as he had wondered constantly for the whole day she had been in the office, drafted in temporarily from Leeds because of her fluency in several Asian languages. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, not tall, with delicate hands and feet and fine bones in an oval face carefully made up to accentuate the brown skin and dark eyes.

  She was wearing a deep red short sleeved shirt over black trousers, a compromise modest enough, he guessed, to satisfy cultural requirements at home but not modest enough to disguise the rounded breasts and slim hips from his searching gaze. Her hair was long and thick but tied back in a plait, leaving Mower’s imagination plenty of room to play with the notion of releasing it as a preliminary to more intimate explorations.

  But this, he decided, was not the moment to pursue his fantasies any further than the marginally warmer than necessary smile which he bestowed upon his colleague. He was not sure whether or not he imagined the faint movement of her lips in response.

  “I’ll have to talk to the DCI,” he said. “If this is more than a missing person - after all she’s seventeen, this girl, and doesn’t have to stay at home if she doesn’t want to. If it’s more - worse - he’ll have to give the go-ahead for inquiries.”

  Rita Desai nodded non-comittally and went back to her desk, as Mower sighed heavily and shuffled together the papers which she had collected on Safi Haque’s disappearance. Mower was used to his boss’s moods. Michael Thackeray had never been the easiest of men to work for. But his temper since Laura Ackroyd’s abrupt departure for London had been so unpredictable that Mower had taken evasive action and kept out of his way as much as he could.

  Fortunately for him, Bradfield CID had no major cases under investigation in the dog-days of July. Burglars kept on discovering inviting windows left open by sweltering citizens, handbags still got detached from the arms of window-shopping women, drivers still discovered that their carefully parked vehicles had dematerialised within minutes, drunken youths poured out of pubs and clubs on hot and sticky Friday nights as eager as ever to vent their frustrations on any contemporary who had the temerity to look them in the eye too hard. In other words, the loose change of crime kept spilling across Bradfield’s dusty streets.

  But for the past few weeks armed robbers and murderers, rapists and arsonists had left the mid-summer Yorkshire town to rest in sun-drenched tranquillity. It was as if the place was holding its breath, with tickets booked and bags packed for the mass exodus to sun and sea which would begin as soon as the schools closed their doors for the summer holidays.

  But now Mower knew he must risk a conversation with his boss and persuade him into the action he seemed reluctant to take. Putting on his Italian jacket, straightening his silk tie and brushing a hand over his fashionably cropped, dark hair, he flashed Rita Desai another smile across the room before picking up the file and knocking on Michael Thackeray’s door.

  The DCI barely looked up from the files in front of him as Mower came in and although his desk was covered with paper-work and he held a pen in his hand Mower doubted whether the chief inspector was focussing on anything outside his own head. He was in shirt sleeves, slumped over his desk like some bulky piece of flotsam washed up by a gale, the ash-tray filled to overflowing and the air thick with smoke.

  “Guv?” Mower said, tension sending a twinge of pain across his back where the scar tissue from old wounds was still sensitive. Thackeray’s eyes flickered in his direction, chilly and neutral as a November day.

  “Guv, we’ve got bad feelings about this Asian girl who’s gone missing. I think it’s more than just a runaway.”

  “Bad feelings? What’s that supposed to mean, sergeant?” Mower sat down and loosened his tie. The room was stiflingly hot and the window tightly closed and he could feel the sweat running beneath his shirt as he told Thackeray about the inquiries which had drawn a blank at Safi Haque’s home and school.

  “The schools break up for the summer holidays next week,” he said. “If she was going to do a runner why not wait till the end of term?”

  “Perhaps her boyfriend was importunate,” Thackeray said dismissively. “It’s not unknown amongst the young. They’re always burning for something, usually sex.”

  “We can’t find anyone who believes she even had a boyfriend, guv,” Mower objected. “According to everyone we’ve spoken to she was a dutiful Muslim daughter at home and a studious pupil at school. If there’s a man in the case we can’t identify him - not from initial inquiries, anyway.”

