Chapter 26
* * *
Çetin İkmen knew that he wasn’t himself. But he also knew that he wasn’t ill. In fact he felt rather lighter and airier than he had for a long time – in a sense. He was worried about Ayşe. He assumed she’d been taken to hospital and knew that if he consented to go to hospital too he may well find out more. But İkmen and hospitals had never mixed easily and so when he left the back of All Hallows and staggered down towards the Tower of London, he knew what he was doing – getting away. Williams and the others wouldn’t let him help with the horror down in the old station and in a way that was a good thing. Although he had never balked at staring the reality of man’s inhumanity to man straight in the eye, he had attended his fill of hideous explosions. If they had let him help with rescuing the victims or counselling the shocked and wounded, he would have done that gladly. But İkmen knew that they wanted their foreign guest kept secure and safe. That meant hospital and that was just where he wasn’t going.
He went where Ayşe had taken him, down Thames Path, by the river. A light breeze was blowing down the river and the coolness of it on his face felt good. Behind him, up on Tower Hill, all hell had broken loose. But he couldn’t look at that. Someone should have known about old Mark Lane station. If the sounds he had heard coming from the tube tunnel were anything to go by, a lot of people had been killed and injured. Ayşe Kudu among them. He should have protected her. He had no idea how, but he knew he should have done so. Had she been his own Ayşe, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, he would have made sure she got out of the underpass even if he’d had to die in the attempt. That, as her immediate superior, was part of his job.
More sirens sounded and he heard some people who passed him say, ‘Bloody Islamic nutters!’ He felt both angry and ashamed. That someone like Ali Reza Hajizadeh should distort the religion so beloved by his wife and many of his friends and family made İkmen furious. The essentials of Islam revolved around love and respect. But in this particular case, a secular person like himself was involved too. Ahmet Ülker had at the least facilitated the bombing. He had allowed or even encouraged Ayatollah Nourazar to recruit in his factories, Hajizadeh and Harrison had hidden in his car and maybe in his house. Ülker, in fact, had been key to the whole operation. But how on earth could the deaths of Londoners he didn’t know help him?
İkmen leaned against the wall that separated Thames Path from the river and lit a cigarette. He looked at the oddly shaped glass building that Ayşe had told him was City Hall. That was where the London Assembly, those who made policy for the capital, met. Mr Üner, the slick young mayor whose parents were Turkish immigrants, was in overall control. How wonderful, İkmen felt, that someone from such humble beginnings should end up as mayor of London. Working in a weird but fantastic building set in such a prestigious and lovely location. Now he looked at it, City Hall was situated in a small park. In that it was like his own place of work, behind Sultanahmet Park. But Mr Üner made rather more use of his park than İkmen did of his. He went out jogging. But then Ayşe had told him that Üner sometimes had to have a cigarette too. How weird modern life was! Thinking about this made İkmen laugh at first but then very quickly what had been funny was suddenly overtaken by the tragedy he could hear unfolding behind him. Tears ran down his cheeks. They blurred his sight, making the strange building on the south bank appear even more distorted than it really was. He went to dig into his pocket for a handkerchief when his attention was caught by the sound of screaming.
At first he thought that maybe it came from behind him but the sound that he heard did not come from that direction. He looked first left and then right, but he was entirely alone. Only one direction remained and so he looked back across the water again. What he saw was a car pulling up to the side of the building and some people milling around at the front. He couldn’t make out individuals but there was a general impression of suitedness which made him assume that they were probably all men. At least one of them was shouting now but he couldn’t hear what was being said. İkmen narrowed his eyes. Then suddenly he understood what was happening and it made him go white with fear. Now, at last, everything was clear to him.
‘That was DI Roman from Barts,’ Superintendent Williams said as he watched yet another dead body being stretchered out of the old station and into the underpass. ‘I’m afraid that Sergeant Ayşe Kudu, our colleague from Manchester, has just died.’
