By Death Divided (4 page)

‘I think you ought to see your doctor again and be honest with him this time. I don’t know much about mental illness
but it sounds as if your husband could be suffering from some form of it. And talk to the police. If you don’t do something pretty dramatic, you or Anna could get seriously hurt.’ Or worse, she thought, and she knew that Julie could recognise the unspoken thought only too clearly.

‘That’s what Vicky said,’ Julie said dully. ‘But I don’t want him locked up. That would destroy him. I just want it to stop.’

Mohammed Sharif, known at work happily enough as Omar, but not here, felt the familiar sounds and smells of Aysgarth Lane enfold him, the Punjabi chatter, the spicy aromas, the car horns of impatient young drivers and every now and again the beat of a Bangla rhythm. It felt like home and for a fleeting moment he regretted having cut himself off so completely from it. He had parked in one of the narrow streets of terraced houses nearby and joined the early evening crowds making their way from one Asian emporium to another. He inched through the door of the Punjab Bazaar, a gloomy cluttered store where women in brightly coloured
shalwar kameez
, headscarfs worn loosely around their hair or shoulders, gossiped amongst the crammed shelves. He had promised Louise, who did not realise how unusual it was for an Asian man to be seen in a kitchen, that he would cook her a curry that night, and he spent some time selecting large plastic packets of coriander, cumin and red pepper for his store cupboard on the other side of town, where such things only appeared on the supermarket shelves in minute and highly priced jars. He slipped easily back into Punjabi at the checkout, where he was greeted by name. This was a tight-knit community, which did not lose track of its sons if it could help it.

He dropped his shopping into the boot of his car and then made his way up the hill, not this time to his parents’ home but to the house of his aunt and uncle, Faria’s parents, and knocked lightly on the front door, which opened directly onto the street. It was opened by his cousin Jamilla, a few years younger than Faria. She was a young woman now, he noticed with approval, elegant in her traditional dress but with her headscarf only loosely furled around her shoulders revealing glossy black hair cut short in a fashion which he did not think her parents would totally approve of. She looked instantly pleased to see him, but he could see an anxiety in her eyes that worried him.

‘Are your parents at home?’ he asked. She shook her head and ushered him in. The proprieties were not offended by the visit of a cousin, even an unmarried one. She led him into the living room, where they found her sister curled on the sofa. The younger girl, Saira, turned the television off with a guilty look.

‘It’s all right, it’s only Mohammed,’ Jamilla said. ‘We were watching a Bollywood video. My father doesn’t like it. He says it’s far too modern.’ She laughed. ‘If he only knew what went on out of sight these days. There’s no way we’re going to marry backwoodsmen from some dusty village.’

‘Good for you,’ Sharif said, aware that perhaps they regarded him and his less than traditional choices as some sort of role model, and knowing that it would be much harder for these young women to break free than it had been for him as a male in a strictly paternalist community. ‘Are you staying on at school, Jamilla?’

‘I’m doing A levels. I’m going to university, whatever they say,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ Saira said. ‘I want to study law. Perhaps I’ll join
the police like you.’

‘Perhaps you will,’ Sharif said. ‘Your parents should be pleased. But watch your film if you like. I enjoy the music and dancing, though I can’t say the plots appeal much. I really came to see your father.’

Jamilla looked at her cousin for a moment thoughtfully.

‘Did you want to ask him about Faria?’ she said quietly at last. ‘He won’t talk about her, you know, even though she hasn’t been to see us for ages.’

‘My parents told me that,’ Sharif said, wondering how much these two smart young women had kept in touch with their older sister. ‘Have you spoken to her at all?’ He knew a lot of the girls had mobile phones their parents did not necessarily know about.

‘Not for weeks,’ Jamilla said. ‘When I call, Imran Aziz answers so I hang up. The last time I spoke to Faria she seemed fine.’ She glanced at her sister for a second and the younger girl nodded imperceptibly, as if giving her permission to go on.

