by Parker Bilal
Pretty early on in his first tour in Iraq he began to pick up words – yallah, itharak along with sayings he already knew, like salaam aleikum – peace be with you; which now took on an ironic aspect since he was carrying an assault rifle when he said it. He found an Iraqi interpreter to give him lessons. None of this helped his position in the unit.
‘You sure you know which side you’re on, Drake?’
It became a standard joke. Send Drake in first. See if they want to make peace, and if the answer is no, we come in with guns blazing. There was an acid burn under all the jokes. He learned to carry himself carefully, to watch his back. Never walk into a situation that he couldn’t get himself out of. And never, ever, fully trust anyone.
The feeling of the hot wind blowing in his face was a physical sensation rather than something he remembered. The people who came up to him in the streets on foot patrol. A young woman carrying a sick child, an old man in tears. They all zeroed in on the one soldier who looked like one of them. Holding out their hands, begging for help, for understanding, for reason.
Realizing that he was complicit in their suffering made him feel responsible. He had seen what happened to men when you put a weapon in their hands and sent them to a foreign land. It felt like a natural progression to apply for the Special Investigations Branch. Someone had to police their own side. So, in his second term, during the surge of 2007, he went back as a corporal in the Military Police.
It was his mother who had brought them to the Freetown estate. She had sorted herself out, found a job in the local library and stopped drinking. For a time they ate regular meals. For a time, this was his manor. It was still a grim sight. The dull grey buildings, covered runways and reinforced glass faced onto an open patch of scrubland that on somebody’s drawing board had been intended as a playing field. A row of shops and a pub had been thrown in to create a sense of community. Most of them were shuttered now, scarred by graffiti, wrapped in iron grilles with doorways bricked in and glass replaced by hardboard sheets.
Drake had good memories and bad from when he used to run here. When dreams stretched no further than becoming hip hop stars, drinking Hennessey in sleazy nightclubs with a stripper on each knee; the So Solid Crew, NWA, Ice Cube; gangsta rap, carjacking and a piece of the drug action. Drake remembered some of the faces, a couple of the names. When he came back from Iraq and joined the force they sent him here. Straight out of Hendon academy. An exercise in what they called community policing. It didn’t take long for him to see it for what it was, a career dead end. He took the first exit he could find and got off that gig for good.
A police van was parked at the entrance to the estate. A handful of sleepy uniforms dozing in the fug inside. Drake leaned out of his window and slapped a hand against the door to wake them up.
‘Anything happening?’
‘What does it look like?’ came back the reply. He hadn’t really expected a serious answer, he just wanted to show them his face.
The central area was prowled by kids who looked far younger than he remembered, all in their early to mid-teens. They spun round on BMX bikes. A mixed bag, all the races united by the same raggedy clothes and hard stares.
The name over the pub read Mad King George, but nobody ever called it that. Around here it was always known as the Alamo, as a hand-painted sign over the bar made clear. Leaning in the doorway was a familiar figure with greying dreadlocks tumbling down his shoulders. When he spotted Drake, Doc Wyatt folded his arms, watching him warily before turning and disappearing back inside.
One summer, when he was around nine, Drake’s mother had taken up with a man named Hendricks. A tall, gentle figure of a man. His background was West Indian, but the startling blue eyes spoke of the passage of other blood lineages. While the summer lasted they often went over to Clapham Common to sit on the grass in the sunshine. His mother would make sandwiches and Hendricks would drink cider and tell stories. He was older than Drake’s mother and had travelled the world. To hear him talk was to feel the world was close. Drake felt safe with him. His greying dreadlocks gave him the impression of wisdom, although the truth was that he had little in the way of formal education. Often he talked about abolitionists who used to live around the common and meet at the Holy Trinity Church.
‘They came clean, you see?’
Drake could have listened to that slow, hypnotic drawl all day. He hated it when his mother broke in with her comments, usually pointless, and totally unconnected.
‘The wealth of this country was built on a lie of the mind, a deception. The idea that slavery was not such a bad thing. You catch my drift? People wanted to believe that it brought wealth and prosperity to the whole world, when of course it only helped the people on this side of the water. Over there, wherever there might be, it brought only suffering and misery.’
It was Hendricks who first told him about the Clapham Saints. A small sect of progressives. Many of whom had, of course, made their money from the benefits of the slave trade.
‘The Bible tells us that slavery is bad, and yet for centuries good Christian people in this country slept soundly in their beds at night, not thinking about the consequences of their actions.’
Drake dreamed only of stability. His mother’s nervous disposition drove her frenetically on towards the next man; a ship forever bound for rocky shores.
According to Hendricks, the original Freetown was established as a colony for freed slaves in West Africa. William Wilberforce and a group of abolitionists launched the idea in 1792. The Clapham Saints, they were dubbed, a group of like-minded progressives who lived in the fine mansions around the common and gathered at the Holy Trinity Church. The estate bearing the same name was built in the early 1960s, designed by a Hungarian named Goldfinger. The leading exponent of what became known as ‘Brutalist Architecture’. A monument to affordable housing for the masses where the cement was displayed front and centre. When the oil crisis hit, bringing recession, these buildings were left as high and dry as a forgotten shipwreck. Like the dinosaurs and scaly beasts buried down in the London Clay below their feet, they weren’t going anywhere soon.
