Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  The spine of the neighbourhood was Aysgarth Lane which carried the traffic to and from the Yorkshire Dales to the north up and down the steep incline into the town centre. This busy commercial route had been taken over by mainly Asian businesses selling everything from insurance to shalwar kameez and saris.

  It could never be said that Bradfield had clutched its new residents too close to its stony heart. They were tolerated with a certain gruff humour, no more, and as their numbers increased and the textile industry crumbled, those natives who could afford it moved out to the Dales and the rest kept themselves to themselves in largely separate suburbs and estates. Aysgarth Lane had fallen into dereliction before it began to thrive again as Asian entrepreneurs snapped up abandoned property at knock-down prices. It was now widely accepted that you could get the best curry in England in Aysgarth Lane, drive the hardest bargain and find the right family to arrange for the most beautiful Muslim wife. It was a largely self-sufficent and increasingly self-confident community which owed more to banks in Karachi than Yorkshire.

  Only when the Asian residents got stroppy - as they did from time to time about discrimination, prostitution, fatwas from Iran or insults from Westminster - did the native Bradfielders’ resentment manifest itself openly. Then letters to the Gazette tended to ask querulously what these people fortunate enough to have been allowed to settle in England could possibly have to complain about.

  But this morning, Rita Desai concluded, as she made her way back to her car which she had parked around a corner, it was anxiety not anger which predominated. She slipped into the Escort, pushed back the white scarf with which she had covered her dark hair, Muslim-fashion, and picked up the mobile phone to report in.

  “It’s panic stations down here, sarge,” she said crisply when she got through to Kevin Mower. “There’s some very very frightened people on Aysgarth Lane.”

  Michael Thackeray had come into work that Saturday morning with something like relief and without the prospect of overtime pay which had tempted many less senior officers to volunteer their services. He was desperately tired but anything, he thought, was better than spending a barren weekend in his flat with nothing to think about except Laura’s absence and his own reaction to it.

  Detective sergeant Kevin Mower had walked into the office hard on Thackeray’s heels.

  “Has anyone found anything?” Thackeray asked.

  “Nothing at all, guv, so far. What do you want to do about the canal?”

  Thackeray thought of the dark, little-used ribbon of water which slid through the town not far from Aysgarth Lane and his lips tightened. The waters were deeper and murkier than those of the fast-moving river Maze and a favourite target for suicides. Twenty miles away and more than ten years earlier he had looked into those black depths himself and knew the seduction they could hold.

  “Do nothing just yet,” he said. “But you could ask county to put the underwater team on stand-by.” Mower raised an eyebrow.

  “Between a rock and a hard place, aren’t we? Damned by the Asian community if we do nothing and she turns up dead, damned by the bean-counters if we spend a fortune looking and she turns up alive.”

  “What’s the house-to-house turning up?” Thackeray asked.

  “Not a lot,” Mower said gloomily. “Rita Desai’s been down to Aysgarth Lane to have a mooch around incognito, as it were. She says people are obviously worried and seem to be thinking the worst. We’re getting the same story from the neighbours as we got at the school. Absolutely no reason for her to have gone voluntarily: a lovely girl, dutiful daughter, hard-working - the Muslim equivalent of the Virgin Mary by all accounts.”

  “But you don’t believe it?” Thackeray asked sharply. Mower shrugged.

  “Who am I to judge,” he said. “Where I come from seventeen year old girls go clubbing, get stoned, wear micro-skirts and have all been on the Pill for so many years they’ve forgotten when they first popped it. There’s a cultural gulf here as deep as the Grand Canyon.”

  “What about Rita Desai?” Mower hesitated for a second before concluding that the question was a purely professional one.

  “She’s still out there, guv. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “When she gets back,” Thackeray said. They were interrupted by a knock on the door. A uniformed officer put his head round.

  “There’s a young lass downstairs says she wants to talk to someone about Safi Haque,” he said. “Reckons she’s a friend from her school.”

