‘Arab?’
‘No, Paki, I suppose. Or Bengali. English anyway. He lives somewhere on the council estate east of Shadwell Road. The mosque will know. That’s the Twaqulia Mosque, just up the road from the police station. Speak to the imam, Mr Hashimi.’
Kathy wrote it all down, checking the spelling. ‘Thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Brock said you know the local characters, like the Kashmiri with the runaway daughter.’
‘Mr Manzoor? Yeah, well, I didn’t tell him the worst part.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Old man Manzoor reckons his daughter’s humiliated him in the eyes of his family, and people say he’s sworn to kill her when he finds her, and the bloke she’s with. He and his two brothers are out most nights after they close up shop, cruising the East End looking for her. They think she’s still around there somewhere. That’s the main reason we’re still keeping an eye open for her, to get to her before her dad does something stupid.’
‘Nasty. You know this young Sharif lad then, do you, Greg? Has he been in trouble?’
‘About six months ago he attacked The Three Crowns-that’s the pub on Shadwell Road, just across the way from the police station.’
‘Attacked it?’
‘Yeah. Marched in one Saturday lunchtime and announced that the pub was an offence in the eyes of God, or something, and started to smash the place up. The landlord and a few of the customers managed to restrain him after a bit, but not before there’d been a good bit of damage, both to the pub and to him.’
‘What did he get?’
‘Twelve months good behaviour. He wanted to be a martyr, see, and go to jail, but the magistrate wouldn’t oblige.’
‘So he can be violent?’
‘You mean, shoot Springer?’ PC Talbot rubbed his nose doubtfully. ‘I never thought of him as bad, really, but he fills his head with these crazy religious ideas. Maybe it makes him feel important, part of something.’
‘Greg, I think you should speak to my boss about this yourself. He tells me your inspector and sergeant have agreed to cancel your suspension and give you a private apology.’
Greg nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah, I know. But the Federation want a public statement printed in The Job. Apparently there’ve been other cases like this, and they want to make an issue of it.’
Kathy felt sympathetic. Through no fault of his own, circumstances had conspired to make life difficult for PC Talbot. ‘Yes, it’s hard. I suppose that’s up to you in the end. But meantime, we need your help. Will you come back with me and speak to Brock?’
He stared gloomily down at his feet, then said, ‘I’ll talk to Shirley.’
Kathy waited by the front door to see what the answer would be. She heard Shirley’s voice, angry, and wasn’t optimistic, but eventually Talbot appeared, pulling on a coat, and they went out to the car.
He directed her to a lane running behind Shadwell Road, from which they turned into a yard behind the police station. Another vehicle was there, a van from which men were unloading folding screens. Kathy spotted Leon Desai among them, and guessed they were a forensic team, preparing to retrieve the green poster from the wall. Wayne O’Brien was with them, talking to Leon, and she said hello to them as she and Greg Talbot passed, avoiding Leon’s attempts to catch her eye.
After they’d gone inside, the Special Branch man, who had been watching Kathy meditatively, turned to Leon and said, ‘What do you reckon on her, then? Know her, do you?’
‘Yes, I know her,’ Leon replied, but didn’t offer more.
‘Well, I reckon she’s dead gorgeous. I go for that arctic blonde look, and just a hint of haggard, like she had a heavy night last night, know what I mean?’
Leon turned away with a discouraging frown. ‘No, can’t say that I do.’
But Wayne wasn’t going to be put off. ‘Come on, old son. You must know something about her. Is she hitched?’
‘She’s not married, no,’ Leon said, his disapproval beginning to sound pompous.
‘Going steady?’
Leon hesitated before replying. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said softly.
‘How come?’
‘Just believe me, OK? Leave her alone.’
But Wayne loved a challenge, and he hadn’t got where he was by taking things on trust.
Inside the police station Brock shepherded the reluctant PC Talbot towards the interview room, ordering coffee and cakes from the reluctant desk sergeant. He turned to Kathy with a beam of satisfaction.
‘I knew you could do it, Kathy. Well done. I’m just sorry I had to involve you. You on your way back to Suzanne now? Give her my best.’
He was in a hurry and she was being dismissed, she realised.
‘I’ve got one or two things to do in town,’ she said. ‘I’ll probably stay at my place tonight. What about the reporter, Clare Hancock?’
‘Do nothing. If she contacts you, tell her I’m thinking it over. Say it may be a day or two before we can give her an answer.’
‘Is that a good idea? Suppose she takes her material to someone else?’
‘I think she’s already worked out that we’re her best hope. At the moment it’s still our case.’
He gave her a reassuring nod and turned away. Kathy dug her hands in the deep pockets of her coat, feeling suddenly dispensable and at a loss.
‘Hi there!’
She turned to face Wayne O’Brien, a big infectious grin on his face. ‘It’s my lunchtime. How about you? Fancy another expedition into the Hindu Kush?’
She smiled back, grateful. ‘Don’t they need you here?’
‘They can spare me for an hour. Come on.’
7
B rock walked alone to the steps which led up to the front door. It was unlocked, and he stepped inside without pulling on the iron bell handle. When he closed the heavy door behind him the noises of the street abruptly ceased. Inside was silence.
Immediately in front of him, laid out on the cheap blue vinyl floor covering, were several pairs of shoes. He bent and removed his own, placed them alongside, and padded forward in his stockinged feet. The place smelled musty, as if years of irretrievable dust had settled in the cracks around the old skirtings and wooden floor boards whose irregularities his feet could feel through the vinyl. A stair with a heavy wooden banister rose steeply against the wall to his left, while ahead lay a corridor running to the head of another flight, leading downwards. He went that way, picking up the sound of dripping water as he approached the stairs and descended.
He came to a white-tiled ablutions room, with taps and duckboards running along each flank and on both sides of a low central dividing wall, three or four dozen wash places in all. He was taking this in when a cough behind him made him turn. A man was watching him suspiciously from the stairs.
‘Good afternoon,’ Brock said. ‘I would like to speak to the imam. Can you tell me where I might find him?’
The man considered him without speaking for a moment, then said, ‘Follow me,’ and turned on his stockinged heel. Brock went after him, back up to the entrance, then up the long flight of stairs to the first floor, where the man told him to wait while he went through a door in a partition nearby. He was standing in the corner of a hall, surprisingly large, with timber-fronted balconies cantilevered around three sides, and half a dozen elaborate chandeliers suspended from the high ceiling. It was bare of all furniture, as if it might be used for dancing, except that the whole floor was carpeted. The pattern on the deep green carpet was a repeated motif of the yellow outline of a shape like a small pointed archway, or an artillery shell, and the disconcerting thing was that, instead of pointing towards one of the walls, in line with the geometry of the room, the carpet had been laid with the motifs all pointed at a skew angle, as if some great hidden magnet had swung them all off course.