He prescribed diazepam, a maximum of ten milligrams a day, two tablets. From his open bag, he took the bottle and counted out sufficient to last three days. He should have felt, beneath the professional exterior, serious sympathy for Melanie Garnett. What had she done to deserve an encounter with a bomber? She was without blame. He was almost shocked at his reaction, as near to being shamed as was possible for him. He put the tablets into an envelope and scrawled the dosage on the label.
'I really wanted that necklace – wasn't a crime to want it. If he'd come with me… if he'd come with me just to look after the kids. He didn't come with me, the kids were arguing, and he's dead. What I hate about him, the last I saw of him, properly saw of him, he was all stone-faced and getting his fags out. Not a kiss, not a "love you", not a cuddle, but looking sour. That's the last I saw of him, damn him.'
To his mind, rebellion was alive in the Kingdom and soon, pray God, the whole stinking edifice would come down. Bart had always been good at learning lines but, then, his talent was to play a part – the part of a liar. Against the weeping anger of the widow he was able to recite in his mind, perfect recalclass="underline" 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' The towers of glass and concrete, airports and luxury hotels, wide highways and people of such mind-numbing arrogance were floating on oil, and the edifice was crumbling. A bomb here and a shooting there, work for the executioner in Chop Chop Square, a frisson of fear eddying into the palaces. Each time he read of, or heard of, an atrocity a little raw excitement coursed in Bart. 'Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.' He hoped, damn it, that he would still be there to see the decay come to fruition, be able to scent it.
'His mother's on the flight tonight. What am I going to tell her? If her precious son hadn't been so bloody mean to me, his wife, he'd still be alive. Do I tell her that?'
Tomorrow would be worse for the widow. She would have his mother there, organizing her, and she would have her guilt. Post-traumatic stress syndrome would crucify her with guilt. If she had not wanted the bloody necklace, her husband would be alive, her kids would have a father. The guilt would churn like a whirlwind in her mind – poor little cow. Ann had never felt guilt, even when she had brought him to his knees. He went into the kitchen, where a maid cowered, poured a glass of water and carried it back into the room. The matriarch slipped a tablet into Melanie Garnett's mouth, then gave her the glass.
Bart waited until she was quieter, then left. Out in the compound, spied on by the neighbours, the sliver of independence deserted him.
He walked to his car, preparing what he would say to Eddie Wroughton. He was in fear of Wroughton, and knew it. He flopped into the back of the car and the driver took him away. He was as pliant as putty, and he knew no route for escape, no track that could free him.
He fumed, but his experience of recent years had taught Eddie Wroughton to mask fury. Had he shouted abuse at the Omani policeman, he would have lost him.
He had been driven a hundred kilometres or so west of the capital to Ad Dari, a trading town en route to the interior. He should have been at the police station, in an interrogation room. Instead, he was shivering – with anger and from the cold – in the refrigeration room of the hospital mortuary. The British staffer in Muscat city was green, so lacking in experience with the Secret Intelligence Service that Wroughton – on hearing of the arrest – had caught the first available flight from Riyadh.
The man he should have been questioning, with relish and vigour, was now a corpse, frozen solid. Death had come in a spasm of pain that the refrigeration plant had preserved. The attendants hadn't even closed the man's eyes, which were wide and staring.
'Cardiac arrest, there was nothing we could do,' the Omani intoned.
Yes, there bloody well was. He could have been properly searched on arrest, had goons in his cell and his hands manacled behind his back.
T h e autopsy will be tomorrow,' the staffer intoned emptily, like he thought it was his failure. 'Don't know what they'll find.'
Wroughton could have reeled off a list of poisons, right for self-administration, that were quick but painful while they did their work.
He turned away. He had no more need to look down at the trolley and the body. The man was late fifties, or perhaps early sixties, but his age would be confirmed over coffee in the policeman's office. His name and occupation were paramount, particularly the occupation, which had brought Wroughton scurrying off the plane. His last sight of the man was his fat fingers and the width of the two gold rings, one on each hand, over which the flesh bulged.
They walked along the corridor towards an office.
'It was a rumour, Mr Wroughton, from information we received.
We acted on it immediately,' the police officer said, ingratiating and ashamed. 'We heard that this prominent hawaldar had travelled a few days ago up-country. He was a wealthy man, prominent in his trade, and he had gone to a place where there is only poverty. We said, and I discussed this with your young colleague, that he must be arrested immediately.'
The staffer flinched because now the blame was shared…
Wroughton understood. The western members of the Financial Action Task Force regularly and predictably targeted the Gulf states for the movement of money that benefited Al Qaeda. There had been a gesture of action, and the action had led to catastrophe. The hazval system was the nightmare, money moving without paper or electronic trace. And big sums were not needed – an investment of $350,000, wisely spent on flying lessons, simulators and cheap motels, would cost the Americans $200 billion, for the rebuilding of the Twin Towers and the economic losses post the hijackings. What was required was money to follow, to track. Breaking into the hawal networks was as big a priority as existed in Eddie Wroughton's life – and the man was dead, the bastard was a stiff. Guilt was proven. A man who took a pill after only cursory questioning was a man harbouring a big secret, a man who would die rather than face in-depth interrogation.
'I'm sure you did the right thing,' Wroughton said, without charity.
There would, of course, be mobile and landline telephone records to work on, but he doubted they would show up anything beyond inconsequential dealings.
They sat. The first coffee was poured into a thimble cup. He sensed a nervous energy building in the staffer. They talked of the hawaldar' s connections, his links, they hacked at his Special Branch file… It was nearly an hour before the staffer's energy burst out.