  “We’ll be down,” Thackeray said sharply.

  Tracy Sullivan was exactly the sort of seventeen year old Kevin Mower recognised and reckoned he understood. She was tall, skinny, tanned and blonde and her black lycra mini and skimpy cut-off top left plenty of room for air to circulate around her long legs and flat stomach. Mower found it hard to drag his eyes from her navel, where a gold ring glinted intriguingly as she wriggled in her chair. She tossed a mane of curly hair away from eyes dark with mascara and smiled encouragingly at the two policemen across the interview room table.

  “I wouldn’t say we was close friends,” Tracy said after due consideration. “But we were in school together since we were little kids. Primary school, I mean. She lived just round the corner from us then. We walked home together sometimes. Still did up till I left Sutton Park.” The girl ran a hand across her mass of hair. “I’m an apprentice now at Mahogany, the salon in town just at the end of Aysgarth Lane. You know it? It’s unisex. I could do you a special deal if you like.” She flashed a predatory grin at the darkly handsome Mower who could not prevent his lips from twitching though he hoped that Thackeray had not noticed.

  “You kept in touch, even after you left school?” Thackeray asked.

  “Well, not in touch, but I saw Safi now and again, know what I mean?” Tracy said. “Like the other afternoon, for instance.”

  “Which afternoon exactly?” Thackeray asked sharply. Tracey thought for a moment.

  “Monday it must have been. We don’t open Monday - no custom after t’weekend. That’s the day I go to college.”

  “What time was this?” Thackeray asked.

  “About four o’clock,” Tracy said. “I go to the leisure and beauty annexe up Aysgarth and I were on my way home.”

  “And Safi?”

  “She were in a car, weren’t she? It came out of one o’them side streets into Aysgarth and stopped on t’corner right by were I were standing. I waved at her and she waved back but she didn’t open t’window or owt. They just drove on round the corner when the lights changed.”

  “Did they turn into town or the other way?” Mower asked.

  “They roared off up the hill, like, going fast.”

  “Out of town, then?” Thackeray said.

  “I suppose so. Up the hill towards Sutton Park.”

  “Do you know what sort of a car it was?” Tracy shook her head.

  “It were a big one, but not a taxi. Silver-grey. It looked expensive. I wondered were she were off to in a nice looking motor like that.”

  “And who was driving? Could you see.”

  “She were with a couple of blokes. Not young, like. I thought it were maybe her dad, or an uncle or summat like that.”

  “Asian, then, not white?”

  “Well, I thought they were Pakis, but I’m not right sure,” Tracy said. “Dark hair, any road.”

  “You didn’t recognise them?” Thackeray pressed her. Tracy shook her head again.

  “They all look alike, don’t they?” she said, with a seraphic smile.

  Safi Haque’s parents sat side by side on a sofa in their living room gazing at Chief inspector Thackeray in mute desperation. Mrs. Haque had covered her hair hastily with her head-scarf when her husband had led Thackeray and Rita Desai into the room and had so far said nothing. Mohammed Haque, his dark-eyes sunken and his beard flecked with grey, had been little more forthcoming when Thackeray had explained when and where Tracy Sullivan had seen their daughter.

  “You have no ide
a who these men could have been?” Thackeray said again, an edge of impatience in his voice now. Mohammed shook his head.

  “I do not know anyone with a car like the one you describe,” he said heavily. “People in Aysgarth Lane do not have big cars. Only taxi drivers.” That was true enough, Thackeray knew. Bradfield had its share of Asian businessmen who had done well for themselves in the town, but like the prosperous white families before them they had tended to move out to more attractive suburbs as soon as they could afford it. And the big cars the taxi-drivers flogged around the town were more likely to fail their MoT than impress a sharp-eyed lass like Tracy Sullivan.

  “Surely she wouldn’t accept a lift with anyone she didn’t know,” Thackeray said.

  “She would not,” Safi’s father came back quickly, glancing at his wife who kept her eyes firmly on her hands which were clasped tightly on her lap.

