But Nargis only shrugged and said nothing. Kathy began to feel that she was wasting her time against this implacable artlessness.
‘Where did he keep his gun?’
‘I never saw a gun.’
‘What about the money?’
‘The money?’ Nargis’ head came up and she stared at Kathy, fully engaged.
‘Yes, Nargis. The money under the mattress in your room.’
‘You’ve been in my room?’ She seemed more astonished than upset.
‘Yes.’
‘That money belongs to my baby and me. Abu gave it to us.’
‘When did he do that?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘About… about two weeks ago.’
‘When exactly?’
‘I don’t know. He just showed it to me one evening and said that it was for me and the baby, if anything should happen to him.’
‘“If anything should happen to him”? You must have thought that was very strange, didn’t you? Didn’t you ask him what he meant?’
‘No.’
‘Where did he get it from?’
‘I don’t know. It was his.’
‘It’s a lot of cash.’
‘Thirty thousand pounds.’ Then she added fiercely, ‘You’d better not have taken any. He said it was for the baby and me.’
Kathy eventually left her in the care of the social worker who wanted to talk to her about her benefit entitlements, and returned home. There were two messages on her answering machine. One was from Tina the travel agent, sounding bright and cheerful; the other, guarded and ominous, was from an inspector of the Metropolitan Police Complaints Investigation Bureau, CIB2. Both asked her to return their call. Despite having anticipated it for the past several hours, Kathy still found her hand trembling when she pressed the button to replay the second message. Together, the two calls seemed to sum up her choices, the fork in the road. She had a bath, went to bed, and didn’t sleep.
When she reported to Queen Anne’s Gate the next morning she discovered that the CIB inspector had left a message there too. She found an empty room, and without putting on the light, sat at the unfamiliar desk and stared at the phone. Then she realised that she was behaving as if she were guilty, hiding herself away as if deserving to be separated from the others. So she got up and returned to the office she shared with Bren and another detective, and picked up her phone.
The inspector informed her curtly that a serious complaint had been made against her by a member of the public, a Mr Sanjeev Manzoor; that she was not under any circumstances to approach Mr Manzoor or any member of his family or acquaintances; and that she should consider herself suspended from duty until a preliminary interview had been held some time in the following week, to which she would be entitled to bring one adviser.
She cleared her throat and said, ‘Superintendent Russell has asked me to make a report on a related matter at a case conference he’s holding this morning, sir. May I attend that?’
The inspector considered this, asked her a couple of questions, then agreed.
Again that trembling hand when she replaced the receiver. She swore softly under her breath and took some deep breaths. She became aware that Bren and the other man, a DC on secondment from SO8, were looking questioningly at her.
‘CIB,’ she said.
‘Shit!’ Bren breathed.
‘Shit!’ the DC echoed.
‘They didn’t take long. What’d they say?’ Bren asked.
Kathy explained and both men swore again. It seemed to be the only adequate word. Kathy found their anxious sympathy even more scary than the CIB inspector’s curtness.
‘This happened to one of our blokes last year,’ the DC said. ‘He’s still on suspension, eight months later.’
‘We had a DI suspended eighteen months,’ Bren said gloomily.
Kathy was wishing she’d made the call from the empty office. Then Brock put his head round the door to check they were all available for the conference, and Bren, nodding at Kathy as at someone who’d just been diagnosed with something terminal, said, ‘CIB, chief.’
‘Oh, they’ve been in touch already have they, Kathy? That was quick. What’s the story?’
She repeated it and he nodded, point by point.
‘Just the usual, then.’ He didn’t seem particularly dismayed.
‘We were saying, boss,’ the DC chipped in, ‘how long the process takes. What do you reckon?’
‘Opening a book on it, are we?’ Brock asked. ‘Put me down for a fiver. Let’s see…’ He rubbed his beard contemplatively, then took out his wallet and pulled out a note. ‘Forty-eight hours. No, make it twenty-four. Five quid says they’ll have dropped it within twenty-four hours.’ He winked at Kathy and limped out of the room.
The DC shook his head sadly. ‘Got to hand it to him, though, haven’t you, Bren? He knows how to do the right thing. For morale and that. That’s leadership, that is.’
Kathy left them to work out their own doom-ridden forecasts and went back to the empty room to nurse her morale and make her second phone call in private. Tina had exciting news, she said. She’d heard of a group that had just lost an assistant tour guide, and were looking for a replacement at short notice. If Kathy had a current passport and could get leave, she could have two weeks in the tropics seeing how the system worked, all expenses paid.
Kathy cupped her forehead in her hand, trying to come to terms with this. She thanked Tina but explained that she was caught up in something where she’d have to be available over the next few weeks.
‘Oh, too bad. I thought it’d be right up your street. Can’t you just tell them to take a jump? I mean, if you’re getting out anyway?’
‘I really appreciate it, Tina. I’m sorry, it’s a legal thing. I can’t get out of it.’
Was that really true? She sat for a while after she rang off, her head in her hands, wondering if she was thinking straight.
The case conference was held in a meeting room in the main New Scotland Yard building on Victoria Street. Most of the people there were from Superintendent Russell’s team, with the addition of half a dozen of Brock’s. Russell began with the announcement that a decision had been made at senior level that the Springer/Khadra inquiry would be split between two groups, under his general direction. One, led by Brock, would focus on the murder of Springer, and the other, comprising Russell’s core team, would continue with the case against the skinheads involved in Abu’s murder. Everyone seemed pleased with this decision, especially Russell’s team, whose investigations had revealed an orchestrated campaign of actions by a number of linked right-wing groups culminating in the Khadra murder, and there was optimism that these investigations would trap a number of leading neo-Nazis in conspiracy if not murder charges.
After hearing a detailed summary of these ramifications, illustrated by complicated diagrams prepared by Special and Criminal Intelligence Branches tracing a web of extremist associations in the Greater London area and further afield, Brock presented a summary of the Springer case that seemed very modest in comparison. The outstanding question really, he said, was whether Khadra had acted alone in killing Springer, or whether some wider conspiracy was involved. Had he been compelled or induced or supported in any way? Where had the gun come from, or the money? And was it possible to clarify his motive, or the choice of victim? There was little discussion at the end of this, and Kathy had the impression that, like the media which was now focusing exclusively on the skinhead angle, most of the police were no longer much interested in why Max Springer had died.
When the meeting broke up Brock came over to Kathy and asked if she was free for lunch. She took this to be another little morale-boosting gesture, and said he didn’t need to worry, if he had more important things to do.
‘No, no,’ he waved that aside. ‘This is work, Kathy.’
They walked a couple of blocks down Victoria Street and turned off, coming to an Italian restaurant favoured, Kathy knew, by lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service. Inside the climate was suddenly hot and crowded and noisy, and they were shown to a table at the back of the room, squeezing between diners most of whom seemed to know Brock, to where a man sat alone, nursing a glass of white wine. They shook hands, and Brock introduced Reggie Grice, a man of dignified bearing, well barbered silver hair and a beautifully cut charcoal grey suit.