Mr Masoud sighed. ‘But you can’t.’
‘No.’
‘I apologize,’ said Mr Masoud. ‘I’m very tired. I must take some rest.’
‘Of course.’
Mr Masoud left the room. Jake heard the sound of a distant upstairs door slamming before the house resumed its deathly silence.
‘My husband is a very angry man,’ said Mrs Masoud.
‘He doesn’t seem so,’ said Jake.
‘He wouldn’t. Despite his mild exterior he’s always been a man with strong moral views and a tendency to judge. Once it was buried deep. Now, he would kill you if he could. There are only two things that stop him trying. His physical inability to complete the task and his civility. Perhaps only the second of those.’
‘He’s every right to feel like that.’
‘He may have the right, but he’s wrong. He probably knows it too. But the correctness or otherwise of a feeling does not make it disappear. And it is only my opinion that he is wrong to hate you. I understand it’s also the opinion of his spiritual adviser at the mosque.’
‘You don’t feel similarly?’
‘No. I find it difficult to know what I feel. It’s not hate or rage. I’m unable to name it.’
‘I should go,’ said Jake, but continued. ‘You can’t exactly show your emotions when you’re giving evidence at the inquiry. It’s impossible to say how sorry I am for what happened.’
‘You made mistakes?’
‘Yes, indubitably. I’ve been told by my legal representatives not to say so, but yes.’
‘Do you know what they were?’
‘Not precisely. In a general sense, yes. I took too much for granted. I worked from assumptions about people and events. The very things I’m trained not to do. I wasn’t ruthless enough. But that’s the argument of the person in denial, the weak. “My mistake was that I didn’t trust myself enough,” that’s how the self-justification goes. It could simply be that I’m weak.’
‘Is that such a bad thing?’
‘What?’
‘To be weak, to be afraid, to have flaws. To make mistakes.’
‘Does that mean you think I deserve some absolution or forgiveness?’
Her features were thoughtful and stern. ‘Not at all. Would my forgiveness offer you any comfort? I don’t think so. You are so busy blaming yourself as it is that my blame or my husband’s is irrelevant. We are all weak, every single one of us; the difference is that your weakness has been discovered and exposed. It’s simply something that you need to contend with, or fail to contend with. It simply is. Does that sound unduly harsh?’
‘No more than it should.’
‘That’s what I thought. I was listening carefully at the inquiry. It wasn’t clear to me whether anyone knew how the device was passed to the young man or detonated.’
‘It’s assumed it was passed to him by someone in the public toilets.’
‘There’s been no trace of such a person?’
‘No. Whoever it was must know the city well. None of the cameras that we had in the park to follow our man picked up this other person, before or afterwards. There was no DNA on the bag that was left in the toilets. The person seems to have appeared and disappeared with no trace.’
‘Unless it was placed in the toilets beforehand.’
‘Yes. We’ve been through all the permutations. We just can’t arrive at one that’s more likely than the others.’
‘And the detonation?’
‘Similarly, did Abu Omar set it off? Was it remotely triggered by a mobile phone or a timer, or did it go off by accident?’
‘I would have thought your scientific people would know.’
‘So would I. But you heard what was said at the inquiry. The impact of the blast. There are no likely, logical explanations. The other conspirators, for instance. Why were they there if this thing was supposed to explode? In your place I don’t think I’d be as rational and enquiring about this as you are.’
‘I am emotional, believe me.’
‘I didn’t mean to imply –’
‘But I am a logical person as well. I look for explanations. I know I’m not about to find one in religion: mine, yours, anyone’s. I seek it among the facts, knowing all the while that if one was to be found there, it would have been discovered already. We are in an age of unreason. Perhaps it has always been this way. Perhaps rationality is the way we paper over the cracks of the world’s irrationality and close our eyes to the hate that flows from it. This age of hate. Those thugs who attacked us, are they any different in their way from the boys who killed Samir and Aisha? The same dark anger. Will this inquiry tell us why they did these things?’
