Scimitar (A Kate Redman Mystery Read online

  He trailed to a halt, and looked at her eager for praise, like a Labrador puppy. She fought the urge to ruffle his fur. Hair, Kate, hair. Instead, she smiled encouragingly and asked, “Anything else?”

  But there was nothing else that young Josh could tell her for now. Kate accompanied him to the front desk computer to check if there was a ‘Mo’ somebody recorded on the database, but, as she expected after what Josh had told her, there was nobody. Kate thanked him again and handed him her card, silently amused at the fact that he blushed as she did so, before saying goodbye.

  Outside, Kate made sure to thank the uniformed officers, who were milling around in the forecourt, vaping, bantering and eyeing the well-toned girls walking past into the gym entrance. She fought the urge to smack them across the head. “Well done, guys. You’ve really helped. Now we have a name, we can start to track down everything else about him.” She thanked them once more and dismissed them. “Take it easy, guys. Thanks.”

  She was desperate to start digging, now she had some information, but forced herself to walk slowly to her car. Relishing the sunshine, Kate tipped her face up to the sky. Ibrahim Bashir. An unsurprising name for someone of his ethnicity… Kate keyed his postcode into her sat nav and drove off, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.

  Chapter Nine

  Ibrahim’s address was a surprise. Number 54 Buck Street was a shabby looking terraced house, one of the Victorian ones thrown up in their hundreds throughout the last century. His address wasn’t even that of the whole house, which had been divided into flats and maisonettes at some point in previous years. It was rented out through one of the scummier private landlords of the area, with whom Kate had already had several unfortunate dealings in previous cases.

  Ibrahim’s flat was one of the smallest; not quite a bedsit, as it had a miniscule shower room and toilet, but otherwise, there was nothing but a sitting room, with a sofa-bed and a kitchenette, of which the facilities consisted of a tiny fridge, a microwave oven and a sink. Kate remembered the flat of Nada Qabbani, a recently arrived Syrian refugee, in one of her earlier cases. This flat had the same air of hopelessness, of despair, of the two tiny rooms being a bolthole, a last resort… but from what, in Ibrahim’s case?

  Kate gloved up and began the search. The flat took minimalism to an extreme, and the search took very little time. There were barely any papers, no bookcase, no cupboards. The kitchenette contained only a few pieces of crockery and cutlery. She pulled out a suitcase stashed under the bed, but it only contained clothes. Kate went through it, piece by piece. Mostly gym gear, Calvin Klein underwear, T-shirts, jeans. A packet of condoms and some breath mints tucked into a pocket. Nothing of great interest.

  Kate sat back on the floor, looking around her in puzzlement. This was a moment when she would have given a great deal to be able to bounce some ideas off a colleague. Chloe inevitably came into her mind, and she automatically reached for her phone before throwing it back in her handbag. Leave the poor woman alone, Kate. She pondered her other workmates before realising that, stretched as they were, she couldn’t justify pulling an officer from the incident room to come and sit in this tiny, empty flat with her and try and figure out why this young, handsome twenty-something man had been living like a hermit.

  She finished the search, such as it had been. There was nothing; no passport, no letters, no utility bills, even. Frowning, Kate locked up the flat and returned the keys to the estate agents around the corner. She drove back to the office in a contemplative mood.

  When she walked in, the first thing she saw was Theo, frowning at himself at his computer screen.

  “What’s up?”

  Theo looked up and smiled a welcome. “Hey, mate. Any luck with the flat?”

  “No.” Kate perched herself on the edge of his desk. “That’s what’s so weird. The whole bedsit’s like a… Well, it’s like a place where someone doesn’t really live.”

  Theo raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  Kate explained about the lack of everything. “Seriously, there’s nothing there. No papers, no books, no DVDs, no computer games. No TV. It’s like he wasn’t really living there.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.” Theo turned his computer screen to face Kate. “Because the search I did on his name brought up some…unusual results.”

