By Death Divided (12 page)

‘Was she being abused?’ Laura asked.

‘She didn’t say so,’ Ayesha said. ‘But it’s not impossible. Her husband may have been worried about his immigration status if she divorced him. She is – was – British, of course. But that would certainly not give
him
a motive to get rid of her. Quite the reverse, in fact. He’d want her alive and married to him if he wanted to be sure of staying here.’

‘You’ll have to tell the police all this,’ Laura said. ‘What I can actually include in my article will depend very much on how their inquiry goes. Do you know where she lived or worked? I could maybe find out a bit more about her circumstances that way.’

‘I’m heartbroken,’ Ayesha said. ‘I wish now I’d been able to do more for her.’

‘I don’t think you should blame yourself,’ Laura said as Ayesha went to her desk and began to flick through her records, making brief notes that she gave to Laura.

‘I suppose confidentiality doesn’t really apply now she’s dead,’ she said. ‘You might be able to do us some good by letting a little light into the murky areas my community doesn’t want to talk about, particularly as they affect women. Let’s hope so anyway.’

‘And you’ll talk to the police?’

‘Of course,’ Ayesha said. ‘Someone’s to blame for this and
I want them punished.’

Laura drove thoughtfully back into the centre of Milford and eventually pulled up outside the address Ayesha had given her for Faria Aziz, but when she knocked on the door there was no answer. She looked up and down the street of terraced houses but apart from a couple of women deep in conversation at the very far end of the row of houses, it appeared deserted. It was probably not a good idea to approach Faria’s husband, anyway, at the moment, she thought, even if she could track him down, as she turned the car round and drove back into the centre of the town. There, she quickly found the travel agent’s office where Ayesha thought Faria had worked. She found a parking space and walked back to the shop and tentatively opened the door. Two assistants, one male and one female, looked up from their computers and offered her encouraging smiles as she approached the counter. Deliberately, Laura chose to take a seat opposite the plump young woman with dark hair, on the reasonable grounds that if Faria had confided in anyone here it would be a female rather than a male colleague. According to the neat notice at her work station, her name was Sandra Wright.

‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said with her most conciliatory smile. ‘I’m not looking for a holiday booking, I’m afraid. I’m making inquiries about Faria Aziz. Someone told me she worked here.’

‘Well, she does,’ the woman said. ‘But she’s off sick at the moment. Her husband says she’s got some virus. She hasn’t been in for…’ She glanced at her colleague. ‘How long is it, Damien? A week or more?’

The young man at the other end of the counter gave the two women a harassed glance as his phone rang.

‘Yeah, a week at least,’ he said as he picked up the receiver and instantly retreated into a complicated conversation about tickets to Bahrain.

‘Which means we’re understaffed,’ the young woman said. ‘I hope to goodness she’s back soon because I’ve got holiday booked for next week. And you are…?’

Laura froze, realising that Faria’s colleagues had not yet been told what had happened to her and then berating herself silently for not foreseeing that this might be the case. Obviously the police had not yet traced where Faria worked. For once she was a jump ahead and very aware that this was not a comfortable place to be. She took a deep breath and introduced herself.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Sandra,’ she said. ‘Obviously you haven’t heard, and this is going to be a shock. But Faria has been found dead in the River Maze.’ The woman looked at Laura, clearly stunned, her face turning a muddy shade of grey and her eyes staring.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my God.’

‘It will be in the
Gazette
tomorrow, possibly on the local radio news tonight. It’s not actually a secret.’

The woman had begun to cry quietly now, scrambling in her handbag for tissues, which she pressed to her eyes.

‘Is there anywhere we can talk more privately?’ Laura asked, glancing at Damien, who seemed to have taken in her message in spite of his telephone conversation, and was staring at her goggle-eyed. ‘I didn’t mean to shock you. I thought the police would have let you know by now.’ She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

‘Come in the back,’ Sandra said, wiping her eyes and getting to her feet. ‘The manager’s out this afternoon so we
can use his office.’

‘Were you good friends?’ Laura asked when the woman had slumped into a chair in the cramped office behind the shop and she had handed her a plastic cup of water from the water-cooler in the corridor outside the door.

‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ Sandra said. ‘Office friends, you know? Nothing more than that. None of us were. I suppose I was sorry for her really. She never said a lot about her own home life but I could see she wasn’t very happy. She was born here, you know, went to school here, in Bradfield, I think, though she wore traditional dress, you know? Trousers and the long loose tunic thing, and a scarf, though she didn’t often have it over her head, just round her shoulders, in the office anyway. She once said her husband preferred it, the traditional dress, I mean, when I was chattering on about buying a new dress for a wedding and she looked a bit… well…jealous, I suppose. I can’t believe this, you know.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Laura said. ‘I really thought you would have been told.’

‘What happened? Did she kill herself? I never thought she was that unhappy. In fact…’

Sandra hesitated, and Laura wondered what was coming next.

‘She told me in confidence,’ Sandra said, echoing Ayesha’s hesitation and then coming to the same conclusion, that it was too late now to be scrupulous in guarding Faria Aziz’s secrets. ‘Though I don’t suppose that matters now. She told me a few weeks ago she was pregnant.’

‘She must have been very happy about that,’ Laura said automatically, knowing how happy she would be, and then realising that maybe Faria had not been happy at all if she had
wanted a divorce from her husband.

‘Well, I think so,’ Sandra said. ‘She seemed a bit nervous about it, actually. But maybe that’s natural with a first baby. I’ve not been there myself…Can’t afford it. My fiancé and me, we can hardly pay the mortgage some months…’

‘So she was more scared than excited?’

‘Yes, sort of. She never spoke much about her husband or family, you know? Not like me. I chatter on about my fiancé all the time. But she was more private. Maybe it was the different, what do you call it? Culture? A different culture. She was very nice, very good-tempered, not like me, I fly off all over the place when I’m stressed out. And she was good at the job. She dealt with all the Pak…Asians…who came in. Talked to them in their own languages sometimes. I can’t believe she’s dead.’

And Sandra burst into tears again, unrestrainedly this time, until her colleague put his head round the door wonderingly.

‘There’s a policeman outside wants to see the manager,’ he said. ‘I told him he’s out. What on earth’s going on?’

An hour later Laura found herself facing Michael Thackeray across his desk and was less than surprised to find him unhappy.

‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t trying to put myself a jump ahead. I just never thought there would be any mystery about where she worked. You know what I’m investigating. This looked like a perfect way into the domestic problems of Asian women.’

‘And how did you discover so easily where she worked? We only managed to find out by contacting every travel agent in Milford.’

Laura could not resist a faint smile.

‘I was lucky,’ she said. ‘I went to talk to the Asian women’s advice centre in Milford and Faria had been there looking for help with a divorce. I asked Ayesha Farouk, who works there, to contact you. I hope she’s done that.’

‘I’ll check,’ Thackeray said. ‘If not we’ll chase her up.’ He made a note on a pad on his desk and then leant back in his chair and sighed.

‘It would have helped if you’d contacted me first,’ he said, wondering how many more times their professional interests might clash before his bosses, if not hers, objected.

‘Ted wouldn’t like to think I was asking your permission to talk to people,’ Laura said.

‘No, I don’t suppose he would. Anyway, you’d better give us a statement and tell Ted what’s happened afterwards, as you’ve managed to get ahead of us on this one.’

‘Fine,’ Laura said. ‘But tell me one thing. Where’s Faria’s husband?’

‘I have no idea,’ Thackeray said.

‘Ah,’ Laura breathed with sudden understanding. ‘A very suspicious death then?’

Thackeray managed a smile then.

‘You might think that, Ms Ackroyd. I couldn’t possibly comment.’

By the middle of the next morning DC Mohammed Sharif was aware of just how isolated he had become. He had spent the previous evening with his family, most of whom had crowded into his uncle’s house a couple of streets down from his own parents’ home. The atmosphere was hysterical with grief and Sharif found himself comforting his young cousins, Jamilla and Saira, who had taken refuge in their bedroom upstairs to escape from the crush of adults bewailing Faria’s fate in Punjabi below.

