Текст книги "Bones in the Nest"

Автор книги: Helen Cadbury

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER FORTY

Doncaster

Gavin Wentworth appeared at Sean’s elbow as he queued in the canteen.

‘Hi, Gav, sorry I lost you. I got pulled onto a job with Khan.’

‘So I heard. You really must stop hanging around on the tops of tower blocks.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Sean reached for a plate of hot food and asked for extra peas. It was about time he started eating more healthily.

‘At least you had your clothes on this time. Can I join you?’

‘Sure, I’m over there with Carly.’

Sean sat down and tucked into his food. Carly was looking at him with a big grin and eventually he asked her what she was looking so pleased about.

‘You, you daft bugger. I turn my back for five minutes and the next thing I know you’re trying for a gallantry medal.’

He shook his head. ‘Doubt it. Just there at the right time and lucky, I suppose.’

She took a breath, as if she was about to sing.

‘Don’t!’ He waved his fork at her, complete with a pea that threatened to fly off. ‘Please! Not the song.’

‘What song’s that?’ Gav put his tray down and sat next to Carly. ‘We need to sort out a new playlist for when, and if, we ever get this lad back on a normal shift.’

‘Make sure it’s got a bit of Kylie Minogue on,’ Carly said. ‘He loves that.’

Sean had his mouth too full of food to argue. Eventually he managed to speak.

‘Sorry if I’m being antisocial, but I need to eat this and get upstairs. Khan’s got Terry Starkey in interview room two with Rick, and Dawn’s got Kamran Ahmed, the victim’s brother, in room three. He wants me up there as an extra pair of hands.’

‘Dawn? First name terms, is it now?’ Gav said. ‘Thought you couldn’t stick her.’

‘Can’t,’ he said through a mouth full of mashed potato, ‘but I’ve still got to work with her.’

He cleared his plate and got up to go. Gavin leant over to Carly and Sean could hear him clearly as he walked away.

‘I’m going to be looking for a new partner, if you ask me, this temporary secondment business has the whiff of something more permanent.’

Sean wasn’t so sure. He would miss Gavin’s terrible sense of humour for a start and all this excitement was starting to give him indigestion. Once he got upstairs, he was told to sit in on each interview alternately, to allow Khan to swap between the two. Rick Houghton was in the room with Starkey when he got there.

‘For the benefit of the recording, PC Denton has entered the room and DCI Khan has left,’ Rick said.

Rick was showing Starkey the photos from the crowd outside the burning shop and asking about Gary MacDonald.

‘He was in HMP Lindholme with you, towards the end of your sentence.’

‘If you say so.’

Terry refused to make eye contact.

‘I do say so. The prison has confirmed you worked in the gardens on the same team.’

Terry shrugged. ‘So, that’s not a crime, is it?’

‘What was he doing in Chasebridge? He’s from over Stockport way, isn’t he?’

‘Helping out. Volunteering.’

‘Helping you, Terry? In a number of different schemes?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘We have information that Gary was supplying class B drugs,’ Rick said, ‘via the snooker hall.’

It was Sean’s turn to look away. He didn’t want to catch Terry’s eye.

‘What did you have against Mohammad Asaf?’ Rick persisted. ‘Was he on your patch?’

Terry shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

‘Or was it a commercial job?’ Rick continued in a level tone. ‘Cash on delivery? Whose idea was the half-hearted attempt at castration? Would you get paid more if you could deliver the goods, so to speak?’

‘Fuck off. I’m not a fucking pervert!’ Terry slammed his fist on the table.

Sean looked at him. Up on the roof of Eagle Mount Four, Chloe had spoken so quietly Starkey couldn’t have heard her, but she what she said was pretty clear to Sean.

‘Who’s saying you are, Terry?’ Sean said. ‘That’s a nasty thing to say about anyone and I’m sure DI Houghton didn’t mean to offend you.’

Terry nodded, hooked by Sean’s sympathy, but Sean hadn’t finished.

‘The thing is though, how would it look if we had intelligence about abuse, historic abuse, perpetrated by yourself?’

The colour drained from Terry’s face. He wasn’t the hard man any more.

‘Sean, bro, what are you saying?’

‘Call me PC Denton, please. I’m saying if you had a sexual offence added to your record, it would make your next stay inside very uncomfortable, wouldn’t it?’

Rick waited for Sean to finish.

