Murder Without Reason (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 5)

by Phillip Strang

  ‘Maybe we should get their director in. Schedule a meeting of the National Security Council,’ Rohan Jones advised.

  ‘Set up a confidential meeting with their director, or whoever is in charge of the Counter Terrorism Command,’ said the PM. ‘Forget the National Security Council; half of them are after my job. Why they want to remove me when the country’s going to hell is beyond me.’

  ‘Maybe they think they can do it better?’

  ‘Rohan, if you weren’t a friend, I’d take that as impertinence.’

  ‘It’s not impertinence, but this is politics. There are those who would regard having you out and them in as more important than halting the decline of this country.’

  Chapter 9

  Yasser Lahham had been an educated man, making a good living with a girlfriend he loved and a lifestyle that others envied. It all changed when the girlfriend, Diana, left him and went off with a long-haired individual driving an old van. Embittered and heartbroken, Lahham re-engaged with his religion at a Mosque not far from the two-bedroom apartment he had paid cash for as a result of a successful business designing websites.

  An overly sensitive individual, he saw love as eternal. The day she had told him that he was a boring man, only interested in work and money and his BMW, was the day his life changed. The Mullah had been sympathetic.

  ‘You cavort with a Western woman. They are all whores. What do you expect? Marry a good Muslim woman. She will never treat you in such a manner.’

  He came to believe the Mullah. Within three months, his parents had secured a good match with a cousin back in Syria, who he met the day before the marriage in Damascus. She was pleasant, attractive and her name was Lilia. It was another month before he came to the conclusion that she was frigid and lifeless in bed, whereas Diana had been wild. With a child on the way and not even a frigid encounter, his visits to the Mosque intensified.

  ‘Does she not satisfy you?’ Mullah Kosai asked.

  ‘Not in the way that the English girl did.’

  ‘Give her time, be patient. The English women get plenty of practice, they have many men. Your wife has only you. It is for you to teach her.’

  ‘You are right. It would be a better world if all women were as my wife,’ Yasser Lahham agreed.

  ‘Are you ready to embrace the holy cause?’

  ‘The holy cause? Which cause do you refer to?’ Yasser Lahham asked.

  ‘The Islamic State,’ the Mullah said. ‘We intend to bring it to this country.’

  ‘England? Surely that is not possible?’

  ‘It is possible, but it needs the help of intelligent people such as you.’

  ‘I am interested,’ said Lahham, reborn as a believer in a stricter style of Islam. ‘Let me know what you require of me.’

  ‘We need to put out the message. Bring the converts to the cause.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘We know. We need you to build a website, a jihadi website.’ Computer illiterate, the Mullah had forwarded the request from Faisal Aslam.

  ‘It is not difficult,’ said Yasser Lahham.

  ‘Your identity must be concealed. Can you do that?’ the Mullah asked.

  ‘False IPs, server offshore, it’s possible.’

  ‘You speak words I do not understand.’

  ‘I do. That is all we require.’

  ‘We need you to meet the Master.’

  ‘The Master, who is he?’

  ‘He is a person that few have met. If you reveal his identity, you will be dead. Is that understood?’

  ‘That is clear,’ Yasser Lahham said.

  ***

  An Indian curry house on a wet, windy night out in Croydon was not the most inspiring of locations, but the food was good, the company affable and social. The two heavies sitting to the back of the Master never spoke or moved other than to down double helpings of all the curries on offer.

  ‘We need a website,’ the Master explained.

  ‘What is the focus?’ Yasser Lahham asked.

  ‘What do you mean by focus?’

  ‘What message do you want it to put forward?’

  ‘We need recruits; we need supporters for the cause.’

  ‘You mean people willing to commit acts of violence, to kill and be killed?’

  ‘Yes, that is who we want.’

  ‘Do you want me to set up a blog as well?’

  ‘Will it help?’ the Master asked.

  ‘It will ensure email correspondence. It will be possible to message them back.’

