Babel

10

T he warm fug, the smell of stale beer, the dimly lit browns and creams of the saloon bar of The Three Crowns were all reassuringly normal. Around the walls were old photographs of it in its heyday as a watering hole for the dockers, shipwrights and sailors who had once populated Shadwell Road. From her seat by the window Kathy could see out between the red velvet curtains to the evening crowds of turbaned and saried shoppers who had taken their place, but with rather less patronage for the pub.

Brock sipped his pint thoughtfully as he worked his way through the sheaf of staff biographies Haygill had supplied, each helpfully provided with a photograph in the top corner. He set aside six, which Kathy considered. There were two Pakistanis including Dr Darr, one Egyptian, two Iraqis and a Lebanese. All had impressive academic pedigrees from a mixture of Middle East, UK and US universities, and all had doctorates in the biological sciences with the exception of the Lebanese, who was the team’s systems analyst and chief computer programmer.

‘You see, what I’m thinking, Kathy… well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘That one or more of these might have put the gun in your wild young tearaway Ahmed’s eager little fist.’

Brock nodded. ‘Not a conspiracy, necessarily, but something like that. We have a tightly knit, somewhat paranoid group, devoted to their great cause and to Haygill, who is being unjustly harassed by some mad old coot who just won’t shut up. And maybe, at the end of another long, hard day, Haygill says, in that weary way of his, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” or words to that effect. Not seriously, just out of exasperation.’

‘So you’d be looking for someone with some connection to Shadwell Road.’

‘Yes. Someone who lives around here, or worships at the Twaqulia Mosque across the way perhaps. Someone who heard about Ahmed beating this pub up, and knows what a charge he’d get from a real mission. Something really important, part of a jihad, involving a real gun, brought in from the Middle East with some shipment of scientific equipment or something.’

‘Sounds plausible.’

‘Mm. Pity.’

‘What?’

‘I was just thinking that you would have been the ideal one to tackle these lads, Kathy.’

‘Me?’ Kathy looked with surprise at the pictures of the swarthy men scowling from the corners of the file sheets. ‘Surely a woman would be the last person to put onto them…’

‘No, no.’ Brock waved this aside, taking another swig of his bitter. ‘They admire strong women, Kathy. They’re disarmed by them. Think of Benazir Bhutto, Hanan Ashrawi… er… that rather attractive Turkish ex-Prime Minister. Did you know there are more women deputies in the Iranian parliament than women MPs at Westminster?’

‘Isn’t that a bit of a caricature? They’re disarmed by strong women?’

Brock smiled. ‘Well, the truth is, we all are.’

‘Wayne would be ideal, wouldn’t he?’

‘Special Branch don’t interview suspects for us, Kathy. And anyway, I don’t agree. I think these boys are far too smart to be taken in by Wayne’s hail-fellow, how’s-your-father patter, don’t you? I mean it might work with some dumb mug down the pub, but these blokes would see through Wayne right away.’

Kathy felt her face burning and reached quickly for her glass.

‘But anyway, no matter. It can’t be helped. We’ll find someone else. Do you want to give it to me now, or do you need another whisky first?’

Kathy blinked. ‘Pardon?’

‘Whatever it is you’ve got in that bag that you’ve been clutching like a live hand-grenade ever since we met.’

‘I wasn’t aware that…’

‘Oh, yes. Another whisky then.’ Brock got up and ambled over to the bar. He stood chatting to the barman for some time before he returned with her glass refilled. ‘He remembers Ahmed’s assault on the pub well. Bit of a lark, he thought, once they’d realised that the boy wasn’t armed.’

Kathy looked over at the huge character pulling a pint behind the bar, twice Ahmed’s body weight. It had taken three of them to subdue him.

‘More worrying is that he’s heard rumours that the coppers have arrested three Pakistani lads from the estate behind here for the murder of a white professor, and he says he’s had a few skinheads dropping in last night and this lunchtime, asking about it. He smells trouble. You’ve heard about the firebombing of the mosque in Birmingham overnight? We’d better warn the local boys here.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to give a combined briefing to Home Office and Foreign Office staff this evening. That’s why this is so important, Kathy.’ He tapped the papers Haygill had given them. ‘No matter what the reality, if anyone else was involved with Ahmed, it will be seen as a conspiracy, a deliberate attack by a group of Islamics on British lives and freedoms, and all hell will break loose. That’s what everyone on both sides is so worried about.’ He shook his head gloomily and took another sip before rousing himself. ‘So, better let me have it, eh?’

