Ted turned pale and averted his eyes before answering. “Well, seeing as you put it like that… But I’m telling you the truth. Nothing happened.”
Hatchley shook his head. “Why don’t I find myself believing you, Ted? Can you answer me that?”
“Look.” Ted held his hand up, palm out. “I don’t want any trouble.”
Hatchley smiled, showing stained and crooked teeth. “And I’m not here to give you any.”
“It’s just…”
“Frightened of something?”
“No. It’s not that.” Ted licked his lips. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to swear to owt, but there were a lad looked a bit like that in last night. It could’ve been him.”
“What was he doing?”
“Having a drink with a mate.”
“What did this mate look like?”
“About my height. That’s five foot six. Stocky build. Tough-looking customer, you know, like he lifted weights or summat. Short fair hair, almost skinhead, but not quite. And an earring. One of them loops, like pirates used to have in old films.”
“Had you seen them before?”
“Only the one in the drawing, if it is him. Sometimes comes in on a weekend after a match, like, just for a quick one with the lads. Plays for United.”
“Aye, so I’ve heard. Troublemaker?”
“No. Not at all. Not even much of a boozer. He’s usually gone early. It’s just…” Ted scratched his head again, sending more flakes of dandruff onto the polished bar. “There was a bit of a scuffle Saturday night, that’s all.”
“No punches?”
He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, the lad in the picture bumped into another lad and spilled some of his drink. The other lad said something and this one replied, like, and gave him a bit of a shove for good measure. That’s all that happened. Honest. Pushing and shoving. It were all over before it began. Nobody got beat up.”
“Could it have continued outside?”
“I suppose it could have. As I said, though, it seemed like summat and nowt to me.”
“This other lad, the one whose drink got spilled, did he have any mates with him?”
“There were three of them.”
Hatchley pointed to the sketch again. “Did you see this lad and his mate leave?”
“Aye. I remember them because I had to remind them more than once to drink up.”
“Were they drunk?”
“Mebbe. A bit. They weren’t arse over tit, if that’s what you mean. They could still walk in a straight line and speak without slurring. Like I said, I’d seen the one in the picture a few times before, and he weren’t much of a drinker. He might have had a jar more than usual, but who hasn’t had by closing time on a Saturday night?”
“And it wasn’t till after eleven o’clock that you got rid of them, right?”
“Aye. About quarter past. I know some places are a bit lax, but there’s no extension of drinking-up time in the Jubilee. The manager makes that clear.”
“What about the other three?”
“They’d gone by then.”
“Were they drunk, too?”
“No. At least they didn’t act it.”
“Anything else you can tell me about them?”
Ted looked away.
“Why do I get the impression you’re still holding something back, Ted?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
“I think you do. Is it drugs? Worried we’ll close the place down and you’ll lose your job?”
“No way. Look, like I said… I don’t want to cause any bother.”
“What makes you think you’d be causing bother by telling me the truth, Ted? All right. Let me guess. If it’s not drugs, then you’re probably frightened these three hooligans are going to come back and wreck your pub if they find out you ratted on them. Is that it?”
“Partly, I suppose. But they weren’t hooligans.”
“Oh? Who were they, then? Did you recognize them?”
“Aye. I recognized them. Two of them, anyroad.”
“Names?”
“I don’t know their names, but one of them’s that lad from the shop off Cardigan Road. You know, the one opposite the bottom of the Leaview Estate. And the other one’s dad owns that new restaurant in the market square. The Himalaya.”
Hatchley raised his eyebrows.
“See what I mean?” Ted went on. “See what I’m worried about, now? I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of some bloody racial incident, do I? The lad in your picture called one of them a ‘Paki bastard’ and told him to get out of the fucking way. That’s what happened.”
IV
Gallows View,
The Mahmoods were one of three Asian families in East-vale. In these parts of Yorkshire north of Leeds and Bradford you saw very few visible minorities, even in the larger cities like York and Harrogate.
Mahmood had enlarged the shop, Banks noticed. Originally, it had occupied the ground floor of only one cottage, and the Sharps had used the other as their living room. But now the shop had been extended to take up the frontage of both cottages, complete with extra plateglass window and a new freezer section. The Mahmoods sold a whole range of products, from bread, eggs, cigarettes, milk and beer to washing-up liquid, tights, magazines, lipstick, stationery and toothpaste. They also rented out videos. Pretty soon, when the new estate was finished, the shop would be a little gold mine.
Unlike most people the racist bigots refer to as “Pakis,” Charles Mahmood actually did hail from Pakistan. Or rather, his father, Wasim Mahmood, did. Wasim and family emigrated to England in 1948, shortly after partition. Charles was born in Bradford in 1953, around the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and he was, naturally, given the name of her only male child because the Mahmoods were proud of their new country and its royal heritage.
Unfortunately for Charles, when his own son was born in 1976, the Prince of Wales had yet to marry and produce offspring. To name his child, Charles had to take the devious route of stealing one of the prince’s middle names. He chose George. Why he didn’t choose Philip, which might have been easier on the lad at school, nobody knew. As for George himself, he said he was only glad his dad hadn’t called him Arthur, which would have seemed even more old-fashioned than George to his classmates.
Banks knew all this because George had been a contemporary of his own son, Brian, at Eastvale Comprehensive, and the two had become good friends during their last couple of years there. George had spent quite a bit of time at the Banks household, and Banks remembered his love of music, his instinctive curiosity about things and his sense of humor. They had all laughed at the story of the family names, for example.
Now the kids seemed to have lost touch, drifted apart as people do, and Banks hadn’t seen George for a while. Brian had just started his third year at college in Portsmouth, and George was still in Eastvale, pretty much unemployed, as far as Banks knew, apart from helping his dad out at the shop. Even though they hadn’t see one another in a while, Banks still felt a little uneasy about interviewing George in connection with a criminal matter.
Charles Mahmood greeted Banks with a smile of recognition; his wife, Shazia, waved from the other side of the shop, where she was stacking shelves with jars of instant coffee.
