Black Quarry Farm Read online

‘No way. There are hundreds of small businesses bringing this stuff over to the UK. A drive down a couple of streets in East London or Birmingham will tell you how easily this stuff is available.’

  ‘Perhaps he arrived here in the UK with his fortune already made?’

  ‘Not according to witnesses. They say he came here with nothing and grew his business from scratch.’

  Henderson paused to note this down. ‘In the file, it says he made a number of trips abroad? What did you conclude?’

  ‘We thought he’d been dealing in drugs, but not from his business trips to Pakistan and India. His wife and the people in his office assumed he was going there, but when we took a closer look, he visited Iraq more often than anywhere else.’

  ‘Iraq? That stacks up to his photo in the file as I thought it was an Iraqi flag behind him.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Perhaps he still had family there?’

  ‘He escaped to the UK before the sky fell in on Saddam and all his cronies. He claimed he was a victim of the regime and he and his family were offered asylum. When all the dust finally settled, he travelled back to Iraq a lot, and we were working on the assumption he was using his network of old buddies to bring in drugs, or perhaps jewellery and gold looted after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.’

  ‘How, hidden in the bales of textiles he was importing?’

  ‘Yep, but when we checked a couple of shipments dispatched by him days before his death, we found nothing.’

  ‘I assume you didn’t find any other evidence to support the drugs or jewels theory?’

  ‘No. His house, business and cars were all clean.’

  ‘Could be he was working with someone else, and the illicit goods he was sourcing were being handled by them.’

  ‘We tried investigating a similar scenario, but it meant trawling through his two-thousand-odd customers. When we asked the ACC for additional manpower and funds, he refused.’

  ‘I can understand his reluctance. Could you email me the customer list?’

  ‘Sure, if you think it will do any good. Can I ask you sir, what’s your interest?’

  Henderson explained about the Saunders murder and how he was trying to find if there was any connection between him and Ibrahim Nazari.

  ‘Good luck with that, sir. It’s a long list. Even the Pakistani guy on our team said it would be a waste of time talking to people. Even if they knew the names of villains, they wouldn’t say a word.’

  Henderson put down the phone and resumed his review. The information on the second victim of the Saunders gun was scant but interesting. Faisal Baqri was young, nineteen, a drama school student. He had been kidnapped while walking to the tube station on his way to college, and was found six hours later with a bullet wound. Henderson couldn’t help but notice he was unlike the other victims: he was of Pakistani descent, had nothing to do with textiles, and he had survived.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘I’ve never been to Sevenoaks before,’ DS Vicky Neal said to her passenger in the car, DC Lisa Newman. ‘It’s not a bad looking place.’

  ‘Me neither. Like you, I’m not from around here, so every time I go somewhere in the car like this, it’s all new. What do you make of Phil Bentley’s new haircut?’ she asked Neal.

  ‘What, the short back and sides with blonde streaks? I like it.’

  ‘I was referring more to the shaved back and sides. It’s like he’s stepped out of a black and white movie.’

  ‘All footballers are doing it.’

  ‘I don’t follow football. Do you?’

  ‘Sure do,’ Neal said. ‘Been a United fan since I was six. When I lived in Manchester I went to as many games as I could.’

  ‘Don’t get the boss started, he’s a Brighton supporter.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hold up, this looks like the place.’

  They’d stopped outside a house in Brittains Lane, a leafy street to the west of Sevenoaks town centre.

  ‘It’s a big house,’ Newman said.

  ‘Not a bad location either. There are fields and woods all round.’

  Neal could see now what DI Henderson was on about when he said Ibrahim Nazari was well-off. The house looked substantial and well-maintained: fresh paint above the lower brickwork, new looking windows and a well manicured garden. They walked past two cars to get to the front door, a sparkling-clean Range Rover and a metallic red Mazda MX5. She could see the back of Mr Nazari’s Porsche through the open garage door, looking as though it was wedged between dozens of brown boxes.