‘Excuse us a minute, Mr Starkey.’ Rick nodded to Sean to step outside. ‘DI Houghton and PC Denton are leaving the room and I am pausing the recording.’

Out in the corridor Rick faced Sean. ‘What was that about?’

‘I was just pointing something out,’ he said. ‘Chloe, or Marilyn, said he’d been abusing Jay, his half-brother, for years. Jay was suicidal. I’m sure we could get her to testify.’

‘Slow down, mate. Get him rattled, that’s fine. But keep it under your hat for now.’

‘But he is a fucking pervert!’

‘Calm down, Sean,’ Rick gripped his shoulder. ‘Listen. If it is true, and if there’s a chance of the girl having a retrial, don’t waste it here.’

‘Have you got enough to charge him with Asaf’s murder?’ Sean said.

‘Not yet, but we’ve got time,’ Rick said. ‘And Sean, I don’t like him being so pally with you.’

Neither do I, Sean thought to himself, neither do I. A door opened along the corridor and Khan put his head out.

‘Sean? I want you in here for a minute, I’ll do a swap.’

As they passed in the corridor, Khan muttered to him: ‘If I have to spend another minute in that room with that sanctimonious little shite, I might ring his neck.’

‘I’m not sure what that word means, sir, but I think I feel the same about Starkey.’

He was opening the door when Sandy Schofield came bustling down the corridor.

‘You got a Kamran Ahmed in there?’

Sean nodded.

‘This message just came. You may want to pass it on yourself.’

‘Thanks.’

She handed it over and disappeared back up the corridor.

In the second interview room, the smell of expensive cologne hit Sean immediately. Kamran Ahmed was wearing designer threads to match the fragrance. If they were genuine, Sean totted up at least six hundred quid, from shoes to collar.

‘As I said to your colleague,’ Kamran said, with a polite nod, ‘I really have nothing to say until my solicitor gets here.’

‘That would be your father’s solicitor?’ DS Simkins said, looking at her notes. ‘A Mr Sadiq?’

‘Yeah, that’s him.’

‘DS Simkins?’ Sean cleared his throat. ‘There’s a message.’

He handed the piece of paper to Dawn Simkins and as she read it, another rare smile forced her mouth up at the corners.

‘It says here that Mr Sadiq is unable to act on your behalf in this instance.’ She and Sean both watched as Kamran’s soft bottom lip hung open. ‘The message is from your father,’ Simkins continued. ‘He’s sorry, but that’s all he says. For the tape, I’m handing the message to Mr Ahmed to read for himself. Would you like us to contact the duty solicitor?’

Kamran Ahmed shook his head. He sat in silence for a moment and when he spoke, his voice was controlled.

‘I can look after myself. This is all a mistake. It’s Terry Starkey you should be talking to, not me. Starkey is a known criminal. This has nothing to do with me.’

‘But you know him?’

‘I’ve … I’ve met him.’

‘So do you know him well?’ DS Simkins said. ‘Are you friends?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So why is he driving your car?’

‘I’ve no idea. He must have stolen it.’

Kamran rested his hands on the table. His calmness was almost soothing, but the veins on the backs of his hands stood up.

‘And you’ve reported it stolen, have you?’

‘I haven’t got round to it.’

Sean saw now why she was called ‘the Rottweiler’. Her interview technique was persistent, she wasn’t letting go. Like Rick, she was playing as if they had all the time in the world. He could have sat for hours watching, but the door opened and Khan came back in.

‘Denton? Can you sort out the tea run for DI Houghton and then come back here and do the same? It may be a long night.’

‘DCI Khan has entered the interview room and PC Denton has left.’

He was back to being the tea boy, just when it was getting interesting. Sean sighed. He knew this could go on for a long while, but wished he could be there when Starkey broke. He knocked on the door of the first room and asked Rick what he and his interviewee wanted to drink. Starkey asked for tea with two sugars, if it wasn’t too much bother. Sean thought he’d have to resist the urge to spit in it, but he kept his face set to neutral.

When he brought the drinks back, Rick was asking Starkey about gardening tools.

‘If we found a knife a bit like this one, whose prints do you think we’d find on it?’

‘No idea.’

‘No idea, or nobody’s prints?’

Starkey shrugged.

‘No comment.’

‘What would we find, Terry? Come on, we know you’re familiar with the tool shed at Halsworth Grange, about what came in and out of it. We know that Taheera Ahmed was killed with a knife that had never been used for gardening. Are you sure you didn’t help yourself to a fresh delivery when it arrived from the Garden Centre?’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’ Terry shouted. ‘I didn’t do the girl and you can’t say I did.’

