“I’m beginning to,” Laura said with feeling. “So you’ve not seen anyone called Ahmed Barre?”
“Sorry,” da Silve said. “You say he’s a Somali? That’s unusual in Bradfield too.”
“His mother’s in London,” Laura said. “Maybe he’s made his way back there since I lost track of him.” She would ring Sally Neill and see whether she or Tom could track down Mrs. Barre, she thought.
“Well, if he turns up here looking for help I’ll ask him to get in touch. I can’t do any more than that, you understand, if he’s a client.”
“I suppose so,” Laura said gloomily. “I blame myself for not keeping a closer eye on him, but it’s difficult. I wasn’t sure what was the best thing to do for him in the circumstances. He’s terrified of officials, the police, everyone.”
“I can imagine,” da Silva said. “But they won’t necessarily lock him up, you know. Not if he’s got family already in the country legally.”
“If you come across him, you’d better try to persuade him of that,” Laura said. “I’ve not had any luck.”
She got up, aware that da Silva’s expression had subtly switched from professional interest to appraisal. She gave him one of her most brilliant smiles. Perhaps if he was that interested, he would remember what he had promised to do.
“Thanks for your help,” she said.
“A pleasure,” da Silva said with feeling. “If there’s ever anything else I can do…?” Laura grinned at him.
“I’ll bear it in mind,” she said.
As she walked out into the bustling crowds of Aysgarth Lane, where da Silva’s office was compressed between a halal butcher’s shop and a greengrocer’s spilling exotic fruit and vegetables across the pavement, she was surprised to come face to face with another white face amongst the brown.
“Good lord, what are you doing here?” she asked in surprise.
Dave Swinburn, the immigration adviser Laura had last seen two hundred miles away in Docklands, stopped in the solicitor’s door way and looked at Laura with equal astonishment.
“I..I’m following up a case,” he said quickly. “I might ask you the same question.”
“And you might get the same answer,” Laura said, suddenly cautious, although she was not sure why. “This is where I live – and work. I was only visiting your neck of the woods, remember?”
“Did you ever find that boy you were looking for in London,” Swinburn asked. “What was his name? Ahmed Barre?” “No, I never did,” Laura said.
“No trace at all?” Swinburn persisted.
“None. Pity, but there you go. I couldn’t waste any more of my holiday on it. I’m due back at work next week. I expect the police will track him down eventually.”
“I expect they will,” Swinburn said. “But keep me in touch. If there’s anything I can do to help….” He put a hand on the door of the solicitor’s office.
“See you,” he said. Laura watched the door close behind Swinburn’s jeans and leather jacket and tousled hair with a feeling of that another door which had been ajar had swung unexpectedly open. She had not believed a word of Swinburn’s excuse for being in Bradfield and she was quite sure that she had never told him Ahmed’s first name, only that he was Osman Barre’s brother. Suddenly she felt half-conscious suspicions dropping into place like tumblers in a lock. What, she thought, would be more logical – or easier – for an advice centre for immigrants to combine advice when people arrived in the country with advice on how to get in. It’s the perfect scam, she thought, knowing it was time to talk officially to Michael Thackeray. But first she would see if she could discover who else Dave Swinburn had travelled so far from home to talk to.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Gotcha!” DS Kevin Mower said with sudden satisfaction as he ploughed through a sheaf of computer print-out paper on the desk in front of him. The CID office was almost empty. DCI Thackeray, who had returned from his interview with superintendent Longley in a state of silent fury, had dispatched most of his detectives to resume their interrupted inquiries into the disappearance of Safi Haque.
Adept at keeping his head down, Mower had volunteered to go through the report from the computer unit which had been dredging through the contents of the Hussain hard discs. And with a sleight of hand which he thought, mistakenly, that Thackeray had not noticed, he had kept Rita Desai in the office with him. She glanced up at Mower from her corner desk.
“Found something?” she asked.
“Too right,” Mower said. “They’ve got round to the haulage company’s stuff, and there are deleted files in there which show a profit out of all proportion to the legitimate business accounts which were readily accessible. It looks as though Trevor Dale’s either been ripping his partners off, or running some sort of scam for them up at his yard.”
“So maybe Majeed is in the clear after all? There was something much bigger going on?”
“Hold on,” Mower said, unable to suppress the smile which crept over him every time he caught her eye. “Don’t let’s rush our fences.”
“Would I?” she said softly, restraining the urge to cross from her desk to his and indulge in seriously unprofessional activities.
“I’ll show this to the guv’nor and see what he thinks,” Mower said, equally tantalised by Rita’s inaccessible proximity. He walked past her desk on his way to the DCI’s office and ran a finger lightly down her cheek.
“I’ll suggest we go up there, just the two of us,” he whispered. “We could call in at my place for some lunch on the way.”
“I’ve never heard it called that before,” she said, running her hand down his thigh in a way which caused him serious problems of self-control. He backed away hastily.
“You’ll get me demoted to traffic,” he said. “Though if you shared my car it might not be so bad.”
