Babel

16

K athy felt a new energy as she drove back to the women’s refuge that night, as if the discovery of the money under Nargis’ mattress had awakened some instinct for the hunt that had been missing until then. Perhaps it was the amount of the cash, thirty thousand as in thirty pieces of silver, that seemed so telling, but for the first time she felt a sense of reality about the crime and their dead suspect, as strong as if they had found the gun rather than money in the pouch. In fact more so, because the gun would have simply sealed Abu’s guilt and finished the story, whereas the money opened new questions and trails. About Nargis, for example, the beautiful, innocent Juliet mourning her killer Romeo. Even if she hadn’t pried into Abu’s belongings when he was alive, he had been dead now for ten days and it seemed inconceivable she hadn’t known that she was sleeping on all that cash. Kathy just hoped she could find out before the CIB caught up with her.

Nargis and Briony were washing up some plates in the kitchen when Kathy arrived. She told them that she had to ask Nargis a few additional questions, and explained that she would have to do it in the formal setting of the local police station, where a proper record of their interview could be made. Briony began to object that her friend had gone through enough that day, but Nargis said it was OK. She seemed quite calm and answered Kathy’s questions about the refuge in her soft little voice as they drove.

Since Nargis was still a juvenile, Kathy had arranged for a social worker to be present for the interview, and when the three of them were seated in the small interview room, Kathy cautioned the girl and explained her rights, then began to ask her about her relationship with Abu.

‘You first met him how long ago, Nargis?’

‘A year ago, this time last year.’

‘And you became close friends?’

‘We went out together.’

‘You were his girlfriend?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then, six months ago, your father sent you overseas to be married, and when you returned last October you ran away from your home and went to live in a room in the house of Mr Qasim Ali in Chandler’s Yard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have any money then?’

A crease appeared between Nargis’ dark eyebrows at this question. ‘No. Mr Ali’s family took pity on me. They helped me.’

‘And you began to see Abu Khadra again? When was that?’

‘Yes, soon after I arrived there.’

‘You became lovers?’

Nargis looked startled, glanced at the social worker, then down at her lap and didn’t answer. You’re right, Kathy thought, tell me to mind my own business.

‘What I mean is, Nargis, that you couldn’t go outside for fear of your family, and so Abu came and spent time with you. A lot of time.’

She gave a meek little shrug.

‘In fact, he pretty well lived with you in Mr Ali’s house, didn’t he?’

Again she said nothing, and Kathy went on, ‘So you were very close. Did he tell you about what he had to do? To kill Professor Springer?’

‘No!’ The girl shook her head firmly. ‘Never. I don’t believe he did that.’ Yet the words lacked force.

‘But he did, Nargis. There’s very strong scientific evidence. And since Abu died, you must have thought about that a lot, haven’t you? About what signs he gave? For instance, do you know where he was that afternoon that Springer was killed? Just over two weeks ago, the Thursday. You must have thought back to that day.’

Nargis’ eyes slipped away. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly at last. ‘He came home that evening…’

‘To Chandler’s Yard?’

‘Yes, at about eight. He said he’d been working, at the university.’

‘Didn’t he seem agitated, worked up about something?’

She didn’t reply, head bowed to her hands clutched over her tummy, and Kathy was again struck how self-possessed she was, as if she had determined to let nothing further intrude on her private meditation with her unborn child.

‘You see, I’m wondering if someone forced Abu to do this terrible thing, Nargis.’

‘How could they?’ she said simply.

‘Perhaps he needed money for something?’

Again Nargis seemed to focus at mention of the word. ‘Money? No, he had a good job.’

‘He didn’t seem anxious at around that time? Under stress? Did he talk about other people? People at his work, perhaps? Or new people he’d met?’

But Nargis only shrugged and said nothing. Kathy began to feel that she was wasting her time against this implacable artlessness.

‘Where did he keep his gun?’

‘I never saw a gun.’

‘What about the money?’

‘The money?’ Nargis’ head came up and she stared at Kathy, fully engaged.

‘Yes, Nargis. The money under the mattress in your room.’

‘You’ve been in my room?’ She seemed more astonished than upset.

‘Yes.’

‘That money belongs to my baby and me. Abu gave it to us.’

‘When did he do that?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘About… about two weeks ago.’

‘When exactly?’

‘I don’t know. He just showed it to me one evening and said that it was for me and the baby, if anything should happen to him.’

