Comply or Die Read online

  Run but run where? Other than going to India every three years I’d never left Seaton St George. I’d never been camping or in a caravan like the girls from school, never set foot in a hotel. I’d never even been in English restaurants. I had been to a few weddings: Sikh weddings, of course, with hundreds of people, but even then there was always the invisible code. Izzat. It dominates our lives.

  Running away to a strange town with no money, no family or friends?

  The fingers of my left hand had curled hard around the bright yellow pole below the red ‘stop’ button and squeezed until they went white.

  Maybe I would be better off getting married.

  I leaned forward and stared at the floor again.

  Why couldn’t I have the life other girls in this country have? I wouldn’t go around getting drunk, being sick, that sort of thing. I’d be good, I told myself, like most of the English girls.

  I am an English girl.

  I just happen to be of Asian descent so I would never get the same freedom. I desperately wanted everything this country has to offer, but it would never happen.

  I didn’t want to run away from my family, but what choice did I have? I didn’t want to marry Quasimodo. And my uncle had just seen me kissing a boy in the street.

  This was going to be the longest bus ride of my life.

  Chapter Two

  Saturday 12th April 2014

  ‘We just want you to come home. Whatever it is, we still love you. Please, we are begging you, come home.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Sam Parker and Detective Sergeant Ed Whelan were watching the TV in the corner of the Major Incident Room, a huge deep black TV, a throwback to an earlier time. Nobody could remember who brought it into the office.

  The father, dressed in a black shirt and black turban, spoke to the camera. ‘We are worried about you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Please get in touch, please come home.’

  He wiped his tears with a blue handkerchief.

  ‘How long she’s been missing now?’ Sam said, her eyes shifting from the TV, glancing at the detectives watching the screen, tin-foil containers on their desks, the remains of chicken fried rice, beef satay, beef curry, floating in a sea of reddish oil, the lingering aromatic smell a clue to what they’d eaten.

  ‘Four months,’ Ed said. ‘Look at him. All tears, head down. And her, the wife, been in the UK what, 20 years, still doesn’t speak English. Look at her dress, totally traditional. And they’d have you believe that all’s well, the daughter’s got nothing to be afraid of, that they’ve integrated, that she can have her own life. Bollocks.’

  The top of Mrs Bhandal’s head filled the screen, thick black hair with streaks of grey. Not once had she looked up since she sat on one of the three chairs behind the long table.

  The family solicitor, Jill Carver, had organised the press conference in a small hotel on the sea front of Seaton St George. Starting the conference at 11am made sure it was featured on the lunchtime news, but more importantly, it gave Carver an element of control; the bar had to be vacated by 11.30am in preparation for the Saturday lunches.

  ‘As usual Carver thinks she’s pulling all the strings,’ Sam said. ‘Organising it for a Saturday, typical slow news day. Maximum coverage for her clients.’

  They watched the husband again, listened to him as he read from a piece of paper, his index finger following the words like a small child learning to read.

  ‘Some of the reports by the media, fuelled by the inept police investigation into our daughter’s disappearance, have been hurtful. We would never harm our children and to say such things is terrible. I was born in this country. My wife came here when we married. We love our children dearly. We just want our daughter to come home, to enjoy all the things the UK has to offer.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ Ed said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Sam.

  ‘I’ll tell you after this has finished.’

  ‘Please, please, just come home.’ The father buried his hands in his head. Cameras flashed.

  Jill Carver spoke. ‘This is a very emotional time for Mr and Mrs Bhandal, a very stressful time. You heard their appeal today.’

  Flashlights bounced off her dark hair.

  ‘All they want is for their daughter to return home. She has been missing for four months now. They cling to the hope that she is alive and well.’

  She paused, looked around the room, picked up her Montblanc pen and pointed it at the assembled media. Aggressive authority replaced the tones of empathy.

  ‘They have answered all questions asked by Eastern Police, but they feel that the police investigation is focussing on the family and not investigating Aisha’s…’

  ‘Finally somebody mentions her name,’ Ed pushed his chair away from the desk.

