‘I don’t think I am, sir. My job is to bring serious criminals to justice. Every member of my team has been hand-picked because of the unique contribution they make to that goal. I’d have thought you would have supported my drive towards excellence. I’d have thought you would be glad that I’m willing to nail my colours to the mast and say, “This is not good enough for Bradfield Metropolitan Police.”’ She shook her head. ‘If we’re not on the same page on that aspiration, I don’t know that I have a long-term future in this force.’ The words were out before she’d had time to consider whether she wanted to say them out loud.
‘This isn’t the time or the place for that conversation, Chief Inspector. You’ve got three murders to solve.’ He pushed himself to his feet, his struggle with the sofa revealing a man less fit than he looked. He walked over to the tall windows that overlooked the canal and stared out. ‘Dr Hill makes a strong case for this West Mercia murder being part of our series. He may be overstating the case, you understand?’ He turned and gave her a questioning look.
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘What I’d like you to do is to talk to the SIO in Worcester and see what he has to say. Once you’ve spoken to him, you’ll have to decide whether Dr Hill is right. And if, on balance, it seems that he is, you’re going to have to bring West Mercia on board with us. They may have the first in the series, but we’ve got more victims and he’s still active on our patch. I want you heading up the task force to deal with this. Is that clear? This will be our investigation.’
‘I understand.’ Now she understood. Blake thought Tony’s actions were about ego because that was his own guiding principle. ‘Does that mean I can bring Dr Hill fully on board with our cases?’
Blake rubbed his chin between fingers and thumb. ‘I don’t see why not. It’s West Mercia’s tab, though. They brought him in. They can pay for him.’ He gave the first genuine smile she’d seen all afternoon. ‘You can tell them that’s the price of admission to the party.’
CHAPTER 32
The team of officers on the knocker in the Brucehill flats didn’t take long to turn up the two Asian lads who’d stood at the bus stop with Niall the previous afternoon. It was clear from the get-go that this murder was not connected to the quotidian villainies of the estate, so for once there was no threat to anyone local in talking to the police. The normal rules of grassing did not apply. True, some refused to talk to the cops on principle, but there were plenty who still thought the murder of a fourteen-year-old who wasn’t connected to any of the estate’s gangs should not go unavenged. There had been enough people more than happy to give up the witnesses.
So within a couple of hours of the discovery of Niall’s body, Sadiq Ahmed and Ibrahim Mussawi had been huckled into Southern Divisional HQ for questioning. Sam, who had left Stacey and the FLO with Niall’s mother, had a brief discussion with Paula on how to play it. Neither wanted to work with an unfamiliar partner, but the alternative was for them to take one witness and to leave the other to a pair of detectives from Southern about whose abilities they knew nothing. ‘What do you think?’ Sam said.
‘Look at their sheets. Mussawi’s got half a dozen arrests for minor stuff, he’s been in court. He knows the system. He’s not going to be going out of his way to help us. But Ahmed, he’s a virgin. Never been arrested, never mind charged. He’s going to want to keep it that way, I think. We should take him, you and me. Leave Mussawi to the local boys and hope they get lucky,’ Paula said.
They found Ahmed in an interview room, lanky limbs in a hoodie and low-slung designer jeans, gold chain at his neck, feet in outsized designer trainers, laces undone. A couple of hundred quid’s worth of gear on a fifteen-year-old kid. Well, there’s a surprise, Paula thought. Dad works in a local restaurant, Mum’s at home with five other kids. She didn’t think Ahmed was getting his spending money from a paper round. She sat back while Sam did the introductions.
‘I want a lawyer, innit.’
Paula shook her head, doing the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ look. ‘See, there you go. Making yourself look like you’re guilty of something before I’ve even asked your name and address.’
‘I haven’t done nothing, I want a lawyer. I know my rights. And I’m a minor, you need to get me an appropriate adult.’ His narrow face was aggressive, all sharp angles and twitchy little muscles round the mouth.
‘Sadiq, my man, you need to chill,’ Sam said. ‘Nobody thinks you did anything bad to Niall. But we know you were at the bus stop with him, and we need you to tell us what went down.’
Ahmed rolled his shoulders inside his hoodie, trying for nonchalant. ‘I don’t got to tell you nothing.’
Paula half-turned to Sam. ‘He’s right. He doesn’t have to tell us anything. How lovely do you think his life is going to be in these parts when we let it be known that he could have helped us catch a stone killer, only he didn’t want to?’
Sam smiled. ‘Exactly as lovely as he deserves.’
‘So there you have it, Sadiq. This is probably the one and only time in your life that you’re going to have the chance to do yourself a favour with us without it coming back to bite you in the arse.’ Paula’s voice was at the opposite end of the kindness scale from her words. ‘We don’t have time to fuck around on this one, because this guy will kill again. And next time, it might be you or one of your cousins.’
Ahmed looked at her, calculation obvious in his face. ‘I do this, I get a free pass off you twats?’
Sam lunged forward and grabbed the front of his hoodie, almost yanking him off the chair. ‘You call me a twat one more time and the only free pass you’ll be getting is to Casualty. Capisce?’
Ahmed’s eyes opened wide and his feet scrabbled on the floor for purchase. Sam shoved him away and he teetered backwards before his chair settled on all four legs. ‘Fu-u-uck,’ he complained.
Paula shook her head slowly. ‘See, Sadiq? You’d have been better off paying attention to me. You need to start talking politely to us or the next thing you know you will need a lawyer because DC Evans here will be charging you with police obstruction. So, what time was it when you and Ibrahim arrived at the bus stop?’
Ahmed fidgeted for a moment, then caught her eye. ‘About half three, twenty to four,’ he said.
‘Where were you going?’
‘Into town. Just to hang about, right? Nothing special.’
A little light larceny. ‘And how long were you there before Niall showed up?’
‘We’d only just got there, like.’ He leaned back in the chair, feigning cockiness again.
‘Did you know Niall?’ Sam asked.
A shrug. ‘I knew who he was. We didn’t hang about, nothing like that.’
‘Did you speak to him at all?’ Paula said.
Another shrug. ‘Might have.’
‘Never mind “might have”. Did you?’
‘Ibrahim goes, “Where you going, brah?” And he goes, like, he’s going into town to hang with his crew. Only, we know he don’t have a crew so it’s bullshit, right? So Ibrahim calls him Billy No-Mates.’
‘The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie,’ Sam said wryly.
‘Do what?’
‘Nothing. So what did he say when you called him Billy No-Mates? ‘
Ahmed ran a finger round the inside curve of his ear then inspected it. ‘Fuck all he could say, was there? Cuz that’s when the car turned up, right?’
‘Tell me about the car,’ Paula said.
‘It was silver.’
Paula waited but nothing more was forthcoming. ‘And? You must have noticed more than that.’
‘Why the fuck would I? It was, like, a pile of crap. It was this silver hatchback thing. Medium sort of size. Total fucking nothing car. Something, like, of no interest.’
Of course it was. ‘So what happened then?’