‘“If anything should happen to him”? You must have thought that was very strange, didn’t you? Didn’t you ask him what he meant?’

‘No.’

‘Where did he get it from?’

‘I don’t know. It was his.’

‘It’s a lot of cash.’

‘Thirty thousand pounds.’ Then she added fiercely, ‘You’d better not have taken any. He said it was for the baby and me.’

Kathy eventually left her in the care of the social worker who wanted to talk to her about her benefit entitlements, and returned home. There were two messages on her answering machine. One was from Tina the travel agent, sounding bright and cheerful; the other, guarded and ominous, was from an inspector of the Metropolitan Police Complaints Investigation Bureau, CIB2. Both asked her to return their call. Despite having anticipated it for the past several hours, Kathy still found her hand trembling when she pressed the button to replay the second message. Together, the two calls seemed to sum up her choices, the fork in the road. She had a bath, went to bed, and didn’t sleep.

When she reported to Queen Anne’s Gate the next morning she discovered that the CIB inspector had left a message there too. She found an empty room, and without putting on the light, sat at the unfamiliar desk and stared at the phone. Then she realised that she was behaving as if she were guilty, hiding herself away as if deserving to be separated from the others. So she got up and returned to the office she shared with Bren and another detective, and picked up her phone.

The inspector informed her curtly that a serious complaint had been made against her by a member of the public, a Mr Sanjeev Manzoor; that she was not under any circumstances to approach Mr Manzoor or any member of his family or acquaintances; and that she should consider herself suspended from duty until a preliminary interview had been held some time in the following week, to which she would be entitled to bring one adviser.

She cleared her throat and said, ‘Superintendent Russell has asked me to make a report on a related matter at a case conference he’s holding this morning, sir. May I attend that?’

The inspector considered this, asked her a couple of questions, then agreed.

Again that trembling hand when she replaced the receiver. She swore softly under her breath and took some deep breaths. She became aware that Bren and the other man, a DC on secondment from SO8, were looking questioningly at her.

‘CIB,’ she said.

‘Shit!’ Bren breathed.

‘Shit!’ the DC echoed.

‘They didn’t take long. What’d they say?’ Bren asked.

Kathy explained and both men swore again. It seemed to be the only adequate word. Kathy found their anxious sympathy even more scary than the CIB inspector’s curtness.

‘This happened to one of our blokes last year,’ the DC said. ‘He’s still on suspension, eight months later.’

‘We had a DI suspended eighteen months,’ Bren said gloomily.

Kathy was wishing she’d made the call from the empty office. Then Brock put his head round the door to check they were all available for the conference, and Bren, nodding at Kathy as at someone who’d just been diagnosed with something terminal, said, ‘CIB, chief.’

‘Oh, they’ve been in touch already have they, Kathy? That was quick. What’s the story?’

She repeated it and he nodded, point by point.

‘Just the usual, then.’ He didn’t seem particularly dismayed.

‘We were saying, boss,’ the DC chipped in, ‘how long the process takes. What do you reckon?’

‘Opening a book on it, are we?’ Brock asked. ‘Put me down for a fiver. Let’s see…’ He rubbed his beard contemplatively, then took out his wallet and pulled out a note. ‘Forty-eight hours. No, make it twenty-four. Five quid says they’ll have dropped it within twenty-four hours.’ He winked at Kathy and limped out of the room.

The DC shook his head sadly. ‘Got to hand it to him, though, haven’t you, Bren? He knows how to do the right thing. For morale and that. That’s leadership, that is.’

Kathy left them to work out their own doom-ridden forecasts and went back to the empty room to nurse her morale and make her second phone call in private. Tina had exciting news, she said. She’d heard of a group that had just lost an assistant tour guide, and were looking for a replacement at short notice. If Kathy had a current passport and could get leave, she could have two weeks in the tropics seeing how the system worked, all expenses paid.

Kathy cupped her forehead in her hand, trying to come to terms with this. She thanked Tina but explained that she was caught up in something where she’d have to be available over the next few weeks.

‘Oh, too bad. I thought it’d be right up your street. Can’t you just tell them to take a jump? I mean, if you’re getting out anyway?’

‘I really appreciate it, Tina. I’m sorry, it’s a legal thing. I can’t get out of it.’

Was that really true? She sat for a while after she rang off, her head in her hands, wondering if she was thinking straight.