She paused, seeking no answer.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just something to cling to. To fool us into thinking justice is being done. None of this will bring Aisha or Samir back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t do much good either. You have to be very careful, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘Pardon me, but I think you may not fully understand what is going on. We live in rage, all of us. It envelops everything we do. Epitomized by those young idiots who wanted to do harm to me and my husband. They didn’t know our son and our granddaughter had died in the explosion; and if they had, they probably wouldn’t have cared. We were simply something they could blame and hate and take revenge on. I’ve been at this inquiry from day one. I started out thinking it was about justice. About me finding out exactly what went wrong, discovering true culpability and putting things right for the future. About being objective.’
‘But?’
‘If you believe that then you are rather more foolish that I’d thought. It’s about anything but those things. It’s about politics. It’s about those in charge insulating themselves by having an investigation and then finding fall guys among the little people. You’ll do. Not that I believe necessarily that those in charge should be held responsible. It’s possible that it was all terrible but unavoidable. I’m reserving my judgement for the moment, but I see little prospect of clarity one way or the other. That’s not what’s at stake in this inquiry. It’s partly about fame and celebrity and being in the media spotlight. Our strutting counsel is in it for the showbiz, though I’m sure he can persuade himself that that’s emphatically not the case, and the Chair isn’t immune either. Above all it’s about vengeance. Believe me, I’ve seen these people, the other families. They’re full of hate. It’s to be understood, I suppose. They look askance at my husband and me, a little like those stupid boys. What they see as justice seems to me to be just vindictiveness.’
‘You can’t blame them. Not everyone is as strong as you.’
‘Strong,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘I suppose you can’t blame them. What has been wrought upon them is not right or fair by any measure. There’s nothing that you can do about it, that anger, it’s like a tsunami, which is why I say you must be careful. Whether in reality your judgement was flawed, whether you behaved improperly, whether you had a moment of uncharacteristic inattention, whether you did everything right but someone else made the bad decisions, whether the systems are somehow wrong, or whether it was simply a tragic coincidence of mistakes and circumstances, all these possibilities are beside the point of this inquiry despite its sober face. A blood sacrifice, or so-called civilized society’s version of it, is required. Unless you can somehow paint yourself as a victim in the general opinion, I fear for you.’
‘I’m not about to do that.’
‘I didn’t think you would. I have no words of comfort for you. It seems your errors led in part to what happened. But you aren’t primarily responsible, and you were probably doing your best. It is right that you suffer. You are a victim, though you shouldn’t compound your errors by trying to take on the whole responsibility and by telling yourself these people are right. They’re not. It’s a hateful situation for all of us and none of us should afford ou
rselves the luxury of wallowing.’
He looked at his hands, clasped in his lap. ‘I must be going.’
She ignored him. ‘You are still looking for these people?’
‘Yes.’
‘There will be people here manipulating these youngsters,’ she said with certainty.
‘It’s incredible how much can be done online.’
‘Yes,’ she said impatiently, ‘but there must be some human link at some point. The inquiry’s shown that much, surely. Are you looking in this city, here and now?’
‘I think I can hardly –’
‘Possibly not.’ She looked at him sternly. ‘I wonder whether you are actually doing anything worthwhile. Whether they have won because you are frozen in inaction.’
‘I can assure you –’
‘I’m sure you can assure me. Whether I can take anything from those assurances is a different matter. The point I’m trying to make is that these people, they will be living normal lives in this city. Those who are encouraging this behaviour will seem harmless. They will not be radical imams shouting loudly at the mosque and on street corners. They will be more insidious than that. You will need to be very sensitive to this.’
‘I’d hope we already are.’
‘Not judging by the evidence. Are you any closer to identifying this other individual?’
‘I can’t comment on that.’
‘No. Let me think. Can I contact you if my thoughts take me anywhere?’
‘You too need to be careful. You’re well known in the community. Even more so after what happened. You can’t afford to be seen as reporting to the authorities.’
