When the Music's Over - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Peter Robinson (12) #13

12

One by one, the team straggled into the boardroom on Thursday morning. It had been a long night for all concerned, and Annie had only managed about two hours’ sleep between leaving Wytherton with Banks and Sunny and coming in to Eastvale HQ for the meeting. Gerry was still in the infirmary, resting. The police doctor had been right: a nasty crack but not an outright break. They’d probably let her out later today, the doctor had told Annie when she phoned earlier, but she would have to remain on light duties for a while until her clavicle healed.

The Wytherton police had done their job and swooped on all the other suspects while Banks and Annie were bringing in Sunny. Now Sunny, Faisal, Ismail and Hassan were all in custody, waiting to be interviewed. DNA samples had been taken and Jazz Singh had promised as quick a result as possible. The scientific process of extracting DNA didn’t take long, and any wait was usually due to long queues at the labs. With Jazz on the job already they wouldn’t have to worry in this case. Samples had also been taken from the cousins in Dewsbury to match against those removed from Mimosa’s body. Annie was raring to have a go at Sunny, who was already in an interview room under guard, stewing until the team meeting was over. Things had been moving very fast that morning. Two of the other girls groomed by Sunny and his gang — Kirsty McVie and Rebecca Bramley — had already been identified by the school secretary, whom the locals had roused from her bed, and briefly questioned. They were scared, but they knew what had happened to Mimsy, and when they were told that Jade had told her story to the police and disappeared, it didn’t take them long to talk. They all named the same crew and said Sunny had told them to lie low until things calmed down.

Today, search teams would go through all the flats and houses concerned, and plain-clothes officers from both Wytherton and Eastvale would try to find the other girls and persuade them to talk. They were dealing with victims, Banks had reminded the assembled officers, and the girls may have been convinced to see themselves as society’s rejects, but they were to be treated with the utmost respect and sensitivity. If at all possible, he had added, each should be assigned a personal female liaison officer.

Superintendent Carver had grudgingly looked into Reg and Bill’s alibi for the Tuesday of Mimsy’s murder and found that Reg was at home with his family and Bill was moonlighting on a film set in Stockton, along with plenty of witnesses. It seemed to let them off the hook, though Annie had let it be known that she thought they were involved in some way, if only for wilful ignorance.

The three cousins of Sunny from Dewsbury had been quickly identified and taken into custody by the West Yorkshire Police, to whom they were already well known. A white van belonging to one of them was being sent up to the police forensics garage in Eastvale for testing. According to the local police, there was a dirty, stained mattress in the back, and several of Mimosa’s personal items, including her mobile and her shoulder bag, were soon found hidden in the house of one of the suspects.

The search was still going on for Jade who, according to the school secretary, was really called Carol Fisher, but nothing had been seen of her so far. At least they had now managed to get a photograph from her foster parents. Gerry had tipped them off about the brother in Leicester, and the police down there said they’d keep an eye on his place.

Already, according to a phone call from Superintendent Carver in Wytherton, mobs were gathering on the estate, the shopping centre and the Strip. Bricks had been thrown, shop windows smashed, a few scuffles had taken place. One young white youth had already been taken off to hospital with blood streaming down his face after he and several cronies had mounted an assault on the mosque. The riot police were trying to keep a lid on it rather than exacerbate things, but it was getting more and more out of control as more people joined the various mobs, and he wanted reinforcements. The tabloid headlines showed a grieving Moffat family on the doorstep of their Southam Terrace house under the bold headline: they murdered our little angel mimosa. Beside the story were three small head-and-shoulders photographs of Middle Eastern men, looking like police mugshots, but connected with a different story entirely. It was just a clever juxtaposition, a journalistic ploy. Adrian Moss would be over the moon, Annie thought.

Winsome and Doug Wilson were about the only ones who appeared well rested, and even Wilson had probably been up half the night going through CCTV footage with the rest of his team. Though they shouldn’t call it footage, Annie thought, as it was mostly digital. Byteage, perhaps? Jazz Singh and Stefan Nowak were fresh, too, though they had also been working unusually long hours and had started early that morning. AC Gervaise had managed to go home for a quick shower and change, but Annie could see the dark shadows under her eyes, and her lipstick was smeared a little unevenly over her Cupid’s bow lips. ACC McLaughlin, having authorised the whole business and set things in motion, had gone home to bed. Banks had also gone home to get some sleep, but he had promised to partner Annie on the interview with Sunny later that morning.

