Death by Design

by Barbara Nadel

  From inside the flat he heard the woman shout. ‘No! No!’

  İkmen could not see what was happening inside, the gap between the door and the door frame was too small.

  ‘I thought you were a good man! I thought—’

  ‘Fatima, Hamdi is a martyr, a saint, he has gone straight to Paradise!’

  ‘Hamdi never wanted that!’ the woman screamed. ‘We talked about it. He wanted to serve Allah in this life, with me and with our baby!’

  He heard her get up, heard her feet slap down on the wooden floor.

  ‘That on the news, was that you?’ she said. ‘Killing people on a train and . . . What do you think they will do to Muslim people if you do these things? And now here with Mr Üner—’

  ‘He is a homosexual!’

  ‘So? He wants to build more play parks for the kids,’ she said. ‘Wants to make the roads safer.’ İkmen heard her footsteps on the wood again.

  Opposite the block, Williams and the CO19 officers were emerging and quietly cordoning off the street. Two men had got out of the BMW; one of them was Ahmet Ülker.

  ‘I wasn’t happy about Hamdi getting involved with you,’ Fatima continued. ‘I told him! I said we should stick to our own, not go getting involved with people from Iran. We, he didn’t understand your country! We—’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ There was silence for several seconds. İkmen pushed the door open a little more and looked inside. The woman was at the door of the room at the end of the corridor, her hands braced against the posts, blocking İkmen’s view of anyone else.

  ‘A woman shouldn’t talk to a man like that!’ Nourazar said. ‘Sit down, disgusting bitch! Hamdi—’

  ‘Hamdi was flattered by you, but I never was,’ she said. ‘Mr Ülker gave him a job, which was good, but you – you’re not even wanted in your own country! Hamdi told me! I was suspicious of that, I—’

  ‘Whore!’

  He must, İkmen reckoned, have been standing already when he hit her. Fatima fell to the ground and suddenly İkmen found himself looking into the eyes of Hadi Nourazar.

  DI Hogarth handed Ahmet Ülker a large briefcase. The factory owner was shaking.

  ‘You get up there, Ahmet,’ he said. ‘You give him this and you ask him to hand over the mayor, alive.’

  The briefcase contained hastily assembled stacks of paper topped off with a thin layer of £50 notes.

  ‘He’ll know it’s not—’

  ‘We’ll be right behind you,’ Hogarth said.

  ‘Will you kill him?’

  Superintendent Williams joined them. ‘If necessary,’ he said.

  ‘Allah,’ Ülker muttered and gritted his teeth to help control his shaking jaw.

  ‘We can’t leave it any longer,’ Hogarth said and began to push Ülker towards the stairwell. ‘One of our men is up there already. But you just go past him.’

  Ülker looked up but he couldn’t see anybody. He mounted the stairs nervously, feeling as if his bladder was going to give way at any moment.

  ‘Who are you?’ Nourazar asked, trying to keep his gun trained on both the mayor seated on the sofa by the TV set and Fatima lying on the floor.

  ‘My name is Çetin İkmen and I am a police officer from İstanbul,’ İkmen said. ‘You caused some misery in my city, Mr Nourazar.’

  ‘Ayatollah . . .’

  ‘Mr,’ İkmen repeated. ‘You are no more a man of religion than I am. You use religious people to make money for you. You trick them. This lady’s husband—’

  ‘Hadi!’

  Nourazar looked up. ‘Ahmet,’ he said with some relief.

  Ahmet Ülker pushed past İkmen, frowning at him as he went. ‘What’s this man doing here?’

  ‘He says he’s a policeman, from İstanbul,’ Nourazar said. ‘You know Derek Harrison always had a bad feeling about him.’

  But Ahmet Ülker didn’t respond to that. ‘Things went wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I—’

  ‘Here’s your money.’ He put the briefcase down on the floor in front of Nourazar and then reached out a hand. ‘Give me the gun.’

  Nourazar frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I will have to take the mayor away from here and do what I have to where we originally planned, in the countryside.’ The Iranian looked unconvinced. ‘Hadi, no one knows we’re here. I wasn’t followed, you—’

  ‘This man followed me,’ he said and tipped his head towards Çetin İkmen.

