“Now Mrs. Hussain’s back that’s exactly what we must do,” Thackeray said. “I’ve already arranged to talk to the staff at Hussain’s offices. Val, you can come with me. And Rita you can go with Kevin to talk to the family again, specifically to take the questioning into that area. She was very shocked yesterday so I got very little out of her but today I want to know whether Imran Hussain had enemies and if so, who they were.”
The meeting over, Rita Desai picked up her coat and wandered towards Kevin Mower who was putting on his jacket. After they had finished their meal the previous evening he had driven her back to her own car as sedately as her own grandmother could have desired, and left her with no more than a brief peck on the cheek. She had driven back to Leeds wondering whether she had given him insufficient encouragement and she was afraid now that her desire to reach out and touch him must be as visible as lightening playing around her hand. But as she followed him at a cautious distance out of the room, it was only Val Ridley who seemed to have noticed the electric charge between them.
“It didn’t take that Paki cow long to get her knickers off for Kevin, did it?” she asked loudly, of no-one in particular, flushing red as Michael Thackeray came back into the room and glanced sharply in her direction. The DCI hesitated as the other men in the room stifled their grins and got ostentatiously on with their business.
“My office,” he said quietly. Val followed him, shut the door and stood waiting awkwardly as Thackeray turned away for a moment to look out of the window, his broad shoulders hunched. When he finally turned round his face was sombre.
“I could have pretended not to hear that,” he said. “Do you think that’s what I should have done?”
Val Ridley ran a hand through her short blond hair, her pale face still flushed.
“No, sir,” she said.
“But do you know why?”
“Yes sir, of course.”
“Do you really?” Thackeray said heavily. He sat down at his desk and waved Ridley into the chair opposite. He suddenly realised how vulnerable Ridley was beneath the cool exterior she cultivated with the men in CID and his own anger evaporated.
“My mother was brought up for a time in the North of Ireland, a Catholic child in a mainly Protestant village,” he said, wondering how she would take this unaccustomed confidence. “She used to take me back when I was a small boy to visit the aunts who still lived there and I soon learned all the insults, the ones flung at me and the ones to fling back. I tried to opt out and say “I’m Yorkshire,” but the local boys - and I’d no idea which side they were on - would come back at me. “Ah, but are you Proddie Yorkshire or Catholic Yorkshire?” and if I gave the wrong answer I’d get thumped. But you know what made her stop taking me over there in the end. She told me, much later, when I decided to join the police. It was the knowledge that if something dreadful happened she didn’t feel she could rely on the RUC to take care of her as willingly as they would take care of the Protestant neighbours. She felt it wasn’t her police force, you see.”
He paused and glanced at Val who was sitting rigid in her chair as if embarrassed by these unsolicited revelations.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked.
“Sir,” Val said.
“It’s not just some personal preference of mine, political correctness, that nonsense,” Thackeray said, angry again at her lack of response. “It’s to do with making sure we’re a police force for the whole town, not just part of it.”
“Yes, sir,” Val said. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid remark.” She looked at him from clear blue eyes with no warmth in them. Thackeray looked wearily at her for a moment.
“Right, “ he said. She had never confided in him or, as far as he knew, in anyone else in the job, but he guessed that it was Kevin Mower’s interest in Rita Desai that was twisting the knife beyond endurance.
“She’s only here temporarily,” he said. “She’s a bright lass with a job to do. Can’t you summon up a bit of female solidarity.”
“I’ll try,” Val said, without enthusiasm.
“So let’s see if we can find a motive for why someone might want to rub out Imran Hussain, shall we?”
He let her drive HIM across the town to Aysgarth Lane where a relatively modern block housed a travel agency below and several floors of offices above. The display of company names beside the door ran to two columns.
