“Was he shot because he tried to kill Charlie, you mean?” Madeleine supplied. “Or because he failed?”
“Exactly,” Sean said, turning to me. “Which brings it down to this – why does somebody want you dead?”
I swallowed. It was a question I hadn’t wanted to give much thought to. “I don’t know,” I said. “O’Bryan did warn me I’d become a target for the kids who’ve been doing these robberies if I stuck my neck out. It could have been that.” It sounded unlikely, even as I said it.
“What about this Garton-Jones character?” Madeleine said. “From what I saw of him at that Residents’ Committee meeting he’s a nasty piece of work, and he didn’t like being thrown off the estate. Disposing of you would have been a good way of killing two birds with one stone, as it were. He gets rid of his opposition, and frightens people enough to want him back at the same time.”
“And when that failed he took second best, you mean, and shot the messenger instead?” Sean pondered. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit extreme, and Garton-Jones strikes me as the sort of guy who’d have wanted Charlie to know who was behind it, and why, before the hit.”
Attila finished his phone call and replaced the receiver. Sean and Madeleine seemed to take this as their cue to leave, and I walked out to the car park with them.
“What about Langford?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance for your little chat yet?”
Sean shook his head and gave me a half-smile as he unlocked the Cherokee’s doors. “He seems to be keeping a pretty low profile at the moment, but I suppose that’s hardly surprising after he tipped you off about my neo-nazi past.”
I glanced at him, puzzled. “But he didn’t,” I said slowly. “It was Jav who told me about it first. Then I confirmed it through the archives at the paper.”
Sean stopped, turned. “Jav?” he demanded. “Young lad, peroxide hair?”
“That’s him. Why, d’you know him?”
He nodded, thoughtful. “Yeah, he went to the local college with Ursula. He was interested in her at one time, but Nasir supplanted him. I don’t think he took it very well.”
I digested the information for a moment. “Hang on, if Jav knew about Nas and Ursula, why did he tell me all that stuff about you hating Nasir? He must have known you didn’t have a problem with it.”
“Maybe he was jealous that she turned him down,” Madeleine suggested. “Maybe he wanted to cause trouble for the family by way of revenge.”
Sean glanced at me, his expression troubled. “Or maybe someone else just put him up to it.”
“Like who?”
“We come back to Langford again,” I said. “He certainly would have known about your past connections.”
“Yes, but so would anyone who had access to a newspaper library,” Madeleine argued.
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Sean said, climbing into the Cherokee and sticking the keys into the ignition. “I’ll ask Harvey Langford. You ask Jav.”
“Yeah, great,” I muttered under my breath, stepping back as they slammed the doors and the V8 fired into life. “All I’ve got to do now is find him.”
Eighteen
Two days later, Pauline came home. I had mixed feelings about it, on the whole. Of course, I was delighted to see her back safe, but with the situation on Lavender Gardens worsening, it might have been better if she’d stayed away.
The police had implemented a Zero Tolerance policy on the estate. Their uniformed presence was high, but it wasn’t providing the calming effect they’d been hoping for.
Inevitably, it seemed to be the teenagers who were bearing the brunt of the draconian measures. Between the boys in blue and Garton-Jones’s mob, they were getting it from all sides, and the temperature was rising. I was uneasy about leaving the house with only Friday in residence to go and meet Pauline from her flight.
All the kids were keeping their heads down, including Jav, who seemed to have gone to ground. I hadn’t even caught sight of the Asian boy since Sean, Madeleine and I had our meeting at Attila’s place, never mind caught hold of him.
Now, sitting in traffic on the M61, I had time to let my mind wander in circles, mentally cursing the lack of hard information I had to go on.
Still, at least I didn’t have to slum it getting down to Manchester. Jacob said he had some parts to collect from a dealer friend of his in the area, and he’d kindly agreed to combine the trip with an airport run. Pauline hadn’t mastered the art of travelling light, and the cavernous rear load bay of Jacob’s battered old Range Rover was filled to bursting by the time we’d crammed all her cases in.
I took the back seat and let Pauline ride up front. She settled into the worn leather upholstery with an air of satisfaction. “This is a proper way to travel. It beats a smelly old taxi any day,” she announced. “You should try sitting in one of those airline seats for hours. The feller next to me was all elbows and a weak bladder. Up and down every five minutes. I swear I didn’t get a wink of sleep all the way back. I’ve no idea what day it is, even.”
It wasn’t long before she worked the conversation round to the situation at home. Then I spent the rest of the journey being bombarded with questions about Fariman’s state of health, Mrs Gadatra’s state of mind, and Lavender Gardens’ state of readiness.
When I told her about the new policing policy, she snorted. “Daft buggers, they’re going to make things ten times worse.” She twisted over her shoulder to look at me. “I hope you told them, Charlie.”
“Unfortunately, the local chief constable doesn’t consult me before he decides these things,” I said dryly.
“Well, what about that policeman feller who used to come calling when you were ill last winter?” she demanded. “MacMillan, wasn’t it?”
“He came to see me twice,” I pointed out. And I hadn’t exactly been welcoming. His overwhelming disapproval of the actions that had led to my temporary incapacity had been too plain to be ignored, however much he seemed to have softened down his attitude since.
Wisely, perhaps, Pauline didn’t pursue that one any further.
We managed to get into Lavender Gardens unmolested, although we attracted close scrutiny from Garton-Jones’s heavies as we went past. They’d already checked out Jacob when he turned up to collect me earlier.
As I should have expected, Friday went totally ballistic at his owner’s return, bouncing round the living room like a puppy and letting out ear-splitting yelps. The Ridgeback had that crafty look in his eye which said he knew full well this was one occasion when he could get away with total disobedience, and he was damn well going to make the most of it.
Our efforts to shut him up had Jacob grinning. He made his excuses and left quickly once we’d unloaded Pauline’s cases. I supposed I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to leave a Range Rover too long unattended anywhere on Lavender Gardens at the moment. It didn’t matter that it was fifteen years old, and the body was slowly taking on an interesting mottled two-tone colour scheme as the rust encroached on the cream paintwork.
In the midst of all this havoc, it would have been easy to miss the sound of the phone ringing. Pauline dragged her frenzied dog off into the kitchen and closed the door behind her, leaving me to pick up the receiver.
“Charlie!” It was a woman’s voice on the line that I didn’t immediately recognise, the tones made echoing by the distortion of a mobile phone. “Where on earth have you been? I’ve found him!”
“Madeleine?” It took me a moment to catch up. “Who have you found? Roger?”
“No, more’s the pity,” she said. “Jav. He’s inside at the moment, but I don’t know how long he’s going to stay there.”