Her words jogged my memory towards the conversation I’d overheard on that building site in Heysham. “What if he’d found out that Langford was working for Mr Ali, and threatened to spill the beans. He could have been doing a bit of blackmail,” I suggested.
Sean was frowning again. “Could be. I suppose that brings his boss into the frame, but don’t forget that Nasir had been paying out this extra cash for a while. Why would Ali wait until now to get rid of him? And surely on a building site they could have conjured up some likely-looking ‘accident’? Besides, who was Nasir threatening to tell, and was it really worth killing him over?”
We fell into a glum silence, pondering over the variables and not managing to make them slot together in any sort of order.
“What about you, boss, any sign of Ursula?” Madeleine asked.
Sean shook his head. “Nothing yet. I’ll keep on it, though. There’s only so many people she could have gone to.”
“Is there any point in talking to that Community Juvenile bloke, O’Bryan, to see if he knows anything either about Nasir or your sister?” I offered. “He seems to be the one with his finger on the pulse as far as extra-curricular activities go.”
“I don’t see why not,” Madeleine said. “We know Nasir’s been in a lot of trouble in the past, and O’Bryan would be the man who’d have the details. If Nas’s been up to anything recently it might even give us an idea where he was getting his money. What d’you think?”
He nodded. “OK,” he said slowly, then turned back to me. “Have you had a chance to find out any more from your friend on the paper?”
“A little,” I said. “They’ve fixed Nasir’s time of death to around three hours after we last saw him, and they reckon he was practically dead before he was moved.”
Sean rose, began pacing restlessly. “OK,” he said, “so let’s take some jumps in the dark here, shall we? Nasir comes and takes a pot-shot at you, Charlie, under duress, or so it would seem. He and Rog run away, and within a few hours Nasir’s been shot and left for dead. Question: why?”
“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
