Babel (16 page)

‘My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Brock, whom you met, discussed this with your boss, Professor Haygill, very carefully this afternoon,’ Kathy smiled back, playing what she assumed to be her best card. ‘Professor Haygill was in complete agreement, in fact very insistent, that we speak to you. But if there’s any question you’d feel uncomfortable about answering, then please don’t.’

‘Oh, but then I’m being uncooperative, which is only a small step down from being a trouble-maker, no?’

Kathy struggled on, mentally striking off her list the questions she’d prepared on the Christmas e-mail saga. Yes, Dr Darr had been aware of Professor Springer’s attacks on Professor Haygill. Springer was a very foolish, irrational old man who had lost touch with the realities of life, quite beneath contempt, more to be pitied. No, he couldn’t recall the CAB-Tech team ever discussing Springer before the murder, why would they? He may have raised the matter with Professor Haygill at some stage, he wasn’t sure, but Professor Haygill had no wish to talk of such foolishness. At the time of Springer’s death he, along with all the other members of the team, was working here in the laboratories, naturally. And he had no theories to explain why anyone should want to kill the old man.

At the end of it, Kathy felt as tense as if she’d been stepping through a minefield, though Darr seemed rather pleased. ‘Have I satisfied you, Sergeant?’ he demanded, beaming.

‘I believe so. Do you know where I can find the other members of the team, Doctor?’

Darr’s good humour abruptly evaporated. ‘The others? But I have spoken for everyone. It will not be necessary for you to interview them. I cannot agree to it.’

‘Professor Haygill was quite specific, Dr Darr. We have to speak to everyone. You could talk to him if you want to check.’

After a tense little negotiation Darr relented. The two Iraqis were working in another lab on the floor below. The others he wasn’t sure about. As they made their way there they marvelled at the equipment they passed, ranks and batteries of gleaming machines stretching away in all directions, all looking new and well maintained. Greg Talbot compared it to the dismal state of the technology available at Shadwell Road police station.

‘Ah, but you’re not editing the book of life, Greg,’ Kathy said. ‘You’re just trying to stop it nicking cars.’

Talbot hadn’t recognised any of the photographs on the staff information sheets, but they had made an arrangement that he would pull out the purple handkerchief he carried and blow his nose if he thought he knew them when they were interviewed, and he confirmed that he’d never seen Darr before. When they found the two Iraqis the purple handkerchief remained in his pocket. They had none of the confidence and bluster of the senior researcher, and Kathy wondered what experiences they’d had with police in the past as each in turn answered her in low monosyllables, eyes on the floor. They also worshipped at the East London Mosque and denied having heard of Springer before his death.

They moved on, leaving the warmth of the CAB-Tech building and hurrying through the cold night to the extreme east end of the campus developments, where a series of serrated-roofed zigzag blocks along the waterfront provided dormitory accommodation.

‘They’re like monks,’ Kathy muttered as they followed the colonnade behind Block A towards Block C. ‘Haygill’s team. They’re all either single or they’ve left their families behind. They toil by day in the labs and retire at night to their cells to pray.’

The stairwells and corridors were spartan, clean and free of graffiti and the two police met no one, although from time to time they would hear the sounds of music or a TV behind a closed door, and smell cooking. The Lebanese computer expert answered their knock at room C-210 and Kathy knew as soon as she registered his face, and even before Greg Talbot started loudly blowing his nose, that he was the one.

Afterwards she tried to work out how she had been so certain. He had been warned of their coming, that was obvious, and no doubt Darr had been on the phone to all of them as soon as they’d left his lab. But it wasn’t that he had mentally composed himself for their arrival. It was something to do with the look and body tension beneath the composure, a mixture of fright and exhilaration and relief, as if he’d been preparing himself for much longer than the half hour Darr would have given him for this first bold stare into the eyes of his fate. It radiated from him and she felt it instantaneously, and knew, as soon as she met his eyes and smiled at him, that he knew she had picked it up.

Without a word he stepped back into the room to let them in. A monk’s cell it was, Kathy thought, with barely enough possessions to fill a small suitcase, and cold, as if to test his resolve and his faith.

‘Mr Khadra?’ Kathy asked, continuing to smile at him. ‘Mr Abu Khadra?’