Everyone took their seats. Before they could even get started, Annie’s mobile buzzed. She apologised and went outside and answered the call. It was DC Masterson in the hospital.

‘What is it, Gerry?’ she said. ‘You should be resting.’

‘I am,’ Gerry said. ‘They gave me some more pills for the pain along with a sedative to help me sleep. It’s really quite pleasant. Now I know why junkies do what they do.’

‘What’s so important?’

‘It might not be important, but I’ve remembered something. From last night.’

‘Hurry up. We’re just about to get started with the meeting.’

‘Can you put me on speakerphone so I can participate?’

‘Gerry, you’re trying my patience.’

‘Yes, guv. Well, as I said, it may not be important, but just before they hit me and started chasing me, one of the gang, the one who called out to Tariq, called me “Ginger”, among other things.’

‘Without meaning anything negative, Gerry, that’s a perfectly natural thing to call you, under the circumstances.’

‘I’m not denying the colour of my hair, guv, but I am wondering how he knew. It was dark out there on the street, where we were, and as far as I know he’d never seen me before. It was like a derelict edge of the estate, opposite an abandoned factory, and most of the streetlights were broken. You’d have to have superhuman vision to see the colour of a person’s hair.’

‘We didn’t imagine it was a random attack on a lone female,’ Annie said. ‘But if he couldn’t see your hair in the dark, how did he know to call you Ginger?’

‘I think Sunny must have told him about us, our visit to the takeaway, maybe told them to keep an eye out for us. Jade mentioned that Sunny and the others had some young lads on the estate who’d do legwork for them. Maybe they do a bit of enforcing, too.’

‘That still doesn’t explain how they knew it was you.’

‘I would imagine Sunny described us both, told them I was the tall skinny one with long ginger hair.’

‘And what does that make me?’ asked Annie. ‘The short dumpy one with curly brown hair?’

‘No, ma’am... I... I didn’t...’

‘Sorry, Gerry. It’s OK. Go on. How did they know where you were?’

‘I don’t think they did, or they’d have probably come into the house after Jade. They could see my hair was long and that I was tall and thin. They were waiting by the car. It was the only one on the street. Maybe they were planning on boosting it when I came along, or maybe Sunny had seen it and described it to them. I suppose it’s pretty conspicuous. I don’t know. But don’t you see? If Sunny had them on the lookout for us, that makes it even less likely that Jade set me up. She’d never even seen me, as far as I know — we’d only talked on the phone — and it was pitch black in the house, even when my eyes adjusted to the dark. All I could see was outlines, silhouettes. It’s my theory that they were on patrol, maybe looking for Jade under Sunny’s instructions, looking for anything out of the ordinary.’

‘Excellent,’ said Annie. ‘If that’s true, it gives us a stronger possible connection between Sunny and Tariq and the rest. I’ll bring it up in the interview. Now get some rest Gerry.’

‘But, guv, can’t I be in on inter—’

‘No. Rest, DC Masterson. It’s an order.’ Annie ended the call and returned to the meeting. ‘Another link in the chain,’ she said. ‘This one possibly connecting Sunny to the attack on DC Masterson.’

Jazz and Stefan had nothing new to report yet, so Annie stood by the whiteboard, making the occasional notation, and went on to fill everyone in about the events of the previous night, making it as succinct as possible, but trying not to omit any of the essential points. ‘That means there’ll be plenty of TIES and actions flying around after this meeting, so catch what you can. It’s going to be another long day. Doug, have you got anything for us on the second car on Bradham Lane that night?’

‘Nothing we can confirm, guv,’ said DC Doug Wilson, rubbing his hand over his unruly hair. ‘Mostly it’s been a process of elimination. As I said before, I think we’ve got the first van, but we can’t get a licence plate number from it, and there are no markings. It’s a dirty white van, that’s all, and we think it could be the one that the girl was thrown from.’

‘Mimosa,’ said Annie. ‘And the van’s been found. It’s on its way. Is that all?’

‘Not quite. We did find a VW Transporter that more or less matched the time parameters and the directions we were looking at.’

