Death in a Far Country (19 page)

‘But we’re going to make sure?’ Mower said with satisfaction.

‘I want round the clock surveillance, starting now.’ Thackeray turned to the street map of Bradfield on the wall behind his desk. ‘I don’t want as much as a mouse, let alone a rat, getting in or out of these streets here, Aysgarth to Inkerman, Blenheim to Austerlitz, without us knowing about it.’

‘We’ll need more troops than we’ve got on duty on a Sunday,’ Mower said.

‘I’ve cleared it with the Super,’ Thackeray said. ‘Call in anyone you need from CID, and uniform will assist. I want details of all vehicles arriving and leaving, all pedestrians on the streets, and which houses are occupied, officially or unofficially. I’ve asked the water company to set up some fake diversions so that traffic has to approach by a more limited number of streets, so that should help. But tell everyone to remain absolutely invisible. I don’t want Stone and his mates scared off. I just want to know where they’re holed up. As soon as we know that, we’ll act.’

‘Right,’ Mower said, with some satisfaction as he turned
to go.

‘And Kevin,’ Thackeray said sharply. ‘I want updating as soon as anyone reports back. I’ll be here all day. I want Stone pinned to the floor this time, with no wriggle room. He needs locking up for a long time.’

‘Sir,’ Mower said closing the door behind him with real relief. For the first time since he’d come back to work, Thackeray was showing some of his old decisiveness, Mower thought. He just hoped to God it would last.

Laura was surprised to find, when she returned from Sheffield and went to the
Gazette
office, that Tony Holloway was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the newsroom was deserted and distinctly chilly, the lights off and the computers down. She kept her coat on and sat at her desk gazing at her blank screen for a long time, her mind running endlessly over what she knew about the problems of Bradfield United and how that now seemed to mesh with the exploitation of the dead girl Grace and her friend Elena. How much of what she knew, or guessed, she could put in print the next morning she was not sure. Or even how much she should pass on to the police who, no doubt, would interview Jenna themselves as soon as the hospital allowed. Feeling unusually uncertain of herself, she wished she knew where Tony had gone.

She crossed the office to his desk, where a bundle of the Sunday papers was scattered around, most of them with the brief details of Jenna Heywood’s accident prominently displayed, not just on the sports pages but at the front. United’s unexpected draw with Chelsea had given the club a celebrity that not even a female in the chairman’s seat had warranted
until now. Laura scanned the papers and was surprised at how pessimistically Jenna’s injuries were described. She wondered if Tony had checked out Jenna’s more optimistic prognosis this morning. By the end of the day, she knew that between them they would have to produce a coherent version of the weekend’s events for Ted Grant’s early editorial conference, and it would be in both their interests to get the facts right.

Back at her own desk, she pulled out her mobile phone, which she had switched off for the drive back from Sheffield, and realised that there were two messages waiting. The first was from Holloway, telling her he was meeting Les Hardcastle at three for a chat about United’s future. The second was an angry sounding call from her father asking her to ring him back. Laura glanced at her watch. It was five to three already. She could spare her father about thirty seconds. He answered the phone as if he had been sitting by it waiting for her call.

‘Have I been sold down the bloody river by Les Hardcastle?’ he said, without any greeting at all.

‘Quite likely, Dad,’ Laura said. ‘What have you heard?’

‘That he’s getting into bed with that shark Ahmed Firoz.’

‘I heard that too,’ Laura said. ‘Isn’t it good news?’

‘All Firoz will want is the land. He’s about as likely to want to rescue the club as he is to bail out George Bush. Les told me nowt about this. The man’s conned me. He’s a bloody fraud.’

And quite likely a would-be murderer, Laura thought, but it would be the fact that he had taken Jack Ackroyd for a ride that would really rankle down in Portugal.

‘I’ll see what I can dig up, Dad,’ she said. ‘Maybe they can be stopped.’

‘I bloody well hope so,’ Jack said, and hung up abruptly.