  Mrs Nazari led them through the hall. It was many months since the murder of her husband and while her eyes looked dark and mournful as if she carried a heavy burden, she didn’t display the raw grief of someone recently bereaved.

  Her disappearance to make tea gave the two detectives an opportunity to take in their surroundings. It was a big room facing the front of the house, furnished with dark wood all around. The coffee table, like everything else in the room, didn’t look as though it had been bought in any UK shop. It was made of solid wood with a rather intricate pattern along the edges and Neal doubted she could move it, never mind lift it.

  Mrs Nazari came back into the room carrying a gold coloured metal tray and placed it on the table. She sorted out the cups and poured the tea before handing one to each officer. Neal didn’t think she’d uttered more than a couple of words since the detectives had arrived.

  The woman’s proximity gave Neal a chance to look more closely at her face. She was a big lady, not fat, but big-boned with wide shoulders and a large head. Aged around mid-fifties she had brown eyes and a well-proportioned face, partially spoiled by a prominent nose. She was brunette, going grey by the look of it, and an appointment with her colourist would be required any day soon.

  ‘Mrs Nazari, it’s good of you to see us,’ Neal said.

  ‘I don’t know why I still need to talk to the police,’ she said in a shaking voice, rising in intensity, ‘Ibrahim is dead and buried. He should be left in peace.’

  ‘The killers of your husband have never been found. We think there is another avenue of investigation which could lead us to them.’

  ‘You really think so?’ she said, her face brightening. ‘This isn’t just another one of your fact-finding meetings to improve the statistics or something?’

  ‘No. As I explained on the phone, we’re not part of the original murder investigation team who looked into the death of your husband. We are leading an enquiry on another incident and believe there might be links between that and your husband’s shooting.’

  Neal was trying to be circumspect; giving Mrs Nazari enough information to encourage her cooperation, but not so much it could be embarrassing if she blurted out something to a journalist.

  ‘So, you think you know the names of the people who killed my husband?’

  ‘No. As I said, we are here because we are investigating another incident. It could help us to identify the killers, but there is also a chance it may not.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s an important point, Mrs Nazari. I don’t want to mislead you and give you false hope.’

  ‘I think it is best if you start by asking your questions and I will see what I can tell you. Despite his murder happening six months ago and it no longer appearing on the evening news, I still want justice.’

  ‘I do understand. Can you begin by telling us what your husband was like?’

  ‘Yes, of course. My Ibrahim was a kind man, always considerate, buying me presents when I felt down and taking me out to nice restaurants at weekends.’

  Her accent sounded as English as anyone else in this street, suggesting she’d come to this country at an early age, but the occasional word or pronunciation betrayed her Middle-Eastern origins.

  ‘What did he do? What was his job?’

  ‘He was an importer of oriental textiles. The sort of material used by Indian women to make saris and other garments.’

  ‘Did he often go
abroad on business?’

  ‘Oh yes, about one week every month.’

  ‘To India?’

  ‘Yes, he went there and also to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. A few times, he went back to Iraq where he is from. He still has an uncle there, you see, and he liked to visit him any time he was in the region.’

  ‘I believe the question has been raised before, but did your husband ever work within Saddam Hussein’s government?’

  ‘Pah!’ She declared with gusto. ‘Nothing but lies, a pathetic attempt by the Security Services to try and smear our good name and deport us. Do the fools not realise, I am a British citizen? I threw them out and told them not to come back.’

  ‘Nevertheless, there is a strong suggestion–’

  ‘Are you also going to play this deportation card? If you are, I will throw you out now.’

  ‘I’m only trying to find out if he was once a member of the old regime. If so, have you considered his death may be the result of old enemies settling scores?’

