by Vince Cable
‘Now, the bad news. The ministerial visit in a few days’ time – it’s Kate Thompson, the Minister of State who led the recent delegation to India. Bright and tipped for higher things. But you know what I think about politicians, especially Tories.
‘Anyway, we have no choice. If we want MOD work in future, we have to be very nice to Mrs Thompson. Keeping Whitehall sweet. The deal is: low-key event, modest publicity – local press, regional TV only – everyone on their best behaviour; a few apprentices on parade; leave the rest to me.’
When Calum’s meeting dispersed, Steve made a point of walking back with Shaida. She gave not the slightest sign of intimacy and Steve felt as if their extramural meetings had never happened. What was it all for? A beautiful young woman had taken advantage of his infatuation to pursue a personal agenda whose ultimate purpose was obscure. He had done as she asked. Now what?
She must have been reading his thoughts. As they walked through the finance department he was given a broad smile and a long look at those open, big, brown eyes rather than the usual cool detachment. He felt the gentlest of touches on his elbow.
‘Thank you very much for what you did the other day,’ she said. ‘I can assure you it was appreciated. You may not realise how much it means to most of those lads to let off steam. They are impressionable. They have now discovered you. Last week it was Russell Brand. Before that George Galloway, Osama bin Laden – the lot. Most of them have the attention span of a goldfish but if you can help keep them out of trouble that’s great.
‘Mo is more serious, though. My dad and I have been really worried about my brother. Completely unable to get through to him. He blanks us or gives us an Islamist rant. But he was impressed by you and said so. It is very difficult. I felt stronger, knowing I have a friend.’ After quickly checking that they were not observed, she gave him a peck on the cheek and then disappeared into her office.
Steve knew that he should be in Calum’s office passing on the warning that there were elements in the community who had picked up on the India connection. But in the warm afterglow of this encounter his attention wandered.
Deepak Parrikar had inherited enough of his father’s guile to be no pushover in detailed negotiations. Like Calum, he was ultimately dependent for business on the goodwill of his government. But he was capable of wriggling like an eel to squeeze a few more lakh rupees out of a contract. Now he was pushing up against the limits of patience of the babus in Delhi. He received a very testy phone call from the PM’s office making it clear that if he wanted to avoid annoying the Prime Minister, personally, he should be on the next available flight to London to sort out any remaining difficulties. Before he went to pack a suitcase he had time to send a text.
Kate was in her office signing papers when her mobile registered a new message. She normally ignored them. She had got used to the endless stream of messages from the whip’s office instructing the government payroll to vote on some obscure piece of legislation. This time she reached for the phone. Boredom? Instinct? It was from a D in Mumbai: ‘Coming London tomorrow. Hilton, Park Lane. Fancy nightcap?’ Pleasant thoughts came flooding back. Yes, she would very much like to see D again. But how? This was home turf. She wasn’t exactly famous but recognised around the Westminster village. The private office controlled her diary. She had an MP’s flat in Kennington and her family were used to her absences during the week. But, no, there were other MPs in the block. Arriving late at night with a handsome Indian would be tea room, then press, chatter the next day. But, of course, she could go to his hotel. Use a taxi not the ministerial car. No one could be surprised to see a minister turning up for an evening reception at the Hilton… or leaving after a business breakfast. A few minutes later she replied: ‘D, love to meet. Your hotel? K.’
Inspector Mankad arrived ten minutes early for his rendezvous at Rita’s Sunshine Bar as was his habit. He would always check out the places where he had confidential meetings. Mumbai could be a dangerous place for police officers on their own in unfamiliar areas. Mankad was a long way from his parish so the risks were fewer. But it paid to be careful. The bar was unexceptional and unmemorable, which was how Mankad liked his rendezvous locations.
The crime reporter from Bharat Bombay arrived on time and after a few preliminaries they thanked each other. The journalist had enjoyed a prestigious splash and Mankad had been able to keep alive a murder enquiry that his supervisors would otherwise have sat on, fearing the consequences of tackling politically influential gangsters. But they were still no closer to finding out who was behind the killing of Vijay Patel.
