Death by Design (22 page)

‘It would seem that our Turkish colleague has disappeared,’ Riley told Fratelli as they watched one of their officers go into the sandwich booth to the right of Fenchurch Street station. The rush hour was over now and traffic through the terminus consisted mainly of day trippers and school parties.

‘Do you think he may have gone native?’ Fratelli said.

Riley shook his head. ‘Not a chance. I’ve heard that our man is the gold standard when it comes to policing in İstanbul. Like Ayşe Kudu, I think he’s in trouble. She’s of the opinion that he’s still at one of the Hackney Wick factories somewhere.’

Fratelli peered down into the street again. ‘Which means he may have told Ülker about this operation.’ She glanced up at Riley. ‘Patrick, there’s been no movement at Ülker’s Bishops Avenue place.’

‘He’s been seen pottering in the garden and he’s having his pool cleaned apparently. A chap arrived a few minutes ago.’

‘So he’s still there. And nothing’s happening in Dalston. Wesley Simpson would appear to be sleeping the sleep of the just, and Harrison and Hajizadeh are still at the factory. Nothing’s moving.’

‘Doesn’t mean that nothing will,’ Riley said.

‘Morning rush hour when everyone is half-asleep is the optimum time to cause chaos in the city,’ Fratelli said. ‘Seven/seven was based on that.’

‘Which is why it would not be the most intelligent thing to do again,’ Riley replied. ‘They know we’re always waiting for it. Carla, whatever they have in mind will be unexpected. Ülker is no fool, even if the rest of them are. And remember that Ayatollah Nourazar, or whatever he wants us to think he is, is out there somewhere.’

Fratelli frowned. ‘Whatever he wants us to think he is?’

Riley looked around the small office just to make sure that no one had come in without his noticing and then said, ‘The acting commissioner has had a telephone conversation with an Iranian of some note.’

‘What, like a—’

‘I don’t know who he spoke to,’ Riley said, ‘but it sure as hell wasn’t some office boy or disaffected refugee. Anyway, it would seem that there’s more to our so-called ayatollah than we thought. We know he comes from a well-off family and that he was not initially part of the Islamic Revolution. What we didn’t know was that he used to work for the Shah’s secret service, SAVAK.’

Carla Fratelli looked shocked. ‘God, weren’t they really vicious and brutal?’

‘Yes, they were,’ Riley said. ‘And apparently, come the revolution, Nourazar shopped most of his old SAVAK mates in Isfahan to Khomeini and his people before he started his own intensive study of the Islamic religion. For some years, apparently, he was a very enthusiastic born-again believer. So much so, in fact, that he was allowed to keep much of the wealth he had accrued under the Shah. But as things began to loosen up in Iran in the late nineties a lot of people found his shrill baying for the blood of infidels unhelpful and distasteful and he was asked to leave. Spent his time, as we know, agitating and raising money for his cause all over the Middle East.’

‘Did the Iranians let him take any of his own money out of the country?’

Riley smiled. ‘Ah well, that is where we get to the crux of the matter,’ he said. ‘No, they didn’t.’

‘So he goes around raising cash for international jihad . . .’

‘While pocketing the money himself,’ Riley said. ‘He also, according to the acting commissioner’s contact, charges top dollar for indoctrination and for his and his followers’ services. It’s a business. Ülker, for whatever reason, has not allied himself to religious fanatics. He has allied himself to another businessman.’

‘Which is what Ahmet Ülker would do,’ Fratelli said. ‘That makes sense.’

Riley looked at his watch. ‘I don’t want to order DI Roman and his team into those factories but apparently Roman has some sort of idea that involves a pig farm . . .’

Of course DI Roman didn’t use a real pig. He had enough sense not to do that. He also had enough sense to tell the real pig farmer who he was and what he was doing. Apparently Mr Trimble didn’t like either the foreigners who wandered about the Wick these days or the prospect of the bloody Olympic stadium.

‘Oi!’ Roman banged on the door that Ayşe had knocked on earlier and then shouted again. ‘You in there! You seen my animals, have you?’

‘Who is it? What do you want?’ The voice was heavily accented and sounded to Ayşe very much like Mustafa. She was off to one side, ready to squeeze into the building between a sheet of corrugated iron and a plank of wood.