Kathy reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to give it to you just yet.’

Brock nodded, took out a neatly folded handkerchief to wipe some froth from his beard. ‘I have one just like it in my desk drawer in the office. It’s dated the fifth of September 1976. My marriage was breaking up at the time, things getting on top of me. I gave it to my boss, and he opened his desk drawer and took out another one just like it, dated 1957. He took mine and put it with his own in the drawer and said he’d keep them there together for a while, to see what happened. After a month I went and asked him for it back.’

Kathy stared down at the envelope in her fingers. ‘Suzanne told you?’

‘Absolutely not. No need. Goodness, Kathy, it would be unnatural if you hadn’t done something like that.’

‘But maybe…’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What I’m thinking is that I’ve lost my nerve, Brock.’

‘Hm.’ Brock scratched the side of his beard. ‘How did it feel, returning to Queen Anne’s Gate to see me this afternoon?’

‘Strange. I felt detached.’

‘Physically uncomfortable?’

Kathy shook her head.

‘And did the thought of interviewing these blokes tomorrow make you feel sick in the pit of your stomach?’

‘No.’

‘Kathy,’ he leaned forward intently and covered her hand with his big fist, ‘I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’ve seen people who have lost their nerve. Whatever it is you’ve lost, or temporarily displaced, it isn’t that, believe me.’ He glanced up and saw the publican looking at them. The man grinned and gave him a big wink. Brock hurriedly took his hand from Kathy’s and leaned back against the padded pub seat.

Kathy sat in silence for a while, head bowed. Then she said, ‘If I interview these men, I have a condition.’

‘I wasn’t serious about that, Kathy. I only raised it to see how you really felt. There are lots of people I can put onto it. You get back to Suzanne and take the rest of your leave. Decide what you want to do about that letter.’

‘Maybe it would be easier to do that if I was here. I mean, pacing up and down the Hastings sea front in January doesn’t necessarily give you a clearer perspective on anything.’

‘Well, that may be. What was the condition?’

‘I’d want PC Talbot with me.’

Brock’s face dropped. ‘I’d hoped I’d spent enough time on PC Talbot. You know the Federation’s getting quite militant about his case. Why him?’

‘Because he’s the most likely to recognise any of them if they’ve shown their face around Shadwell Road.’

‘That’s true.’ He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. ‘All right, Kathy, you’re on. We’ll get Special Branch to check these characters overnight, and you and PC Talbot can get started first thing in the morning, even if it means risking the first police strike since World War One.’

‘What’s wrong with now?’ Kathy said, snapping the clasp on her shoulder bag. ‘According to the list they gave you, most of these men are living in hostel accommodation on the UCLE campus. We might get to them all tonight, while Wayne does his stuff on their past records.’

‘What about PC Talbot?’ Brock said, looking worried as he tried to work out which point in the hierarchy to attack first.

‘Can we get him a baby-sitter? His wife’s on nights at the hospital. I’m sure I could talk him into coming out with me for an evening if we can take care of his kid.’

Brock grinned with relief. ‘Kathy, I don’t know what I did without you. Anything else?’

‘Well, if these blokes are as touchy as they sounded over the Christmas e-mail, and if they are involved in some way, we’re going to need back-up, maybe armed, and on campus.’

‘Yes. As discreet as possible.’ He drained his glass and got to his feet, slipping Kathy’s envelope into his pocket. ‘A race riot and a police strike. Now that would be something for one night. I hope you’re not going to make me regret this, Kathy.’

She swallowed her whisky. ‘Not losing your nerve, are you, Brock?’

They started with Dr Tahir Darr, the senior researcher of the team, and the oldest. He was still working in one of the laboratories in the CAB-Tech building when they arrived, and he recognised Kathy from their earlier meeting. He glanced dismissively at Greg Talbot, who stood back, saying nothing, looking very junior and inoffensive out of uniform, and clearly Darr felt unthreatened as Kathy worked through the first set of questions she’d prepared. He’d been with Professor Haygill for over three years now, and when he talked of the team ‘we’ had built up, the work ‘we’ were engaged in, he was referring to Haygill and himself as the prime movers of CAB-Tech.

It was only when she went on to more personal matters that he began to look at her more quizzically and measure his answers more carefully. Yes, he was a practising Muslim, and attended the East London Mosque in the Whitechapel Road, the oldest in London, and why was that any concern of hers? Kathy explained that, with all the loose and inflammatory speculation recently concerning the Springer case, the police were anxious to be able to protect people who might come under unjustified attention, especially those on campus.