  ‘... disappearance,’ Carver continued. ‘My clients are peaceful, loving people who abhor the suggestion that has been played out in the media, fuelled, to use my client’s phrase, by the inept police investigation, that this is an honour crime. This is a case of a young 18-year-old who has gone missing…’

  ‘And was missing for three days before they reported it,’ Ed shouted, jumping out of the chair.

  ‘And my clients are as desperate as any other parents would be to have their daughter safely returned to the love and support of her family,’ Carver finished.

  The father spoke again.

  ‘Please, please, Aisha, just come home.’

  Jill Carver stood up.

  ‘Thank you everybody. As you can see my clients are very distressed, and answering any questions that you may have would just add to that. Thank you once again for coming.’

  Despite the barrage of questions that followed, she ushered the couple out of a side door.

  ‘Well Carver wrote that speech for him,’ Sam stood up.

  ‘Absolutely every word,’ Ed added, following her to her office.

  ‘Go on then,’ Sam said, sitting at her desk. ‘Enlighten me.’

  Ed pulled out a chair.

  ‘He talks about Aisha being able to do what she wants. You saw them. They’re traditional Sikhs. No way will she be able to do what she wants. Let’s see if there’s an arranged marriage in the background. He’s obviously had one.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘C’mon. He’s born here. She’s been here 20 years. They’re in their 40s. Aisha’s 18. Wife comes over from rural Punjab. Probably arranged when they were kids, maybe even when they were babies. Families like that stick to the traditional way. Arranged marriages. Bring someone over from India, guaranteed entry to the UK, the better life.’

  ‘What’s it like over there, over in India?’

  ‘Where they come from? Rural Punjab. Best way to describe it is how I imagine England to have been in the days of Robin Hood, only less rain and more heat: oxen pulling ploughs, life very slow, water drawn from wells. It’s different to the cities, different to Delhi, Mumbai, different to Goa. The wife’s family, from what I remember, lived in a small village about an hour from Jalandhar. Next to the village where his family come from.’

  ‘It’s a place Tristram and I always fancied,’ Sam said. ‘Before…you know?’

  ‘I know.’ Ed paused, waiting for Sam’s glassy eyes to lose the film of water. ‘There’s no doubt it’s a fascinating place.’

  He slowly shook his head from side to side as he recalled his visits to India. ‘Delhi’s packed. Every time you turn a corner it’s like St James’ Park emptying, people flashing their white teeth, brown eyes staring at you, curious about you. Then there are the smells... spices, curry… and the bright clothing, a Picasso on a canvas of thick, grey exhaust fumes.’

  ‘Very poetic,’ Sam smiled.

  ‘But here’s the thing Sam, Jalandhar is 11 hours by road from Delhi. Eleven hours on the same road, the GT road, a road running the length of the country built by the British during the days of the Raj. There are even bloody songs about it.’

  ‘Like Chris
Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Ed said. ‘No way does the M1 compare to that road. Any girl born in this country, sat in the back of a car, looking out of the window, driving up there with family for an arranged marriage, must be absolutely terrified.’

  Ed looked away, picturing the scene: the three lane Grand Trunk road, cars overtaking, undertaking, braking for carts pulled by cows, scooters carrying father, wife, and as many kids as they had. The heat. The dust. The never-ending road bordered by fields and occasional petrol stations and food outlets, the sense of enormity. A British-born girl taken there for a forced marriage had no chance. Where would they go? He was a well-travelled middle-aged detective, not some girl shy of her 19th birthday, who’d never been out of her home town, other than to visit relatives in either England or India. These girls would be overwhelmed, helpless.

  Sam leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs.

  ‘Is that your opinion? Forced marriage?’

  ‘Been at the back of mind since the day she went missing,’ Ed told her. ‘She’s the eldest of two daughters. Mum and dad must have had arranged marriage. If people are happy with that arrangement, fine. Let’s be right, it’s no more of a lottery than meeting someone at work or in a pub.

