By Death Divided Page 6

  ‘It’s not all on one side,’ Siddique came back quickly. ‘What’s that English saying? Six of one, half a dozen of the other? I think that’s right, you know.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sharif said. ‘All I know is that if you make an effort you can succeed in this country. It’s not impossible. How is it that the Indians do so much better than we do here? Are they better? Brighter? Or just more adaptable?’

  ‘Well, you’ve done it, you’ve succeeded in a most unlikely profession,’ Siddique said soothingly. ‘But you don’t bother to come back and show these angry young men at the mosque your success. You should think about that, maybe.’ Sharif got to his feet and turned to go, not wanting the imam to see that his last comment had hit harder than he liked. ‘Maybe,’ he said again.

  He walked slowly back down the narrow street to where he had left his car, but before he got there he was aware that he was being watched by a group of young men, bearded and in shalwar kameez rather than the jeans and sweatshirts worn by most of the teenaged youths around the Lane. They clustered on the corner where the road swung round to rejoin the main road and its bustling shops. He avoided their eyes as he flicked open his electronic lock and made to open the driver’s door of the convertible that was his pride and joy. The young men had been chattering in Punjabi as he approached but they fell silent as he got within ear-shot, until one suddenly spat in his direction, narrowly missing his shoe, and followed with a flood of invective aimed at the antecedents of policemen in general and himself in particular. Sharif could feel the anger surge like a tsunami from his stomach but, gritting his teeth, he slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Another gout of saliva hit the windscreen and without thinking he switched on the screen-wash and was slightly surprised when it showered the nearest of the group with a mixture of dirty water and more.

  The young men drew back, shouting furiously as Sharif slammed the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb as fast as he dared. Safely round the corner he slowed again and stopped, clutching the steering wheel with trembling hands, taking deep gasping breaths for a moment until his rage subsided. He was, he thought, stretched on a rack not of his own making in his chosen profession, eternally marked out as some sort of traitor even by those in his own community who seemed genuinely to want peace and harmony, and watched at work with cold-eyed suspicion by those few of his colleagues who wanted – and expected – him to fail.

  Ten years ago as an enthusiastic recruit he had truly believed he could make it work. Now, after all that had happened since at home and abroad, he was beginning to suspect he was losing everything, his own culture, his prospects of promotion, his peace of mind and his chances of happiness. He no longer prayed, as the Prophet (peace be upon him) instructed, but he certainly cursed, regularly every day, with multicultural enthusiasm. But he cursed George Bush, bin Laden, Tony Blair and the Saudis, the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Pakistanis indiscriminately and with vigour for the destruction of his hopes and dreams. He had always thought of Bradfield as his home, had balanced nimbly between two cultures and, he thought, made a success of his life, and had begun to hope recently that he might even be able to pull off a marriage that flew in the face of tradition, but it was getting harder. The tightrope felt as if it was fraying fast.

  Michael Thackeray opened the door of the flat he shared with Laura Ackroyd and sniffed the air, surprised not to identify the cooking smells that greeted him more often than not. He tried his best to be the modern man Laura expected but cooking was not a skill he had ever acquired and she seemed happy enough to reign as queen of the kitchen when they ate at home, veering between experiments in fusion food and plainer fare, only a cut above the canteen fodder he had survived on for most of his adult life and that, if he was honest, he still preferred.

  Laura was not in the living room and he found her in the bedroom, brushing her copper red curls and wearing very little, a sight that filled him with urgent desire. He slipped his hands around her breasts and kissed the back of her neck, and she responded with a long lingering kiss. But then she glanced at her watch and pushed him away.

  ‘There isn’t time,’ she said regretfully. ‘We’re due at David and Vicky’s at seven-thirty.’ She smiled at him mischievously. ‘I did remind you this morning. Had you forgotten?’

  ‘I had,’ he said, not bothering to hide his disappointment. ‘Do we have to go?’

