Straight Back (7 page)

“I hate to see you so upset,” he said. “Your mum can’t get you out of this.”

“If you let me go now I won’t say anything, alright?”

“Let you go? Let you go where? A young girl as beautiful as you shouldn’t be out on her own at night.”

“Let me go!”

“You know I can’t do that, Sheridan.”

EIGHT

“I’m not here to make any judgments on anyone, Mrs Taylor,” said Jeff who was sitting with DS Ollie Wright in the living room of Ellie Taylor’s house.

“I see,” said Ellie.

“I just want to know what happened to your daughter last Sunday,” Jeff went on. “It’s my job to find out and I don’t think you’ve started off with a very good impression of us.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Then let me try and engage with you so we can get justice for all concerned.”

Ellie heard those words “justice for all concerned,” and couldn’t help but start to cry.  Her daughter had been murdered. But, on the way, she’d murdered an innocent man over some stupid argument. Her little girl had taken a knife to a man who’d now left behind two little kids. It wasn’t just the anger over the police delay in trying to find Sheridan that night that was getting to her. It was the crushing reality of knowing what Sheridan had done to an innocent man called Sam Jackson.

“We’ll give you some time, Mrs Taylor,” said Jeff.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ellie. She wiped her eyes with a tissue. “I’ve never been one for pushing things to one side. I like to face them head on. I think that ultimately you’re better off doing that.”

Jeff admired this woman for her strength and her certainty in this time of such great sadness and loss. “Wise words, Mrs Taylor and admirable, if I may say, in the circumstances.”  

“I’m not looking for plaudits, Detective,” said Ellie. “But it is hard at the moment. It’s devastated our family. I have a new baby as you know, my little son, Tariq. He’s upstairs, sleeping, at the moment. He’ll never know his big sister even though she didn’t want to know him for the short time she knew him.”

“Why was that, Mrs Taylor?”

“Because she didn’t like the fact that he was brown,” said Ellie. “Sheridan had somehow got it into her head that it was okay to be racist. Where she got that from I really don’t know but I guess it was because of my partner Arif who’s from Iraq. Even though my ex-husband left me and left me penniless, Sheridan always believed that I was the bad guy and held out the hope that her father would come back. I tried, time and again, to explain to her that he would never be back but she always accused me of lying. Arif is a really decent human being and has tried so hard to reach out to Sheridan. But she wouldn’t have any of it and I think the whole race thing was her way of fighting Arif’s presence in our lives and her father’s absence.”

“These kind of things are hard to take in families.”

“You know what I’m talking about?”

“My late wife was Chinese and I have a son who my parents have rejected because he’s mixed race. So yes, I do know what it feels like and I don’t have any contact with my parents because of it.”

Ollie had never heard his boss talk so frankly and openly about his personal life before and he didn’t know about what Jeff had revealed. It was sad and deplorable on the part of Jeff’s parents. But he’d used his own personal situation to try and make some kind of common ground with Ellie Taylor and for that he got top marks from Ollie. 

“Mrs Taylor,” Ollie began. “We need to find out who was driving that Mondeo. Do you know of anyone who you daughter would’ve known sufficiently to get into a car with them? Think hard and however unlikely you think something might be it may lead to us finding some answers. Just the name of someone would give us a start.”

Ellie looked down slightly. “No, no there isn’t anyone I can think of.”

She’s lying, thought Jeff.

“Are you sure, Mrs Taylor? Are you sure there’s nobody you can think of who we might want to talk to?”

“No,” said Ellie. “Absolutely nobody.”

Why is she lying? Is she trying to protect someone?

“Right,” said Jeff. “Well, we’ll need to interview Arif Rashid. It’s standard procedure to be able to eliminate him from our enquiries.”

“Yes, I thought that would be the case,” said Ellie. “Well, Arif does two jobs with two different office cleaning companies in order to contribute to the family finances. I’ll give you the details. He was a doctor in Iraq but they won’t let him practise here. I think it’s disgraceful.”