The journalist explained that the paper was planning a big piece on the Parrikars. A story built around their dynastic succession was falling into place. The glamorous, charming, modernising, Westernised son and the grizzled old man, with a colourful past, losing his grip. Now there was the British VIP girlfriend – a blurred picture but just about usable – and the proof of a connection with the Sheikh’s family with its unsavoury links to the underworld and, at one remove, Pakistani terrorist operations. And there were lots of stories of the old man’s earlier life that could be reheated: the brutal clearing of the slum dwellers from desirable sites; an infamous scam involving adulterated cement; the Backbay Reclamation corruption scandal; the numerous unpunished breaches of building and planning regulations. All of this was being run past the lawyers. And the editor, whose vision of the paper was light entertainment for the commuting masses, still had to be persuaded that this foray into investigative journalism wasn’t going to result in his experiencing the fate of Mr Patel.
The policeman listened quietly. He could see the attractions of shaking the tree. But he couldn’t see where the murder case was leading. His network of informers had all repeated the gossip in the bazaars that Patel had been killed by a couple of thugs from the Sheikh’s clan. And the motive was Patel’s refusal to pay extortion money. But something didn’t add up. Parrikar and the Sheikh had been close associates and – in the one piece of useful intelligence the Inspector had gleaned from his press contact – they had been in touch again very recently. Yet an execution of this kind would have been sanctioned from the top.
And he had just heard that the body of one of the suspected killers had been found on one of the city’s rubbish tips.
As he left work, Steve was surprised to find Shaida waiting for him with her younger brother, looking sheepish and carefully studying the ground in front of him: ‘Can we talk? It’s important,’ she said. She led the way to a patch of ground where staff came out to have their snacks in summer and kick a football around.
Once settled on a bench she explained: ‘My darling brother here has a problem. Mo, tell him!’ Mo wouldn’t say anything so she filled in the awkward silence. ‘I found him, last night, by accident, watching a disgusting video on his laptop. Not hard core. I know all about that. Sex starved boys do it. Not a problem. But this was much worse. It was from one of the jihadi groups showing what they do to their prisoners. We talked afterwards and Mo said he was given it on a memory stick by one of his friends who was at the last meeting you spoke to. Eventually the truth came out. This young man – Zuffar – is trying to organise a group to “do something for the jihad”. Bombing. Or killing a policeman. Trying to get Mo involved. Come. Speak up.’ Still not a word. ‘We need your advice, Steve. Perhaps your help. Mo doesn’t want to go along with his friends, though he agrees with a lot of their ideas and seems emotionally dependent on them. He won’t shop them to the police and I worry that if the police find out they will detain him, and my dad and I could be at risk of losing our jobs. We can’t tell our parents; they would go spare.’
Steve was too numb to give a reply. And Mo was no closer to communicating directly. There was a long, embarrassed silence. Eventually Steve mumbled a semi-coherent response. ‘Look, I’ll have to think about it. I don’t have any instant wisdom. My instincts are that we have to find a way of getting the intelligence to the authorities without incriminating Mo or dra
gging in your family. But I don’t know people in that world. The only police officer I know is the sergeant in charge of my ward community team. Or there is the security man – Starling – at Pulsar, but I don’t really know him from Adam.’ Shaida looked at him pleadingly. For the first time he saw not a beautiful Asian princess or a desirable woman but a frightened, vulnerable person trapped between the conflicting loyalties to her family and the country of which she was a part.
On the evening following the Pulsar staff meeting, one of the attendees prepared for a long night at the office. His usual routine was to arrive for the day by public transport so there would be no car left in the car park after the factory closed. At the end of the day he would check out, wait in the toilets near the entrance to the works and then slip quietly back inside. He had access to all parts of the building including the secret basement and so could work quickly, undisturbed, through the night, copying discs and logging into the terminals for which he had been able to obtain the access codes and passwords. He didn’t understand much about the material he was acquiring but he didn’t need to and his customers were well pleased with his fishing expeditions.