  ‘Vicky says – though honestly I can’t remember – that it’s the anniversary of the night I met you at their dinner party. You can’t have forgotten that, surely?’

  On that unexpectedly significant previous occasion, David Mendelson had been intent on introducing Bradfield’s new DCI to his father Victor, one of the town’s longest serving solicitors from its most eminent law firm, to a member of the town council and to a journalist from the local paper who, to Thackeray’s surprise, turned out to be young, beautiful and red-headed.

  If Vicky had harboured an ulterior motive for introducing her oldest university friend to an apparently eligible single man she had had no intention of admitting it back then and had often wondered later, as Michael and Laura’s stormy relationship progressed, whether such a thought should ever have entered her head at all. But there was no hint of those doubts in her eyes as she opened her door tonight to her guests, both of whom, she was relieved to see, appeared unusually contented with each other.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘It’s just the four of us. Or at least it will be when I’ve got my demon boys upstairs to bed.’ Right on cue, her two sons tore out of the sitting room and flung their arms around Laura whom, they obviously hoped, would save them from banishment for at least a few precious minutes more. Laura followed Vicky into the sitting room with a hand on each boy’s shoulder, followed by Thackeray, his face impassive as he came to terms once again with a family life he bitterly envied and feared he would never now reproduce, having lost his chance so catastrophically the first time around. He took a proffered soft drink from David Mendelson with a nod of thanks and sank into a chair beside him, leaving the women and children chattering on the other side of the room. He greeted his host’s immediate launch into a discussion of a recent case they had both been involved in with guilty relief.

  When Vicky had finally filled Laura in on Daniel and Nathan’s continuing achievements in primary school, and persuaded the boys in the direction of their bedrooms, Laura turned to the two men again and picked up the thread of their conversation.

  ‘The last I heard the stupid woman had gone back to the bastard,’ David said. ‘She’ll end up one of your murder victims, you’ll see.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Thackeray said. ‘But if the combined persuasion of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service can’t get a woman to give evidence, I don’t see what else we can do. According to our domestic violence people, there was no corroboration from anyone else with the Robinson woman. No neighbours, no frequent visits to A and E, nothing you could have proceeded on without her testimony. She just turned up the one time at the infirmary, beaten half to death, said her husband attacked her and then changed her mind and withdrew the complaint.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ Laura asked. ‘Battered wives? I’m supposed to be writing something about that. I suggested it to Ted Grant after Vicky’s friend Julie turned up here. She won’t make a complaint about her husband either. Says it would be bad for the child.’

  ‘Well, anything you can do in the Gazette to make people take it seriously would be good,’ David said. ‘It really isn’t easy to launch a prosecution never mind get a conviction. And there’s always that fear at the back of your mind that it’s going to end up with someone dead.’

  ‘I haven’t trawled through our archives yet,’ Laura said. ‘Can you remember any cases from the last few years that I should look at, cases where the husband has ended up in court?’

  ‘Not offhand,’ David said. ‘I think there was something in Leeds about ten years ago where the wife ended up killing her
abusive husband. There was a great furore about whether she could plead provocation even if he hadn’t been attacking her at the precise moment she took a knife to him. I think he was asleep when she actually stabbed him.’

  Laura shuddered, avoiding Thackeray’s eye. She found it difficult to comprehend the curdled emotions that polluted and destroyed relationships which must have started off in harmony, although she knew he understood some of it only too well.

  ‘I’ll look it up,’ she said. ‘I do remember it vaguely.’ She glanced up as Vicky came back into the room, glad of the opportunity to change the subject.

  ‘So how is Naomi Laura?’ she asked brightly after the child the Mendelson’s had named after her. ‘I’m sorry we missed her bedtime.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Are we completely crazy?’ Vicky Mendelson asked Laura Ackroyd the next day as they pulled up outside a neat and tidy semi on the cheaper side of Southfield, close to the primary school that Anna Holden no longer attended.