‘You mustn’t tell anyone, Mohammed,’ Jamilla said. ‘But the last time we spoke she seemed really excited because she said she was pregnant, but it was very early and I wasn’t to tell anyone except Saira because she wasn’t sure yet. She sounded really happy about it. But since then I haven’t managed to get through to her.’

‘If she was really pregnant surely she would have let your parents know?’ Sharif said.

‘I know, I know, so maybe it was a false alarm. She doesn’t seem to have told my mother yet. False alarms happen, you know,’ she said seriously as if Sharif might be unaware of such female mysteries.

‘I know,’ he said gravely, suppressing a smile.

‘And we think it’s happened before,’ Saira said.

‘You mean the false alarm?’ Sharif said. ‘She’s lost babies?’

Saira nodded, her face serious.

‘I’m only guessing,’ she said. ‘But she always sounds very sad about not having children yet.’

‘So how long ago did you speak to her?’

‘Jamilla glanced at her sister again as if for confirmation.’ ‘About two months ago maybe. My mother’s very upset because she doesn’t come to see her any more.’

‘And you haven’t been over to Milford to see her? It’s not very far.’

‘We thought when school finishes we might go on the bus to visit her, didn’t we, Saira?’

‘We don’t like Imran Aziz much,’ Saira said. ‘But Faria is working all day in some travel agent’s, so we could only really see her in the evening when he would be there too.’ Sharif guessed that the girls’ new-found determination not to marry anyone from a Pakistani village had been reinforced by the arrival of Imran Aziz in their lives, the proverbial cousin from the old country, though not in this case, he believed, a country bumpkin.

‘Perhaps I’ll go over and see her myself,’ Sharif said. ‘Do you have her address? Or do you know where she works, perhaps? It might be easier to catch up with her there.’

‘Oh, would you?’ Jamilla said fervently, and Sharif realised just how seriously anxious she was about her sister. She went over to a small bureau on the other side of the room and rummaged through a drawer. She came back with a small notebook of addresses and phone numbers from which Sharif copied Faria’s details into his own notebook.

‘I’m not sure where she works, but it’s some sort of travel
agency. Surely you could find it, Mohammad. You’re a detective.’

‘I’m sure I can,’ Sharif said. ‘No problem.’

‘I know my parents are worried about her,’ Jamilla said quietly. ‘They won’t admit it but I think they are afraid that she has run away from Imran Aziz. But she wouldn’t do that if there’s a baby coming, would she? I really wanted to tell my mother, but she made us swear not to.’ Saira gave her sister an anxious look and Sharif knew the scandal a runaway wife would cause in the family and the wider community and hoped for Faria’s sake her parents’ fears were not true.

‘Did she agree to this marriage?’ he asked. ‘I was never sure.’

‘Nor was I,’ Jamilla said quietly. ‘My father wanted it, I know that. But Faria would never talk about it. Like you, I was never sure.’ Her dark eyes filled with tears.

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ he said, his stomach tight with foreboding. And when he left and glanced down the narrow, almost deserted street, few cars here, where many of the men were out of work, he wondered if he risked precipitating a family crisis by pursuing his cousin. But as he hurried back to his own car, close to the still bustling thoroughfare of Aysgarth Lane, he concluded he would have to risk it. The three sisters had always been close and if Jamilla and Saira were so worried about Faria then the least he could do was try to set their minds at rest. He would take a chance and track her down in Milford. It was, he thought, the least he could do. In the meantime he would cook for Louise, a simple thing that would shock his father and uncle to their core, but which in the new life he had created for himself seemed quite normal. He was, he thought, further adrift from his roots that anyone in his family could imagine.

Sergeant Kevin Mower walked the short distance from police HQ to Bradfield Infirmary and presented himself at the ward where the night’s apparent mugging victim had been found a bed. The doctor treating her had reported that she was now fit enough to be questioned, but showed few signs of being able to explain who she was or how she came to be lying on a patch of waste ground, battered and bruised about the face and at serious risk of hypothermia.

