Bones in the Nest (25 page)

The New Moon Chinese restaurant was empty at lunchtime, which suited Sean fine. He was early, but he hadn’t been able to settle all morning. Lizzie had promised to meet him straight from the lab. He wanted to hear it in person, no email trail, no texts. She said she understood.

He asked for a jug of water and ordered a mixed starter. A bowl of prawn crackers arrived straight away and he broke one in his fingers and let it melt on his tongue. He wasn’t really hungry, but it was something to do. He checked the time on his phone. She was a minute late. There was music playing, barely audible despite the stillness in the restaurant, a high-pitched Chinese instrument full of sorrow. Then she was there, a laptop case over her shoulder, white blouse under her little black jacket, turning the corner of the stairs, the waiter showing her across the empty restaurant to where he was waiting.

‘Got it,’ she smiled briefly and sat down. She pulled a large, brown envelope out of the bag. ‘The paperwork
was a bit tricky, but I said I was trying to rule out cross-contamination. That thread of denim you gave me at the Asaf murder scene? I wrote on the notes that I couldn’t be sure you hadn’t touched it, so I needed to order a double-blind test for your DNA against Starkey’s.’

‘I hadn’t touched it.’

‘I know that. Now concentrate. You’re on the system, obviously, but your dad’s DNA was more tricky. He’s not a suspect, although we could have arrested him for perverting the course of justice, but I didn’t think you’d want that. Then Gavin Wentworth gave me this.’

She pulled out a clear plastic bag containing Jack Denton’s baseball hat, which Sean had left in Gav’s car on the night of the Clean Up Chasebridge meeting.

‘It’s much easier to prove or disprove a half-sibling relationship if you’ve got the father’s DNA.’

‘And?’ He thought he would be sick if she didn’t tell him soon.

‘The good news is Starkey is not your half-brother. He has no DNA in common with you or your father.’

‘Thank fuck for that.’

He wondered why she didn’t smile; the papers were still in her hand.

‘And the bad news?’

‘Marilyn Nelson, or Chloe Toms, as she’s now known, is, however, your sister. Your half-sister on your father’s side.’

The Chinese music wailed gently in the background like a ghost calling him from somewhere.

‘That stupid bastard. He must have been putting it about all over the fucking estate.’

‘Before you were born, though. Chloe’s older than you, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said. Chloe Toms looked like a child, but Lizzie was right, she must be three or four years older at least. ‘Who’s her mother?’

‘Well, the DNA doesn’t tell me that, but the Internet was very helpful. I’ve quite enjoyed being a detective actually.’

She watched him and waited for a moment, as if she was testing how much he wanted to hear.

‘Linda Nelson died in a car accident six weeks after her daughter was sent to prison. The newspaper reports said she worked behind the bar at the Chasebridge Tavern. She never married.’

‘And the Tavern went up in smoke itself last year. Christ, it all turns to shit in the end, doesn’t it?’

‘Are you OK?’ Her hand was moving across the table. He let her place it on top of his.

‘Yeah. I’m OK. Funny, I always wanted a sister.’

Lizzie withdrew her hand and he wondered if he’d missed something.

‘My nan went up to the library yesterday,’ he said, ‘did a bit of research in the old local papers they’ve put online. James Armley’s death wasn’t clear-cut. On the first day of the case the defence claimed it was planned as a double suicide, but the girl didn’t have the bottle. Then she changed her plea to guilty to manslaughter on the second day, blamed herself I suppose, or just gave up fighting. Guess who the eye witness was, who said he’d seen her push James off?’

‘Terry Starkey?’

‘In one.’

‘I never thought she had it in her to kill Taheera Ahmed either,’ Lizzie said. ‘But you know what?’ She tapped the envelope. ‘I don’t think Starkey did it.’

‘You’re kidding! He had access to the weapon, the gloves, everything.’

‘There was a print on her cheek, perfectly shaped like a pair of lips. The DNA from the saliva is her brother’s. I think if we put it to Kamran Ahmed that he killed his sister, then kissed her goodbye as the blood drained from her throat, he might stop denying it and tell us where he disposed of her car. I’ve told Khan, but he says not to rush with the documents. He’s enjoying making Ahmed sweat a bit.’

‘I think Khan guessed he was behind it,’ Sean poured a glass of water and drank it in one. ‘But I’d assumed he’d got Starkey to do his dirty work and paid him with the car.’