  ‘Probably,’ Laura admitted as she turned the engine off and peered at the anonymous modern house. ‘But as Julie says, he can be charm and consideration itself if he chooses. I think in most cases like this the violence is only directed at one person.’ She fervently hoped she was right, knowing that she faced Thackeray’s justified wrath if this unannounced visit went pear-shaped.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Vicky said. ‘Anyway, perhaps he’s out.’ But Bruce Holden was in, unshaven and in his dressing gown but awake enough to recognise Vicky and offer her a shamefaced smile as he held the door open. He was, Laura thought, a normal enough looking man, attractive even in a slightly overweight way, with clear blue eyes and tousled fair hair, nothing like the monster she had been half expecting to confront.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Did Julie send you?’

  ‘She asked me to pick up one or two things for Anna,’ Vicky said. ‘This is Laura, another friend.’

  Holden’s eyes flickered in Laura’s direction without interest. He waved the two women into the sitting room, where a thin veil of dust over every flat surface indicated as clearly as anything the abandoned state of his home.

  ‘I want her to come home,’ he said thickly, not sitting down himself but beginning to pace around the room with a sort of restless irritation. ‘She knows I love her and Anna to bits. Will you tell her please to come home? I need them here.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ Vicky said. ‘But that’s something you’ll have to resolve between you. In the meantime, she wants this stuff for Anna.’

  She handed Holden a list handwritten on a sheet torn from an exercise book, which he glanced at cursorily. For a moment Laura thought he was going to screw it up, but he seemed to overcome whatever surge of emotion the list had prompted and nodded dully.

  ‘Most of it’s in her room,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go and look? I don’t think I can.’

  Vicky nodded and made for the door.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ Laura said quickly, thinking that would give her a chance to talk to Holden privately. She guessed that he did not trust Vicky but might regard her as a more or less unknown quantity in his marital war. And that he might be looking for allies.

  Holden kept on pacing for a moment as they listened to Vicky going up the stairs and opening the door of Anna’s room. Then he flung himself down into a chair opposite Laura and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to what was happening around him. He was a tall man, carrying his superfluous weight easily, but now she could see that the skin around his eyes was slightly puffy and putty coloured, and he constantly licked dry lips.

  ‘Has she persuaded you to put her up then?’ he muttered resentfully. ‘Given poor little wifey sanctuary, have you?’

  ‘Not in my tiny place, even if my partner would put up with it,’ Laura said.

  ‘So where the hell is she? I know Vicky knows, though she won’t bloody tell me, will she? I never liked that woman, chattering away about my affairs at the school gate. She put Julie up to this nonsense. She’s got a vivid imagination, has Julie. Makes things up a lot.’

  Laura opened her mouth to protest that bruises could not be imaginary when she had seen them with her own eyes, and then thought better of it. It would do no good to provoke Holden, she thought, and in spite of his relatively normal demeanour he might actually be dangerous. But it seemed to be too late. Her scepticism must have shown in her eyes.

  ‘Do you know where they are?’ he shouted suddenly, his colour rising.

  ‘She and Anna are safe enough,’ Laura said. ‘I don’t think they feel safe here at the moment.’

  ‘I haven’t even been here much,’ Holden said, his face as sulky now as a spoilt child’s. ‘I’ve had to go to my mother’s to get a square meal. Anyway, it’s Anna I want to see. That bitch has no right to keep my daughter away from me. I’d never hurt Anna. I love her to bits. I have rights too, you know. I’m her father.’

  ‘You would need to talk to a solicitor about that,’ Laura said.

  ‘Has she gone to the bloody police?’ Holden asked furiously. ‘Why do I need a solicitor, for God’s sake? They’re all bloody sharks.’

  Laura floundered for a moment, unable to grasp how thoroughly Holden seemed to have blanked out the implications of his recent behaviour.

  ‘When a marriage breaks down you usually need a lawyer,’ she offered feebly. ‘Perhaps an advice centre… Or your doctor, maybe, could help with your problems.’