  Thackeray held out his hand for the file which Mower was still holding. He flicked through it, pausing at the photograph of Safi Haque for a moment, stony-faced. The poor bastard’s aged ten years in a couple of days, Mower thought, taking in Thackeray’s grey pallor and the dark circles under his eyes and his more than usually dishevelled dark hair. But although he knew the precise cause of Thackeray’s distress he also knew there was nothing he could say which would be remotely acceptable by way of help or consolation.

  “A pretty girl,” Thackeray said at last. “There’ll be a man involved one way or another. There always is. They’re hung out to dry between the two cultures, these kids. She could be trying to avoid an arranged marriage, or she could have got involved with someone the parents don’t approve of, decided to defy them and run off with him.” Thackeray hesitated and Mower could see his lips tighten as he considered the other alternative which had also been at the forefront of Mower’s mind.

  “Brothers?” Thackeray asked.

  “Two, one older, one younger,” Mower said. “You’re thinking of the case in Manchester last year? The brother who tried to kill his sister because of a relationship with a white bloke?”

  “We’d be fools not to consider something like that if she doesn’t turn up safely soon,” Thackeray said. “Are you sure she’s not just been packed off back to Pakistan for some reason? That’s not uncommon either, is it?”

  “Rita Desai says not. And I can’t see any reason why the parents would report her missing in that case. But we can check with the airlines, in case someone else had taken her out of the country. So, we start a search, guv?” Mower asked.

  “Low key,” Thackeray said. “Use Desai to liaise with the family. Keep me informed.”

  “Sir,” Mower said, taking back his file and retreating rapidly towards the door.

  “Kevin,” Thackeray said abruptly.

  “Guv?”

  But Thackeray shook his head and lit another cigarette, his hand shaking slightly.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s not important. It’ll keep.” And Kevin Mower closed the door, disconcerted and dismayed at his sense of relief.

  It had been a long, hot, frustrating day but Mower was still surprised when his uncharacteristically tentative invitation to Rita Desai to join him for a drink after work in the Woolpack was accepted. He sat at a corner table watching the slim, erect figure standing at the bar. He was mesmerised by the thick plait of dark hair which reached almost to her waist, and he knew that he wanted Rita Desai more than he had wanted any woman for a very long time.

  She had insisted on getting in the first round and came back through the early evening crowds carefully carrying his pint and a long glass of some pink liquid he did not recognise and a faint smile on her lips.

  “What the hell’s that?” he asked.

  “Campari soda,” she said. “It’s Italian. Very refreshing. I’m surprised they had it here, actually. This isn’t exactly the Frog and Banana, is it?” She glanced round the
gloomily unreconstructed bar with its beer-sodden carpet and tatty stools with a faint smile. “We get a better class of boozer in Leeds.”

  “They don’t insist you behave like one of the lads in Leeds, then?” he said. “Pints all round and a chicken vindaloo to follow?”

  She laughed, and her dark eyes lit up as she dropped a striped straw into her drink and drank deeply, watching him over the rim of the glass.

  “You can try to do it that way,” she said, her face animated now and a half smile still playing round her lips in a way which quickened Mower’s breathing to such an extent that he consciously told himself to calm down. “And I can vindaloo them under the table if I have to. Naturally. But in my experience it doesn’t work. I’m not one of the lads, am I?”

  “Obviously not,” Mower said, giving her an appreciative look, which in spite of his determination to remain cool, fastened itself inexorably on the curve of her breasts beneath the loose red folds of her shirt. She met his gaze this time with a definite twitch of her lips and a flash of something which was perhaps more than amusement in her brown eyes. She turned her attention to her drink.

  “That’s alcoholic, is it?” Mower asked doubtfully as the level in her glass dropped at speed. She laughed at him this time.

  “It is, sarge, since you ask. I got a taste for it on holiday in Portofino. And no, I’m not a Muslim, so you don’t need to be looking over your shoulder when you’re seen out with me.”