  ‘But when the girl doesn’t want to go through with it, when she is forced, that’s a different issue. There’ll be so many pointers in the family. I wouldn’t mind having a look at the file to be honest.’

  Sam thrust herself upright, coming to ‘attention’ in the chair.

  ‘Well that’s good. We’ve been asked by Monica Teal, our new ACC, to have a look at it and I’m reckoning you can provide some investigative pointers. You’ve been on national working parties, plus there’s your personal insight. Giving the investigation another coat of looking at is not going to hurt. And be honest, you love getting one over Jill Carver as much as I do.’

  ‘Why do I think I’ve just walked into a big trap?’ Ed said.

  ‘And there’s an 18-year-old who could do with your help right now. Nobody has a clue where she is.’

  Ed shook his head. ‘Unless she’s got clean away, and I hope she has, she’s dead’

  ‘God I hope not. Look, I’ll give you Bev Summers and Paul Adams. That should be enough to be going on with. We can look at staffing once we know where we are splodging. Just get a feel for what’s been done up to now.’

  ‘Honour crimes are a nightmare to investigate,’ Ed said. ‘Everybody’ll just clam up. And if she’s dead, here or in India…’

  His words hung in the air, that time-standing-still moment between pulling the ripcord and the chute unfurling.

  Sam rubbed her face and stood up.

  ‘As JFK once said, we don’t do these things because they’re easy, and let’s be right, if the job was easy, we wouldn’t be getting it.’

  ‘True enough,” Ed nodded.

  The meeting of the Mortimers was under way in the Jolly Roger. Steve Donnelly, the licensee, watched the group of five in matching blue T-shirts with their pathetic logos, sink another round of shots. Did this lot ever do any studying? Did they ever make it to a lecture? Forty grand’s worth of debt just to learn how to be a piss-head. Christ, he had regulars who been on the dole for years who were piss-heads, but they’d never felt the need to undertake a three-year degree course to learn how to do it.

  Mortimers might be good for trade, but shots at 2pm, the Newcastle game televised at 3pm thanks to some foreign channel and young girls piling in later was a Molotov cocktail on a smoking fuse; more Bloody Brawl than Bloody Mary. At least he’d had the foresight to put a couple of bouncers on. Pay weekend and ‘The Toon’ playing away guaranteed a till drawer like Tigger on crack cocaine.

  This lot of juveniles would keep themselves in order while the match was on – too many hard lads who would sort them out if they stepped out of line – but later, once the football lot had gone, and the night crowd came out, it would be different. These gobshites had no manners around young women. If they spoke to his daughter like they spoke to some of the girls in here, he would happily lose his licence and his liberty.

  The final whistle and the football crowd shuffled out, shoulders slouched in resignation at another away defeat.

  The pub moved to the transitional stage between daytime and evening drinkers. Except for the group of five Mortimers in the corner. Their table was littered with pint glasses, shot glasses, empty crisp and salted nut packets, and they were getting louder. Steve Donnelly considered refusing to sell them any more drink, but they were filling his till with their student loans. Besides, when did the police ever do licensing checks these days? Not since the old days.

  He remembered the dedicated police-licensing department checking up all the time in the 1980s. When that department closed down, a uniform Sergeant and the local PC carried out spot checks. Now? Nothing. Financial cuts. Government austerity. Whatever the cause, there were no visits these days. So he just kept taking their money and would sort any drink-fuelled trouble later.

  The first group of girls came in about 7pm, five students dressed for a Saturday night out in their short shirts, skimpy tops and high heels, young girls out with their friends and not bothering anyone.

  He watched three of the Mortimers swagger unsteadily over to the group. The lads said something. He couldn’t hear what. The DJ was into his third track of the night, Pharrell Williams belting out Happy. He watched the tall redhead mouth ‘Fuck Off’.

