Death by Design (18 page)

‘Ah, Mr Üner. He lives by the river?’

They began walking down in front of the Tower gift shop towards the River Thames.

‘Practically,’ Ayşe said. ‘His office, City Hall, is over there, on the southern shore of the Thames.’ She pointed to a most peculiar modern building fashioned, İkmen thought, rather like a misshapen cone. ‘Haluk Üner is a workaholic. He always arrives for work early, leaves late, works on Saturdays. He is very fit but sometimes when he is under a lot of stress, you can see him outside City Hall having a cigarette. He’s quite open about it. But I don’t think he handles stress well.’ She smiled. ‘Poor man. Poor boyfriend or girlfriend of that man.’

Great walls of stone reared up to their left as Ayşe and İkmen began walking on the cobbles beside the Thames. Along the way İkmen noticed ancient cannon facing out from the Tower across the river, towards City Hall. It was as if the might and majesty of a semi-divine monarchy were ranged against the power and modernity of the secular authorities opposite.

‘So how long have you been embedded in Stoke Newington?’

‘For almost eight months,’ Ayşe said. ‘They couldn’t use a local copper because, as you know, in Turkish communities we all know each other. So I was brought down from Manchester. At first the plan was to have me infiltrate Ülker’s organisation by getting a job in one of his factories. But it soon became apparent that he only employs male foremen, and those that do the actual work are all illegals. Of course I could have come in as you did, as an illegal myself. But the high command here in London deemed that too risky for a woman and so the plan was that eventually I work for Ülker in one of his shops. I was putting out feelers to that effect. But then it all went off in İstanbul and you came along. It’s much better with you anyway because you can pretend you don’t speak English. That has already proved useful.’

‘Your superiors were quite right about not allowing you to enter this country illegally. I came in with an African couple and although I didn’t see anything untoward happen to them – well, no more than what was happening to me – I fear for them, especially the woman. Our driver delivered them to some men on the motorway near Canterbury. The men who took the couple in looked at that woman in ways that made me shudder.’

Ayşe shook her head sadly. ‘So you said, and I know it bothers you. Illegal women get raped,’ she said. ‘If they put up a fight, they could be killed. And I would put up a fight. There are many things I will do for my country but . . .’

‘Fortunately your country doesn’t expect that of you,’ İkmen said. And then he stopped in front of a large gated aperture in one of the Tower’s walls and read a sign that was standing in front of it. ‘Traitor’s Gate.’

Ayşe smiled. ‘This is where those accused of treason would enter the Tower from the river. They would be imprisoned for a while and then, in all probability, they’d end up having their heads cut off.’

‘Few societies go gently on traitors,’ İkmen said.

‘The Metropolitan Police have informed me that they are preparing themselves for some sort of attack tomorrow,’ Commissioner Ardıç said to Süleyman. ‘Obviously this information is not to be passed on to anyone.’

‘No, sir.’

‘The British are very grateful for the intelligence we have provided them.’

‘But what will they do if nothing actually happens tomorrow?’ Süleyman asked.

‘I don’t know. I am not privy to their every waking thought,’ the older man said rather irritably. Ardıç was clearly nervous about this upcoming operation in a foreign country. Although quite why he should be so was a mystery to Süleyman.

‘Officials at the British Consulate were sympathetic to the notion of our Pakistani gentleman visiting his old captain in England,’ Süleyman said. ‘But Mr Iqbal would like to stay permanently and I don’t think they’re very keen on that.’

‘Can you blame them?’

‘In principle, no. But he has helped us and by extension their own police force. Without Abdurrahman and his assistance, the police in London would not be mounting their operation tomorrow.’

‘No . . .’ In truth, Ardıç wasn’t thinking about the old Pakistani man or the Metropolitan Police. He was thinking about Çetin İkmen. He was apparently going to be kept well away from the action should any occur in the vicinity of Mark Lane. But that didn’t stop Ardıç from being concerned. İkmen had a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘Five, so far, of the workers from Ülker’s Tarlabaşı factory have tested positive for tuberculosis,’ Süleyman continued. ‘But the Afghans who lived with Abdurrahman and Tariq are still out there somewhere.’

