The windows of the advice centre were covered with heavy wire grilles and the door, when she tried it, was locked. A tinny voice on the door-phone asked her who she was when she knocked and having identified herself she was admitted to an untidy shop-front office where an elegant young black woman in miniskirt, gold shirt and long patent boots was working at a computer.
“Dave just popped out to see a client,” she said waving Laura into a seat. “He shouldn’t be long.” She sat down next to a deeply depressed looking Asian woman with a scarf wrapped around her face and a skinny black youth with dreadlocks in a tattered T shirt and jeans who gave her an unfriendly glance before moving further away and burying his head in a music magazine.
The clientele of the shuttered office reminded her forcibly that she was in a strange country where she had few friends and quite possibly more enemies than she knew about. Kevin Mower had called her early that morning just after Sally and Tom had left the flat. The tension in his voice carried every one of the two hundred miles from Bradfield as he told her about his brief exchange with Steve Wesley at Deadman’s Wharf.
“He’s only really interested in the murder if it helps him to pin down illegal immigrants,” Mower said. “And he’s not interested in you at all.”
“Surprise me,” Laura had said dispiritedly. She was, she had realised even more clearly then, entirely on her own, and she had decided to try to recruit Dave Swinburn as an ally in her efforts to find out what was going on in the closed and frightened communities where he worked.
Swinburn arrived within minutes, wearing a jacket over his T shirt and looking harrassed, his brown curls more tousled than the last time she had seen him and the blue eyes slightly desperate in a pale, strained face. The nervous energy was still there, though, and the charm. He apologised quickly to the other two people waiting for his attention with an attractively rueful smile before waving Laura into a tiny inner office where there was just about space for two people to sit, one on each side of a desk piled high with dusty files.
“Business must be good, then?” Laura said, glancing at the tottering paper mountains which surrounded them. Swinburn shrugged off his jacket, threw it over the back of his chair and flung himself down with a groan.
“I thought this new government might make things easier,” he said. “But they’re still locking people up whenever it suits them and the paperwork takes forever. The Home Office’s latest little jape is to try to deport the parents of a kid who’s here in hospital with leukaemia.” He shrugged. “So what can I do for you?”
“I want to find the boy who was with Osman Barre the night he was killed,” Laura said. “I thought you might be able to tell me where these Somali boys hang out?”
“If it was as easy as all that I reckon the police would have found him by now,” Swinburn said. “What makes you so sure he’s a Somali anyway?”
“Don’t forget I saw the two of them,” Laura said. “They were chattering away in a language I didn’t recognise. It had to be Somali if Osman was so fluent.”
“That’s what the police think too, is it?”
“I’m not sure what the police think,” Laura said. “They’re not telling me. I take it you’re not flavour of the month with DI Wesley either?”
“Too right,” Swinburn said. “The man’s the next thing to a Nazi himself, as far as I can see. Anyway, I’ll put some feelers out amongst the community for you, if you like.”
“One of the teachers at Ben Jonson said she thought Osman might have been with his brother.”
“His brother?” Swinburn sounded surprised. “I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“Apparently they were expecting him. But not necessarily through Heathrow.”
“You mean he’d be here illegally?”
“That’s what Osman let slip, apparently,” Laura said.
“In that case he’ll be keeping well clear of the police, won’t he?”
“He might come here for help,” Laura suggested.
“He might. Though he certainly hasn’t turned up yet,” Swinburn said doubtfully.
“What do you do if he does?” Laura asked.
“We help them put in an asylum application, if that’s what they want. But some of them are so scared of the authorities that they live underground for months, years sometimes. Contact with the police in their own countries often means they end up beaten to a pulp - or dead - so they steer clear if they can.” Laura shivered.
“They’ll never get a conviction for Osman’s murder without the other boy’s evidence,” she said. “I know it’s risky for him to come forward if he’s here illegally but I don’t get the impression the police will make any more effort than they absolutely have to unless I can push them into it by producing another witness.”
“That sounds like the friendly neighbourhood nick at Deadman’s Quay,” Swinburn said cynically. “Where are you staying? I’ll call you if I hear anything useful.” Laura gave him her mobile phone number and stood up to go.
“I want those bastards caught,” she said quietly.
“Sure,” Swinburn said. “I’ll put the word out. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be in touch.”
Laura drove slowly through the clotted taffic, past Ben Jonson School cowering behind its high protective walls, to park on a littered strip of tarmac outside the grim brick block where Osman Barre’s mother and sister had been housed. She was hot and tired but driven by a fierce anger. She locked the car, wondering whether it would still have its wheels when she returned. This was not a neighbourhood where a new car would survive long.
It was midday and very humid as the temperature climbed into the eighties, and she felt breathless by the time she had climbed up the three flights of smelly concrete steps to the top walkway. She glanced down. The whole area appeared deserted in the glare of the sun, but she had the feeling that hidden eyes were watching her progress. The car still seemed to be intact.