  “Thought never crossed my mind,” Mower protested, although both ideas had - the going out and the worry about whether he needed to watch his back. “So, how do you find Bradfield CID after the big swinging city?”

  “Fine,” Rita said. “Not as unreconstructed as I expected.” She glanced at him sideways with a mischievous grin. “Quite passable, really. Your DCI’s a bit dour, though.”

  “Right,” Mower said. “He’s having a rough time. His girl-friend’s just left him.”

  “I see,” Rita said. “And what about yours? Your girl-friend, I mean?” Mower felt a warm glow begin to spread through him that had nothing to do with the excellent quality of the Woolpack’s ale which surged up from the cobweb encrusted cellar below like ambrosia from Hades.

  “I’ve no-one special at the moment,” he said happily and, unusually, truthfully. “You?” She shook her head, but even as he framed the words to invite her to have dinner with him, he flinched as a heavy hand gripped the shoulder where a knife had been thrust too recently.

  “There you are, lad,” detective superintendent Jack Longley said. “They told me I’d find you in here.”

  Swallowing hard to still the nausea which Longley’s grip had induced, Mower struggled half-way to his feet only to have the superintendent press him down into his seat again.

  “What are you drinking, Kevin?” he asked. “I want a word.” He glanced at Rita Desai meaningfully and to Mower’s silent fury she took the hint with a rueful smile, drained her glass and got to her feet.

  “Thanks for the drink, Kevin. See you,” she said, swinging her long plait of hair over her shoulder and sliding away through the crowds of drinkers without a backward glance.

  “Pretty lass, that,” Longley said. “As bright as she looks, is she?”

  “Brighter, I should say, sir,” Mower said grimly, trying to keep his breathing steady as he waited for the pain in his shoulder to subside. He watched impatiently while Longley ploughed his way to the bar and back, took off his jacket and settled himself into the seat Rita had just vacated. His shirt was damp and creased and he took a deep draught of his pint and wiped the froth off his lips with a sigh of satisfaction before he spoke.

  “By ‘eck, it’s hot,” he said. Mower nodded, gazing at his own drink, trying to hide the anxiety in his eyes and knowing that he was not going to like the reason for this unprecedented approach in his off-duty time.

  “Sir,” he said neutrally.

  “This Asian lass who’s disappeared,” Longley said. “You reckon it’s serious, do you?”

  “DC Desai went back to the family this afternoon, sir,” Mower said. “She doesn’t seem to have taken much with her if she’s run away. Her mother couldn’t be sure but she couldn’t give any sort of list of clothes that were missing, toiletries, that sort of thing. She went to school with one small sports bag, dressed in school uniform, navy blue shalwar kameez, white head-scarf….”

  “Aye, right, well I reckon we’d best take it seriously then,” Longley said vaguely. He fell silent over his glass again and Mower waited for him to get to the real reason for his visit to The Woolpack. Mower knew he had told Longley absolutely nothing so far that he did not know already. His pint glass drained, Longley waved away Mower’s automatic offer of another drink and drew his chair closer to Mower’s. Although his fleshy features shone with sweat he looked pale and ill at ease.

  “I wanted a private word,” he said heavily. “I’m worried about Michael Thackeray. I looked for him late this afternoon and he’d gone already. His office looked like a tip…smokey…”

  “He’s got some personal problems, sir,” Mower said coldly. “That’s all I know.”

  “Laura Ackroyd?” Longley said.

  Mower shrugged, an instinctive gesture which sent another twinge of pain across his back.

  “She’s gone to London,” he said, unable to keep an edge of anger out of his voice. This sort of interrogation, he thought, was seriously out of order and he did not mind Longley knowing what he thought.

  “For good? She’s left him?” Longley persisted, obviously prepared to bull-doze over the sergeant’s unspoken unease.

  “I honestly don’t know , sir. I think if you want to talk about this you should talk to Mr. Thackeray, not me…”

  “Is he drinking?” Longley’s question hung in the air between them like an electric charge and Mower shrugged again helplessly.