‘And?’

‘It belongs to a bloke called Jim Nuttall. Lives out Stockton way.’

‘And what has Mr Nuttall been up to?’

‘Nothing, it seems. Honest businessman. No form.’

‘So what is it about Jim Nuttall that gives you pause for thought?’

‘It seems he lied, guv.’

‘Lied about what?’

‘What he was doing. When I talked to him a couple of days ago, he admitted he’d been out in the van that night. He runs a spare parts service. Specialist bits and pieces for old bangers, antiques and so on, and he makes the deliveries himself to save on overheads. Admits it’s nothing that’ll ever make him rich, but he enjoys his work. He said he had a delivery to make to a regular customer in Southampton, and he was used to night-driving, actually liked it, so whenever he went down there he drove by night. Less traffic.’

‘And?’

‘Only I remembered to check with the customer in Southampton, and it was actually two days earlier that Mr Nuttall made the delivery. He’d got the dates wrong.’

‘So, on the night in question, a week last Tuesday, his van was captured on CCTV travelling the route we’re interested in, but he had no reason to be there?’

‘That’s about the long and the short of it, guv.’

‘Then either he’s lying or he got muddled up and made a mistake. Well done, Doug. Good catch.’

Wilson adjusted his glasses. ‘Thanks, guv.’

‘We’ll pay him a visit later this morning.’

There was nothing else new, so Annie started issuing actions and TIES, and when the room emptied, leaving her alone with the gilt-framed photos of the wool barons who made Eastvale, she allowed herself to slump in her chair, close her eyes for a moment and cover them with her hands. But her mind was still humming with the adrenalin of the night. There was no way it was going to allow her a nap. Instead, she headed for the canteen to get a large mug of coffee before heading for the squad room to prepare the interview and wait for Banks.

* * *

Excerpt from Linda Palmer’s Memoir

Let me tell you about my best friend Melanie. Her full name was Melanie Vernon, and she died of breast cancer two years ago. I know I’m jumping way ahead now, and maybe it’s nothing to do with what you want to know, but her early death hit me hard and brought back a lot of memories from that Blackpool holiday, the only holiday we ever shared. And it tells you something of the cost to me of what happened. We hadn’t been in touch often over the years, but we had met up on a few occasions for drinks and dinner and we always had a good laugh. She was flabbergasted that I had become a ‘poet’ and confessed that poetry was like a foreign language to her. In turn, I was surprised to find that she had married a local electrician’s apprentice while I was at university and had two children in quick succession, then two more, never pursuing a career of her own. Secretly, I had always expected Melanie to become a model or an actress. She was attractive, no doubt about it. People said we both were, and we made quite a contrast. Back then she had wavy dark hair and looked a bit Italian, with almond brown eyes and the smoothest olive complexion I had ever seen. Chemo took care of the hair, eventually, her skin turned into cracked parchment and her beautiful eyes became red-rimmed, hollowed and frightened, underlined with shadows like bruises. The last time I got seriously drunk and cried was at her funeral. Her husband read Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember’ and that just did me in like a gut punch. Do you know it? You probably haven’t got to the late nineteenth century yet unless you’ve cheated. It ends:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

But we do remember, and we are sad. As another poet said, ‘Every man’s death diminishes me.’ Sorry about that flight of fancy, but it’s what I do.

After Melanie died, I wished so much that I had told her what happened to me on that holiday right then and there. Not telling her meant the end of something. The secret stood between us from then on like a wall. After that holiday, we were never as close as we used to be, and we drifted apart. I regret that. It was only later, when we were grown-ups, that we could tentatively breach the wall, but we were never as close as we had been that summer. We were never so innocent again, either.

Melanie’s father worked in a bookie’s office, and her mother was a housewife, like mine. I think my mother always looked down on Mr Vernon a bit because of his job. She wasn’t a gambler, and if pushed she would probably say she thought gambling was a sin. Or at least a particularly low form of vice. But Mr Vernon and my father had something in common. Both were white-collar workers, and therefore scoffed at by some of the rougher factory workers who lived on our estate, who thought of themselves as real men doing real men’s work. They were the true working class, while we were the soft underbelly of the middle class. Back then most people actually had jobs, and it wasn’t being on benefits that defined your class, but the sort of work you did. My father worked in an office as a shipping clerk. It was a menial job, as was Mr Vernon’s — all he did was fill in forms all day, and was paid a pittance for it — but they had to wear a suit and tie to work instead of dirty overalls, so lots of the locals thought them posh and stuck-up without even knowing them.

