Death by Design

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I haven’t,’ Bülent replied. ‘Mum hasn’t mentioned it, but then my mother wouldn’t.’ He sighed impatiently. The feud between his parents was getting Bülent down. ‘I don’t think that anyone else has heard. But then Dad said that he wouldn’t be contactable. I worry.’ He sighed again and then asked, ‘Mehmet, you don’t know where Dad is, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Süleyman said. ‘On my honour.’

  ‘I fear he’s somewhere out east,’ Bülent said. ‘There’s always trouble out there.’

  ‘Your father is not a man easily outwitted, Bülent.’

  ‘He can be shot as easily as anyone else, though, can’t he?’ Bülent said. He lit a cigarette and went on his way. Süleyman and the old Pakistani continued in the opposite direction towards the British Consulate.

  Working at night wasn’t easy for Çetin İkmen. He had worked many night shifts in the past but never as a matter of regular routine. And he had to keep his wits about him. Terry had called to say that it was now more important than ever to report anything and everything that went on both at his residence and his place of work. Mustafa, his fellow security guard, had a police record, albeit minor, and Ayatollah Nourazar was a known fundamentalist agitator.

  İkmen didn’t have a great deal of experience with terrorist offences. His speciality was murder. Furthermore, he was uncomfortable with the context in this case. He wasn’t a religious man by any means, but nominally he was a Muslim and it offended him to see the faith of his fathers, and of his wife, distorted to create prejudice and pursue acts of violence. He felt sympathy for Christian and Jewish Britons caught up in all this but he feared them too. What if a major incident did take place in Mark Lane? What if the people of Britain all became insanely anti-Islamic as a result? Clearly that was what the terrorists wanted and the thought appalled him.

  It was pointless trying to sleep now that the sun was shining directly into his window. Also, Mr Yigit was vacuuming the stairs to a tuneless rendition of ‘Kiss, Kiss’ by Tarkan, and that alone was death to sleep. And yet the landlord knew that some of his tenants worked only at night. There was a Kurdish man who worked as a bouncer at a nightclub in the West End, and then there was also Süleyman Elgiz who Ayşe had said worked in Ahmet Ülker’s factories. He was out all night but thus far İkmen hadn’t seen him at Hackney Wick. Since most of the workers there were Africans who slept on site, Elgiz had to be a foreman or at least something a little bit more elevated than just a stitcher. İkmen wondered idly where the Iranian ayatollah laid his head at night. The vacuuming, and the singing, stopped, and İkmen heard the voice of another man.

  ‘Yigit, you know you’ve got to find a room for Mr Harrison, don’t you?’ It was Ali Reza Hajizadeh, speaking in English. ‘He needs to be here until Friday morning. He’s working with me.’

  ‘Why? Mr Harrison has house,’ Yigit said. ‘In south London I think.’

  Ali Reza clicked his tongue in aggravation. ‘Just do it, Yigit,’ he said. ‘Orders of Mr Ülker.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t have—’

  ‘Chuck one of the Kurds out,’ the Iranian interrupted. ‘You’re a Turk, you don’t like them anyway, do you?’

  ‘Ali Reza, I like all people!’ Yigit protested. ‘I have no problem with no one!’

  ‘Well, good for you, Yigit,’ Ali Reza said. ‘What a fine man you are! Just remember that this is Mr Ülker we’re talking about here. You know what will happen if you refuse him.’

  İkmen heard Mr Yigit sigh very deeply.

  ‘Mr Harrison will be wanting his room at six o’clock tonight,’ the Iranian said. ‘Just make sure that one of your Kurds is on the street by then. Oh, and change the sheets before Mr Harrison gets in there, won’t you? And don’t give him the terrible nylon things you give to me!’

  İkmen heard footsteps descending to the floor below and then the vacuuming started up again. This time Mr Yigit did not sing while he worked. He was no doubt puzzling over who he could move and under what pretext. Clearly, Ahmet Ülker’s word was law.