  ‘The people from the Security Services raised this issue also, and I told them, I don’t believe you. He wasn’t in the army when Iraq started the war with Iran, he worked at Baghdad University. As for their accusation about him being a junior minister in Saddam’s government, I told them. It is a lie. Whether they said it to try and smear him or for some other purpose, I do not know, but he was not. He was a simple man with simple needs. He imported material from Asia and sold it here in the UK and other places in Europe.’

  Neal could see she wasn’t going to make any progress with this topic. DI Henderson had asked her to raise the subject as he believed if Nazari had been in the government, someone with a grievance against Saddam in general, and Nazari in particular, might have exacted their revenge. However, if Mrs Nazari was confident her husband had never worked there, she wouldn’t be able to answer the next question in the list: who did she think might have killed him?

  ‘Tell me about your husband’s business.’

  ‘I will in a moment,’ she said standing up, ‘but first let me refresh the tea. This pot has gone a little cold.’

  ‘Whoa, that went well,’ she said to Newman when Mrs Nazari had left the room.

  ‘It almost got us chucked out. I can’t understand why.’

  ‘Yeah, but does she really not know, or is she lying?’

  ‘It would be a hard secret to hide for all those years. He would need to fabricate a whole new life.’

  ‘Plenty have done it before. Think of all those former Nazi officers who fled to places like America and Argentina. They went back to what they used to do before the war, dentists, doctors, or pen pushers in the government and invented a story to cover the years before and during the war.’

  ‘I suppose so, but if she genuinely doesn’t know and we press too hard, making her think we do, it makes her marriage look like a sham. It’s as if she’s been married to a man she didn’t know.’

  ‘I think you’re right. Hence the reason she’s getting so upset.’

  Mrs Nazari came back into the room again carrying the tray, but this time beside the tea pot sat a small plate of biscuits. The lady of the house was perhaps in need of a snack, or she was warming to her visitors. Neal believed it to be the former.

  DI Henderson had decided they should avoid talking about the murder of Ibrahim Nazari, and after meeting the woman, she believed he had made the right decision. It would only open old wounds and tell them nothing more than was included in the comprehensive documentation accompanying this crime. The police could be accused of many things, but not covering all the bases at a murder scene wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Mrs Nazari, before you went out to make tea, you were about to tell us about your husband’s business.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said sitting down heavily in the armchair.

  She was distracted for a few moments by some movement taking place outside and Neal felt sure she saw a wave of panic crossing her face which disappeared as quickly as it had come, when she realised it was a postal delivery. The shuffling of footsteps and the rattle of the letterbox followed moments later. Did she fear the men who had killed her husband would now come looking for her? If she knew he had connections with the old regime, it would be a rational reaction, but if she didn’t, perhaps she was displaying the nervousness of the victims all murders left behind.

  ‘Em, yes,’ she said composing herself. ‘Ibrahim’s business operated from offices in the centre of Sevenoaks. It was himself and three staff.’

  ‘Did he have a warehouse where he stored the textiles?’

  ‘Yes, in Dartford. It’s closed now as is the office in town. Such a shame as he spent years building the business up.’

  ‘How did it operate?’

  ‘He knew suppliers from all across India and Pakistan. He would bulk up customer orders here in the UK and Europe and travel to the Far East and source the fabric. He had a reputation as a man who delivered, so he was always busy.’

  ‘Who were his main customers?’

  ‘Oh, he had hundreds: East End market traders, shops in Indian and Bengali areas of London, and Pakistani districts of Birmingham, Halifax and Bradford, for example.’

  ‘Are there any customers you remember him talking about more than others?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Yes, Bilal Designs in Southall and Saree Bazaar in Wembley.’

  ‘Those were his biggest customers?’ Neal said, noting the names down.

  ‘I think so. You can take a look yourself. All the files from the business are deposited in my garage. I didn’t have the heart to throw them out.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Henderson took a seat behind his desk, placed a cup of coffee down, and looked at his watch: 6:30pm. He had an appointment to keep and didn’t want to be late.