She was, Mower thought as the nurse showed him to her bed, a good-looking elderly woman, in her seventies, he guessed, with almost white hair and intelligent blue eyes. But the gash on her cheek, which had been stitched, had caused the left side of her face to swell and discolour, and her hands, which clutched at the sheets nervously, were also bruised, although her nails were clean and carefully trimmed, not the hands of anyone who might have collapsed after an evening’s binge drinking. He introduced himself and was sure that he saw a flash of consternation in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry about your accident,’ he said. ‘Mrs…’ The
woman licked her lips and then set them in a straight line.

‘I think I must have had a dizzy spell,’ she said, her voice husky but perfectly clear, her accent only faintly local. ‘The doctor tells me there’s nothing serious to worry about. I don’t think you need to waste your time with me, Sergeant. It’s very kind of you, but there’s no need.’

‘The doctors were concerned about you,’ Mower said. ‘You seemed not to know your name, and they suspected a crime might have been committed. They were quite right to call us. Have you forgotten your name?’

The woman hesitated for a moment and then shook her head slightly, wincing with the pain.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I was just a bit confused when I woke up here.’

‘So you are?’ Mower prompted firmly enough for her to be clear he was not going to be fobbed off.

‘My name is Holden, Vanessa Holden.’ And she gave him an address in Southfield.

‘Do you have a husband we can contact, Mrs Holden?’

‘No, no, I’ve been a widow for years,’ she said and hesitated, as if she had been about to say more and had changed her mind. Mower wondered for a moment if she had a boyfriend she was reluctant to admit to, but dismissed the idea with the arrogant contempt of youth.

‘No one else we should contact for you? Other family…’

‘No thank you,’ Vanessa Holden said with finality.

‘So can you remember what happened last night? We’ve had a series of muggings of elderly people in your area, that’s why CID is so interested. If you can remember anything, give us a description of an assailant, that would be very, very helpful.’ Mower knew that someone of her class and generation would
generally help the police willingly enough if they could, but Vanessa Holden shook her head again.

‘I can’t remember what happened,’ she said firmly. ‘The doctor says it might come back to me but it certainly hasn’t done yet, so perhaps it never will.’ Mower wondered whether he was imagining the note of certainty in her voice again, as if a decision not to recall anything about her injury and what led to it had already been taken and she was merely confirming it now.

‘Do you live alone, Mrs Holden?’ he asked, and again heard that slightly odd hesitation, and a flickering of her eyes, which told Mower without doubt this time she was lying.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’ll get someone – a friend with a car – to come round later and take me back. I don’t walk very fast now, you know. Arthritis. The doctor says I can go after lunch. I’ll be fine.’

‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ Mower said. ‘But if you do recall any more about what happened, I’d be grateful if you’d call me.’ He handed her a card. ‘It’s often difficult to get a clear description of these young muggers. I’m sure yours would be more accurate than most.’ But he could see he had lost her. She glanced away towards one of the nurses as if for help and Mower guessed that she had no interest in muggers because there probably had not been one. If someone really had assaulted Vanessa Holden she probably knew, but did not intend to tell him, who it was.

On his way out he met a white-coated young woman doctor he vaguely recognised and asked exactly when Mrs Holden would be discharged.

‘There’s no reason to keep her,’ she said. ‘And, as always, we need the bed.’

‘Is there any indication what caused that gash on her face?’

‘Not really. It could have happened if she felt faint and fell, although it’s quite deep and there wasn’t any sign of mud or gravel in it, apparently, which is a bit odd if she fell out of doors. But it’s really not serious. We only kept her in overnight because of the risk of concussion. We’ve told her to see her own GP about any dizzy spells she might be having, if that’s what it really was.’

‘You sound doubtful,’ Mower pressed.

‘Well, I was a bit surprised she had forgotten so completely after such a relatively minor injury. But at her age, you never know.’

