He read it over, cocking his head to one side. ‘The Qur’an. Let’s have a look…’ He pulled a well-worn hardback book from the bag he’d had slung over his shoulder and thumbed through to chapter seventy-eight.
‘Of course, we don’t know the context, how it came to be in the victim’s room, but it sounds threatening, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, here we go, about the Day of Judgement.’
He handed the book to Brock who read the passage, then pointed to the words that followed. ‘“We have recorded everything in a Book.” The victim apparently said something about “the people of the book”. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ O’Brien took the volume back and turned to the index at the back. ‘Here we go… Chapter four… “People of the Book! Exceed not the limits in the matter of your religion, and say not of Allah anything but the truth.” The book it’s referring to is the Bible, and the people of the Book are the Jews and Christians who follow it.’
‘I see.’ Brock frowned in thought. ‘The victim, Max Springer, professor of philosophy at UCLE, had strong opinions about fundamentalists, apparently, though not only Muslims. He doesn’t seem to have had a particularly high profile in recent years, and everyone seems very surprised that he should have been murdered, let alone in such a public and conspicuous way. He was sixty-six, at the end of his career, highly regarded for his past work, especially overseas, but not very active now. So one theory might be, if an extremist group was responsible, that it was intended as a provocative act, to strike down a figurehead. Something like that.’
O’Brien took this in, munching on his sandwich. ‘He was shot, wasn’t he? Anything on the gun?’
‘We haven’t found it yet,’ Bren said. ‘But we did find one of the two cartridge cases, and both bullets, one still in the body and reasonably intact. So far the best information we have is 7.62 millimetre, of East European make.’
‘No hint of any drugs in this? He wasn’t making a fuss about student drug use, dealers on campus, anything like that?’
‘Not as far as we know.’
‘I was thinking of a possible Turkish connection. Since the Turkish mafia moved into London they’ve cornered a big slice of the drug market, of course. I just thought, if he’d upset someone, the style of killing fits. Giving a public warning to people to keep their heads down. But I suppose the same would apply with your religious extremists. Nobody’s claimed responsibility, then?’
‘No, but they wouldn’t necessarily need to,’ Brock said. ‘The timing was significant. Springer was just about to deliver a public lecture in which he was going to compare religious fundamentalists to Nazis. He was killed as he approached the lecture theatre. The killers may have thought that speaks for itself, and they don’t need to risk making a further statement.’
‘If it was a religious thing,’ Bren said, ‘you’d have to assume it was an international group, wouldn’t you, not UK based? There’s been nothing like this before, has there? I mean, we’re not talking about our own migrant community, are we?’
O’Brien sat back and wiped his mouth. ‘There’s no real distinction, Bren. If your family’s been settled in Brentwood for three generations, your picture of the world is London, know what I mean? But for new immigrants, with stacks of close family connections back in the old country, the world is London plus Jamaica, or Bradford plus Karachi. You can’t put a wall around, say, the Mujahadin or the Tamil Tigers, and say they’re foreign and far away. They’ve got brothers and cousins in the next street to you, like as not.’
‘So you think there might be a local connection?’
‘Could be. It ain’t easy to walk into a foreign country and find your way around, and discover all about your victim’s movements and habits, without getting noticed. A bit of local help goes a long way.’
Brock’s phone burbled. He listened for a minute, then rang off. ‘How would you like to have a look at our killer, Wayne? They’ve been working at enhancing the security video and they reckon they’ve done about as much as they can. They’re setting it up upstairs.’
They met Leon Desai and a technician from the electronics laboratory in one of the upstairs rooms, and sat down around the screen. The small and fuzzy images which they had seen previously were now transformed, the face of the gunman filling the picture.
‘Is that colour right?’ Brock asked, pointing at the areas of skin that showed around his lips and eyes. They were distinctly brown rather than white.
‘So-so,’ the technician replied. ‘I had to manipulate the colours, and that was as close as I could get, using the glimpses of teeth and tongue and the whites of the eyes as parameters. But it wouldn’t be reliable enough to use in court.’
‘We spent the last hour with a lip-reader,’ Leon said, ‘trying to make out what he was saying. Unfortunately the victim’s head obscures part of his mouth towards the end. She wasn’t all that happy about it, but this is her best guess.’
He looked uneasy as he handed Brock a folded sheet of paper.
Brock unfolded it and stared, his frown deepening. ‘Good grief,’ he murmured.
He handed it to Bren, who read out loud, ‘“Allan, you bastard”.’ He looked at Brock in astonishment. ‘What does that mean? He got the wrong man? He meant to kill someone called Allan?’
‘How could he?’ Brock said. ‘He was three feet away. How could he mistake Springer for someone else?’
‘Hang on,’ the Special Branch man broke in. ‘Suppose he wasn’t speaking in English? I’m thinking, could it be “Allah” instead of “Allan”, like “Allah-u-Akbar” maybe? “God is most great”. It’s the traditional call to prayer, and it’s also the battle cry of the shaheed, the religious martyrs. Saddam Hussein had it stitched onto the Iraqi flag during the Gulf War.’
‘That sounds more like it. And that would mean that we’re looking for someone who speaks Arabic.’
‘Interesting,’ Wayne said. ‘Very interesting. I guess you want what I can give you on London activists, then, Brock?’
‘I believe we do, Wayne. And let’s keep this to ourselves for the moment. If we’re right, this is going to be explosive.’
That afternoon Brock returned to the university campus to check on the progress of the more rigorous search of Springer’s room which was going on, in parallel with a similar search of the philosopher’s home, a modest semi in the Essex suburbs. While he was talking to the searchers, warning them to inform him immediately they came across anything with an Islamic connotation, there was a discreet cough at his back and he turned to see the University President’s Executive Officer standing in the corridor, regarding them with a quiet smile. Brock wondered how long the young man had been there.
‘Pardon me, but Professor Young heard that you were on campus, Chief Inspector, and wondered if he might have a word, when you’re free.’
‘I’m busy here at the moment.’
‘Of course. Shall I say an hour?’
‘All right.’ Brock turned back to a pile of papers he had been studying. They were handwritten notes, in Springer’s almost indecipherable scrawl, for lectures or essays.
An hour later he was shown into the President’s office. Young sat in shirtsleeves in front of the broad window, the view even more distracting in daylight, studying a single document on his otherwise paperless desk. The impression given was that a vast support apparatus of filing systems and office drones must exist in order to sustain this emptiness and space, leaving the great man uncluttered, free to take decisive action. Brock thought of the contrast with Springer’s tip, or, come to that, his own untidy office. Against the bright panorama it was difficult to make out Young’s expression as he raised his eyes, a significant few seconds after Brock had entered the room.
‘Take a seat, Chief Inspector. Thanks for coming up. I thought I’d better take the opportunity to be briefed on current progress. I’m told that you’re pursuing an interesting line of inquiry.’
‘Are you?’
‘You’re looking for Islamic connections, I understand.’