The nights were long but he had a makeshift bed in the basement, and by carefully timing his visits to the washroom he could be fresh, shaved and ready for work in the morning. This arrangement had worked perfectly for months, with the exception of the two nights when the night watchman had shown a worrying degree of initiative and curiosity. The scare hadn’t had lasting consequences and he had a plan to eliminate the risk in future.
This evening would be tricky, however. There had been no forewarning of the staff meeting and its contents required quick action on his part. Unfortunately, he had come to work by car that day and would therefore have to cover his tracks by driving the car somewhere else and returning after dark. He knew of a back entrance, had access to a key and knew how to disable the alarm before it could go off. He did have the easier option of sending out his messages from his laptop at home but his instructions were never to leave traces of his activities on his own machine: a pristine back-up system would be his alibi if questions were ever asked about data leakage and disloyal emails. Besides, he had come to enjoy his nocturnal adventures.
As Mehmet approached the end of his shift but well before staff started to arrive for work, he needed to visit the washroom at the factory entrance. As he washed his hands and prepared to leave he noticed that one of the cubicles behind him was ‘engaged’. On his way out he gave a push to the door but it was clearly locked. There was no sound, or sign, of occupation. As he left the washroom and then the building, he decided to watch the washroom entrance for a while, remaining concealed behind a pillar. A part of him reached for a rational, innocent, explanation. He also realised that if there were a less innocent explanation, he might well not be thanked for revealing it. After ten minutes he decided to return to his cabin and forget about the incident. Just as he was about to end his shift he saw a movement from the washroom. Someone he recognised emerged carrying a washbag and, after looking around furtively, disappeared into the body of the factory. Mehmet hadn’t been seen, he hoped, but the knowledge he now had was potentially dangerous for the night visitor – and for himself.
Inspector Mankad’s careful investigation into the Patel killing was finally starting to produce some results. ‘Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey’ was his catchphrase, picked up from some gangland Hindi movie. He didn’t waste time and energy, or arouse suspicion and envy, in hyperactive investigations. He waited for the information to come to him. And he remained detached in case the political wind was blowing too much in the wrong direction and necessitated a tactful retreat. His intelligence came from his network of carefully cultivated informers. He looked after them: never compromised his sources; ensured that, if they found themselves behind bars, there would be special privileges, segregation from their gang enemies and early release. And, in this case, a friendly journalist had also done his bit, not least in signalling to the underworld that the ever approachable Inspector was on the case.
He had established already that two of the Sheikh’s more unsavoury and violent foot soldiers had been responsible for Patel’s killing. They had abducted him after work at knifepoint and taken him to a van. At some point he had been killed and mutilated, before or after death wasn’t clear, and his body deposited into a large open drain whence it had been washed some way downstream to little Ravi’s harbour by a night-time downpour. Mankad discouraged his energetic assistant, Sergeant Ghokale, from arresting these small fry, and instead awaited developments. Informers reported that one of the two, Afzal, had been flashing around unusual amounts of money, buying an expensive gold necklace and watch, gambling and drinking bootleg liquor. And he had been shouting his mouth off, trashing the Sheikh as a ‘has been’ and a ‘nobody’ and making it clear that he was moving in more elevated circles now. His body was found on a rubbish tip shortly afterwards. And the other, Taheem, had disappeared.
Then, this morning, at the police station, another breakthrough of a kind. His division had launched a sweep-up operation in one of the baastis, netting a few petty criminals and many others who were merely bystanders or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such raids kept the politicians off their backs – demanding ‘action on crime’ – and occasionally, but rarely, produced a serious villain. One wretched piece of humanity, his face covered in blood and snot, was dragged into Mankad’s office. Mankad disapproved of his colleagues’ methods as inefficient and unprofessional but had been careful to keep his views from more senior officers and, occasionally he acknowledged, there was a tiny nugget of gold among the spillage. This man, Jadhav, he was told, had some information if he could talk to the Inspector.
