Dead Reckoning (20 page)

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Authors: Patricia Hall

BOOK: Dead Reckoning
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By ten Laura was dozing, still on the sofa, still with the TV flickering quietly in the corner of the room, with the lump of unresolved foreboding slowing her thoughts and reducing her body to inertia. The shrill of the phone startled her and set her heart thumping in hope that it was Thackeray again. Instead she heard a voice she only half recognised.
“Amina,” she said stupidly. “What can I do for you? Have they found your sister?”
“I need you to help me,” Amina Khan said, her voice husky and so low that Laura could hardly hear what she was saying.
“If I can,” Laura prevaricated.
“Saira rang me. I persuaded her to meet me in Paris. But I want someone to come with me. She's not going to believe me if I tell her Simon Earnshaw is dead. She'll think it's a trick of my father's to get her back home. There are seats on the early flight to Paris in the morning from Manchester. We could be there by eleven, meet her, and be home the same day. Will you come with me? Please?”
Laura was fully awake now, heart beating fast, knowing she was being presented with a story to die for.
“I'd want to write about this, when the time's right,” she said, hesitantly. She heard Amina draw a deep breath.
“Saira will never be able to come home,” she said at last. “All this will wound my family, whatever happens …”
“Better for me to write about it with some sympathy than for the tabloids in London to get hold of it later,” Laura said. “You know the police will find her in the end. It's inevitable.”
“She hasn't told me where she's staying. Just where to meet her. If the police, or my brother or anyone else she doesn't want to talk to are visible she won't come near, she says. That's why I thought of you. She won't recognise you or, if we're careful, know you're with me. I can talk to her first and then introduce you. Then you can reassure her that what I'm telling her is true.”
“But you'll have to tell the police later. Or I will.”
“Maybe,” Amina said, her voice faint. “But will you come?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “I'll come. Book me a flight.” The thought of telling Michael Thackeray in advance where she was going did not even cross her mind.
 
