Dark Clouds (9 page)

I can see where he’s coming from and it’s worrying. This isn’t the tolerant give and take Englishness I associate with Fiona Adler and my agreeable neighbours in Islington. I’m getting drum rolls here and echoes of Europe in the 1930s. Things are falling apart and people need scapegoats. We’re in East London now though. I’ve never been here before, but I’m thinking of a sort of Muslim Asian Harlem when we stop outside an anonymous building.

Robson’s speaking to someone on his mobile. There’s innocuous tittle tattle between tunes on Radio London. I can see a couple of Muslim kids with white skull caps on the corner. They seem innocent enough. But then the electronic gates open, one of them gives us a middle finger, while the other turns around and goes through the motions of wiping his ass.

‘What is this place?’ I want to know.

‘The section we’re going to is a morgue,’ Robson says.

He’s looking straight ahead and I’ve got my hand on the door lever. I want out. I don’t care about unruly elements who might be waiting for me in the next street.

‘This is important, sir,’ Robson tells me. He’s stopped the car, but nothing happens when I pull on the door handle. I’m a prisoner in East London.

‘Why are we here?’

‘There’s been an incident,’ he says, and that’s it.

There are a few police cars and an ambulance in a courtyard and there’s a guy with a bare metal trolley going through a doorway just by where we’ve parked. Inside the building, the walls are painted in drab institutional beige, but the stone floors have recently been covered with a shiny varnish.

Robson leads the way. He seems to know where he’s going, but I’m still trying to escape in my head. I’m back in Switzerland, but on the other side of the lake from the Sharif’s place. I’m wearing skis and when we stop outside a body storage room, I take off and I’m careering down the Swiss Alps to a Caribbean sanctuary.

‘This way, please,’ a white coated attendant says when the door opens and Robson shows his police ID. There are large metal drawers along one wall with a couple of trolleys at the back of the room. The attendant coughs as we approach the metal containers. When he thinks we’re ready, he puts his hand on a well-worn handle and pulls the drawer out. It’s like a filing cabinet that extends for a couple of meters and there’s a body lying under a white shroud.

‘Could you please take a look, sir,’ Robson says, lowering the cover over the head of a corpse with a brown face.

I can feel the bile in my stomach surging up to my throat. I swallow it back with difficulty and there are tears in my eyes. The hair on the body is shiny and black and the smooth Kashmiri forehead is familiar. But there are knife slashes on the cheeks and Rashid Kumar’s throat has been brutally slit from one ear to the other. A mortician has sewn the skin back, but the corpse has shrunk and it’s clear that the victim has lost a lot of blood.

‘You know who this is?’ Robson asks.

 Yes, of course I do, you fucking fascist dickhead. I’m losing it. I want to touch Rashid’s forehead. I want to bring him back and I’d like to incinerate the bastards who did this to him. He asked for my help, but I wasn’t able to save him.

The mortuary attendant is now pushing the huge filing cabinet drawer back into place. I can feel the bile returning to my throat and I’m rushing to a basin on the other side of the room.

‘No – please!’  The white-coated guy shouts. He’d rather I used a lavatory in the hallway, but it’s too late. I’m throwing up a vile-smelling green liquid with no substance. It’s all over the basin, and as Robson coughs, I turn on a tap to try and wash it away.

*  *  *  *  *

Earl Connors is waiting outside in the corridor. His hands are crossed like a mourner at a funeral. After a moment’s silence; he turns to me and indicates that we should go upstairs. Robson doesn’t come with us, and when we get to the first floor corridor, Connors leads the way to a room that is bare apart from a table, a few basic chairs and a coat stand.

‘I understand this is a shock for you,’ he says when we sit facing each other across the table. ‘We think it may have happened shortly after your meeting with him on Thursday.’

Does this mean I’m now in the frame – and who were the murderers? Could they be friends of Mike, now known as Mohammed, Sharif?

‘The people who killed him are almost certainly Islamic activists,’ Earl says. ‘But there are many different alliances and it’s difficult to make connections.’

Robson appears after a while with two plastic cups of canteen tea and chilled sandwiches. These contain prawns and chicken and I feel I’ll throw up again if I try them, so I push the paper plate to the edge of the table.

‘How did you find your friend, Sharif?’ Connors asks when I’ve tried the tea.