  Kate leant forward to look more closely at the screen. “Which were?”

  “Well—” Theo reached for his mouse. “For a start, there aren’t that many Ibrahim Bashirs. It’s a pretty unusual name. I’ve spent most of today tracking them down. The only one I can’t get hold of…” He looked at Kate, deadpan.

  Kate grunted. “Go on. There’s clearly more.”

  “The only one I can’t get hold of…” Theo paused again.

  Kate bit back a scream of frustration. “Stop with the theatrics, will you? What’s the issue?

  Theo looked solemn. “Well, the last remaining Ibrahim Bashir that I could find seems to have died fifty years ago.”

  Even though she’d been expecting some similar sort of bombshell, Kate gasped. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Theo’s slim brown fingers tapped the keyboard. “See, look at that.”

  Kate flung herself onto her knees before the screen to look more closely. She looked at the words on the screen, the collated information from the various databases that Theo had been accessing. “Bloody hell.”

  “Tell me about it, mate.” Theo was grim-faced. “There’s something seriously weird about this case. I need to talk to Mark before we go any further.”

  “You do. I’ll come with you.” Kate looked across at Olbeck’s office to see if he was there. He wasn’t. She sighed and looked at the clock. It was rapidly approaching clocking-out time.

  “Are you staying on?” she asked Theo.

  “I can do for a bit. I’m meeting Nic for dinner.”

  Never in her life would have Kate thought that her former DCI would have been referred to in such informal terms. “Say hi to her, for me, would you?” she asked, hoping she sounded sincere.

  “Sure.”

  Both of them made moves to leave the office, picking up coats and bags and shutting down their computers. Kate was suddenly filled by a wave of curiosity. “Actually, fancy a drink, Theo? Let’s leave this for now. Let’s have an informal debrief.”

  Theo looked at her with one dark eyebrow quirked up. “Really?”

  Kate nodded. “Really.” She hesitated, remembering her earlier thoughts about Anderton and babies and everything else… She added, “Actually, I could also do with a…um…a listening ear. Got a few things on my mind.”

  It was to Theo’s credit that only the briefest look of panic crossed his handsome features. “Sure, mate. Let’s go to The Arms for a swift one.”

  ‘The Arms’ was the informal name for the nearest pub to the station, The King’s Head. The swapping of body parts from the signage to the vernacular often provoked some confusion amongst new recruits.

  Theo bought the first round and they found a seat at the back, where for a few minutes, they might be assured of some privacy. “So, how’s it going?” She asked. “With you and—” For a moment, she had to stop herself saying ‘DCI Weaver’. “With Nicola?” She amended, hastily.

  “All good.” Theo took a long pull of his pint and eyed her over the top of the glass. “How about you and Anderton?”

  “All good.” Kate dropped her gaze and stared into the shimmering maroon depths of her wine. “You know we’re looking to buy a house together?”

  Theo apparently hadn’t known that. They had a very middle-class conversation about the price of property in the South West, for about ten minutes, before they caught each other’s eye and guffawed at the clichés they were becoming.

  Kate took a deep breath. “Do you ever find…”

  “What?” Theo was still smiling, but t
here was a wariness underpinning his tone.

  “That…the age gap… It’s—” Kate took a gulp of wine and put her glass down. “That it’s going to be a problem?”

  Theo frowned. “To be honest, mate, I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  Kate took another gulp. “Yes, maybe that’s the way to play it.” She rubbed at a droplet of condensation that had fallen to the surface of the table. “But—I don’t know…” She tried again. “You know, whether we should be getting married, or having kids, or something like that—” She looked up to see blank panic in Theo’s face and, despite herself, felt like giggling. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “I’m just thinking aloud. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well…” Theo began awkwardly and then dried up, grimacing.

  Silence fell. Amidst it, Kate felt something like despair. This was the conversation she should be having with Olbeck, or Anderton himself, not with Theo. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, smiling brightly, reassuring herself as much as her friend. “Another one?”