  ‘So we’ll get rid of him and the woman!’ Ülker said.

  From down on the floor, Fatima muttered, ‘Bastards!’

  ‘Come on, Hadi!’ Ülker began to feel sweat breaking out on his brow. ‘Give me the gun. I’ll do it. You take the money and get out of here.’

  For just a fraction of a second Ahmet Ülker and Çetin İkmen exchanged a glance. It was fleeting, meant little and was really no more than an acknowledgement of each other, but Nourazar saw it and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll keep the gun for the moment, thank you, Ahmet.’

  ‘But Hadi, to open the case—’

  ‘I can do that very well with one hand,’ he said and proceeded to open first one catch on the case, then the other.

  Now almost fainting with tension, Ülker said, ‘Hadi—’

  The aiming of the pistol and the subsequent shot happened in less than half a second. But Nourazar was not a good shot. He aimed for Ülker but hit Fatima, wounding her in the top of her arm. Çetin İkmen threw himself on her, putting his body between hers and any further shots. But none came.

  ‘Put the gun down, Nourazar!’ A heavily armoured CO19 officer was now where İkmen had just been. He was staring down the barrel of an HK MP5 submachine gun.

  Nourazar instantly pointed his pistol at the mayor’s head. ‘No, I think that it is you who should—’

  ‘This place is surrounded,’ the officer said. ‘Go outside and you’ll get your head blown off. Surrender.’

  Nourazar jabbed his pistol hard into the side of Haluk Üner’s head. ‘No.’

  ‘Then bloody kill me!’ the mayor’s voice suddenly echoed around the room. ‘You’ve kidnapped and beaten me, you’ve killed people in my city, you’ve called into question my—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘No, I will not!’ Haluk Üner said. ‘Kill me! You are as fake as Ülker’s handbags, Mr Nourazar! Let’s have an end to it, shall we? You kill me and then this officer will kill you. Then you can go to Paradise! That is, after all, what you want, isn’t it?’

  But Nourazar didn’t shoot. He didn’t shoot even though everyone could see that he wanted to. The CO19 officer walked slowly forward, reaching out a hand as he did so.

  ‘Put the gun down,’ İkmen said from beside Fatima. He was covered in her blood but she would be all right. Whether her baby would survive the experience was another matter.

  ‘Put it down!’ Another officer had entered behind the first one. The small room was filling up. Nourazar’s face was now white.

  ‘Put it down!’

  Whether he lost his grip on the pistol or whether he consciously let it clatter to the floor, no one knew. But suddenly Nourazar’s pistol was on the floor, one officer picking it up almost before it had landed, the other officer twisting Nourazar’s arms behind his back and kicking him to the floor.

  ‘Get down and spread your legs, you fucking cunt!’ the officer screamed.

  İkmen saw the mayor wince at the brutality of it but then he shakily came over to İkmen and looked at Fatima. ‘Madam, I am so, so sorry,’ he said. And then he turned to the ever increasing number of officers in the room and said, ‘Can we please get an ambulance for this lady?’

  DI Hogarth, who was now cuffing Ahmet Ülker, called through to Superintendent Williams outside. ‘Sir, could we have an ambulance here?’

  Williams was already on it.

  İkmen helped Fatima to sit up. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said.

  She smiled and then looked up into Haluk Üner’s concerned face and said, ‘You were very
brave, Mr Üner.’

  ‘He hijacked our religion,’ Haluk Üner said. ‘He made me very angry.’ And then tears slowly began to roll down his face. Fatima, crying too now, put a hand up to his face and began to gently wipe the tears away.

  Chapter 31

  * * *

  Çetin İkmen hadn’t really wanted to go to hospital on his own account.

  ‘They have far too many injured people to deal with to be bothered with me,’ he told Superintendent Williams as the latter nevertheless made him get into a bed at Guy’s Hospital. In reality İkmen knew that Williams had no choice. He couldn’t send him back to İstanbul until he had rewarded İkmen’s work for the Met by making sure that he was OK. İkmen was exhausted, dehydrated and his pulse was very high. The doctor recommended a sedative and a night of observation in hospital. As İkmen drifted off to sleep, more trolleys carrying the injured from Mark Lane were brought into Guy’s. At that point there had been thirty-two confirmed deaths and a hundred and twelve seriously injured.

