They found Ahmed in an interview room, lanky limbs in a hoodie and low-slung designer jeans, gold chain at his neck, feet in outsized designer trainers, laces undone. A couple of hundred quid’s worth of gear on a fifteen-year-old kid. Well, there’s a surprise, Paula thought. Dad works in a local restaurant, Mum’s at home with five other kids. She didn’t think Ahmed was getting his spending money from a paper round. She sat back while Sam did the introductions.
‘I want a lawyer, innit.’
Paula shook her head, doing the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ look. ‘See, there you go. Making yourself look like you’re guilty of something before I’ve even asked your name and address.’
‘I haven’t done nothing, I want a lawyer. I know my rights. And I’m a minor, you need to get me an appropriate adult.’ His narrow face was aggressive, all sharp angles and twitchy little muscles round the mouth.
‘Sadiq, my man, you need to chill,’ Sam said. ‘Nobody thinks you did anything bad to Niall. But we know you were at the bus stop with him, and we need you to tell us what went down.’
Ahmed rolled his shoulders inside his hoodie, trying for nonchalant. ‘I don’t got to tell you nothing.’
Paula half-turned to Sam. ‘He’s right. He doesn’t have to tell us anything. How lovely do you think his life is going to be in these parts when we let it be known that he could have helped us catch a stone killer, only he didn’t want to?’
Sam smiled. ‘Exactly as lovely as he deserves.’
‘So there you have it, Sadiq. This is probably the one and only time in your life that you’re going to have the chance to do yourself a favour with us without it coming back to bite you in the arse.’ Paula’s voice was at the opposite end of the kindness scale from her words. ‘We don’t have time to fuck around on this one, because this guy will kill again. And next time, it might be you or one of your cousins.’
Ahmed looked at her, calculation obvious in his face. ‘I do this, I get a free pass off you twats?’
Sam lunged forward and grabbed the front of his hoodie, almost yanking him off the chair. ‘You call me a twat one more time and the only free pass you’ll be getting is to Casualty. Capisce?’
Ahmed’s eyes opened wide and his feet scrabbled on the floor for purchase. Sam shoved him away and he teetered backwards before his chair settled on all four legs. ‘Fu-u-uck,’ he complained.
Paula shook her head slowly. ‘See, Sadiq? You’d have been better off paying attention to me. You need to start talking politely to us or the next thing you know you will need a lawyer because DC Evans here will be charging you with police obstruction. So, what time was it when you and Ibrahim arrived at the bus stop?’
Ahmed fidgeted for a moment, then caught her eye. ‘About half three, twenty to four,’ he said.
‘Where were you going?’
‘Into town. Just to hang about, right? Nothing special.’
A little light larceny. ‘And how long were you there before Niall showed up?’
‘We’d only just got there, like.’ He leaned back in the chair, feigning cockiness again.
‘Did you know Niall?’ Sam asked.
A shrug. ‘I knew who he was. We didn’t hang about, nothing like that.’
‘Did you speak to him at all?’ Paula said.
Another shrug. ‘Might have.’
‘Never mind “might have”. Did you?’
‘Ibrahim goes, “Where you going, brah?” And he goes, like, he’s going into town to hang with his crew. Only, we know he don’t have a crew so it’s bullshit, right? So Ibrahim calls him Billy No-Mates.’
‘The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie,’ Sam said wryly.
‘Do what?’
‘Nothing. So what did he say when you called him Billy No-Mates? ‘
Ahmed ran a finger round the inside curve of his ear then inspected it. ‘Fuck all he could say, was there? Cuz that’s when the car turned up, right?’
‘Tell me about the car,’ Paula said.
‘It was silver.’
Paula waited but nothing more was forthcoming. ‘And? You must have noticed more than that.’
‘Why the fuck would I? It was, like, a pile of crap. It was this silver hatchback thing. Medium sort of size. Total fucking nothing car. Something, like, of no interest.’
Of course it was. ‘So what happened then?’
‘The window comes down and the driver says something like, “You’re Niall, right?”’
‘He definitely used Niall’s name?’ If Ahmed was right, it proved this was a premeditated set-up.
He gave her the, ‘Well, duh,’ eye-roll. ‘I said so, innit?’ he drawled. ‘He definitely said the name Niall.’
‘What happened then?’ Sam was back in the act. Paula wished he’d shut up, almost wished she was with a Southern Division detective she could have intimidated into silence.
‘Niall stuck his head in the window, so I didn’t catch what was going on between them. Niall said something like, how did the geezer know he was going to be there. But I couldn’t make out what the driver was saying.’
Why was it always like this? Paula wondered. One step forward, one step sideways then one back. ‘What did he