There was a moment when no one spoke.

‘Who did you “do”, Terry? The young man, Mohammad?’ Rick said. ‘Or did you do the neat little warning cut on his younger cousin, Saleem? If not the girl, then who? They were all neat, sharp jobs, the work of someone who knows what he’s doing with a knife. Is that you, Terry? Or have you got your own apprentices now?’

‘Fuck off. I’m saying nowt. You’re trying to mess with my head. No comment.’

It was getting late and Rick decided to transfer Starkey to the cells. Khan wanted to keep Ahmed going for a bit longer. Sean met him in the corridor.

‘I just need one of them to say enough to tie it in with your recording,’ Khan said, ‘but at the moment, all we’ve got is one pack of lies against another. I don’t understand why Ahmed’s protecting Starkey, and until we get Lizzie’s DNA tests on Taheera, we haven’t got enough to prove anything.’

Sean stifled a yawn and Khan took the hint.

‘You’d better get off. You’ve had a long day.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘And take tomorrow off. We owe you that.’

‘OK,’ Sean said, but his heart sank, he wanted to be part of it, see it through to the end. Khan was waiting for a response. Sean forced a smile. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Nan was waiting up for him. She had something to show him. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but news had already filtered down from the Chasebridge estate to The Groves.

‘I’m so proud of you for saving that girl! At first I wasn’t sure about her, but I went up to the library and did a bit of research. I always knew there was something about that case that didn’t fit. That lass was peculiar all right, dragged up in the pub half her life, but I never had her pegged as a killer. But what about Bernadette Armley? Is it true she got carried off in an ambulance? Bit too convenient, that. I know you don’t have to tell me, but I reckon that son of hers has something to do with all this, and she’s been covering his back.’

He didn’t have the energy to remind her what she’d originally said about Marilyn Nelson and he wasn’t going to be led on the subject of Terry Starkey, he just shrugged and let her show him the printouts she’d made. He listened to her forming a campaign to get a pardon for Marilyn, until his eyes were closing. Before he went to bed, he sent Lizzie Morrison a text, but he couldn’t stay awake long enough to wait for the reply.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Doncaster

The New Moon Chinese restaurant was empty at lunchtime, which suited Sean fine. He was early, but he hadn’t been able to settle all morning. Lizzie had promised to meet him straight from the lab. He wanted to hear it in person, no email trail, no texts. She said she understood.

He asked for a jug of water and ordered a mixed starter. A bowl of prawn crackers arrived straight away and he broke one in his fingers and let it melt on his tongue. He wasn’t really hungry, but it was something to do. He checked the time on his phone. She was a minute late. There was music playing, barely audible despite the stillness in the restaurant, a high-pitched Chinese instrument full of sorrow. Then she was there, a laptop case over her shoulder, white blouse under her little black jacket, turning the corner of the stairs, the waiter showing her across the empty restaurant to where he was waiting.

‘Got it,’ she smiled briefly and sat down. She pulled a large, brown envelope out of the bag. ‘The paperwork was a bit tricky, but I said I was trying to rule out cross-contamination. That thread of denim you gave me at the Asaf murder scene? I wrote on the notes that I couldn’t be sure you hadn’t touched it, so I needed to order a double-blind test for your DNA against Starkey’s.’

‘I hadn’t touched it.’

‘I know that. Now concentrate. You’re on the system, obviously, but your dad’s DNA was more tricky. He’s not a suspect, although we could have arrested him for perverting the course of justice, but I didn’t think you’d want that. Then Gavin Wentworth gave me this.’

She pulled out a clear plastic bag containing Jack Denton’s baseball hat, which Sean had left in Gav’s car on the night of the Clean Up Chasebridge meeting.

‘It’s much easier to prove or disprove a half-sibling relationship if you’ve got the father’s DNA.’

‘And?’ He thought he would be sick if she didn’t tell him soon.

‘The good news is Starkey is not your half-brother. He has no DNA in common with you or your father.’

‘Thank fuck for that.’

He wondered why she didn’t smile; the papers were still in her hand.

‘And the bad news?’

‘Marilyn Nelson, or Chloe Toms, as she’s now known, is, however, your sister. Your half-sister on your father’s side.’

The Chinese music wailed gently in the background like a ghost calling him from somewhere.

‘That stupid bastard. He must have been putting it about all over the fucking estate.’

