He nodded at Bren who said, ‘Where were you on the afternoon of last Thursday the twentieth of January, between four o’clock and six?’
Ahmed gave this some thought, then answered suspiciously, ‘With two of my friends, at my place.’
‘Did your mum see you there?’
‘No, she was at work.’
‘Anyone else see you there?’
‘No. Where am I supposed to have been? And who am I supposed to have threatened, anyway?’ He turned to Brock angrily. Now the silence had been broken, the words were coming out fast and angry. ‘He said I was under suspicion of issuing a threat. Well, who did I threaten? This is crap, this is. This is your kafir justice, this is. You’re just trying to stitch me up, ’cos I’m not white, ’cos I’m a Muslim!’
Brock raised a calming hand. ‘No, no, Ahmed. We’re not trying to do that. Tell me, do you know anyone down at the new university in the docklands, UCLE?’
There was a slight but definite reaction, Brock thought, but then Ahmed might well have been following the Springer case. ‘You do?’
‘No, I don’t know anyone there. I wouldn’t want to.’
‘Why not? You’re a bright lad. You’d get on with the students, I should think. In fact I’m surprised you didn’t go there yourself.’
‘They’re stuck-up kafir trash!’ Ahmed burst out. ‘They just learn error and lies in that place.’
‘Do they?’ Brock said softly, beginning to feel close to something at last.
‘And they wouldn’t let the likes of me in anyway, on account of their prejudice and discrimination.’
‘But I thought they had quite a lot of Islamic students there, from many countries…’
‘Oh, yeah! Paying fees! Of course they take them if they pay! The greed of Satan knows no bounds!’
‘No, no,’ Brock shook his head sceptically. ‘I’m sure that’s not true. They wouldn’t be allowed to have a discriminatory policy, surely?’
‘It’s true! They speak lies and favour their own. I know. They turned me away.’
‘Really? When was that, Ahmed?’ Brock was aware of Bren sitting very still.
‘Four years ago! Before I took my A levels. I went for an interview, but they wouldn’t offer me a place, because I was a Muslim.’
Brock shook his head, looking shocked. ‘That’s hard to believe, these days. What subjects were you interested in, as a matter of fact? What did you apply for?’
‘PPE. But they wouldn’t have me, a Muslim from the East End.’
Brock sat back and nodded at Bren. ‘PPE. That’s philosophy, politics and economics, isn’t it? You’d have been one of Professor Springer’s students, only they closed down his undergraduate course. Was he the one who interviewed you?’
A look of confusion slowly filled Ahmed’s face, as if something had just surfaced in his mind. ‘I’m not going to say any more. Not until Imam Hashimi gets here.’
‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind about that,’ Brock said. ‘I really would advise you to accept a solicitor. As I said, it won’t cost you anything.’
‘I don’t want a Christian lawyer speaking for me.’
‘Well, we can see if a Muslim one is available. But you really do need the advice of someone who understands the law. Shall I arrange that? And while we’re waiting for that to happen, can we just confirm one little matter…’ He reached across to open the file lying on the table in front of him. Inside, in a plastic bag, was the green leaflet from Springer’s study. ‘This is one of yours, isn’t it, Ahmed?’
The young man looked carefully at it, then nodded defiantly. ‘Yeah, that’s ours.’
‘And you sent it to Professor Springer, didn’t you?’
‘Eh?’ Again the look of confusion, turning into alarm. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is this Professor Springer?’
Brock smiled. ‘If you don’t know, Ahmed, you must be just about the last one left in the country who doesn’t. You sent him this as a death threat, didn’t you?’
Ahmed’s mouth snapped shut, his eyes startled and wide.
‘One of the interesting things about making a death threat, Ahmed, is that you’re guilty of a crime even if you don’t actually intend to carry out your threat, so long as the victim believes you do, and we know that Professor Springer believed the threat was a genuine one, because he told us about it. But then, you did intend to carry out your threat, didn’t you? You weren’t playing games.’
8
A fter the event, Kathy found it hard to work out exactly how she ended up sleeping with Wayne O’Brien.
After their lunch in Shadwell Road, a fish kebab at the Banglatown Balti House, they had arranged to meet that evening for a meal at what Wayne described as his favourite curry palace, Chutney Mary’s in Chelsea. Then Kathy had strolled along Shadwell Road, wondering at the number of travel agencies advertising flights to places she’d never heard of, and she’d bought a few unfamiliar goods along the way, including jackfruits and some black seed oil, irresistibly promoted as ‘able to cure every disease but death’.
She was putting these goodies in the back seat of her car when her mobile rang. It was Clare Hancock.
‘Well, have you discussed it with Brock?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, Clare.’
‘And?’
‘He’s not sure. He wants to think about it. Maybe a day or two.’
Silence for a moment, then, ‘He didn’t buy it, did he? He thinks it’s a waste of time.’
‘It’s not that, but he’s got a lot of other pressing things at the moment, and you haven’t given us much to go on. He has no idea how credible your other lead might be.’
Another silence while the reporter thought it over, then she came back with, ‘All right. I’ll let you look at it, Kathy, or at least a photocopy of it. I won’t give it to you, because I’m not supposed to have it, and if you put me in a corner I’ll deny I ever did have it. But you can read it, and judge for yourself.’
‘Clare, you really would be far better dealing directly with Brock.’
‘No way. Where can we meet?’
She said where she was, and Kathy agreed to drive to a place nearby where she could park. It wasn’t really taking her far out of her way home to Finchley anyway. When she rang off, Kathy wondered at this insistence on dealing with her. Not just sisterly solidarity, surely. Did Clare think she would be more easily persuaded than Brock? Or was it something more devious? If she but not Brock viewed this piece of evidence, might that put her credibility or judgement on the line at some future date, when everybody was denying its existence? The same way Clare Hancock seemed to feel that her reputation was at risk. Kathy decided to ring Brock and let him know what she was doing, but she was told that he was interviewing a suspect and wasn’t available.
She spotted the reporter standing in a doorway as soon as she turned into the street. The woman was talking into a phone, but snapped it away as soon as she saw Kathy’s fair hair and ran over to the car and got in.
‘Well…’ She took a deep breath, like someone bracing for a big jump. ‘I hope I’m not going to regret this.’
Kathy waited, unable to offer any comfort.
‘OK. The reason my paper’s being coy is that we got a letter from Springer two weeks ago, and did nothing about it. He claimed, among other things, that his life was at risk. The letter was obviously libellous and unprintable, and the sub-editor who read it didn’t even bother to run it past the lawyers. He put it in the reject box and it didn’t get entered into the computer or anything. Then he went skiing. When he came back on Monday morning and read the fatwa story, he remembered the letter, dug it out of the box and showed it to my boss, who showed it to me. The letter didn’t seem to support the fatwa idea, and we were in a spot. Here we were pursuing this murder theory when the victim himself had tried to get in touch with us with a different story, and we’d ignored him. We’d look stupid. My boss decided we’d best pretend we never saw the letter, and just hope it hadn’t been sent to any other paper too. So far that seems to be holding up.’