Grave Island: a compelling mystery thriller

by Andrew Smyth

  ‘He kept the place tidy.’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t like mess. I think he was rather relieved when I moved into my own flat, because my room was always a tip.’

  I shut the bureau and stood up. ‘I don’t know what we’re looking for, but as far as I can tell, it’s not here. Let’s try his bedroom.’

  Greta led me back through the living room to the master bedroom which shared the same full-width windows onto the terrace. The room was as tidy as all the others, except for a couple of plastic carrier bags thrown onto the bed. I checked the bedside table and then went into the walk-in cupboard. All his suits were hanging neatly, some in the plastic covers they’d come back in from the cleaners. ‘What’s on the bed?’

  ‘Just his possessions from the hospital,’ Greta said. ‘I threw everything from his bedside table into those bags. I haven’t looked at them but I can’t imagine there’s anything interesting there.’

  I tipped the contents of both bags onto the bed. There was his wristwatch, a couple of magazines and a paperback. A dressing gown, some tissues and his medication. ‘You brought his medicines back?’ I asked Greta.

  ‘As I said, I brought everything here. I put them all in the bags.’

  I spread out the medicines over the bed cover. Apart from the specialist medicines there was his anticoagulant, Oxaban, which he’d been taking for his heart, as well as the insulin for his diabetes. I picked them up and shook them. There were still plenty of anticoagulants left as well as insulin cartridges. I put them down on the bed and started going through them. The Oxaban bottle looked a bit odd and as I inspected the label it came unstuck and fell off, which I thought was strange. I looked at it more carefully and there was something about it that suggested it wasn’t the original label.

  I picked up the insulin container. ‘This label’s been stuck on top of an older one. Look.’ I pushed my thumbnail under the top label and started to peel it back. ‘The label underneath appears to be in Greek. As far as I can make out, the use-by date on it was two years ago.’ It was marked with the hospital’s details. ‘Didn’t he take his own medication with him?’

  ‘No, he had to use theirs. He went in for a pre-assessment a couple of weeks beforehand and they prescribed new medication. They told him they needed to keep control of what the patient was being given.’

  I looked at the Oxaban again. According to Professor West he prescribed this in preference to the normal anti-coagulant so it didn’t conflict with the operation. But if he’d spent two weeks on a medicine that had been relabelled and might be out-of-date like the insulin, then it must have made him vulnerable.

  I inspected the labels more closely. ‘Out-of-date insulin could have contributed to his death,’ I said, ‘but I need to find out about this Oxaban.’ I looked at Greta. ‘I think we need to follow this up. I’ll have to trace these back and find out where they came from.’ Finally it seemed to me I had a definite lead, even if it wasn’t the one Greta had given me.

  6

  We wrapped the medicines carefully and locked the flat. From Greta’s initial fears that her father might have been murdered by his associates, we seemed to have moved to something much more complicated. ‘Perhaps I should go back to the hospital and see if this wipes the self-satisfied smile from the general manager’s face,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t see him giving you any information. He’ll shut up like a clam if he knows there’s any suggestion of the hospital being at fault.’

  ‘Yes, but the security consultant might help, but I think we should find out more about this Oxaban first.’

  ‘Sally might be able to give us some medical background. Phone her and see if we could meet this evening.’ I pulled out my phone and dialled her number. As usual it went straight to voicemail so I left a message and for good measure sent her a text, saying that we’d be expecting her on the boat this evening. I didn’t want to give her a choice, so I added that it was urgent.

  This time I left Greta to take a taxi back to her office. I decided to walk across the park to Regent’s Park Underground Station and see if the quiet open space stimulated my thinking. I didn’t know much about drugs but knew that some still had their full active ingredients many months, sometimes even years after their labelled sell-by date, but I didn’t know if insulin was one of them. And if the insulin cartridges were faulty, then it begged the question whether the anticoagulant was what it said on the tin. We needed to trace the supply route, but this was turning into something that I hadn’t bargained for.

  But now I had something to follow up and I wasn’t going to let it go. I dismissed the idea of passing it onto the police – I couldn’t see them getting very far. The hospital would bring down the shutters and simply deny everything. Both Professor West and Bob Tyler had made that very clear. Acting alone, I might have better luck in looking at what went on behind the scenes. If I could meet Sally then she might be able to help me with the medical side of things. At that moment I had no idea how significant the relabelled medicines were.

  My thoughts were interrupted by my mobile trilling its annoying sound at me. How often had I decided to change the ringtone but forgotten to do anything about it? It was a message from Sayed asking for a meeting. It was his usual terse communication and gave nothing away about whether it was urgent or not but I realised that I couldn’t carry on keeping Sayed to myself. I didn’t think I’d ever live it down if there was any fundamentalist activity and it emerged that I’d told no one.

  I thought it was safer asking Sayed to meet me on the river, rather than in his park as before. There were too many people there who might be interested in an Afghan meeting a white man in the park. I sent him detailed instructions about how to find Salacia and asked him to meet me there at around five pm which should give him plenty of time.