On a hunch, Laura buttoned up her coat again and walked across the town to the Clarendon hotel, where she glanced into the bar from the foyer. As she suspected, Tony Holloway was sitting at the far end of the room with Hardcastle, deep in animated conversation, the older man’s face flushed with excitement. He thinks he’s won, Laura thought to herself. He may even still think Jenna is dead or dying. He’s going to get the most enormous shock when he finds out she isn’t.

In two minds whether to march into the bar and tell the two men that she had just come back from Jenna’s bedside, she was suddenly aware of a third man approaching their table, a tall, heavily built, grey-haired Asian wearing an expensive looking suit and an air of total self-confidence. Even without hearing anything of what was being said, Laura could see that the other two deferred to the new arrival, Tony half rising to his feet, and Les Hardcastle waving urgently to the waiter to attend to the newcomer’s needs. Laura did not hesitate then. She marched across the thick pile carpet of the Clarendon bar with an enthusiastic smile on her lips and a cheery greeting for Tony Holloway.

‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d lost you and would have to write tomorrow’s story all by myself. Good afternoon, Les. You must be getting fed up with everything that’s going wrong at that club of yours. But at least Jenna’s not as badly hurt as they first thought. I’ve just come back from visiting her and she had some very interesting things to tell me that I’d like to check out with you. If that’s all right?’ She smiled invitingly at all three men.

To judge by the expressions on the men’s faces, her intervention, as she had expected, was not remotely all
right with any of them. Tony Holloway’s face flushed with embarrassment and Les Hardcastle half rose in his chair with a flash of such naked rage that Laura took a pace backwards in case he decided to hit her. The third man remained seated and impassive, his dark eyes slightly hooded and full of curiosity as he watched the drama unfold before him.

Obviously thinking better of making a scene to upset the Sunday afternoon calm of the Clarendon, where people at other tables were already showing an interest, Les sank back into his seat and waved Laura into the fourth chair at the table.

‘This is Laura Ackroyd, also from the
Gazette
,’ he said to the silent onlooker opposite him, who took a sip of his iced water and nodded noncommittally in Laura’s direction.

‘She’s helping me with this story,’ Holloway added quickly.

‘And you have been to see the unfortunate Ms Heywood?’ the third man asked, his accent impeccably public school. ‘How enterprising of you. The morning papers implied her life hung by a thread.’

‘You shouldn’t believe all you read in the papers, Mr… er…?’ Laura said.

‘Ahmed Firoz,’ the big man said easily. ‘I’m relieved to hear that the accident was not as serious as we were led to believe.’

‘Are you?’ Laura asked quietly.

‘We all are,’ Les Hardcastle said quickly. ‘It would be a tragedy for the club to lose our Jenna so soon after Sam. A real tragedy.’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Laura said. ‘It was an attempt to kill her.’

There was complete silence around the table for a long time
before Hardcastle cleared his throat noisily.

‘Is that what she’s saying?’ he asked.

‘That’s what she’s going to tell the police. It comes after a lot of other harassment. All very unpleasant, and now positively murderous.’

Laura was aware of Firoz watching Hardcastle very intently as he drummed his fingers gently on the table.

‘I think perhaps we need to continue this discussion without the help of the Press,’ he said eventually. Laura watched Hardcastle’s face darken to a positively dangerous puce before Tony Holloway got to his feet and Laura too pushed back her chair.

‘I’ve missed my drink then, have I?’ she said to Hardcastle sweetly. Firoz got to his feet with her and helped her on with her coat.

‘It has been very interesting to meet you, Ms Ackroyd,’ he said, his voice emollient but his eyes cold.

As the two reporters walked out of the hotel together, Tony gave instant vent to the frustration that had been simmering ever since Laura had entered the bar.

‘You’ve lost us an exclusive there,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’m bloody sure Hardcastle and his friend were going to spell out exactly what they had planned for the club now Jenna Heywood’s out of the way.’

‘There’s only one problem with that, Tony,’ Laura said. ‘Jenna’s not out of the way. And as far as I can discover Ahmed Firoz is about as likely to rescue United as he is to become Archbishop of York. All he wants is the land. Les Hardcastle has been had. So has my dad. And so have you. And if Jenna can make her suspicions stick, Hardcastle may
be facing a very long time in jail. If I were you, I’d keep very quiet about your cosy relationship with that gang of sharks or Ted Grant will have your guts for garters.’