  A few minutes later, Carol Walters and Vicky Neal trooped in. In their hands, thick files and cups of coffee. The long days and late nights were catching up on everyone. Henderson got out of his seat and joined them at the meeting table.

  ‘Right,’ he said, keen to move on. ‘Carol, you’ve met the former wife of Robert Saunders, and Vicky, you’ve met Ibrahim Nazari’s wife. I don’t want a blow-by-blow account of each meeting, but what I’m looking for is any connection between the two men. Okay?’

  They both nodded.

  ‘Carol, make a start.’

  ‘The ex-wife of Robert Saunders is called Irene Jennings, she reverted to her maiden name when she divorced Robert about five years back, and lives in a smart house in Romford. She’s got two kids, Paul and Danny, and despite them looking like adults to me, they both live at home, as does Irene’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Okay, we now know her background, what did she tell you about Robert?’

  ‘They were married for twenty years before he took up with a twenty-five-year-old called Jasmine. He was loaded in the latter stages of their marriage, according to Irene, and some of it seems to have filtered down to her, evidenced by the lavish surroundings. Jasmine left a couple of years later and seemingly cleaned him out.’

  ‘Did she? Were her actions fraudulent?’

  ‘I thought maybe they were, and I asked her why she thought Robert didn’t report it. She ducked the question and changed the subject.’

  ‘Suggesting what, she knew the source of the money wasn’t legit?’

  ‘Could be or just too painful to go there.’

  ‘What contact has Irene had with Robert following the split?’

  ‘Regular, it sounded like.’

  ‘Right up to the time he died?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Did she know he was on the run and why?’

  ‘No, but he told her he’d done something stupid, his attempt to rectify a dire financial situation after Jasmine took all his money, but she didn’t elaborate.’

  Henderson felt energised. ‘It feels to me like we’re at last getting to the nub of this.’

  ‘I thought so too, but then she started sobbing at
the mention of his death, so we didn’t get much sense out of her for the next few minutes.’

  ‘So, what did she think her ex had done? Robbed a bank? Bulldozed an ATM?’

  ‘She didn’t know, as he wouldn’t tell her, didn’t want her to become involved, he said.’

  ‘Didn’t want to put her in danger and have her end up like him, more like,’ Henderson said.

  ‘She described him as a mild-mannered individual, and when I suggested some obvious money-making schemes like the ones you mentioned, she shook her head with some vigour. Said he wouldn’t have the bottle for any strong-arm stuff.’

  ‘So, what does that leave? Fraud? Money laundering? Maybe drug dealing?’

  ‘She didn’t know for sure, but when I persuaded her to guess, she said maybe it had something to do with his last employer.’

  ‘Sounds like fraud. What did Saunders do?’

  ‘He was a kind of warehouse and logistics expert. When he left school, he worked for a succession of hauliers, scheduling loads and devising transport routes. He was a natural according to Irene. You could phone him at any time, and he would know where a particular lorry would be and what load it was carrying.’

  ‘You could get on Mastermind with a brain like that,’ Henderson said.

  ‘Which brings us back to Simon Radcliffe,’ Vicky Neal said. ‘Wasn’t he tipped as the show’s next host?’

  ‘A tenuous link, DS Neal. Tenuous.’

  ‘I agree. Forget it.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ Walters continued, ‘Saunders worked for several logistics companies before experiencing a long period of unemployment after one made him redundant. He was desperate for a job and was finally rescued by an old school friend. He started working for his company and, according to Irene, it was the making of him.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘For once he had money in his pocket, and his old confidence came back. I didn’t want to spoil her reminiscing to remind her it wasn’t long afterwards he left her and took up with Jasmine.’

  ‘What do we know about this company and his old school friend?’

  ‘His name is Gohar Cheema, born in Pakistan, and came to the UK when he was five. He owns a small clothes manufacturing business called S&H Oriental Fashions in Haringey in north London.’