Love Like Blood Read online

  ‘Makes sense,’ Thorne said. ‘Stuff in common.’ The truth was, he knew as much about the two religions as he did about boilers, but he could see that the site made great play of the sort of ‘stuff’ he had been thinking about. It was open to all Hindus and Sikhs of any age and background, even welcoming non-Indians simply interested in the culture, and promoted care for all members, mutual respect and the honouring of the Indian motherland.

  As Tanner scrolled down, Thorne was taken aback to see a swastika prominently featured. He simply pointed at it. Said, ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s an important symbol in a lot of Indian religions,’ Tanner said. ‘The Nazis borrowed it.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Thorne was pointing to a man pictured at the bottom of the page, above an elaborately drawn Namaste. He wore an open-necked black shirt and a broad smile. His palms were pressed together in greeting and there was a red mark or tika in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Arman Bannerjee,’ Tanner said. ‘Local businessman.’

  Thorne saw her face darken. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve had a few run-ins.’

  ‘I take it you went to some of these meetings?’

  ‘A couple, yes. This group and a few others. Not quite so open to non-Indians as they claim to be. Or maybe it’s just non-Indians who happen to be coppers poking around where they’re not wanted.’ She was still looking at the man with the wide grin and the gesture of warm welcome. ‘Bannerjee complained,’ she said. ‘Him and several others, eventually.’

  ‘You think he might have sent those men to your house?’

  ‘I’d upset quite a few people by the time I stopped.’

  Thorne nodded. It had been the worst thing imaginable that had forced Nicola Tanner to stop, and even then, the compassionate leave had been something she’d had little choice about. He said, ‘Upsetting people is good, sometimes. Shakes things loose.’

  ‘No Muslims involved though, right?’ Tanner was already looking for another website, typing in the address. ‘So I’d started looking for a group where all three religions would come together. Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. I talked to some of the groups within those communities working against honour-based violence and it turns out a few of them had already been doing some digging of their own. Which brings us to this.’ She hit the enter button and Thorne watched while the page loaded.

  ‘London AHCA?’

  ‘Anti Hate Crime Alliance. It represents all three of the major south Asian religions.’

  Three young men stood together in the centre of the page, smiling. One was heavily bearded and wore a Muslim prayer cap, another wore a turban and was sporting a T-shirt with the slogan Don’t Freak, I’m A Sikh, and the third had the tika on his forehead that marked him out as a Hindu.

  ‘Most of these morons in the BNP and the English Defence League don’t know one religion from another,’ Tanner said. ‘They think all Muslims are terrorists, and if that wasn’t bad enough, think anyone remotely Asian-looking is a Muslim, so plenty of innocent Sikhs and Hindus are getting the shit kicked out of them by these idiots and getting rightly pissed off about it. They formed this group to start organising some opposition and obviously, it made sense for the Muslim community to be involved.’ She pointed to a tab marked Forthcoming Meetings in a column on the left. ‘They’re pretty busy.’

  ‘Gives someone who’s looking to send certain kinds of messages to certain kinds of people the perfect opportunity.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘Last place you’d think of.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Tanner said. ‘Just because you don’t want to get beaten up for no good reason doesn’t mean you aren’t also the kind of person who’d have your daughter killed for shaming you.’ She quickly opened two new web pages, shrank them and positioned them next to one another. ‘Some members of those groups I mentioned… Karma Nirvana and the Halo Project… had been going to these meetings for a while and heard one or two opinions they didn’t like the sound of.’

  Thorne couldn’t argue. ‘We should go along ourselves.’

  ‘I think we should.’

  ‘I mean, preventing violence is one of our jobs, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Tanner said. ‘There’s a meeting tomorrow. Now…’ As she began to type, that smile appeared again, the one that was so pleased with itself. ‘… best till last.’

  Thorne leaned forward. ‘Porn site next, is it?’

  Tanner didn’t hear or didn’t bother to acknowledge him. She said, ‘Look what popped up on YouTube this morning.’

  It was obviously mobile phone footage; the kind Thorne had seen plenty of times before. The phone was usually the first thing to come out when anything dramatic happened.

  A punch-up, a car crash, a terrorist attack.

  ‘Some kid on the Tube with them,’ Tanner said. ‘Filmed the whole thing.’

  For a few seconds the image was blurry, jumping around until it became clear that they were inside a carriage on an underground train. Thorne could hear the voice of the kid doing the filming; mumbling his commentary, keen to stay anonymous.

  Bloody hell, look at them…

  Amaya and Kamal, frozen in their seats. A big man in a paint-spattered jacket standing above them, shouting and swearing, making threats. An Irish accent. An older, Asian man in a suit, sitting next to Amaya and answering back; standing his ground in the face of the abuse. The same man Thorne had seen in the CCTV still.

  He’s going to deck him in a minute.

  ‘That’s how they did it,’ Tanner said. ‘How they got Amaya and Kamal off the train. One of them making threats and the other one stepping in, like he was trying to save them.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Two of them.’

  ‘I mean the kid doing the filming. Jesus… why didn’t he do something instead of sitting there with his phone?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Tanner said. She was right, and besides, it was time for her big reveal. She leaned forward, waited for the right moment and paused the video. ‘There.’