Laura Ackroyd dressed very carefully the next morning. She had time off work to attend the police inquiry at County HQ, and she wanted to give as sober and responsible an impression as she could to the officers from the Midlands. She chose a black suit over a not-too-revealing cream silk top, stuffed her red boots to the back of the wardrobe and slipped her feet into dark stockings and black shoes with a medium heel, before trying to discipline her unruly cloud of red hair into a neat chignon. She eyed herself critically in the mirror. She knew she stood to be accused of reckless impulsiveness, which had put her own life in danger and had almost cost Michael Thackeray his, but she hoped her almost nun-like appearance might help counter any preconceptions the inquiry team might harbour before she even appeared.

Nothing she had done was criminal and she was not the accused in the proceedings. She was not even likely to be the star prosecution witness. That honour would probably fall to the elusive Val Ridley. Even so, she knew that what she said this morning might affect future careers, and not just Michael Thackeray’s. The least she could do was give an impression of sobriety and seriousness and try, in her evidence, to overcome the impression of recklessness that the inquiry
might already have gained. But as she cast a final critical eye over her appearance in the mirror, she was suddenly filled with a crippling doubt that she could pull it off. When it came down to it, she had put the man she loved into an impossible situation, and even if the inquiry was less critical than she feared, even if he himself eventually forgave her, she doubted if she would ever forgive herself.

Two hours later she came out of the board room, where she had faced three sceptical and brusque senior police officers, feeling wrung dry, to find Michael Thackeray waiting for her in the foyer, his back to the inquiry desk, his expression grim. Her heart thudded uncomfortably and she gave him a wry smile.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ she said, her mouth dry.

‘I had to come over anyway,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘How did it go?’

Laura shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell,’ she said. ‘They listened to me but they didn’t give much away. They said they might want to see me again when Val Ridley has given evidence, which she doesn’t seem to have done yet. No doubt to compare our stories. Have you got time for a coffee? I think I need one.’

Thackeray glanced away. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘We’ve a big operation on this afternoon. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I’ll get back to the office, then,’ Laura said, pulling on her coat and hoping that Thackeray would not see the tears that welled up in her eyes. But he put a hand on her arm and she had to resist the overwhelming temptation to move so close to him that he had to take her in his arms. But that seemed to be very far from what he had in mind.

‘I thought I’d talk to Vince Newsom,’ he said. ‘Find out
what he’s going to say. I don’t see why he should implicate you in his nasty tabloid tricks.’

‘Vince is OK,’ Laura said dully, pushing emotion firmly out of her voice. ‘He’s given evidence already, I think. I’ve not seen him this morning but I’d already spoken to him about his evidence. He’s already agreed to say he found the note accidentally in his car. That seems to be the best version of events for both of us, and as I told that lot in there, I really can’t really remember very clearly what happened, so I can’t dispute what he says.’

‘You’d spoken to Vince?’ Thackeray asked, an edge of angry disillusion in his voice. ‘You did a deal with that bastard?’

‘Oh, Michael,’ Laura said desperately. ‘He got hold of Val’s note somehow. I didn’t give it to him, but I can’t prove that.’

‘He stole it then, which is exactly what you’d expect.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Laura said. ‘I can’t say that for sure either. He may have just found it. I could have dropped it. Anyway, that’s what he’s said, and I agreed just now that it’s possible.’

‘Right,’ Thackeray said, his eyes stony. ‘And what did you tell them about the hostage situation?’

‘I told them that Christie was lapsing in and out of consciousness. I thought it was safe to go in, and I guessed you thought the same.’

‘If they swallow that they’ll swallow anything,’ Thackeray said bleakly, turning away.

‘Michael,’ Laura said, putting a hand on his arm in her turn. ‘We have to talk. We have to resolve all this.’

Thackeray shrugged her hand off and sighed.