He was an extremely attractive young man, she thought, lean and svelte like a colt, with delicate, sensitive features and large dark eyes. His hair was cut short, his ears tight against his skull emphasising the impression of intense alertness, and he was wearing a white T-shirt, black jeans and a pair of old trainers, once white but now worn and grey. Behind him, on a small wooden table, a book lay open.

He answered her questions with barely more words than the Iraqis had used, but with a calm that brought back to Kathy the word that the student Briony Kidd had used about Max Springer, ‘serene’.

He went to mosque in Shadwell Road, he said, and Kathy wasn’t in the least surprised. She was about to ask him if he’d ever met a Pakistani boy there, by the name of Ahmed Sharif, when her phone began to ring. She frowned with annoyance and turned away to answer it. It was Brock, sounding tense and short of time. She excused herself and went out into the deserted corridor.

‘Kathy, how far have you got?’

‘We’re on number four, the Lebanese.’

‘Anything?’

‘This one’s promising. Definitely a possible.’ She was conscious of her voice sounding loud in the empty corridor.

‘Nothing more concrete?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, we’ve got a problem. Just had a call from Haygill. Dr Darr’s been onto him, complaining that your questions are personal and intrusive and insulting to their faith, and now Haygill’s denying that he gave us permission to interview his staff individually. Says he’d meant for him to approve the questions first and to be present. Darr’s obviously put the wind up him, told him he’s got another Christmas e-mail situation on his hands, and he says he’ll get the University President to kick us off the campus if we don’t stop what we’re doing immediately and wait for him to come over to mediate.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘He’s at home in Enfield, in his pyjamas. Darr caught him just as he was going to bed, exhausted from his trip. He’s very agitated and wanted us to leave it until morning. When I refused he said I’d have to meet him at the university to negotiate with him, but I’m tied up with this bloody meeting for at least another half hour.’

‘What do I do?’

‘Leave.’

‘Can I take this one with me? I think . . .’

‘Definitely not. If Haygill gets too stroppy we’ll go back in with warrants, but for the moment we’ll do it his way. I promised him you two would get off the campus right away.’

Kathy returned to room C-210 where Abu Khadra and Greg Talbot were standing exactly where she had left them, in silence. She gave the Arab a big warm smile. ‘Well, that’ll be all, Mr Khadra. We’ll leave you in peace now.’

‘You’re going?’ He looked mystified.

‘Yes, we’re quite satisfied, thank you.’ Her eyes met his and she knew immediately that he didn’t believe it for a minute. ‘If I have forgotten anything, will you be staying here for the rest of the evening?’

He nodded, still mystified, and they left. When Greg started to say something outside in the corridor she put a finger to her lips and led him away. Not until they were well clear of the building did she explain what had happened.

‘That’s too bad,’ he said, ‘I was beginning to enjoy it. That last one was promising, I reckon. I know I’ve seen him around.’

Kathy nodded agreement. More than promising, she thought, trying to put aside her sense of misgiving. She wondered how Wayne O’Brien’s research was going, but couldn’t reach him on her phone and left a message. Then she and Greg bought some fish and chips and settled down in her car beneath the track of the Docklands Light Rail to wait for Brock’s instructions.

They got Brock’s call to meet him at Haygill’s office at 8:15 p.m., sooner than Kathy had expected. Darr had adopted a defensive position behind the director’s right side, and scowled at them as they entered the room. His boss looked grey and exhausted, and it was this that got things moving. Once the initial conciliatory sentiments had been expressed, Haygill and Brock quickly agreed that they should jointly witness the remaining interviews, and when Darr began to repeat all his grounds for objecting to Kathy’s questions Haygill silenced him by asking him to get Abu Khadra.

While they waited, Brock passed Kathy a note. She opened it and read the fax, from Wayne O’Brien to Brock.

‘One result only so far. Abu Khadra was arrested by Israeli army in south Lebanon under emergency powers in 1989. Then aged fifteen years. Held for twenty-one days. No further record.’

Darr returned shortly to say that Abu wasn’t answering his phone, and that he’d sent the two Iraqis over to his room to fetch him. They rang back a few minutes later with the news that there was a light on in C-210 but the door was locked and there was no response to their knocks.