Like a rich guy with too much time on his hands who is now daydreaming about World War Three.

‘But was there anything concrete?’ Connors wants to know.

I give him the camera and the notes I made on what I found in Sharif’s study. I then go through most of what happened over my twenty-four hours in Geneva. I think Sharif has probably crossed over to the bad guys and that someone who loved his sister, Sulima, is now an activist. I hold back on Pele’s name, describing him simply as a bald-headed Asian with intense eyes who stared up at me from the photograph in Sulima’s handbag.

Earl has taken the miniature camera. He’s got my shots of the two e-mails, but the picture of Pele isn’t there.

‘I guess I pressed the wrong button,’ I tell him. I’m still holding back on his name though. He was Sulima’s guy, and I don’t want to get her into any unnecessary trouble.

*  *  *  *  *

 ‘Bear with me,’ Earl says, getting up to make a call on his mobile. He’s checking out an e-mail address on a Security Service data base. It’s surprisingly quick and he seems pleased when he returns from the window.

‘I think we know who Jeremy Wagstaff is,’ he says. ‘But what did your friend Sharif send him that he appreciated.’

‘Cash?’

‘Possibly … we’ll have to investigate.’

OK, but can I go now please, Mr Connors, sir. There’s stuff I need to check out to help pay my bills. I’ve already pissed off a number of people because I didn’t go to Paris. But there are still commissioning editors in the States who want copy on David Cameron and Nick Clegg and their wives. They are also interested in the gay guy who got exposed for claiming rent payments to his lover for accommodation. ‘
And Rudi …
’ a big cheese from across the pond has texted. ‘
Are there any UK Government women with a bit of spark or sex appeal … you know, ballsy achievers who are also photogenic …ideally, we’re looking for tits + a bit of scandal?
’

There’s a lot to do, and I really can’t see what else I can deliver for either my President or Her Majesty. So what do you think, Earl … I’ll be discreet of course. But can I go?

‘You’re working for us now, Rudi,’ Earl says, sitting back in his chair. ‘We’ll pay you a retainer and you may be able to file occasional pieces for your editors. We’ll have first call on your time though, and Carla will explain what’s required. She’s in Paris at the moment, but she should be back tomorrow.’

If I met him at a PR reception for sport, politics or business, I’d put Earl Connors in a solid, middle-tier position. I also have this recurring image of him standing proudly with his family while singing from a hymn sheet in a humble Caribbean church. Only now, instead of a bible with a leather cover, there’s a gun in a shoulder holster under his arm.

I want to at least go through the motions of protesting. I’ve been hijacked as an untrained and reluctant collaborator. I’ve already done as much as I can, but Earl’s holding up his hand. It’s a polite way of telling me to shut up.

‘You’ll need to be careful,’ he says.

‘Why? ‘

‘Because the same people who went for Rashid Kumar might also see you as a threat.’

‘So I should keep an eye out for Muslim activists?’

‘Yes …’

He’s cool and there’s a hint of humour in his eyes. I don’t have any options about whether or not I work with him, so I might as well find out as much as I can.

‘These riots in Birmingham and the other incidents with black and Asian participants … what’s happening?’

I’m talking to a dark-skinned Afro-Caribbean. There may be residual sensitivities: Memories of injustices, not just on slave plantations in the Caribbean, but all over the United States and beyond. But Earl has no qualms about responding.

‘Sometimes a lot of things come together,’ he says with a shrug. ‘This is happening in England now. It’s destabilising and it goes against the grain. It’s certainly not what my parents anticipated when they came here and produced myself and my siblings in the sixties.’

For a moment, I’m getting a window on a traditional Caribbean family who wanted to improve their situation. The Connors kids, and especially Earl, who I gather is the youngest, would have ticked most of their parent’s aspiration boxes. They’ve all gone through college and found good jobs, while Mom and Dad have returned to a contented retirement in Tobago. It seems like a raw roll of the dice for Earl and his brothers have been pitched into the sort of social fragmentation and civil strife that his parents could never have foreseen in England.

‘We have many dissatisfied kids on the streets,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘They’ve felt alienated since they started at nursery school and their frustration is now being harnessed.’

 ‘By Islamists?’

‘Mainly … yes. And it’s a lethal combination, because on the other side of the race divide you’ve got indigenous white nationalists who are getting stronger with every incident that explodes on the streets.’