‘Before you were born, though. Chloe’s older than you, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said. Chloe Toms looked like a child, but Lizzie was right, she must be three or four years older at least. ‘Who’s her mother?’

‘Well, the DNA doesn’t tell me that, but the Internet was very helpful. I’ve quite enjoyed being a detective actually.’

She watched him and waited for a moment, as if she was testing how much he wanted to hear.

‘Linda Nelson died in a car accident six weeks after her daughter was sent to prison. The newspaper reports said she worked behind the bar at the Chasebridge Tavern. She never married.’

‘And the Tavern went up in smoke itself last year. Christ, it all turns to shit in the end, doesn’t it?’

‘Are you OK?’ Her hand was moving across the table. He let her place it on top of his.

‘Yeah. I’m OK. Funny, I always wanted a sister.’

Lizzie withdrew her hand and he wondered if he’d missed something.

‘My nan went up to the library yesterday,’ he said, ‘did a bit of research in the old local papers they’ve put online. James Armley’s death wasn’t clear-cut. On the first day of the case the defence claimed it was planned as a double suicide, but the girl didn’t have the bottle. Then she changed her plea to guilty to manslaughter on the second day, blamed herself I suppose, or just gave up fighting. Guess who the eye witness was, who said he’d seen her push James off?’

‘Terry Starkey?’

‘In one.’

‘I never thought she had it in her to kill Taheera Ahmed either,’ Lizzie said. ‘But you know what?’ She tapped the envelope. ‘I don’t think Starkey did it.’

‘You’re kidding! He had access to the weapon, the gloves, everything.’

‘There was a print on her cheek, perfectly shaped like a pair of lips. The DNA from the saliva is her brother’s. I think if we put it to Kamran Ahmed that he killed his sister, then kissed her goodbye as the blood drained from her throat, he might stop denying it and tell us where he disposed of her car. I’ve told Khan, but he says not to rush with the documents. He’s enjoying making Ahmed sweat a bit.’

‘I think Khan guessed he was behind it,’ Sean poured a glass of water and drank it in one. ‘But I’d assumed he’d got Starkey to do his dirty work and paid him with the car.’

‘Looks like Starkey was just the accomplice, in Taheera’s case. We still need something concrete to pin him with the Asaf murder. We know he had access to the right sort of knife, but it would be good if we could find it. I think he’ll go down as an accessory with Kamran Ahmed, whichever way it falls.’

‘Blue denim thread,’ Sean said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘It puts Starkey at the scene of Asaf’s murder.’

‘And Chloe’s drawing puts him at Halsworth Grange with Kamran Ahmed. Perhaps it wasn’t just about supplying the weapon, perhaps Kamran needed Starkey with him to see it through.’

‘Or in case Taheera put up a fight,’ Sean said.

‘But she didn’t. I don’t understand that.’

‘Khan’s furious,’ Sean said. ‘He hates Kamran, like it’s personal.’

‘Yeah, well it is personal for Sam,’ she said.

The waiter arrived with four stainless steel dishes. Sean’s appetite had come back and he couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

‘In what way?’

‘The idea of honour killings. In fact he told me off for using the word “honour”. He says they’re inherently anti-Islamic.’

Sean shrugged. ‘Fair enough, but how is that personal?’

‘It’s to do with Khan’s parents. They had a love marriage, apparently, and got cut off from their families. It’s complicated for him, I think, because he did the same, married a non-Muslim and they couldn’t cope with that.’

‘I didn’t know he was married,’ Sean helped himself to sesame prawn toast. He realised he didn’t know very much at all about Khan.

‘He and his wife are trying for a baby. He thinks his parents might soften if there’s a grandchild,’ Lizzie said, and stirred a spoon into the dish of salt and pepper chicken wings, piling some onto her plate.

‘How did you get all this out of him?’ Sean said. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the kind to share his personal life.’

She seemed to be focusing on her chopsticks and the business of transferring a piece of chicken to her mouth, so she didn’t reply at first.

‘It makes me realise how lucky I am,’ she said, giving up with the chopsticks and using her fingers. ‘My mum’s a bit of a nightmare in her way, but I can’t imagine her disowning me, or worse, because of a boyfriend she doesn’t approve of.’

‘Even if he was a Muslim?’ Sean said.

She looked up sharply. ‘Look, I went for dinner with him once. OK? Was I under surveillance?’