‘I come from the farm the other side of Waterden Road,’ Roman said.

‘Not the pig farm?’ The voice was filled with disgust.

‘Yeah,’ Roman said. ‘Some silly work experience kid let me piglets out. Only little, they are, but they can’t half go! You seen—’

‘There are no pigs here,’ Mustafa said through the closed door. ‘Please go!’

‘Well, you say there are no pigs,’ Roman persisted, ‘but they can squeeze in anywhere. What people don’t know about pigs is that when they’re frightened they can be quite quiet. Hide theirselves away, they do. Place like this, wood, they could be in and hiding and you’d never even know.’

The sound of furious whispering came from inside and then slowly Mustafa opened the door. He didn’t open it much, just enough for Roman to see that there were other men at his back. He gave Ayşe a look and she began to work one leg into the gap between the corrugated iron and the wood.

‘If you let me in,’ Roman said, ‘I can come and flush them out for you.’

‘This is private property!’ Mustafa said. ‘My boss is not here but I know he would not like it.’

‘Fair dos,’ Roman said. ‘But mate, my animals are worth quite a bit of money. Know what I mean? I can’t afford to lose them and I’m sure you don’t want pig shit all over the place.’

Ayşe breathed in deeply and pushed her body through the gap. She felt splinters from the wooden plank tear at her chest and waist. Since coming to Stoke Newington she had pigged out on Turkish treats far more than she had ever done back in Manchester. Now she was paying the price.

More whispering, which Ayşe could hear was in Turkish and along the lines of what on earth could they do, they couldn’t have pigs in there with them.

As Ayşe brought her head through the gap, she felt the corrugated iron cut into her forehead. Warm blood trickled down her face.

‘Fucking hell!’ Roman said impatiently. ‘I haven’t got all day. If you won’t let me in, you’re going to have to catch the pigs yourselves. But be warned, they can bite, you know, if they feel threatened.’

‘We are Muslims, we cannot handle pigs!’ Mustafa said.

‘Look, I tell you what,’ Roman said. ‘I won’t come in there, but if you come out here, I’ll show you how to get hold of a pig safely.’

There were several moments of silence before Mustafa said, ‘OK. OK you tell us. Some of our workers are Christian, they can do it.’

Mustafa, Cengiz and the other foremen walked out of the building and pulled the door shut behind them.

Ayşe stood for a moment in the foetid air around her, looking at row upon row of people of every age, race and religion labouring in front of her. Outside, she heard Roman say, ‘Right, you’ll need some sort of cloth or towel or something if you don’t want to actually touch the porkers yourselves . . .’

After wiping blood and sweat from her brow, Ayşe began to scour the rows of people for İkmen. Many of the heads that laboured over sewing machines were dark, like the leather that sat in great piles at the end of each row. Most of the people had dark skin too. The man she had seen through the crack in the door earlier had jet-black skin. For want of any other plan she ran towards him and put her hand on his shoulder. He swung round as if he had been burned. His terrified eyes opened wide in horror until he took in who she was, and then he said in perfect English, ‘Young lady, your uncle is here. I fear these people may have hurt him quite badly.’

It was then that Ayşe turned her head and saw the lone white, naked figure slumped next to the black man, his skin covered in cuts and crusted blood. From the look of him, he was unconscious.

It was going to be many hours before Ali Reza Hajizadeh could make his ultimate sacrifice. Timing was everything, he knew that, and the ayatollah was going to text him with the go-ahead. In the meantime he had nothing to do except think and listen, or rather try to blank out the drivel that Derek Harrison came out with every so often. He was so full of self-pity! So what if he’d been in a train crash back in 1975, he’d survived, hadn’t he? He hadn’t been able to do the job he had always wanted to do, but why was that so bad? Back in Iran, under the Shah, people had lost their lives every day in prisons so awful they defied description. When he had first met Ayatollah Nourazar, Ali Reza had recognised him immediately. He had not known him personally back in Iran, but he knew him by reputation. Nourazar was a troublemaker and a firebrand and Ali Reza loved him. Since the early days of euphoria in Iran, back in 1979 and the 1980s, things had changed considerably and someone so uninhibited in his love of the Almighty was no longer welcome. Luckily a lot of people outside Iran understood where clerics like the ayatollah were coming from and so he was thankfully still able to make a difference. For Ali Reza to give his life for such a cause was an honour that he could barely articulate. Of course had some nameless Afghan done the deed, it would have been more perplexing for the authorities. They would have been mystified as to who he was and why he had done what he had. It would also have been easier to move Tariq around; he himself was a known face in the UK jihadi community. But so far everything was going well. All he had to think about now was his own personal legacy.

