The Professor of Truth (13 page)

Arriving back at the drop-off zone, he parked his taxi and hurried in to the departures hall. He knew he should not leave his vehicle unattended but as it was a registered taxi he believed he could do so for a short while without getting into trouble. The airport was quiet, there were only a few people checking in, and he reckoned he could easily spot his passenger, return the pen and be back in his car within two minutes. In fact he saw the man at once, walking across the concourse towards the check-in area. He appeared to be coming from the vicinity of a desk where unusually bulky, heavy, fragile or otherwise special items were deposited and processed before being taken by trolley through to the air-side baggage-loading area. Parroulet hurried towards him, and when a few yards away called out, in French, “Wait, sir.” The man looked startled, even frightened, and began to retreat. Then, recognising Parroulet and seeing the pen held out towards him, he came to a halt. “Your pen,” Parroulet said. “You dropped it.” “Thank you,” the man replied. “It was not important, but thank you.” He took the pen and said “thank you” a third time, then continued on his way to the check-in desks. Parroulet watched him take his place in a short queue, then returned to his car and drove away. It was only later that he thought it odd that, although the man had evidently not yet checked in, he was carrying only the attaché case. Of the grey suitcase there was no sign.

The prosecution made much of this incident. “You said the man looked frightened. Could you think of any reason why he should be frightened?” “Maybe because I am coming at him quite fast. Maybe he think am I going to attack him.” “Why would he think that?” “Maybe if he has done something bad, if he think am I airport security.” “Again, I ask, why would he think that?” “I don’t know, he look nervous, afraid. Also he is sweating a little much.” “And this man, could you confirm, was the same man that you had driven to the airport?” “Yes.” “The same man that you see here in this court?” “Yes.” “Yet he was no longer in possession of the grey suitcase even though he had not yet checked in?” “That is what I think, yes.”

The defence lawyers, cross-examining Parroulet, also had plenty of questions. “You were first interviewed by the police, you said, a year after the bombing?” “Yes, about a year.” “The police record confirms this. It confirms the date on which you were first interviewed and shown photographs. The police record also shows that you were interviewed and asked about the identity of the man you drove to the airport on many more occasions. Nineteen times over the course of twelve months. Do you remember these interviews?” “They were very many, yes. I don’t remember everything that happen all those times.” “But do you remember when, from a photograph shown to you by the police, you first identified this man here as your passenger?” “I don’t remember exactly.” “It was not during the first interview, Mr Parroulet.” “I don’t think so.” “In the first interview you picked out three pictures that you said might be of your passenger. None of
them was of the accused.” “Maybe. It is a long time before.” “It wasn’t until the second interview, according to the police record, that you said you thought a photograph of the accused might be of your passenger.” “Okay, if that is what police record says.” “That is what the police record says. Even then, though, you were doubtful. You said that the photograph was not very clear.” “Well, but later they show me a better one.” “A different photograph?” “Yes, and better.” “This was, in fact, Mr Parroulet, during the fifth interview you had with the police. And later they showed you yet another photograph of the accused, by which time you were much more certain that it was of your passenger, even though more time had passed.” “Yes, I see it more clear.” “But a great deal of time had passed since you had seen the man. And when he was in your taxi, you only saw him in the rear-view mirror, and you said he was wearing sunglasses most of the time, so how can you be so sure that the photograph was of the same man?” “I remember him. He take off the glasses sometime.” “He pushed them on to his forehead?” “Yes. And also in the terminal, when I give him pen. I see him more clear then.” “But even then he had his sunglasses on.” “Yes but he is not difficult to see. I see him right away.” “I don’t dispute that you recognised him at the time, Mr Parroulet. But I question whether, a year, fifteen months, two years later, you could positively and definitely identify the man in these different, sometimes not very clear, photographs, as the passenger wearing sunglasses, of whom you had only occasional and brief views while you were driving, who hardly spoke to you, and whom you never saw again.” “I only tell you
what I tell police. It is the same man.” “And do you see that man today?” “Yes,” pointing at Khazar, “that is the man.” “When you saw the identity parade of suspects, nearly a year ago, you identified the accused as the man who was in your taxi.” “Yes.” “You were, and are now, quite sure about that identification?” “Quite … sure.” “You seem to hesitate, Mr Parroulet. Do you mean absolutely sure or partially sure?” “I am sure, yes, very sure.” “Do you think that, after being shown so many photographs of one man over a long period of time, you may have identified that man as your passenger, not because he actually was your passenger but because you recognised him from the earlier photographs?” “No, it is him. It
was
him.” “Did the police encourage you to pick that man by repeatedly showing you his picture?” “No, he is in my car that day.” “But they did repeatedly show you his picture?” “Yes, I see it many times.” “Do you not think it possible that you may have been mistaken, and that you are mistaken today, all these years later?” “No, I am not mistaking. It is him.”