  Sunshine beating down on the window outside his room was not something İkmen had been expecting. Not just because he was in the UK but because somehow he had not imagined that such a thing could happen amidst such horror. Something else he hadn’t reckoned on was the sight of his son.

  ‘Sınan?’

  At first he thought he had to be dreaming. But then he remembered, of course his son worked in England now.

  ‘Dad.’ He leaned down, put his arms round his father’s neck and kissed his cheeks. ‘Dad, the police came and got me. You’re something of a hero. What have you been doing?’

  It took İkmen a few moments to really come into full consciousness, but when he did he told his son that he had been working with the Metropolitan Police.

  ‘I don’t know how much I can tell you,’ he said as he took a glass of water gratefully from his son’s hands.

  ‘Mum, everyone in fact, thought that you were out east,’ Sınan said.

  ‘Does your mother know I’m here?’

  ‘Once you were safe, the Met called Commissioner Ardıç who went personally to the apartment and told Mum,’ Sınan said. ‘We’re all really proud, you know, Dad. Even Mum.’

  Sınan no longer lived in İstanbul but he was well aware of the tension that had scarred his parents’ marriage in the wake of his brother Bekir’s death.

  ‘You know you can call home now,’ Sınan said.

  İkmen shook his head. ‘Later. As long as they know.’

  ‘They do.’ And then Sınan watched as his father’s eyes closed. ‘I’ll leave you to rest for a while, Dad.’

  But İkmen didn’t hear him and as Sınan left he began snoring heavily once again.

  In spite of the very serious charges being made against him, Ahmet Ülker looked really quite relaxed.

  ‘Hadi Nourazar approached me,’ he told Superintendent Williams. ‘It was his idea to kill the mayor. I knew nothing about that. I was paying him to frighten Mr Üner.’

  ‘Mr Ülker, you were instrumental in recruiting men to blow up a disused tube station,’ Williams responded. ‘Thirty-four people have died so far.’

  One of those was Derek Harrison. It appeared, the police told him, that Derek had been stabbed.

  ‘Superintendent, Ali Reza Hajizadeh was a fanatic,’ Ülker said. ‘Even Nourazar, a fanatic himself, was wary of him. He wanted to die. What can I say? He was to create a diversion by blowing himself up on Mark Lane station. He was there to create a noise! An old railwayman that Derek knew gave us the code. Do you think that such a person would have given us the code if he had known that people were going to be killed?’

  ‘Give me his name and I’ll ask him,’ Williams said.

  ‘He’s called John Richards and he lives in Barking,’ Ülker replied. ‘I think you’ll find he is a member of the British National Party. Not someone who would help jihadis. He didn’t know that Hajizadeh was going to climb down onto the rail track. None of us did!’

  ‘But by your own admission you knew that Hajizadeh was a fanatic,’ Williams said. ‘You must have realised there was a possibility he would blow up a train.’

  Ülker looked at his lawyer and sighed. ‘I meant no harm.’

  ‘You meant no harm?’ Williams laughed. ‘Mr Ülker, we put a police officer inside your organisation. The illegal workers we knew about anyway but from him we got your dodgy arthritis drug scam as well as much about your plans for Mark Lane and our mayor, Mr Üner. That officer—’

  ‘He is a Turk.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a Turk,’ Williams said.

  ‘You cannot trust the Turkish police.’

  ‘No?’ Williams laughed again. ‘Ülker, this officer and his colleagues were on the team who closed you down in İstanbul. Inspector Çetin İkmen has yet to be fully debriefed, but when he is, we’ll get even more on you. Not to mention poor old Wesley Simpson.’

  Ülker looked up and frowned.

  ‘Beyond a bit of dodgy goods moving, Wes had retired,’ Williams said. ‘He is not best pleased about what Nourazar and you put him through.’

  ‘The man is a thief,’ Ülker said.

  ‘Oh, so I can’t take İkmen’s word for anything because he’s a Turkish policeman and I shouldn’t be listening to Wesley because he’s a thief?’