There’s a lot happening, and I’m thinking of Robson here with his discreet sympathies for the English Nationalists. I’ve reported on serious tribal differences in Africa and conflicts between Russians and Muslims in Chechnya. But I’ve never considered the possibility of young blacks joining with Asian and Arabic Islamists to destabilise a solid white and nominally Christian majority. It’s unreal, and all the more so since it seems to be happening in the
green and pleasant land
that is England.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I ask

‘Cultivate your contacts,’ Earl suggests. ‘Especially anyone who might have known Rashid Kumar.’

So I need to call Khalad Hassan. I’m also curious about what Carla Hirsch might be up to in Paris. I’m thinking of Sulima rushing off there to deal with problems she said were to do with a Sharif shipping office. Is it just a coincidence that these two are in the same city?

‘What’s Carla doing in Paris?’ I ask. ‘And why is she calling the shots here?’

Earl is leaning back on the chair, shaking his head and steepling his fingers.

‘You don’t need to know, Rudi … but we are working closely with the Americans.’

Robson knocks and enters as we’re speaking. Rashid’s thoracic surgeon friend has arrived he tells us. He wants to take the Kashmiri’s body and bury him as soon as possible in accordance with Islamic practice.

‘It’s not possible,’ Earl says.

‘Very good, sir … but he is downstairs.’

‘I’ll speak with him if you like,’ I suggest. I’m not sure why I’m volunteering, but Rashid was someone I wanted to help. I was too late, and I think the least I can do is to offer condolences to his partner.

‘OK,’ Earl agrees. ‘I’ll leave you together for a few minutes. I’ll then come down and explain why there has to be a post-mortem and an inquest … I’m sure he’ll understand.’

Very few people know about Rashid’s death, which at the moment is covered by the Official Secrets Act. His body will have to remain in secure storage until a coroner gives the OK for a private burial. The procedures are strict on this, and there is no religious leeway.

Chapter 8

A dignified Albanian waits in the reception area. He’s in his late forties and his face is dazed with grief. He half listens when I say I was a media colleague of Rashid’s and that I always valued his friendship. There isn’t much more I can tell him, and I’m slipping away when Earl Connors comes downstairs. The thoracic surgeon is shaking his head. He can’t accept the bureaucratic niceties. He just wants to bury the mutilated body of his partner.

Robson offers me a lift to Islington, but I need fresh air, so I leave the anonymous morgue and started walking towards Bethnal Green. I’m thinking of the artist, Ingrid, as I go, and when I see a free sidewalk bench, I sit down and take out my mobile. The number she’s given me rings for a while, and I’m about to hang up when she answers.

‘I’m covered in plaster!’ she exclaims, ‘but I need to eat. Where are you?’

I’m not sure, but when I’ve described a few landmarks, she suggests I get a cab to a Vietnamese restaurant close to her studio in Dalston. If there was more time, I’d have walked, but I’ve taken the initiative and I want to follow through.

‘You’re not from around these parts, are you?’ a Cockney cab driver asks.

‘No – not really,’ I say and it’s like I’ve pressed the button on a recording that has the cabby going on about life and the universe and how London’s going downhill fast.

‘
We can’t go on like this
,’ he says. ‘
It’s not workin’ ‘an it’s gonna get worse … I’m no racist, believe me, my gran was Jewish from East Europe. Only we can’t accommodate all of these cultures from around the world … an’ when they start wavin’ placards an’ destroyin’ our culture an’ heritage – well, that’s it, they gotta go, ‘avent they?
’

It’s easier to grunt and nod occasionally than to participate, but when the cabby turns around to reinforce his point at a set of traffic lights, I catch a small badge with a Nationalist Party emblem on his jacket.

‘So what’s the solution?’ I ask. It’s meant to be a challenge, but I’ve put it tentatively, and it gets the cabby into free flow about what has to be done.

‘
First we stop immigration, guv, then we start deporting anyone who shouldn’t be ‘ere …an’ for those that remain, we’ll ‘ave a proper education programme on what it means to be British. If they want citizenship, they’ll ‘ave to pass a test on the basics …an’ if anyone’s up for terrorism – well, I’d say shoot first an’ ‘ave the questions after …right!
’