Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “You come,” he said but even before Laura could shake her head and swallow “Not on your life” in favour of a determined “No”, Ben had glanced at his mother’s angry face and thought better of this new obstructionist tack.

  “You can’t come,” he said. “Just mummy and daddy can come to the Cussy Tark.” Sally picked him up and shook him gently.

  “You are an obnoxious brat,” she said, clutching him to her ample bosom, their two bodies melding into one. “Come on, horror, let’s get you dressed.”

  “Am I right or am I right?” Tom asked no-one in particular when mother and son had disappeared into the bathroom. “He is one spoilt child.”

  “Confused, maybe?” Laura ventured. Tom shot her an sharp look and then subsided onto the sofa beside her with a slightly shame-faced grin.

  “You think I should be livin’ wit’ my baby-mother, Miz Laura?” he asked, adopting a West Indian accent which was obviously as alien to him as it was to her. “She don’ want me, man.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me,” Laura said.

  “No,” he agreed. “Sally tells me you’re going to write something about Osman Barre’s murder.”

  “Don’t you think I should?” Laura said defensively. Tom did not sound thrilled by the idea.

  “People round here aren’t crazy about the Press,” he said. “When the weasels bother to come down from that bloody tower, and out of the News International fortress in Wapping, they invariably get it wrong. I’ve no doubt someone up there is composing a piece at this minute to prove that Osman Barre was to blame for his own murder.”

  “You forget I was there,” Laura said quietly. “And Mrs. Barre wants the story written.”

  “No-one will talk to you about it,” Tom said with total conviction.

  “Well, if they won’t talk to the police and they won’t talk to the Press, how will they ever get justice?”

  “Justice? Well, now, there’s an old-fashioned concept,” Tom said lazily, leaning back in his seat, his eyes narrowing. “Let me know when you find it, will you? I’d be interested to see what it looks like.”

  When Sally and Tom had gone, clutching their wildly excited son between them, Laura went back to bed, buried her head under the duvet to keep out the daylight and slept heavily. She was wakened again by the telephone, and for the second time that morning she struggled into the living room before she was fully awake. She picked up the receiver.

  “Laura?” a voice which she did not recognise asked. She must have mumbled something in response although afterwards she could not remember what because almost before she had spoken the obscenities began. Laura listened for a moment and then flung down the receiver as if stung. As her head cleared and she took in what had happened, her initial disgust was replaced by anger. She hung up and punched in 1471 to identify the caller’s number, but without success. Whoever had launched the barrage of threatening racist abuse had taken the precaution of doing so from a number which could not be traced.

  She sat down abruptly, holding her flaming cheeks in her hands. The fact that the caller had used her name meant that this had not been a casual assault. Someone had directed it specifically at her. And the content, although foul, had been specific too. She had been told to get out of London and forget that she had ever set eyes on Osman Barre.

  She sat gazing at the phone, wondering whether to try to contact Michael Thackeray or the local police station and decided against either. The former, she thought, would only beg her to come home, and she was not ready to do that yet. Far too much remained to be resolved in her own mind before she spoke to Michael again. The latter, she thought, was unlikely to be willing or able to offer any practical assistance which she could not provide for herself.

  If anything, she thought wryly, the call had only made her more determined to see the Osman

  Barre story through. If anyone thought they could frighten her off she would quickly and decisively prove them wrong. But what really worried her was how anyone with such an obviously malign interest in the case had discovered where she was staying. She felt grateful for the security doors downstairs which were designed to keep the flats safe from intruders.

  The next time the phone rang Laura approached it with her heart racing. She did not pick up the receiver immediately but listened on the answering-machine until she was sure that it was not a repeat of the previous call. The voice was again one she did not recognise but when it claimed to be a colleague of Sally’s she cut in reluctantly and explained that Sally was not there.

  “Oh shit,” the voice said. “I wanted Sally and Tom urgently. This is Jan. From Ben Jonson School. You remember, we met..?”

  “Yes, of course. Can I give them a message?” Laura said, recalling the pale, distraught English teacher who had taught Osman Barre.

  “It’ll be too late, but tell them that the police have come down in droves to the Saturday school..”

  “The what?” Laura asked, confused.

  “A lot of the refugee children come in for extra English lessons on a Saturday morning,” Jan said. “The cops’ve barged in asking questions about Osman and the boy he’s supposed to have been with the night he was killed. They’ve no right to come in questioning kids without their parents’ permission, especially not kids like this who throw a wobbly when they see the school crossing patrol in uniform.”

  “I’ll come down,” Laura said. “Tell me how to get to you from Sally’s place.”

  She stuffed her taperecorder and Sally’s keys into a shoulder bag and in jeans and a T shirt hurried the half mile through heat-dazed Saturday streets to Ben Jonson High School, wishing she had travelled to London by car instead of by train. But she had not expected to be tramping the streets of Docklands in pursuit of a story which threatened to be as unpleasant as any she had ever written.