Inspector Fratelli shook her head. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘She was bleeding into her brain. They tried to relieve the pressure . . .’ He shrugged. ‘She died on the operating table. Carla, I’m going to have Ülker brought in and I’m going to tell DI Roman’s men to move in on his factories. We can’t wait any longer.’
‘Sir—’
‘Sir, this place is filling up,’ another, rougher voice cut in, one of the firemen. ‘We need to get a makeshift morgue erected up on the surface.’
Williams looked at the roughly covered line of bodies that lay on the concrete, an ever lengthening line from the northern end of the underpass to the southern end at All Hallows Church.
‘A marquee – anything,’ the fire officer said.
‘Yes,’ Williams said. ‘Yes.’ He took his phone out of his pocket. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, we’ve just discovered that one of our colleagues has died, I—’
‘Sorry about that, sir,’ the fire officer said, ‘but—’
‘Superintendent Williams!’ Another, foreign voice called down the underpass from the All Hallows end. This was followed by the sight of a small, shabby man hurriedly picking his way through the blanket-covered bodies.
Williams peered at him. ‘Inspector İkmen?’
İkmen was breathing hard. He had run all the way.
‘Superintendent,’ he gasped as he came to a halt in front of Williams and Fratelli. ‘Sir . . . you must get over to City Hall. Now!’
‘City Hall? Inspector İkmen, the emergency is here.’
İkmen shook his head. ‘No, or yes it is, but they are taking the mayor. Over at City Hall, men with guns!’
Williams’s eyes widened.
‘Sir, we must get there now!’ İkmen said. For a couple of seconds Williams said nothing, he seemed quite stunned. ‘Sir!’ İkmen shouted. ‘Sir, Mr Üner will die!’
And then the spell of inaction broke and Williams said, ‘Carla, stay here and get a makeshift morgue organised. I’ll square it with the acting commissioner to have Ülker brought in and his businesses shut down.’ He began to step over the corpses. ‘Come on,’ he said to İkmen, ‘you and I will get over there. Armed, you say?’
‘Yes,’ İkmen said as he picked up speed in front of him.
Williams dialled a number, put his phone up to his ear and then requested the services of the armed response unit CO19 at City Hall. After that he called his boss, the acting commissioner.
Wesley Simpson had duly picked four blokes up from Stratford – an old Arab man he’d seen before, two Asians and one other Arab by the look of him. Then there had been a bit of stuff about losing first the Ford Fiesta that had picked him up and then the Mini that had taken its place. But Wes was used to losing tails. He’d told the blokes that they had tails and that in his experience they were probably the police. He thought that maybe the knowledge might make them cancel what they were intending to do. But the old Arab said that whatever happened they had to continue on their way.
‘We must go on to Potters Fields,’ he said. ‘We have business there.’
Wes shrugged. If the coppers were following them they probably wouldn’t give up just because he lost them twice. They would be back and he would have been lying had he said he wasn’t worried. But these blokes were clearly in charge and there was also that load of money at stake for him. ‘All right, mate,’ he said as he turned off London Bridge and down on to Duke Street. Potters Fields, where these characters wanted to go, was a turning off Tooley Street, around the back of City Hall. There was a lot of noise, sirens and klaxons, as Wesley pulled
into the small side street that was Potters Fields. But he didn’t take too much notice of that. He began to pull over to the side of the road when the old bloke said, ‘We need you to drive across the park and up to City Hall.’
‘I don’t think you’re meant to drive on the grass,’ Wes said but by that time he’d seen in his rear-view mirror that two of his passengers were carrying guns. ‘But I suppose I can make an exception . . .’
Wesley drove across the grass and came to a halt at the side of the building. The men got out, the old one telling Wes to ‘Wait here!’ as he did so. As he watched the men race across the grass, Wesley did wonder whether he should just cut his losses and leave. After all, there didn’t seem to be anybody about to see what he’d just done or who he was with. He could dump the car somewhere and then go home on the tube. Or he could leave the car where it was and let the blokes do the driving themselves. Ahmet the Turk he’d known for some years and Wesley liked him. This lot with guns were quite another matter. To Wes’s way of thinking, there was a touch of the al Qaeda about them.