And more and more and more. The minutes that had passed between Parroulet’s dropping off his passenger and returning to give him the pen were crucial. How many minutes? How long does it take to walk across the terminal concourse? When did Khalil Khazar check in? Did he check in anything at the oversized luggage desk? No. Did he have only one item of luggage, the attaché case, when he checked in? Yes. Could he have disposed of another item during those minutes? Yes, but nobody could say how he could have done so. Surely this had to be demonstrated? Not if Parroulet’s
sightings of the grey suitcase were correct. Back and forth it went across the courtroom, the two sides challenging each other’s questions and conclusions, Parroulet looking bewildered at the detail he was being asked to recall after he had given so many statements to the police, and after all those years had gone by. I don’t blame him for being bewildered—I would have been—but he stuck to his story with a doggedness of which I was not initially suspicious. Indeed, at first I was willing him to be consistent, to be strong, because I wanted to see “the accused” found guilty. I believed Khazar was the bomber. I never
wanted
to think of him as innocent. But the longer I watched and listened, the greater the doubts that began to cloud my mind, the less I believed the evidence against Khazar, and the more I thought that something was seriously wrong with the trial.

I watched and listened along with the other families, those who could bear to be there. Day after day we went to court, and sometimes in the evenings we talked, but at other times I wanted to be alone. As the days turned into weeks, I wanted my own company more, the space to think by and for myself—because, when we talked, I saw a gap opening up between myself and most of the others, especially the American relatives. We saw and heard it all together, the same words and images, the same productions of evidence, the same arguments and counter-arguments, but we drew different conclusions. It seemed to me that regardless of the flaws and inconsistencies in the case being built against him, regardless of the lack of credibility of some of the witnesses, including Parroulet, the other relatives were
determined that Khalil Khazar must have done what he was accused of having done. It would have taken something huge and incontrovertible—a watertight alibi, for example—to dissuade them of his guilt. There was nothing like that to clear him. He had been at the airport on the right day and at the right time. He had a life that was in partial shadow. He had been seen—by Parroulet—in possession of a suitcase identical to that which had contained the bomb. He had been seen—by Parroulet and others—
not
in possession of this suitcase when he should still have had it with him. Like the others, I began by wanting his guilt to be beyond doubt. I also wanted him to speak for himself, but he never did. Either this was by his own choice or on his counsel’s advice, but he remained silent. That might have been seen—
was
seen—as an admission of guilt, but not by me. As the trial went on, I felt more uneasy, then more despairing, then unwell. Sometimes the body knows better than the mind when something is wrong. Several times when the court rose I had to hurry away to be sick.

The indictment against Waleed Mahmed turned out to be based on nothing more than the dubious words of the car mechanic Ali. Khazar and he were supposed to have acted in concert, and the inference to be drawn from the indictment was that Mahmed, with his inside knowledge of the workings of the island’s airport security systems, had taken the primary suitcase from Khazar that morning and somehow circumvented those systems and infiltrated it on to the flight to Germany. From there it had gone on its way, tagged to be transferred to London and thence to New York.
But during the trial no explanation was ever given as to how this amazing act of subterfuge was carried out. Nor was it demonstrable, according to all the records of the airport authorities and the different airlines operating there, that an unaccompanied suitcase had been loaded on to the original flight. In their summation, the judges acknowledged that this was a major difficulty for the prosecution. There was no evidence that Waleed Mahmed had been at the airport that day, no evidence that he had taken the suitcase from Khazar, no evidence that he had managed to get it on to the plane bound for Germany. The case against Mahmed was accordingly dismissed.