In some ways, Melanie seemed so much more mature than me. Her breasts were bigger, for a start, and had started to develop by that holiday. Mine had hardly grown much at all, and it had been like squeezing the water out of a lump of granite trying to get my mother to buy me my first bra. Finally, she relented, but only because I put on a tight, slightly damp T-shirt and pinched my nipples to go out one day, making sure I went into the kitchen to say goodbye, though I didn’t usually. It worked. Breasts or no breasts, there was no going out without wearing a bra for me after that.

But Melanie had real breasts. You would have liked Melanie’s breasts. Most men did. I saw them that week in Blackpool because we had to dress and undress together in the same room. They weren’t huge or anything, but hillocks compared to my pathetic little drumlins. Firm little hillocks. Don’t get me wrong. We weren’t lesbians or anything like that; you just notice things like breasts and pubic hair when you’re reaching puberty. I should imagine boys were the same comparing penis size. When I think of what happened, the cancer eating away at them and spreading to her lymph nodes, her liver, I still can’t help but cry. One of her children, Carolyn, is an English teacher. We met at the funeral, and she visits me sometimes to chat about poetry and drink wine. Sometimes when I look at her, I think she’s the spitting image of Melanie.

So in Blackpool that summer, it was going to be the terrible two. The whole town was at our feet, and we were set to grab what we could. Including boys. Melanie was more sophisticated about the opposite sex than I was. She had told me about her last boyfriend, who had tried to tit her up when she was babysitting for Mr and Mrs Delaware down the street. She said she moved his hand away gently, but she remembered that it felt nice and sent a shiver right through her. Perhaps next time, she had thought, she would let him touch her there, but he lost patience and moved on to Sally Hargreaves, who had a reputation for doing it with anyone, even though she wasn’t as beautiful as Melanie. People like Sally Hargreaves excepted, it was an age when good girls mostly didn’t. And we were good girls. We knew some girls who did. Sally had to leave school and we all knew why. We also knew you shouldn’t give in to boys, or they’d look down on you and tell their friends what you let them do to you. Then you became a slut. Or worse, you’d get pregnant and have to get married. You had to save yourself, we believed, preferably till marriage, of course, but failing that, at least until you were genuinely in love.

I wasn’t sure whether I was willing to go as far as letting a boy touch my breasts as I had only done a bit of French kissing so far and wasn’t even sure I liked the feel of a tongue in my mouth, but I was keen for new experiences and we certainly intended to team up with some likely lads and get them to take us on rides at the Pleasure Beach. It wasn’t as expensive then, and you didn’t have to pay to get in. A kiss on the Big Dipper, perhaps, or the Ghost Train. Now that might be fun, especially when the spider webs brush across your cheek in the dark and a phosphorus skeleton jumps out of nowhere right beside you. Or in the funhouse, where all the paths are constantly changing angles and direction and you see yourself in distorting mirrors.

I remember we did meet two boys from Doncaster in the Coffee Cellar one morning and they wanted to walk on the beach with us after dark. The first night we went to the Pleasure Beach with them and went on a few rides and ate some candyfloss but we wouldn’t walk on the beach with them. We arranged to meet them the next day. After we’d been to the funfair we walked with them across the prom. It was a lovely evening, I remember, and the sun was setting out on the Irish Sea, the waves rolling in, but there was still a broad enough swathe of beach to walk on.

I took my sandals off and felt the warm, moist sand under my feet, digging my toes in as we walked. He — I can’t remember his name — took hold of my hand at some point and I let him. It felt nice. Melanie’s boy already had his arm around her. We just walked like that and soon we came to one of the piers — I can’t remember which one — and I remember it surprised me to see two or three courting couples under there leaning against the pillars or the base of the sea wall and kissing or perhaps even more. We sat on some rocks under the pier and he kissed me. It was a gentle kiss, I remember, not a thrusting probing one. He never tried to touch my breasts or anything. A real gentleman. Melanie told me she felt her boy’s penis pressing hard against her tummy as they kissed but I don’t remember anything like that. It was a sweet kiss, a soft kiss, and the last good kiss I remember having for a very long time. We arranged to meet in two days at the same spot, by the Laughing Policeman, but it was too late by then.