  İkmen wondered why Harrison needed to move into the Rize and why the date of his departure was Friday, 3 May. Whatever Terry and Ayşe said, he couldn’t quite believe that Ahmet Ülker and his associates would plant bombs in London on exactly the same day they had planned to do so when Tariq had been involved. Ülker’s İstanbul factory had been raided in the interim and that surely would have made him nervous. Turks at the factory had talked – eventually. Whether or not Ülker knew about that, he would realise that if anyone had talked to the police in İstanbul, they would most certainly pass the information on to London. So the idea of mounting the attack as originally planned with Tariq seemed ridiculous. And why was Mark Lane the target? It wasn’t as if the Israeli Embassy or anything significant like that was down there. İkmen resolved to go to Mark Lane the following day and have a look around. He would have to be careful in case any of Ülker’s people saw him. Maybe he would run that by Terry first. He would have to speak to him anyway to pass on what he had just heard. He also wanted to express his doubts about the date, although the news about Harrison suggested everything was still on course for Friday.

  ‘It’s my day off tomorrow,’ Ayşe said as she sipped her cappuccino. ‘I could take you to the Tower of London. Nothing wrong with me showing my uncle the sights.’

  İkmen smiled. ‘If I can stay awake,’ he said. He hadn’t managed to get any sleep since he’d listened in to Yigit and Ali Reza’s conversation in the hall.

  ‘You’ve got to try and get a look inside those factories tonight, Çetin,’ Ayşe said. ‘We need to know if that cleric and maybe some of the bodyguards reported to us from İstanbul are staying there. Keep your ears open.’

  ‘Unless he speaks Farsi and then I will be lost,’ İkmen said.

  He’d asked to meet Ayşe in the İstanbul Büfe at the end of her working day and an hour and a half before the start of his. He’d spoken to Terry during one of his long, lonely walks around the Abney Park graveyard but his handler had just reiterated what had been said before. A covert surveillance operation on both Ülker and his associates and Mark Lane itself was scheduled for Friday. Those involved had to be apprehended with explosives or weapons of some sort before an incident took place. According to UK law, just finding such items on someone’s property did not mean that person was guilty. And the Met really wanted to take Ülker right down. If he was aiding terrorists he would have to give them up to the police completely in order to come out of the process with any sentence less than life. If he gave up information about his business dealings with other gangs or in other parts of the world as well, so much the better. Just thinking about it made İkmen frown.

  ‘I still don’t know why Ülker wants to get into bed with terrorists,’ he said. ‘He could just carry on making and distributing fake goods and keep his head down. He isn’t religious. Why does he need to ally himself with people like this Iranian cleric?’

  ‘Fakes are being cracked down on here,’ Ayşe said. ‘The mayor’s “Condemn a Counterfeit” scheme means that people can just ring up City Hall anonymously and tell the mayor’s office who is producing or selling fake goods. And if an actual gang member wants to provide the police with information, he will get a reward for doing so.’

  ‘Your Mr Üner is a very determined man,’ İkmen said.

  She smiled. ‘He’s a bit of a hero – with the Met. And let me tell you, there isn’t a British woman of Turkish descent who doesn’t have designs on him. That includes me!’

  ‘Mr Üner isn’t married?’

  ‘No.’ She lowered her voice. ‘To be honest with you, Çetin, I tend to think that the rumour one sometimes picks up that Haluk Üner is gay may well be true. It would make perfect sense in terms of his abhorrence for fundamentalists.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘And yet it still can’t be comfortable for him. I have seen him interviewed and he is obviously a believer and proud of it.’

  ‘So am I,’ Ayşe said. ‘We all are.
I am not, believe me, happy about spying on and reporting fellow Muslims. But the belief that I cling to and that Haluk Üner lives by also is that these extremists are wrong. I don’t believe that stoning homosexuals or denying women an education takes you closer to God. We’re Muslims, we are enlightened, we’re above such things!’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘I don’t know about any of that . . .’

  ‘Yes, but you are a Muslim.’

  ‘That is what it says on my identity card, yes,’ İkmen said with a shrug.

