‘Oh, yes, if you don’t mind!’ Ayşe said, ‘I . . .’ She stood up and took her mobile phone out of her handbag. ‘Thank you!’
To the astonishment of the other two girls who worked in the bar, Ayşe ran through the shop and out to the back next to the dustbins. There she called İkmen’s mobile number. It rang but no one answered. Maybe İkmen hadn’t heard it for some reason. Or maybe he couldn’t answer his phone because of where he was or who he was with. But then perhaps the reason he wasn’t answering was a little bit more serious than that. He had said that he would do his best to get closer to what was going on and being said in the Hackney Wick factory. The operation in Mark Lane was already under way, but she hadn’t heard from İkmen at all since he went to work the previous night. It did not augur well. Quickly Ayşe called Riley who told her to hold her position for the time being. Nothing had happened as yet at his end and with Ülker at home and Harrison and Hajizadeh at Hackney Wick, all appeared quiet.
‘But sir, I’m uneasy,’ Ayşe said. ‘He’s usually on time and anyway I would have thought he would have called in by now if only to tell us he had learned no more.’
Riley was quiet for a moment, thinking, then he said, ‘When do you usually take your morning break?’
‘Ten thirty if I squeeze one in,’ Ayşe said.
‘If our friend hasn’t materialised by ten thirty then get yourself over to Hackney Wick,’ Riley said. ‘Let the team there know you’re coming. But go in alone. You’re looking for your uncle. It’s really quite reasonable. The team are at your back if anything should go wrong.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ayşe took a deep breath and walked back into the shop. As she entered, her client said, ‘Any luck?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Ayşe said. Then she turned to her colleagues and said, ‘If he’s not here by my break is it OK if I go and look for him? You know what these old people are like. If I lose him, my dad will kill me!’
Hatice, who owned and ran the nail bar, looked at Ayşe with sympathy and said, ‘Yeah, babe, that’s OK. I dunno, old Turkish blokes, what are you gonna do, eh?’
Staring into the darkness of the tunnel made Derek remember. Travelling by tube had not often been an option for him, not since Moorgate. But here in this place the feelings he had were not as panicky and fearful as they usually were. Maybe it was because it was hidden away from the usual bustle and crowds of the tube, or maybe it was simply because of what he, or rather that bloody Iranian, was going to do.
‘You know I know you shagged the boss’s wife,’ he said to Hajizadeh as he looked into his shadowed, impassive face.
‘Did you tell him?’ Hajizadeh said without emotion.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
A distant rumble in the tunnels heralded the rapid passage of another train past their half-lit position and for just under a minute they were silent until it had passed.
‘When I first found out I thought you’d give yourselves away, you were that obvious about it. Or she was,’ Harrison said. ‘But then when I knew that you were going to be doing this job I didn’t want Ahmet to kill you before you’d done it.’
‘You care about my martyrdom?’ the Iranian said with a smile.
‘No. But I want this done and if you’re prepared to do it then that’s all right by me.’
Another train was approaching from the opposite direction. It was just gone ten, getting to the end of the rush hour. But traffic was still heavy.
When the train had passed, Ali Reza Hajizadeh said, ‘When this is over, will you tell Ahmet about Maxine and me?’
Derek shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Ahmet is my mate. He’s been good to me. If his wife’s a slapper then he should know about it. He should have the choice as to whether to keep her or chuck her.’
‘You see women as things.’
‘Don’t you?’
Ali Reza looked away.
‘Not that I blame you,’ Derek said. ‘Her being a tart means that Maxine is good at it, I have no doubt.’
‘Ahmet might hurt her.’
‘Well, if he does, that’s his business.’
There was a pause before Ali Reza said, ‘What will you say about the fact that you knew for so long but said nothing?’
Derek smiled. ‘Oh, I’ll lie about that,’ he said. ‘No one to hurt if I say I only just found out.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No.’
Another train passed, its lights illuminating the jaundiced faces of the people inside. Derek recalled his first childish investigations into the tube, of tracing its progress through the city on maps, of walking right up to the edge of the tunnel whenever he was on the platform of a deep line station. His mother would scream and holler for him to get back and behave himself. His sister’s face would always be white with fear. But not Derek’s. Not then.
Once the train had passed, Ali Reza, looking tense now, said that he needed to relieve himself.
Chapter 21
* * *
There was no one outside the first factory Ayşe came to on Ahmet Ülker’s property. Both sheds were covered with moss and patched with corrugated iron and lumps of wood that were probably old railway sleepers. In fact, if there hadn’t been any noise coming from the buildings, she could have been forgiven for thinking that they were deserted.
There was a bell beside the large, tattered double doors that led into the building. Ayşe rang it. As she did so she looked around, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to see any of her fellow officers who now ringed the operation, but doing it anyway as an act of reassurance. Just before she’d entered the site she had called DI Roman who was in charge of the team observing the factories and told him what she was about to do. He’d been concerned, for her and for the integrity of the whole operation, but he’d also agreed that İkmen’s position had somehow to be established. His apparent disappearance could mean nothing or it could signal that Ülker had worked out who and what he was, which could put everything that had been done so far in jeopardy.
‘Yeah?’ One of the doors slid to one side and Ayşe recognised the face of the other security guard, Mustafa Kermani.
‘My uncle hasn’t come home,’ Ayşe said. ‘Çetin Ertegrul?’
Mustafa shrugged. ‘So?’
‘We’d arranged to meet this morning,’ Ayşe said. ‘I thought he might still be at work.’
Behind Mustafa she could just see into the factory. A row of people seated behind sewing machines.
‘Well, he isn’t,’ Mustafa said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ One of the men at the machines, an African by the look of him, turned away from what he was doing and looked over. ‘Maybe he’s gone to the coffee house. Maybe he’s gone back to his lodgings.’
‘I called the Rize. He isn’t there.’
The African was looking hard at Ayşe now and she saw him move his eyes, twice in rapid succession, to his left. It was as if he was trying to signal to her.
‘What are you looking at?’ Mustafa had noticed and was not happy.
‘Oh, nothing, I—’
‘Your uncle isn’t here,’ Mustafa said.
‘Yes but—’
‘As far as I know he left at the end of his shift here at eight,’ Mustafa said. ‘I’ve stayed on because we’re short-handed.’ He raised his arms and shrugged. ‘Now I have to get back to my work.’
He pulled the door rudely across in front of her face and she heard him lock it. Ayşe walked back towards Homerton Road, taking her phone out of her bag as she did so.
‘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 wit
h 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.
Death by Design Page 17