‘So, if the niqab woman was actually a man, all my probing at the university and upsetting the people in HR was pointless, wasn’t it?’ Paula Powell said, getting up from her chair in David Scott’s office. ‘This “woman” doesn’t work at the university and she isn’t anyone’s grandmother. So where do we go from here?’
‘We’ve got two lines, haven’t we?’ Scott said. ‘If this witness, Jamilleh Hamidi, is right about it being a man – and we’ve only got her word for it – then there is the possibility that he’s the killer. I doubted whether the dog incident was related to our case at all, and it’s still a long shot, but now it seems more likely. So we need to pursue that angle. Your work at the university isn’t necessarily wasted. The guy had to get the niqab from somewhere. We still need to look for households where the niqab is worn and there’s no Islamic community in Marlbury other than that associated with the university, is there?’
‘HR say they have no-one on the staff who wears a niqab and Student Records said they couldn’t give me names of Muslim students.’
‘Couldn’t or wouldn’t?’
‘Said they didn’t categorise students by religion.’
‘Which is fair enough, I suppose. I think I’ll approach the chaplaincy.’
‘The chaplaincy? How’s that going to help?’
‘It isn’t just dog collars. They’ve got a multifaith centre there. Someone must look after the Muslim students. Anyone with access to a niqab must be pretty devout, surely?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Traditional, anyway. It’s a start. Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘OK. So, I’m taking you off Islamic duties for the moment and sending you to tread on some other sensitive toes.’
‘You’re too kind. Whose?’
‘The Samaritans. You know what Malcolm Burns told me. Go and find out who else talked to Karen Brody. I’ve asked Steve to get dates and times of her other calls to the Samaritans from her phone record. Find out, if you can, what was said. Check them all in their log – the call to Malcolm included. Find out if they make notes about the calls they get. If so, ask for them.’
‘And if they refuse?’
‘Use sweet reason. Point out that Karen is dead, so any secrets that may be revealed can do her no harm. Try to keep Malcolm’s name out of it if you can. I don’t want to get him sacked if we can help it. They’ll pass your request on up to the director, I’m sure. If she’s difficult, threaten her with a search warrant and a possible subpoena. I have every respect for the work the Samaritans do but this is a case where being obstructive is just pointless.’
*
On the university’s crowded campus, he was directed, at the third time of asking, to the multifaith centre and found it to be a small and characterless room tucked away behind a room with blackened windows from which the beat, thump and shuffle of a vigorous dance routine could be heard. Distracting for the faithful, he thought, imagining those sweaty, half-naked bodies just next door. The room, he realised, was characterless precisely because of the multiplicity of faiths it was designed to accommodate. No artwork, no emblems, no fixtures, no books, even, could be guaranteed offence-free, so there was nothing. This wasn’t a room designed for the meeting of faiths but for keeping them apart. Scott found this vaguely depressing.
More depressing for him was the notice on the wall which gave the times of different services but said that the chaplains were to be found in the chaplaincy office, room 135b in the registry. Cursing, he got back into his car, threaded his way across campus, picked up signs to the registry, parked in a space labelled Reserved for the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and went inside to enquire for room 135b. As he made his way up to the first floor, Scott reflected that there was no shortage of character here. The architect had let his imagination roam free, designing a fancifully round building of mildly oriental appearance, a building that nonchalantly denied the dullness of the bureaucratic workings within.
Room 135b had obviously been carved out of room 135, a slice taken just big enough to accommodate two desks. A youngish man sat at each of them, both wearing jackets and ties, both looking up with professionally welcoming smiles. Scott addressed the older and swarthier of the two. ‘I’m looking for the Muslim chaplain,’ he said.
‘And you’ve found him.’ The man stood up and offered his hand. ‘Rashid Malik,’ he said.
‘David Scott.’ He fished in his pocket with his free hand. ‘Marlbury CID.’
If Rashid Malik was taken aback he didn’t show it. ‘Have a seat,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’ His accent was educated and slightly patrician, his manner relaxed. A man who could be comfortable almost anywhere. Scott revised his approach; he would need to be more open with this man than he had intended to be.