‘I’ll call you when I’ve made arrests in this case I’m working
on,’ he said. ‘That’s my first priority. And we can’t risk you and I getting tangled up in a live case again. It’s stupid and dangerous and has got to stop.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m due in a meeting five minutes ago,’ he said, turning again and heading away before Laura had any chance to reply.

She watched him walk down the corridor without looking back and turn into one of the doors at the end and pass out of her sight. She drew a sharp breath and pushed her way out of the glass entrance doors, the wind buffeting her and searing her eyes so that by the time she reached her car, tears were running down her reddening cheeks. She sat for a moment with the engine running, gazing through the icy windscreen and waiting for it and her mind to clear. Thackeray, she thought, had spoken to her almost like a stranger, and she wondered if that was what she was destined to be in future; a stranger or even perhaps an enemy. Could all that passion have come to this?

At two that afternoon, four police vans followed by a couple of unmarked cars made their way slowly and silently up Aysgarth Lane, as if not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves. They turned at traffic lights into the maze of dilapidated Victorian streets that huddled around the shell of St Jude’s church which was still hemmed in by corrugated iron barriers and scaffolding years after its tower had partially collapsed, almost taking Michael Thackeray and Laura Ackroyd with it. The church, like several of the streets of mainly boarded up houses, had been waiting years for the demolition men to finish the job. Halfway into the enclave the vans split up, two pulling up in Inkerman Street, where
at least half the houses were boarded and derelict, and two making their way round to the alley that gave access to the backyards between the two rows of houses in adjacent streets.

DCI Michael Thackeray, in the passenger seat of one of the cars that had parked discreetly in Inkerman Street, listened as one by one the groups of officers reported that they were in position. Satisfied, he gave the order to enter number 52, a three-storey terraced house where all the windows were boarded and there was no external sign of human activity, but where comings and goings had been observed by his discreet observers over the last twenty four-hours.

The raid went smoothly and as planned. By the time Thackeray and Sergeant Mower picked their way across the overgrown strip of front garden to the door, now hanging half off its hinges, the uniformed officers had arrested several men who were detained, handcuffed and sullen, in the bleak front room of the house. Thackeray glanced at the prisoners, bitterly disappointed that none of them looked familiar. He raised an eyebrow at the uniformed sergeant who had led the assault.

‘This the lot?’

‘We haven’t been upstairs yet, sir,’ the officer said.

‘Right, let’s do it,’ Thackeray ordered, and he and Mower followed half a dozen uniformed men, batons in hand, up the rickety staircase into the upper reaches of the house. The boarded up windows made the whole place dark and not all the lights worked. On the first landing there was a musty smell of dirt and bad drains, and possibly something worse, which seemed to be coming from a filthy bathroom where the door was ajar. The other doors leading off the landing were
locked with heavy bolts on the outside of the doors.

Thackeray nodded.

‘One at a time. Be careful,’ he said, and the Sergeant unbolted the first of the bedroom doors. There was no light inside but from the dim illumination offered by the bare bulb on the landing Thackeray could just make out three girls cowering on the far side of the room across the three beds that had been crammed into the meagre space. The Sergeant handed him a powerful torch and he crossed towards them, illuminating pale faces, huge, terrified eyes, and skinny, barely pubescent bodies in skimpy tops and skirts. They were shivering, though whether from cold or fear was impossible to tell. A combination of both, he guessed.

‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly, not able to tell whether they understood him or not. ‘You’re safe now. Do you understand me? We are the police. You’re safe now.’ Two of the girls sat down suddenly on a bed, as if their legs could no longer support them, and began to sob. The third stood rigid and still shaking against the wall as if waiting for her own execution.

Thackeray turned away abruptly and beckoned Mower and the uniformed sergeant out onto the landing where several uniformed officers were standing by, looking sick.

‘Are there girls in all the rooms?’ he asked, and the officers nodded, lost for words.

‘There’s a lass over here looks seriously poorly to me,’ a burly constable said, gesturing towards the door on the other side of the landing, which he had just unbolted.

‘Right, this is what we do,’ Thackeray snapped. ‘Get those bastards downstairs off to the nick. We’ll question them later. Then get some light in here, and send for social services, a
doctor and an ambulance. These are children, most of them, and I’m not having them banged up in cells even for half an hour. They need proper care and medical attention and we’ll sort out who they are and how they got here later.’

