By Death Divided (6 page)

‘It may be nothing, Omar,’ he had said, leading the way to Thackeray’s office. ‘But report it to the boss and then if this imam turns out to be dodgy they can’t accuse you of failing to act.’

‘Cover my back, you mean?’ Sharif muttered, not hiding his bitterness.

‘You’d be a fool not to,’ Mower said, looking grim.

But then, face to face with the DCI, Sharif felt foolish. Part of his strategy for success in the police service had always been to play down his difference from any other officer and this sudden catapulting of his private concerns into the official arena bothered him more than his colleagues could have been aware.

‘There was nothing there to pin down, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s odd that Imran and Faria are not around, but not unheard of for people to go on long visits in our community. She may have gone ahead and now he’s gone to join her.’ The other alternative that haunted him, that Faria might have run away
from an intolerable marriage, he did not want to raise in this company. The shame and embarrassment that would cause his family was too personal to be broached to non-Muslims of even the most sympathetic kind. And sympathy only went so far in the police service before suspicion inevitably kicked in.

‘As for the imam, Abdel Abdullah,’ he said, ‘it was just a feeling. A few bearded young men hanging about and an obviously pretty traditional imam. But a fanatic? No, I’ve got absolutely no evidence for that at all. It would be a travesty to say I had.’

‘I’ll pass your impressions on to special branch,’ Thackeray said. ‘They may want to talk to you. It may well be an
overreaction
but you know how it is. We all need to be ultra careful.’ He shrugged slightly wearily. Like everyone in Yorkshire, he was appalled that young suicide bombers could have emerged from the tightly packed streets of a local Asian community without any serious suspicion beforehand.

‘And as far as your cousin is concerned, if you can’t track down her or her husband soon, I suggest you or her parents try to make contact with her husband’s family in Pakistan before you panic. As you say, there could be an entirely innocent explanation.’

‘Sir,’ Sharif said. ‘It would be embarrassing for us all to report a missing person when there is nobody missing.’

But if Faria was in Pakistan, he thought, why had her husband not told him that when he had spoken to him a few nights previously? Even so, he had to admit that Thackeray was right in principle. The family had not done enough investigation itself to locate Faria. His mind flew back to the hot and humid days he had spent in the family’s ancestral
village in the Punjab at her wedding and he wondered whether the marriage he had witnessed had been arranged, in the traditional way, or actually forced on the young woman who had certainly not looked particularly happy as the ceremonies proceeded. Nothing had been said by his own parents, but he recalled his own slight sense of surprise that Faria had agreed to marry her distant, and much older, cousin. But he had never raised the issue. Notorious for his more relaxed lifestyle, he hesitated to be seen to be questioning such a sensitive area within the family. He had no reason to suppose that his uncle did not have Faria’s best interests at heart, nor the slightest real evidence that she had objected to the match. If she had done, surely her ambitious young sisters would have known and had some views on the matter. But they seemed content with what had happened.

He sighed heavily as Thackeray turned back to the paperwork in his desk. But as he followed Mower back to the main CID office, the sergeant stopped and turned to face him.

‘I’ve got a mate in special branch,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get any hint of what’s going on in Milford if you like. They’re keeping a close eye on comings and goings to Pakistan, obviously. They may even have your cousin’s husband under surveillance.’

Sharif froze, the anxiety gnawing again at his stomach, like a hunted animal alert to the slightest hint of danger.

‘You mean he might have used the marriage to get into the country for all the wrong reasons?’ he said, his horror apparent in his eyes. ‘But that would have meant my family being involved. That’s inconceivable. My father and my uncle were incandescent after the London bombings, especially when it turned out that the bombers were local boys, from
Yorkshire. You have no idea how betrayed most people in the community felt. Suddenly all the yobs in town felt they had good reason to abuse us, spit at women, provoke young men…’ His voice trailed away, close to despair.

‘That’s as may be,’ Mower said grimly. ‘But these people don’t go around wearing little labels saying ‘I’m a Terrorist’. Or at least, the successful ones – in their terms – don’t. If the imam in Milford’s a bit dodgy, as you obviously think he might be, your cousin’s husband may be a suspect too. And you’ll get nothing back through official channels, for obvious reasons.’