“May I ask if you had any other relationships between the time your husband left and meeting Arif?” Ollie probed as gently as he could.

“No,” said Ellie. “There’s been nobody else.”

Jeff and Ollie sat outside in Jeff’s car for a few moments to discuss the interview with Ellie Taylor.

“She’s lying, sir,” said Ollie.

“Of course she is,” Jeff agreed. “There is someone who she knows we might need to talk to but why is she protecting them? Why would she want to protect the potential murderer of her daughter?”

“There could be all kinds of reasons if it’s wrapped up in her personal life, sir,” said Ollie who liked DI Rebecca Stockton very much but who was so glad that Jeff Barton was back. It was like a grown-up was back in charge. “I’d say an ex-boyfriend though.”

“Yes, so would I” said Jeff. “So how are we going to get her to open up about him? In the meantime, I take it no house-to-house has been done around here?”

“No, sir,” said Ollie who was almost embarrassed to admit that.

“Well, let’s get it started. Somebody might’ve seen the Mondeo and who was driving it.”

“Okay, sir.”

“And I want house-to-house conducted around the petrol station too for the same reason. Somebody has to have seen that bloody car.”

“My brother calls it ‘
the end of fun car’
,” said Ollie.

“What, the Mondeo? Why?”

“Well, it’s what men with families have to get,” said Ollie. “My brother had a sports convertible before he and his wife had the kids. I think he thought he’d traded in his youth when he traded it in for the Mondeo.”

Jeff laughed. “Well, thankfully I kept hold of my Audi and, as it doesn’t look like I’ll be having any more kids in the foreseeable future, I think I’ll continue to keep hold of it.”

“You do that, sir,” said Ollie, looking round Jeff’s car which was in impeccable condition. He really did take care of it. “The Audi is a mighty fine motor.”

“I don’t think you can beat German cars, to be honest,” said Jeff, who then stretched and yawned. “Don’t take it personally, Ollie. I’m not bored with your company. But I think part of me is still in Hong Kong.”

Ollie laughed. “No worries, sir. I always get jet lag when I go back to see my relatives in Jamaica. Not that I’ve gone back for a while which disappoints my mum and dad.”

“You can’t live your life for your mum and dad, Ollie. You’ve got to find your own way and you seem to be doing alright.”

“Yeah, I’ve no complaints,” Ollie agreed. “I’m still close to my mum and dad though, sir. They even accepted the fact that I’m gay and I live with my partner Neil and the Caribbean community isn’t always accepting of same sex relationships. I feel lucky, which is why I was sad to hear about your situation with your parents, sir. That’s if I’m not speaking out of turn?”

“You know me well enough by now, Ollie,” said Jeff. “You can say what you like to me. As for my parents … well it may mend itself one day. Who knows? I certainly didn’t cause the rift. They did because they objected to me marrying a Chinese girl and they now take that out on my son. It’s so fundamental and I’ve been so angry and hurt by it that I don’t know if it ever could be mended to be honest.”

They were both shaken out of their conversation by a sharp tapping at the window on Ollie’s side. He wound the window down.  A woman who they both put in her sixties wearing a light blue raincoat over a white blouse and dark blue trousers leaned her head down to speak to them.

“Are you the police officers looking after our Sheridan’s case?”

“Yes,” said Ollie, who then introduced himself and Jeff. 

“Forgive me. I was walking down the road and I saw you coming out of my daughter’s house. With the way you’re dressed, I put two and two together. I’m Sheridan’s grandmother. My name is Joan Sanders. Ellie Taylor is my daughter and, though it grieves me to tell you,  there’s something you should know that I know she won’t have told you. Can I come down to the station? I’d rather talk there than round here.”

“Are you ready now, Mrs Saunders?” said Jeff.

“Yes,” she replied. “I am. I was on my way to my daughter’s but I haven’t knocked on the door yet.”