But he carried on waiting in spite of his misgivings. It was the thought of the money he was going to get that made him. But when he heard shots being fired about ten minutes later it wasn’t cash but fear that ensured Wesley could not move from the spot.
Tower Bridge had been closed to traffic after the explosion on the tube. Now it was opened for one police car. In that car, Superintendent Wyre Williams and Inspector Çetin İkmen sped towards what could now be seen was a very violent affray outside City Hall.
‘I could not understand why someone like Ahmet Ülker would get himself involved with terrorists,’ İkmen said as Williams’ car whizzed across the bridge towards the motorcyclists guarding the entrance on to Tower Bridge Road. ‘Then I saw that incident. I heard gunfire. I remembered that the mayor sometimes needs a cigarette to calm his nerves. He goes outside.’
The motorcyclists moved out of the way quickly, allowing Williams to pass without hindrance.
‘Mr Üner wants to put people like Ülker out of business,’ İkmen went on. ‘He has a campaign against such people. Ahmet Ülker cannot allow him to do that and so he makes this terrible alliance with Nourazar, the man who hires himself out as a one-person jihadi training and suicide operation. Superintendent Williams, the explosion in the underground was merely a diversion.’
Williams was driving like a demon. ‘CO19 are on their way,’ he said. He was completely focused on the task in hand and did not express any sort of opinion about what İkmen had said.
Williams turned right, and right again up a tiny side road, which brought them to the back of City Hall. A group of shouting, hostile men with guns held out in front of them were pushing a very pale Mayor Haluk Üner towards a bright blue Subaru Impreza. İkmen instantly recognised his own clothes on one of the men, and the person wearing them was Ayatollah Hadi Nourazar. He went to get out of the car, but Williams stopped him. Up on Tower Bridge he could see another police car, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing, headed in their direction. ‘That’s CO19,’ Williams said, ‘the armed response unit. You stay here.’ Then to İkmen’s horror the unarmed Williams got out of the car.
‘You had better get back in your police car,’ Nourazar said and pointed his gun at Williams. ‘We need to take Mr Üner for a ride.’
‘You’re not going to get out of here,’ Williams said.
The Iranian shrugged. ‘You think?’ he said, then he smiled. ‘You let me out or I will kill your mayor.’ While two of his men trained their guns on Williams, Nourazar put the muzzle of his gun up to Üner’s head.
‘The roads—’
‘The roads are closed to the north of here,’ Nourazar said. ‘The explosion took place on the other side of the river, didn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘Of course it did. I helped plan it myself. We will go south.’
The driver’s door of the Subaru opened and a familiar figure to Williams got out. ‘Explosion? What explosion?’ asked Wesley Simpson.
‘Nothing of any consequence,’ Nourazar said. Then pushing Haluk Üner in front of him he said, ‘Get in the car.’
‘Is that the mayor?’ Wesley persisted. Then he looked at the ayatollah and his men and said, ‘Fucking hell, man, are you kidnapping the mayor?’
‘What I am doing is of no concern to you,’ Nourazar said. ‘Get back in the car and when I tell you, drive.’
‘Oh, I don’t like—’
Nourazar briefly turned his gun on Wesley. ‘Get in the car!’
Wesley Simpson did as he was told. Just before he got in, Williams looked into his eyes and said, ‘Wes, be careful.’
The other police car had crossed the bridge now. Nourazar hustled his men and Üner into the Subaru, and got in himself. ‘You had better think carefully about what you do now,’ he said to Williams. ‘I will not hesitate to kill Mr Üner.’ And then he pulled the door shut and shouted at Wesley to get going.
Just before the car took off back down Potters Fields, the ayatollah looked in to the police car where he spotted Çetin İkmen. There was a moment when surprise and maybe even a little anxiety registered on his face.