‘Because I’m Asian, too,’ Sharif said bitterly.

Mower looked at him with some sympathy in his eyes.

‘You know the way it is now,’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ Sharif said. ‘I know the way it is.’

Laura Ackroyd waited for Michael Thackeray to come home that evening with increasing impatience. She had left the office early and driven back up to Southfield after Vicky had telephoned her to give her Bruce Holden’s mother’s address, but when she had knocked on the door of Mrs Holden’s neat Victorian house she had got no reply. Standing back from the front door she realised that the curtains were closed on all the downstairs windows but upstairs she thought she saw the faint shadow of a movement at the window. Never one to give up easily, she rang the bell again, more insistently this time, and eventually she had heard a shuffling movement behind the door and a voice asked who was there, without any attempt being made to undo the locks.

‘My name’s Laura,’ she said. ‘I’m a friend of Julie’s.’ She knew she was stretching the truth but only, she thought, in the interests of Julie and Anna themselves. And when Vanessa Holden eventually opened the door, with much unbolting and unbarricading, she felt vindicated as she took on board the elderly woman’s bruised face with a long line of stitches down
the cheek.

‘Mrs Holden?’ she asked gently. ‘Can I come in? I don’t want to intrude but I did see Julie and Anna yesterday for an article I’m writing about violent relationships and I thought you might be able to help me too. And help Julie, as well, maybe. You do know her husband – your son – has been hitting her?’

Vanessa Holden shuffled backwards into the shadows of the hallway, offering no objection to Laura following her, and allowing her to close the front door behind her.

‘Pull the bolts,’ she said, her voice faint, and Laura did as she was told although she did not think that the cheap bolts on the door, top and bottom, would resist a determined intruder for very long. When Vanessa opened the sitting room door, allowing a little more light into the hall, Laura could see that she was in her dressing-gown, as if she had just got out of bed when she had disturbed her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘If you’re not well…’

‘Come in,’ Vanessa said, her voice slightly firmer. ‘I was just resting. As you can see, I’ve had a little accident. They only sent me home from hospital this afternoon. It’s nothing serious but I still feel a bit shaky.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said again, accepting the chair the woman waved her into. Vanessa put on the lights, though she did not pull the curtains open, before lowering herself down on to the edge of an armchair, with a wince of pain.

‘Did you have a fall?’ Laura asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Vanessa said. ‘My memory’s a bit hazy, but I think I was pushed. I went out for a walk, to get away for a bit, and I know there was someone else there when I fell over. I’m not sure who it was. I can’t walk very quickly these days.
My knees are bad. But I do like to get out for some fresh air when I can. I don’t like to use the car all the time.’ She glanced away and Laura could see that her eyes were full of tears.

‘Do you live here alone?’ Laura asked.

‘I did,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m a widow. My husband died some years ago and I thought I’d got some sort of life back together. You never really get over it after a long marriage, but I was coping.’ She hesitated.

‘And then?’ Laura prompted.

‘My son, Bruce. Have you met him as well?’ When Laura nodded Vanessa Holden shrugged and gazed silently at a fading bowl of flowers on a side table. ‘When they came back to Bradfield I was really pleased, but it wasn’t long before I realised that his marriage wasn’t going well. Last week, when Julie finally left him, he arrived on the doorstep and announced he wanted to move in with me – just until she came back, he said, though I guessed that she wouldn’t come back. I already knew he’d been hitting her, you see.’

‘So your son’s been living here?’ Laura said, surprised. She had had no reason to assume that when she saw him earlier in the day he was not living in his own home.

‘Just for a few days. But I don’t want him here. He was out when I came home this morning. Maybe he went back home, I don’t know. That’s why I locked all the doors. I can’t have him here any more.’ A shudder suddenly went through her body. ‘He’s been hitting me, too,’ she said in a whisper that Laura could barely catch. ‘When he loses his temper he’s like a madman. In fact, a doctor might say he is mad, I think. I can’t have him near me any more. If that’s what’s been going on with Julie I can understand why she left with the child. I knew something was dreadfully wrong, but she never told me
exactly what.’