  “Is there no-one, family, friends, Safi might have gone with?” Thackeray persisted. Mohammed Haque’s eyes darkened with anger.

  “Without telling her father?” he asked incredulously. “That is not the way we behave with young girls, chief inspector. No-one I know would take Safia away without asking me. It is not acceptable for her to go anywhere with a man without her father or her brother.”

  “And Safi would go along with that? She wouldn’t disobey you?” Thackeray ventured.

  “Never,” Haque said flatly, and broke into a tirade of Punjabi directed at his wife, who responded simply by shaking her head, her eyes full of unshed tears. Thackeray glanced at Rita Desai but she shook her head imperceptibly too, to indicate that the couple were not saying any more than they had already told them in English.

  “And you didn’t see Safi come home that night, either of you?”

  “She was here when we came home from the shop,” Mr. Haque said.

  “But on Wednesday she wasn’t?” Haque nodded unhappily and Thackeray sighed.

  “If what you say is true, Mr. Haque, then we have to assume that if Safi really was in that car on Monday afternoon, if for some reason she had accepted a lift, then she might have done the same again. And that might have something to do with the fact that you say she went to school that day, and the next, and the school say she never arrived. In which case the men in the car may have something to do with Safi’s disappearance.” At that Mrs. Haque gave a moan which indicated that although her command of spoken English was not good she had understood the gist of what for Thackeray was a reluctant conclusion.

  “Why should anyone want to take away my daughter?” Mohammed Haque asked desperately.

  “You have no idea?” Thackeray asked. “And no-one has been in touch with you about Safi?” Haque shook his head and shrugged while his wife buried her face in her hands. In the silence which followed the door opened and a young boy of about fifteen came into the room. Mohammed Haque turned to him and again began to speak rapidly in Punjabi. Thackeray watched Rita Desai’s intense concentration as she tried to follow the conversation.

  “This is..?” Thackeray broke in at length.

  “My youngest son Majeed,” Haque said. “I was explaining to him what you have said…” Majeed scowled angrily at the two police officers but said nothing. Again Rita Desai gave Thackeray the slightest of nods.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Haque,” Thackeray said quietly. “But there are only two reasons why criminals might take a young woman away by car: either to do her some physical harm or, more unusually I have to say, to extort money for her safe return. Do you have access to the sort of funds that might make a ransom a possible motive?” Haque looked bewildered at the question, which was reply enough for Thackeray.

  “I am not a rich man, chief inspector,” he said with dignity. “No-one could think that.” Then, realising the implication of what he had said, he shuddered.

  “Tomorrow we’ll widen the search,” Thackeray said heavily, thinking not only of the oily waters of the canal now but of the thousands of square miles of open country towards which Safi Haque had been heading when Tracy Sullivan had seen her in a large silver car. Bodies could, and often did, lie undiscovered on the Yorkshire moors for years. He fervently hoped that Safi’s would not be one of them.

  They left the Haques, after giving them Rita Desai’s mobile phone number and strict instructions to call her if anyone contacted them about Safi.

  “If it hadn’t been for Tracy we’d have had to get a warrant to search the house and they wouldn’t have liked that,” Thackeray said as Rita drove them back to the central police station. “No-one ever likes to admit that the father’s always the prime suspect in cases like this. It’s more comfortable to pin the blame on sex fiends and the rest of the tabloid monsters.”

  “I’d like to talk to the mother alone,” Rita said thoughtfully. “And the son.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Nothing she said, obviously, because she said nothing. But the son said something when he came in which, if I caught it right, sounded a bit odd.” Thackeray waited. He did not under-estimate Rita Desai.

  “I thought he said something like ‘Mother told you this is what would happen.’ I could be wrong.”

  “Tomorrow you can talk to them separately,” Thackeray said, an edge in his voice. “If there’s something they’re not telling us we’ll have them for wasting police time. D’you believe she was still at home until Wednesday?”

