Bones in the Nest (11 page)

‘What did he study?’

Balement looked at the screen again and smiled. ‘Foundation Diploma in Media. Does that help?’

‘Might do,’ Sean said.

‘Hold fire on putting out a statement, if you don’t mind,’ Carly chipped in. ‘We don’t want anything in the press yet.’

‘A statement? I can’t see why we’d want to make a statement.’

‘Yes, “the college regrets” etcetera. Usual thing.’ She
smiled. ‘We’ll make sure the press know he was one of yours, but not yet.’

Sean wondered if he could kick her without Balement noticing. ‘We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.’ He shook the principal’s hand and headed for the exit.

‘Is it me or is that guy a slippery freak?’ Carly said.

‘It’s not you. I wonder why Mohammad was on a second warning?’

‘Maybe this fine young gentleman can help us.’

Outside, the squad car had a visitor. Saleem Asaf was testing the doors and windows.

‘Now then,’ Sean said. He was sure they were well covered by CCTV if Saleem tried his police brutality trick.

‘I need protection,’ Saleem said.

‘I’m sorry?’

The boy’s fingers played over the wing mirrors of the car.

‘Mistaken identity, innit.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘They were after me and they got my cousin.’

‘If you’re worried,’ Sean said, ‘you’re welcome to a lift home. I’m sure we could fit you in.’

Saleem jumped back as if the car had stung him. ‘I’m not getting in that voluntarily.’

‘We can cuff you, if you’d prefer,’ Carly said.

For the second time, Sean fought the urge to kick Carly, but Saleem was looking at her, as if a new idea was forming in his mind.

‘Can you tell me,’ Sean said, ‘why Mohammad was on a warning from the college?’

‘They didn’t like him doing business here,’ he shrugged.
‘This is where he got nicked. And even after he came back and was more sorted, they’ve been trying to find ways of getting rid of him.’

‘What was he selling?’

‘Whatever people wanted: skunk, sweets for the gym boys, a bit of miaow. Coke and old school ganja for the teachers. But nothing lately. That’s what I’m saying. They got the wrong guy. I’m the one in danger now.’

‘I don’t know what you expect us to do,’ Sean looked at his watch. He and Carly needed to be back on the estate or the Rottweiler would be on their case. ‘Unless you’re confessing to a crime.’

‘Yeah, maybe I am. OK, you better bundle me in the car now. Knock us about a bit, in case anyone’s watching. Then drop us off at the Cash and Carry on Christ Church Road, will you? I promised Ghazala, my sister, that I’d get some stock.’

Carly shook her head. ‘Forget it.’

Sean watched the boy run his fingernail along the black rubber trim on the windows. It started to lift. ‘Leave it out, Saleem, or you’ll be nicked for damaging police property.’

The boy looked up and grinned. ‘Suits me.’

‘Go home, Saleem.’

They got in the car and left him in the car park, staring after them like a kid whose mates have taken the ball and left him with nothing and no one to play with.

‘Just a wind-up merchant,’ Carly said, as she opened the glove compartment and rooted around among the old tissues and sweet wrappers.

‘What you looking for?’

‘Dunno, peppermints. Whatever. Seeing if anyone’s left us anything nice.’

‘We should be so lucky,’ Sean said.

At which point, Carly launched into an impression of Kylie Minogue that lasted all the way to the Chasebridge estate. Sean couldn’t be bothered to tell her to shut up; he was still trying to make sense of Saleem Asaf. Carly was probably right. He was a wind-up merchant and an attention-seeker too. Sean thought back to the other night in the alleyway. He and Gav were sure they’d seen money or drugs change hands, but all the boy had on him, when he’d been searched at the station, was chewing gum and cigarettes. Saleem wasn’t as gangster as he made out. His cousin, on the other hand, had been playing with the big boys, and it had cost him his life.

Sean found DS Dawn Simkins sitting in an unmarked car on the access road alongside Eagle Mount One. He knocked on the window. She gestured that he should come round to the passenger side and get in.

‘God,’ she sighed. ‘This place is a right shithole.’

He said nothing. It might be a shithole, but it was his shithole.