  The high school, when she reached it, was protected by high brick walls with broken glass on the top, like some educational fortress with no obvious entrance, not even a drawbridge, in sight. Slowly she followed the perimeter round and eventually came to tall iron entrance gates which stood open. They gave onto a bleak tarmac playground which surrounded a decaying Victorian block of blackened brick under a crenellated tower from which later extensions spread out like tentacles. Two police cars were parked by the gates and a uniformed policeman stood beside the main door.

  “I’m looking for Jan Dennison,” Laura announced, marching up to the officer with total confidence. The constable looked at her without much interest.

  “You’ll have to talk to DI Wesley,” he said. “He’s in charge. Second office on the left.”

  Talking to an unsympathetic DI Wesley was not top of Laura’s priorities and once inside the cavernous entrance hall and out of sight of the guardian on the door, Laura took stock. To her left the glass fronted reception booth was empty and the office doors - reception, general and head-teacher’s secretary - were, to her relief, tightly closed. To the right a tiled corridor led away to classrooms and directly ahead swing doors with glass panels gave access to what appeared to be the main school hall. It was from that direction that she could hear the echoing sound of excited voices and the scrape of chairs on a wooden floor.

  Laura followed her instincts, marched through the swing doors and straight up the centre of the hall between ranks of empty chairs to the stage. There a handful of teachers and a uniformed police officer were surrounded by a multi-racial group of thirty or so excited young people in a rainbow assortment of traditional and western dress. Jan Dennison recognised Laura and extricated herself from the crowd with a welcoming smile. She looked hot and harassed.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “They’re taking the kids off one at a time for questioning by a detective inspector.”

  “Steve Wesley?”

  “That’s the one. Not a representative of law and order I warm to,” Jan said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Laura said. “He reminded me of a dead fish. But what’s this all about?�
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  “The ones who’ve been interviewed say they’re more interested in finding out about Osman’s friends and relations than they are in asking questions about the skinheads and the racist attacks in the neighbourhood.”

  “Can the kids cope if their English is not very good?” Laura asked.

  “We insisted that a teacher sit in with them,” Jan said. “But we can’t translate, of course. We’ve got kids here who speak Kurdish, Greek, Chinese and half a dozen African languages. I told the inspector he was wasting his time with most of them. They won’t even understand the questions let alone be able to give a coherent answer. That’s why they’re here on a Saturday in the first place - to improve their English.”

  Behind them the doors into the hall were pushed open noisily and they turned to be met by detective inspector Wesley himself striding down the room towards them with a far from welcoming expression on his face. He was followed by the constable who had been on the main door and who now looked extremely worried.

  “Miss Ackroyd,” Wesley said brusquely. “What are you doing here?”

  “I invited her,” Jan Dennison said quickly.

  “I told her to come and see you, sir,” the uniformed officer said quickly. “I never told her to come straight in.”

  “As it happens I was going to call you anyway, inspector, even before Jan rang me,” Laura said, deciding that attack was the best form of defence. “I had an unpleasant phone call this morning and I can’t understand how anyone could have found out where I’m staying. Except from the police.”

  Wesley looked nonplussed for a moment, his pale, seamed face suddenly blank and then he shrugged.

  “I can’t help you there. If you want to report it, I suggest you go down to the nick and talk to the desk sergeant,” he said dismissively. “I’ve already suggested that you’d be better off going home to Yorkshire or where-ever it is you come from. I can’t get into witness protection when we don’t even have a defendant yet. Just let me know where to contact you and I’ll get in touch when I need you.”

  “You never will have a defendant if witnesses you’ve already got get scared off,” Laura snapped. “Although as it happens, I’m not easily scared.” That was not entirely true, she thought, recalling the menace of that phone-call, but it might provoke him into some sort of response. But Wesley just looked at her with scarcely veiled contempt.

  “I’ve told you. I need corroboration. I’m concentrating on getting hold of the boy who was with Barre when he was attacked.”

  “What about the skinhead I identified from your photographs?”

  “Him too. That’s in hand. And now if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave. I don’t want reporters mixed up in police operations. You’re not planning to write anything about this, are you? As a witness….”

  “I may be,” Laura said. “But don’t worry. I know all about the legal complications that entails. But as you seem to be as far away from charging anyone as you were the other night, none of that applies just yet, does it?” It would do no harm, she thought, to let this over-bearing bastard know that she knew her law.

  “Contact the Press Office at Scotland Yard if you want information,” Wesley said curtly. “And now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving before I begin to get the impression that you’re obstructing the police…”

  Laura flashed Jan a look of sympathy before turning on her heel and marching out of the hall just in front of the detective inspector. She was aware as she crossed the entrance hall of the sound of sobbing coming from one of the rooms to the side, but when she turned to look, Wesley interposed himself deliberately between her and the half-open office door.

  “Obstruction is an arrestable offence,” he said.

  “Thank you, inspector,” Laura said sweetly. “I’ll be talking to Jan Dennison later. I’ve no doubt she’ll fill me in on everything I need to know.”

  Furious at being ejected from the school so summarily, she sat on a low wall opposite the entrance to regain her composure but it was hot and dusty and she soon realised that it could be hours before Wesley finished his interrogations and let the children go. In any case she would be in the same difficulty over language as he was if she wanted to ask them questions. Better, she thought, to wait until Sally could come with her and talk to them with their parents.