‘Looks like Starkey was just the accomplice, in Taheera’s case. We still need something concrete to pin him with the Asaf murder. We know he had access to the right sort of knife, but it would be good if we could find it. I think he’ll go down as an accessory with Kamran Ahmed, whichever way it falls.’

‘Blue denim thread,’ Sean said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘It puts Starkey at the scene of Asaf’s murder.’

‘And Chloe’s drawing puts him at Halsworth Grange with Kamran Ahmed. Perhaps it wasn’t just about supplying the weapon, perhaps Kamran needed Starkey with him to see it through.’

‘Or in case Taheera put up a fight,’ Sean said.

‘But she didn’t. I don’t understand that.’

‘Khan’s furious,’ Sean said. ‘He hates Kamran, like it’s personal.’

‘Yeah, well it is personal for Sam,’ she said.

The waiter arrived with four stainless steel dishes. Sean’s appetite had come back and he couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

‘In what way?’

‘The idea of honour killings. In fact he told me off for using the word “honour”. He says they’re inherently anti-Islamic.’

Sean shrugged. ‘Fair enough, but how is that personal?’

‘It’s to do with Khan’s parents. They had a love marriage, apparently, and got cut off from their families. It’s complicated for him, I think, because he did the same, married a non-Muslim and they couldn’t cope with that.’

‘I didn’t know he was married,’ Sean helped himself to sesame prawn toast. He realised he didn’t know very much at all about Khan.

‘He and his wife are trying for a baby. He thinks his parents might soften if there’s a grandchild,’ Lizzie said, and stirred a spoon into the dish of salt and pepper chicken wings, piling some onto her plate.

‘How did you get all this out of him?’ Sean said. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the kind to share his personal life.’

She seemed to be focusing on her chopsticks and the business of transferring a piece of chicken to her mouth, so she didn’t reply at first.

‘It makes me realise how lucky I am,’ she said, giving up with the chopsticks and using her fingers. ‘My mum’s a bit of a nightmare in her way, but I can’t imagine her disowning me, or worse, because of a boyfriend she doesn’t approve of.’

‘Even if he was a Muslim?’ Sean said.

She looked up sharply. ‘Look, I went for dinner with him once. OK? Was I under surveillance?’

‘No, in fact I had no idea, but like every guilty suspect, you’ve just given yourself away.’ He was trying to keep it light, but he had a bad feeling he’d said the wrong thing. She was stabbing at the chicken now as if it was still alive.

‘Do you mind me asking,’ he said, ‘when did you have this dinner with DCI Khan?’

‘Couple of nights ago. I’d been a bit hard on him, and I felt guilty, if you must know. Look, I’m not in the business of stealing other people’s husbands.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you were.’

The sound of Lizzie’s chopsticks and Sean’s fork on the china dishes punctuated the music, but no more was said while they concentrated on their food. Sean was thinking about Terry Starkey. If Jack believed he was Terry’s father, had the idea come from Terry himself, or someone else? Perhaps Bernadette Armley had believed it to be true all along.
How did you end up like Terry
, he wondered. Old man Starkey had been a drinker; then he was dead. Not much of a start in life for his son. Perhaps Terry was jealous of his younger brother, James. Perhaps that’s why he wanted to hurt him. Sean had often felt sorry for himself, with his mother dead and having Jack as a dad, but now he looked at it, he realised he’d been lucky. He’d had his nan, and she was solid.

‘What makes one person turn out a psychopath,’ he said, ‘and another person, well, I don’t know, like me, I suppose?’

Lizzie didn’t have an opportunity to answer before there was a commotion on the stairs and a familiar figure
burst through the red curtain into the dining area.

‘Get your hands off me, man!’ Saleem Asaf was trying to retrieve his arm from the tight grip of the restaurant manager. ‘It’s the copper I’ve come to see and he’ll want to see me, best believe.’

‘It’s OK,’ Sean said to Mr Lee, the manager. ‘Saleem. What’s up?’

‘I need you to arrest me.’

‘Excuse me?’

The boy edged his way round the other tables. He sat down without invitation and helped himself to a plate of chicken wings.

‘Got to make the most of it. I ain’t going to be eating like this for a while.’

‘Be my guest,’ Sean said. ‘Lizzie, let me introduce Saleem Asaf, Mohammad’s cousin.’

‘Came to tell you I burnt down the shop,’ he said, as he tore the meat off a wing with his teeth.

‘In that case, can I have that chicken bone when you’re done?’ Lizzie said.

He shrugged. ‘What for?’