‘And he’s been hitting you too?’

Vanessa glanced away and then nodded almost imperceptibly, putting a hand to her damaged face.

‘He threw a plate at me, because he didn’t like his meal,’ she whispered, almost as if ashamed. ‘That’s why I went out on my own last night. It was quite late but I thought I had to get away. I think I must have fallen. I really can’t recall. It’s all a bit hazy.’

‘But you weren’t mugged?’ Laura asked. ‘It was your son who hurt you?’

Vanessa nodded silently.

‘How long has this been going on?’ Laura asked angrily. ‘With you, I mean. Julie’s already told me about her experiences.’

‘Oh, only just these last few days. He’s never had the opportunity before, I suppose. It’s so strange. He seemed a normal enough little boy. That’s him there, in a school photograph.’ She waved to a picture of a sunny looking child in school uniform. ‘He must have been about twelve then. Quite a happy child, really, but he became a very depressed teenager. Though not unusually so, I didn’t think. All my friends used to say that their teenagers were the same: sulky, long silences, outbursts of fury. He went to college, got a job, and then another job in Blackpool.’ She hesitated before deciding to go on.

‘We didn’t see much of him while he was over there. I think there were girlfriends before Julie. And he did say one time that he had been in hospital, though he was a bit vague about why and for how long. But by then my husband was ill and I was preoccupied. I suppose I didn’t have time to worry
about him as much as I used to. When he got married his father was too ill to go to the wedding. But I was pleased for Bruce. I thought a wife and family were what he needed. And when they came back to Bradfield I was delighted. I was on my own by then and was anxious to see more of them, Anna especially. We only ever had the one child so there were no other grandchildren. Not like some of my friends, who seem to be surrounded by them.’ As Vanessa went on she seemed to become more and more forlorn, twisting her hands in her lap and occasionally fingering the stitches in their zigzag pattern on her cheek.

‘I know it’s difficult,’ Laura said. ‘But you really ought to report him to the police if he’s abusing you. I said the same thing to Julie. He needs to be stopped before he causes someone some serious harm.’ The knowledge that battered wives very easily become murdered wives hovered at the back of her mind like a dark cloud and she wondered if it applied to battered mothers too. But she did not want to panic this frail woman who seemed to be having difficulty in coming to terms with what had already happened to her to blight what should have been an enjoyable old age.

‘The police have special units to deal with cases like this,’ Laura insisted. ‘It doesn’t have to go as far as a prosecution if he’s willing to accept some help to control his temper.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Vanessa said. ‘Julie must do what she has to do. She has a child to care for, but I can’t complain to the police about my own son. I’ll just tell him he can’t stay here any longer. He must live in his own house.’

‘Do you think he’ll listen?’ Laura asked sceptically.

‘I don’t know,’ Vanessa said, and with that Laura had to be content. But by the time she got home half an hour later
she found that she was seething with suppressed anger herself, and when Thackeray finally arrived home she poured out everything she had uncovered about Julie Holden’s situation. Thackeray listened tolerantly enough but when she had finished he shook his head in exasperation.

‘I know it’s infuriating,’ he said. ‘But unless these women make a complaint it’s almost impossible for us to do anything. We were aware of Vanessa Holden’s alleged accident. The hospital alerted us. But according to Kevin Mower she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – remember what happened, so we didn’t even know if a crime had been committed. She could simply have had a fall. It’s not unusual at her age.’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ Laura said. ‘She’s sitting in her own home, terrified of her own son, and no one can do anything to protect her?’

‘She tells you that now, but it’s not what she said yesterday and it may not be what she’ll say tomorrow. She has to make a complaint. Of course, if you can persuade her to do that, we’ll take it seriously.’

Thackeray put an arm round her and pushed her unruly hair away from her face as if about to try to kiss her, but she pushed him away, her face flushed.

‘Don’t you dare say “I love you when you’re angry”,’ she said. He smiled faintly and pulled away.

‘I wasn’t exactly going to say that. But I do think that you’re in a better position to do something about all this than the police are. Just for once, and don’t ever quote me on that. Write your story, why don’t you? Do your campaigning. It can’t do any harm and it might actually do some good, if not for the Holden family then for some other battered woman who reads it and makes the decision to take a bully to court.’