The case conference was held in a meeting room in the main New Scotland Yard building on Victoria Street. Most of the people there were from Superintendent Russell’s team, with the addition of half a dozen of Brock’s. Russell began with the announcement that a decision had been made at senior level that the Springer/Khadra inquiry would be split between two groups, under his general direction. One, led by Brock, would focus on the murder of Springer, and the other, comprising Russell’s core team, would continue with the case against the skinheads involved in Abu’s murder. Everyone seemed pleased with this decision, especially Russell’s team, whose investigations had revealed an orchestrated campaign of actions by a number of linked right-wing groups culminating in the Khadra murder, and there was optimism that these investigations would trap a number of leading neo-Nazis in conspiracy if not murder charges.

After hearing a detailed summary of these ramifications, illustrated by complicated diagrams prepared by Special and Criminal Intelligence Branches tracing a web of extremist associations in the Greater London area and further afield, Brock presented a summary of the Springer case that seemed very modest in comparison. The outstanding question really, he said, was whether Khadra had acted alone in killing Springer, or whether some wider conspiracy was involved. Had he been compelled or induced or supported in any way? Where had the gun come from, or the money? And was it possible to clarify his motive, or the choice of victim? There was little discussion at the end of this, and Kathy had the impression that, like the media which was now focusing exclusively on the skinhead angle, most of the police were no longer much interested in why Max Springer had died.

When the meeting broke up Brock came over to Kathy and asked if she was free for lunch. She took this to be another little morale-boosting gesture, and said he didn’t need to worry, if he had more important things to do.

‘No, no,’ he waved that aside. ‘This is work, Kathy.’

They walked a couple of blocks down Victoria Street and turned off, coming to an Italian restaurant favoured, Kathy knew, by lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service. Inside the climate was suddenly hot and crowded and noisy, and they were shown to a table at the back of the room, squeezing between diners most of whom seemed to know Brock, to where a man sat alone, nursing a glass of white wine. They shook hands, and Brock introduced Reggie Grice, a man of dignified bearing, well barbered silver hair and a beautifully cut charcoal grey suit.

‘Reggie’s one of our scientists,’ Brock explained. ‘He used to be a sort of “Q” for MI6, didn’t you, Reggie, brewing untraceable poisons and so on.’

Reggie screwed up his nose with distaste. ‘ Please, Brock. You know I hate to dwell in the past.’ He cast an imperious gaze across the restaurant. ‘Why have I never been here before? It seems rather jolly. They can’t be coppers, surely?’

‘They’re lawyers, Reggie.’

‘Oh, well, that answers both questions.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘When you’ve been divorced as often as I have, you tend to avoid the haunts of lawyers.’

‘I heard there was a new Mrs Grice in the offing, Reggie. Is that true?’

‘Pure rumour and speculation. And what about you? You look as if someone’s been giving you a hell of a battering.’ He peered at the traces of bruises on Brock’s face, then looked with interest at Kathy.

Brock picked up the menu and said, ‘I can recommend the veal.’

Reggie inclined his head to Kathy. ‘Brock is so secretive, Kathy. I wonder if you and I could get together and swap information on the old goat.’

‘I should warn you,’ Brock murmured, ‘that she’s currently on suspension for beating up a member of the public with her Asp.’

Reggie looked entranced. ‘You hit someone with a snake? How perfectly splendid. Doesn’t that make her a sort of Cleopatra to your Mark Anthony, I wonder, Brock?’

It gradually transpired that Reggie Grice was no longer a practising scientist, but rather, in the manner of poacher turned gamekeeper, chaired various Home Office committees concerned with the regulation of scientific and medical research.

‘And you want to know more about Richard Haygill and CAB-Tech?’ he said, consulting the menu. ‘I’ve been following the case with great interest, of course. It was one of his boys who bumped off the mad philosopher Springer, wasn’t it?’

‘I suppose, to get to the heart of it, Reggie, we’ve been wondering what possible threat Springer could be to someone like Haygill and his operation. From what I’ve been able to gather, Haygill seems to have a great deal of credibility. I’m not sure that the same can be said for Springer.’