As Mower came out of the hospital entrance he pulled out his mobile and thumbed in a text to Jess. The swift and explicit answer made him grin exultantly as he strolled across the town hall square in the watery sunshine that had followed the previous night’s heavy rain. Promises, promises, he thought happily, as he put Vanessa Holden’s problems onto the mental back burner. He would get no information from that source, for whatever reason, he thought: there was no assailant, no witnesses and no real evidence of a crime having been committed, and CID really had more important things to think about.

DC Mohammed Sharif drove back from Milford to Bradfield that evening feeling extremely uneasy. He had driven the seven miles to the smaller town after work and found his way to the address which Jamilla had given him for her sister Faria. It proved to be in a narrow street of stone terraced houses not far from the town centre, each one set back behind a wall and a tiny patch of garden, some well-tended,
but most, like that at number 41, cluttered with wheelie-bins and assorted rubbish that had missed its target. In the fading light there were few people around, and few lights on in this or any other house. He knocked a couple of times, without really expecting an answer. And when he peered though the downstairs window, where the curtains were only half drawn, he could see very little of the gloomy interior at all.

There was absolutely nothing that his detective’s nose could pin down as suspicious but still something about the evidently empty house disturbed him, and when a male voice spoke immediately behind him he gave a start that to an observer must have looked uncannily like guilt.

‘Ah said, what d’you think you’re up to?’ The voice was broad Yorkshire and the tone distinctly unfriendly but when Sharif turned he found himself looking down at an elderly man in a flat cap and threadbare sweater, who had apparently stepped out of the house next door and was speaking to him from his own gate, leaning his full weight on it to keep it firmly shut.

Sharif smiled faintly and, he hoped, reassuringly. The man was small and wiry, coming barely up to the tall Asian’s shoulder, but he radiated determination like a small bantam cock, alert for any intruder on his territory.

‘I’m looking for my cousin who lives here,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a burglar.’ He hesitated to admit to being a policeman but guessed that, if it came to the crunch, it might take his warrant card to remove the suspicion from this
next-door
neighbour’s sharp eyes.

‘Oh aye? And what’s your cousin’s name then?’

‘Faria,’ Sharif told him. ‘She’s the wife of Imran Aziz. Have I got the right house?’

Sharif watched a range of emotions flicker across the old man’s weatherbeaten, deeply wrinkled face as he looked him up and down before he nodded slightly, his expression marginally more friendly.

‘I don’t know her name, that one,’ he said. ‘I hardly ever see her. She sometimes hangs t’washing out in t’back yard but that’s about it. But he’s Imran, I do know that. I took some package for him one time, months back, summat from Pakistan. There were nobody in that day either so the van left it wi’me.’

‘They moved here about two years ago, after they got married,’ Sharif said.

‘Aye, that’d be right. He’s quite a bit older than she is, real May and September job, that.’

‘Quite a bit older,’ Sharif agreed non-commitally, although he knew that he was not the only one in the family to wonder at the twenty-year age gap between bride and groom, something he had almost had his head bitten off for when he raised the issue with his uncle on the plane to Lahore for the wedding. ‘I don’t suppose you know where they are? If they’re away, anything like that? I really need to speak to my cousin and there’s been no answer to the phone for a few days.’

‘I wouldn’t know owt about their comings and goings,’ Faria’s neighbour said dismissively. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves.’ I bet you do, Sharif thought, guessing why without any difficulty at all. This was not a predominantly Asian area, like Aysgarth Lane in Bradfield, and he knew that an Asian family buying into a white street would not be greeted enthusiastically by many of the local families. Local lore had it that brown faces reduced property values and that often became a self-fulfilling prophesy as the whites began to move
out in a torment of anxiety and prejudice. He turned away from the front doorstep with a sigh.

‘Course, they might have gone away after being harassed like that,’ the neighbour conceded reluctantly.

‘Harassed?’ Sharif said.

‘Brick through t’window a week or so back.’

‘BNP thugs, you mean?’ Sharif snapped. ‘Did they report it?’

‘Not BNP. No way. A couple of your kind – long white shirts and beards, like summat from bloody Afghanistan on t’telly.’

