"Is Memet here?" Thorne asked.
Zarif shook his head. "Gone out for the day." He picked up his coffee cup, pointed with it towards the street. "Next door is Hassan's minicab office, if you want. My other two sons are usually in there. I'm certain they just play cards all day." He took a slurp of the coffee and with a grin gestured for Thorne and Holland to do the same.
"Good?"
"Strong," Thorne said. "Zarif Brothers owns a number of video shops, is that right?"
Another proud smile. "Six or seven, I think. More, maybe. They get me all the latest films, the new James Bond."
"Muslum Izzigil was the manager of one of those shops a quarter of a mile up the road. He and his wife were shot in the head." Zarif's eyes widened as he swallowed his coffee.
"Did your sons not mention that to you, Mr. Zarif?" The daughter began talking loudly to him in Turkish from behind the counter. Zarif held up his hands, spoke sharply to her, then turned at the noise of the door opening. The irritation instantly left his face:
"Hassan."
The door closed. Several of the lanterns clinked against one another. Thorne turned to see two young men moving purposefully across the room. He was in little doubt they'd been summoned from next door by the customer who'd just left. One of the men stopped at the counter and began talking in a low voice to Sema. The other marched across to the end of the booth.
"My old man's English isn't so good," he said. Thorne looked at him. "It's fine."
Another stream of Turkish, this time from the son to the father. Thorne held up a hand, put the other on Arkan Zarif's beefy forearm.
"What's he saying?"
Zarif rolled his eyes and began to slide out of the booth. "I'm being sent back to the kitchen," he said.
Holland caught Thorne's eye, disturbed at losing control of the interview. "Hang on."
Zarif turned back to the table. "You want more coffee?"
"It's fine," Thorne said, answering Zarif and Holland at the same time.
As Arkan disappeared down the stairs, Hassan slid into his place. With a wave, he beckoned to his sister for his own cup of coffee. He leaned back and stuck out his chin.
Rooker lay on his bunk, glued to the TV that was bolted to the wall in the corner, swearing at Trisha. Mid-morning was virtually written in stone. If the subject was a very good one, he might defect to Kilroy, but it was always a lot more polite and BBC. The people on Trisha were usually not too bright and a damn sight more likely to swear and row. This morning's was especially good: "Problems with Intimacy'. There was some poof banging on about how he'd never been able to tell his kids that he loved them and a woman who couldn't bear her husband putting his arm around her in the street. Rooker decided that they ought to try crapping next to a child molester or showering with rapists.
He'd spent well over a third of his life in prison but had never got used to the proximity of some of those he'd been locked up with. He remembered reading about how all animals needed a certain amount of territory even rats or rabbits or whatever a bit of space that was all theirs, or they'd start to go mad, attacking each other. Fucking rabbits going mental! Plenty of people inside did lose it, of course, plenty of them big time, but he was surprised it didn't happen more often. He was amazed that a lot more prison officers didn't die every year.
Thinking about it and he'd had plenty of time to think about it -he'd been wary of getting close to others at school. Changing rooms made him uncomfortable. He'd go home dirty after games rather than jump in the showers with the rest of them. He often wondered if this distance he felt from other kids was why he had ended up in his particular line of work…
On the show, Trisha asked the woman if she loved her husband, even though she hated him touching her in public. "Yeah, I love him sometimes," she said. "Other times, I could kill him." Rooker laughed along with the studio audience. He knew that the difference between him and most people who said things like "I could kill him' was that he really could do it. He could remember what it was like to put a gun to someone's head, to pull a knife across a throat, to pour lighter fuel into some poor bastard's hair. The programme finished and he stepped out on to the landing. He could smell lunch coming as he walked down to the floor. You could always smell the food going in one direction or the other.
"DLP going for it this time, d'you reckon? Rooker?" Alun Fisher had served three years of a five-year tariff for causing death by dangerous driving. He had a history of drug abuse and mental illness. His refusal to eat properly meant that he spent as much time on the prison's health care wing as he did in the VP Unit. "Bound to approve you, this time. You'll be counting the days, yeah?" Rooker grunted, stared across at the card school in the corner. He was feeling confident this time. They were bound to go for the deal, considering what he was offering. He could probably afford to pick up one of the pool cues and bash Fisher's head in and they'd still send a police limo to pick him up.
"You're going to have it sweet on the outside," Fisher said. "That's what everybody reckons. You'll be looked after 'cos you never grassed."
Rooker stared at him.
Fisher nodded and grinned, the teeth blackened and rotten from years of drug use. "Never fucking grassed."
"The business was Mr. Izzigil's. Our company owns the building which is looked after by a letting agency. I didn't actually know him." Hassan
Zarif had the same accent as his father, but the grammar and vocabulary were virtually faultless. Two years here and already their native language had become their second. It was clear that, in all sorts of ways, the Zarif boys were quick learners. "My brother popped in occasionally, I think, and perhaps Izzigil would give him a film or two as gifts. Disney films for his children."
"Right," Thorne said.
"Zarif Brothers owns the property, but the video business was Mr. Izzigil's."
Holland failed to keep the sarcasm from his voice. "You said that." Zarif cocked his head, put a finger into the empty metal ashtray, and slowly began to spin it on the tabletop. He was in his early twenties, tall, with a mop of thick, black hair which sat high on his head. A pronounced chin marred the brooding looks and was emphasised by the polo neck he wore under a heavy, brown leather jacket with a fur collar. He sighed slightly at having to state the obvious again. "He rented out movies."
"That's not what paid for his son's school," Thorne said. "Or the nice new Audi in his garage."
Zarif shook his head, spun the ashtray.
"He had over thirty thousand pounds in a building society "wealth management" service," Holland said.
"Some people have no vices."
Thorne leaned across, gently nudged the ashtray to one side. "So, you've no idea at all why anybody would want to put a bullet in his head? And put one in his wife's head for good measure." Zarif clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as if he were trying to decide exactly how to answer.
Thorne knew that this meeting was as important for the young man sitting opposite him as it was for them. Hassan Zarif knew he was safe, at least for the time being. This was about making impressions. He wouldn't want to appear obstructive, but he had a natural cockiness, and a place in the world he thought he'd earned the hard way. It was a tricky balance to strike, but while he played the part of concerned local businessman, he also had a message to send. He wanted to let them know, nicely, of course, that neither he nor the rest of them were to be pissed around.
"Maybe he fucked the wrong man's girlfriend," Zarif said. From behind the counter, Zarif's sister began to laugh. Thorne glared at her, none too keen on the joke, but saw that she was actually laughing at something Zarif's friend was saying to her. He turned back to Zarif. "As we told your father, we're investigating a number of recent murders."