“Fingers in a lot of pies,” Val Ridley said, running an eye down the list. “Transport, travel, import-export…”
“He started off running a taxi firm, apparently,” Thackeray said. “He came a long way in a short time. Him and his brother.” They went inside and were met in reception by a tall, slim young Asian man in a well-cut suit, a designer silk tie and expensive jewellery.
“Good morning, chief inspector,” he said, holding out a well-manicured hand to Thackeray. His manner was collected and his voice without a noticeable accent. “I’m Baz Patel, Mr. Hussain’s finance director. We spoke on the phone. I’m in charge here today. Mr. Hussain’s family are at home, naturally. I think everyone finds it hard to believe that you’re treating this as murder. It’s been a terrible shock to us all.” Thackeray was not sure whether he imagined a hint of irony in the young man’s tone.
Patel showed them into his office and sent for tea. Behind his desk, uncannily free of paper but home to a state of the art computer, he spread his hands expansively, comfortably in control of what he surveyed.
“What can I tell you?” he asked. What he told them was a classic tale of a young immigrant who had started from nothing and had over thirty years built up a small and prosperous empire in a new country.
“Mr. Hussain discovered, as many of us do, that no-one wants intelligence and qualifications if they come in an Asian package,” Patel said dryly. “He drove taxis for a while and then raised the money to take over the business. That was the start.”
“Capital wasn’t a problem then?” Thackeray asked.
“Capital is not a problem in immigrant communities if the investment looks sound,” Patel said dismissively. “You ought to know that. It probably came from Pakistan.”
“But you’re not of Pakistani origin?” Val Ridley asked carefully, as if tip-toeing through a mine-field. Patel laughed.
“There are - were, I should say - three partners. Imran and his brother Sayed, Councillor Sayed, but of course you know that. And lastly, and very much leastly, there’s Trevor Dale, of Dale’s Haulage. His place on the board was guaranteed when the Hussains took him over, and though they’d dearly like to get rid of him they’ve not succeeded yet. I’m another anomaly. My family’s Indian, refugees from Idi Amin and I was brought up in Leicester. I did my accountancy degree in Manchester. The Hussains had to advertise the job because they couldn’t come up with a trained accountant within the family. When they do I’m sure I’ll be asked to go.” He grinned disarmingly.
“Imran Hussain was not a prejudiced man, you understand,” he went on with a shrug. “In fact I don’t think he was actually a very religious man, though he went to the mosque when it was required. The fact that I’m not a Muslim didn’t bother him a scrap. The fact that I’m not family irritated him every time he looked at me. Such is life.”
“Trevor Dale,” Thackeray said. “You think they wanted him out of the business? He’d be likely to resent that, would he?”
Patel stretched his hands behind his head of fashionably cropped hair and looked at Thackeray quizzically with dark hooded eyes.
“Our Trevor’s a professional Yorkshireman,” he said. “Calls a spade a spade and a Paki a bloody Paki - as they do. There’s no love lost. But if you’re asking whether Trevor could have had anything to do with the murder of Imran, I think it’s very unlikely. They leave him alone to run the haulage side of the business which is what he’s always done and what he does very well. But if the Hussains hadn’t offered him a deal for his company he’d have been on the rocks by now. I’ve seen the books and they were not a
pretty sight. The Hussains rescued him and he’s comfortable enough with that. Imran’s death isn’t good news for him. It could throw the whole set-up into the melting pot again if Sayed feels he can’t cope with the business and pursue his political ambitions as well. And, believe me, Sayed is very ambitious indeed. He’s set to be mayor next year and has his sights set on Westminster after that.”
“Ambitious people have enemies,” Thackeray said. “Anyone spring to mind who might have wanted Imran Hussain dead?”
“Sayed’s got plenty of enemies,” Patel said with a grin. “Half the Bradfield Labour Party for a start, the white half, who don’t fancy an Asian MP. But Imran has steered clear of local politics, as far as I’m aware. He was the driving force behind the business.”
“Is Trevor Dale here,” Thackeray asked. “I need to talk to him.” Patel shook his head.