‘But isn’t that the excuse that police have always used, for collecting dossiers on everyone?’ Darr exclaimed, with a ferocious flash of his brilliant white teeth. ‘You’re doing it for our own protection! How very kind!’

‘My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Brock, whom you met, discussed this with your boss, Professor Haygill, very carefully this afternoon,’ Kathy smiled back, playing what she assumed to be her best card. ‘Professor Haygill was in complete agreement, in fact very insistent, that we speak to you. But if there’s any question you’d feel uncomfortable about answering, then please don’t.’

‘Oh, but then I’m being uncooperative, which is only a small step down from being a trouble-maker, no?’

Kathy struggled on, mentally striking off her list the questions she’d prepared on the Christmas e-mail saga. Yes, Dr Darr had been aware of Professor Springer’s attacks on Professor Haygill. Springer was a very foolish, irrational old man who had lost touch with the realities of life, quite beneath contempt, more to be pitied. No, he couldn’t recall the CAB-Tech team ever discussing Springer before the murder, why would they? He may have raised the matter with Professor Haygill at some stage, he wasn’t sure, but Professor Haygill had no wish to talk of such foolishness. At the time of Springer’s death he, along with all the other members of the team, was working here in the laboratories, naturally. And he had no theories to explain why anyone should want to kill the old man.

At the end of it, Kathy felt as tense as if she’d been stepping through a minefield, though Darr seemed rather pleased. ‘Have I satisfied you, Sergeant?’ he demanded, beaming.

‘I believe so. Do you know where I can find the other members of the team, Doctor?’

Darr’s good humour abruptly evaporated. ‘The others? But I have spoken for everyone. It will not be necessary for you to interview them. I cannot agree to it.’

‘Professor Haygill was quite specific, Dr Darr. We have to speak to everyone. You could talk to him if you want to check.’

After a tense little negotiation Darr relented. The two Iraqis were working in another lab on the floor below. The others he wasn’t sure about. As they made their way there they marvelled at the equipment they passed, ranks and batteries of gleaming machines stretching away in all directions, all looking new and well maintained. Greg Talbot compared it to the dismal state of the technology available at Shadwell Road police station.

‘Ah, but you’re not editing the book of life, Greg,’ Kathy said. ‘You’re just trying to stop it nicking cars.’

Talbot hadn’t recognised any of the photographs on the staff information sheets, but they had made an arrangement that he would pull out the purple handkerchief he carried and blow his nose if he thought he knew them when they were interviewed, and he confirmed that he’d never seen Darr before. When they found the two Iraqis the purple handkerchief remained in his pocket. They had none of the confidence and bluster of the senior researcher, and Kathy wondered what experiences they’d had with police in the past as each in turn answered her in low monosyllables, eyes on the floor. They also worshipped at the East London Mosque and denied having heard of Springer before his death.

They moved on, leaving the warmth of the CAB-Tech building and hurrying through the cold night to the extreme east end of the campus developments, where a series of serrated-roofed zigzag blocks along the waterfront provided dormitory accommodation.

‘They’re like monks,’ Kathy muttered as they followed the colonnade behind Block A towards Block C. ‘Haygill’s team. They’re all either single or they’ve left their families behind. They toil by day in the labs and retire at night to their cells to pray.’

The stairwells and corridors were spartan, clean and free of graffiti and the two police met no one, although from time to time they would hear the sounds of music or a TV behind a closed door, and smell cooking. The Lebanese computer expert answered their knock at room C-210 and Kathy knew as soon as she registered his face, and even before Greg Talbot started loudly blowing his nose, that he was the one.

Afterwards she tried to work out how she had been so certain. He had been warned of their coming, that was obvious, and no doubt Darr had been on the phone to all of them as soon as they’d left his lab. But it wasn’t that he had mentally composed himself for their arrival. It was something to do with the look and body tension beneath the composure, a mixture of fright and exhilaration and relief, as if he’d been preparing himself for much longer than the half hour Darr would have given him for this first bold stare into the eyes of his fate. It radiated from him and she felt it instantaneously, and knew, as soon as she met his eyes and smiled at him, that he knew she had picked it up.

Without a word he stepped back into the room to let them in. A monk’s cell it was, Kathy thought, with barely enough possessions to fill a small suitcase, and cold, as if to test his resolve and his faith.

‘Mr Khadra?’ Kathy asked, continuing to smile at him. ‘Mr Abu Khadra?’