  Hot, tired and thirsty, with her hangover beginning to remind her again of the previous evening’s self-indulgence, she picked up her shoulder-bag and set off on the half mile walk back to Sally’s flat. The day was sultry, and thunder clouds were beginning to pile up over the hills of south London which she glimpsed through gaps in the identical blocks of council flats and maisonettes, some of them renovated but most dilapidated, which surrounded the school. The area seemed deserted, emptied by the mid-day heat although on some of the balconies, amongst the straggling lines of washing, she occasionally glimpsed a dark face looking down.

  She searched in vain for a pub but it was not until she was more than half-way back to the converted warehouses on the quayside that she began to feel a prickle at the back of her neck which was not caused by the heat. At the next corner she swung round suddenly, convinced that she was being followed, but the street appeared to be deserted apart from a couple of stray dogs chasing each other on a patch of brown grass.

  “Come on, Laura,” she said to herself angrily, setting off again at a good pace in spite of the lack of shade. At the next corner she glanced back again the way she had come, and again could nothing except three mothers with pushchairs, innocent citizens surely, chatting at a bus-stop a couple of hundred yards away. She shook her head, suddenly oppressed by the humidity, her dry throat and the renewed thumping between her eyes. She pulled her sticky T shirt away from her back and felt a trickle of sweat wriggle its way down to the waistband of her jeans like a chilly finger.

  She could see Sally’s flats now just a couple of blocks away and she stepped out briskly again, fumbling in her bag for the keys which Sally had loaned her. But as she fitted the unfamiliar key into the lock to open the heavy front door she was startled by the sound of something splashing into the dock behind her and this time she knew she had not imagined it.

  Spinning round she saw a crop-headed youth in black T shirt, short jeans and tightly laced Doc Martens which reached half-way up his calves. He was sitting on a bollard close to the edge of the wharf, his legs crossed, his eyes hidden by dark glasses, a mocking smile on his lips. Beyond him a pattern of ripples widened lazily where he had evidently tossed something in and set every boat in the dock bobbing gently on the disturbed black water.

  Laura turned the key and went inside quickly, before looking back through the thick glass of the door. Only then did the youth move, offering her a one-fingered obscene salute before turning away and strolling insolently out of sight. She had seen that gesture before and it was no less frightening now in broad daylight than it had been in the harsh glare of the station at night.

  Safely back in Sally’s top floor apartment, she double locked the front door, put on the security chain and wiped the sweat from her brow before finding the energy to pour herself a tall glass of orange juice from the fridge and top it up with shaking hands with what was left of Sally’s vodka. Outside, the sun had gone in and she could see the thunder clouds swirling closer from the south and lightening already flickering over what she guessed must be Crystal Palace on a rise already half blotted out by slanting grey rain.

  She flung herself down on Sal’s bright yellow sofa, her heart still racing, as the apartment darkened and the light outside the windows turned purple. She knew, from that single obscene gesture, that the boy on the quay was one of the youths who had murdered Osman Barre. It was equally clear that he did not care in the least that she might have recognised him. This was, she thought, hostile country and for once in her life she did not know where to turn for help.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Going to Tom Massey’s gig in a basement club in Hackney had seemed like a bad idea to Laur
a from the moment she and Sally had waved their complimentary tickets at the two enormously tall bouncers on the door. In spite of what Tom had said, the two men in long draped black jackets, their muscular shoulders straining against the cloth, cast a disparaging eye over Laura’s white pants and loose black silk top. Her clubbing gear had been selected with much laughter from the clothes at the back of Sally’s wardrobe where they had been dumped as her circumference expanded and she knew they were hardly the height of fashion. But eventually the doormen completed their inspection and nodded her in.

  It had seemed steamy enough in the rain-streaked street outside but inside the humidity engulfed them like wet cotton wool. The flickering lasers hurt Laura’s eyes, the noise battered her ears and the bass beat thumped uncomfortably inside her chest as soon as they entered the dimly lit main room where a frenzy of dancers jerked to the music.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” Laura yelled into Sally’s ear but she was not sure her friend heard as they buffetted their way through the crowd towards the rostrum where they could see Tom crouched over his record decks, hair on end and T shirt soaking wet with sweat.

  She had tried to wriggle out of her commitment to come to the club, but had let herself be bullied into it in the end. Sally, Tom and Ben had got back to the flat at the height of the thunder-storm, jangling her nerves as they filled the living room with laughter and wet clothes. In the commotion of showering, eating and preparing Ben for bed she had sought a few seconds of calm to explain to Sally what had happened at the school that morning but with only partial success.

  When the phone rang, Sally had withdrawn to her room for a long conversation with Jan Dennison and had returned complaining thunderously about the police, but tight-lipped about the reasons. The chance for Laura to explain her own fears never came. In the end, soothed by a few puffs on the joint Tom and Sally were sharing, she decided that she would feel safer with her friends than baby-sitting Ben in place of the woman friend Sally had arranged would come in to look after the child for the evening.