Mrs. Barre’s door was as tightly closed as the last time Laura had called, and a box of groceries stood unattended on the threshold. She reached through the metal grille and knocked on the reinforced door and eventually it was opened on its chain by Mrs. Barre, who looked older and greyer than ever.
“Your supplies have arrived,” Laura said cheerfully. “Do you want me to carry them in for you?”
“I can do it,” the Somali woman said, unsmiling.
“Can I come in?” Laura asked. The woman shrugged, no sign of welcome in her eyes. She unlocked the gate but held the door firmly with one hand, barring Laura’s way.
“There is nothing more I can tell you,” she said.
“You could tell me the names of some of Osman’s friends,” Laura said.
“He had no friends,” Mrs. Barre said.
“He had a friend with him the night he was killed,” Laura said, an edge of irritation in her voice. “I saw him. They were very friendly.”
The woman was already on the brink of panic and suddenly, as she glanced nervously over the balcony to the street below, she became agitated. Laura followed her gaze and saw a group of young men with aggressively short haircuts and heavy boots marching across the deserted car park in the direction of the entrance to the flats just beneath them. Mrs. Barre’s eyes widened in fear and she clutched the door jamb to support herself.
“They are coming here,” she said, her voice hoarse. Laura pulled her mobile phone out of her bag.
“I’ll call the police,” she said but Mrs. Barre clutched at her frantically to prevent her using the phone. Behind her in the doorway Laura saw her young daughter Djamilla and a figure she recognised instantly as the young man she had last seen laughing and chattering with Osman Barre as they made their way home together through Princess Wharf station.
“No, you don’t understand,” Mrs. Barre said urgently. “No police. We can’t have the police here. My son Ahmed is here with me. They will arrest him.”
Laura glanced over the balcony again. The gang of youths had reached the e
ntrance door at the end of the block and were shoving and pushing their way inside. She glanced down the walkway.
“Is there a staircase at the other end as well?” she asked. Mrs. Barre nodded dumbly.
“Quick then, all of you come with me and we’ll get out that way. I’ve got a car downstairs.”
Mrs. Barre turned quickly and grabbed her son.
“You go,” she said pulling him out onto the landing. “Go with this lady. You must trust her. Djamilla and I will stay here and distract them. We will be safe if we lock the doors.”
For a moment the four of them stood frozen in indecision, Laura wanting to argue but knowing there was no time for that. She grabbed Ahmed Barre’s arm and dragged him along the walkway towards the further stairs, leaving it to Mrs Barre to decide whether to follow or not. As they reached the end of the walkway they heard her slam her front door and bar it behind them.
“They should come with us,” Ahmed said frantically.
“It’s too late,” Laura said, pulling him round the corner and onto the stairs. “I’ll ring the police as soon as we get to the car.” They descended cautiously and in silence to the third and then the second floor landing from where they could hear the invading youths clattering up the far end of the building. Laura guessed then that they were as safe as they were going to be and she took Ahmed’s arm again and pulled him headlong down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom, she dug out her mobile phone again and punched in 999. She just hoped that by the time the police arrived she and Ahmed would be safely away and no harm would have come to Mrs. Barre and Djamilla.
They ran across the tarmac and she unlocked the car with trembling fingers and pushed Ahmed into the passenger seat. Glancing upwards, she could see where the gang of youths had congregated on the top landing outside the firmly locked and barricaded door of the Barre flat. The sound of hammering could be clearly heard four floors below. As she started the engine and crashed the unfamiliar gears, she glanced up again and saw one of the youths looking over the balcony in the direction of the car.
“Get your head down,” she instructed Ahmed and as he ducked below the dashboard she hoped fervently that no-one had got a clear view of her or her passenger as they had run across the couple of yards of littered parking space between the flats and the Peugeot. But she did not really think they had been that lucky. As she pulled out into the main road and turned north again, a police patrol car with its blue light flashing swerved past her into the car-park.
“It’s OK,” Laura said quietly to Ahmed who was still crouching beside her with his head down. “The police won’t have seen you anyway.” She tried to sound reassuring, but in truth now she had found Ahmed Barre she did not have the faintest idea what to do next.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Michael Thackeray swept into Bradfield CID like an avenging angel the next morning. He had spent the previous evening trying to raise Laura on her mobile. He had bought her the phone himself after a previous breakdown in their sometimes precarious communications, and was infuriated to find that ever since she had left for London she had evidently been failing to switch it on. He did not think this was an accident. A call to Sally Neill’s flat as soon as he had left the office the previous evening gleaned only the information that Laura had left that morning with the intention of staying in London for a few more days.
“Surely she told you where she was going,” Thackeray had snapped.
“Sorry,” Sally had come back sharply. “Who is this?” But when he told her, the tone at the other end of the line became if anything even more chilly.
“I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she’s ready,” Sally said. “She only left me her mobile number. The magazine she’s working for may know where she’s staying, I suppose.”