‘She should never have married that man,’ Jamilla had said in English in a fierce whisper when Sharif came in and closed the door carefully behind him. It was a sentiment Sharif shared but which he knew could not be spoken downstairs, where the rest of the family were giving vent to their grief and horror but without apparently ever touching on the subject of Imran Aziz and his unexplained absence from the home he had shared with Faria.

‘I’m sure your father blames himself for insisting on it,’ Sharif said. ‘He regrets giving in to your grandfather.’

‘Are they looking for Imran?’ Jamilla asked. She seemed to be the calmest member of the family in the house although Sharif could see the pain in her eyes and knew that her
self-control
must be fragile.

‘I think so,’ Sharif had said, the policeman in him making him very cautious.

‘Can you catch him?’ Saira said. ‘He must have driven her to this. She would never never have killed herself if she hadn’t been driven to it. She used to be so happy here with us.’ The younger girl collapsed on her bed in tears and her sister sat beside her, stroking her hair gently.

‘Or did he kill her?’ Jamilla asked, her own face beginning to crumple. ‘Was she murdered?’

But Sharif could only shrug.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘No one does. When you last spoke to her, did she give you the feeling that she was depressed?’

‘That she might kill herself, you mean? No, no, of course not. I told you. She said she might be pregnant and seemed – well, excited, I suppose. She would never kill herself. Not Faria. It must be Imran to blame. You’ll catch him and find out, won’t you? You won’t let him get away with this?’

‘They will find him,’ Sharif said. ‘Not me personally. They won’t allow me to be involved, but my boss will catch him. Believe me. We’ll find out what happened. Did you tell your father about what she told you about a baby?’

‘No, not yet,’ Jamilla said. ‘Do you think I should? It will only make him even more upset now, won’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ Sharif said. ‘I suppose there’s no point. We don’t even know if it’s true.’ He lied without a qualm, very aware that DS Mower had not mentioned this crucial piece of information to Faria’s father when he had broken the news
of her identification to him, and guessed that the DCI wanted to raise the issue with Faisel Sharif during the interviews that would inevitably follow. Perhaps Thackeray was right, he admitted to himself wearily. This was not a case he could be involved in.

Sharif had gone home to his own flat late, leaving a huddle of family members still distraught in his uncle’s small living room, and found he could sleep only fitfully for the rest of the night. Rising early, and ignoring Thackeray’s instruction to take some time off, he arrived in the CID office before eight-thirty and found it almost deserted. He tried to settle at his desk, dealing with some of the files he had abandoned in despair the previous day, but he could not concentrate and when some of his colleagues began to drift into the room, one or two giving him curious glances, he realised that there had been some sort of meeting from which he had been excluded. Getting to his feet he found himself face to face with DS Kevin Mower.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked thickly.

‘An early start,’ Mower said. ‘They’ve launched a major inquiry into your cousin’s death, on the assumption it’s probably murder. We’ve just had the first briefing. The DCI heard you were in and wants to see you straight away. He’ll explain what’s going on.’

Sharif found his fists clenched into balls at his side and he made a conscious effort to breathe normally and relax.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thanks Sarge.’ He did not hurry to the DCI’s office, guessing he would get short shrift for disobeying an order to stay away, not relishing the dressing down that would provoke, and even more afraid of what Thackeray might tell him about his cousin’s death. Something must have
caused this morning’s upgrade of the inquiry, and he knew that the grounds for it could only be bad news for him and his family.

Thackeray was on the phone when DC Sharif opened the door of his office but he gestured for him to come in and sit as he finished his call abruptly and slammed the receiver down.

‘I told you to take time off,’ he said, his tone harsh. ‘That was for your own good, Mohammed. You look like death warmed up.’

‘Sir,’ Sharif mumbled, knowing from his own inspection of the dark circles beneath his eyes in his shaving mirror early that morning that the DCI’s comment was more than justified.

‘So why are you here?’ Thackeray demanded, slightly more gently.

‘I needed to know what was going on,’ Sharif said. ‘My family need to know what’s going on.’