“He’s based down at the haulage depot off the Manchester Road. He travels a lot, drives one of his trucks now and again if there’s an extra driver needed. A horny-handed son of toil, is our Trevor. He very seldom comes into the office, apart from board meetings and they don’t hold many of them. We do the admin here, of course. All his stuff comes in via an electronic link to the computers here. But we don’t see much of him in person. He prefers it that way. Gives him the illusion he’s still an independent operator.”
“There’s no-one you can think of who might have wanted Imran Hussain dead?” Thackeray persisted.
“You don’t think this was just a random attack, then?” Patel asked thoughtfully. “Some racist hooligan?”
“It’s too early to tell,” Thackeray said quickly. “We have to look at all the possibilities at this stage of a murder inquiry, including domestic or business antagonisms.”
“Well, I’m not really the man you need to be talking to,” Patel said. “For obvious reasons. I’m just as much an outsider as you are where the Muslim community’s concerned. But I’ll tell you one thing. If this is some internal row, within the community, they’ll close ranks as tight as the Kashmir border. Most of the Asians in this town come from a very small area of the Punjab, as I’m sure you know. They’re all related to each other, one way or another. In the end, justice may be done but it won’t be your sort and it may not even be in this country.”
“That’s an unprejudiced view, is it, Mr. Patel?” Thackeray said with a thin smile as he got to his feet. But Patel was unabashed.
“What would you do, Mr. Thackeray, in a strange country where you only half trust the police force?”
Thackeray knew that some of what Patel was saying was true: there were barriers here of language and custom which it could prove impossible to break down. But for all that, he might have to try. He glanced at Val Ridley who looked pale and tense.
“We’ll be in touch,” he said. “Do you live locally?”
Patel shook his head and handed the chief inspector a card.
“Not in Bradfield,” he said seriously. “It’s too much of a Muslim town for me.”
Zafira Hussain had about her the stillness of the grave. She sat in her comfortable sitting-room flanked by her young sons, plump and serious boys with huge dark eyes, smart in their best suits and ties. But while the boys looked solemn and slightly bewildered, Zafira appeared to be holding herself rigid in an effort to control the surging emotion which had reddened her eyes and made a thin face puffy and creased with tears.
“I know very little about my husband’s business affairs, sergeant,” Mrs. Hussain said, after studying her tightly clasped hands for several minutes after Mower asked the question. “But I do know that he has been worried for some time.” Her English was slow and precise. “It is not the custom, you understand. The men attend to business, I attend to my home and my children.” She flashed a look at Rita Desai which might have held a hint of criticism, Mower could not be sure, although he felt Rita stiffen slightly on the sofa beside him.
“But you think this worry concerned the business? It wasn’t a family matter?” Mower persisted.
Mrs. Hussain glanced at her three immaculate sons and shook her head.
“There was no reason for him to be worried about the family,” she said firmly.
“Did your husband bring any of his work home with him?” Mower asked. “Did he have a study here, or a computer?” Mrs. Hussain shook her head again firmly.
“He worked at his office. When he came home he was a family man, sergeant. His brother had other interests, as you know, which took him into the town very often, but Imran was not involved in politics. Just recently he had begun to work for the cultural centre that the council and the Rotary Club were interested in setting up. His brother persuaded him to do that. That took him to some meetings recently. But that was unusual.”
“And I believe he wanted to join a golf club?”
“Ah, that,” Mrs. Hussain said, shaking her head slightly as if she disapproved of such frivolity. “It was his doctor who suggested that. My husband was a very conscientious man, sergeant. He worked very hard. His doctor suggested that he should take some exercise, for the good of his heart, you understand? That is why he was thinking about golf.” For a fraction of a second, Mrs. Hussain almost smiled.
“I did not think it was a very good idea,” she said. “Imran played hockey when he was a young man but that is a sport for the very fit. I did not think golf was very…” She hesitated, her lips twitching again. “Very suitable.”