He was an extremely attractive young man, she thought, lean and svelte like a colt, with delicate, sensitive features and large dark eyes. His hair was cut short, his ears tight against his skull emphasising the impression of intense alertness, and he was wearing a white T-shirt, black jeans and a pair of old trainers, once white but now worn and grey. Behind him, on a small wooden table, a book lay open.

He answered her questions with barely more words than the Iraqis had used, but with a calm that brought back to Kathy the word that the student Briony Kidd had used about Max Springer, ‘serene’.

He went to mosque in Shadwell Road, he said, and Kathy wasn’t in the least surprised. She was about to ask him if he’d ever met a Pakistani boy there, by the name of Ahmed Sharif, when her phone began to ring. She frowned with annoyance and turned away to answer it. It was Brock, sounding tense and short of time. She excused herself and went out into the deserted corridor.

‘Kathy, how far have you got?’

‘We’re on number four, the Lebanese.’

‘Anything?’

‘This one’s promising. Definitely a possible.’ She was conscious of her voice sounding loud in the empty corridor.

‘Nothing more concrete?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, we’ve got a problem. Just had a call from Haygill. Dr Darr’s been onto him, complaining that your questions are personal and intrusive and insulting to their faith, and now Haygill’s denying that he gave us permission to interview his staff individually. Says he’d meant for him to approve the questions first and to be present. Darr’s obviously put the wind up him, told him he’s got another Christmas e-mail situation on his hands, and he says he’ll get the University President to kick us off the campus if we don’t stop what we’re doing immediately and wait for him to come over to mediate.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘He’s at home in Enfield, in his pyjamas. Darr caught him just as he was going to bed, exhausted from his trip. He’s very agitated and wanted us to leave it until morning. When I refused he said I’d have to meet him at the university to negotiate with him, but I’m tied up with this bloody meeting for at least another half hour.’

‘What do I do?’

‘Leave.’

‘Can I take this one with me? I think…’

‘Definitely not. If Haygill gets too stroppy we’ll go back in with warrants, but for the moment we’ll do it his way. I promised him you two would get off the campus right away.’

Kathy returned to room C-210 where Abu Khadra and Greg Talbot were standing exactly where she had left them, in silence. She gave the Arab a big warm smile. ‘Well, that’ll be all, Mr Khadra. We’ll leave you in peace now.’

‘You’re going?’ He looked mystified.

‘Yes, we’re quite satisfied, thank you.’ Her eyes met his and she knew immediately that he didn’t believe it for a minute. ‘If I have forgotten anything, will you be staying here for the rest of the evening?’

He nodded, still mystified, and they left. When Greg started to say something outside in the corridor she put a finger to her lips and led him away. Not until they were well clear of the building did she explain what had happened.

‘That’s too bad,’ he said, ‘I was beginning to enjoy it. That last one was promising, I reckon. I know I’ve seen him around.’

Kathy nodded agreement. More than promising, she thought, trying to put aside her sense of misgiving. She wondered how Wayne O’Brien’s research was going, but couldn’t reach him on her phone and left a message. Then she and Greg bought some fish and chips and settled down in her car beneath the track of the Docklands Light Rail to wait for Brock’s instructions.

They got Brock’s call to meet him at Haygill’s office at 8:15 p.m., sooner than Kathy had expected. Darr had adopted a defensive position behind the director’s right side, and scowled at them as they entered the room. His boss looked grey and exhausted, and it was this that got things moving. Once the initial conciliatory sentiments had been expressed, Haygill and Brock quickly agreed that they should jointly witness the remaining interviews, and when Darr began to repeat all his grounds for objecting to Kathy’s questions Haygill silenced him by asking him to get Abu Khadra.

While they waited, Brock passed Kathy a note. She opened it and read the fax, from Wayne O’Brien to Brock.

‘One result only so far. Abu Khadra was arrested by Israeli army in south Lebanon under emergency powers in 1989. Then aged fifteen years. Held for twenty-one days. No further record.’

Darr returned shortly to say that Abu wasn’t answering his phone, and that he’d sent the two Iraqis over to his room to fetch him. They rang back a few minutes later with the news that there was a light on in C-210 but the door was locked and there was no response to their knocks.

‘He’s probably just popped out to visit someone,’ Darr suggested huffily, but Kathy knew otherwise and Brock saw the look on her face and said quietly to Haygill, ‘Maybe it would be wise to go over there, and get security to meet us there with a key. What do you think?’

For a moment Haygill looked confused and uncomprehending, then Brock’s tone registered and anxiety brought him to his feet. ‘Yes.. . Yes, you’re right.’