‘We need to find them,’ Ardıç said. ‘Did the factory workers prove positive for any other dreadful maladies?’

Süleyman’s face dropped. What he was about to say was sadly fairly standard when it came to large groups of illegal immigrants. ‘Most of the women are HIV positive as well as about a third of the men. All those people were escaping abuse of some sort.’

Ardıç did not reply. Not because he didn’t care; strangely for such an explosive and often harsh individual, he did. But he was also a realist and he knew that if he thought too much about what would be done with the illegal immigrants now he would descend into a depression he would find hard to shift.

‘And so we send them back,’ Süleyman began. ‘We send them—’

‘The law must be upheld,’ his superior cut in sharply. ‘If we do not uphold the law then we get anarchy.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Süleyman lowered his head and then breathed out slowly in order to calm himself. He didn’t want to send the stick-thin African women back to die of starvation in their drought-ridden villages. He didn’t want to send the Cambodian youths with their dead, hostile eyes back to pimps and gangsters so cruel it was almost beyond belief. What was more, he didn’t think that Ardıç wanted that either.

‘There are now few hours before this anticipated incident in London and so I want you to go back to the illegals and to those foremen from the Tarlabaşı factory and question them again,’ Ardıç said. ‘They are not of course to know what may be about to happen. But we need to know if they have anything else to tell us. This Iranian cleric that Ülker has made some sort of pact with may yet be the key.’

‘Tariq is the only one we have proof he radicalised, sir.’

‘Mmm.’ Ardıç looked unsure. ‘Maybe that is what certain parties would like us to believe,’ he said. ‘But I’m not so sure that I do. Why that particular boy? Why go to all that trouble for just one lad? Why not radicalise all the young Muslim boys?’

‘There weren’t that many Muslim males in the workforce,’ Süleyman said.

‘Well, question closely those you have identified,’ Ardıç said. ‘Oh, and what about Tariq’s diary? Did you get any more information from that?’

‘The translator reckons that most of it consists of copied passages from the Koran,’ Süleyman said. ‘Tariq lost all but one member of his family back in Afghanistan and so the verses he copied were those which brought him comfort – intimations of the life to come. The only thing related to the supposed attack is the detail that Mark Lane is in the district of Tower Hill. But then I’m sure that the Metropolitan Police are well aware of that fact.’

Ardıç frowned. ‘What does that bit actually say, do you know?’

‘It just says, “Mark Lane, Tower Hill”, as far as I am aware,’ Süleyman said. ‘Oh and the district code number too, EC3.’

‘Why write both the district and the code? Presumably they are interchangeable.’

Süleyman shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. But Tariq was a foreigner, presumably he wrote down what he thought he needed to do the job. In this instance he clearly duplicated the information he was given.’

‘Mmm.’

Süleyman left soon afterwards. Ardıç, still concerned about İkmen and still frowning deeply, rubbed his hands vigorously across his heavily stubbled chin.

‘We’ll use the underpass,’ Ayşe said pointing to a flight of steps down beside the back of the church known as All Hallows. ‘Byward Street is so busy it’s impossible to cross.’

‘The church looks as if parts of it have been rebuilt,’ İkmen said as they began to descend.

‘I believe it was bombed in the war,’ Ayşe replied. Although a dedicated Mancunian, Ayşe had so far used her time in London well and had got around as much as she could. She’d learned a lot.

The walls of the subway were covered with pale blue tiles. Hardly the vibrant royal and aquamarine blues of Turkish İznik tiles, but they were at least functional. The underpass itself consisted of a rather dirty floor and walls and ceilings that seemed to be constructed from metal girders. Not long or even particularly dark, it was nevertheless unpleasant and İkmen wanted to be through it as quickly as possible. When he was about halfway across, from underneath his feet came a roaring, whooshing sound that was so very similar to what he remembered from the 1999 earthquake that he screamed.

‘Çetin?’

‘What the . . .’ For just a second İkmen entirely lost his cool, and his ability not to use the English language. ‘Ayşe what—’

‘Çetin, Turkish!’ she hissed. ‘Even here, even now! Turkish!’

‘Yes, but . . .’ He reverted to his own language as requested and said, ‘What?’