A quick glance around the faces inside the pub told Drake that some things never changed. Bearded hipsters, Anatolian builders, Congolese hairstylists, along with a few older men with pale skin and rugged eyes, who stared through him as they sipped their beer. Drake rapped his knuckles on the counter until Wyatt gave up his pretence of not seeing him and slid down the bar.
‘Well, well, look what the cat done drag in.’ He spoke with an exaggerated West Indian lilt.
‘Good to see you, too, Doc.’
‘Sightseeing, or on business?’
‘A bit of both.’
They had been friends once, a long time ago it felt now.
‘Was it the fire over at the mosque?’ Doc Wyatt had a large gap between his front teeth that some people thought made him look goofy, but Drake had seen him take on knives and bicycle chains and not break a sweat. He might look like a pacifist, but you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.
‘Yeah, when was that again?’
Doc Wyatt rolled his eyes. ‘Seriously? What they pay you for up there? Oh, yes, now I recall. Somethin’ to do with rattin’ out your own people, right?’
That was how it had ended, when Drake came back wearing a uniform. Community policing and him just out of Hendon. He knew he had made mistakes, come down heavier than he needed to. Back in those days he had been trying to prove himself.
Drake nodded at the rows of bottles. ‘You got any decent rum back there?’
‘I might have.’ Doc Wyatt swivelled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other without touching it. ‘Serving a cop can do some serious damage to my reputation, you know.’
‘Your reputation will be fine.’
‘Always smooth with the talk, eh, Cal?’ He still reached for a bottle.
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’
‘Difference being, I not in the busin
ess of lockin’ people up, innit?’
‘Tell me about this fire.’
‘Ah, it’s just part and parcel of the situation round here. People say things is progressin’, but ya aks me and I don’ see a lot in that way roun’ here.’
Drake recalled an incident report on the fire. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, putting it down to the kind of vandalism that happened from time to time.
‘Usual thing, innit? Nobody give a fuck about what happen. People mindin’ they own business, sayin’ they prayers.’
‘You’re saying there was no investigation?’
‘Investigation? Now that’s a big word. It’s what people say when they busy doin’ nuttin’. Sure, man, we investigatin’. Raas, man. Nothing changes.’
Doc Wyatt tilted his head towards the outside. ‘Now we got the goon squad parked up out there every day, try to stir things up.’
‘They succeed?’
‘Sure, sooner or later the kids let down dey tyre or pop a bag of dog shit off dey windscreen and they come charging in like the Light Brigade, innit? Fall for it every time. So, you just slumming it, right?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t say no different, neither.’ Doc Wyatt leaned his elbows on the counter. ‘If you’re really here to help, then it’s about time. People stopped caring about this place years ago. Them boys in blue just waitin’ for a chance to send in de riot squad.’ He hesitated for a moment.
‘I was sorry to hear about your mum,’ said Doc.
‘She was a junkie.’
‘Everybody was.’
Drake’s mother had set her flat alight one night. An old paraffin heater, a burning cigarette and a bottle of White Horse. A recipe for disaster that summed up her entire life.
With that Doc Wyatt wiped his hands on a cloth and slid down the bar to serve an old guy holding an empty pint glass. Drake turned to survey the room. It was starting to get busy. The closed looks and deflected glances told him that word had already spread about who he was.
Through the archway that led to the Lounge Bar next door Drake spotted an odd collection of four men sitting together. Three of them were young, skinheads, wearing green bomber jackets. They were grinning and snarling at one another. The table in front of them was littered with pints of lager and torn packets of crisps. The fourth man was older, in his late thirties. The sides of his head were shaven and the hair that remained on top was combed over and back in a thick wave of oil. Some kind of Hitler Youth thing going for him. When Wyatt came back Drake asked if he knew who the man was. Wyatt’s mouth wrinkled in disgust.
‘That’s Stephen Moss. You wanna steer clear of him. Nasty piece of work.’
‘Interesting,’ said Drake.
Outside, a group of kids on bikes circled round his car, their chains whirring like rattlesnakes. Someone had spray painted ‘5-Oh’ on the side. The paint was still running. When they saw Drake, they took off, standing up as they peddled hard, flying away towards the shadows.
As he drove out of the estate, Drake pulled up by the TSG carrier and banged on the side again. He waited for the driver to wind down his window.
‘Can you pull back a bit?’
‘Back?’
‘Off the estate. Give these people some space.’
The beefy sergeant scratched his ear. ‘You need to take it up with DCI Pryce.’
‘There will be trouble if you hang around here looking aggressive.’
‘Like I said, you need to take that up with DCI Pryce.’
Drake thought he could hear laughter from inside the van as he pulled away.
