Up in Flames Read online

  ‘It is these skinhead yobs you are thinking of, yes?’

  Casey, wary of being pushed on to one particular track, said cautiously, ‘The skinheads are one possibility. But they’re not the only ones. There were no obvious signs of a forced entry, you see.’

  Rathi Khan nodded absently at this, as if it was something he had expected. ‘I told her she must keep the doors and windows locked. She said she would.’ He shrugged. ‘But the young are careless about such things. Maybe she was slapdash and with the warm weather...’ His explanation tailed off, then he added, ‘Of course, if she left the back door or windows open or unlocked anyone at all could have got in. Is that what you are thinking happened, Inspector?’

  Casey nodded. ‘It seems a likely possibility. I’ll need to speak to your daughter’s in-laws. Could you let me have their address and full names?’

  ‘What for do you want to speak to them?’ Rathi Khan asked anxiously. ‘I told you they can have had nothing to do with this business. They are decent, honest merchants, no matter what my son may say.’

  His son didn’t seem keen for them to pursue the matter either, only his reasons were rather different. ‘They will only poison your mind against Chandra,’ he told them. Suddenly, he seemed to be backtracking. Casey wondered why and what Chandra’s in-laws might reveal.

  ‘I will, of course, bear that possibility in mind, sir,’ Casey reassured him. ‘But I am investigating the cause of your sister’s death and that of her baby, not her character.’

  They both fell silent at this, as if they had each remembered their mutual grief and felt rebuked. Casey was relieved that neither of them thought to challenge his assertion. But, as with all murder victims, the unfortunate Chandra and her character would get as thoroughly investigated as the crime itself.

  Mrs Rathi Khan broke in and spoke to her son. Devdan gave a brief reply and she asked Casey in broken English, ‘Why? Why you see them?’ She turned to her husband and spoke to him in Hindi.

  He gave her as brief an answer as had her son.

  ‘Does your wife understand much English?’ Casey asked.

  Rathi Khan hesitated before he replied. Perhaps he hoped to shield his wife from the distress of their questions. Or perhaps, as Catt would no doubt believe, he didn’t want anyone else but himself to provide answers.

  ‘My wife understands a little only. But more than she speaks. She mixes rarely outside our own community. Like my son, she is upset because she fears Chandra’s in-laws will speak badly about her to you. And not just to you, to the Asian community also.’

  ‘What my father means is that what they say will reflect on our family.’ The son sounded bitter. ‘My father has not only a good business within our community, but he has the future of his younger daughter to think of.’

  ‘You, too, have a daughter you will need to find a husband for some day,’ Rathi Khan quickly reminded his son. ‘Besides,’ he appealed to Casey, ‘is it wrong to want the best for a child? It is too late now for Chandra. But I want my younger daughter to have her chance to marry well.’ He gave a tiny lift of the shoulders. ‘Such things are important. Bad blood between us and Chandra’s in-laws, Mr and Mrs Bansi, will not help the situation.’

  Casey gave an understanding nod, and with yet more quiet persistence, Mr Khan was persuaded to supply the details of Chandra’s in-laws. There was little more to say and Casey rose, satisfied that they had two possibilities to check out — the skinhead yobs who had harassed Chandra and her grieving, unkind parents-in-law.

  He asked Mr Khan if the family would like Shazia Singh to stay with them to give what comfort she could, but his offer was refused.

  ‘We are better alone,’ Mr Khan told them, adding, with a glance at his son, as though issuing a reminder, ‘We are a private family.’

  ‘We’ll leave you in peace then. If we could just have that photograph of Chandra and one of the baby.‘

  Mr Khan went to the large and ornate marble fireplace that dominated the room, picked up a silver-framed picture from the mantelpiece and handed it to Casey. ‘That is my Chandra. My beautiful Chandra. As you can see, Leela was just like her.’ He gave a sad, fleeting smile. ‘Though only like her in beauty. Chandra was always such a good baby. Leela was what I believe you English call a bawler. Always she cried, that child.’ His face shadowed. ‘Perhaps, even so young, she sensed her fate.’

