Babel

by Barry Maitland

  ‘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 s
hort 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 universiti
es 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.’