  The boys walked away, exchanging the usual juvenile comments he’d heard all his life... ‘dirty lesbos’, ‘dog rough anyway'. Fashions might change but whether it was the platforms and flares of the 70s or the jeans and T-shirts of today, the abuse was the same.

  By 9pm the pub was bouncing, bass booming and bodies bumping. Strobe lighting completed the transformation, the pub morphing into a nightclub. The Mortimers had left their seats and were now staggering around, incoherently speaking to girls who weren’t interested in listening. When a couple of the group, mouths open, tongues out, tried to pull two young women towards them, Steve decided enough was enough. He signalled to the doormen.

  The bouncers approached and asked them to leave. One of the group, the biggest who obviously fancied himself with the ladies and in a fight, held his ground.

  ‘Fucking make us.’

  The odds were not good for the student. Billy, in his 50s with a black leather jacket, broad shoulders and huge arms, had worked the doors in most of the rough establishments in town. He remembered the old days before the advent of the Door Supervisors course and the three-year licence. He would have loved to smack the arrogant little prick on the spot. But there were too many cameras and the risk to his badge, and his employment, was too great.

  ‘Come on then. Fucking make us,’ the student repeated, his forearms flexing, fists clenching.

  Customers moved away, an unspoken no-go circle of space between punters and antagonists appearing.

  Donnelly shouted ‘reinforcements on their way’ as he put down the phone.

  The younger bouncer moved in... 6ft 8in, slim, and 19 years old. He leaned in towards the group’s apparent leader.

  ‘We don’t want to make you, we’ve asked you nicely. One way or the other you are leaving, whether that’s you walking out, us throwing you out, or somebody bringing a stretcher to carry you out. I don’t care. But you’re leaving. I haven’t had a drink, you have. I’ve had a good Thai kick-boxing sparring session this afternoon. Warmed me up nicely.’

  ‘Just leave it Jack,’ one of the others in the group said.

  ‘Yeah, let’s just go,’ another added.

  ‘Listen to your mates,’ the tall, young bouncer said.

  ‘Fuck them.’

  Three started to walk away; one remained with the aggressor in a show of solidarity.

  Again the tall bouncer spoke.

  ‘Just us now. Your mates are heading out.’

  The aggressor turned away, picked up a half-drunk pint fro
m one of the empty tables and threw the beer over the young bouncer.

  Billy stepped in.

  ‘You pompous little shit. You’ll pay for that.’

  He grabbed the beer thrower’s arm.

  ‘You’ll not pay now. Too many cameras, arsehole, unless you swing for me, then the cameras will show self-defence. But you will pay.’

  The young bouncer flicked beer from his face and smiled.

  The last two blue shirts with the daft logos were escorted off the premises.

  Outside as the group staggered away, the aggressor had to have the last word. ‘I’ll get you two later.’

  Billy nodded and stretched his arms in a come-on-then stance.

  ‘Yeah right, little boy. I’m bricking it.’

  The young doorman just kept smiling.

  Chapter Three

  ‘There’s no money for overtime, you know that,’ Sam told him, walking to her car.

  ‘Yeah I know, but we may as well make a start tomorrow,’ Ed said. ‘I’ve had a word with Paul and Bev. We’ll just take another day off later.’

  ‘How many lieu days have you got now?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Forty-odd, just like everybody else. What do you do? Just because there’s no money doesn’t mean the job stops. We’ve got an 18-year-old missing here. I’ll feel better myself knowing I tried. I just wish they’d involved us earlier… It’ll only take a couple of hours tomorrow, then we’ll hit the ground running on Monday.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Sam said, opening the door of her Audi. ‘Anything you need, give me a shout. I’ll look forward to a briefing on Monday.’

  ‘Much planned for tomorrow?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Nothing. Lazy day. Can’t even go out for lunch with Bev now that you’ve talked her into coming in.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Ed said.

  ‘Don’t worry. Give me a day to catch up. I’m doing a short literature course at the uni. Discovering some of the literary greats... Hemingway, Dickens, George Orwell and... ’