Jadhav was not forthcoming and clearly terrified. Mankad gave him time to settle, allowed him to go under escort to the lavatory to clean himself up and offered him sweet tea. Eventually a few words started to dribble out.
Jadhav was at the bottom of the criminal food chain. Not clever or brave or confident enough to belong fully to a gang, let alone be trusted with a weapon, he was called in to do menial tasks and paid a few rupees for his efforts. The few rupees helped his family to survive. A few nights ago he had been called to one of the better, pukka, buildings in his baasti. There was a body on the floor, blood and bits of flesh and bone lying around. He was told to help carry the body to a van in jute sacking and then to clear up the mess. He had received five hundred rupees, much more than usual, and told to maintain his silence. This hadn’t, however, withstood the police interrogation.
The description of the body and clothes fitted that of Afzal, one of Patel’s killers. But Jadhav couldn’t or wouldn’t say anything about the people who had employed him. All he would say, over and over, was ‘Trishul’, meaning ‘trident’. Mankad knew the names of every gang in Mumbai and every serious gangster. This was a new one: a Hindu symbol, a common sight in religious pageantry, the three-pronged trident carried by the god Shiva and used to kill every Mumbaikar’s favourite deity, Ganesh. What on earth was this about?
Then he recalled when he had seen tridents in action. It was a televised recording of events a quarter of a century earlier, when a mob led by militant Hindus, some of them holy men, sadhus or sanyasis, brandished tridents, as they set about destroying the ancient building disputed between the two religions. To a modern-minded citizen of the new India, like Mankad, these displays of religious fanaticism and hatred were an embarrassing relic of the past. But he was uncomfortably aware that many Indians did not share his relaxed view of these matters. Some of them were now in powerful positions. There was surely a link between the Hindu militants of the Shiv Sena hut and criminals who adopted the iconography of that religion. It was not a link a humble policeman wanted to explore too far. These worries almost spoilt his lunch.
Before setting off for London, Deepak Parrikar had dinner with his father. Parrikar Senior was unusually agitated; more than Deepak could remember. Their earlier he
art-to-heart, exposing the Sheikh’s visit and the attempted blackmail, hadn’t exhausted his soul searching.
‘Your mother: a lot of health problems. She is very unhappy. Talks a lot about when she is gone, what will become of the family. She asks how I will cope on my own. Funeral preparations. I try to tell her: you have years of good life. But she doesn’t listen.’
Deepak had heard the tale often enough to know that it was a preliminary to other matters.
‘Then there is the business. I don’t want to trouble you with small things but we have many problems in Mumbai. Construction, development, very difficult. Workers all the time threaten strikes. Greedy politicians demand more money. Tenants stop paying rent. Police are no use. Also those Hindu fanatics are strengthening their hold on the city. They don’t respect me. Always problems but never so bad.’
He paused, to give himself time to eat and gather his strength for the most difficult part of the conversation.
‘Now this Patel thing. We have done favours for the Sheikh but I know him; he will want more to leave us in peace. Now we are in the papers. Maybe more to come. People say I keep bad company, I’m too close to gangs. I am trying to stay clean. To keep a good reputation for you, your brother and sister. To protect the family name.’
His first real conversation with his son had released a torrent of emotions. For the first time he reflected seriously on his life and his legacy, on his own powerlessness, his inability to protect his employees, his openness to blackmail.
He tried to explain to his son his complicated feelings towards the man who had almost certainly ordered the killing of Patel and was now seeking to inveigle him into some dangerous operation. In times past he would have taken on the challenge, met muscle with muscle. He was not a squeamish man and in his younger days he had had a fearsome reputation, holding his own in an underworld where might was right and the weak were trampled underfoot. Now he no longer felt able to fight.