  Embarrassed by such a mawkish sentiment and the raw pain behind it, Casey concentrated on removing the picture from its frame, taking rather longer over the job than it strictly required. Wordlessly, he handed the frame back and dropped his gaze to the photograph.

  Chandra had been a beautiful girl, with long, lustrous midnight black hair and pale luminously clear skin. The spirit that her father had mentioned earlier was evident in the laughing dark eyes that stared boldly out of the picture. This was no shy, reserved Asian girl. Chandra looked like she would be capable of giving her mother-in-law as good as she got.

  As he studied the picture of the young and undeniably beautiful Chandra and her equally beautiful, doe-eyed baby, Casey was suddenly filled with melancholy, saddened that all the youth, beauty and vitality evident in her photograph should now be lying charred and ruined in the mortuary. For in her photo, Chandra looked so wonderfully, vividly alive as to make death, particularly such a death as this, all but unbearable.

  Conscious that he was intruding on a grief he had no right to share, Casey told them, in a voice roughened by emotion, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Rathi Khan nodded and clutched his wife’s hands more tightly. ‘Shukriya. Thank you. You, you will keep us informed?’

  ‘Of course.’ Casey glanced again at the photograph. ‘I promise you I will find whoever committed this dreadful crime.’

  Rathi Khan met his gaze. He said simply, ‘I’m sure you will, Inspector.’ His bleak expression only emphasised the fact that this wouldn’t bring back his laughing, beautiful daughter or her baby.

  Before Casey had the opportunity to leave, the front door slammed again. The sound of laughter echoed down the hallway and a young Asian woman in her early twenties and two girls of around four and thirteen came into the room. The woman and the teenager clutched a variety of colourful carrier bags and, judging by the quantity of bags and the pleased expressions, had evidently had a successful shopping trip. They stopped abruptly as they saw Casey, Catt and the uniformed WPC.

  ‘What is it? What has happened?’ The young woman asked Devdan.

  Devdan ignored her and it was left to his father to briefly introduce them, ‘Rani, my daughter-in-law and Kamala my second daughter.’ He paused, then added poignantly, ‘who is now my first.’

  ‘First?’ For a moment, the teenager looked merely puzzled, then anxiety spread across her pretty face. It was easy to see she was Chandra’s sister. Her sister-in-law, with her blotchy skin and heavy features, looked very plain beside her. ‘What do you mean, Dad? What has Chandra done now?’

  Her words revealed her assumption that her parents, rather than life itself, had disowned Chandra. Rathi Khan waved a silencing hand at her.

  ‘She has done nothing. Of course, she has done nothing. But we have had some bad news. Some very bad news about your sister and the baby.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Young Kamala stood, with clenched fists in the middle of the room, tension radiating from every pretty facial contour.

  Her father told her, more gently than he had his wife, but not gently enough. There was no gentle way to tell such news, after all. Kamala burst into tears and threw herself at her mother. Rani Khan, Devdan’s wife also began to cry and turned to her husband for comfort, but he brushed her aside, picked up his little girl, and kissed her tears away instead, leaving his wife standing forlorn, sad-eyed and ignored.

  Casey felt uncomfortable, but his training hadn’t deserted him. His observation told him that young Kamala’s grief was real enough. But Rani’s? Casey wondered whether he had imagined the look of satisfaction that had momentaril
y pinked and prettied her plain face before the tears flowed. Had her husband noticed it, too? Or was Devdan’s careless attitude merely habitual?

  As Kamala’s agonised weeping hiccupped to a close, Casey felt sure he hadn’t imagined the betraying expression. But if Rani Khan had felt no great liking for her beautiful sister-in-law, what plain woman would? Chandra had been adored by her own husband and loved also by her brother, her sister-in-law’s husband. And poor Rani, standing alone and still uncomforted, appeared to be loved by no one at all. Even her children preferred to be comforted by others. With Chandra dead, she had one less rival for her distant husband’s affections. Anyway, judging by the quantity of shopping bags she had been otherwise occupied during the relevant time and could have had nothing to do with Chandra’s death.

  From where she sat, encircled by her mother’s plump bare arms, Kamala suddenly burst out at her father, startling Casey as much as anyone.