‘I will be careful. I am accustomed to being careful. Every Muslim woman of my age with academic achievements, a career and an independent life knows what it is to be careful. I am assuming we can play your James Bond 007 games if I think of something and we need to meet?’
‘I suppose so,’ he said.
‘Well, then. May I have your number?’
It was becoming darker and the rain lashed down, brought off the moors by the east wind, when they left.
‘It’s a bit of a mare’s nest but I think we’ve contained it,’ said Chris. ‘Apparently the kids are saying nothing. They’re claiming to the police that a ruckus developed between them. It’s thin, and there’s CCTV that says different, but the police aren’t minded to pursue it. It’ll all go pear-shaped if this lot here decide to file a complaint.’
Jake was thinking of Mrs Masoud’s resolve when he said, ‘I don’t think they’ll do that.’
He felt suddenly exhausted. It was their quietness, despite whatever hatred Mr Masoud might be concealing, that he found merciless.
12
FRIDAY
It appeared it was on. If you were perceptive enough – and Jon Brough was – you could smell it in the atmosphere in the days and sometimes weeks leading up. Something in the senior officers’ demeanour with their juniors, the tension, the finicky attention to detail, the drive to have every piece of equipment cleaned, operational, charged and in its designated place. These things were normal in routine circumstances; perfection was all that would do. There was no eighty per cent solution when you were drilling hostiles. But at times such as these the demand was for more than perfection, if that were not an oxymoron; unease and twitchiness pervaded as kit was checked, rechecked and checked once more, medical records were queried and attended to if jots and tittles were out of place, and vehicles were vacuumed and polished twice a day in the compound. Not so’s a civvy would know the difference. But if you were trained so that your senses were on high alert, you knew.
He’d well understood that something was in the offing, that somewhere somehow intel had become available. The bods had been identified and somewhere in this city were planning their worst. The powers that be had some kind of handle on what was going on and when it would all kick off. That sooner rather than later the team would be on the street making the calls. This was how it was supposed to work, at least. Then the station attack had happened.
His feeling was confirmed that morning when he had a text politely wondering whether he could come on shift early, in the next hour in fact, instead of at 13:00. For Jon and his colleagues such polite queries were calls to action and everything else – plans, family crises, dentists’ appointments, leaking roofs, holidays – had to be dropped instantly and, more than that, forgotten for the duration. This was why Jon Brough eschewed the complications of dependencies, whether him relying on others or the other way round. One day he’d like to have a dog, a big one that he could take with him on his fourteen-mile hikes; one day he’d like to have love in his life, a simple, conventional love (he knew he thought along straight lines); one day he’d like to have children. There’d be plenty of time: before long his reactions would slow and his eyesight deteriorate marginally, and he’d be out. He would call it before the medicos did and he was called in for a friendly chat with the gaffer. That much was a matter of pride. For now, his one abiding connection was with his mother, in her bungalow just out of town, but she knew she came second by some distance, and accepted it.
He shaved carefully and put his gear in his bag. He might need it if events began to overtake everyone. He packed three clean pairs of underpants. He knew he had spares of both shaving kit and underwear in his locker at work, but he found a back-up to the back-up reassuring. That was it – no, some anti-perspirant too – and he was out, in the car, the flat all safely locked up and double-checked.
At least this wasn’t Helmand. Always the advance force of some other advance force. You didn’t need shaving kit or deodorant there – and as for spare grollies, you’d need a pantechnicon full, the number of times each day you thought you were going to shit yourself. The work there was more uncomfortable, dangerous and elemental, but simpler. No judgement calls. In, do the job, and with a bit of luck out again. Maybe the odd task took three or four weeks but you could put up with it: the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the dust, the fear, the vacu-packed rations, crapping into cling film to carry home so as to avoid leaving ground trace. You were on mission and, as some would say, this was what it was all about.