‘They’ll be informed,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ve appointed a family liaison officer to keep them informed. You know how these things work and you know you can’t be involved in any way.’

‘You’ve upgraded the inquiry…’ Sharif muttered. ‘Is there a reason?’

‘Two reasons, as it happens,’ Thackeray said sharply. ‘Firstly additional forensic information, which came in late yesterday. And secondly the sudden interest the security services have taken in Imran Aziz. Since you saw our friend McKinnon from Manchester the other day they say they have intelligence from Pakistan that makes them wonder why he was so desperate to get a visa to come to this country that he divorced one wife and married another.’

‘You mean…’

‘I don’t know what they mean, Mohammed. Apparently he hadn’t crossed their radar until now. I think what you told McKinnon about Aziz and the new imam in Milford was genuinely news to them, but since then they’ve obviously been talking to their friends in Islamabad. You know how it is. Any hint of suspicion is enough.’

‘I think the Muslim community’s got that message, loud and clear,’ Sharif said, his voice bitter. ‘Break the door down, why don’t you? Smash the place up. Shoot us by accident. We’re all suspects now. Even me, I suppose.’

Thackeray looked at the younger man wearily.

‘I’m sorry it seems that way,’ he said. ‘Believe me.’

‘So what’s this new forensic evidence?’ Sharif asked.

‘The toxicology report. They’ve found traces of narcotics,’ Thackeray said. ‘Have you any reason to believe that your cousin might have been taking drugs – legally or illegally?’

‘No, of course not,’ Sharif said. ‘Are you saying she was an addict? I can’t believe that for a moment. Absolutely not.’

‘I’ve asked Amos Atherton to take another look at the body, in case there’s anything he missed. Puncture marks for instance, in the unlikely event they might still be visible after she’d been in the water so long. Though Amos isn’t given to careless mistakes, I have to say. But whatever the cause, it is possible that your cousin was in a disoriented state when she went into the river, whether it was by accident or design. It offers us another line of inquiry. Puts the whole thing in a more sinister light.’

‘Wonderful,’ Sharif said, his already haggard face taking on a slight sneer. ‘I don’t think I’ll pass that suggestion on to my aunt and uncle.’

‘I don’t want you telling your uncle, or anyone else, anything you pick up here about this investigation,’ Thackeray said sharply. ‘Which is why I want you on leave until I tell you you can come back. I mean that, Mohammed. It’s not in your interests to be here at all. Go home and see what you can do to help your family in what must be a terrible situation.’

‘So do I have a career left when this is over, sir?’ Sharif asked, getting to his feet slowly.

‘Of course you do,’ Thackeray said. ‘This is unpleasant for you, but it will pass. You did the right thing bringing your initial suspicions to my attention. No one can fault you as a police officer in any way. But now you must take my advice. Go home, stay away, probably until this is resolved. That way your integrity remains intact. Believe me, it’s for your own good. If it goes on too long I’ll see if I can get you a temporary transfer to another division. But in the meantime, take a holiday.’

‘Right, sir,’ Sharif said, hoping Thackeray could not see how reluctantly the words were forced from him. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Thackeray said as DC Sharif turned away. ‘I really am.’

As soon as he was sure that DC Mohammed Sharif had obeyed his instructions and left police headquarters, DCI Michael Thackeray went upstairs and knocked on the door of Superintendent Jack Longley’s office. As he expected, he found the super at his conference table with Doug McKinnon of the anti-terrorism unit in Manchester, flanked by two officers he did not know and Chief Inspector Bradley Smith, a young high flyer who had recently taken charge of the uniformed
wing of the force in Bradfield. Introductions to McKinnon’s colleagues made, Thackeray slipped into the vacant chair next to Longley as all eyes swivelled in his direction.

‘I still have no absolutely firm evidence that Faria Aziz was murdered,’ he said. ‘But given the latest information, that she had either taken or been given some sort of narcotic before she went into the river and drowned – we’re waiting for an identification on the drug – it looks increasingly likely. On top of that we have evidence that she was considering a divorce, even though she was pregnant. Murder’s certainly a possibility we can no longer ignore, especially as the husband’s nowhere to be found.’