They hurried across the windswept campus, heels clattering on the wet concrete paving slabs, to find the corridor to room C-210 now filled with people. Other CAB-Tech team members had joined the Iraqis, and a number of residents had been attracted out of their rooms by their shouts and the banging on Abu’s door. Two of Mr Truck’s security men were there too, bulky in thickly padded jackets and military style caps. Haygill exchanged a few terse words with them, and the gathering fell silent as one of them pulled out a bunch of keys.

Whatever worse fears the spectators might have had didn’t just evaporate when the door swung open and they saw into the empty room, for although there was no Abu lying unconscious on the little bed or slumped with a rope around his neck, there was still something immediately disconcerting about the room’s bareness which gave an almost supernatural dimension to his vanishing. There were no postcards on the pinboard, no creases on the bedcover, and no curtains on the window to hide the sinister blackness of the river beyond. Only the book lying open on the bare table confirmed that he had once been there.

Brock stepped forward to examine it. No one else seemed inclined to follow him into the room. After a moment he called back over his shoulder, ‘Dr Darr. Do you or one of your colleagues read Arabic?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Darr declared, and waved one of the Iraqis to step with him to Brock’s side.

‘It is the Qur’an, sir.’

‘Yes. He’s underlined one of the verses, here. What does it say?’

The Iraqi stooped to read, then straightened and stared meaningfully at Darr and murmured something. Darr whispered in return, then took a deep breath.

‘It concerns the fate of martyrs, sir,’ he said at last, reluctantly, clinging to the formal mode of address like a shield.

‘Could you translate it, please?’

Darr muttered to the Iraqi, who began to recite.

‘‘‘Don’t think that those who are slain in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive and in the presence of their Lord, who looks after them and heaps gifts upon them. They are happy that those they have left behind suffer neither fear nor grief. They rejoice in Allah’s grace and bounty…’’’

A murmuring broke out among the people in the corridor as they picked this up, and phrases were repeated for those who hadn’t heard. Some men began to press forward into the room to see the book for themselves. Brock spoke to the security guards, asking them to clear the crowd, which they began to try to do, with some difficulty. He turned to Darr and the Iraqi again. ‘Where could he have gone?’ he demanded.

They shook their heads. Abu was always the outsider in the team, Darr explained, because of his work, in computers rather than the science. He worked to a different pattern, a different timetable. He attended a different mosque.

‘In Shadwell Road? Why there? Did he know people there? Friends?’

They shook their heads, uncertain.

‘’Ang on.’ PC Talbot spoke up. ‘I’ve got ’im now. He drove a motorbike, didn’t he? A little yellow Yamaha.’

They nodded, yes. His pride and joy.

‘Yeah, I can picture ’im now. With a black helmet. I’ve seen ’im down the Road a lot. I thought he lived there.’

Brock turned to Haygill, who was hovering just inside the door to the room as if he wanted to be anywhere but there. ‘Anything you can add, Professor?’

The scientist cleared his throat. ‘Er… Excellent worker. Good computer people are like hen’s teeth these days, and Abu is outstanding. A brilliant young man. He’s had offers from other places, but he’s stayed with us. Believes in the work.’

‘Any relatives in this country?’

‘Not to my knowledge. His family is all in Lebanon, I understand. He went to the Gulf to study. University of Qatar.’

That seemed to be all that they knew of Abu, or were prepared to tell, and Brock asked them to leave while he and Kathy carried out a search of the room. Its emptiness extended into all its corners, no hangers in the wardrobe, no fluff beneath the bed.

‘I don’t think he did live here,’ Kathy said finally. ‘He didn’t have enough time to clean it out this thoroughly.’

Only the book seemed to bear any signs of vital human life, its pages interleaved with small fragments of Abu’s past, an old postcard of the Roman ruins at Ba’albek in the Beqa’a Valley of Lebanon, some letters in spidery Arabic, some photographs, an elderly smiling woman wearing traditional headdress, a family group at a table, two little girls, a middle-aged European.

‘Bloody hell,’ Brock said, lifting up the last picture for Kathy to see.

It had been cut from a glossy printed page, and the face was younger by ten or fifteen years, the unruly bush of hair thicker and darker, the face plumper, but it was certainly him.

‘Springer?’ Kathy asked.

‘Springer,’ Brock nodded. ‘Our victim.’

He turned the paper over but the back was blank.

‘Looks like it’s come from the dust-cover of a book,’ Brock suggested. ‘His autobiography maybe.’

He put the picture back between the leaves and stared at Kathy. ‘The book of his life.’