‘I’d rather be in Sheffield,’ she said. ‘I was only put on this case so he could prove he could work with a woman.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘He’s had complaints, that’s why he’s been sent over here. But then he’s not shy of chucking his own complaints about, so be careful.’

‘Right. Thanks. D’you mind if we talk about the job? Anything from the house-to-house?’

‘Nothing much. I was going to start on this block when the uniformed constables get back. But you can do it if you like.’

Sean stared up at Eagle Mount One.

‘Might be a slight conflict of interest if I take this one,’ he said. ‘Maybe I could do Attlee Avenue?’

‘I think you’ll find I’m in charge of allocating manpower, Acting DC Denton.’ The emphasis was heavy on the ‘acting’.

‘I understand. But the thing is, I grew up in that block. My dad still lives there.’

He waited to see if she was going to apologise for calling his former home a shithole, but she didn’t. She just shrugged and unclipped a list of house numbers and handed it to him.

‘All right. Attlee Avenue. Be back here in half an hour and you can come with me to see Mrs Armley again. She might relate to someone local. And if we can’t get any sense out of her, we’ll have to bring her in and do it on video. The paperwork’s underneath. Make sure you fill in the forms correctly, otherwise it’s a waste of everyone’s time.’

He decided not to take it personally and was glad to be out of the car. She was like a negative-energy black hole, pulling everyone in range of her force field down with her. He took his jacket off, slung it over his shoulder and loosened his tie. On Attlee Avenue, a few people were sitting out in their front gardens and there was a smell of freshly lit barbecues. Two uniformed officers were walking over the grass of the recreation ground, heads down, checking to see if anything had been missed.

‘Gav!’

‘Now then. Look at you!’ Gavin Wentworth stood up straight and rubbed the small of his back.

‘You off nights as well?’ Sean called over to him.

‘Aye, made sense to swap me too, and put me on this unit. Thanks for the night off, sunshine, though I’m not sure I’ve acclimatised yet. I could fall asleep on my feet, to be honest.’

Gavin’s new partner kept going towards DS Simkins’s car, while Gav offered to carry on down Attlee Avenue with Sean. In the first house, a nervous Polish woman shook her head and said ‘sorry’ to everything they asked. At the next, a tired woman with numerous children running around, said she’d had the telly on all evening in the back room, and didn’t know a thing until the police arrived this morning.

‘It’ll be to do with all the immigrants,’ she added as they turned to go.

‘Sorry?’ Sean said.

‘It never used to be like this here.’

‘Thank you for your time,’ Gav said. ‘Come on, son,’ he said quietly to Sean, ‘it’s not worth it.’

Sean was wondering what glorious part of Chasebridge’s past she was harking back to. Certainly not one that had existed in his lifetime. The names of the people doing the fighting might have changed, but that was all. The next few houses gave them nothing and one man just told them to f-off, he was having a sleep. Gav suggested they break off for ten minutes and pick up a bar of chocolate to give them the strength to face the other end of the street.

They followed Attlee Avenue down to below the primary school and walked round Winston Grove to the shops. Sean glanced up towards the flats at the top of the hill and picked out Mrs Armley’s window, mentally marking the distance again. Inside the newsagents, the same young woman in a
hijab was serving behind the counter. They waited behind an elderly lady buying scratch cards.

‘Tax on the daft, that lottery,’ PC Wentworth muttered. ‘If she saved that up, she’d have a nice nest egg for Christmas.’

When their turn came, the girl looked at them warily.

‘Look, I’ve already told the other officer, Mo was here until about eight that evening, helping me.’ She looked around the shop, as if she was checking that they wouldn’t be overheard. When she was sure they were alone, she spoke quietly. ‘He was really happy. Checking his hair and all that in the mirror, I thought … no, it doesn’t matter.’

The shop door opened behind them and the bell chimed. Sean was about to say something, when PC Wentworth cleared his throat.

‘Thank you, young lady. Now, can I have a large bar of milk chocolate, please? And if there is anything else, just get in touch.’

Outside Gav snapped the end off the chocolate and looked up at the names above the door.

‘The licensees are called A Asaf and K Asaf, so is she family too?’