  ‘Why did you have to stop me from visiting Chandra at the flat? Now I will never see her again.’

  Her words seemed to catch her father on the raw. He looked defenceless, his face a stiff death’s-head of grief. It seemed as much as he could do to mutter, ‘I told you. Chandra needed to be alone. She had just lost her husband and needed to consider her future. She didn’t need your thoughtless chatter upsetting and distracting her.’

  The answer didn’t satisfy his younger daughter. With all the passion of youth, she wrenched herself from her mother’s embrace and stalked to the centre of the room to confront her father. ‘Come on, Dad. Don’t pretend that Chandra was in deep mourning for Magan. The last time I saw her was at his funeral and she seemed dry-eyed enough then. But that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t lonely, especially after the way those Bansis treated her. But no, we left her all alone in that dreary flat. You, who are all the time going on about the strength of the family. Where were we when she needed her family the most? You wouldn’t let me babysit. You wouldn’t even let Mum or Gran babysit and I still don’t understand why.’

  Kamala was tall, nearly as tall as her father. Rathi Khan seemed to shrink as if intimidated by this barely teenage Valkyrie he had nurtured. But he rallied sufficiently to answer her. ‘You know your Grandmother’s not well. She couldn’t babysit. And your mother had her duties looking after her. She—’

  ‘Gran’s your mother. Why couldn’t you look after her for a change? It’s not as if there’s much wrong with her anyway and she adores the baby, but she’s barely seen her since she’s been here. I don’t think Gran understands any more than I do.’

  ‘That’s just it — you don’t understand. Haven’t I told you that your Grandmother’s nerves are all in a jangl?. She’s of an age to suffer difficult problems. You know how Leela cried and cried yet you expected your Grandmother to cope with that for hours on end.’

  ‘Oh.’ This seemed to bring Kamala up short. ‘Are you trying to say that Gran’s going through the change?’ For a moment, all her youthful certainty faded. But, young as she was, she quickly rallied. ‘My friend Annie’s Gran sailed through it. A course of HRT would set Gran right.’

  Her father looked taken aback. ‘What do you know of these matters, girl?’

  ‘More than you, probably, Dad,’ was Kamala’s quick reply.

  ‘Enough of this. How dare you speak to your father like so? You shame us in front of these people. Go to your room.’ Kamala’s Grandfather intervened, his voice harsh, the tone that of someone used to being obeyed.

  For a moment a transfixed Kamala looked as if she might defy her forbidding Grandfather, but then, he broke into a rapid Hindi. Whatever he said had the desired effect. For after flinging one desperate, anguished look at her mother, Kamala fled the room, her tears echoing back at them from the vaulted entrance hall before she slammed into her bedroom and banged the door.

  There was an embarrassed silence after her abrupt departure. But within a few moments, Mr Khan Senior had broken it. ‘I apologise for my granddaughter,’ he said to Casey. ‘You should send her out to us in India,’ he told his son. ‘There she would learn how to behave so she does not bring such shame upon us. Remember the family, my son,’ he sternly rebuked Rathi Khan. ‘How many times must I remind you of its importance?’

  Casey thought it was time they left the family to it. After the abrupt departure of the outspoken Kamala, the rest of the family seemed shaken and subdued and unlikely to reveal anything more. They were entitled to some privacy, anyway. After uttering more condolences, Casey told the family they would let themselves out. He nodded to Catt and WPC Singh, They made for the front door and shut it quietly behind them.

  Chapter Five

  They had just reached the car when Dan Khan opened the front door and walked towards them, his small daughter still in his arms. ‘Wait, Inspector.’

  Casey stood by the car door. He wondered what further revelations he was about to hear. ‘Was there something else you wished to tell me, sir?’

  Now that he had Casey’s uninterrupted attention, Dan Khan didn’t seem sure what he wanted to say. After hugging his daughter and smoothing her hair, finally, with what must be unnatural diffidence, he said, ‘it was more something I wanted to ask.’ He paused, then rushed on as if he had to force the words out. ‘I wondered whether there was any possibility that my sister might have killed herself.’