But of course the magazine Laura was working for was not accessible at that time of the evening. Thackeray banged his fist on the table as the line went dead. By eight o’clock, he had reached such a pitch of frustration that he decided to use more devious means to find out what was happening in London. He was well aware that he risked Laura’s most unforgiving anger, the particular cold fury which she reserved for men who tried to interfere with her cherished independence. But his own anxiety was so overwhelming that he knew that was a risk he had to take.
Systematically he had called every friend and acquaintance he had in the Metropolitan Police, on the off-chance that he would be able to locate someone who knew the state of play in the case of the murder of Osman Barre. By eight thirty he found himself unexpectedly passed on to DI Steve Wesley at Deadman’s Quay CID.
“West Yorkshire?” Wesley said, his voice heavy with suspicion. “How is it I keep running up against West Yorkshire these days? What can I do for you, Mr. Thackeray?”
Circumspectly, Thackeray explained that he needed to contact Laura Ackroyd about a case in which she was a witness and that she seemed no longer to be at the address where she had been staying.
“That girl seems to do a lot of witnessing,” Wesley said sharply. “A professional at it, is she?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Thackeray said. “But her friend said that she had been in touch with you and that you might know where she had gone.”
“I told her to get back to bloody West Yorkshire,” Wesley said. “I can’t run round nannying her down here until a case comes to court. If it ever does. I’m nowhere near charging anyone yet. All I’ve got is one tentative identification.”
“Has she been threatened then?” Thackeray said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Not as far as I know,” Wesley said. “But it’s not unusual with these gangs of thugs. I don’t know how it works up there with the sheep, but helping the police is a high risk occupation in East London. I advised her to go home. If she hasn’t, I really can’t be held responsible.”
“Well, I expect that’s what she’s done then,” Thackeray had said evenly. “I’ll check it out in the morning. If you’re ever up this way drop in for a jar.” Of poison, he added under his breath.
He had hung up feeling sick and shaken, had set his alarm for six, washed down two of the sleeping pills he usually tried to avoid with a glass of water and slumped into a heavy, troubled sleep, determined to move mountains the next day so as to make himself some time to go to London to look for Laura.
It did not turn out to be as simple as that. When he had assembled his troops in the main CID office, Thackeray realised that he was in danger of letting events overtake him. The series of interviews which had begun soon after the discovery of Hussain’s body were beginning to bring a helter-skelter of results, as was the painstaking forensic examination of the car in which he had been attacked and the area where his body had been found.
He let Kevin Mower brief the assembled detectives from a sheaf of overnight reports on what was known about Hussain’s movements on the day he died, which was little enough. His wife had travelled down to London with the children two days previously when her sons’ private school term had finished and, in her current state of shock, had so far come up with no suggestions as to where her husband might have been coming from or going to on the fatal evening.
But it was now clear that the car had been damaged some distance further out of town on the Aysgarth Road. It had evidently hit a garden wall, leaving traces of paint and glass from a smashed light in its wake, and travelled on for half a mile, leaving a trail of debris and burnt rubber, before swinging onto the grass verge where it had been found. The blood inside was almost certainly Hussain’s, as were the traces found on the pavement outside the car and in the garden where he had been discovered. It now seemed almost certain that he had been alive when he had either been carried out of sight of the road, or had staggered there himself.
“More significantly, they’ve found traces of brick dust where the windscreen crazed,” Mower said. “The glass didn’t smash, so there’s nothing inside the car, but somehow a hefty chunk of masonry hit that glass and then skidded off the bonnet, probabl
y while the car was in motion, and that’s not likely to have been accidental. We’ve got uniformed up there looking for bits of brick.”
“You think someone threw it at the car, sarge,” Val Ridley asked. “Kids having a laugh, you mean, like they drop lumps of concrete off motorway bridges or onto trains?”
“I know it seems odd,” Mower said. “But everything about this death is odd, not least the fact that it certainly wasn’t the brick which killed him, though it may have caused him to swerve into the garden wall. But there are no bridges over that road for miles back, so the brick must have been thrown rather than dropped.”
“Fingerprints?” Thackeray asked.
““A dozen separate sets at least,” Mower said glumly. “And none of them known. They’re working on eliminating Hussain and his family first, then they’ll see what’s left.”
“What about witnesses? Did no-one see the car hit the garden wall? Or notice it stopped on the verge?” Thackeray asked irritably.
“No-one so far, guv, but we haven’t given many details to the Gazette yet. I thought an appeal in this afternoon’s paper to motorists who might have been passing…?”
“And no-one heard the gun-shot?” Mower shook his head gloomily.
“Right,” Thackeray said. “Any comments?” There were shrugs from the assembled detectives and after a pause it was Rita Desai who ventured to speak.
“You seem to be assuming that this was just a random attack,” she said. “A robbery gone wrong, or kids chucking bricks just for the hell of it - not a premeditated murder, I mean.”
She hesitated under the eyes of a dozen colleagues and flushed slightly.
“Doesn’t the gun suggest that it was deliberate,” she said. “Isn’t that a possibility? What if the car was stopped by someone who wanted to kill him. Shouldn’t we be looking for a motive, in case that’s what happened?”
Dead on Arrival Page 13