‘Yeah, I reckon she’s the victim’s cousin, Saleem’s sister,’ Sean said. ‘Ghazala, I think he called her.’

Gav gave him a friendly pat on the back. ‘Nice piece of deduction, Mr Watson.’

‘Don’t you start. I’ve had enough stick from Carly.’

‘We’re all made up for you, lad, truly. Anyway, that’s something for you to give your new boss, all part of a routine inquiry, and no need to own up to our unscheduled chocolate break. So long as the Rottweiler with the clipboard doesn’t
spot we went off plan. Here …’ He broke off a line of squares and handed it to Sean.

‘Do you think he was meeting a girl?’

‘Probably, or a boy,’ Gav said.

‘Surely not!’

‘Why not? Because Pakistani boys can’t be gay? Let me tell you something. A few years ago, I was based in Leeds and I was driving with a colleague round one of the outlying estates. We came across a group of lads, fifteen or twenty of them. I thought, hey up, this is some sort of gang. I was braced for trouble.’

‘What was it?’

‘Lads who took the bus out to the edge of town, or got on their scooters or whatever, to meet up where nobody knew them, nobody to tell their families. Young gay lads. Asian lads.’

‘All right. Point taken. He got a text from a lover, or a prospective lover. He was on a promise and he ended up dead. That doesn’t get us much further.’

Back on Attlee Avenue they encountered shrugs, monosyllabic responses and a door shut in their face by a toddler, who they could hear screaming inside the house. Eventually the mother opened the door and said she was sorry about that, but the little girl was scared of the police since they kept taking her dad away and no, they hadn’t seen anything. Finally, as Sean was giving up hope, an elderly man outside his house said he’d been sitting in his front garden on Tuesday night, watching the world go by. He’d come out to do the watering and decided to have a bit of a rest on his bench as it was such a nice evening. He showed them a low stone bench
under his window, flanked by roses and giant daisies.

‘It was very quiet. A young lad went by, smoking a cigarette. I remember that because I could smell it. I’ve packed them in myself, but now and again I get the smell of one and it brings back the cravings, you know what I mean?’

The boy he’d seen was wearing a hood, that’s all he could remember, strolling casually, not in any rush. He didn’t see his face. He got the feeling he stood about for a while, because the cigarette smell lingered. Sean sat on the bench and realised that the hedge was so high, you saw people only as they passed the gate. The rest of the estate disappeared once you were seated and you could be a hundred miles away from the Chasebridge estate. They thanked the old man and carried on to the last few houses. Sean looked back down the hill.

‘If you were planning to visit Eagle Mount Two,’ he said, ‘it would be straightforward. You’d turn the corner of Winston Grove, come up the centre of the estate past the school and the community centre and then across the rec at some point. You’d never be out of sight of Mrs Armley’s window. Unless you were trying to hide from someone. I suppose he could have cut between the community centre and the back of the primary school and come up Attlee Avenue, where nobody claims to have seen him.’

‘There you go, boss.’ Gav said, handing Sean a clipboard with the house numbers all ticked off. ‘Put your squiggle there.’

‘Gav, mate, I’m not your boss.’ Sean picked up the pen.

DS Simkins wasn’t in the car when they got back to it. Gav set off in the direction of the low-rises to catch up with
his new partner and Sean carried on to the tower blocks. In the entrance hall of Eagle Mount Two, Lizzie Morrison was crouching down, running a UV light over the floor of the lift.

‘Hi!’ Sean said, trying to sound casual. ‘You got more to do here?’

‘Something’s bothering me, so I thought I’d do another sweep. How about you?’

‘On the way up to see Mrs Armley.’

‘Do us a favour, Sean. While you’re there, see if you can get her mop. There might be blood traces on it. This lift was definitely cleaned recently, but I’m picking up a faint pattern. Blood’s almost impossible to shift completely, even with Mrs Armley’s arsenal of household chemicals.’

‘OK.’ Sean turned towards the stairwell. He was trying to puzzle something out in his head, which didn’t add up. He came back to where Lizzie was working.

‘Why did she stop cleaning the footprints at the door to the stairwell, if she took the trouble to clean the lift? Surely you would clean the worst bits first.’