‘Oh, we’re all vulnerable, Brock. I came across Springer once, at a conference on ethics and science, ages ago, and although they dubbed him Mad Max behind his back, he struck me as very shrewd. Of course he could have gone gaga since then. He was one of those people who instinctively take a contrary point of view, just to see what will come of it. We need people like that, of course. My God, we could do with a few in my neck of the woods! And you’d think that scientists would particularly welcome them, since scientists are supposed to constantly question everything. But in practice it doesn’t necessarily work like that. We got quite ratty with Springer at the conference, as I recall. He unsettled us, made us feel vulnerable.’

Reggie turned his attention to the wine-list. ‘I should warn you, Brock,’ he said, ‘that I have absolutely no appointments this afternoon, and presumably Kathy doesn’t either if she’s on suspension. Which means that we can get stuck into the reds, while you nurse your mineral water.’

‘Be my guest, Reggie.’

‘Thank you, we shall. Have your researchers dug up an article in Nature of last May about UCLE and CAB-Tech?’ He reached for a slim document case on the floor beside him and selected a photocopied sheet which he handed to Brock. The page was headed ‘NEWS’ and contained several short articles on current events. The one circled in yellow marker was titled, ‘UNIVERSITY DENIES RIFT WITH BIOTECH RESEARCH CENTRE’.

Brock read the article while Reggie consulted with Kathy on her tastes in wine. UCLE President Roderick Young has issued a press statement denying rumours that the university’s Centre of Advanced Biotechnology might move to another institution, possibly overseas. The university has recently been embroiled in a race discrimination case involving staff of the Centre, which receives much of its funding from Middle East sources. Describing CAB-Tech as the flagship of UCLE’s research effort, Young said that earlier problems had been exaggerated, and that both parties were committed to the partnership.

Kathy suggested a wine on the list, but Reggie turned it down on the grounds that it was far too modest for Cleopatra’s taste. He stabbed a finger at the article. ‘A bit like me issuing a press statement denying rumours that my wife was leaving me, eh?’

‘So there have been domestic problems at CAB-Tech,’ Brock nodded. ‘We heard about some of them.’

‘Bound to happen. You put a high-flying operation with bags of money like CAB-Tech inside a cash-strapped university and it’s bound to attract hostility and jealousy. Haygill’s position in particular would be sensitive. Who is he really answerable to, and who is his real paymaster? The university or his overseas backers? There have been several cases recently of universities suing academics with strong external consultancy funding for a share of their outside earnings. You could imagine the mischief someone like Springer could create in that sort of atmosphere, if he wanted to.’

He indicated to Brock his selection from the wine list. Brock suppressed a wince and called over the waiter.

‘So Haygill could be vulnerable to Springer on the home front,’ Reggie went on, snapping a bread stick. ‘But more interestingly, he could be equally vulnerable on the foreign and scientific fronts too.’

‘How come?’

‘There’s no doubt Haygill’s science is top-drawer stuff in a highly visible and competitive area, but it’s a tricky field, gene therapy. Bucketfuls of cash have been poured into it, but so far results have been sparse, and in at least one case-the Jesse Gelsinger case in the States last year-fatal. The American authorities have examined several hundred gene-therapy protocols involving thousands of patients, but so far we’ve been very cautious about approving experimental programmes involving humans in this country.’

‘Your committees would have to clear what Haygill does, would they?’

‘What he does in the UK, yes, which is mainly laboratory work on genes and gene vectors. He’s said to have gathered an extraordinary amount of material for his analysis, genetic material from over a million women from around the Middle East.’

‘What?’ Kathy looked up, startled. ‘In that building of his, a million women?’

‘A few cells from each, yes…’ Reggie’s attention wandered to the menu. ‘The veal, you reckon, Brock? What about the pollo?’

‘I’ve always found it quite edible, Reggie.’

‘Yes… but you don’t really care much about food, do you? Not really…’ He mused over the alternatives, then ordered the chicken liver crostini, Brock some grilled pigeon. Kathy didn’t feel hungry, and ordered a small risotto and green salad.

‘Anyway,’ Reggie went on, reaching for another breadstick, ‘we have to approve what he does here, but we don’t monitor whatever experiments or applications of his basic research he or one of CAB-Tech’s commercial affiliates may do overseas, right? And that’s where things become sensitive.’

‘What sort of things might he be doing?’ Kathy asked, still thinking of the million women’s cells inside that ziggurat, and wondering if she really wanted to know.

‘Well, let me give you an example. A few years ago the Ashkenazi Jews in the United States became concerned about the incidence of cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease, among their people. So they decided to screen their schoolchildren’s blood. Each child was given an anonymous code number, and when they reached marriageable age and a match was considered with another young Jew, the two code numbers were examined, and if both were found to be carriers for the disease the Committee for the Prevention of Jewish Genetic Diseases advised against the marriage.

