‘Trying to. Haven’t got to that one yet. I’m afraid I’m finding them tough going.’
‘Try it,’ she said peremptorily, jutting her chin at the book.
‘ A Man in Dark Times,’ Brock read the title. ‘That one’s easier, is it?’
‘Probably. It’s his autobiography, written just after his wife died, so it’s a bit gloomy in parts. But moving too. His experiences in the camps for instance.’
Brock frowned, puzzled. ‘I thought it was his parents who were in the camps…’
‘Not in Germany-in Lebanon. He understood, you see? He experienced it. It gave him the right to talk about it.’
‘About what?’
‘About the struggle between truth and freedom.’
Brock sipped his drink, none the wiser. ‘You haven’t told us how you fit into all this, Briony. How come you know these people?’
‘I met George at uni, and through him I met Fran and Nargis and Abu.’
‘That puts you in a rather special position, doesn’t it? You must be one of the few people who knew both Max and his killer.’
She flinched at the word and glared at him. ‘I still don’t accept that Abu did it,’ she hissed fiercely, keeping her voice low so that Nargis wouldn’t hear.
‘I’m afraid the forensic evidence is pretty overwhelming. Both his gloves and his coat were impregnated with the same gunshot residue that was on Max’s clothes.’
She stared at him in disbelief, as if genuinely unable to reconcile this with something else in her mind.
‘Why do you doubt it so strongly?’ Brock pressed her.
‘Because… because I knew Abu. He wasn’t a mad fanatic. And he didn’t hate Max.’
‘How do you know that? Did he know Max?’
Her eyes shifted away. She sipped her drink. ‘We discussed Max, as my tutor, and because he’d attacked Abu’s boss, Haygill. Abu thought it was rather silly, that’s all. I couldn’t even get him to have a decent argument about it, you know, the ethics of what they’re trying to do and all that.’
‘Sometimes people are very good at not showing what they really think, Briony. Especially if they’ve had painful experiences in the past. Did you know he was detained by the Israelis for a time when he was a teenager? Did he ever talk about that?’
Briony shook her head, the same frown of bafflement on her face.
‘And Max was Jewish, wasn’t he?’
‘But not practising. He didn’t even support a lot of what the Israelis have done. That’s what I’m saying. You should read the book.’
Brock said, ‘OK,’ and reached up for Springer’s book. ‘And how’s your work going now?’
‘Nowhere.’ She turned away. ‘It’s impossible without him.’
‘But wouldn’t he want you to finish it? Surely that would be the best thing you could do to honour his memory?’
‘It doesn’t work like that. It has no meaning now, like empty labour. I just feel sick when I think about it. Each day I go in there and sit at the table and hope that he’ll tell me what I should do.’ She pushed the glass aside and walked away.
15
B rock made some phone calls, getting the address of a refuge in East London where he could take Nargis. He also spoke to the duty inspector at Tooting police station, and was advised that Mr Manzoor and his companions had been interviewed under caution, then released pending further inquiries. They had claimed to be mourners who had become involved in a minor scuffle when Mr Manzoor had attempted to make contact with his runaway daughter whom he had recognised at the scene. The so-called clubs they were carrying were in fact traditional Kashmir walking sticks. Manzoor demanded that the police execute the warrant issued by the magistrate for the return of his daughter and prosecute anyone who attempted to obstruct it. In particular he wished to make a complaint against a woman police officer at the scene who had made a racist attack on him, injuring his right arm.
‘That’s nonsense,’ Brock said. ‘I was a witness to the whole thing.’
‘That may be so, sir,’ the inspector said, ‘but I’ve had to follow procedure and notify CIB.’
Brock’s heart sank. The Complaints Investigation Bureau would follow up any accusation of racial abuse against an officer with vigour. ‘Where is Manzoor now?’ he asked.
‘He was given a medical examination here, sir, then taken to hospital for X-rays and further treatment. He had quite a bit of swelling and bruising, and he’d worked himself up into a fair old state. You say you were a witness, sir? Maybe you could come over and give a statement.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Brock shook his head impatiently, wishing now that he’d used some other way to shake off the purple car.
‘And what about the daughter, sir? Any information on where we can find her?’
‘I think you’ll find that the warrant he referred to covered the East London area,’ Brock said vaguely. ‘You might speak to Shadwell Road. They have the details.’
‘Very well…’ Brock could hear the caution in the inspector’s voice as he tried to pick his way through what was becoming a minefield-a race complaint against an officer, a DCI from Serious Crime, a warrant for an abducted girl… ‘You won’t be approaching Mr Manzoor yourself, will you, sir? Only, if you’re a witness it might be…’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Brock said tersely and rang off. All the same, he knew the man was right.
While the three women sat huddled together around the gas fire, discussing what they should do, Brock took Kathy into the kitchen and told her what he’d learned. She went pale when he mentioned CIB.
‘Now, look, you’ve got plenty of witnesses, Kathy. You used minimum force to prevent a serious assault.’
‘I don’t know for sure he was going to assault her,’ she said, feeling her heart thumping, adrenalin flushing through her as surely as if the assault on her was a physical one. ‘I didn’t know it was him, or his daughter.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And I can’t remember if I identified myself before I hit him.’
‘There was no time. It all happened too quickly. I saw it very clearly, Kathy. You acted quickly and properly.’
She looked at him directly. ‘But then, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re my DCI. That’s what CIB3 will say.’
There were three complaints departments. CIB1 was administrative and advisory, while CIB2 investigated serious allegations. The third department, CIB3, was different. Its task was to search for police corruption and racism in an undercover, proactive way, even without complaints. The case against Kathy might be investigated by CIB2, but Brock and the others might be tainted by it and become a target for
CIB3.
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ Brock said. ‘Manzoor’s putting up smoke, covering up his hurt pride. But maybe he’s got more than that to hide.’
‘Like what?’
‘If he came to the funeral in the hope of catching his daughter, then he must have known that Abu Khadra was her boyfriend, right? So when and how did he make this discovery? If someone at Chandler’s Yard tipped him off that she was there, why didn’t he just tell the police and get them to execute the warrant? Why wait till the funeral?’
‘I don’t know…’ Then something kicked in Kathy’s memory. ‘When was it…?’ she said slowly, thinking. ‘On the day after Abu was killed, yes, the Wednesday afternoon, I went back to Shadwell Road, just to sniff around.’
‘What? You were supposed to be on leave, Kathy. Russell had taken over the case.’
‘I know, but Bren had been going on about how quickly everything had happened, and I was curious. That’s when I met Manzoor-that’s how he recognised me this afternoon. The barman at The Three Crowns had mentioned that he’d seen Manzoor talking to one of the skinheads, so I went into his shop and asked him. He said he’d just tried to persuade the man not to make trouble. Then, when I was leaving, he asked me kind of casually if I knew where Abu had lived. Was it in Chandler’s Yard, or was it the university?’
‘You’re thinking that he must have known then that Abu was the boyfriend? And if he knew on the Wednesday, why not earlier, before Abu was killed? But how?’ Brock thought about that. ‘It’d be a terrible irony if I told him, wouldn’t it?’