she had to do. We’re not sure which university. One guy thought Leeds, the other Manchester. And we’re not sure what he studied either. Might have been biology, might have been zoology. Might have been fucking needlework, frankly. I think the pair of them were making it up as they went along by that point.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Why do they try so hard to please us?’
‘Probably because we have the power to throw their arses in jail, Chris,’ Paula said pointedly.
‘All right, all right, enough of the stand-up routine. Piss off, the pair of you. And don’t come back till you’ve got everything there is to know about Jack Anderson. Including his current address.’ She got up and grabbed her jacket from the coat stand. ‘I’m going to swing by Robbie’s mum and dad’s house. Maybe they remember Jack Anderson. You never know. And then I’m going to talk to a man about officer deployment. Just as well he’s already in hospital, he won’t have far to go to get fixed.’
Ex-Detective Superintendent Tom Cross owned one of the most expensive houses in Bradfield, thanks to a spectacular win on the football pools some years before his enforced retirement. His pension was adequate to support him and his wife comfortably. But nothing could have convinced him he was lucky. There are some people who are incapable of contentment, and Tom Cross was one of them.
He stared moodily out of the bathroom window at a perfectly groomed lawn sloping gently down to the River Brade, where a neat day boat was moored to a concrete jetty. Miserable bloody day for the game, he thought. No matter how well wrapped up he was, his nose would be a bulb of ice by half-time.
Cross turned back to the mirror, switching on his electric shaver and applying it to his heavy jowls. His pale green eyes were prominent, responsible for his old nickname of Popeye. Like his cartoon namesake, Cross still had the massive muscular shoulders and upper arms of the rugby prop forward he’d once been. The mirror didn’t reveal the massive gut that years of fast food and beer had created; Cross had always tended to avoid the truth whenever it made him uncomfortable. Some would say that had been the source of his professional downfall. Cross himself would have laid it at the door of that sanctimonious bitch Carol Jordan.
He shaved swiftly, then ran a deep basin of warm water. He immersed his whole head, running his fingers over the grey bristle that surrounded his bald crown. He rose gasping from the water, his little cupid’s bow mouth spraying droplets over the marble sink surround. Bloody Jordan and bloody John Brandon. Pair of prigs. Jordan had stepped into his shoes and Brandon had put the word out that Tom Cross was a cheat and a liar. It had made it bloody hard to get his mitts on the sort of security work he deserved. At least today, before he froze his arse off watching the struggle to make headway without Robbie Bishop, he’d be working with somebody who recognized his worth.
The letter from Harriestown High had come out of the blue. He’d not been back there since his sixteenth birthday, when he’d buggered off and got himself a job on a building site till he could get taken on as a police cadet. But according to the letter from the head, the school now had a policy of employing former pupils wherever possible. When it came to planning security for a major fundraising event, Tom Cross’s name had been the first to come up.
As invited, he’d called the number on the letterhead. To his surprise, it was an answering machine which simply said, ‘You have reached Harriestown High School. Please leave your name and number and we will call you back as soon as possible.’ The call back came within five minutes, from the head himself. ‘Sorry about the answering machine,’ he’d said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many threatening and abusive phone calls we get from parents.’
Cross snorted. ‘I’d believe you all right. In my day, if the school or the police got in touch with your parents, you were in for the high jump. Now, the parents take the kids’ part and we’re the ones getting the kicking.’
‘Quite so. Thank you for getting back to me. If you’re interested in this project, I think the best thing is for you and Jake Andrews to have a meeting. Jake’s organizing the whole thing. He has all the details at his fingertips. It’s going to be quite the do. Robbie Bishop’s already pledged to support it with his presence, and he’s persuaded his former fiancee to DJ a session. She works for Radio One, you know,’ he added conspiratorially. ‘I’ll have Jake call you.’
And later that day, Jake had indeed called. They’d had a preliminary meeting over lunch in a very fine French restaurant in town. The sort of place Cross wouldn’t normally have chosen, but he would admit they knew how to cook steak and chips. Now, they were going to look at the detailed plans, including the layout of the venue, the stately home of Lord and Lady Pannal. Though God alone knew who they were going to get to headline the event now that Robbie Bishop had popped his clogs.
Cross slapped aftershave on his cheeks, never flinching at the sting. He glanced at his watch, hanging up by the mirror. He’d better get a move on. He was meeting Jake at a pub on the far side of Temple Fields. They’d have a swift half, then go to Jake’s flat for lunch. The lad had been apologetic. ‘Sorry about having to meet in the pub. It’s just that my place is a nightmare to find. Everybody gets lost. I’ve learned it’s just easier to meet in the pub first. All the stuff we need is back at the flat, so I’ll do us some lunch and we can work while we eat. I’m a vegetarian, but don’t worry, I do cook meat for my visitors,’ he’d added with a smile.
Cross walked through to his dressing room and pulled a pair of thermal long johns from his underwear drawer. Thermals on the outside, a good lunch on the inside. He’d survive an afternoon at the football no trouble.
Yousef slammed the door of the bedsit and leaned against it, eyelids pressed tight together, the lump in his throat set to choke him. He’d worked so hard to keep his aim true. He’d silently recited his motivation like a mantra, morning noon and night. He’d held fast to his conviction that his heart and mind were as one. That what he was doing was not only for the best, but also the only possible way forward.
It wasn’t as if he’d tried to kid himself that there would be no consequences. He’d allowed himself to think of how it would be for his family. Intellectually, he’d known they would be shocked and distraught, unable to believe him capable of this. But they’d get over it, he’d told himself. They would get past it, write him out of their lives. The community would sustain them. They’d be all right. Not everyone would agree with what he’d done, but they wouldn’t cast out the whole Aziz family as a result.
But this morning, the enormity of it all had hit him like a train. Not that anything special had happened. They’d all done their usual Saturday-morning stuff. His mother to the local Asian mini-market to buy halal meat, vegetables and fruit for the weekend. His father to the mosque for prayers and conversation with his friends. Raj to the madrassa for an hour of Koranic studies. Sanjar in bed, sleeping off the week. And Yousef to the warehouse to make sure everything was running as it should. It had been strange, knowing he was doing it for the last time. Strange, but not emotional. It was hard to be emotional about an old factory and a bunch of workers who could never become his friends.
The killer had been Saturday lunch. Traditionally, they ate together. His mother always prepared some slow- cooked miracle of spicy lamb and vegetables, with a pile of chapattis to soak it up. It was a brief interlude of family time in a life where everyone was busy with their own concerns. The knowledge that he was never going to experience it again had made it almost impossible for Yousef to eat. And that in turn had provoked his mother to wonder what was wrong with him. She’d only let up when Raj had started whingeing because Sanjar had to make an emergency delivery in Wakefield so he wouldn’t be able to drop Raj off to meet his friends for the football.