“Speak for yourself, sergeant,” Rita said briskly. “I’ve got my eye on fast-track promotion. My dad won’t be satisfied with anything less than chief constable by the time I’m thirty five.” They heard a door open behind them and Mower turned round quickly to meet Thackeray, who came into the room with the same angry glint his eye as he had had last time they had seen him
“Anything new?” he asked.
“Yes, guv, I was just bringing you this report,” Mower said. He spread the documents out again on his desk and pointed the DCI to the relevant passages.
“Right,” Thackeray said, making up his mind quickly though well aware of the risk he was taking. “Who else is around?”
“Just DC Blake,” Mower said. “He’s gone to the canteen for a cup of tea.”
“Get hold of him and meet me downstairs in the car-park. You too Rita. I think it’s time we had a serious chat with Trevor Dale and anyone else working up there, don’t you?” He completely failed to notice Mower’s look of disappointment as he turned away to do as he was told.
Laura was surprised when she saw Dave Swinburn come out of Ben da Silva’s law office and get into an open-topped black Escort convertible which had been parked on double yellow lines outside. It was not the sort of vehicle you would expect an impecunious voluntary worker to be swanning around in, she thought as she slipped her own car into gear and slid into the traffic stream behind him, heading down-hill on Aysgarth Lane and into the town centre’s busy one-way system. She kept up with him as discreetly as she could, hanging back just enough to keep one or two cars between them but not so far that she would miss a change of lane or a sudden left or right turn.
Clear of the worst of the traffic, Swinburn accelerated away up the Manchester Road and Laura glanced at her fuel gauge, hovering just above empty, hoping that he was not heading for the M62 motorway where she would not be able to follow for long.
But just beyond the underpass beneath the ring-road, Swinburn slowed down and signalled a left, swinging onto a narrow lane lined with blackened stone terrace houses which looked as though they had changed little since flocks of sheep rather than motor traffic came this way.
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She soon discovered, though, that this was not just a short-cut to open country as she was forced to swerve into a gateway to make way for a huge container lorry coming in the opposite direction. As she watched the cumbersome vehicle receding in her rear-view mirror, she felt more cogs begin to click into place. She swung her car back onto the road, unsurprised to discover that she could no longer see Swinburn’s Ford or that round the next bend appeared the well-signposted entrance to a large haulier’s yard where nine or ten similar reddish-brown container-bearing trucks were parked in rows against a high chain-link fence.
Circumspectly she drove past the entrance, glancing inside to where she could just see the Escort swinging behind what looked like a small prefabricated office building. A hundred yards further on she pulled off the road onto a patch of scrubby grass verge to give herself time to think. She switched off the engine and glanced back towards the yard, just visible through the bushes which lined the road at this point, and could see several men moving around amongst the vehicles.
She sighed. She had liked Dave Swinburn, she thought ruefully, and believed him only too readily when he had offered to help her in her search for Ahmed Barre. It was obvious enough now why he had been so willing to assist. If he had contacts with a container firm, he almost certainly had business of his own with Ahmed which had more to do with his journey across the Channel than arranging an asylum application for him. And if he was in Bradfield it was quite possible he had broken into her flat in search of some clue to the Somali boy’s whereabouts and would be none too pleased to discover now that he had been followed. She just hoped that he had not already succeeded in locating Ahmed somewhere in Bradfield.
It was time, she thought, to call in the cavalry, however reluctant she might be to make contact with one of their officers. She pulled her mobile out of her bag and punched in the number of police head-quarters.
But before she could get any response she was hurled forward against the windscreen by the force of something hitting her car hard from behind. Twisting round in her seat her heart seemed to miss several beats as she saw her rear windsceen completely filled by the front of the truck which was pushing her forward at increasing speed towards a group of only too solid looking trees which stood at the end of the patch of grass. It took only seconds to realise that if she was still in the car when the irresistable force behind her met the immovable objects in front there would not be much of her left to tell the tale when the wreckage was found. Desperately she unfastened her seat-belt and flung open the driver’s door and herself out of the car, landing with an uncomfortable thud on the hard ground and rolling uncontrollably several times until she came to rest, bruised and shaken, in a muddy ditch. She lay still for a second, gasping for breath, wondering if her Houdini escape had been noticed. The rending of metal which signified the death of her trusty Beetle faded into silence, but just as she began to gather her wits and her breath and risk a glimmer of hope, heavy hands seized her by the shoulders and lifted her almost bodily out of the mud and nettles in which she lay, twisted her arms behind her back, wrapped something suffocatingly dark and dirty around her head and face, and began to propel her round the back of the lorry and, she guessed, back along the road to the haulier’s yard.
Laura did not resist. For one thing every bone in her body felt as if it had been wrenched out of its socket and shoved back into place slightly askew. For another, she knew that there had been too many men in the yard to make escape a feasible prospect. And for a third, she had managed to shove her mobile phone into the pocket of her jacket, where, she hoped, it remained unseen.