* * *

Sunny was still sulking in the interview room when Banks and Annie joined him, along with his legal aid solicitor, Haroon Malik, later that morning. Sunny had been allowed to consult with the lawyer earlier, but it remained to be seen what his position would be when they started to question him. There was going to be no good cop, bad cop, Banks and Annie had decided. Just two cops.

They arranged their papers on the table, went through the formalities of setting the recorder going, and informed Sunny that the interview would also be filmed. He didn’t seem to care. He was hunched down in his chair, a slight figure, hardly the sort of man you’d expect to play such a cruel and despotic role over a number of young girls in his thrall. But appearances could be deceptive.

The room was hot and stuffy, and Haroon Malik requested fresh air. There were no windows to open, and no air conditioning, so Banks sent for a fan, which slowly swivelled back and forth on a shelf throughout the interview, making an irritating clicking sound every time it reached the end of its arc and started to swing back. But at least it stirred up the warm air a bit. Sunny asked if he could smoke, but Banks said no, and pointed to the sign on the back of the door. He loosened his tie before starting.

‘OK, Sunny,’ he said. ‘You know why you’re here.’

Sunny folded his arms. ‘No, I don’t. I’ve done nothing wrong. This is racial persecution.’

‘Did you know a girl called Mimosa Moffat?’

‘No comment.’

‘Jade? Carol Fisher?’

‘No comment.’

‘Kirsty McVie, Rebecca Bramley, Melissa Sandbrook, Susan Williams and Kathleen Nielson?’

‘No comment.’

‘They are all girls between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, and we have information that you used them for sex and for purposes of prostitution. Do you have anything to say to that?’

‘No comment.’

‘Is this going to be a no-comment interview?’ Annie asked.

‘No comment.’

Haroon Malik had a brief word in his client’s ear.

‘Did Mimosa Moffat leave your flat on the night of Tuesday, the twenty-first of July with three men, cousins of yours from Dewsbury, in a white van?’ Banks asked.

‘No.’

Banks cupped his hand to his ear. ‘Sorry. Was that “no”, or the beginning of another “no comment”?’

‘The answer’s no. I don’t know no Mimosa whatshername, and she didn’t leave my flat in a van.’

‘I think you’re lying,’ said Annie. ‘What were Mimosa’s drawings doing on your wall?’

‘I bought them down the market. I don’t know who drew them, did I?’

‘Do you know a young man named Tariq Jinnah?’

‘No.’

‘We think he and some of his mates attacked one of our female officers near the corner of Leinster and Mill Street last night. She’s suffering from a cracked clavicle.’

‘Tough for her,’ said Sunny. ‘I don’t know him.’

‘Again,’ said Annie. ‘We think you do. We think you’d told him and his mates to keep an eye out for both her and me after we visited your takeaway. She’s “Ginger”. Rattled you, did it, that comment about the DNA? Stop lying, Sunny. It won’t do you any good in the long run.’

‘No comment.’

Banks shuffled his papers. ‘We have statements from three of the girls already who claim that you seduced them first with presents — cigarettes, drink and drugs, mobile phones and top-ups, food and free taxi rides specifically — had sex with them, then threatened them with violence and used them for the purposes of prostitution, telling them it was payback time, actually using violence against them if they dared to refuse. What do you say to that?’

‘No comment.’

‘There’ll be evidence of their presence in your flat, you know. It’s being thoroughly searched right now. It’ll be a lot worse for you if it turns out you’ve been lying to us about knowing them.’

Sunny half rose from his chair and grabbed the edges of the table. ‘What’s that you say? They’re in my flat? Now? But I gave no permission.’

‘You don’t have to, Sunny. We have a judge’s warrant. It’s perfectly legal. Your solicitor will tell you.’

Haroon Malik asked for a moment alone with his client, and Banks and Annie paused the recording equipment and left the room. When they came back and resumed, Sunny seemed more relaxed. Sometimes interviews went this way, Annie reflected. The suspect lied and denied everything up to a point, then decided that a slightly sanitised version of the truth might be more acceptable. Next thing, maybe Sunny would be wanting to make a deal.

