If Snow Hadn't Fallen (a Lacey Flint short story)

another of the five suspects, who lived near by.
    Emma had introduced me, as we’d agreed, as her assistant, without giving my name. My role was to observe, make notes and keep as quiet as possible. If these three men were guilty, they and I had had a very close encounter in the park that night. I wanted to get a closer look, to hear their voices, see if anything rang a bell. More importantly, I was keeping a sharp lookout for any sign that they recognized me. So far as I could tell, there had been nothing from either Bailey brother. They’d glanced at me and then turned their attention to Emma. Fisher, though, was a different story. He was watching me.
    If we learned anything today, Emma would pass it on to Tulloch. Her reward, if anything came of it, would be a story.
    ‘I’m looking into the possibility that you were set up,’ said Emma, as the Bailey boys fidgeted, scratched and sniffed. Fisher kept his eyes on me and on the notepad on my lap. ‘Due to pressure to meet targets, the Met have been keeping lists of young white men believed to have been involved in racial incidents in the past.’
    Robert Bailey pulled his face into something between a sneer and a sulk.
    ‘We think it’s quite likely,’ Emma went on, ‘that when something more serious occurs, the Met go through the list, find faces that seem to fit and tailor the facts to achieve an early result.’
    It was complete nonsense, but we needed these three to trust us. The younger Bailey brother enthusiastically agreed that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Emma was completely right and that he’d long suspected as much himself. Of course, he didn’t use quite those words.
    Fisher was still watching me. In fairness, though, he seemed more interested in what I was writing than in my face.
    ‘I just need a bit of background to start with,’ said Emma. ‘You both live here with Mrs Bailey and two younger brothers. Any sisters?’
    We planned to ask about all the boys’ families in order to identify any young women. Back at the office, I’d put faces to names and see if any of the gang’s relatives were likely candidates for my woman in black. It took a while, because all the men really wanted to do was complain about police ignorance, and the Paki git who’d shopped them when they’d been nowhere near the effing park. After a bit of prompting, though, we found out that between them the gang had four sisters. I wrote down their names and ages.
    ‘I understand that young white women in this area receive a lot of unwanted attention from Asian men,’ said Emma, who was sticking to her script perfectly. ‘That they can be seen as easy targets.’
    With an impressive number of expletives, Robert Bailey agreed that young white women were often seen as easy pickings by men from Asia and the Middle East.
    ‘What about Aamir Chowdhury?’ asked Emma. ‘Did any of the women you know mention that he’d made a particular nuisance of himself?’
    For the first time, the men seemed less sure of themselves. The Bailey brothers looked at each other. Fisher dropped his eyes to the carpet.
    ‘Did he bother any of your sisters?’ I asked, unable to keep quiet any longer. All three looked directly at me. Fisher’s eyes narrowed.
    ‘Never had no hassle like that with him,’ said Robert Bailey, after a moment.
    ‘He filed several complaints against the five of you,’ said Emma. ‘For bothering him at home and for harassment of Mr Karim. And he was a witness in a shoplifting incident that you were involved in about a year ago.’
    ‘Fucking fix,’ muttered Fisher.
    ‘Just a bit of banter, innit?’ said Paul. ‘Never meant nuffink by it.’
    According to the reports, the ‘bit of banter’ had included threatening and abusive racial taunts, obscene graffiti on property and broken windows. Aamir’s car tyres had been slashed several times and the paintwork of his car scratched.
    But you heard of similar problems all over London. They rarely ended in the extreme violence that Aamir had suffered.
    ‘We’ve heard a rumour that Aamir was seeing a white girl,’ I said. ‘Possibly even a married woman, and that that was the reason behind the attack. Did you ever hear anything like that?’
    Fisher and the younger Bailey stared at me. Robert shook his head.
    ‘Any of you married?’ I asked, although I knew that none of the five were. ‘What about long-term girlfriends? Might he have been bothering one of them?’
    ‘I seen you somewhere