Yet the inference lingered. Somehow Khazar had got that suitcase, laden with its deadly contents, through the security system and on to the plane. The judges’ view was that no record of that suitcase existed precisely
because
it had bypassed the airport’s rigorous baggage reconciliation procedures. And so, taking all the other evidence and weighing it up, the court concluded—although it could not say how he had done it—that Khalil Khazar had indeed achieved his aim, and was therefore responsible for the murder of Emily, Alice and two hundred and seventy other people.

I used to think that the only question I wanted answered was, who killed my wife and daughter? I used to think that nothing else mattered, and indeed for a long time nothing else did. Nor did I care about why, or even how—only about who. The motivation of the killer or killers was of no interest
to me, their religious or political grievances, the rights and wrongs of their cause, whatever it was, utterly irrelevant. I felt that if I allowed myself to consider such issues I would be distracted from the only item of any consequence, the need to identify the murderers and put them behind bars for the rest of their lives. And when Khalil Khazar and Waleed Mahmed were accused, and later arrested, and finally brought to trial, I thought that the beginning of the end was in sight, that my single desire might actually be realised. But then the trial went wrong. The case against Mahmed was quickly shown to be built on sand, and I dismissed him long before the court did. That left Khazar. Slowly yet remorselessly, the proceedings ate away at my confidence in his guilt too. With each new day I was forced to be dissatisfied with some of what was presented as proof. My mind could not accept what my heart wanted to. I found myself asking new questions in my head. I wanted to stand up and shout, “This is wrong, you have the wrong man, how can you have the wrong man?” but I did not because I still hoped that as the trial reached its conclusion some overwhelmingly convincing piece of evidence would eradicate all my doubts and I would be able to go home knowing that justice had been done. Instead I went home fearing the very opposite.

I left the trial with my grief renewed and doubled. There were news teams from around the world outside the building, reporting on the verdict, and of course they wanted to know what we, the victims’ families, felt. I could not speak to them. I should have been able to stand in front of the cameras and say that the long chapter was over, the nightmare
was at some kind of end. Others were doing just that. There were people making statements on behalf of families, governments, the police. I recognised three policemen, senior officers who had all been working on the case from the start, smiling and laughing together. I had spoken to them all over the years, when they had given us updates and briefings, cautioned us against hope, guided us from despair. One of them broke away to go to talk to some reporters, to express what would presumably be some degree of satisfaction. They’d finally got one of the accused. Disappointing in some respects, but … a bird in the hand and all that. The other two watched him go. I noticed they stopped laughing, and one of them, catching my eye, turned his back on me.

I pushed through the crowds and hurried away. I walked as far and as fast as I could, until I found myself in a park. People were exercising their dogs in the distance, a couple of ragamuffin pigeons pecked at the grass, a feeble fountain was gurgling, as it seemed to me, its last gurgles. A few wooden benches were stationed around the fountain, one of them occupied by a sleeping vagrant, the others empty. I sat down and watched and listened to the expiring fountain. I put my head in my hands. I wanted a beer, gin, whisky. I wanted to be drunk. No. The last thing I wanted was alcohol. No. The last thing I wanted was this.

A man had been found guilty of killing Emily and Alice, a man who, I feared, was either entirely innocent or, if involved at all, was only a minor character in the plot. (I can use the language of literary analysis as well as Nilsen or anyone. It’s my job.) My loved ones, all those loved men and
women and children, had been murdered, and now, was a possibly innocent man to rot out his life in jail while the real killers remained at large? As I sat on that park bench and the fountain spluttered and the pigeons coughed and the tramp on the bench snored I realised that I was nowhere near the end of the nightmare. A new nightmare was beginning, and this was the one in which I would spend days and nights and years in my own Château d’If, my fingernails broken and my forehead resting against the cold dampness of stone walls. This was the fate that now awaited me, although I did not know it at the time: to be imprisoned like Dumas’s old priest, imprisoned too like Khalil Khazar, imprisoned for the crime of not being able to believe.