She put one of her hands on his back and said, ‘It’s just a tube train. The District and Circle lines run underneath here. I’m sorry it’s upset you so, I would never have suggested—’

İkmen hurried past her for the stairs. ‘For a moment there it sounded just like an earthquake.’

‘Ah.’

‘I was there in ninety-nine,’ he said. ‘One of my friends lost his legs.’ Poor old Balthazar Cohen, the father of his daughter Hulya’s husband, Berekiah.

‘I’m sorry.’ Ayşe followed him up the stairs and stood next to him as he slumped in front of the subway entrance, which was next door to a chain restaurant, and lit a cigarette. In front of them the traffic on Byward Street went past in one long, continuous parade.

‘You know that having a cigarette actually increases anxiety rather than—’

‘Oh please, spare me the Metropolitan Police guidelines on smoking!’ İkmen said, suddenly really angry. ‘I don’t care! I am not one of you, I don’t have to listen! Leave me to die before my time in peace!’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Now where is this Mark Lane?’

Ayşe, somewhat chastened, pointed towards the right. ‘It’s not far.’

They walked past some nineteenth-century buildings and a great block that looked as if it had probably been constructed in the 1960s. At ground level this block offered what İkmen was now coming to realise was a standard selection of coffee bars and sandwich shops. Thus was the City of London, thus was İstanbul and almost everywhere that could be called urban across the globe. Then they turned right into what Ayşe said was Mark Lane. It was lined with office buildings both old and new, most of them unremarkable.

‘At the top of Mark Lane on the right is Fenchurch Street main-line station,’ Ayşe told İkmen. ‘Trains run from there out to the east, to Essex and the commuter towns of Basildon and Southend-on-Sea. Thousands of people pass through there every day coming to and going out of the city. If a bomber chose that as his target, well, it would be carnage. Our people will be all over it tomorrow.’

‘Mmm.’ İkmen pointedly lit another cigarette and looked up at the huge building in front of him. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s called Minster Court,’ Ayşe said. ‘It was built at the end of the nineteen eighties when confidence in the economy was still high. Just before it all collapsed in the early nineties. There are dozens of insurance companies, accountants, shops, bars and cafés in there.’

‘It looks a bit like Dracula’s castle,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘The pointed rooftops and the strange angles.’

Ayşe nodded. ‘One of the Met officers I know calls it the Fortress of Darkness.’

‘But it is a significant structure.’

‘Yes, it’s quite a target,’ Ayşe said.

‘You’re going to be here tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ayşe said. ‘After I take you back to Stoke Newington I have to get myself to the Yard for a briefing.’

‘And me?’

‘Your role in all this is not what was envisaged at the beginning,’ Ayşe said. ‘We didn’t know when you arrived that the threat from Ülker’s organisation was so imminent. When I first came down to London to infiltrate Ülker’s fake handbag operation we believed it might be forming an alliance with other gangs. That is still a possibility of course but now we are in this other, rather more frightening world.’

‘Yes.’

They walked along the street in silence. People came and went from buildings: singly, in couples, in groups. It was a nice day and some people were actually dispensing with their jackets as they walked out into the weak sunshine. The sight made İkmen shiver. Turks would never do such a thing so early in the year.

Ayşe, seeing where İkmen was looking, said, ‘We grab whatever sunshine we can over here. There isn’t much and so people just have to make the most of it.’

He smiled. ‘It’s all so normal,’ he said as he watched two men light cigarettes and a young girl take a swig from a can of Coke.

‘We don’t know that tomorrow it won’t just carry on like this,’ Ayşe said. ‘Hopefully all the effort we’re putting in will be for nothing. But if it isn’t . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Tonight, when you go to work, you must try to find out what you can, especially if Ülker and his henchmen are around. Get inside the factory.’

‘They’ve caught me once already.’

‘It’s our last chance,’ Ayşe said. ‘You have to get in there and take note of anything and everything you can.’

İkmen would have been lying if he’d said that he wasn’t scared. He was terrified. People like Ahmet Ülker pulled out other people’s fingernails, burned them with red-hot irons. But he just smiled and said, ‘Of course.’

A young businessman absorbed in eating a prawn sandwich barrelled into İkmen, spilling some tiny crustaceans down the front of his jacket, and then continued on his way without a word.