Half dragged and half stumbling on her own feet, Laura was taken some distance before she was stopped, still held tightly by vice-like hands, and finally thrust upwards and forwards to land on her hands and knees on a rough and unforgiving surface which scraped more skin from her knees. As the wrapping which had covered her face fell away there was just enough light, for just long enough, to see that she had been thrust into one of the huge metal container trucks in the yard. But in the split second in which she tried to orient herself and protest, the metal doors clanged shut behind her and she heard the bolts rammed home. She turned and sat down with a groan.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “This is a another fine mess you got me into, Laura.” She was hardly aware that she had spoken aloud until she heard her own voice echo in the dark space around her. The darkness was so dense that it was almost palpable, like thick black velvet threatening to squeeze out of her what little breath she had left as she felt panic clutching at her throat. She swallowed hard and peered upwards to see if this container offered the tiniest crack of light, the flaw which had been the saving of Ahmed Barre. But there was nothing, and as she gazed she began to see swirling lights in front of her eyes that she knew were not real.
At least this container had appeared to be completely empty, she thought, trying to remember every detail of what she had seen in the split second between the suffocating blanket falling away from her face and the doors’ closing. Or had it been? She shut her eyes tightly and tried to recall that moment of dim vision as she had been thrust head first into this musty, echoing space, and she shuddered. There had possibly been something, she thought, a shapeless bundle in the far corner, rubbish perhaps or….. She stopped, overcome by a wave of nausea. But she knew she had to find out.
Laboriously she pushed herself tentatively to her feet and with her hands stretched out in front of her as if she was playing some deadly game of blind man’s bluff she edged her way to her left until her finger tips met the metal side of the container. Then, carefully, one step at a time, she worked her way down the side wall reaching out gently with her foot each time before putting her weight on it. She had gone down the side and along the back and then, even more carefully now, several steps along the other side wall, before she reached what she had begun to believe was a figment of her imagination. But the huddled bundle she had so briefly seen was real and with her heart thumping she crouched down beside it and reached out a hand to explore.
Hardly daring to breath, she felt a human shape and reaching the neck and face with gentle fingers she was flooded with relief as she discovered that her companion was warm and breathing and female, though either asleep or unconscious. With trembling fingers she felt a smooth cheek and thick hair fastened back in a plait.
“Safi,” she breathed. She shook a shoulder gently but there was no response apart from a faint groan. Wishing that she carried a torch, or even a box of matches, Laura sat back on her heels and wondered what to do next. Her heart was still thudding and it took her a few moments to recall that she still had her mobile phone. She pulled it out and felt for the on button. The tiny light suddenly glowed red and Laura felt an irrational rush of relief flood through her at the realisation that perhaps the outside world was not so far away as she had imagined. Carefully she press 9 three times and waited, but she was rewarded with nothing except a crackle of static electricity. Furious, she banged a fist against the unforgiving metal side of the container realising that its density perhaps did not allow her signal to reach its destination. Or perhaps they lay in one of the famously dead areas from which signals did not carry. The phone, she thought bitterly, might save them, but not yet, and not here.
And even as she put it away again in her pocket she realised with another panic stricken lurch of her stomach that something was happening outside. A muffled thud was followed by the unmistakeable vibration of an engine starting up, and then by a lurch as the container truck began to move. From out of the darkness came a sudden flashback to the moment when she and Ahmed had seen a human hand reaching as if in supplication from that stinking mountain of rubbish in Kent, and she knew with absolute certainty that that place, or somewhere very like it, was where she and Safi were being taken. And with her breath coming in sudden gasps as panic seized her, she knew that there might be nothing she could do to save herself or the girl.
On Thackeray’s instructions, M
ower drove up to Dale’s haulage yard by a back route which the DCI hoped would allow them to approach without being seen before they turned in at the gates. But as the sergeant steered the police Rover along the narrow lane between dry stone walls, his eye was suddenly caught by a flash of metallic green in a muddy lay-by almost within sight of the yard’s high security fencing.
He swung the car off the road and parked on grass rutted by heavy vehicle tyres. He got out and Thackeray followed more slowly, unwilling to acknowledge what he thought he could see. But by the time Mower had made his way to an overgrown ditch in the shade of a couple of tall ash trees which had great gouges in their trunks, they were both close enough to recognise exactly what it was they were looking at, half hidden amongst the tall grass and nettles.
Sick with apprehension Mower jumped into the muddy ditch and looked inside what was left of the VW which had been crushed into less than half its usual length. Peering through the shattered windows he could see the car’s rear engine protruding through the shreds of the back seat. The narrow boot lid at the front had been pushed up to almost completely obscure the smashed windscreen so that it took him some time to make sure that there was no-one lying amongst the torn and twisted wreckage of the front seats. Satisfied, he scrambled back to join Thackeray who was standing ashen faced and unmoving on the grass above him.
“No-one,” Mower said. “No blood, nothing. The driver’s door might have been open. It’s difficult to tell.”
Thackeray let his breath out in a shuddering gasp of relief.
“It is Laura’s car?” Mower asked tentatively.
“Of course it bloody is,” Thackeray said. “So where the hell is she?”
“And what’s it doing here anyway?” Mower ventured. “D’you think it was stolen?”
“You under-estimate Ms Ackroyd,” Thackeray said bitterly. “If there’s something dodgy going on up here and she found out about it d’you think she’s hesitate to drop in to ask a few questions?”
Dead on Arrival Page 22
