Michael Fowler - Cold Death

“My boyfriend did this with drain cleaning fluid — a powerful acid.” She re-covered her face. “This ended my career. You see I was a TV news journalist working in London — an in-front of camera reporter.” She gave them an awkward smile.

“I’ll not bog you down with the details because I know you’re here on other matters but it will give you an awareness of where I am coming from. The man who did this; my boyfriend, was chosen for me by my parents. He came from my parents village in Pakistan; he was from a family who had been very good friends with them. My father and his father had been business partners before my parents came to live here. I quickly discovered that his values and culture were entrenched in something I didn’t really understand and I knew it wasn’t going to work within weeks of meeting him. Firstly he wanted me to pack in my job. He started to accuse me of flirting with my colleagues. After nine months I told him I had taken enough and told him I wouldn’t be going through with the marriage. I left him one night whilst he was at work and went to stay with a friend — another reporter. He started pestering me with phone calls threatening me so I changed my number. Then he’d turn up at work and security had to intervene. Anyway one night we were celebrating a colleague’s birthday in a bar one evening and he turned up. He started accusing me of having an affair and then just threw the cleaning fluid in my face. Fortunately some quick thinking by my friends prevented me from serious injury — they poured drink all over me and then used water from behind the bar, but it still left me with this.” She smoothed a finger over the scar. “The police arrested him but he was given bail and fled back to Pakistan — to his family. He’s still on the run out there.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I continued my career as a journalist but it was all desk work. My editors didn’t say as much but I realised my career in front of the camera was over and so I persuaded the company to make me redundant and I used the money to come up here where no one knew me and set this place up, so that I could help protect other Asian women from what happened to me.”

“And have you been able to help many?” asked Grace.

“Hundreds over the years. Word of mouth and contacts through solicitors have made this a very popular place for women to turn their lives around.”

“And I gather from what you’ve told Zita that you believe our victim contacted you for help and had made arrangements to come here but never turned up and also that you haven’t been able to get hold of her since?” Hunter said.

“That’s right. I’ve tried her mobile several times since our meeting and there’s no answer. In fact I rang it as late as yesterday and now it appears to be dead. Not only that, but I saw the news the other evening, and the reconstructed face you showed looked exactly like the girl who came to me for help. When we met she called herself Samia.”

Hunter and Grace looked at one another. Grace opened up her folder and slid out an A4 size colour copy of the facial reconstruction. She also took out copies of Samia’s photographs from her Facebook site. She slipped them across the coffee table to where Nahida had a better view.

“Is this the girl you met?” asked Grace.

She lined up each of the photographs and picked up one, which showed Samia holding up a drink to camera. She scrutinised it for just a few seconds before setting it back on the table. She tapped the photograph and raised her eyes to fix Grace. “This is definitely the Samia I met and spoke with.”

“When did she come here?”

“Oh she never came here at all. She originally left a message on our answer machine and left her mobile number. It would have been a good six months or so ago now. I arranged to meet up with her at a coffee place at Meadowhall. It’s a place I always use. It’s public and it’s busy. I also need to suss out the people I’m meeting with before they find out where we are. You wouldn’t believe the things the husbands and parents do to try and track down the girls who flee here. I have had people posing as police officers, social workers, solicitors. You name it I’ve had to deal with it.” Nahida leaned forward clasping her hands intently. “I suppose my job is a little bit like yours when I meet up with the people who request my help. I have to sort out who is genuine and who is not.”

Hunter knew exactly where she was coming from. He pursed his lips and nodded.

“Can you remember what she said to you?” continued Grace.

“Not word for word but I can give you the gist of our conversation.” She settled herself back. “She told me she wanted to get away from her parents but needed somewhere she could hide for a while — where she couldn’t be found, whilst she sorted somewhere permanent to go. She said her parents were putting pressure on her to go out to Pakistan to marry a cousin out there and that she didn’t want to go. I told her that I could help her out with that. Samia told me that she was being constantly watched since she had finished University; that her parents wanted to know virtually her every move. She also told me that she felt she was being followed and mentioned two cousins. At our first meeting she also gave me details of other problems she had encountered because of a relationship with a young doctor. At the end of that meeting I gave her a number of options which included talking to the police as well as meeting me again. She felt she couldn’t go to the police because she didn’t really want to get any of her family into trouble. She felt it would just make things worse for her. She really just wanted to get away.”

“Did you meet again?”

“We did but that didn’t go to plan. She contacted me a couple of times from her mobile and told me she couldn’t get away without anyone knowing. Then right out of the blue about six weeks ago Samia rang me. She said she was on a train coming to Meadowhall and asked if I could meet her again at the coffee place just by Marks and Spencers. She was in a bit of a state when I finally got there. She was agitated, looking all around her. I have to say she made me nervous even though I’ve been involved in so many of these. I was really glad that there were a lot of people around us. She told me she’d managed to sneak out of the flat whilst her father was at the warehouse and she’d brought some things for me to store for her until she could get everything together so she could leave. I could see she was in one hell of a state and I did suggest she should come with me there and then. I could arrange with the police to pick up her other bits she needed later, but she didn’t want anyone else to be involved, especially not the police. I didn’t want to leave her to do that but she said everything would be okay; she was confident she could finish getting together the last of her things. And in a couple of days, she said, she’d contact me and arrange to be picked up.”

“Can you remember when that was exactly?”

“It will be in my diary.”

She pushed herself up out of the seat and left the room, but she was only gone a few minutes before she returned carrying a red knapsack in one hand and a large journal in the other. She set the knapsack down on the coffee table, covering the photographs of Samia, then she sat back in the chair, crossing her legs again and flicked open her diary across one thigh. Following a roving finger she drifted her eyes over several pages checking each one before moving onto the next. After a couple of minutes she paused and stabbed at a page. “It was Monday the twenty-eighth of July.” She announced looking across at Hunter and Grace. “She was already at the coffee shop waiting for me.”

Hunter gazed across to Grace and caught her eye. He knew from the briefing two days previously that her friends had last reported speaking with her the day after — the twenty-ninth of July. Since that day on no one had heard from Samia.