  But I realised that it was decision time as I sat on a bench by the boating lake, watching the families enjoying the sunshine and the groups of people on the rowing boats who were apparently trying to re-enact the sinking of the Bismarck. Judging by the amount of water spraying around they were doing quite a good job of it, while the ducks were doing their best to keep away from the hostilities.

  On our second meeting, I’d finally found the courage to tell Sayed that I no longer worked for military intelligence and that I had to hand his case over to someone else, but he’d been quite adamant that if I did so, it would be the last we heard from him. I couldn’t quite work out why he had so much apparent faith in me but then I thought that given his unsettled history he might regard me as one of the few constant threads running through his difficult life.

  As I considered it further, I realised that I really didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t keep Sayed to myself and the most obvious person to share him with was Ali, but I’d not forgotten the way he’d behaved in the Afghan village and his accusations that I’d shot Sayed’s brother. If he still believed that, it might make things difficult. But he came from a Muslim family – even if he denied being religious himself – so Sayed might feel more relaxed with him.

  I decided that I’d have to risk it – apart from anything else, I didn’t know who I could bring in. Strictly speaking this was not a matter for military intelligence but should have been passed over to our Thames House co-ordinators at MI5. Since I’d mainly worked overseas, I’d had more to do with MI6, but this was a domestic matter. I realised that I’d been staring at my blank phone for some time and shook myself out of my indecisiveness and scrolled through to Ali’s number and dialled it.

  He answered on the second ring as though waiting for the call. When I asked him to meet me on the river, he told me that he’d got an important meeting. ‘Cancel it.’ This was more important than anything else he might be doing. ‘Cancel and meet me and a private informer on the barge.’

  ‘Private informer?’ he spluttered. ‘You’re not supposed to have private informers. You know they have to be registered.’

  If he was expecting me to argue, he was disappointed b
ecause he must have realised without my saying it that I was no longer bound to his rules. ‘Is that agreed then?’ I repeated. ‘Five o’clock at the barge. Oh… and come alone.’ I knew he wouldn’t appreciate that last comment, but I hung up before he could say anything. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist coming to find out what the Big Mystery was.

  Sayed arrived early, saying he’d left himself enough time to find the place. ‘This is pretty cool,’ he said as he stood on the pontoon looking at the boat. He was even speaking like a native and I admired the effort that had gone into it. I gestured him to come up and moved aside to let him go into the saloon ahead of me. He walked to the windows and looked out. ‘Wow, what a view. How long have you lived here?’

  ‘A few months. Ever since I left the army. Tea?’ I asked and Sayed, still looking around, simply nodded. I fiddled in the galley and handed him a mug and took one myself and sat down. ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, sitting down opposite me. ‘It’s going okay. I’m getting good marks on my pharmacy course and will finish it soon. Then I’m thinking of going back home. They need me there.’

  ‘And did you decide to enrol in the Koranic classes?’ I thought I should get to the point before Ali arrived. ‘Incidentally, you didn’t tell me the name of the person you were concerned about.’

  ‘Khazim, Khazim Ali. He’s a model pupil – too perfect in fact. He carries this sort of aura around with him. The imams call it holy, I call it smug and self-satisfied but people don’t seem to see in me the same dedication that they see in him. There’s a group within a group that I wasn’t invited to join. Khazim always stays on after the class. I waited behind once to see what happened and he didn’t leave until nearly two hours later.’

  At that moment, I could see Ali walking along the pontoon and I went to the door to let him in. ‘This better be good,’ he said as he clambered up the gangway. ‘I had to cancel a meeting with the head of the department.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ Sayed had stood up and was looking across at Ali. He turned to me. ‘I told you I only wanted to deal with you.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ I said and let Ali go in ahead of me. ‘Sit down, Sayed, and I’ll explain. Ali’s a former colleague. I haven’t told him anything about you, but he used to work with me in intelligence and he was there in Afghanistan when we met your mother.’ Sayed was staring at me. ‘I told you that I’m not in the army anymore, but Ali is and he can probably be of more help.’

  Ali was looking puzzled. ‘Ali, this is Sayed.’ Ali came in and approached Sayed and held out his hand. Sayed looked up at Ali before turning and looking fiercely at me but I pretended I hadn’t noticed and continued my explanation. ‘I managed to trace Sayed here in London and we’ve been in touch on and off since I got back.’

  Sayed’s hostility was obviously affecting Ali who stepped back and sat down next to me. ‘This is a security matter,’ I continued. ‘Sayed thinks some of the people at his mosque are being radicalised and he said he might look into it for me. I suggested he attended the same Koranic classes so he could observe this person more closely.’ But I could see that I wasn’t making much impression on Sayed who was heading out of the saloon.

  He stopped at the doorway and turned. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to become a code number in an intelligence operation. I’m only here because you helped put me in touch with my mother.’

  ‘Ali was there too,’ I protested, but it seemed to make little impression on him. ‘Wait a moment and think about it. It was both of us in your village – we were together. We saw your brother, Shamir, and had the photograph of him and Jafar. We were a team.’

  I reached inside my jacket and pulled out the photo and held it out to Sayed. ‘This is your brother Shamir?’ I looked across at Ali before adding, ‘We were both there when he was shot.’