  Not pin-sharp, but still a very decent close-up of the two men who had tricked Amaya and Kamal into getting off the train.

  Who, in all probability, had been paid to murder them.

  ‘That’s them,’ Tanner said, sitting back. ‘Those are the men who killed Susan.’

  ELEVEN

  After Tanner had gone, Helen opened the wine she had brought and sat with Thorne on the sofa, waiting.

  He told her all about it. He told her about Tanner’s murdered partner and the honour killings investigation it was connected to; that he was now connected to.

  Helen took a minute once he’d finished. She said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t be much of a girlfriend if I didn’t remind you that it isn’t your investigation. If I didn’t tell you how stupid you were being.’

  ‘Meena Athwal was mine,’ Thorne said. ‘It looks like she was killed because her father, or her brothers, or all of them, paid to have her killed. How could I —?’

  Helen held up a hand. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. I’m not willing to argue about it. I haven’t got the energy. I know what you’re like, anyway, so what’s the point?’

  Thorne nodded, happy to be let off the hook.

  ‘Once you’ve made your mind up about something.’

  ‘I’ll consider myself told,’ Thorne said.

  Helen sat up and turned to look at him. ‘The other day I was out with Alfie in the park and he stopped because he wanted me to carry him. I told him he was a big boy, and that I was tired, and that he was perfectly capable of walking.’ She smiled as she remembered. ‘He just stood there in the middle of the path and refused to go any further. So, after arguing the toss with him for five minutes, I just carried on walking and it got to the point where I could hardly see him any more when I turned round, but he stayed exactly where he was. Just stood there and wouldn’t move an inch… stubborn little sod.’ She took a sip of wine and shrugged. ‘I had to go back and pick him up in the end, but guess who h
e reminded me of?’

  ‘Well it can’t be genetic, can it?’ Thorne said.

  Helen’s smile slipped a little, because suddenly they were on dangerous ground. Officially, Alfie’s natural father was a man named Paul Hopwood; a police officer who had been killed on duty only a month or so before Alfie was born. Paul almost certainly was Alfie’s father, but the affair between Helen and another officer eight months before his death meant that there would always be doubt. Always doubt and always guilt.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Helen said.

  Thorne wondered if now might be the time to have that conversation about practicalities, but the mood had already changed. The moment, if it had ever been there at all, was gone.

  ‘She doesn’t look like the sort who’s going to get you into trouble,’ Helen said. ‘Tanner. So you might get away with it.’

  ‘Don’t troublemakers always look like that?’ Thorne asked. ‘Like the trustworthy ones?’

  ‘No, most of the time they look like you.’ Helen laughed. ‘You’ve always been a shit-magnet. You can see it a mile away.’

  ‘Was Paul like that?’

  Helen blinked. ‘No.’

  Thorne thought: Didn’t stop you shagging someone else though, did it? He said: ‘So, why the affair?’

  ‘Because I’m an idiot,’ Helen said. She had another drink and another after that, and suddenly she looked pleased with herself. ‘Actually, no. I had an affair because I met someone I fancied and I wanted to shag him. That’s why.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And can we talk about something else?’

  ‘Fine.’

  They sat in silence for a minute; silence that was always a little heavier without Alfie around. Then Helen said, ‘It’s like that song. The one about angels…’ She nudged him. ‘You know. On one of your stupid cowboy compilations.’

  Thorne thought about it. ‘“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”’

  ‘Yeah, that one.’

  ‘Kitty Wells.’

  Helen shrugged, because she didn’t care. ‘It’s all about how men can cheat or whatever and that’s acceptable somehow, but when women do it, men say it’s because they’re weird or whatever. Like it’s something in their naturally wicked nature. A woman can shag someone just because she feels like it, you know? God’s got bugger all to do with it.’

  She said something else after that, but Thorne was thinking about Meena Athwal. About Kamal and Amaya. The men who had done these things, whatever they believed, were not carrying out divine will, and faith of any sort had nothing to do with any of it. It was murder, plain and simple.

  Tanner had been right. They were just men.

  And God, of any sort, had bugger all to do with it.

  Thorne glanced up and saw that Helen was looking at him. ‘It’s a good song,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, it’s all right.’

  They dug the remote from between the sofa cushions, and put the news on, and Helen was asleep on Thorne’s shoulder before it had finished.

  TWELVE

  Walking towards her front gate, Tanner froze, just for a second, when she saw a figure emerge from a car twenty yards ahead of her. She reached quickly to unzip her shoulder bag: pepper spray and telescopic baton inside. She relaxed when a hand was raised, and when the man moved through the bleed from a streetlamp on his way towards her she recognised DS Dipak Chall.

  She zipped her bag up again and carried on walking.

  For a week or so after Susan’s murder, a patrol car had been stationed permanently outside Tanner’s house. It was understandable, of course, but in the end she had told her boss that it was no longer necessary, fed up with coming and going with mugs of tea as much as anything. A car still passed along her road as part of the local night shift, which was fine, but she did not feel the need to be protected.

  She certainly did not want to be watched.