‘It’s a delicate matter, I’m afraid,’ he said, glancing at Malik’s colleague. ‘Maybe we should—’
‘Don’t worry about me. I can make myself scarce.’ The younger man stood up. ‘Things to do, you know,’ he said, gathering up papers.
‘Thank you, Michael,’ Malik said as he left.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced him,’ Scott said.
‘Don’t worry. It’s a regular routine. We often have students in here wanting to discuss personal matters, as you can imagine. The shared office isn’t ideal.’
‘How many chaplains are there?’
‘Six.’ He looked round the little room. ‘We box and cox.’
‘My issue,’ Scott said, ‘is this. We have had a report of someone in full Islamic dress – the niqab specifically – on the premises of the university day nursery, unaccompanied by any family members and not apparently connected to any of the children.’ Malik was about to speak but Scott continued, ‘In itself this is not a police matter, of course, but one witness at least believes that the person was a man.’
Scott saw the muscles tense in Malik’s face but his voice was quiet and his tone even as he said, ‘These stories go around, you know. One actual incident begets a hundred rumours.’
‘I know. But the witness concerned is a Muslim woman, if that makes any difference.’
Malik nodded. ‘Does she think she knows the man?’
‘No.’
‘How do you think I can help?’
‘We have to take this seriously because of children being involved. I’m sure you understand that.’
‘Yes.’
‘The other thing is …’ Scott hesitated. He had not intended to talk about the murders but this man’s calm gaze changed his mind. ‘You will know about the murders – the mother and child – last week. The person in the niqab was attacked by their dog in the garden of the day nursery shortly before they were killed. The dog was killed too.’
This time Malik did look shaken. He pressed his hands to his face for a moment and closed his eyes. ‘The newspapers have said nothing of this,’ he said.
‘It’s information we’re not releasing.’
‘No. Well, I’m glad of that, of course.’ He looked into Scott’s face. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘We need to identify men who have access to a niqab. Is there any way that you could identify such people?’
‘There are people I can talk to. I shall need to go carefully.’
‘But not too slowly.’
‘No. Have you thought that a man might have purchased the niqab?’
‘Could a man do that? It wouldn’t seem odd?’
‘Not at all.’ He allowed himself a smile. ‘It’s not a fashion item, you know.’
‘No.’
‘In a family where the women wear full niqab it is quite common for the men to do all the shopping.’
‘But you can’t buy a niqab in Marlbury, can you?’
‘No. London would be the nearest place. Or they can be bought online. I can give you the names of some online sites.’
‘Thank you.’ This world, Scott thought, was odder than he could have imagined.
*
In Butchery Lane, trapped in the maze of crooked, narrow streets behind the abbey, Paula, with Sarah Shepherd beside her, drove slowly, scanning the crowded terrace of house fronts for the discreet sign that read The Samaritans. There was nowhere to park and she wondered how the volunteers managed. She parked round the corner on double yellow lines, then they walked back and rang the doorbell. An elderly woman opened the door, looked flustered when Paula waved her ID, said she would have to talk to the director and closed the door on them. After some time she returned, allowed them into the tiny hallway and directed them up the narrow stairs.
‘Right up the top here,’ a voice sang out as they reached the first landing, and they climbed an even narrower flight to a sloping-roofed eyrie with a single window and a startlingly close view of the abbey tower. The woman who stood up to greet them confounded Paula’s expectations. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. The woman was tall, blonde and manicured, slightly blowsy but expensively dressed, vaguely theatrical. Her voice had a smoker’s rasp to it and a half-smoked cigarette burned in an ashtray on the desk. She stubbed it out before moving out from behind the desk.
‘Filthy habit,’ she said. ‘Estelle Campion. I’m the director.’
‘DS Paula Powell and DC Sarah Shepherd,’ Paula offered, shaking hands.
‘Lovely.’ She beamed at them. ‘Would you like coffee? I’m sure one of the volunteers downstairs would bring us some.’
