‘When all this began, ma’am, when my uncle got me to agree to help Mehmet Yilmaz, I was kind of annoyed because my community, Turks, had pressurized me with the “you’re one of us” argument. You know, blood is thicker than water, don’t forget where you’re from, that sort of thing.’
Hanlon nodded.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if that’s the case, it cuts both ways.’
Hanlon looked at him with interest. Enver continued, ‘My cousin’s wife is a prison officer at Wendover. I’ve put myself out for Uncle Osman, it’s about time he returns the favour. Time for him to put a bit of pressure on his son.’
‘Will she do it, though?’ queried Hanlon. It was like a gift from God but she didn’t want to get too excited. It was a lot to ask. If Fordham found out one of his officers had made unauthorized contact with Anderson, he’d be furious. It would be a sackable offence.
Enver stroked his moustache. He looked at Hanlon. ‘There’s a Turkish saying, “Bilemmek ayyup degil, sormamak ayyup”. Do you know what that means?’
‘No,’ said Hanlon. It sounded strange to hear Enver, with his London accent, speaking a foreign language. The sonorous Turkish words rolled off his tongue fluently.
Enver stood up. ‘I do,’ he said, somewhat smugly. ‘I’ll go and arrange it. I’ll see you later, ma’am.’
Gently, but triumphantly, he squeezed his way back through the furniture towards the door. Hanlon watched him leave with what she realized was growing affection. She hoped to God that Enver’s cousin’s wife would help.
I wonder what the saying meant, she thought. If that gloomy sod can look cheerful, it has to be a good sign. Hanlon’s mood brightened for the first time in days. She began to make plans for action when, not if, she got the information she needed.
32
‘Not knowing is not shameful, not asking is.’ That was the meaning of the proverb. It was time to ask for a favour. If Hassan demurred, Enver would call his father, the imam. Enver texted Hassan, who he’d always got on well with, and checked the shift patterns of Julie Demirel, Hassan’s wife. She was working that day and would be home about five. The other question was, yes, she’d be working Thursday. Enver arranged to meet her that evening. He could imagine the puzzlement his request to see them would have caused. Enver rarely left London. He’d never been to their house before, although they probably saw him at least a dozen times a year when they came up to London, to Southgate, home of the extended Demirel family, for family do’s. He thought there was a reasonable chance they’d cooperate.
With luck, they would know where the boy was being held within twenty-four hours. He texted Hanlon to that effect and got a laconic ‘good’ by way of reply.
Enver put his phone away. His police station was frenziedly busy. The Reynolds disappearance may have elbowed the Whiteside shooting off the front pages but Whiteside was one of their own. The thoughts of most officers were centred on the Whiteside shooting. He was still in a coma, stable but with an uncertain prognosis. In everyone’s mind was the thought that whoever had done this was quite likely to kill again, or had killed before. Although Whiteside wasn’t dead, the attempt on his life had been unambiguous and so it was being investigated by a murder investigation team. This MIT was being led by DCI Simon Harding, an affable, well-respected officer with a reputation for pedantic thoroughness. The MIT team in charge of the Yilmaz family was still in the charge of DCI Murray. They’d been elbowed to one side in terms of importance by the Whiteside shooting. Both teams were working out of the same station, the two incident rooms separated by a corridor.
Supervising the two MIT teams was the Specialist Crime Directorate’s Homicide Command, represented here by DCS Ludgate. Despite his dislike of Ludgate on a personal level, Enver was impressed by the stamina and energy that Ludgate was putting into everything. He was inspirational. He guessed maybe these cases would be Ludgate’s last hurrah before he retired, and he wanted to leave with a reputation enhanced by the investigations. There were about thirty police working on the Whiteside shooting alone; the station was full to bursting. The only quiet room in the place was Hanlon’s office-cum-storage facility.
Baby Ali’s death and the Yilmaz disappearance had slipped far down the agenda. His investigative team numbered four: DCI Murray, heading it, Enver, and two constables. There was no media interest in the child’s death and none of the crusading zeal that a cop killer creates amongst his fellow officers. There was no ‘it could have been me’ or ‘there but for the Grace of God’ feeling about the Yilmaz family. They were a footnote now in Haringey’s crime stats. There was even, as Corrigan had predicted, a growing feeling that maybe they hadn’t been killed. The theory was that faced with the possibility of deportation, the Yilmaz family had staged their disappearance. And there was no proof they were dead. After all, where were the bodies?
Murray, as far as Enver could see, was doing everything reasonably well. He was a conscientious officer despite the rumours that the Yilmaz family was alive. Until the axe fell on the investigation, and he was secretly convinced the time was not very far away, he’d do his best. With Enver he was very hands off. He was inclined to leave Enver very much to his own devices after Corrigan’s descent on the investigation. He issued Enver with basic investigative duties, particularly liaising with the local community and the sexual assault unit together with the child abuse unit.
Murray was investigating racial attacks on Turks as well as the obvious paedophile angle. Enver felt increasingly uncomfortable watching the vast display of resources that the two investigations were consuming. The media briefings, the endless interviews, the progress meetings, the liaison committees that were needed to make sure that nobody else was holding a vital piece of the jigsaw, the logjam of logistical problems as detectives were taken away from different cases — when two people, he and Hanlon, knew who was responsible. Or, more accurately, he felt, thought they knew who was responsible.
Then there was the ongoing fact of Peter Reynolds’ disappearance. That was the real focus of most of the Met’s resources. It was Whiteside’s misfortune to have been shot when something as newsworthy as Peter’s disappearance had happened. It was a huge news story. BBC, ITV, Sky, and all the newspapers were covering it. Hanlon’s point, that there was no way of knowing where he was being held except via Anderson, was horribly true. Enver didn’t know what she’d said to Anderson to get him to cooperate, but obviously it wasn’t police approved. Given that, would they even be able to legally act on the information as to where the boy was? It had after all been acquired through torture. A human rights lawyer would say they had no right to act on it, even if it meant the rape and murder of Peter. Bingham’s rights had been well and truly violated. It was all so difficult.
Many times Enver had wondered if he was doing the right thing. Should he go directly to an increasingly harassed Ludgate? The DCS was doing a difficult job with tremendous skill and energy. He was at almost every key meeting for the investigations, he put in a staggering amount of hours and, since he was coming to the end of his career, none of this would result in promotion or financial reward. Maybe, Enver felt, he should go to the assistant commissioner? As far as he could tell, Hanlon’s decision to play this alone was based mainly on a feeling that somewhere in the police force, Conquest had a source of information. That to involve the Met would be to tip off Conquest. But there were many informants in the Met. It went with the turf. If you adopted that attitude, nothing would get done. You might as well give up and go home. Or, if you were concerned about the Met, you could use a neighbouring constabulary. Surrey, Herts or Kent and Essex, for example. What if Hanlon’s go-it-alone policy was directed purely by personal revenge and she had suckered him in to help. Yes, she was charismatic, but so, by all accounts, were the Kray twins. That didn’t make them wise leaders.