‘Muslims?’

‘Aye, Muslims.’

Sharif shook his head angrily, not sure what this bit of information might imply.

‘I’ll have to come back another time then,’ he said. He hesitated for a second and then pulled his wallet out of his inside pocket.

‘I’ll just leave Faria a note, I think,’ he said. ‘Ask her to call her mother.’ He was conscious of the old man’s bright
bird-like
eyes watching him suspiciously as he scribbled something on a page from his diary. ‘Maybe their phone’s out of order,’ he said inconsequentially, knowing that was untrue, but he wanted to give this curious observer as little to gossip about as he could. He slipped the page through the letter box and closed the dilapidated gate carefully behind him.

‘Thanks for your help,’ he said as the old man turned on his heel and closed his own front door with a sharp bang that said more than words could about his resentments, and Sharif wondered, for the hundredth time, whether the two communities that lived so uneasily side by side in these small
Yorkshire towns, could ever learn to coexist without friction. It was without surprise that he noticed a tattered British National Party election sticker in the window of number 43. It was in sad and neglected streets like these, he thought, that the racists gained ground, not in the vibrant multi-cultural enclaves of the big cities where a rainbow nation seemed to thrive. And the difference, in the end, came down to money, or the lack of it. Faria and Imran had little enough, he thought, but judging by the state of the street, their white neighbours had even less, and probably much less chance of escaping their poverty. An Asian like him, westernised, confident and turning up in smart clothes and an almost new car, would only feed the old boy’s sense of injustice.

He had turned back towards Bradfield, driving unusually slowly to give himself time to think. There was no evidence that he could see that anything was wrong at the house in Milford, no reason to send in the uniforms to break down the door. But even so there was this knot of fear in his stomach. On the way into the centre of Bradfield, where he coexisted happily enough with white neighbours in his flat in a warehouse building, he turned again into the warren of streets around Aysgarth Lane where Punjabi immigrants had created over forty years as near a replica to a village society as the old men had been able to impose on the unyielding grid of Yorkshire millworkers’ houses.

He pulled up close to the mosque, an imposing structure that had been paid for by the long and painstaking accumulation of cash from pockets that could ill afford it. But he was not here to pray. He rarely observed the strictures of his religion these days and his father had despaired of turning him back into Islamic paths, failing to understand how thoroughly
the young men who had recently become strict observers of their faith alarmed him. Instead, he turned to one of the identical stone houses in the shadow of the minaret and knocked again on a solid frontdoor. This time his knock was answered promptly by a stocky middle-aged man in a white
shalwar kameez
and skull cap, his grey-flecked beard reaching comfortably to his chest.

‘Mohammed,’ he said with a welcoming smile. ‘We don’t often see you here – or at prayers. Come in.’

Ignoring the implied criticism, which was only to be expected from the Bradfield mosque’s imam, Sharif followed Achmed Siddique into the dark living room of the small terraced house, where he had to move piles of books and papers from chairs before both men could find anywhere to sit. When the ritual pleasantries had been completed, Siddique looked inquiringly at the detective.

‘So, is this an official visit or are you looking for a little spiritual guidance at last?’

‘I’ll skip the guidance, but I’m not here on official business,’ Sharif said carefully. ‘It’s a family thing.’

‘Good,’ Siddique said. ‘There’s enough of the official business going on already. Most of it unannounced. I suppose we have to expect it in the circumstances but it gets a little wearisome being regarded as an emissary of that lunatic in the mountains at every prayer meeting when what I am preaching is the precise opposite of his ravings.’ He glanced away as if to hide the anger in his eyes.

‘It’s that bad?’ Sharif asked sympathetically.

‘We’re all being blamed for what those misguided young men did,’ Siddique said. ‘I had thought things were getting better but now people spit at us in the street and abuse the
women. It is a bad time, Mohammed. Maybe you’re insulated from it, but here in Aysgarth Lane, it’s a very bad time.’