  “Nah, you’re alright, mate. Thanks.” Theo tipped the last of his pint down his throat and set the glass back on the table. He gave her a cautiously sympathetic smile. “You and the boss’ll be cool. You’ve just got to work it out for yourselves, you know?”

  “I know.” Feeling a rush of affection for her old workmate, not least because he clearly still saw Anderton as ‘the boss’, Kate squeezed his arm. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning saw the whole team, minus Chloe, gathered in the incident room. Olbeck and Kate had already taped up several of the crime scene photographs on the whiteboards.

  “Now” said Olbeck gesturing to the picture of Ibrahim sprawled in the undergrowth “you might already know that we have a tentative identification of the victim, I say tentative because as we dig deeper, we’re discovering some odd anomalies.” He reiterated Theo’s findings of the day before. “The trouble is that it seems likely that Ibrahim Bashir was a false identity.”

  He paused and regarded the dead face of the victim. “Now, I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you lot, knowing what you know. Why would someone have a false name?”

  “He’s a con-man,” said Rav. “Or was.”

  “He’s on the run.” contributed Martin. “I mean—was.”

  “Yes, definitely a possibility. Anything else?”

  “Actually,” said Martin. “He’s most likely to be an illegal immigrant. We’re getting more and more coming in through Bristol and Salterton.”

  “That’s actually the most plausible theory yet,” said Olbeck. “But how does that explain him ending up in the gardens of Bucklesbury House?”

  They all pondered this for a moment. “It is very odd, that,” agreed Martin.

  “Mistaken Identity? said Rav. “I hope not. Surely we’re better than that.” Olbeck looked over at Kate with a wry smile. They’d discussed this at some length in the hour before the meeting, so Kate knew her cue when she heard it.

  Kate cleared her throat. “Or he could be working undercover.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows. “For us? Or—well—like a spy?”

  Even the word sounded overly dramatic to Kate but Theo and Rav were nodding.

  “Like Stuart, right?” said Rav.

  “Possibly.” Olbeck was scribbling on the whiteboard as they spoke. Spy? Absconded? Illegal Immigrant? Con-man? He looked over at Kate. “Kate, this is the kind of thing it would be really good to have some outside experience on. Can you get hold of Stuart and see if he could come in and talk to us?”

  Stuart Granger was an old friend of Kate’s, who’d been working undercover for the Abbeyford force when a series of events had forced his resignation. He now worked as a private detective and Kate realised, with a jolt, that she’d not even seen him in person for over a year. “I’ll give him a call,” she said.

  “Good. Thanks, Kate.” Olbeck made a few more notes. “What else have we got? Forensics back yet?”

  “Not yet,” Rav said with a longsuffering sigh.

  “Okay. How are we doing with the volunteer interviews—the gym goers, anyone who might have known—” Olbeck quirked his fingers into rabbit ears. “’Ibrahim Bashir’?”

  “I’m carrying on with those today,” said Kate, shielding an inner sigh at the thought of all those crowds of beige-coat-wearing, earnest, bespectacled pensioners, all peering at the photograph of Bashir and recoiling and then shaking their heads and telling her no, I’ve never seen him before, dear, no, I’ve never seen anyone like him around here before, sorry I can’t help you… Can’t I do the gym bunnies instead, she thought, grinning to herself.

  They went through all the other points to be covered before Olbeck dismissed them. Kate slung her handbag over her shoulder and made her way to her car. Almost automatically, her hand went to her mobile to check WhatsApp and Messenger and Facebook.

  There was one text from Anderson. Chloe’s here – wants to talk to you? Can you? X

  Kate couldn’t, really, but after a moment’s thought, she took her hands from the car keys in the ignition, pulled on the handbrake again and dialled Chloe’s number. As she waited for the call to be picked up, she had the momentary puzzled thought as to why Chloe hadn’t just called her directly. But then Chloe knew how busy Kate normally was, so it wasn’t surprising that she perhaps hadn’t wanted to interrupt her.

