Lurking.
An assignation with a lover?
His thoughts were a maelstrom.
Noakes’s voice broke into these speculations.
‘Any idea if it was a man or a woman . . . ?’
Animal, vegetable or frigging mineral more like, if what that drama teacher had said about Shawcross was accurate. Friends with benefits! And her a teacher!
‘I couldn’t say, Sergeant . . . Though I believe the heroine of her novel was sexually fluid.’
That bloody figures.
At that moment, a young girl whom Markham recognized from reception came towards them. As soon as the DI set eyes on her, he knew something was badly wrong. His whole body tensed.
‘Inspector Markham, there’s been a call for you.’ Instinctively, he reached for his mobile before remembering that they’d handed their phones in at the front desk.
‘I took the message,’ she said, her smile faltering as she picked up on the detectives’ tension. Nervously, she handed the DI a note.
Markham’s face betrayed nothing.
‘Duty calls,’ he said with assumed insouciance. ‘Ms Shaw, many thanks for seeing us. You’ve been a great help.’
‘I only wish I could have done more, Inspector.’ Ronnie Shaw shook hands all round and headed back to her ward.
Markham said nothing until they found themselves back in the hospital forecourt.
‘What is it, guv?’
The DI’s face seemed to have turned to marble.
‘The night patrol’s found a body at the community centre.’
Noakes looked back at the hospital, almost fancying that he saw deranged faces pressed up against those permanently sealed windows, sneering and jeering at them.
He found his voice. ‘Who is it, guv?’
‘Tariq Azhar.’
13. Baiting the Trap
‘Who discovered the body?’
‘Well, it was Mr Burt actually, Inspector.’ PC Dave Elson’s tone was wooden, but the sideways look he shot at Noakes expressed a conviction that they had their man. ‘Remarkable how he always manages to be on the spot.’
As soon as Markham heard the news about Tariq Azhar, he knew where they would find him.
In that strange hollowed out water feature at the bottom of the community centre garden.
‘What brought you out here, Mr Burt?’ he said gently to the glassy-eyed caretaker.
‘Dunno . . . just felt like a walk and ended up by the fountain.’ Squirming under the grim intensity of Noakes’s gaze, he added, ‘I’ve always liked it . . .’
Channelling his inner Barbara Hepworth. Even Burton found it unconvincing.
But the DI nodded encouragingly, his eyes steady and kind.
The caretaker seemed to take heart.
‘Sometimes I stand inside and it’s like I’m invisible . . . peaceful . . .’
Noakes could see the attraction of hiding from his juggernaut sister and nitpicking Peter Elford.
‘What happened this evening, Mr Burt?’
‘I walked round the fountain . . . just running my hands over the stone . . . I looked inside . . . and that’s when I saw him.’ The man’s thin locks were plastered to his skull with sweat.
‘Mr Azhar?’
‘Yeah . . . He was stood there, sort of nodding with his eyes shut. For a moment I thought he might’ve gone in there to meditate . . . part of his religion or something . . .’
Noakes turned his snort of derision into a cough.
‘Then what?’
‘That’s when I saw the blood on his shirt and trousers . . .’
‘Did you touch him?’
‘No . . . I called his name but knew it was no use . . . he was dead.’
‘You didn’t see anyone else on the premises? Didn’t notice anything unusual or out of the ordinary?’
‘It was only me there . . . me and . . . Tariq . . .’
The caretaker was trembling violently now. Delayed shock, thought Markham.
He turned to Dave Elson’s brawny fellow officer. ‘Constable McCann, would you please take Mr Burt home and see that he gets a hot drink.’
The heavily built six-footer took the caretaker’s arm and marched him, none too gently, away to his flat.
The little party contemplated the water feature in silence. It felt curiously isolated, for all that the SOCOs were busy shrouding the site with tarpaulin and arc lights.
Azhar’s body had been manoeuvred out of the narrow cavity by Dimples Davidson and his team with a dexterity which somehow belied the horror of what had been done to the young Asian. For his throat had been cut in a single savage slashing stroke that had almost decapitated him. ‘The vic was a slight man,’ the pathologist said in answer to the question which hung in the air. ‘A single assailant could have done it and then wedged him into this . . .’ he regarded the fountain with distaste, ‘thing.’
‘D’you think it had any significance, doc — him being deposited in an upright position like that?’ Burton knew the memory of Azhar’s emergence from the garden niche would haunt her for a long time to come. ‘Could it have been a ritual . . . ?’
‘More likely to have been convenient . . . easier than sticking him in one of those wheelie bins round the side,’ came the grim response.
‘Didn’t the Incas an’ prehistoric folk bury their dead standing upright . . . out of respect, if they’d been warriors, like? I saw it on Tomorrow’s World,’ Noakes mumbled defensively.
Burton felt inclined to laugh, but there was something oddly comforting in the thought that Tariq Azhar hadn’t been brought low . . . left supine or humbled in the dust.
Davidson was troubled by no such reflections.
‘I doubt the sicko who