‘The girls whose statements we have are all under the age of consent,’ said Banks. ‘What do you say to that?’

‘How would I know what age they are? They all look the same to me.’

‘I take it by that you’ve decided to admit you do know the girls, but you’re claiming you didn’t know how young they were. Am I right?’

‘That’s right. Can I help it if girls like me? Think I’m handsome. And there was no prostitution. These girls like to party. You don’t have to pay them.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. But I thought it was you who got paid?’

‘There’s no call for that. And I want to make it perfectly clear that I had nothing — nothing at all — to do with Mimsy’s death.’

‘But you did know her, and the details of her death?’

‘Yes. Of course. I read the papers.’ He gave Annie a scathing glance. ‘And that one came round the takeaway along with her friend and tried to fool us into believing they could tie our food to her stomach contents. No way.’

‘No way she’s had your food, or no way we could tie it to your takeaway?’

‘I googled it. It’s not possible. Scientifically. So you’ve got nothing on me.’

‘Why did you google it?’ Annie asked.

‘What?’

‘About the stomach contents. Why did you google it?’

‘I was curious.’

‘Sure you weren’t worried?’

‘I have nothing to be worried about.’

‘But you admit you were lying a few minutes ago when you denied all knowledge of these girls?’

Sunny looked down at his hands on the desk. ‘Yes. All right. I thought you were going to blame me for something I didn’t do just because of the colour of my skin.’

‘And now?’

Sunny turned to Haroon Malik. ‘I know I didn’t do anything wrong, so I’ve nothing to fear. I have no reason to lie.’

‘Good decision, Sunny,’ said Banks. ‘Maybe we don’t have any forensic evidence. Yet. But we do have plenty of witnesses and victims who are willing to testify against you and your friends. Your girls are starting to talk, Sunny. What you did to Mimosa has got them really upset with you. Some of them claim you beat them up if they refused to go with men you brought to the flat. They want us to put you and your friends in jail so they can get on with their lives.’

‘I didn’t kill Mimsy. Why would I do that? And our girlfriends were all well treated. Better than they deserved. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on?’

‘Enlighten me, Sunny,’ said Annie.

‘They’re trying to paint a different picture. Nobody got raped or beaten. And we didn’t know anything about the girls being underage. Far as we knew, they were all willing to do everything they did. More than willing. They liked to party. We partied with them.’

‘Did you supply them with drink and drugs?’

‘You have a drink at a party, don’t you? It’s only natural.’

‘So you’re not a practising Muslim, then?’

‘I never said I was, did I? What’s that got to do with anything? That stuff’s got nothing to do with me. I’m British, I am. I was born here. My father was born here.’

‘No one’s saying you’re not British, Sunny, just that you tend to be a bit less so when it suits you. Like earlier.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What Americans call the race card.’

‘I don’t expect no special treatment because I’m brown.’

‘But that’s just it, Sunny. You do. When you think you can get it. You seem to think being of Pakistani origin exempts you from the rules the rest of us have to play by. And it works the other way. Whenever we call you on anything, you’ll call foul and say it’s because you’re of Pakistani origin, saying we’re out to get you because of the colour of your skin.’

‘Well, that’s what it feels like. You’ve no idea what it’s like. You’d have to be me to understand.’ He tapped the centre of his chest. ‘My dad told me that when he was a kid, people used to say we lived ten in a room and ate Kit-e-Kat by choice. Like we were animals or something. But we had a culture. We had a religion. We had morals. You see these young white girls today in their short skirts and torn stockings, looking like prostitutes, talking and swearing like they do, the language they use, drinking in the street, having sex whenever they feel like it, taking drugs. They’re just rubbish. If any of our daughters behaved like that, we’d kill them.’

‘Well, that’s another issue, and not one that concerns us here. All we’re interested in is whether you killed Mimsy.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘So you say. There must have been something about the girls you liked, no matter that you say they were rubbish, seeing as you spent so much time with them. Let’s get back to the parties, Sunny. Especially the young girls.’

‘They were all up for it. We didn’t make nobody do anything they didn’t want.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

‘It’s you lot who let them run wild in the first place. Where are their parents when they’re out drinking and taking drugs and having sex till all hours? When they come to us, they’re already fully trained sluts. We don’t have to force them to do anything. And there were no drugs involved.’