  “I don’t know, sir,” he said again. “I’ve not seen any sign of it.”

  “And you probably wouldn’t tell me if you had, would you?” Longley said. “Aye, well, I’ve no objection to loyalty, so long as it’s not blind loyalty. So keep an eye out, lad, and if you’re worried, I want to know about it. Right?”

  “Right, sir,” Mower said unhappily. Worry was not the word he would have chosen to describe what he had been feeling about his boss for the last week or more. He forced his mind back to Longley who had drained his pint and was leaning across the table with an intensity which only added fuel to Mower’s anxiety. If Thackeray was an immovable object, he thought, and Longley an irresistible force, there was a serious danger that he might get pulped in the collision when it came. Longley gave the sergeant a smile that had more than a touch of a leer in it.

  “Now then, if that sharp young lass wants to know why I wanted a word, you can tell her it’s all to do with this charity appeal I’ve got myself involved in through the Rotary Club,” he said. “The new Asian cultural centre. Doing our bit for community relations, we are, just like the chief constable says we should, and I reckon the junior officers in CID should get involved an’all. I’d have mentioned it to Mr. Thackeray but in present circumstances….It’s a pity you and him aren’t joiners. There’s a lot to be said for being in the Lodge, Rotary, all that. Keeps you in touch, gives you summat to do of an evening apart from chasing skirt - or brooding.”

  “Sir,” Mower said helplessly, wondering whether Longley’s legendarily formidable wife would see his activities in quite the same light as he did.

  Longley leaned back in his chair, his usually benign face stony as he stared at Mower’s thin features and bright dark eyes before apparently making up his mind to say more.

  “I don’t want Michael Thackeray wrecking his career over the bloody Ackroyd woman,” he said. “And if I judge you right, lad, you don’t either. So think on about what I’ve said.” He lumbered to his feet without another word and pushed his way through the crowds towards the door.

  “But what the bloody hell does he think I can do about i
t,” Mower muttered angrily as he drained his own glass. “If Michael Thackeray wants to go to hell, he’ll go there his own way and there’s damn all I can do to stop him.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  From inside Deadmans Quay police station, a Victorian hulk of dirty yellow brick beached on a lazily curving reach of the Thames, Laura Ackroyd gazed at the tiny patch of blue sky visible through the grimy panes of a high interview room window. The building seemed to be one of the few that had survived the worst the Luftwaffe and Docklands redevelopment could hurl at East London and she wondered whether, in spite of the blitz of destruction and rebuilding, attitudes had changed much since Jack the Ripper had stalked the riverside alleys and courts not far from here.

  The terraced slum tenements and courts had long gone, replaced by featureless blocks of flats. The poverty had proved harder to eradicate as this part of London gave shelter to wave and after wave of refugees and immigrants looking for work just as the once bustling docks closed down and fell into dereliction.

  “You can’t have got a very clear view from the top of that escalator,” detective inspector Steve Wesley said sceptically as Laura slowly turned the pages of glossy police photographs he had put in front of her. “Too far away, surely, weren’t you?”

  “I didn’t get a good look at any of them until I shouted,” Laura said. “That made them all look round. And one of them, the tallest, stood for a moment staring at me…” She shuddered. “Almost as if I’d no right to interfere…”

  She turned another page, still finding it hard to come to terms with what she had witnessed the previous night or with the man who leaned over her a fraction too closely as she worked her way through his mug-shots.

  “Friday’s a bad night,” Wesley said. “We get a lot of drunken scuffles and brawls when the pubs turn out. But usually no more than a cracked head or two. They tell me it’s nothing to what it used to be like in the old days when men round here had jobs and money to burn.”

  Laura looked at him for a moment in disbelief. He was a tall man, grey of hair and pallor and unusually thin for his hard-drinking profession. His long face, lantern-jawed above a prominent Adam’s apple which bobbed alarmingly as he spoke, seemed ingrained with cynicism. He met her gaze with chilly grey eyes and a thin-lipped smile.