‘It was an extremely successful campaign, and as a result cystic fibrosis has been pretty well eliminated from the American Jewish population, but it was also controversial. The New York Times attacked it as being eugenic, and there was considerable debate. Since the Nazis, the word ‘eugenic’ is the big bogey word, of course-the deliberate attempt to breed certain characteristics into, or out of, the human population. But before them it was a quite respectable idea. We’d been improving cattle and wheat that way for thousands of years, so why not people? In the first few decades of the twentieth century lots of respectable people, from Theodore Roosevelt to Winston Churchill, thought eugenics was the way to go, and lots of countries passed eugenics laws for the compulsory sterilisation of inadequate citizens who might be weakening the gene pool, Sweden and many US states, for example, apart from Germany.

‘In the end, you see, science is a political and a philosophical matter. It was the compulsory nature of the eugenics laws that we now consider repugnant, the state enforcing an idea against the free will of the individual. And for that reason the campaign of the American Ashkenazi Jews was felt to be acceptable, because it merely screened and advised the individuals concerned about the possible consequences of their actions. But in other circumstances there might be social or cultural reasons why people might not follow that advice. And what if some form of gene therapy became available which would allow a government to actively interfere in the passing on of the defective gene?

‘So, that brings us back to Haygill. Let’s say you have some incurable genetic disorder like, say, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is more prevalent in certain regions of the world because of patterns of intermarriage which, for social and cultural reasons, you don’t want to interfere with. And let’s say someone like Haygill comes along with some kind of therapy for a specific gene, let’s call it BRCA4, which will eliminate the disease without restricting people’s intermarriage choices, provided it’s applied systematically according to some government-controlled protocol. Is that eugenics? And if it works for that disease, why stop there? Why not clean up all the genetic typos in the book of life?’

Reggie paused as lunch arrived.

Brock, who had been making notes, looked up. ‘And is there such a project?’

Reggie shrugged. ‘We don’t know. We know that Haygill has done work on BRCA4 in his labs over here, and we’ve heard rumours of a trial for an ambitious BRCA4 protocol, but it’s never been submitted to us.’

‘When we first met Haygill he gave us a dumb copper’s guide to genetics, and he used the same metaphor, about the book of life.’

‘Oh, yes. He must use it all the time. His clients and paymasters will like that, the idea of an authoritative, true book of life, kept free of error. But that’s where Springer could make trouble, you see, where science becomes philosophy. Is it blasphemous to tamper with the human genome, with God’s book of the human being? Springer would probably argue that it is. And Haygill’s clients would be susceptible to that. They’ve been brought up to believe in a Book which records Divine revelation in the actual words spoken over a twenty year period by the Prophet, and preserved over the following fourteen hundred years by continual repetition without error. They would be sensitive to the suggestion that Haygill’s project might be heretical and blasphemous.’

Reggie stopped talking for a while to eat. His lecture seemed to have given him an appetite, and he tucked in vigorously. Kathy, on the other hand, had become less and less hungry as he’d gone on. She knew that the kind of work that Haygill was doing might prevent much suffering, but since she’d formed the image of the glass ziggurat and its vast collection of female cells the idea of it had seemed increasingly insidious, as if the whole production had made the human patients it was meant to serve completely passive and even irrelevant.

Brock didn’t seem very hungry either, and appeared preoccupied. His phone began to ring, and he murmured an apology and put it to his ear. He muttered something and slipped it away, checking his watch.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to run away,’ Reggie said, mouth full.

‘No, no. I was just checking the time. I was badly out with my estimate, Kathy. Only five hours. I said twenty-four.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘What’s that?’

‘Mr Manzoor has decided to withdraw his complaint against you. CIB have closed the case.’

‘Just like that?’ She felt numb for a moment, then relief flooded through her. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘That means you’re not on suspension any more, so you’d better lay off that wine.’ He smiled and poured some from the bottle into his own glass and raised it. ‘Congratulations.’

Reggie joined in. ‘How did you wangle that, Brock?’

‘Upon reflection the complainant realised that Kathy would have revealed some inconvenient facts about him, if the matter had been pursued.’

‘But I didn’t know any,’ Kathy objected.