CHAPTER 18
The Birch Lane mosque was, strictly speaking, not part of Freetown. It was down a narrow side street across from the main playing field at the centre of the estate. An old red-brick building that had once been a synagogue. There were places where you could strip away the wallpaper to find carved menorahs and stars of David in the woodwork. The imam had insisted they be covered up but not removed, out of respect for the Jews, who, as ‘People of the Book’, had to be respected. Drake knew this because back in the day he had prayed here. A million years ago, or so it felt now. It had been converted into a rectory. Then it was a music studio. Eventually it was reborn as a community centre and then cuts left it desolate until it came back to life as a mosque. And if the sign now planted in the front yard was genuine, it had just been acquired by Jerome Clapp Associates and was about to be converted into ‘unique housing modules’. All enquiries to the number given.
The low garden wall still bore a smattering of swastikas and quips about towel-heads and camel fuckers. The community artists had been busy again. Drake called Kelly and asked for the details, then waited while she pulled the file.
‘Three weeks ago, the fire started with a low-grade incendiary device being thrown through the front door.’
The stone arch around the entrance to the building was charred. The heavy wooden doors were blackened and split from the heat.
‘The guy in charge of the place was hurt. Not badly. Some burns and smoke inhalation. Why the interest?’ Kelly meant, why now?
‘I’m not sure. It may be nothing. This damage looks like more than just a homemade fire bomb.’
‘Take it up with forensics. They still haven’t filed a full report.’
That meant nobody was taking it too seriously, which was what you might expect. Someone pours lighter fuel through a letter box and drops a match in after it. Happens all the time, mate.
Drake went around the side of the building and found another entrance. The door stood open. He stepped up into a kind of utility room. There was a washing machine and dryer. At the far end a door led into a toilet. Alongside were shelves of cleaning products, brooms, dusters and a large, industrial hoover.
‘Hello?’ Drake called out. There was no reply.
He was standing in the hallway that ran the length of the building. To his right he could see the entrance. The cracked door and crime-scene tape flapping outside. A chill breeze ran through. From here it was clear that the damage was far more extensive than was apparent from the outside. For one thing the fire had cut down the hallway, charring the walls and the ceiling which had been lined with false panelling. This had melted in places, accounting for the burnt plastic smell. From this side the fire seemed to be centred on a room just off the hallway, to the right of the front entrance.
‘What are you doing here?’
Drake turned to see a woman dressed in black from head to toe. The yellow rubber gloves on her hands added a weird touch of colour. He put her age at somewhere in her late forties. Her eyes and nose were red. Clearly she had been crying.
‘Police,’ he said, holding up his badge. She squinted at the name before turning away.
‘You’ve come too late,’ she said over her shoulder.
Drake followed her through a doorway into a prayer room. She went back to her work, cleaning the wood of the mihrab, the niche in the wall that indicated the direction of Mecca. Drake tried to shake off the feeling of discomfort he felt in that room. The woman seemed to notice. She looked at him.
‘Have we met before?’
‘I don’t think so. Look, I’m a detective.’ He produced his notebook and pen to try to look more convincing. ‘Can I ask who you are?’
‘I am Mrs Ahmad, the wife of the imam. This . . .’ She made a conscious effort to control her anger. ‘This is our home, or was.’
Drake looked round and nodded. ‘I understand your husband was hurt in the attack.’
‘Third-degree burns and smoke inhalation. They say he will never recover fully.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Her expression said this was little comfort. ‘What do you want here?’
‘Like I said, I’m a detective.’
‘I mean, why do you come now?’
‘These things take time.’
She gave a dismissive snort. ‘Nobody is interested. A mosque burns. It’s a natural h
azard.’
There was a touch of Eastern Europe to her accent.
‘Where is your husband now?’ Drake asked.
‘We could not stay here. Too much damage. They put us in a hotel.’ Her eyes were flat, but her nose now wrinkled. ‘Dirty place. Noisy. Full of dirty people.’
‘Right.’ Drake nodded at the gloves and the bucket of soapy water. ‘So you’re cleaning up.’
‘We want our home back.’
‘Can you tell me what happened?’
The woman heaved a sigh.
‘I was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, we do it every Friday, for the people, after prayers. The place was packed. It’s a miracle more didn’t die.’
The prayer room was a wide open space. Some walls had been knocked through. The floor was covered with carpet imprinted with a repeated motif: rows of arched doorways lined up in the same direction. The faithful would each stand on one of these doors to face Mecca.
‘How many were here when the attack happened?’
Mrs Ahmad shrugged. ‘Thirty, forty men? In the kitchen, maybe ten women, helping me.’
‘They all gave statements?’
‘No, of course not.’
Drake tapped the notebook against his side. People didn’t hang around waiting for the cops to show up and start asking questions.
‘Can you give me any names?’
The woman met his gaze levelly. ‘It’s a masjid, a mosque. A place of worship, people are free to come and go as they please. This is a free country.’
‘Course it is. So, tell me, the imam was in the hallway when the attack happened?’
‘No, no. The doorbell rang. Ahmad had just finished his tafsir. That is . . .’
‘I know what tafsir is.’
‘Of course.’ She looked at him strangely before going on. ‘I was in the kitchen. I hear the bell. I think it is strange. The door is open so that people can just walk in. I remember coming to stand in the doorway. I thought I will go answer it, but Ahmad waved for me not to bother, and he went himself.’
‘What happened then?’