Fane said, ‘You say “all the way to France or Britain” – where do we think these arms are coming from?’
‘Milraud says it’s Dagestan.’
‘Where our friend Donation – Baakrime – is right now,’ said Bokus.
Liz nodded. ‘I doubt it’s a coincidence.’
Bokus said, ‘But he’s unreachable there – for us and for you. Neither of us has any permanent post in Dagestan and we’d never get anyone in there in time to find out anything useful. If we’re going to crack this open it’s not going to be through Dagestan or Baakrime.’
‘That’s right,’ Liz said firmly, determined that the question of who was to blame for Baakrime’s flight from Yemen should not be reopened. ‘But we still need Miles Brookhaven in Yemen on the case. If he can find out the identities of the British youths who went out to Yemen – the ones Baakrime said were planning on returning home for some purpose – then we can keep tabs on them if and when they come back into Europe.’ Liz didn’t really think Miles would be able to find out anything useful, but she felt it was important to keep the Americans on board. Which meant providing at least a pretence of a job for Miles Brookhaven to do in Yemen.
‘That’s if they haven’t got new false documents,’ said Bokus doubtfully.
She went on, ‘We’ve got two potential sources of information here: the young man Atiyah, who’s been the contact with Antoine Milraud – we’ve got twenty-four-hour surveillance on him. And this man Lester Jackson.’
‘That’s the black man from Berlin?’ Fane asked.
‘Yes. He owns a club just outside Manchester. He’s well known to the local Special Branch, but it’s all standard criminal stuff – drugs and the white slave trade. Since Jackson’s shipped women, he’ll know how to ship arms, I imagine. I bet he’s being employed for his expertise in trafficking.’
‘Trafficking from where?’ asked Bokus.
‘I wonder,’ said Fane caustically.
Liz gave a resigned smile. ‘Dagestan, of course,’ she said. ‘We know that at least one of the women in his club came from there. Anyway, we can’t do much besides watch Atiyah for now – if we brought him in, it could blow the case without our finding out what he’s planning to do. If he’s been terrorist-trained in Yemen, he’s not going to crack under questioning. We just have to hope he makes some kind of a mistake in the next week – you know, phone someone or send an incriminating email.’
‘Why don’t you turn him over to the Yemenis?’ asked Bokus, and Fane laughed.
Liz shook her head in regret. ‘I wish we could. But there’s the small matter of his being a British citizen. So we’ll watch him all right, but I think Jackson’s a better bet. He’s got no reason to think we suspect him – as far as he knows he got away in Berlin – but we know more about him than he realises.’
Fane said, ‘Who’s going to direct the operation to put the squeeze on this chap? Local Special Branch?’ He sounded sceptical.
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘It will be us. I’m going up to Manchester tomorrow.’
‘Rather you than me,’ said Fane, looking at the rain now lashing the windows and sounding pleased for the first time that day.
Chapter 40
Liz had done her homework before she’d made an appointment to see the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police. She already knew that Greater Manchester was one of the largest police forces in Britain and she was expecting to find that the Chief Constable was one of the old school, a man who had risen through the ranks, man and boy a policeman, near to retirement and fiercely loyal to his colleagues and to the old style of policing.
What she found was that Chief Constable Richard Pearson was forty-seven years old, the youngest Chief Constable of any of the larger forces in England. He had degrees from Nottingham and Edinburgh Universities and a D.Phil. from Oxford and had been a part-time officer in the Territorial Army for a number of years. He had risen fast through the police ranks and had been in his present post only six months, appointed as part of a push from the Home Office for a new image for policing. He had previously spent two years as Chief Constable of the Cheshire force. With all this information filed away in her mind, Liz set off in quite cheerful mood on the train to Manchester, thinking that perhaps the interview with the Chief was going to be less tricky than she’d thought.
The Police HQ was a three-mile taxi ride from the station, on a smart new industrial estate, full of brick-and glass buildings dominated by the service industries. After signing the register in the large atrium and receiving a visitor’s pass to hang round her neck, Liz waited, sitting on a sofa in front of a low table spread with newspapers and assorted police leaflets, one of which was covered with photographs of Manchester’s most wanted criminals. She flicked through these with interest and was not in the least surprised to find that Lester Jackson was not among them. She was musing that he was probably worse than any of those whose mugshots were on display when a young female constable arrived to escort her to the Chief’s office on the top floor.
A tall, lean man with a shock of blonde hair got up from the desk as she was shown into the room and came forward with a big smile and a hand held out. As she shook it Liz said, ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’
‘It sounded important.’
‘It is,’ she said as they sat down in easy chairs in a corner of the room. ‘We’re working on a counter-terrorism case that involves a young British man of Yemeni origin. His mother lives in Eccles.’
‘That’s part of our Salford West Division,’ said the Chief.
‘He doesn’t live there. He’s a student at SOAS in London – though he’s told the college he’s from Yemen and he’s given them false identity details. But he’s Eccles born and bred and he comes home periodically.’
Pearson gave a half-smile. ‘I suppose even terrorists have mothers. Do you have a name for this chap?’
‘We do. His name is Atiyah. We call him Zara and we’ll be briefing your counter-terrorist team as things develop. But Zara is not the reason I’m here to see you.’
Liz paused but Pearson said nothing. She went on, ‘We believe that Zara is due to receive a shipment of guns and ammunition from abroad – it’s coming from one of the ex-Soviet republics – Dagestan. We’re not sure exactly when but believe it will arrive in the next week or so – as part of a delivery to a middleman in Manchester, who we think regularly receives shipments through this route as part of a criminal business.’
‘Does the middleman have a name?’
‘Lester Jackson. He owns a club called Slim’s in Wilmslow – it’s a combination of flash restaurant, small-time casino and brothel.’
The Chief Constable nodded. ‘I know all about Jackson and Slim’s. I was Chief in Cheshire before I came here. But I wouldn’t have associated him with terrorism.’
‘No, I understand. And I don’t think he is directly involved in terrorism. I think he’s just making some extra cash by adding the weapons to one of his regular deliveries. I very much doubt if he realises all the consequences of what he’s involved in.’
‘How did he get drawn into this?’
‘I think it must be through his transport contact in Dagestan. It’s complicated, but the whole affair seems to have originated with a corrupt government minister in Sana’a in Yemen. We think he has been buying weapons in Dagestan and selling them on at a huge profit to whoever will buy them. He seems to have agreed to supply a bunch of jihadis – and Zara is one of them. At first we thought they were going to use them in the Arab Spring countries, but it’s beginning to look as if they plan to use them here.’