Haygill, looking defeated, shook his head. Then Brock added, ‘There is one other thing. I asked you before for your documentation on the BRCA4 protocol, and you refused. Now I must insist.’
‘There is a copy in the drawer of my desk in my office at the university. It’s locked, but my secretary has a key. I would ask,’ Haygill shrugged hopelessly, ‘can it please be treated as a confidential document. As I told you, it is commercially sensitive. I would hate to think of it floating around your offices, being photocopied…’
‘I propose to give it to an expert, to give us an independent professional assessment.’
‘Who did you have in mind?’
‘Dr R.T. Grice, Home Office.’
‘I know him.’ Haygill considered this, then reluctantly nodded. ‘Very well.’
After they had gone, Brock turned to Bren. ‘Well?’
‘It’s him,’ Bren said flatly. ‘I reckon he picked Abu as the most pliable and dependable of the bunch. Maybe the most disposable, too.’
‘Maybe.’ Brock rubbed his knee, sounding unhappy. ‘But he could make that story stick.’
‘Finding the gun on his bookshelf? Come on, chief, that was the most improbable thing I’ve ever heard. Why would Abu leave the gun there? How did he even get into Haygill’s office?’
‘Mm. All the same, we need another angle, Bren. The money, we’ve got to tie that firmly to him.’
‘Yeah. No luck so far, but now we’ve got access to his records we may come up with something. Interesting to think, isn’t it boss,’ Bren added innocently as they made for the door, ‘if Leon hadn’t pulled that stunt the other night, we wouldn’t know anything of this.’ He hurried out before Brock could reply.
20
T hey found a parking space in the housing estate behind Shadwell Road and made their way through the rear lanes towards the cries of hawkers, the smell of roasting meat and the sound of amplified music throbbing on the crisp morning air. Market stalls had been erected down the centre of Shadwell Road, and the street was packed with visitors savouring the mixture of the exotic and the banal. A stall selling hijab headscarves stood next to one specialising in cowboy hats; the aromas of cumin and fennel from a spice stall competed with those of a hot dog barrow, saffron and purple silks with heavy metal T-shirts, sitar and koto with electric guitar.
Distracted by an illustrated wallchart of selected positions from the Kama Sutra, Kathy was saved from being run down by a burly child on a scooter by a tug on her arm from Leon Desai. She stumbled against him and laughed and they moved on, flushed by a sense of intimacy in the mass of the crowd.
‘Did you ever see Chandler’s Yard?’ she asked, and when he shook his head she said, ‘I’ll buy you a cup of coffee at the Horria Cafe.’
‘Just so long as we don’t bump into Dr Darr and his mates,’ he muttered, sounding genuinely worried, and she laughed again, feeling unexpectedly light and happy this morning, with the sun overhead at last, the buzz of the crowd, and him at her side. She caught a glimpse of Sanjeev Manzoor in the distance, standing in the doorway of his shop, surveying the passing throng with a scowl of disapproval on his face, and she almost felt inclined to say hello to him and offer to shake hands, but wisely thought better of it and they turned instead out of the crowd, past the door to The Three Crowns and into the sudden quiet of the lane.
The activity in the street hadn’t reached the Horria. There was one family of very pale-skinned visitors, looking slightly bemused by the menu at a table decorated with two small crossed and faded flags of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and the Yemeni Arab Republic, and there were two of the old men playing cards on a table at the back, but that was all and Kathy wondered how Qasim Ali made a living from the place. He was on his knees in front of the jukebox, fiddling with the switches. He gave a snort of disgust and struggled to his feet, giving the machine a hefty thump. Immediately a high-pitched female voice broke into an Arabic pop-song at full volume, to the consternation of the English family.
Qasim welcomed Kathy as a great friend, and on her behalf accepted Leon. He seated them at a table at the front where they were only half deafened by the music and could look out onto the cobbled square, to a small printing works opposite on the right, and a tiny second-hand furniture store on the left.
‘Abu lived here?’ Leon murmured. ‘No wonder he was driven to murder.’
‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ Kathy grinned. ‘Qasim turns the music down when people are praying in the mosque upstairs. We could have a look later if you like. Brock told me that your family were Muslim once. You never told me.’
‘It didn’t seem important.’ He looked at her. ‘We had other things on our minds.’
She met his eyes, dark and intent, and she felt a familiar response stirring in her. No, she thought, I’m not falling for that look again. Leon’s adventure had brought them together again, but as friends, they had tacitly agreed. She was determined this time to move at her own pace, to try to keep control of the direction of her life. She looked out of the window and said, ‘Perhaps that’s why Brock agreed with you meeting Darr the first time.’
Leon winced. ‘Don’t talk about that.’
‘Oh, but it was a success. From that everything fell into place.’
‘You mean Haygill’s world fell to pieces. And it was all a mistake. Mrs Haygill thinks her husband was spying on him when he wasn’t. I don’t feel very proud about that.’
‘She wouldn’t have told us about the gun otherwise. And anyway, their marriage was obviously on its last legs.’
‘We don’t know that. We don’t even know he’s guilty. How’s the money trail going?’
‘Nothing yet. They haven’t found any obvious withdrawals from Haygill’s accounts to correspond to the thirty thousand, and they’ve had no luck so far tracing the notes themselves back to his bank.’
‘Hm.’ Leon was silent for a moment, then said abruptly, ‘How’s Wayne?’
‘Wayne O’Brien? Didn’t you know? He doesn’t exist any more. They’ve changed his name, address and phone number, and he’s become somebody else. He’s working on another job.’ Brock had told her two days before, and at first she hadn’t believed it, thinking it was some kind of practical joke. But it was true. This happened in Special Branch, Brock had said, they come and they go. All the same, she would have liked to have said goodbye. She had felt an unexpected sadness, as if she’d just learned that Wayne had died rather than merely moved on.
‘Really?’ Leon’s shoulders straightened a little, and Kathy thought it looked almost as if a weight had been removed. ‘Hell, what a life.’
‘I liked him, Leon.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘He was what I needed at that moment. Nothing too serious.’
‘And I was too serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry.’ He looked disconsolate.
‘Well, now, ladies and gents,’ Qasim boomed and put their coffees down in front of them. ‘Mind if I join you?’ He offered them his cigarettes and when they refused, lit up himself. ‘How’s the detecting going? I see you caught another one.’ He puffed and reached across to a newspaper lying on the next table and showed them the report- ‘
BOFFIN QUIZZED IN MURDER HUNT ’.
‘We’re not sure yet, Qasim,’ Kathy said.
‘He was Abu’s boss, right? Makes sense to me. Abu’d never ’ave done it on his own. Fact I still can’t hardly believe he did it at all. This guy must be a Svengali, right? Made ’im do it?’
Kathy remembered Springer using that word too; Svengali the sinister manipulator, the evil hypnotist. Was Haygill really such a character?
‘The thing that blows me away is that those two actually met, here in this very place, before any of this happened.’