If Hanlon had any faults in Whiteside’s opinion, it was that she played her cards too close to her chest. But then again, Whiteside wasn’t overly concerned with larger pictures. One thought occurred to him as he switched his phone off.
‘Dr Cohen, does that file mention any known associates?’
Cohen glanced at the screen. ‘He set up Albion, the name of his business — the poet Blake would be turning in his grave — with a partner, a Paul Bingham, in the eighties, but there’s no more mention of him.’
Whiteside felt a surge of elation and excitement inside. Bingham. Paul Bingham, could it be? He struggled to keep the tension out of his expression. ‘This Bingham, does he have a nickname?’
Cohen raised his eyebrows and peered at the screen. ‘Yes, he does,’ he said. Please God, please let it be Rabbit, prayed Whiteside. ‘Rabbit. Does that help?’
‘Yes, yes, it does,’ said Whiteside. Oh my God, yes, it does.
‘Will there be anything else?’ Cohen asked.
Whiteside shook his head. Rabbit Bingham. No wonder Conquest wanted any criminal details keeping off his record. If Conquest was involved with crime it was something far more disturbing than drugs. Far worse. He could see now why Conquest would do anything to keep off the police radar. No wonder he was trying to find out what the DI wanted the other night. He must have been shitting himself when Hanlon, a woman with a fearsome reputation for direct action, had turned up on his doorstep.
‘Thank you very much for your time, Dr Cohen. I’ll see myself out.’ Whiteside could have punched the air with elation. Bingham!
As he walked down the stairs Whiteside thought, now I know what you’re thinking, Hanlon. Child sex abuse and murder. You lift a stone and what do you find under it. Rabbit Bingham. And now Conquest. He couldn’t wait to see Hanlon’s face.
When she was delighted, she would raise her left eyebrow. Grim satisfaction, Hanlon’s version of happiness, was a wintery smile. What he now had was maybe enough for the two together.
As soon as he was outside in the street he phoned the DI. Her phone was switched off so he left a message. ‘Ma’am, you were right. Most importantly, Rabbit Bingham, yes, that Rabbit Bingham, was one of Conquest’s associates. Oh, last thing, that number question: 18 is A. H.’ He wouldn’t need to explain what that meant. Hanlon would know. Those bloody dogs of Conquest’s. If he’d called them Rover and Spike, Whiteside wouldn’t even be at the institute.
Whiteside wasn’t Hanlon. He didn’t hide emotions. He grinned as he flagged down a taxi. Time to go home and celebrate.
Celia Westermann sat upstairs in what had been an attic room at the top of the building and watched Whiteside on one of the twelve CCTV monitors she had on her desk. Her face was no longer that of the amenable, put-upon drudge. It was implacable and cruel. There was no trace now of the downtrodden secretary. Invisible, a malignant ghost sitting at her desk, she had tracked Whiteside’s progress on camera down the stairs, back through security, past Zev and Reuben, the guards on the door, and into the street. She clicked on the icon on her screen where she had herself accessed Conquest’s file and picked up her own phone while she looked at the image of Whiteside as he talked on his mobile.
People say that there are two requisites for betrayaclass="underline" love and hate. Eta Westermann, Celia’s mother, had dementia. Physically, she was fit for her age, she could live for years, but mentally was another story. She was a seventy-eight-year-old baby. She had a baby’s needs: nappies, washing, feeding, attention. The home that she was in was wonderful. The staff were highly trained and motivated, the building light, airy, clean. It was also extremely expensive. Celia could not afford it on her salary. That was where the love came in. Then there was the flip side of love.
Celia felt she practically ran the institute. She had been here for twenty-six years now, running virtually all of the administration, from IT to wages, and got as much thanks as the expensive computer equipment that surrounded her. Less maybe. She was regarded by the predominantly male workforce as an old maid, practically pitiable despite the fact she probably did three people’s jobs. Indeed, to replace her, they would need three people. Zev and Reuben earned more than she did — she authorized their pay checks for God’s sake, and what did their jobs entail, looking menacing and checking bags. A dog could do that job. A chimpanzee could do it. A retard could do it. And they had the gall to look down their noses at her.
Almost a year ago a bill from the home had arrived that she simply couldn’t pay. The next day she took out a bridging loan from her bank and the same evening, accessing the institute’s encrypted files, worked out who was selected for ‘action’ by the London branch of Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence. She chose one of three names. With the recent assassinations of scientists in Tehran still fresh in Muslim minds, the person concerned was more than grateful for the tip-off.
Payment from the Arab had been swift and generous. Since then, each transaction becoming morally and practically easier, she had done it three times more. Today would be her fifth. From another database, she accessed Conquest’s mobile number and called it. He answered immediately. Celia liked that in a man. He was curious to know who the unknown caller was. She told him why she was calling, using a voice changer to disguise herself. It was a man’s robotic voice that read out over the phone to an increasingly disturbed Conquest the contents of his file. For a price she would give him the name and address of the journalist who’d accessed it. Payment would also ensure she kept an eye on any further access of his details, which she would pass on.
Conquest agreed, as she’d known he would. How could he refuse? Her screen showed the bank balance of the account she had set up to handle these transactions. Within a couple of minutes the balance increased dramatically and she gave him Dunlop’s name and his address from his business card. She hung up. What Conquest did with the information was up to him. Mother had another six months of care.
Well, lekh tizdayen, Zev and Reuben. Lekh tizdayen, Dr Cohen, and lekh tizdayen, Shapiro Institute, and lekh tizdayen, Mr Dunlop. She almost giggled at herself. She never swore usually.
Celia Westermann checked she had left no trace of her recent activities on the computer system. She was as thorough as she was unappreciated. Then she went downstairs to fetch the coffee cups from Cohen’s office. She was a tidy woman.
18
The address that Enver had for Mehmet and his family was in a depressed-looking street just off White Hart Lane, where a rough area of Wood Green shades into a slightly rougher area of Tottenham. It was the kind of place he had grown up in. The kind of place where you joined a gang to get girls, money, respect, to avoid getting targeted and, perhaps most importantly, to fit in with the others. Peer pressure is huge when you’re young. It’s also one of the peculiarities of life in a city, particularly when you live on or near an estate, that there’s an almost village-like sense of agoraphobia. Enver still knew grown men he’d been at school with who had hardly ever ventured out of Tottenham, more specifically their area of Tottenham. Turkish kids don’t stray into Greek Tottenham and vice versa. They’d re-created the kind of no-go areas their Cypriot parents had moved to Britain to avoid.
The afternoon was sunny for once; it had been a grey, cold, wet spring and the May sunshine transformed even this North London road into somewhere almost pleasant.
Hanlon parked her Audi A3 with practised skill and the two of them got out of the car. A group of youths eyed them curiously. In this kind of neighbourhood strangers were few and far between. You didn’t visit unless you had to. Hanlon’s car itself stood out from the others parked by the kerb. We might as well have come in a marked police car, thought Enver. That’s the only time anyone round here sees a roadworthy vehicle, if it’s the Old Bill, a drug dealer or social workers. He wondered if the car would be intact when they returned, or if it would be keyed or otherwise damaged. They should have brought a uniform to look after it.