  Sayed took the photograph and looked at it without saying anything. It was as though he was transported back to a different world in a different time in a different continent. ‘That’s Jafar with him,’ he said eventually. ‘Always the fighter.’

  ‘Sayed.’ I sensed that he might listen to us. ‘Ali can help you. He has more contacts.’ I glanced across to Ali who was looking intently at Sayed and I risked playing the race card. ‘He’s a Muslim so he understands your background better than I do and wants to help. Why don’t you come back inside and we can talk about it? It’s still up to you what you do, I’m not putting any pressure on you.’

  Sayed finally came in and sat down. ‘You were in Chorjah when he was killed? How did it happen?’

  Ali looked across at me again before replying. ‘I’m sure Philip told you. There was an attack on your village. We didn’t get there until afterwards.’

  ‘But you say you were there when he was killed?’

  I didn’t like where this was going and thought it was time to take over. ‘It must have been a sniper. We didn’t see him. But I haven’t asked why Shamir was there in the first place. Why hadn’t he left as you did?’

  ‘He couldn’t. If you look at the photo again you’ll see he’s leaning against Jafar. Shamir was crippled when he was young. It was polio – several of the kids caught it but Shamir was the worst.’

  ‘Weren’t you inoculated against it?’ I asked without thinking.

  ‘It was when the Taliban came. I told you they shut down the little clinic saying it was the work of the West and they wouldn’t have anything to do with it. By the time the clinic reopened again it was too late.’ Sayed picked up the photo and looked at it again before handing it back to Ali. ‘I have a copy and look at it when I call home.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ I asked.

  ‘As well as we could hope for,’ Sayed said. ‘They have some sort of peace now, so things are a bit better.’

  ‘Ali might be able to help you get back to visit,’ I said. ‘He might get you a ride on one of his transport planes that’s always going out there.’

  ‘They’re not mine,’ Ali said before appearing to realise how negative it sounded. ‘But I could always see what I could do,’ he added, rather grudgingly, I thought.

  ‘But you’ll keep an eye on this Khazim for us?’ I said and turned to Ali. ‘Sayed thinks that he’s been groomed for some kind of project.’

  ‘A tip worth knowing,’ said Ali. ‘It’s one of the first lessons they teach us. Sometimes a mark on their forehead means that they’re preparing something. Look out for that because it means they’ve been praying hard to build up confidence and forcing their forehead down onto the floor. MI5 has foiled several plots because the agent has noticed marks.’

  Sayed nodded and stood up. ‘I’ll remember that. I’ll be in touch if I find out anything else,’ and without saying goodbye, he jumped off the boat and walked down the pontoon.

  I watched him go before turning to Ali. ‘What do you think?’ I asked, although I could see that I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  ‘You’ve been in touch with him all the time you’ve been back here in the UK?’ he asked and I could see that he was quite angry. ‘You should have told me about him – I needed to know. Are there any rules that you think apply to you? You have such a high opinion of yourself that you think you don’t need anyone’s help, you can manage everything on your own. How I ever thought of you as a friend I don’t know – it took me too long to see you for what you were.’

  ‘And what am I? I’m the same person I’ve always been – I think it’s you who’s changed.’

  ‘And why are you calling me a Muslim? I told you I’ve got no religion. I renounced all that a long time ago. I don’t like to be labelled like that.’

  ‘But you still have the same heritage. I thought it was something Sayed could relate to.’

  ‘So how long have you been seeing him on your own? You’re supposed to register and share informants.’

  ‘But I am sharing it,’ I protested. ‘I asked you here because I wanted you to know about it.’

  ‘This isn’t a matter for
military intelligence. This should be handled by MI5. They’ve got all the personnel and experience at this sort of thing. Instead you’re handling it like an amateur – which is what you are. You’re on the outside now.’

  Ouch, that was a bit mean, if true. ‘You saw him, Ali. He won’t deal with anyone else – he nearly walked out when he saw you. Don’t ask me why, but he won’t. And anyway, he hasn’t any concrete information. At the moment it’s only suspicions. If it turns out that he’s really onto something then we can call in the experts. And in the meantime, you know about it so that makes it semi-official.’

  ‘That’s a pretty good indication of what you think counts as official. Nothing that anyone else would recognise.’ He stood up. ‘Okay, I’ll register it with them, and monitor the situation, but it’s not going to make you very popular.’ He paused, and I wasn’t looking forward to what he had to add. ‘This boy, Sayed, how do you think you’re helping him? It’s your guilty conscience, trying to make amends for what happened out there.’

  ‘And what did happen out there? Nothing happened.’ I really didn’t know how to get through to him. ‘I don’t have a guilty conscience. I’m helping him because it’s the right thing to do and he’s helping me for the same reason. Not everything can be reduced to desiccated policies and strategies. Some things we do simply because they are right.’

  Ali shrugged. ‘That was your job: to follow policies and strategies, but of course you didn’t think that was enough.’

  ‘We were doing the right thing, Ali,’ I said. ‘It might not have been pretty but we were doing it for the right reasons.’

  He stared at me before heading out of the saloon and I could see that it was pointless saying any more. ‘Ali, before you storm off, did you manage to look into those files?’