  Had she not seen his face, washed orange beneath the lamp, she would have recognised Dipak Chall quickly enough anyway. That lazy, loping walk. Gangly and drooping like a bored teenager, even though he was in his early thirties.

  She reached the front gate before him and waited, taking out her keys.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I just…’

  She looked at him. ‘How long have you been sitting there, Dipak?’

  ‘I just got here, really. I was passing, so I thought I’d look in.’ He saw the look on Tanner’s face that told him she was not buying it. ‘OK, about half an hour, but I was on my way home and it’s not like it’s out of my way.’

  She couldn’t remember where he lived. ‘Do you want to come in?’

  Chall looked a little surprised. ‘Yeah, I mean, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Tanner nudged the gate open with her foot. ‘It’s freezing out here, and I can just as easily tell you off over a cup of tea.’

  They leaned back against the polished worktop in Tanner’s kitchen. She passed Chall a coaster for his mug, and said, ‘I don’t need nannying, you know.’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Good. So I won’t expect to see you lurking outside my house again, all right?’

  Chall smiled as he stared down at his tea. ‘Got it, ma’am. No lurking.’

  ‘And you don’t really need to call me ma’am, not when you’re standing in my kitchen drinking tea.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean wouldn’t you be far better off going home to your… going home?’ Tanner hedged her bets, suddenly aware that she was still unsure as to the details of her sergeant’s domestic set-up. She was almost certain he was married, but did he have kids? Months before, when they were both working on the Heather Finlay case, she had chided herself for her ignorance about someone she had worked with for almost a year by then, had resolved to put it right.

  She hadn’t, because in truth it was more than simple ignorance. It was a symptom of her reluctance to involve herself in her workmates’ lives, to forge what she’d always seen as meaningless social relationships with colleagues outside the Job.

  The truth was, she’d only ever allowed one person to get really close.

  Standing where she was now, in the spotless kitchen of a house that now felt a lot bigger and quieter than it had a fortnight before, she could see just how peculiar that was. How pig-headed.

  A terrible change had been forced upon her, but she could choose to make easier ones.

  She said, ‘You got kids, Dipak?’

  Chall shook his head. ‘We’re working on it, though.’ He reddened slightly. ‘I mean, we’d like to.’

  ‘You want one? A couple?’

  ‘I don’t know. Three, maybe?’

  ‘Nice.’ Tanner sipped her tea. Outside an interview room, chit-chat was not her strong point. ‘Listen, thanks again for getting me that CCTV stuff.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ Chall said.

  ‘Well, it’s not your case, so you might have got yourself into trouble.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘You still might.’

  ‘Was it any use?’

  ‘Oh yeah, that was them. And we know how the men who took them did it, too. How they got Amaya and Kamal off that train.’ She held out her mug, touched it to Chall’s. ‘So, cheers.’

  ‘You think it’s your pair of hired honour killers?’

  Tanner nodded. ‘I’m as sure as I can be.’ She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Thorne that Chall knew what she was working on, but she hadn’t told the sergeant quite all of it. She was wondering whether now was the time when she heard him say ‘Hello’ and looked up to see that the cat had wandered in.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Mrs Slocombe,’ Tanner said. She glanced over and saw Chall nod, clearly with no idea what the joke was. Unlike Tom Thorne, he was a little too young to remember the innuendo-laden sitcom it came from. ‘Susan’s cat. Well, my cat now.’
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  They watched the cat rub itself against the leg of the kitchen table, then move across to butt its head against Chall’s shin. He leaned down to stroke it and it quickly slinked away again.

  ‘Are you religious, Dipak?’

  He looked at her, took a few seconds. ‘Well… in theory, I suppose. I don’t really do anything about it, though.’

  She smiled. ‘Probably some official guidelines saying you’re not allowed to ask questions like that at work.’

  ‘It’s OK, we’re not at work.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be nosy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Look, it’s fine, and I get why you’re asking.’

  ‘I’d like to know what you think, that’s all.’

  Chall looked down as the cat made another approach, but this time he ignored it. ‘No, I’m not as religious as maybe I should be, but it doesn’t make any difference to the way I feel about all this stuff. Honour, or whatever they choose to call it. However they try and dress it up.’ He looked across at her. ‘It’s fucking disgusting.’ He blinked, as though surprised at what he’d said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Tanner said. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’

  ‘Didn’t mean to swear.’

  Tanner laughed. ‘You can swear as much as you like in here. Just don’t spill anything.’

  THIRTEEN

  It wasn’t clear if AHCA meetings were held in different locations each week, but tonight’s was being held in the main hall of an independent Hindu academy in Highbury. Looking for it on the map, Thorne could not help but notice that the location formed the third point on an almost perfect triangle, with both the Sikh temple in Finsbury Park and the mosque in Stoke Newington within a mile or so.

  ‘Home fixture for everyone,’ Tanner said, as they walked from Thorne’s car.

  ‘Stamford Hill’s not far either.’ Thorne pointed towards the district of the city just two miles to the north of them, which was home to Europe’s largest concentration of Hasidic Jews. ‘I wonder why there isn’t any Jewish representation? Plenty of them been on the receiving end from right-wing nutters.’