‘He’s probably just popped out to visit someone,’ Darr suggested huffily, but Kathy knew otherwise and Brock saw the look on her face and said quietly to Haygill, ‘Maybe it would be wise to go over there, and get security to meet us there with a key. What do you think?’

For a moment Haygill looked confused and uncomprehending, then Brock’s tone registered and anxiety brought him to his feet. ‘Yes . . . Yes, you’re right.’

They hurried across the windswept campus, heels clattering on the wet concrete paving slabs, to find the corridor to room C-210 now filled with people. Other CAB-Tech team members had joined the Iraqis, and a number of residents had been attracted out of their rooms by their shouts and the banging on Abu’s door. Two of Mr Truck’s security men were there too, bulky in thickly padded jackets and military style caps. Haygill exchanged a few terse words with them, and the gathering fell silent as one of them pulled out a bunch of keys.

Whatever worse fears the spectators might have had didn’t just evaporate when the door swung open and they saw into the empty room, for although there was no Abu lying unconscious on the little bed or slumped with a rope around his neck, there was still something immediately disconcerting about the room’s bareness which gave an almost supernatural dimension to his vanishing. There were no postcards on the pinboard, no creases on the bedcover, and no curtains on the window to hide the sinister blackness of the river beyond. Only the book lying open on the bare table confirmed that he had once been there.

Brock stepped forward to examine it. No one else seemed inclined to follow him into the room. After a moment he called back over his shoulder, ‘Dr Darr. Do you or one of your colleagues read Arabic?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Darr declared, and waved one of the Iraqis to step with him to Brock’s side.

‘It is the Qur’an, sir.’

‘Yes. He’s underlined one of the verses, here. What does it say?’

The Iraqi stooped to read, then straightened and stared meaningfully at Darr and murmured something. Darr whispered in return, then took a deep breath.

‘It concerns the fate of martyrs, sir,’ he said at last, reluctantly, clinging to the formal mode of address like a shield.

‘Could you translate it, please?’

Darr muttered to the Iraqi, who began to recite.

‘‘‘Don’t think that those who are slain in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive and in the presence of their Lord, who looks after them and heaps gifts upon them. They are happy that those they have left behind suffer neither fear nor grief. They rejoice in Allah’s grace and bounty . . .’’’

A murmuring broke out among the people in the corridor as they picked this up, and phrases were repeated for those who hadn’t heard. Some men began to press forward into the room to see the book for themselves. Brock spoke to the security guards, asking them to clear the crowd, which they began to try to do, with some difficulty. He turned to Darr and the Iraqi again. ‘Where could he have gone?’ he demanded.

They shook their heads. Abu was always the outsider in the team, Darr explained, because of his work, in computers rather than the science. He worked to a different pattern, a different timetable. He attended a different mosque.

‘In Shadwell Road? Why there? Did he know people there? Friends?’

They shook their heads, uncertain.

‘’Ang on.’ PC Talbot spoke up. ‘I’ve got ’im now. He drove a motorbike, didn’t he? A little yellow Yamaha.’

They nodded, yes. His pride and joy.

‘Yeah, I can picture ’im now. With a black helmet. I’ve seen ’im down the Road a lot. I thought he lived there.’

Brock turned to Haygill, who was hovering just inside the door to the room as if he wanted to be anywhere but there. ‘Anything you can add, Professor?’

The scientist cleared his throat. ‘Er . . . Excellent worker. Good computer people are like hen’s teeth these days, and Abu is outstanding. A brilliant young man. He’s had offers from other places, but he’s stayed with us. Believes in the work.’

‘Any relatives in this country?’

‘Not to my knowledge. His family is all in Lebanon, I understand. He went to the Gulf to study. University of Qatar.’

That seemed to be all that they knew of Abu, or were prepared to tell, and Brock asked them to leave while he and Kathy carried out a search of the room. Its emptiness extended into all its corners, no hangers in the wardrobe, no fluff beneath the bed.

‘I don’t think he did live here,’ Kathy said finally. ‘He didn’t have enough time to clean it out this thoroughly.’

Only the book seemed to bear any signs of vital human life, its pages interleaved with small fragments of Abu’s past, an old postcard of the Roman ruins at Ba’albek in the Beqa’a Valley of Lebanon, some letters in spidery Arabic, some photographs, an elderly smiling woman wearing traditional headdress, a family group at a table, two little girls, a middle-aged European.