‘Well, I don’t want to interrupt—’
‘Oh, it’s an easy gig, the morning slot. We’re rarely busy at this time.’
She moved to the phone on her desk. ‘Milk, sugar?’
‘Both milk, no sugar, thanks.’
‘Fred, my darling,’ she purred into the phone, ‘if you’re not busy, could you bring us three coffees, two with milk, mine the usual? Brilliant!’
Paula and Sarah seated themselves on a small sofa under the window, while Estelle Campion pulled a handsome leather swivel chair from behind her desk and sat down facing them.
‘Orthopaedic,’ she said, by way of explanation of the chair. ‘Bad back.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Paula said, ‘that I really don’t know much about the Samaritans. I know what you do, of course, but … is this a full-time job, being director?’
Estelle Campion gave a hoot of laughter. ‘If only!’ she said. ‘I’m just a volunteer like everyone else. I do this for three years and then return to the corps de ballet.
‘So how much time do you spend here?’ Sarah ventured.
‘Oh, I’m here most days. It’s how I choose to do the job. Some directors have full-time jobs, of course, and can’t give the time, but I’m fortunate in having a husband who can keep me in the manner I enjoy being accustomed to, so I can give this my full-time attention. I want to make a difference. It’s mainly fundraising, if I’m honest. We have to raise money all the time just to keep going. This is my latest project.’ She gestured at the room. ‘It was a storeroom full of junk up till six months ago, and now voilà! Of course, it helps that my husband is in business locally. I have connections.’
Feeling that she was getting more information than she needed but unwilling to start on the substantive business until the coffee arrived, Paula said, ‘Lovely view.’
‘Yes,’ Estelle Campion said, frowning slightly. ‘The bloody bells can get you down, though.’
The clinking of china signalled the arrival of coffee and a small, neat, silver-haired man arrived with a tray.
‘My favourite man,’ Estelle murmured, patting his arm as she took her coffee. Black, Paula noticed, and with quite a bit of sugar in it to judge from the way she stirred it. A woman who liked to be wired, then.
‘So,’ Estelle asked as Fred disappeared, her eyes suddenly sharp, ‘what is it I can do for you?’
‘You’ll have read about the murders of Karen and Lara Brody,’ Paula said, putting her coffee down to cool. ‘We are aware that Karen made several calls to the Samaritans in the week before she died, the last of them very shortly before she was killed.’
‘And who gave you that information?’ The geniality had quite disappeared from her voice.
‘We have Karen’s phone records,’ Paula said. ‘The calls are there.’
Estelle Campion sipped her coffee. ‘So, you know about them. What more do you expect me to tell you?’
‘I would like to know what she said. We believe it’s information that will help us to find her killer.’
‘Ha! You really don’t know much about us, do you, if you think that I’m going to tell you what a caller said to us in confidence?’
‘I know that you can be subpoenaed to give that information in evidence in court. And you know that too.’
‘And I know that there is no court case in the offing.’
Paula sighed. ‘Karen Brody is dead,’ she said. ‘I think your duty of confidentiality ends with death, doesn’t it? Don’t you have a duty now to help us find her killer?’
‘Our duty of confidentiality doesn’t end with death. Sadly, we lose some of our callers – some do kill themselves – but what they said to us remains confidential.’
‘So you won’t help us to find a murderer?’
‘No.’
Sarah stood up and moved towards the door. ‘You keep notes on your callers, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Who told you that?’
‘When I was at school. We had a talk. Two people from the Samaritans came and talked to us. Someone asked if they kept notes and they said yes.’
Estelle looked her in the eye. ‘We have no notes on Karen,’ she said. ‘I destroyed them when we heard that she’d died.’
‘How could you be sure that it was the same woman who had talked to you?’ Paula asked. ‘Was there anything she said that made you think she was in danger?’
‘The names. She told us her name was Karen and her daughter was Lara.’
‘Just that?’
‘Just that.’
They stared at each other.