Chapter 27
* * *
The residents of one of London’s most exclusive addresses, The Bishops Avenue, East Finchley, were not accustomed to visits from the police. Apparently there had been some awful terrorist outrage down in the City, people had died, but that had nothing to do with them. Strange then that such a lot of police officers should fetch up and surround Mr Ülker’s house. At such a time of emergency, the residents of The Bishops Avenue would have imagined that the police, especially the local force, would have better things to do. What they didn’t know was that the police officers who came for Ülker were not local and they were very much concerned with what had happened in the City.
Ahmet Ülker had just got off the phone when armed police smashed in his front door and someone who introduced himself as DI Hogarth arrested him in connection with terrorist offences. He was, they told him, going to accompany them to Scotland Yard. Ahmet, grey-faced, said nothing. Then one of the armed men accompanied him to his bedroom to retrieve his jacket and wallet.
Just before they left Ahmet’s sixteen-million-pound house, DI Hogarth said, ‘I understand you’re married, Mr Ülker. Would you like us to inform your wife about where you’re going?’
‘I would if I thought she might care,’ Ahmet replied with a sudden smile. Then he added, ‘My wife and I had an argument two days ago. She walked out.’
DI Hogarth looked as if he didn’t quite believe that. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me to contact her at her new address or—’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Ahmet said. ‘Things have been bad between us for some time.’
‘Fair enough.’
And then they left. Down the long, curving drive, out through the great big expensive but cheap-looking iron gates and on to the avenue. Because it was Bishops Avenue and people there just did not do such things, no curtains twitched at any of the windows as the police car made its way down the road. But that didn’t mean that no one noticed. Everyone who was not at his or her country cottage or second home in Marbella took very careful note of the fact that the rather smart Turkish businessman who had a stripper for a wife had been taken away by the police.
‘Fucking hell!’ The car carrying the CO19 officers was blocking the exit from Potters Fields. Wesley looked quickly at the pavement on either side of the road but decided that it was far too narrow for him to drive his car on to.
‘Go back! Go back!’ Nourazar said, waving his gun wildly about in the back of the Subaru. ‘Go back towards the river!’
As two huge and heavily armed men got out of the police car, Wesley Simpson did the fastest three-point turn he had ever done in his life. As he did so he said, ‘OK, OK, there’s a path down there, I can drive along it, get back to Tooley Street.’
‘Good man!’
Then suddenly realising that what he was doing w
as in fact something he had vowed never to do again, Wesley said, ‘But you better not hurt the mayor! I ain’t doing time for assisting in no killing. I do not do that stuff!’
‘Just drive,’ the man sitting next to Wesley said, handling his gun in a sinister fashion.
Wesley drove the car up into the park and around the other police car. Superintendent Williams, a man he had some past experience with, and some guy he thought he’d seen at Ahmet’s factory stood beside it. As he passed them, they got in their car, no doubt to pursue him. If he got caught this time, they’d throw away the key. Wes looked at Haluk Üner’s white face in his rear-view mirror, and he decided then and there that if there was any way he could stop these characters from hurting him, he would. Half a million quid was a lot of money but it was bloody useless if you were doing big time in the Scrubs for accessory to murder. Not that prison was his immediate concern right now. First he had to somehow get away from these nutters with guns. He had to do that while still driving and without putting the mayor in danger.
‘What do you want?’ he heard Haluk Ülker say to the men in the back of the car with him.
None of them answered him. He looked pleadingly into the rear-view mirror at Wesley who said, ‘I have no idea what this is about. I’m just the driver.’
Now on the Queen’s Walk in front of City Hall and right beside the river, Wesley stole a glance in the direction of the Tower and saw what looked like a cloud of smoke in the area. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘It’s—’
‘Someone has blown up a tube train,’ the mayor said. ‘These guys—’
Nourazar slapped Haluk Üner across the mouth with his pistol. Wesley heard something break and said, ‘Fuck!’ He looked in the rear-view mirror and saw blood pouring out of the mayor’s mouth.
‘Be quiet, sodomite!’ Nourazar hissed at the mayor. Then seeing the look of alarm on his driver’s face, the Iranian said, ‘This man performs unnatural acts with other men. Your mayor, Mr Simpson! London should be ashamed!’
Death by Design Page 21