  Casey shot a warning glance at Catt, who looked as if he might venture an opinion, before he asked, ‘Do you have any reason to think that she might have?’

  Dan Khan shrugged his elegantly-clad shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. You heard my little sister in there. She said Chandra was lonely. She wasn’t suited to living alone. She had just lost her husband and no matter what Kamala said, there was affection between Chandra and Magan. She was depressed about the future. And then, of course, with Leela crying so much she didn’t get much rest. All in all a recipe for desperation.’

  Casey wondered why, if this was the case, her mother or grandmother hadn’t babysat occasionally and given her a break. Why she had been left in such isolation with just a couple of visits from her parents. Apart from being at a difficult time of life, Mrs Khan Senior appeared healthy and fit enough to be able to look after one small child as did Mrs Rathi Khan and Devdan’s wife. He waited. He sensed there was more to come. He was right.

  Dan Khan, like his sister, had large, lustrous, thickly-lashed eyes. They gained a sheen of moisture as he told them, ‘My sister was a widow, Inspector. A widow with a baby daughter. I don’t expect you to understand what that means in our society, but we’re Hindus. It is not usual for Hindu widows to remarry. Maybe it’s better she’s dead. No-one else would want her now. My parents and grandparents like to believe she’s in Paradise. Perhaps they’re right. God knows, as a widow with a small daughter, Chandra was unlikely to find much Paradise down here. Think of the dowry my father would have to find, even if he could find a man willing to take them both on. He was trying to persuade my sister into an arranged marriage in India. With a much older man. It would have been much the best solution.’

  For Rathi Khan certainly, if not for Chandra, was Casey’s immediate thought.

  Dan Khan’s soulful gaze rested on his sweet-faced little daughter for a moment, as if seeing for the first time what might be her future. His cheek clenched and unclenched as if he didn’t much like what he saw. ‘My mother was very keen, too. It would have been much cheaper, you see, for her to marry someone in India. Much cheaper than here in England where the dowry is so high. They were worried that if my father didn’t arrange something that she might dishonour the family in some way with an unsuitable man.’

  Had she? Casey wondered. Was that partly what her mother-in-law’s accusations had been about? Had Dan Khan found out about this anonymous unsuitable man? Had the rest of her family? Her in-laws? He questioned Dan Khan some more.

  Bitterly, he denied it.

  Casey wasn’t sure he believed him. Dan Khan seemed strangely resentful of his sister, even though i
t was clear he had loved her. Had he been jealous of Chandra? Jealous of her sudden freedom and the opportunity it presented to find herself a lover more to her taste? In spite of her agreeing to an arranged marriage, from her photo and from what he had learned about her Casey was sure that Chandra Bansi had not been the usual meek and biddable Asian stereotype, so it struck him as possible that she had taken a lover.

  And if such a lover existed, he could be the real reason Rathi Khan had tried to keep the sisters apart. If Chandra had damaged her reputation by some unwise liaison, he wouldn’t want his younger daughter’s chances sullied by the connection. And as to what her family might do to Chandra...

  ‘And was your sister willing for your father to try to find another husband for her?’

  ‘No,’ Devdan admitted. ‘But it is possible she would have come round in time. She was aware that otherwise, she might face the rest of her life alone.’ Tautly, he added, ‘Strange she didn’t appreciate that there are worse fates than living alone. Of course, it’s different for a woman, but if I—’ he broke off. But Casey could guess at the rest - if I had gained my freedom from an unwanted partner, I’d count my blessings.

  Casey could see why Chandra might have been depressed. Poor girl, what a situation to have to face just after losing her husband; even a husband she perhaps hadn’t loved. Devdan Khan seemed angry that his sister had gained a freedom he had envied and hadn’t appreciated it. But if what her brother said was right and there had been no lover, would her admittedly bleak Hobson’s Choice of futures have depressed her enough for her to kill herself and take her baby with her? And in such a way.

  Then, of course, there was the alternative, that having dishonoured her family, they had helped her and her shame on a speedy journey to the next world.

  He studied Devdan Khan thoughtfully for a moment, then said, ‘These accusations of Chandra’s in-laws - what did they consist of exactly?’

  ‘I told you.’