‘Go on.’ Lizzie straightened up.

‘Well, she made out that she stopped when she saw the body, but that doesn’t make sense. The cleaning ends on the landing, just inside the door. I’m beginning to think she never saw the body. She said “it”, not “he”.’

‘But she must have seen it. She called it in.’

‘I think she said there’d been a fight. We thought she meant it had just happened, but it was hours before. I wouldn’t mind knowing exactly what she did say.’ He selected a number from his contacts. ‘Hi, Sandy … um, it’s Sean. If you get this, can you call me back?’

‘Friends in high places?’ Lizzie said.

‘Friend in the call room. Anyway, she’s not picking up, maybe she’s finished for the day.’

‘Some people have social lives. Apparently.’ Lizzie puffed a cloud of white powder over the lift’s control buttons and gently brushed the excess off. ‘Not our Mrs Armley, though. It looks like she’s been very busy. Not much left to go on here, but we need to get this lift back in use. The natives are getting restless.’

Sean looked at his watch.

‘Are you waiting for someone?’ Lizzie asked, without looking up.

‘That DS from the Sheffield squad. Simkins.’

‘The grumpy-looking one? She was here five minutes ago. She completely ignored me, so …’

‘Shit. Why didn’t she wait for me?’

Sean took the stairs two at a time and arrived out of breath at Mrs Armley’s door. Bernadette Armley undid what sounded like five different locks, before she opened the door on the chain. He held out his badge.

‘Hello, it’s the police.’ He decided not to bother with the ‘acting detective constable’ bit. ‘I was here yesterday.’

She slid the chain off and opened the door.

‘Someone knocked before,’ Mrs Armley said, ‘but I didn’t let her in. She said she was police, but it could have been a ruse, don’t you think? Like that lot I had in last year who said they were the gas board and took my watch and my rings from by the bed.’

She stood back and he went in. Mrs Armley relocked the door and padded in fur-lined slippers to join him by the
window, which overlooked the heart of the estate. Apart from the faint rush of her nylon housecoat, she moved without a sound. Neither of them spoke while Sean listened to the outside world, deadened by double-glazing. He hoped he wasn’t in trouble, but he was sure it wasn’t his mistake. DS Dawn Simkins had come without him on purpose.

He could see where the cordon had been reduced to a triangle of tape, the apex tied to the lamp post. A police crime incident van was parked on the access road and beyond it the playground was empty. Two boys were kicking a football back and forth on the patch of rough grass. A small dog ran out through the tattered hedgerow that hid the bins behind the community centre. It circled hysterically, barked at the boys and disappeared, summoned by someone out of sight.

Sean looked down at the low-rise blocks, which cupped one side of an oval along Darwin Road. He glanced across the rec, the community centre and the primary school, to Attlee Avenue, curving around the other side. The ground sloped down until the rooftops of The Groves filled the view and above them, in the distance, Sean could see the Frenchgate Shopping Centre and the tower of Doncaster Minster. The view would be even better higher up, but the interesting thing from this angle was that he could see the road and even the path up to the flats. Only the side door to the stairs was out of view.

‘Tell me again, where did the young man run from?’

She pointed towards the school. ‘He cut across there. And I said: “there’s someone up to no good.” That’s what I said. “There’s someone on the run.” Lost sight of him after that.’

He couldn’t have vanished, and yet nobody on Attlee
Avenue had noticed him. Someone casually sauntering past with a cigarette didn’t tally with a young man being chased.

‘And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone else?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Did he stop? Or did he carry on running?’

She peered out and shook her head.

‘Did you keep looking? Or did you look away for a few seconds? It’s important.’

‘Like I said, I lost sight of him.’

‘Was anyone following him or chasing him?’

‘I can’t remember.’ She turned away from the window and sat down on the settee. She was so tiny and frail looking. She patted the seat next to her. ‘I’m forgetting my manners, son. Sit yourself down. Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘No thanks, I’ll get one later at my nan’s.’

‘Who’s that then?’

‘You probably don’t know her.’ He recalled DCI Khan’s sharp look yesterday when he nearly gave away that he was local. ‘You said you saw the boy running, but did you see anything else before that? Anything unusual?’