  Ahmet Ülker didn’t answer.

  ‘And then of course there is the issue of your wife, Mr Ülker,’ Williams said. ‘Her family haven’t heard from her. They’re worried.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ Ülker said. ‘She left me, Mr Williams. How should I know where she is if she doesn’t tell me?’

  ‘Maybe the search we’re going to make of all your properties as well as those registered to Yacoubian Industries will help to solve the mystery,’ Williams replied.

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘Then you’re obviously not worried about what we might find,’ Williams said. ‘So maybe you didn’t kill her.’

  Again, Ülker didn’t answer.

  ‘But then again, it’s not just Maxine we’re looking for, is it?’ He smiled. ‘A lot of money won’t look good for you. Neither will a stack of blank British passports.’

  Ülker frowned. ‘Passports?’

  ‘Like the ones our Turkish colleagues found at your factory in İstanbul,’ Williams said.

  Ülker, grave, did not answer.

  ‘Something else we’d like to know, Mr Ülker. Movie Star Pools turned up at your place yesterday, I imagine to clean your pool. Trouble is, there’s no such company and so I was wondering who Movie Star Pools might really be. Think you can help me with that, do you?’

  Ülker turned to his lawyer and, for a moment, the two of them whispered between themselves. When they had finished, the lawyer said, ‘Superintendent, may I please have a word with my client in private?’

  The Iranian official sat down beside the acting commissioner and said, ‘That’s him.’

  They were observing an interview between a still visibly scarred Patrick Riley and Hadi Nourazar. The ayatollah had refused any legal representation and was currently saying nothing.

  ‘Hadi, when we found you,’ Riley said, ‘you were aiming a gun at the mayor of London, having just shot an entirely innocent woman.’

  Nourazar looked up at the ceiling and then down again at his hands.

  ‘You were instrumental in the torture of a man you knew as Çetin Ertegrul, actually an undercover police officer,’ Riley continued. ‘Together with others who were encouraged by you to end their own lives, you kidnapped Mr Haluk Ülker and held him against his will.’

  The Iranian official asked, ‘The men who committed suicide, how do you know that Nourazar encouraged that?’

  ‘The driver of the car, a civilian, hired simply to drive hard and fast, told us,’ Dee replied.

  ‘Can you trust him?’

  ‘In this instance I think we can,’ Dee said. ‘And besides, Hüseyin, why else would those men do such a thing? Two of them had families, they were all decent b
lokes. Nourazar got his hooks into them . . .’

  ‘That is his skill,’ Hüseyin the Iranian official said. ‘People follow him. Even we were taken in.’

  ‘When he returned to his religion?’

  ‘He was a model.’ Hüseyin smiled. ‘A SAVAK agent, burdened with remorse, finding solace in speaking against other royalists and, of course, in the mercy of Islam. Only later did we realise that his conception of Islam was not in accord with our own.’

  ‘That must have been worrying for you,’ Dee said.

  Hüseyin didn’t reply.

  In the interview room, Riley spoke again.

  ‘Mr Nourazar—’

  ‘Ayatollah,’ Nourazar interrupted.

  Riley smiled. ‘You can drop the holy man routine with me,’ he said. ‘We know all of this jihadi thing is only for money.’

  Nourazar turned away.

  ‘Mr Ülker has already told us that he was going to give you money. Although he says that he only wanted the mayor “frightened”. He says that killing the mayor was your idea.’

  There was no response at all.

  ‘You want to know what I think happened?’ Riley asked. ‘I think that at the beginning you were so afraid of the Islamic Revolution you shopped all your old mates in SAVAK in order to save your own skin.’

  This time, at the word SAVAK, Nourazar did respond. His face went white and he emitted a tiny gasp.

  ‘Oh, we know all about SAVAK and your role in it,’ Riley said. ‘We know about how you took to Islam and then how it just wasn’t really for you.’

  Nourazar looked at Riley with disgust.

  ‘If only he would talk!’ Dee said to his Iranian guest.

  ‘He won’t do that,’ Hüseyin responded calmly. ‘Silence is all that remains to him. If you would give him to us, David . . .’