  Ayşe changed the subject. Now was not the time to be discussing what each of them did or did not believe. ‘The counterfeiters are under threat here,’ she said. ‘What we fear is that those gangsters who fund terrorists or are in some way connected with them are now calling in favours because of the crackdown. If bombs start going off in London and people think it is because of Mr Üner’s initiative, they will withdraw their support for him and the gangs will grow even more powerful. When Mr Üner started this campaign, he was really putting his neck on the line – and ours, of course.’

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  Ayatollah Hadi Nourazar was deeply offended that Ahmet Ülker had denied him and his men proper accommodation. In İstanbul he had given them the use of a very nice apartment. Here in London they all had to sleep in one of his nasty factories. The noise was appalling and the smell of the people who worked for Ülker not much better. But then physical comfort was not really what Nourazar craved. What he really wanted was respect, something the Turk Ülker did not seem over-keen to give him. But then Ahmet Ülker, like most Turks, was a Sunni Muslim and so he wasn’t at all impressed by a Shi’a cleric – not that Hadi Nourazar was a real cleric. He used the title ayatollah because that was what he had been – once. Not now. The Islamic Republic of Iran didn’t want people whose beliefs and practices echoed those of the Afghan Taliban, and Ayatollah Nourazar gave the impression of being a Shi’ite Talib in all but name. He was of the opinion, for example, that women should be denied shoes; they walked far too noisily when shod, something that could disturb men at their devotions. And although the Islamic Republic did not exactly publicise the fact that Nourazar was no longer a significant person or even wanted in Iran, he had been denied entry back into his own country for over five years. And so he and his disciples, who he called collectively the Brothers of the Light, agitated in Palestine, Egypt, Afghanistan and Syria. He and some followers had ended up in İstanbul while travelling from Syria to Egypt. A two-day stopover in the city on the Bosphorus had turned into a week, during which Nourazar had met Ahmet Ülker. The new mayor of London had just started his campaign against the counterfeiters and Ülker had been worried. It was a concern he shared with Hadi Nourazar. The ayatollah had told his new friend that Mr Haluk Üner was nothing to worry about; some well-placed explosive devices would fix the problem.

  But Ahmet Ülker had been sceptical and worried. He wanted the mayor of London off his back with regard to his businesses but he didn’t really want to harm or endanger anyone else. The ayatollah was of the opinion that assisting a suicide bomber to kill infidels would attract blessings from heaven as well as resolve Mr Ülker’s business difficulties. None of his own people could be spared for such work but he could recruit people who would take on that role. And so Mr Ülker had let him recruit the Afghan boy Tariq. Unfortunately that had not worked out and a new suicide bomber had had to be recruited in England. This had not been hard but as far as Hadi Nourazar was concerned it was not entirely satisfactory. A young Iranian known to Ahmet Ülker had been approached with a theoretical scenario and had apparently been most enthusiastic about the idea. He came from one of those old Isfahan families who had benefited from the rule of the Shah. Radicalised at university in England apparently, this young man could not be faulted for his zeal. But Nourazar distrusted Ali Reza Hajizadeh’s blood. He and his family had been amongst the elite. People like them had drunk alcohol and worn jewels and not even really been loyal to the Shah, much less the subsequent republic – just like Hadi Nourazar and his family. Now Ali Reza wanted to take jihad to the people of London and Ahmet Ülker was happy for him to do so. But then Ülker himself was not a believer. He drank, he had a big ostentatious house, a loose western wife. The ayatollah for different reasons didn’t trust him either. But Ülker was just a means to an end, and Hadi Nourazar felt that the end justified the use of such people. After all, if he, Hadi Nourazar, brought enough death to enough infidels, then the world, not just the Iranian government, would have to respect him. And then of course there was the money. That, more than anything, made Hadi smile. That, as nothing else about him, was real.