‘DNA test.’ She patted her envelope.

‘No need, lady. I’ve come here to fess up. Then your boyfriend can arrest me.’

Sean thought this would be a bad moment to look embarrassed.

‘Saleem, what’s this about?’ he said. ‘Get to the point or I’ll have to ask Mr Lee to throw you out.’

‘Criminal damage, can you do me for that? I burnt down the shop, innit. My dad and my uncle are going to land at
Manchester Airport in three hours’ time and I can’t be here when they get back.’

‘We’ve been assuming it was a racist attack.’

‘Good.’ Saleem’s mouth was full, but he still crammed more meat in.

‘But you’re willing to admit to arson?’

‘Mmnh, hnh.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I did it. And you can prove it, right?’ he said, handing Lizzie the stripped wing bone.

‘I think so. If your DNA matches the sample we have from the crime scene.’

‘But how?’ Sean said.

‘I think I know,’ Lizzie interrupted. ‘The torchlit parade was making its way round the estate. You sent Ghazala away, telling her to keep herself safe, didn’t you, Saleem? You promised to lock up. Then you waited until the protestors were outside, dropped the bottle full of petrol inside the shop, went out of the back of the building and bolted the shutters.’

Saleem looked impressed. He grabbed a handful of prawn crackers, nodding as he stuffed them in his mouth.

‘But why?’ Lizzie asked. ‘To steal pills from the Health Centre?’

‘Pills? Nah.’

‘So?’ Sean said.

Saleem was still for a moment. ‘Are you wearing a wire?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Saleem, this is Doncaster, not Baltimore.’ Sean said. ‘No, I’m not wearing a wire. Just get on with it.’

‘I’m not under arrest yet?’

‘No, but you will be for wasting police time in a minute.’

Saleem flicked the tassels of the tablecloth.

‘OK. I thought you’d pin it on those CUC Nazis and that would serve them right. The thing is, I didn’t want to run the shop. I don’t want to stay on the Chasebridge estate all my life, and with Mo gone, that was my destiny, d’you get me?’

‘What about your sister?’ Sean said.

Saleem hesitated.

‘Surely she’d run the shop?’

‘I can’t stay there. She can’t either. It’s not safe for either of us.’ He lifted his T-shirt up to show his dressing, as if that explained everything.

‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’

‘Yeah.’ He turned another chicken wing over in his fingers and put it down again. ‘That other detective said you got some shoe prints from the bottom of the stairs at Eagle Mount Two. From a potential witness? Well, they’re mine. Your man took my shoes away from the hospital. I know he’s going to work it out sooner or later. But I never had anything to do with Mo’s murder, right? I walked in on them, Starkey and his crew, and a couple of younger lads, the ones I knew. Mo was already dead, but they were cutting him, daring each other …’

His face twisted with the effort of trying not to revisit what he’d seen. Lizzie leant forward.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I understand. I’m sorry you had to see that.’

‘Is that right?’ Sean asked Lizzie. ‘Do the shoes match the prints?’

‘I’ll have to check, they’re somewhere in a backlog of
evidence, but maybe that’s where the other half of my ant’s got to.’

‘Your what?’ Saleem looked confused, but Sean decided there wasn’t time to explain.

‘Did your sister know who Mohammad was going to meet,’ Sean said, ‘the night he was killed?’

‘She guessed,’ Saleem said. ‘Mo got a text from his girl, but it wasn’t really from her, you know what I mean? Her brother took her phone. He texted Mo, pretending to be her.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because he told me. He thinks he’s the big man, Kamran Ahmed, but he’s just a dog.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘He was playing gangsters. Met up with Starkey in a club, paid him to be his chauffeur and that. Cool as a cucumber he turns up to the shop, the day after Mo’s murder, talking dirty to Ghazala, calling her a slag. She’s had troubles, man. Some boy hurt her, I told you this before, but it weren’t her fault. It doesn’t make her a slag.’

He paused for a reaction but Sean and Lizzie simply stared at him.

‘So I told him what I thought of his family. You know? To return the favour. Now maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but he dissed my sister. I told him that his sister was the slag, she was the one that crept upstairs, to our flat, to fuck her boyfriend. Kamran Ahmed said he knew that, and why did I think Mo was dead? Did I really think those
gora
dogs cared about him, some has-been errand boy? It was never about drugs. They killed Mo for money. Kamran’s money. He told me how he set it up. He even clicked his fucking fingers to show how easy he thought it was.’