  But if the suggestion of a lawyer had enraged Holden the word ‘doctor’ seemed to turn him incandescent. He jumped up from his chair and for a moment Laura froze, thinking he was going to attack her, but instead he lurched across the room and took hold of a photograph of Julie that had been standing on a low table and hurled it into the fireplace, where the glass and frame disintegrated with a crash.

  ‘That cow,’ he spat. ‘What’s she been saying about me? Why would I need a doctor? I hate doctors. I never want to see another bloody doctor in my life, investigating, prying, spying, trying to get inside your head.’ As he ranted, Laura got up and sidled towards the living room door, relieved to see Vicky coming back downstairs carrying a carrier bag full of the books and other items Anna had asked for. Vicky glanced into the sitting room and seemed shocked by the change in Holden’s mood.

  ‘Time to go, I think,’ Laura said quietly, heading towards the front door, but as she opened it Holden followed them into the hall.

  ‘Tell that bitch I want to see my daughter,’ he yelled. ‘Tell her I’ve got rights. She can’t just take Anna off like that without a word. Tell her if she doesn’t arrange for me to see her I’ll organise it myself. I’m not stupid. I’ll find them. Believe me.’

  Laura pulled the door shut with a feeling of relief and followed Vicky back to the car.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t a triumph of diplomacy, was it?’ Vicky said with a tight smile. ‘What did you say to him?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Not a lot,’ she said as she pulled away from the kerb, the quiet suburban street almost deserted in the pale sunshine, and she wondered how many other well-kept façades hid horrors like Bruce Holden. ‘I suggested getting help – a lawyer, counsellor, doctor, and he went mad. I really thought he was going to hit me. I think Julie’s right and Bruce Holden is seriously dangerous.’

  ‘We could have got him done for assault if he’d touched you,’ Vicky said. ‘That might have been quite a good thing. We could have given evidence then.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ Laura said dryly. ‘I’ll do a lot of things for battered wives but I don’t think getting battered myself is one of them.’

  ‘He’s going to keep looking for her, isn’t he?’ Vicky said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he is. He asked me if she was staying at my place.’

  ‘I think she needs to get out of Bradfield for a bit,’ Vicky said. ‘It won’t take him long to find the refuge and he’s mad enough to try to break in to find them.’

  ‘I think he’s mad, full stop,’ Laura sa
id. ‘He made some seriously odd comments about doctors.’

  ‘Well, it’d be a lot easier to get him for assault than get him treatment for mental illness,’ Vicky said seriously. ‘David always says madmen have to kill someone before anyone takes their problems seriously.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ Laura said.

  ‘Why don’t you discuss it with Michael. He might have some ideas without making it official.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Laura prevaricated. ‘Did you say his mother lived in Bradfield? He said he’d been blagging meals off her.’

  ‘Julie has talked about her mother-in-law. I think she gets on quite well with her.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘But I can’t come detecting again with you again just now. I left Naomi with David. He’s working at home this morning but he has to be in court later so I must get back. Would you like to drop in for a coffee?’

  Laura shook her head.

  ‘No, I must get back to the office before Ted Grant fills my desk with some bright young recruit willing to work for half the salary – or on work experience for nothing at all. It’s not safe to venture out for long the way things are these days. Redundancy’s hanging over the place like a big dark cloud.’

  ‘What’s caused this crisis, then? Is the Gazette in trouble?’

  ‘It’s not just the Gazette. Fewer and fewer people seem to want to read local papers any more,’ Laura said. ‘They’re all glued to the Internet and reality telly. It’s the curse of Big Brother. Our readers are all in their fifties and sixties and rising. You can tell from the ads: lots of walk-in baths and stair-lifts, while the world of all-singing and dancing mobile phones passes us by.’

  Vicky glanced at her friend curiously. She knew that she had put some of her ambitions on hold to stay in Bradfield with Michael Thackeray and she wondered how much that still frustrated her. As Laura pulled up to drop her off she kissed her quickly on the cheek.