“My father was very good at cricket,” the oldest of Imran Hussain’s three sons suddenly volunteered. “We could never bowl him out when we played in the garden.” Mrs. Hussain put a hand on her son’s arm gently, and her face crumpled slightly.
“He was planning to take them all to the test match next month,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Mower said. “And I’m sorry to have to bother you with these questions at this time, but there are some things we need to know if we are to find out what happened to your husband.”
“I understand,” Mrs. Hussain said.
“Do you have any idea where your husband might have been on the night he was killed? He was driving back into Bradfield down Aysgarth Lane when the car was stopped, but his colleagues don’t know where he was planning to go after he left his office at about five. What would he usually do while you were away. Would he come home to eat, or go out to a restaurant.”
“I have no idea,” Mrs. Hussain said, her face becoming closed and remote again. “He did not mention that he had any special plans when we spoke on the telephone after I arrived at my brother’s.”
“A diary?” Rita Desai asked suddenly. “Did Mr. Hussain keep a diary at home?” Mrs. Hussain shook her head again.
“He did not bring his work home,” she said. “But something was worrying him. That I do know. He was not himself before we went, but I don’t know the reason. If it has anything to do with what happened, I wish I could help you. But I can’t.”
“A traditional marriage,” Mower said mischievously as he and Rita Desai drove back to police headquarters.
“It’s changing,” Rita said. “The young women who were born here won’t put up with it, not for much longer anyway, Muslims or Hindus.”
Mower glanced at her sideways with a faint smile.
“So no-one’s arranging your marriage then?”
“Not on your life,” Rita Desai said, swinging her long plait of dark hair back over her shoulder with a flourish.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Mower said, and hoped she could not divine just how pleased.
Jack Longley sat in the bar of the Clarendon Hotel that evening, a double whiskey untouched on the table in front of him, considering his position. He had bumped into Sergeant Kevin Mower and the young Asian DC whose name escaped him earlier that afternoon. They had been on their way out of the office and when, in response to his casual enquiry, they told him they were going to talk to Imran Hussain’s family again, his anxieties about the case had momentarily overwhelmed him.
“T
his one’s a beggar,” he had said, to Mower’s scarcely veiled surprise. “Just mind where you’re treading lad or we’ll have the Asians screaming blue murder again.”
“Which outcome do you reckon’s most damaging, sir?” Mower had asked, not bothering to hide the contempt in his eyes. “A racist outrage or a nice little internal Asian job which we’ll never solve? I’m sure we can come up with the right answer if the community leaders let us know which is most convenient.”
Longley had not replied, turning on his heel angrily as Mower put his arm round Rita Desai and hurried her down the stairs but not so quickly that Longley could not hear his next comment, echoing up the staircase, as clearly as perhaps he was intended to.
“It’s bollocks, you know, all that stuff they teach you at training school about fear or favour. Bollocks in Bradfield anyway.”
At the end of the day Longley had retired to the Clarendon to regroup his tattered defences only to find himself having to take the flak stoically from another direction. He had taken a seat well away from the swing doors in an alcove which shielded him from most of the crowded room. Even so, he was the centre of attention, with a constant stream of burly, expensively dressed men making their way through the crowds to bend his ear. The mood in the bar this evening, as Rotary Club members gathered for their monthly meeting, was not a happy one and most of those there seemed intent on letting Longley know the cause of their discontent.
“Can we expect an early arrest then, Jack?” asked Hal Womersley, a prosperous survivor who straddled the wreckage of the town’s once great textile industry.
“It does none of us any good,” chimed in Calvin Wright, whose cut-price cash-and-carry had taken him from the check-out to a millionaire’s mansion in less than twenty years.
“The whole town suffers,” added Tim Fisher, sharp-suited and sharp-eyed head of the town council’s enterprise unit. “It drives investment away.”
Dead on Arrival Page 14