‘No, in fact I had no idea, but like every guilty suspect, you’ve just given yourself away.’ He was trying to keep it light, but he had a bad feeling he’d said the wrong thing. She was stabbing at the chicken now as if it was still alive.

‘Do you mind me asking,’ he said, ‘when did you have this dinner with DCI Khan?’

‘Couple of nights ago. I’d been a bit hard on him, and I felt guilty, if you must know. Look, I’m not in the business of stealing other people’s husbands.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you were.’

The sound of Lizzie’s chopsticks and Sean’s fork on the china dishes punctuated the music, but no more was said while they concentrated on their food. Sean was thinking about Terry Starkey. If Jack believed he was Terry’s father, had the idea come from Terry himself, or someone else? Perhaps Bernadette Armley had believed it to be true all along. How did you end up like Terry, he wondered. Old man Starkey had been a drinker; then he was dead. Not much of a start in life for his son. Perhaps Terry was jealous of his younger brother, James. Perhaps that’s why he wanted to hurt him. Sean had often felt sorry for himself, with his mother dead and having Jack as a dad, but now he looked at it, he realised he’d been lucky. He’d had his nan, and she was solid.

‘What makes one person turn out a psychopath,’ he said, ‘and another person, well, I don’t know, like me, I suppose?’

Lizzie didn’t have an opportunity to answer before there was a commotion on the stairs and a familiar figure burst through the red curtain into the dining area.

‘Get your hands off me, man!’ Saleem Asaf was trying to retrieve his arm from the tight grip of the restaurant manager. ‘It’s the copper I’ve come to see and he’ll want to see me, best believe.’

‘It’s OK,’ Sean said to Mr Lee, the manager. ‘Saleem. What’s up?’

‘I need you to arrest me.’

‘Excuse me?’

The boy edged his way round the other tables. He sat down without invitation and helped himself to a plate of chicken wings.

‘Got to make the most of it. I ain’t going to be eating like this for a while.’

‘Be my guest,’ Sean said. ‘Lizzie, let me introduce Saleem Asaf, Mohammad’s cousin.’

‘Came to tell you I burnt down the shop,’ he said, as he tore the meat off a wing with his teeth.

‘In that case, can I have that chicken bone when you’re done?’ Lizzie said.

He shrugged. ‘What for?’

‘DNA test.’ She patted her envelope.

‘No need, lady. I’ve come here to fess up. Then your boyfriend can arrest me.’

Sean thought this would be a bad moment to look embarrassed.

‘Saleem, what’s this about?’ he said. ‘Get to the point or I’ll have to ask Mr Lee to throw you out.’

‘Criminal damage, can you do me for that? I burnt down the shop, innit. My dad and my uncle are going to land at Manchester Airport in three hours’ time and I can’t be here when they get back.’

‘We’ve been assuming it was a racist attack.’

‘Good.’ Saleem’s mouth was full, but he still crammed more meat in.

‘But you’re willing to admit to arson?’

‘Mmnh, hnh.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I did it. And you can prove it, right?’ he said, handing Lizzie the stripped wing bone.

‘I think so. If your DNA matches the sample we have from the crime scene.’

‘But how?’ Sean said.

‘I think I know,’ Lizzie interrupted. ‘The torchlit parade was making its way round the estate. You sent Ghazala away, telling her to keep herself safe, didn’t you, Saleem? You promised to lock up. Then you waited until the protestors were outside, dropped the bottle full of petrol inside the shop, went out of the back of the building and bolted the shutters.’

Saleem looked impressed. He grabbed a handful of prawn crackers, nodding as he stuffed them in his mouth.

‘But why?’ Lizzie asked. ‘To steal pills from the Health Centre?’

‘Pills? Nah.’

‘So?’ Sean said.

Saleem was still for a moment. ‘Are you wearing a wire?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Saleem, this is Doncaster, not Baltimore.’ Sean said. ‘No, I’m not wearing a wire. Just get on with it.’

‘I’m not under arrest yet?’

‘No, but you will be for wasting police time in a minute.’

Saleem flicked the tassels of the tablecloth.

‘OK. I thought you’d pin it on those CUC Nazis and that would serve them right. The thing is, I didn’t want to run the shop. I don’t want to stay on the Chasebridge estate all my life, and with Mo gone, that was my destiny, d’you get me?’

‘What about your sister?’ Sean said.

Saleem hesitated.

‘Surely she’d run the shop?’