‘Two of the girls are cocaine addicts,’ Annie said. ‘Susan and Kathleen. And Mimosa was on ketamine the night she was raped and killed.’

‘I don’t know anything about no ketamine.’

‘Isn’t it true that Mimosa wanted to leave your little group? Isn’t it true she wanted her own life back? Maybe she had somewhere to go, had found someone else? She wanted her freedom.’

‘She was free to go whenever and wherever she wanted.’

‘Where’s Jade, Sunny? Where’s Carol Fisher?’

‘How should I know? And it’s not my fault if they make a bad lifestyle choice and take drugs.’

‘It is if you supplied them, got them hooked in the first place.’

‘I told you. No drugs.’

‘So our men won’t find anything incriminating in your flat?’

‘They will find nothing.’

‘Very well,’ said Annie. ‘Now you’ve decided to tell the truth, Sunny, what about Tariq Jinnah?’

‘What about him?’

‘Was he one of your drug connections?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I knew Tariq slightly, yes, from the community centre. He bought food from my restaurant sometimes. That’s all.’

‘Come on, Sunny. We think he was one of the people responsible for the attack on one of my officers. A female, alone, four men.’

Sunny spread his hands. ‘What can I say. They’re hotheads, Tariq and his friends. Young people today. That’s why I have little to do with them. They do odd jobs for me, that’s all. They have their own businesses going on, and I suppose they wanted to scare the police away.’

‘Well, they went the right way about it, didn’t they?’

‘As I said. They are hotheads. Young and foolhardy.’

‘They not only knew that she was a police officer, but they also knew what she looked like, even down to the colour of her hair in the pitch dark,’ Annie said. ‘As far as I know, you, Faisal and Ismail were the only ones we talked to on the Strip. Not Tariq or his friends. Did you describe us to them?’

‘I might have mentioned something,’ Sunny mumbled.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘But I didn’t tell them to do anything. Just, you know, keep an eye out, scare you off if you came around asking questions.’

‘Why did you want us scared off? What were you afraid we’d find out?’

‘Nothing. We just like to be left alone. Most cops aren’t interested in what goes on around here, anyway. They don’t bother us.’

‘Bother you doing what?’

‘Just living our lives, you know.’

‘So you admit you set Tariq and his mates the task of keeping an eye open for me and “Ginger”?’

Sunny nodded.

‘How did it work?’

‘They were driving around the estate and Tariq saw a green Corsa.’

‘You knew that DC Masterson drove such a car?’

‘I saw you and her drive away in it the other night.’

‘So what did Tariq do?’

‘He rang me, and I told him to wait there until you came back. Just to stand around the car, you know, but not to do anything.’

‘A warning?’

‘Sort of.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘That’s all. Nothing more. They have their own interests to protect. I’m not responsible for them or their actions. I suggest you talk to them about it.’

‘We will,’ said Banks. ‘No worry. We’ll have them in custody, too, soon. Anyway, we’ll get back to that later. For the moment, perhaps you can tell us what happened that Tuesday night, when Mimsy got into the van?’

‘It was no different from usual. I had some cousins dropping by, and they offered to give Mimsy a lift. She wanted to see her girlfriends in Dewsbury. That’s all.’

‘Are you sure that’s the only reason she went with them in the van?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘The three men had sex with her, Sunny.’

‘So? That’s her business. I wasn’t there.’

‘I think it’s yours. I think you asked the men to punish her for being disobedient, for wanting to leave.’

‘No way.’

Banks rifled through his papers. ‘Zahid Bhatti, Younis Qazi and Masood Chaudhri. Do those names mean anything to you?’

Sunny’s jaw dropped, and his eyes opened wide. ‘How did you...?’

‘Police work, Sunny. Good old police work. Well, do you know them?’

Sunny swallowed and nodded.

‘That’s good,’ said Banks. ‘They’ll be here soon, when West Yorkshire are through with them, and they seem willing to help us with our enquiries. I have to say, they leave a lot to be desired when it comes to getting rid of the evidence.’

‘Look,’ said Sunny, a pleading tone coming into his voice. ‘You have to understand how it is with us. Our culture. Things are different.’