He’d put a letter in the post to his parents, telling them why he was doing what he was doing. They would be upset, of course, which was why he was telling them himself. He didn’t hate them, as such. He just didn’t see why he should spend his time with people who couldn’t or wouldn’t face the truth. Dying for God was a far more important thing than living, as his parents did, for holidays, parties and alcoholic drink. But there was another aspect to his legacy, and that concerned the man who sat up against the wall behind him now. Derek Harrison couldn’t tell Ahmet about his affair with Maxine. That would make him seem like a base man, which Ali Reza knew he most certainly was not. Of course some people would just see what he had done as the quite justifiable use of a woman from a damned and hated race. He had not, after all, enjoyed having sex with the gypsy. He had simply cultivated her to gain an entrée into Ahmet’s house and his world. The Turk was a businessman with no interest in religion of any sort and therefore he, too, was expendable and needed to be watched. But that said, Ali Reza did not want Ahmet Ülker or anyone else to think badly of him after his martyrdom. It was a pure and sincere act and should not be tainted by scandal of any sort.

He looked over at Harrison who had his eyes closed. Was he asleep? Ali Reza could not tell. He needed Harrison to help him get into the explosive vest he was going to have to wear to do the job. It was a two-man job. So he couldn’t do anything now. Once he was kitted up and ready, however, he could take Derek Harrison out. He could do nothing now about Maxine and what she might say but he could, and indeed should, silence Derek and that in itself would be very satisfying. It was, after all, what Ahmet Ülker wanted him to do.

Ayşe Kudu looked down at the padlock that kept İkmen fastened to the bench and then reached into her pocket. She took out a Swiss Army knife from which she quickly unfolded a corkscrew. İkmen, now just about conscious, said, ‘What?’

Ayşe inserted the end of the corkscrew into the padlock, turned it and was unsurprised when the thing came away with ease. ‘Never disappoints,’ she said. İkmen slowly pulled his hand away and then instantly placed it over his private parts.

‘Ayşe,’ he said, ‘I apologise.’

‘I’ve got to get you out of here,’ she said, looking around wildly. Outside she could hear Roman still droning on about pigs. But she knew he couldn’t hold the men’s attention for much longer. ‘Come on.’

She put her hands underneath İkmen’s armpits and pulled. He wasn’t a heavy person by any means but wounded and beaten he was a dead weight. Ayşe grunted with the strain.

‘My friend, you must lift yourself,’ said the same cultured voice Ayşe had heard before. She turned to look at the African.

‘I can’t take you as well,’ she whispered to him in English. ‘I’m sorry.’

İkmen roused himself and started to push himself on to his feet.

The African nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘What’s your name?’ Ayşe asked him as she pulled İkmen towards her and began to move away. The door into the factory was shaking now as if someone was trying to get back in.

‘Fasika,’ the man said. ‘I am from Ethiopia.’

‘Fasika, from Ethiopia.’ Ayşe would not forget the name. When this place was finally taken down, she would make sure that Fasika the Ethiopian was well taken care of.

As she pulled İkmen towards the hole in the side of the building, İkmen said, ‘Mark Lane isn’t the target.’

‘What?’

‘Mark Lane isn’t the target,’ he repeated. ‘I heard them: the Ayatollah, Ülker, Hajizadeh.’

‘But they’re—’

‘Ülker, Hajizadeh and Harrison left last night. The ayatollah left this morning, in my clothes.’

The door was opening now. Ayşe heard Roman say, ‘So it could be worse, couldn’t it? I mean, you try to deal with a boar on heat and you’ve got some real problems. These are just babies . . .’

‘Bastard!’ Mustafa swore. ‘How can he let his filthy animals loose like that!’

As one of the men pulled the large door shut again, Ayşe pushed a wounded and bleeding İkmen through the hole. Hoping against hope that Roman would be there to take him, she shoved and pushed as hard as she could. İkmen groaned in pain.