‘I can’t stay there. She can’t either. It’s not safe for either of us.’ He lifted his T-shirt up to show his dressing, as if that explained everything.

‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’

‘Yeah.’ He turned another chicken wing over in his fingers and put it down again. ‘That other detective said you got some shoe prints from the bottom of the stairs at Eagle Mount Two. From a potential witness? Well, they’re mine. Your man took my shoes away from the hospital. I know he’s going to work it out sooner or later. But I never had anything to do with Mo’s murder, right? I walked in on them, Starkey and his crew, and a couple of younger lads, the ones I knew. Mo was already dead, but they were cutting him, daring each other …’

His face twisted with the effort of trying not to revisit what he’d seen. Lizzie leant forward.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I understand. I’m sorry you had to see that.’

‘Is that right?’ Sean asked Lizzie. ‘Do the shoes match the prints?’

‘I’ll have to check, they’re somewhere in a backlog of evidence, but maybe that’s where the other half of my ant’s got to.’

‘Your what?’ Saleem looked confused, but Sean decided there wasn’t time to explain.

‘Did your sister know who Mohammad was going to meet,’ Sean said, ‘the night he was killed?’

‘She guessed,’ Saleem said. ‘Mo got a text from his girl, but it wasn’t really from her, you know what I mean? Her brother took her phone. He texted Mo, pretending to be her.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because he told me. He thinks he’s the big man, Kamran Ahmed, but he’s just a dog.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘He was playing gangsters. Met up with Starkey in a club, paid him to be his chauffeur and that. Cool as a cucumber he turns up to the shop, the day after Mo’s murder, talking dirty to Ghazala, calling her a slag. She’s had troubles, man. Some boy hurt her, I told you this before, but it weren’t her fault. It doesn’t make her a slag.’

He paused for a reaction but Sean and Lizzie simply stared at him.

‘So I told him what I thought of his family. You know? To return the favour. Now maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but he dissed my sister. I told him that his sister was the slag, she was the one that crept upstairs, to our flat, to fuck her boyfriend. Kamran Ahmed said he knew that, and why did I think Mo was dead? Did I really think those gora dogs cared about him, some has-been errand boy? It was never about drugs. They killed Mo for money. Kamran’s money. He told me how he set it up. He even clicked his fucking fingers to show how easy he thought it was.’

‘Who did you see, Saleem?’ Sean said. ‘When you arrived at Eagle Mount Two? We need a name.’

‘Starkey – it was him, with the knife, cutting down there, like—’ Saleem’s eyes filled up and he rubbed his knuckles into them to take away what he’d seen. ‘Kamran added a bit of spice to make sure they’d go through with it. He told them Mo had raped a girl, a little white girl.’

‘Was Kamran there?’ Sean said.

‘No.’

‘And did Starkey see you?’

Saleem shook his head. ‘I came in and I went back out. I wasn’t hanging around. One of the other boys must have told him I’d been a lookout because Starkey didn’t say nothing when he did this,’ he fingered the front of his T-shirt, ‘but I swear, if he knew I’d been there, he’d have finished me.’

‘And when Mohammad was being chased, Starkey’s mother was watching from her window. Another lookout,’ said Lizzie.

‘Ghazala said Mohammad was happy when he left the shop that night,’ Sean said, quietly.

‘She keeps saying she should have stopped him,’ Saleem said. ‘She used to talk to that girl. I think they became friends. My sister doesn’t have many friends. And now the girl’s dead too.’

Saleem was still, as if he’d finally run out of energy.

‘Taheera was a virgin, Saleem,’ said Lizzie. ‘Whatever else they were doing upstairs, it wasn’t that.’

The boy stared at his hands.

‘I was so scared,’ he said.

Sean took a deep breath. ‘Come on Saleem, let’s go round to the police station, you can hand yourself in there for the arson. I’m not actually on duty right now, just having a nice quiet lunch with a friend. I can’t promise anything, but if you can stick to this story under oath, I think we might be able to help you. You’ve done the right thing in telling me, Saleem. Remember that.’

‘And you remember,’ Saleem said, ‘that you promised to look after my sister.’

Sean nodded, but he wasn’t sure that Ghazala needed his help; she seemed more than able to stick up for herself.

‘Right, I’d better come with you and give this to DCI Khan,’ Lizzie picked up the brown envelope. ‘And then, Sean, you and I need to have a bit of a talk.’

‘Oh?’

‘We need to talk about your sister, your new half-sister.’