‘You’re doing it again, aren’t you?’ said Annie.

‘What?’

‘That race card thing. Go on. Tell us how you’re different, then.’

‘We owed them one, right? The cousins. And she was it. Mimsy. They took a fancy to her. Girls are a kind of currency. There’s an exchange rate, and it keeps changing. Some days it’s in your favour, and some days it’s not. We were repaying a debt, that’s all it was. There was no punishment.’

‘That’s an interesting cultural difference,’ said Annie. Glancing at Banks. ‘We’ll have to remember to take it up with PC Jawanda back at the police station, but I think I know what he’ll tell me.’

‘What?’

‘That it’s a load of bollocks. That every culture, every ethnic group, has its bad elements, its rotten apples, its psychos and sexual predators. I know mine does. I suspect that yours is no different.’

Sunny scowled. ‘Nobody assaulted her. She was up for it, right enough.’

‘How do you know that? You said you weren’t there.’

‘Zahid told me.’

‘You’ve talked with your cousins since the incident?’

‘Sure. They’re family. We talk on the telephone often.’

‘Of course she was “up for it”,’ Annie cut in. ‘She had enough ketamine in her to fell a horse.’

‘If she did, I don’t know where she got that. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Maybe your cousins supplied it?’ Banks suggested.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did Zahid tell you happened?’

‘She got a bit frisky, like. My cousins are only human. It was like pass the parcel, that’s all. They didn’t kill anyone. They just fucked her. Then all they did was throw her out of the van. It was just a bit of fun.’

‘So your cousins admitted to throwing Mimsy out of the van?’

‘Yeah. But it was just for a laugh. She was just a silly little white slut. It was a bit of fun.’

‘Fun?’ Annie said. ‘Fun? Throwing a young girl out of a moving van naked and stoned in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. That’s your idea of fun?’

‘They slowed down. They told me they slowed down. She wasn’t hurt when she left the van. And it was a warm night.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. It was nothing to do with me.’

‘But she was one of your girls. Your girlfriend, in fact. Weren’t you angry to hear that she had been treated so disrespectfully?’ Annie asked.

‘I’m not possessive. It’s not—’

‘I know,’ Banks cut in. ‘It’s a cultural thing. But are you sure you weren’t just a little bit jealous? Are you sure you didn’t head out after them, and when you saw Mimsy walking back up that lane, you got out and gave her a good thrashing?’

‘No! You can’t say that!’

‘Just asking, Sunny. What did you do after the van left Wytherton?’

‘Nothing. I went to bed. I watched TV.’

‘Which is it?’

‘I watched TV in bed.’

‘Alone? Well, I suppose you would be, with your girlfriend gone to have sex with three of your cousins, wouldn’t you? Unless you had Jade or Kirsty or Mel to keep you company. Did you, Sunny?’

‘No. I was alone.’

‘That’s not much of an alibi.’

‘I didn’t know I’d need one. How could I know they’d throw her out of the van and she’d be on the road?’

‘Why did they throw her out of the van? Did they tell you?’

‘She was weirding out on them. The K, I suppose. They couldn’t deal with her no more, she was like a wild animal, so they chucked her out. They didn’t mean to hurt her.’

‘Was it because she wouldn’t consent to commit certain sex acts?’

‘Come again?’

‘She wouldn’t let them do what they wanted to her.’

‘She’d let anybody do anything to her when she was off her face like that.’

‘How do you know, Sunny? You said you had nothing to do with ketamine, with drugs.’

‘You’re twisting my words.’

‘How am I twisting your words?’

‘What about the other girls?’ Annie asked.

‘They’re all the same.’

Banks glanced at Annie. The disgust was clear to see on her face. ‘Well, DI Cabbot,’ he said, ‘I think that’s all the questions for the moment. Why don’t we put Sunny here in a nice comfortable cell while we gather the rest of the statements and see what the teams have stumbled across in their searches?’

‘Wait a minute. What do you mean, cell? I’ve told you what I know, haven’t I? I’ve cooperated. We’re done. You’ve got to let me go now.’ He looked despairingly at Haroon Malik. ‘Tell them they can’t do this.’ The lawyer remained impassive.

‘But we haven’t finished with you yet,’ said Annie. ‘Not by a long chalk.’