At midday the next day Laura and Amina Khan came up the steep steps from the Metro on the Left Bank of the Seine at St.
Michel in bright winter sunshine and a sharp wind which was whistling along the river from the east. They did not speak or look at each other. They had made their plans carefully and Laura took up a position close to the Metro entrance while Amina crossed the road onto the river embankment where the green-shuttered bookstalls were just beginning to open up and display their wares. She began to work her way along the stalls slowly, as if browsing, while Laura watched, glancing at her watch occasionally to give the impression that she was meeting someone. Surrounded as she was by swirling groups of students and tourists, heads down against the wind, she doubted that even the keenesteyed observer would notice her.
Saira has asked Amina to meet her by the bookstalls on the Quai des St Augustins but had made it very clear that before she approached her sister she would watch to make quite sure she was alone. In her long coat and white hijab Amina was noticeable enough amongst the handful of browsers who had arrived almost before the book market came to life. Across the river on the Île de la Cite where the vast bulk of the Conciergerie and the Ste Chapelle loomed over the fastflowing water, there was scant opportunity for anyone to watch the Quai. But on the Left Bank Laura casually scanned the buildings facing the busy road between the embankment and the river and wondered if Saira was watching from one of the small cafes or the flats rising four or five stories above them. Right up at rooftop level, she thought, there were probably still the little garret apartments occupied by artists and students, amongst the glittering slates and chimney pots. Perhaps Saira had found her French refuge in one of those bohemian eyries in this area of narrow streets and milling young people from dozens of nations where a young Asian woman would not be thought at all remarkable.
Wherever Saira had been concealing herself she took her time to emerge. Laura had turned up the collar of her jacket in an attempt to stop the wind from pinching her ears, and begun to stamp her feet and wish she had chosen practicality rather than an attempt at Parisian elegance in the form of a rose silk shirt and fine wool trouser suit, by the time she noticed that Amina, who had been standing reading at one of the stalls on the opposite side of the road, was no longer alone. In fact she was deep in animated conversation with a tall slim girl in jeans and a duffle coat whose long dark hair was tossing wildly in the wind. Laura took a sharp breath and began to think that perhaps her trip would prove fruitless as the two young women appeared to be arguing fiercely but eventually they turned and began to walk slowly back towards the Metro.
Saira Khan was beautiful, although there was anxiety in her eyes and dark circles beneath them when she acknowledged Laura with a cool curiosity which gave nothing of herself away. She pulled her hair inside her collar and shivered slightly, waiting suspiciously for her sister's next move. But Amina seemed frozen, unsure now that she had achieved half her objective of what to do next.
“Why did you come?” Saira asked Laura. “I asked her to come alone.”
“Amina felt she needed a bit of moral support,” Laura said. “Let me buy you both lunch,” she offered, nodding in the direction of the Boulevard St. Michel and its cafes and bars. “It's too cold to talk out here.”
The sisters followed her, both wary and unsmiling, and eventually settled at a table close to the window of a bar and ordered coffee and sandwiches. Saira merely picked at her baguette with long fingers which trembled so much that Laura began to wonder whether Amina had already broken
the bad news that she had brought from Bradfield. But it seemed not, as the sisters spoke merely of their family, quietly and mainly in monosyllables until Saira tossed back her coffee and turned on Amina angrily.
“So why have you really come?” she asked. “You know I won't come back. We've made our plans.”
Amina covered her mouth with her hand, as if to prevent herself from crying out, and her glance at Laura was so anguished that she felt compelled to take the initiative herself.
“I'm so sorry, Saira,”she said. “Amina really brought me with her to help her tell you some awful news. There's no easy way to say this, I'm afraid. Simon Earnshaw won't be coming to meet you. He's dead. He's been killed. And the police in Bradfield want to talk to you.”
Saira flinched and leaned back in her chair as if Laura had struck her physically. Then she fastened dark, stunned eyes on her sister.
“Who did this?” she whispered. “Is this Sayeed and Father? How did they find out? How could they possibly find out? We were so careful, Simon and I. So quiet and so careful.” It was interesting, Laura thought, that Saira never for a moment thought that Simon had died accidentally. She assumed far more quickly than the police had done that her lover had been murdered.
“The family didn't know about Simon. None of us had any idea. But of course the police found out,” Amina said, her eyes as full of tears as her sister's. “And they think you did it.”
“No,” Laura said quickly. “I don't think that's true. But they do need to talk to you, Saira, as a witness. And they suspect you're in France so they'll no doubt ask the police to look for you. The best thing for you to do is to come back
with us and talk to them voluntarily. The longer you stay out of sight the more suspicious they're likely to get.”
“You don't understand,” Saira said contemptuously. “Amina knows I can't come back to Bradfield. Ever. We were going to live here in France, away from it all. I've been trying to contact Simon for days. I couldn't understand why his phone was switched off …” Her voice trailed away and she seemed to shrink in her seat as the full enormity of what had happened began to sink in. Around them the bar began to fill up with chattering, insouciant groups of young people as the Parisian lunch-hour got into full swing while Laura, sitting between the two stricken, silent young women, felt the full weight of the tragedy which had struck them, crushed as they were between the millstones of sudden death and cultural expectations which would not even recognise the relationship let alone the loss.
“I don't know what your plans were,” Amina said hesitantly. “But I brought you some money. It's not a lot.” She passed an envelope across the table, but Saira thrust it instantly back at her.
“Money's not a problem,” she said. “Simon gave me money.”
“I got the impression Simon was worried about money,” Laura said cautiously. “He seemed to be trying to get a better deal as part of his father's plans for the mill.”
“He was keen to buy a house in France, but he didn't discuss finance with me,” Saira said. “There was no problem with money as far as he was concerned. He said his grandfather would look after him.”
“His grandfather?” Laura began, surprised by that unexpected Earnshaw family revelation. “You really need to talk to the police about all this.” But Saira shook her head furiously.
“No,” she said. “I can't come back.”
“You could come back to England, to London maybe, even if you don't come to Bradfield,” Laura said. “It won't be much fun to be arrested and sent back by the French police.”
Saira did not answer. She drew patterns on the table in spilt coffee until Amina stopped her, putting a hand over hers. But Saira pulled away impatiently.
“We were going to live in Provence,” Saira said. “Simon had been offered a job in Montpellier, at the university there, with an ecology research programme. We were going to fly down and look for a house in the countryside. The climate sounded so marvellous, not like the cold and rain in Yorkshire. We were going to be happy there, where no one would know us or care that we weren't the same race or the same religion. No families to hassle us, his or mine. Then he got worried about something, something about his grandfather and the sale of the mill, so he suggested I come to Paris to wait for him. He wanted to finish the term and get his masters' … He needed that …”
“What about your degree?” Amina asked angrily. “Didn't that count for anything?”
“It did count, but not so much. When I can speak good French I can finish my education here. It was more important for Simon to finish, for the new job. I had what I wanted, Amina, can't you see that? I was happy and I had what I wanted. And now this!”
Laura felt tears sting her own eyes at Saira's distress but she felt that she must persuade the girl to think about her new situation for her own sake.
“Saira, Simon was murdered,” she said quietly. “Perhaps because of you, perhaps not, but you must want the police to find out who did it. You must help them.”
Tears were flowing freely down Saira's face now and she glanced at Laura without comprehension.
“What does it matter?” she asked, brushing her cheeks angrily with a paper napkin. “I have no future now.”
“Of course you have,” Laura said sharply, when Amina failed to respond to her sister's evident despair. “You're very young. You'll get over this, truly you will, and you'll be happy again. But the immediate problem is the police. Please come back with us. Please, Saira. You know it makes sense.”
But Saira had got to her feet and Amina still sat with her head bowed, ignoring her sister's distress. Saira spoke quietly to Amina in Punjabi and then turned and left the bar without looking back.
“What did she say?” Laura asked, still furious at the older sister's passivity.
But Amina just shrugged.
“She said goodbye,” she said. “I don't suppose I'll see her again.”
“How can you say that?” Laura cried. “How can you accept that? Run after her quickly. You can't just let her disappear like that. You don't know what she might do.”
“I can't help her,” Amina said. “She's chosen a path my family will never accept. I might wish it were different, perhaps in another generation it will be different, but not now. I know that, she knew that when she got into a relationship with this man. She knew what she was doing and what the consequences might be. We all know.”
“It's an unforgiving religion,” Laura said, thinking of another creed in which she had identified similar tendencies. “I thought God was supposed to be merciful.”
“That doesn't mean men always are,” Amina said and Laura did not dare ask her if that was a gender-specific remark. She just gazed at Amina, silently appalled.
“You think your morality is any better?” Amina asked angrily. “Girls running around half-naked, drinking,
prostitution, pornography — do you really think that is better for women?”
Laura could not find the heart to answer. She glanced through the window at the pavement crowds which had swallowed up Saira Khan as if she had never been.

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