“Then jump in the back and let’s go,” said Jeff. “There’s a burger-type takeaway place just down the road with parking. We’ll talk there over a coffee and then I’ll run you back here.”    

The three of them sat round a half circle table on red plastic-covered seating with their piping hot coffee in polystyrene cups. Ollie clearly didn’t come into places like this and his slightly uncomfortable pose made Jeff smile. He, on the other hand, had been in this sort of family-orientated eating place many times with Toby and Toby’s mates. Kids love this kind of food although he rationed Toby’s indulgence of it. He didn’t want him ever to make fast food his first choice. Joan looked at peace with her surroundings. No doubt she came in here with her grandchildren.

“So what is it you think your daughter hasn’t told us, Mrs Sanders?” asked Jeff whilst sipping his coffee. The caffeine would be useful to shake off the lethargy that was beginning to creep through his body.

“This is hard for me,” said Joan. “I don’t like going behind my daughter’s back but there’s so much at stake here that I have to try and put those feelings to one side and do the right thing.”

“Which is?” asked Jeff.

“When Arif came into my daughter’s life I was immediately impressed by him,” Joan began. “He seemed to really love my daughter and she’d been so badly let down and scarred by what her ex-husband had done to her. If I was driving a car and that bugger stepped into the road in front of me, I’d be so tempted to put my foot on the accelerator although perhaps I shouldn’t tell you gentlemen that? But he left her almost destitute. I had to clean out my own savings to get her and the girls back on their feet.”

“So what happened with Arif, Mrs Sanders?” Ollie asked.     

“Nothing that was bad,” Joan insisted. “He moved in and, a few weeks later, my daughter was pregnant. I didn’t see any wrong in any of it. My granddaughter Paige was thrilled at the prospect of a new half brother or sister. She liked Arif just like we all did.” 

“But what are you trying to tell us, Mrs Sanders?” Jeff wanted to know.

“Well, nothing went wrong with Arif,” Joan emphasised. “He’s not the problem here. No, the problem was that Sheridan just wouldn’t accept that her mother had moved on from her father and was now with Arif, to the extent that she was now pregnant by him. She became bad tempered, she answered her mother back and said some terrible things and she sucked all the happiness out of what her mother had found with Arif. It was a happy time and yet it was a dreadful time. Sheridan was so full of anger and spite. I’d never seen her like that. It was as if she just wanted to hit out at the entire world. It was such a worrying time for Ellie and, although she had Arif, I know there was someone else she also came to rely on.”

“Who was that?” Jeff asked.

“He was a teacher at Sheridan’s school,” said Joan. “Sheridan seemed to grow close to him and we thought that if she had someone she could confide in then it might help. Ellie met him a few times and she came to rely on him. He seemed like a good sort.”

“How do you mean ‘
he seemed like a good sort’
?” Ollie questioned. “Did something happen to make you change your mind?”

Joan hesitated. Sometimes the truth was really hard to tell. “I came round to the house one Thursday afternoon. He was lying on top of Sheridan’s bed whilst she was inside it, wearing not very much, and I didn’t think it was appropriate so I told him to leave. I mean, why would he want to do that unless he had some kind of ulterior motive? My daughter didn’t do anything about it because she just didn’t see any wrong in him. She thought he was misunderstood but Arif, to his great credit, insisted that he never came to the house again.”

“And what was this man’s name?” Jeff wanted to know.

“His name was Leo McKenzie,” Joan revealed. “And he’s still in post at Sheridan’s school.”

When they got back to the station, DC Joe Alexander was the only one in the squad room.

“Where is everyone, Joe?” asked Jeff. He didn’t hold anything against Joe for having jumped in there with Rebecca. He was certainly more grown up than that and besides, if he hadn’t hesitated for all those weeks and months instead of acting on what he could see clearly written all over Rebecca’s face then Joe wouldn’t have stood a chance. He knew he’d only got himself to blame.