‘You would have done, Kathy. You would have done.’

She shook her head, grateful but not understanding, and it occurred to her that it might not be too late to ring Tina and tell her she could go on the trip after all. It wouldn’t be difficult to arrange it. All she needed to do was excuse herself and make a couple of calls. But then she thought about Brock’s intervention with Manzoor, and imagined him quietly pulling strings in the background, preparing the way for her return to duty. She thought about it, working through the options, and still she didn’t move.

She became aware that the two men were talking about something else. Reggie had asked about Abu and his place in Haygill’s team.

‘Odd,’ he said eventually. ‘Seems all very clumsy and incriminating.’

‘How do you mean?’ Brock was taking another sip of the wine, reluctantly acknowledging Reggie’s excellent taste.

‘Well, he must have been a real loose cannon, this Abu. I mean, what he’s done must be a tremendous embarrassment to Haygill, the very person he was trying to protect.’

‘Presumably he didn’t expect to get caught. Perhaps he knew that Springer was planning something to get at Haygill, along the lines you’ve suggested, and felt he had to act. Apparently he regards Haygill as a kind of father figure.’

‘I see…’ Reggie didn’t seem convinced. ‘All the same, you’d think he would have talked it over with someone else on the team. You know, with a group like that, tightly knit, strong sense of themselves as outsiders, I would have expected a pretty strong pressure for people not to fly off and act on their own.’

‘He was an outsider within the group, Reggie. The computer man, not a scientist like them.’

‘Still, he shared their beliefs… I’ll tell you something else I would have expected, too.’

‘What?’

‘Well, think about it from the investors’ point of view. They’re putting money into a tricky research project being undertaken miles away, in a foreign country and led by a foreigner. Of course there will be all sorts of agreed procedures for Haygill to report to them and keep them informed, but he will obviously present things in the best light, and he’s a foreigner. But then there are the Islamic team members, who share the investors’ culture and values. Wouldn’t you expect one or more of them to be acting as inside agents for the investors, their commissar, keeping tabs on the others and sending back the inside story?’

‘And maybe trying to cover up anything that could be embarrassing to them,’ Brock said. ‘Muddying the waters if necessary.’ He thought of the way in which Abu’s death had seemed to be set up. Could his guilt also have been contrived in some way?

As they came to the end of the meal, Brock thanked Reggie for his ideas.

‘Hope the cost wasn’t too excessive.’

‘You’re always good value, Reggie.’

‘Well, I haven’t completely finished yet. There are things you hear at the bar, after a long day conferring with one’s fellow scientists, after one has exhausted the exalted topic of how life works and turns instead to what the bloody hell it all means. Have you met Mrs Haygill?’

‘Seen her. We haven’t spoken. Blonde, big hair.’

‘That’s it. The whisper is that she’s a bit of an embarrassment to her husband. Likes the booze a bit too much to be allowed to accompany him on the Gulf trips. Also rumoured that she likes to play around while he’s away on his trips, possibly with Haygill’s boss.’

‘His boss?’

‘Yes, at the university. The head man, Vice-Chancellor or whatever.’

Later that afternoon Brock’s team met at Queen Anne’s Gate to plan the next steps. All of the employees at CAB-Tech would be interviewed or reinterviewed, and inquiries into the source of Abu’s money were proceeding at the Bank of Credit and Commerce Dubai in the City. Brock had asked Wayne O’Brien to attend, and now asked the Special Branch officer to comment on Reggie Grice’s thoughts on the dynamics of Haygill’s group, particularly the Middle East scientists. He went through them in turn, sketching the information they had been able to find on each.

‘The key man is Haygill’s deputy, Dr Tahir Darr, without a doubt. At thirty-eight he’s the oldest of them and he’s always at the centre of things. He also seems to have the most interesting private life and access to money. He’s got a wife and kiddie living in Shepherd’s Bush, but he also likes to go out clubbing on his own or with male company. When their sponsors come over from the Gulf it’s Darr gets the job of taking them out to see the sights. A favourite nightspot for the visiting Arabs is Thoroughbreds in Mayfair, a drinking and gambling club where Darr is a member. One of the staff there is a friend of ours and knows him as a regular.’

‘Do we know who these visitors are?’ Brock asked, and Wayne produced a list.

‘All respectable businessmen, venture capitalists, scientists.’

‘And Darr knows them all.’

‘Probably better than Haygill does. He speaks Arabic as well as Urdu.’