Jon had never thought of himself as a macho man. Had left uni with a second-class degree in English and aspirations somehow to do good. Wandered into the army, as much as anyone can wander in that direction. Specifically hadn’t wanted a commission, wanted to be at the coal face of it. Thought it’d mainly be development work in Africa, that kind of stuff. No problems with that. No airs and graces. Craved the discipline in a way. Discovered he was good at it; very good at it if the scores from the various tests were anything to go by. And apparently they were. He found himself one day being interviewed by a gimlet-eyed blond-haired officer with a gobshite Scouse NCO in tow. They’d liked him; he’d liked them. Rest was history.
Killing is easy for those without a conscience. Those were the ones 22 weeded out early on and rejected. A certain coldness was required for sure and no, you couldn’t afford to get too far up your fundament about the rights and wrongs of it. The ethics were for others to fret about: your job was to execute with precision and dispassion. Execute being, of course, the operative word, almost all the time. When 22 were called in, the possibilities of nicey-nicey, less extreme solutions were usually long exhausted. Which was why you had to have faith that the moral issues had already been worked through. You had to obey orders and you could not afford hesitation or prevarication. Conscience was something different. Killing someone should be hard; it should fill you with questions and doubt, before and after. Bloodthirsty bastards, of whom there were more than a handful in the army, were not fitted for the Regiment.
Civilian life was different. He’d wanted out because he was a moral person. Not that he thought that the life was immoral, but because he liked to think, to make his choices for himself. Or so he’d believed at the time. But choice made life more complicated. Doing this job – now, here – there were a thousand choi
ces that had to be made, most of which were distant from the strictly professional. It was strange to be doing this on the streets of the city in which he’d grown up, among the people he knew. He was infused with the place, it was him and he was it: that northern tang, the hard-nosed expression concealing emotion, mawkish at times. The humour, the nuance of expression. The city, glowering, towering over him. The ghosts of industry in the form of street names like Foundry Square and warehouses converted into nouveau-chic retail outlets. The pubs, raucous and rowdy and bright while he supped quietly in the corner. It was more vivid, fully immersed, than in the Regiment in some far-flung shithole. He couldn’t go in, do a job, get out. He was already in when he did a job and there was no getting out.
All those choices inevitably boiled down to one, at that moment. Challenge or no challenge? Would shouting ‘Armed police!’ cause the suspect to do exactly what he was trying to prevent? Was the suspect carrying? If so, what? Left-handed or right-handed? Is there a trigger device in the hand? Danger of collateral damage to innocents? And the central question: what is this person’s intent? What is in the eyes that speaks of what resides in the heart and will, in a fraction of a second, be translated into a decision and then action: to submit or to detonate. If the latter, it has to be pre-empted; with the classic double-tap to the head, which was as cold and brutal as it sounded.
He was admitted to the compound, parked up carefully and went to the locker room. He changed without haste. Pacing was important, he knew from experience. There would be sufficient adrenaline spilt later in the party. Or it might be a no-show non-event. Either way, it didn’t make much sense to raise the pulse rate unnecessarily.
He would never have reckoned on his acquiring an addiction to the action. He’d always believed himself to be a calm person, easy-going but not to the point of passivity. Maybe this life had changed him, or it had been latent in him the whole time. When he’d left the military he’d joined the police and within three years become a detective. A change of air, he’d thought, one that played to his intellectual tendencies and gave him the scope to think and make those deductive, elective choices he’d missed. It had been a mistake. The head-banging routine of catching no-hope no-marks trapped in their own tiny, vacuous, vicious circles of offence, addiction, capture and reoffending – victims in their own right, of circumstance, of society, who had not the first idea of how to market their drugs, complete their burglaries, abuse their partners or carry out their sordid sex crimes without being detected – was tedious. There was, naturally, little relation between detection and successful prosecution. But that, too, had never seemed a matter of intellect, of matching his mind against the criminal’s. It was much more a case of fortune, good or bad, and resources, invested wisely or badly, as well as a high dependence on overworked, often incompetent or uncommitted colleagues. And the CPS. Don’t get me started on the CPS, he thought.
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