‘Sir,’ the Sergeant said, and stomped down the stairs as if relieved that someone knew what to do in a situation that was entirely foreign to him.

‘Guv,’ came an urgent voice from the landing above. ‘Guv, I think you should see this.’

Thackeray and Mower exchanged a glance full of foreboding and climbed the final flight of stairs to the top of the house where a uniformed constable was leaning with his back to the wall outside a door that he had evidently just opened. He looked pale and sick and he waved a hand vaguely at the dark interior of the room.

‘In there,’ he said.

The stench and the swarming flies told Thackeray and Mower exactly what they would find in this final locked room. Taking a deep breath, Thackeray led the way. The room had two beds, one of them empty but the other occupied by a small crumpled shape underneath a duvet, a shape that, as Thackeray gingerly pulled back the bedclothes, revealed itself as the body of a young girl, naked and lying on her side, her eyes closed, her flesh waxen and showing the first signs of bloating. But even in its incipient decay it was possible to see that the girl’s body was severely bruised, with contusions and abrasions on her back and shoulders and across one cheek. Thackeray pulled the duvet gently back up to cover her.

‘Get Amos Atherton,’ he said to Mower as he led the way out of the room and closed and bolted the door behind them.
Mower nodded, finding it difficult to speak as the sickly smell of death filled their mouths and nostrils.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Thackeray said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I need some fresh air.’ The two of them made their way downstairs and out of the front door where Thackeray lit a cigarette and pulled the smoke gratefully into his lungs while Mower got onto his mobile phone and set the wheels of another murder inquiry into motion. The four men who had been arrested were being loaded into one of the police vans and Thackeray beckoned the Sergeant back.

‘Suspicion of murder,’ he said flatly.

‘I heard there was a body,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Jesus. What the hell’s been going on in there?’

‘I think hell just about sums it up,’ Thackeray said. As he gazed bleakly away down the street where officers were beginning to thread blue and white tape across the road to isolate the crime scene, he was surprised to see two more officers heading in the direction of the house with, between them, an animated and struggling figure held firmly by the arms, his hands handcuffed behind his back.

‘He tried to slip out the back,’ one of the PCs said breathlessly. ‘Gave us a run for it.’

‘Did he?’ Thackeray said, running a satisfied eye over the portly figure of Emanuel Asida, who suddenly seemed to subside in the officers’ grasp, panting slightly from his exertions, as he recognised Thackeray. ‘Well, I don’t think he’ll be running very far for a long time now, will you Mr Asida? Emanuel Asida, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder…’

‘What?’ Asida screamed, beginning to struggle frantically again. ‘I had nothing to do with murder. Nothing at all.’

‘Caution him, Sergeant,’ Thackeray said wearily, turning away in disgust. ‘And take him down to the nick. We’ll follow you. This looks like being a long, long day.’

Laura Ackroyd pulled back the curtain in her grandmother’s front room and gazed through the gloom of a murky, damp evening towards the looming shape of Priestley House, behind its barricade of fences.

‘Are you quite sure, Nan?’ she said. ‘You’ve only seen her picture in the paper.’

Joyce pursed her lips. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I’m not entirely senile yet. It was the girl who’s run away, and if what you say is true, then Elena won’t be far away either. This lass was carrying a bag of shopping and she went in through the fence there, where the gap is. I saw her as clearly as I can see you now.’

‘What on earth are they doing still round here?’ Laura asked incredulously. ‘They must be crazy. I thought they’d be long gone by now.’

‘Well, I can’t answer that, but I think we should get them out of that filthy rabbit warren before they come to some harm. There’s all sorts of young tearaways use that block at night. If Elena’s frightened enough she might jump off the top. Even the police will terrify her. You know that. She’s threatened it before.’

Laura gazed again at the flats, wishing that she could call Michael Thackeray and hand this problem over to him, but knowing that Joyce was right, Elena’s panic could be triggered as much by the sight of police officers as by whoever else was trying to find her. She squared her shoulders.