  Derek Harrison had always had problems with sleep or, rather, he’d had problems since 28 February 1975. The Moorgate disaster was what everyone had called it. But ‘disaster’ hardly did it justice. Hell, more like. He’d been going to see his sister Phyllis down at the Barbican. She’d married a posh doctor and had a flat in that dull but expensive complex. Derek had still lived with his mum and dad in Highbury at the time. He’d just been taken on to do the underground driver’s course – his dream job – and so he was on top of the world. He’d quite naturally taken a tube down to Moorgate. He thought he’d walk to the Barbican from there, it was easy enough then. But when the train arrived at Moorgate, it didn’t stop. It ploughed into an overrun tunnel, hit a single hydraulic buffer and then smashed into the brick wall behind. The second and third carriages concertinaed into the first carriage and the driver’s cab. Forty-three people died immediately. But not Derek Harrison in carriage number three. Bleeding and terrified, he was in total darkness; all around him people were moaning and screaming but he himself seemed to be injured in only one foot. He couldn’t move his left leg below the knee at all. He had no idea about the internal injuries he had sustained.

  It took the fire brigade four hours to free him. It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit down there by that time and he was boiling hot and ice-cold by turns. A doctor put him out for it because they had to cut off his foot at the scene. Then at Barts Hospital they took out his gall bladder and his spleen. By the time he left Barts, he had one foot and a stack of medication the doctors told him he would have to take for the rest of his life. London Underground was very sorry, both for the accident and for the fact that they could no longer consider him for a driver’s job. Would he consider maybe working in one of their ticket offices?

  Derek Harrison, as he so often did, woke up screaming. Mr Yigit, who had never heard the like before, was ordered by his wife to go and see what on earth the matter was.

  When he got to the door of Mr Harrison’s room, all Mr Yigit could hear was bitter weeping.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  İkmen whipped round from watching the old man and his group of followers in the corner and found himself face to face with Mustafa.

  ‘I was cold,’ he said.

  ‘You’re paid to watch this place,’ Mustafa said. He took hold of İkmen’s arm and pulled him outside the factory.

  ‘As I said, I was cold,’ İkmen repeated.

  ‘Well, too bad,’ the bull-necked younger man said. ‘I know you’re getting on in age but Mr Ülker doesn’t pay you to snoop around.’

  ‘I wasn’t snooping, I was—’

  ‘Cold, yeah.’ Mustafa lit up a cigarette and then breathed out slowly, observing İkmen closely as he did so. ‘You were looking at the old man talking to the young men in the corner.’

  ‘He has a turban,’ İkmen said. ‘I thought that maybe he was a Hodja.’

  ‘I told you, he’s from Iran,’ Mustafa said.

  ‘The young men were very interested in what he was saying,’ İkmen said.

  Mustafa frowned. ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ İkmen shrugged. ‘I couldn’t understand.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Mustafa looked at his watch and realised that he should get back to guarding his own factory. ‘I must go. Don’t go inside again. There’s no delivery tonight and
so there’s no need for you to. If you feel cold, rub your hands together or light a cigarette.’ Then he left.

  İkmen breathed out slowly in order to calm his nerves. It had been unfortunate that he had been caught inside the building. Thank goodness the ayatollah had been speaking English to his little band of disciples, which as far as Mustafa was concerned meant that İkmen hadn’t understood a word. Some of the disciples seemed to be boys of Pakistani origin who could speak neither Turkish nor Farsi. The Iranian had spoken English very well and, İkmen thought, with a cultured accent.

  In the main, what the ayatollah had said to the boys was inconsequential rhetoric but one thing he had said seemed significant: he would be leaving to ‘spread my word of truth yet further’ on Saturday morning. He didn’t say why he was leaving or where he was going but it seemed odd to İkmen that he should choose Saturday to move on. If an attack was planned for Friday then surely that was when the ayatollah would leave – if he was taking part. If he wasn’t taking part, it would make more sense for him to be clear of London before the attack took place. People around Ülker were making arrangements that did not seem to add up.

  İkmen sent a text to Terry with this latest piece of information and then went back to doing his job. Not that there was much to do, with no deliveries and apparently no one lurking around the area taking drugs or drinking. There were, however, ominous sounds from inside the factory – people being shouted at and beaten.

  Although he knew full well that his wife had gone downstairs and that she was upset, Ahmet Ülker did not leave his bed to follow her. She was drinking gin, smoking and crying in the kitchen not for him or anything he had done but because of her boyfriend Ali Reza. The Iranian was now telling those around him that, from Friday, he was going away for a while. Maxine, besotted with him, was devastated.