‘Any news on his whereabouts?’ McKinnon asked.

‘Nothing,’ Thackeray said. ‘No sightings. We’ve checked out his car and it’s still parked in the street close to the house with a flat tyre. So wherever he’s gone he’s either gone by public transport or in someone else’s vehicle.’

‘Or he’s dead,’ Bradley Smith offered. ‘Isn’t that a classic scenario for a domestic? Murder followed by suicide? Maybe he’s in the river too, and we simply haven’t found his body yet. Isn’t that what you’re looking for?’ He addressed his final question to McKinnon. ‘A reason to search the house? Surely we’re concerned for the man’s well-being, aren’t we? That’s more than enough reason to go in without a lot of fuss. We don’t need to mobilise armed officers and the full paraphernalia of a terror raid, just force the door and have a look round inside, in the interests of Imran Aziz’s safety. For all we know, he may be lying dead or injured in there. It’s much less upsetting for the neighbours if we do it softly softly. All the neighbours.’ He glanced at Longley, who was nodding his head slowly, considering what Smith had said.

‘There’s no reason why you can’t go in with my officers,’ he said to McKinnon.

‘I need a full forensic search,’ McKinnon said. ‘The works.’

‘It’s quite possible we’ll need one as well, dependent on what we find,’ Longley said.

‘Look, I know why you may want to pussyfoot about,’ McKinnon said. ‘Community relations and all that. But I’ve got inquiries launched in Pakistan about this man and his unusual determination to get into this country. And you’ve had one of your own officers raising doubts about the mosque in Milford. Where is he, by the way? What’s his name? Sharif?’

Thackeray glanced at Longley, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘I’ve sent him home,’ the DCI said. ‘The dead woman is his cousin and I can’t have him involved in the investigation.’

‘Right,’ McKinnon said. ‘Keep tabs on him, though. I may want to talk to him again.’

Thackeray nodded, trying to conceal a sudden surge of anger that he knew was irrational, but McKinnon neither noticed nor, Thackeray was sure, would have cared much if he had. He was single-minded in his pursuit of what he wanted in a way Thackeray doubted he would ever be, and that, he thought with a slight sense of shock, was his weakness as a policeman and why he would never go further. He worried too much about what he was doing and it’s effect on the innocent. McKinnon, he realised with a start, was pressing on regardless, as he always would, no matter who got trampled underfoot.

‘But as for Aziz’s house, you know we can’t take any chances in the current circumstances. You may be right. It may simply be a tragic domestic incident. But we have to be
sure. We need to go in, straight away, no messing about. I want documents, computers, phone records, the lot. And a full forensic examination of the premises. Whether or not you use armed officers is up to you, how many uniforms you throw at it is your decision, but there’s no way all that is going to happen without any of the neighbours noticing, is there? Let’s be realistic. If there’s a reaction, you’ll have to live with it. Is it a heavily Muslim street?’

‘Apparently not,’ Thackeray said. ‘All we’ll be doing is confirming the white neighbours’ worst suspicions.’

Longley nodded slowly.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing at Thackeray and at Bradley Smith for confirmation. ‘Go ahead with a raid. Keep me fully informed, please. As far as we’re concerned, this is probably a murder inquiry and CID will proceed on that basis until we hear that there is solid evidence of something worse. Thank you, gentlemen.’

By one o’clock that afternoon the newsroom at the
Bradfield Gazette
was in a ferment and Laura Ackroyd felt besieged at her desk. She had spun her chair away from her computer screen the better to confront Ted Grant and the crime reporter Bob Baker, who were standing close to her desk, almost breathing down her neck.

‘You must have got some inkling of this, surely,’ Grant said, his face flushed with excitement. ‘We were bloody lucky to hear anything at all about it in time for the final edition. It was only because one of the neighbours had the sense to call Bob that we knew anything was going down. The bloody Press Office didn’t breathe a word. Said they were going to issue something later in the day when the operation was
complete.’ Grant, purple-faced, spluttered with such outrage that Laura feared for his health.