  “Chloe? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” Chloe sounded relatively calm. “Look, I know you’re busy, but I could really do with seeing you. Would you be able to come around mine later?”

  “Tonight?” Kate had been planning to go for a swim and pick up some shopping before heading to her house but, really, her old friend needed her more. “Of course. I can’t say what time I’ll be finished, though.”

  “I know what it’s like. Just text me.”

  Kate promised to and said goodbye. As she drove from the station carpark, she wondered what it was that Chloe wanted to talk about. Stupid question; of course there was only one thing she wanted to talk about, but… Pondering, Kate drove towards Bucklesbury House, turning on the windscreen wipers as the grey clouds above her began to spit rain.

  After she’d secured her car in the visitors’ carpark, Kate scrolled through her list of contacts to find Stuart’s number. The line rang and rang, and eventually it went through to voicemail. Sighing inwardly, Kate left a rather awkward message, apologising for not having been in touch sooner, and asked him to call her back.

  She had one less uniform on the team today, but they still managed to clear the entire list of remaining volunteers, which pleased Kate. Less pleasing was the fact that not a single person claimed to recognise the victim or to have even spotted him on the grounds. Kate, thanking the last person as they exited the interview room, wondered a little about the gardener who had tentatively claimed to have seen Bashir. Was it worth pulling him in again? She went to see if Nick Riley was working that day but, on finding out that it was his day off, decided to take down his details instead. Just in case.

  Driving home, peering into the dusk through the now lashing rain, Kate reviewed the case. Where to go from here? We could see who he rented the bedsit from, she thought, mentally making notes. See if they’ve got any further information on him. See if Faith Fitness has any CCTV footage of him, maybe even with this mysterious friend of his. What else? She reviewed their morning meeting, trying to remember what Olbeck had said. Absconder, con-man, spy…

  Spy. It sounded so unlikely, but… Kate needed to talk it through with someone. At the junction of the road leading back to Abbeyford, she automatically went to indicate right before realising with a start that she was supposed to be going to Chloe’s place. Correcting her mistake, she flicked the indicator up again and swung the wheel. Would Chloe be up to discussing the case? I suppose
I’ll just have to wait and see. Kate joined the traffic on the road heading towards the coast and put her foot down, heading for Salterton.

  Chapter Eleven

  Chloe Wapping’s house was a charming little seafront cottage, built in blocks of white-painted stone, rather as if constructed from giant sugar cubes. Kate, who’d stocked up on posh crisps and a bottle of wine on the way, felt an uneasy mix of anxiety and pleasure as she rang the doorbell. How was her friend? What did she want to say? When Chloe opened the door, Kate was relieved to see a wan smile on her friend’s face. Chloe’s hair was scraped back in a rough ponytail and she was wearing loungewear; a grey-striped hoody and pyjama bottoms. Kate had the irrelevant thought that it was genuinely the first time she’d seen her friend wear something other than one of her customary black suits.

  They hugged, and Kate could feel the sharp edges of Chloe’s shoulder blades beneath her hands. She drew back and held Chloe at arm’s length. Her friend had always been slim, but she was now well on the way to becoming gaunt.

  “You’re getting awfully thin.”

  Chloe dropped her gaze. “I know. I just can’t really eat very much at the moment.”

  “Come on.” Kate tucked her arm in her friend’s and propelled her into the cottage. “I’m going to force-feed you crisps, whether you like it or not.”

  The little cottage felt as cosy as ever and the wood burner was glowing with warmth and light. For all that, Kate could see evidence of Chloe’s state of mind; a heap of tissues partway under the sofa, the dregs of some amber coloured liquid—whisky?—drying in several glasses on the table.

  “I haven’t made any dinner,” Chloe said dully. “But I could if you want some.”