‘Hah,’ Laura came back, not mollified, but slightly encouraged to find that for once Thackeray allowed that her work might be useful. ‘I’ll talk to Ted again in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can widen my brief to include battered mothers.’

‘And talk to your Asian contacts as well,’ Thackeray said thoughtfully. ‘There are more ways than one in which wives can be bullied. I suspect some young women are still being bullied into marriage, one way or another. And I’m not sure how that works out in the long run.’

‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked quietly.

‘I can’t tell you anything specific,’ Thackeray said. ‘Not without breaking a confidence. Let’s just say that young women are still going back to the subcontinent to marry and I reckon that some of them don’t go very willingly. How are they treated when they find the marriage is not going well? What do they do? Where do they turn for help?’

‘That sounds like a hornets’ nest,’ Laura said. ‘And one Ted Grant may not be very keen to poke a stick at.’

‘And when did that ever stop you?’ Thackeray asked. And Laura grinned wickedly before she kissed him.

For the second time that week Mohammed Sharif drove slowly towards the network of terraced streets off Aysgarth Lane on his way home from work. If he had been reluctant to knock on his uncle’s door the last time, he was ten times more reluctant now. He knew that his news would not be welcome and his inevitable questions resented bitterly where they touched on family honour. Even if he had attended the mosque five times a day for prayers, for as long as he had lived, he would not be greeted with any warmth now, and as someone who had
obviously abandoned most of the traditions his uncle and his father held dear, he would be doubly resented.

His tentative knock on the street door was opened quickly by his uncle himself, who greeted him with obvious coolness. He led him, unsmiling, into the cramped living room, where his wife and his two younger daughters were sitting, almost as if they had expected him.

‘Jamilla has told me that she spoke of Faria,’ Faisel Sharif said curtly, obviously angry that Mohammed had visited his young cousins when he had not been there himself.

‘My parents told me that you were worried because she hadn’t been in touch,’ Sharif said. ‘There’s nothing the police can do unless someone reports her missing – you or her husband preferably, so this is not official yet. It can’t be. But obviously I’m anxious too. I’ve tried to contact her but apart from a brief phone call to her husband, who just said she was out, I’ve not been able to speak properly to either of them. It does seem very odd. I wondered if you’d heard from her yet? Have you spoken to Imran Aziz?’

The question hung in the air as his uncle lapsed into a brooding silence before glancing at his two younger daughters and then waving an angry hand towards the door.

‘Go upstairs while I talk to your cousin,’ he said. Jamilla looked for a moment as if she might protest but then thought better of it and the two girls left, closing the door behind them. Sharif’s aunt said nothing, her hands twisting her long scarf compulsively between her fingers, her dark eyes opaque. Sharif waited. Whatever his uncle wished to tell him, he could see that it was causing him great distress and there would be no hurrying him. Eventually he glanced at his wife, whose eyes filled with tears, and they both sighed.

‘It is a long story and God willing it will have a happy outcome,’ Faisel said at last.

Sharif waited again, his stomach churning, but well aware that the older man would not be pushed and that his wife would not pre-empt anything he wanted to say. But the longer he waited the more he was certain that he would not like what he was about to be told.

‘It goes back more than twenty years, to the year Faria was born,’ Faisel Sharif said at last. ‘The family was already well settled in England. I came alone originally, to join your father, and we had good work at Earnshaw’s mill. My wife came later, and soon after that our first child arrived.’

‘I remember all that,’ Sharif, who had been about ten at the time, said quietly. ‘I remember when Faria was born.’

Faisel nodded impatiently, clearly not wanting to be interrupted.

‘But I began to get letters from my father about a dispute in the village between him and his cousin, Imran’s father. There was trouble over some land that no one disputed belonged to the family but which my uncle wanted to sell and my father did not. My father prevailed but there was bad blood remaining with this cousin, a lot of bitterness, and he suggested that we promise my daughter to his cousin’s young son Imran in marriage, if he had not already married by the time she was old enough. There was such a gap in their ages that I thought it would never happen. God willing, it was just a sop to a disgruntled old man.’