  “Not really,” Rita said. “I think maybe they were making their own efforts to find her and only came to us when they failed. But that’s just a hunch and Kevin Mower says you don’t like hunches. I could come back with Kevin. He speaks a bit of Punjabi.”

  “So I understand,” Thackeray said, giving her an amused glance. “He’s a talented lad, is our Kevin.”

  Rita Desai smiled demurely at nothing in particular and thought about those talents of Mower’s she would like to explore rather more urgently than his flair for languages. She would have to be careful, she thought. She suspected that Thackeray’s dour exterior concealed a very sharp mind and she did not want him jumping to premature conclusions.

  “More overtime then, sir?”

  “You’re not complaining, are you?” Thackeray asked.

  She flashed the DCI a real smile this time and was rewarded by the slightest twitch of the lips.

  “Seriously,” she said. “You think Safi Haque’s in trouble?”

  “I think Safi Haque’s probably dead,” Thackeray said, with chilly finality. “The problem now is where to start looking for the body.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Laura woke to a disturbance which she could not recognise, a combination of a hollow drumming and a high pitched wailing which sounded animal rather than human, although she did not think it could be. She glanced at her watch, took on board the state of her mouth - bad - and her head - worse -, sighed and rolled out of bed and pulled on a sweat-shirt over her pyjamas.

  She opened the door of Sally’s spare bedroom and the puzzle resolved itself immediately into a small boy lying rigid on his back on the polished floor kicking his heels and banging his fists and howling. Sally was standing over her son, her hands on her hips while Tom Massey, who was leaning lazily against the kitchen door, glanced in Laura’s direction with a grin.

  “Belt him, woman,” he said to Sally. “That’ll soon shut him up.”

  “Problem?” Laura asked superfluously.

  “Come on, Ben. Daddy’ll take you,” Sally said, only to be met with a renewed frenzy from the floor.

  “Take him where?” Laura asked Tom as she edged past him into the kitchen, put the kettle on and hunted in the fridge for orange juice.

  “We were going to take him to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark,” Tom said, watching Laura appreciatively as she poured herself a glass of juice and made coffee. “Down to the Isle of Dogs on the train and under the tunnel. You know the foot tunnel? Isambard Kingdom Brunel?”

  Laura shook her head to indicate not just ignorance of the great engineer’s problema
tic attempt to cross the Thames but her total inability to take on board the explanation which appeared to be hovering on Tom’s lips.

  “So what’s the problem?” she asked muzzily.

  “Sally thought she should stay here with you, but little Idi Amin there didn’t think that was such a good idea. She lets him wrap her round his little finger, you know?” Laura filled her coffee up with milk and took a deep draught, willing the caffeine to make it as far as her brain. She and Sally has stayed up late the previous evening with a bottle of vodka and very little tonic, a mistake she knew she would regret for the rest of the day.

  “Quite honestly all I want to do is wrap myself around a few paracetemol this morning,” she said. “If Sally wants to walk under the Thames - or even on it - don’t let me stop her.”

  “You coming to my gig tonight, then?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, Sally mentioned it. I’d love to,” Laura said. “If I’ve got my head together by then.” Tom moonlighted as a DJ in a local club at weekends. “But I didn’t bring any clothes to go clubbing. I might go up to the West End shopping later.”

  “They don’t dress up at my place,” Tom said. “We leave those door policies to the clubs up town.”

  She followed Tom back into the living room where Ben was drumming his heels with undiminished intensity although his wailing had subsided to a shuddering sob.

  “Don’t change your plans on account of me,” Laura said to Sally. “I’ll be fine here on my own. I need some more sleep. Leave me some keys so I can go out if I want to.”

  “Are you sure?” Sally asked warily, glancing at Ben. “We’ll be back mid-afternoon I should think.”

  “If you promised to take him, then take him,” Laura said. The sobbing had stopped and Ben was looking at her through narrowed eyes, his cheeks streaked with tears. Laura fought down a sudden urge to pick him up and cuddle him.