If Snow Hadn't Fallen (A Lacey Flint Short Story) by S. J. Bolton Read Free Book Online Page B

‘Anyone he was friends with? I’ve been to the hospital, but no one seems to have known him very well, although they all speak highly of him.’
    She continued to look past me, as though if she concentrated hard enough I would just disappear.
    ‘He challenged those men in the newsagent’s shop last year,’ she said angrily. ‘He saw them stealing and he kept them there until the police arrived. His courage got him killed.’
    ‘We know that he was brave,’ I said. ‘Everyone I’ve spoken to admired him. It’s important to us that we find out what happened.’
    ‘Just words.’ She tried to push past me.
    ‘I saw a woman last night in the park where he died. A veiled woman. Was it you?’
    Her eyes met mine then. She was shocked, maybe a bit scared, and I pressed home my advantage.
    ‘Amelia, he was a young man. Cultural and religious constraints aside, he must have had a life.’
    ‘Amelia!’ The woman pushing her way towards us wasn’t someone I recognized. She was older than the girls around us – someone’s mother, maybe, or older sister. She and Amelia had a rapid exchange in Urdu. Then the older woman faced me.
    ‘You will excuse us now,’ she said. ‘If you have more questions, you must ask Amelia’s parents.’
    Taking Amelia by the shoulder, she steered her away and the two of them walked off down the street.

12
    ‘YOU’LL BE IN a whole heap of shit if anyone finds out you’ve done this,’ said Emma.
    ‘I know,’ I agreed, staring at the door with the chipped blue paintwork. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’
    We were in my car outside the home of Paul and Robert Bailey, two of the suspects in the Aamir Chowdhury murder. The Bailey brothers, nineteen and twenty-two respectively, lived with their mother and several younger siblings in a council flat roughly a mile from the park where Aamir had died. The woman in the passenger seat was Emma Boston, a freelance journalist whom I’d met in September, when the killer terrorizing London had used us both as pawns in an increasingly disturbing and violent game. Emma wasn’t a friend – I don’t make friends – but she was someone I was learning to respect and trust. More importantly, she wasn’t afraid to break the rules occasionally.
    Both Bailey brothers had been in trouble in the past. In addition to the incident in Karim’s shop, the elder, Robert, had spent six months in prison for handling stolen goods and a similar length of time in a young offenders’ institution for selling class B drugs. Paul, the younger brother, was the nasty one. Along with a string of charges and cautions in the five years that he’d been known to the local police, Paul had been the main suspect in the brutal beating of a young Asian man twelve months earlier. No one had any doubts that he’d done it, but the evidence to prosecute just hadn’t been there and he’d walked free.
    It took a long time for anyone to answer Emma’s knock. Eventually, the door was opened by an emaciated, wan-faced woman with two inches of grey roots showing in her dyed black hair. She could have been in her early sixties. We knew, because we’d checked, that the boys’ mother was thirty-nine. We explained that we were reporters, working on a story about wrongful arrests, but she didn’t seem to be taking much in. In fact, she’d been about to close the door on us when Emma mentioned the possibility of a fee. The prospect of cash worked like a charm and we were shown along a dark corridor lined with cardboard boxes and into a poky room that smelled of stale beer, smoke and body odours I didn’t want to think too much about. There were three men in the room. Emma showed them her press pass and introduced herself.
    Whilst we talked, the mother sat huddled in a chair in the corner, her eyes flickering from the TV screen to us and back again. I’m not sure she took in anything much.
    Although I’d seen photographs, it was difficult at first to tell which Bailey brother was