Which brought me round to a sudden realisation. MacMillan was too high-powered to be running round investigating unconfirmed reports of gunfire. He was strictly a murder and mayhem kind of bloke. So what was he doing outside my door on a Saturday morning?
“Charlie.” He greeted me now in that familiar clipped tone. “I wouldn’t have expected to see you living here.”
“Superintendent.” I nodded shortly in turn. “It’s temporary. I’m house-sitting for a friend.”
“I see,” MacMillan said. He glanced at Friday, then held out his hand for the dog to sniff. To my great disappointment the Ridgeback didn’t sink his teeth into the proffered flesh up to the gum line. Instead, while the Superintendent rubbed him absently behind his ears, he stood quite happily with a soppy look of animal bliss on his face. I threw him a reproachful glance. Traitor.
“I suppose you noticed us calling on your neighbour,” the policeman went on casually. “I’d like to have a word with you about her son, if you have a moment?”
“Of course,” I said. “You’d better come in.” I unlocked the front door with my mind clicking over furiously. MacMillan was as canny as they came, and he had a sixth sense for lies. If I could avoid having to tell him any, then so much the better. I know nothing, I reminded myself. Let him tell you everything.
I nearly blew it almost as soon as we’d sat down on Pauline’s flowery cotton loose covers. “So, what’s Nasir been up to?” I asked brightly.
“Why should you think he’s been up to anything?” MacMillan asked with a slight frown. “I know the lad had a record of juvenile delinquency, but from what I understand, he’s been out of trouble for the last couple of years.”
“Oh,” I faltered, cursing inwardly. “I just assumed that you weren’t making a social call, and—”
“The boy’s dead,” MacMillan told me bluntly, never taking his eyes off my face while he said it. Unless you play poker professionally, it’s really hard to keep that sort of news from leaving its mark. I could feel my eyebrows lifting as my jaw fell.
“Dead?” I repeated stupidly. “Dead – how?” Let it be an accident, I prayed. Car crash, heart attack, fell in front of a train – anything would do except . . .
“I’m afraid Nasir received a single gunshot wound to the chest some time late yesterday evening,” MacMillan informed me in his best official tone. “It wasn’t instantly fatal, but it would appear that he died as a result of it shortly afterwards, and I now find myself in the middle of a murder inquiry.”
Twelve
For a few moments I sat without speaking. Nasir was dead. I remembered that shot I’d heard while I was tackling Roger. Sean had told me Nasir had managed to clear the gun and so he’d given up the pursuit.
But what if Sean had caught up with Nas? When it came to hand-to-hand Sean was outstanding. Brutally effective. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second before taking down an armed opponent. Particularly an unskilled teenager, running scared, and with a jammed weapon.
What if he’d taken control of the gun and shot Nasir, leaving him dying before calmly returning to the gym to wait for me. He was certainly cold-blooded enough.
But why? It was a damned stupid way to try and protect his brother, if that was his motive. None of it made any sense.
I raised my head and found the Superintendent still watching me closely with the calm deliberation that made his company so uncomfortable. On the mantelpiece Pauline’s dark wood-cased clock ticked loudly into the silence. All of a sudden my mouth was dry, and I had to swallow before I could speak.
“Where did it happen?” I asked, not stopping to think if the question was a logical one for a supposedly innocent party.
MacMillan gave no sign that I’d made a significant slip-up. “He was found in a rubbish skip, near one of the old industrial estates in Heysham,” he said, matter-of-fact, as though he was describing a change in the weather.
“Heysham?” Not on a piece of waste ground behind a gym in Lancaster, then.
The wave of relief that washed over me brought light-headedness in its wake. “Poor Mrs G,” I said, guilt following on like the next breaker onto the beach. My emotions must have been strung across my face like Times Square neon by this time. “Do you have any ideas who was responsible?”
“We’re working on several lines of inquiry,” he said automatically, but for the first time he looked a little awkward.
I caught the hesitation and was intrigued. “Do I hear a ‘but’ in there, Superintendent?”
MacMillan frowned for a moment, then leaned forwards in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and straightening a cufflink while he considered what he was prepared to tell me.
Finally, he looked up. “We’re having a certain amount of trouble with our relationship with this neighbourhood,” he said at last. “It’s vital we clear this crime up quickly, and are seen to be doing so.”
I nodded.
“But, if we start carrying out thorough house-to-house inquiries we are in danger of being accused by community leaders of not looking beyond the Asian population for a culprit.” He sighed and dredged up a tired smile. “It’s a case of damned if we do, and twice damned if we don’t.”
“I can understand that,” I said slowly, keeping noncommittal.
“Now I’m the one who’s hearing a ‘but’,” MacMillan said, his voice wry.
I glanced up, met the policeman’s flat cool eyes with a micron-thin layer of composure. “I don’t really see what this has to do with me.”
The Superintendent paused again, sitting up and crossing his legs, paying particular attention to the crease in the fine material of his trousers. When he spoke it was as if he was picking each word with care. “I need some eyes and ears on the ground, Charlie,” he said. “I need to know everything about Nasir Gadatra’s activities, legal or not. The sort of thing that people might not want to let slip to us.”
He ran a hand over his face, the first time I’d seen him let his frustration show. “When something like this happens these people tend to close eyes, mouths and ranks. Then they accuse us of doing nothing. We can’t win.”
For a while there was silence. Friday padded through from sloshing the contents of his water bowl over half the kitchen floor. He slyly dried his muzzle by wiping it across my knees while pretending to offer sympathetic support.
I scratched his head distractedly as my brain bounced on ahead. If Sean hadn’t killed Nasir, then who had? I kept coming back to wondering why Roger had been so desperate for his friend to shoot me. What was driving the boy?
I tried to forecast the likely consequences of telling MacMillan about the attempted shooting. What would happen if I filled him in about Roger, and moving on logically from that, about Garton-Jones and his thugs? And what about Langford’s involvement with Mr Ali? Where did they fit in to all this?
Sean was going to be livid if I involved his brother with the police again. Mind you, Attila probably wasn’t going to be overjoyed to have his place dragged through the mud, either, and I needed my job. Perhaps it was better to be safe than sorry . . .
I shook my head slowly. “I’m not sure if I can help you, Superintendent,” I said, managing to look him straight in the eye with amazing sincerity. “Nasir had rather old-fashioned attitudes about the role of women that meant we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye,” I added truthfully. “We never really hit it off, and he certainly never confided in me.”
MacMillan gave me a long stare that as good as told me he knew damned well I was holding out on him. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him, though, because I’d done it before.