‘It’d be interesting to get inside his head, but not easy,’ Brock said. ‘From the way he reacted when we spoke to him at CAB-Tech, I reckon he’ll be a difficult nut to crack in interview.’

‘Yes, I was wondering about that,’ Wayne said. ‘Whether we could get closer to him.’

‘What about your friend at the club he goes to?’

Wayne shook his head dubiously. ‘Rupert? He’s one of the barmen, keeps us informed who’s passing through, especially the known drugs figures. But he wouldn’t be right for a job like this.’

‘Sounds one for you, Wayne,’ Bren suggested. ‘Undercover’s up your street, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think he’d come across for me, either. I reckon it needs someone he can relate to, another Asian, maybe with a science background, to catch him at a weak moment in his cups. We’ve got a couple of good Asian guys in my section, but they’re up north at the moment, working on a case in Bradford. You don’t have anybody like that, do you?’

Bren shook his head, pondering. Kathy didn’t speak. There was someone, of course, but she waited, expecting one of the others to say the obvious. Finally, when no one did, she said, ‘Well, there’s Leon.’

They looked surprised. ‘He’s not even part of our section, Kathy,’ Bren objected.

She shrugged, not wanting to pursue it. It was a stupid notion, really, and she could see Brock thinking the same.

But Bren was having second thoughts. ‘He is Asian, though, and he’s got scientific knowledge, with his DNA and all that, and he’s very familiar with the background. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.’

‘I met him, didn’t I? At Shadwell Road?’ Wayne said. ‘Yeah, he might be spot on.’

‘He’s forensic liaison, Wayne,’ Brock objected. ‘He’s not an undercover detective. This isn’t his line of work at all.’

‘You never know,’ Bren pursued, enthusiastic now, ‘he might jump at the chance. Why don’t we ask him? I saw him downstairs ten minutes ago.’

He jumped to his feet and went off in pursuit, returning after a few minutes, Leon Desai following.

Brock said, ‘Leon, sit down. We’ve been talking around a problem, and a suggestion came up…’

He spoke diffidently, as if they were discussing the unlikely plot from some new movie, and as he went on, Kathy could see exactly why. Watching Leon sitting there, listening carefully with his polite but sceptical, rather distant, expression, she could understand why he was completely wrong for the task, and she kicked herself for ever suggesting it. He was the opposite of Wayne, lacking small talk, keeping himself to himself, not inviting confidences. As an undercover operative he might just manage to extract an opinion on the weather.

Leon heard Brock out in silence, giving nothing away from his expression. Then his mouth formed a little smile and he said, ‘What idiot dreamed that one up?’

They all laughed, and glanced over at Kathy, and Leon followed their looks, still with his little smile, until he realised it was her. For the briefest of moments his expression registered a small shock, then clouded and turned away. It was enough for Kathy to read, however. He believed she had done it to humiliate him, to make him a joke among her friends, the real detectives.

Bren, oblivious to all that, was enthusiastically beefing up Brock’s sparse outline, suggesting approaches that could be tried, and getting Wayne O’Brien to offer his ideas.

Leon listened until they were finished, then turned to Brock and said, ‘None of it would be admissible in court, would it?’

‘That’s right.’ Brock looked uneasy. ‘It would purely be a matter of giving us background, Leon. But look, I’ve already explained to Wayne that your expertise lies in the forensic area. You haven’t been trained for this sort of thing. I really think…’

‘Well, we could give it a try,’ Leon said calmly, ‘if you think it’ll help. I’ll need to be properly briefed.’

‘Great!’ Bren beamed and clapped Leon on the back. Brock smiled reluctantly, and Kathy wanted to crawl under the table.

She tried to catch him alone as the meeting broke up, but Wayne intercepted her and Leon slipped quickly through the door.

‘I thought I might take you up on that offer of a return match,’ Wayne said with a cheeky smile. ‘If you’re free tonight.’

‘How come? What about the girlfriend?’

He raised an open hand, palm down and wiggled it from side to side. ‘Bit dodgy. I think the wheels are falling off again.’

She felt a sudden spurt of irritation with the glib grin. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, Wayne. Only I don’t much fancy being a stop-gap for when your girlfriend’s wheels come off.’

He began to protest, but she brushed past him after Leon. He had gone.

Later that evening she rang his home number and left a message with his mother, but he didn’t phone back.