‘I’m just going to pop downstairs now, Mrs Campion,’ Sarah said suddenly. ‘I’m going to take a look at your records. You can give us access or you can wait for us to come back with a search warrant. If we do that, you’ll have a couple of marked police cars sitting outside for several hours and I’m not sure what that will do for your public image.’
Go Sarah! Paula thought as she heard her start down the stairs. It was a card she hadn’t intended to play just yet but it was obviously going to work. Estelle Campion picked up her phone. ‘There’s a policewoman coming down to look through the log, Fred,’ she said. ‘You know the procedure, don’t you?’
Paula heard the emphasis on log and procedure. Fred was being given instructions to hide everything except the log. On the other hand, she was prepared to believe that notes on Karen had been destroyed. What would be the point of keeping notes on a dead woman? She stood up.
‘Did you ever talk to Karen yourself?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘But you knew about her? You discussed her with other volunteers?’
Estelle gave a slight nod.
‘Did you think she was in danger?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘She wasn’t suicidal.’
‘And not in danger from anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘So why was she calling?’
Estelle gave a sigh. ‘You’ve only got to read the papers to know why. Husband serving a long prison sentence, young child, no money, lonely. Who wouldn’t be depressed?’
‘But she had been in that situation for months, and she was finding her way out of it, getting a qualification. Why did she suddenly start calling?’
‘She had something she was trying to sort out. A problem. She was cagey about it. Said it was about divided loyalties – something like that.’
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it.’
She stood up and took a raincoat off a hook on the back of the door. ‘And now I’ll just see you off the premises before I go. I’m due out at Hartfield Hall. They’re very kindly putting on a fundraiser for us – a strawberries and champagne tea.’
Paula found Sarah in a small, messy room with four telephones. She was completing her check of the log. ‘The dates and times tally,’ she said, ‘and this Y/N column here is for suicidal or not. She’s always an N.’ Under her breath, she murmured, ‘No sign of any other records. They’ve spirited them away somewhere.’
Paula turned to Estelle Campion, who was standing in the doorway with her raincoat on. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘If you think of anything else, I’m sure you’ll let me know.’
Outside, at the car, she said to Sarah, ‘You did well in there. Quite changed the weather.’
Sarah flushed scarlet. ‘Was that all right? I was worried I was out of order.’
‘Just don’t try it too often,’ Paula said. ‘OK?’
Her phone rang.
‘David?’
‘Paula. Are you finished at the Samaritans?’
‘Yes, Not much joy. She—’
‘Can you get up to the hospital right away?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Jamilleh Hamidi has just been taken in. We don’t have much detail yet. She was found semi-conscious on the university campus. Someone appears to have tried to strangle her.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘They don’t know yet. She tried to say something, apparently, according to our guys who responded to the 999 call.’
‘This has to be to do with her talking to me yesterday, doesn’t it, David?’
‘It’s … possible.’
‘And it links her assailant – Karen and Lara’s killer – to the university.’
‘I think that’s moving too fast. There are a lot of unknowns.’
She was in the car now, with Sarah driving. ‘David, it doesn’t have to be the killer who attacked her, does it? What she told me made it more likely that Karen and Lara were killed by a Muslim man. If Jamilleh told anyone – her husband, for instance – what she told me, do you think she could have been punished for directing us towards the Muslim community?’
‘Paula, we don’t know and we can’t know yet. We need to hear from her, which is why I need you and Sarah at the hospital.’
‘Have you got a guard on her there, or are we it?’
‘Mike Arthur’s there. He was on the 999 call and I’ve told him to stay.’
‘OK.’ Just about to ring off, she had a sudden thought. ‘What about Jamilleh’s friend – Farah? She was there that afternoon and there yesterday when Jamilleh talked to me. If it was the killer who attacked Jamilleh, Farah could be in danger too.’
There was silence on the other end. Then he said, ‘For that matter, Gina would be in danger too.’
‘So? What do we do?’
‘We can’t offer protection – we haven’t the resources. But they should be made aware.’
‘Do you want me to do that?’
There was a silence.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’