  ‘Then a blog is what we need.’

  ‘I can have a rough website set up by the end of the week. Is that okay?’

  ‘That is fine,’ the Master said.

  There were to be several more meetings before Faisal Aslam was satisfied. Within days of going live through a server in a remote part of the former Soviet Union, the responses from the dissolute, the curious, the educated and the desperate started to rise. Within a month, the Master had a potential two hundred plus for the cause. A further two months, the number had swelled to nearly three thousand.

  The Master was pleased, and Yasser Lahham was content in the knowledge that he was bringing forward the Islamic State’s day of conquest. His wife, now with a child in her arms, was proving more compliant and responding to his gentle teachings in the art of lovemaking. He had been well taught by Diana and he, in turn, was transferring that knowledge to his wife. He knew that she would never have the wild abandonment, the screaming that he had been so fond of, but she would be satisfactory, and he had his love eternal, even though it was not with the original person intended. He was determined to bring the wayward English woman to heel at a later date.

  ***

  The results hoped for after the meetings with Mohammad Shafi had been few and inconsequential. It concerned Frederick Vane and Andrew Martin.

  ‘How do we quantify this? How do we come to a conclusion?’ Frederick asked.

  The new office now had a personal assistant, a formidable woman of forty-five, who bossed both Frederick and Andrew around. Cheryl Gorman was a straight-talking Irish woman who had grown up in Belfast in a family of eight children: seven were male and the one female, the youngest, was Cheryl. It was either push her way in or be pushed to one side. It was a trait that had carried over into womanhood. Two husbands, a couple of daughters, supposedly as tough as she was, and she was not afraid to speak her mind if she felt something was out of order. Andrew thought she was great; Frederick was not so sure.

  ‘What have we gained from Shafi?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘He’s a piece of work,’ Frederick said.

  ‘A dangerous individual, surprisingly charismatic,’ Andrew said.

  ‘It’s a strange world. I found his company to be more agreeable than that of our director,’ Frederick said.

  ‘It begs the question,’ Andrew said. ‘If their upbringings had been reversed, would it be Shafi we’d be reporting to and the director locked up in Belmarsh?’

  ‘It’s an interesting theory,’ Frederick acknowledged. ‘Does conditioning from childhood decide whether a person is to be a saint or a villain, a pacifist or a jihadist?’

  ‘It may well be, but we’re here to stop the Islamic State, not debate a course of resolution. We’re not social workers.’ Andrew saw another area of research for a later date.

  ‘True, so how do we progress?’

  ‘We need facts. What numbers of individuals are there involved?’

  ‘Jihadists or sympathisers?’ Frederick asked.

  ‘Let’s deal with the jihadists. They’re our immediate problem. We need the sympathisers, but first, we need to stop the bombings.’

  ‘That implies we need to think where they will strike next,’ Frederick said.

  ‘We discussed this before. That’s why we met up with Shafi. What did we learn from him?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘The jihadists are invariably poorly educated and easily manipulated, although that wasn’t the case down in Salisbury. Th
e bomber there was well-educated, came from an affluent home.’

  ‘That’s an aberration. Let’s focus on the stupid ones, as Shafi referred to them. How many do we reckon?’

  ‘According to their website, there were about three thousand on the blog that looked possible and, judging by the conversations, at least half are in the north of the country.’

  ‘Do we have a name for the Prof?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Yasser Lahham,’ Frederick answered.

  ‘Any details?’

  ‘Syrian parents, well-educated, born in this country, a smart guy with website design and blogging. He had it made, good car, decent accommodation, but something happened. He changed lanes, became an ardent fundamentalist.’

  ‘What happened doesn’t concern us. What his website achieved is our interest,’ Andrew commented.

  ***

  Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook had bought a new suit for the occasion ‒ dark blue, with a new white shirt and an aqua blue tie. He was Jamaican by heritage, and aqua blue showed the flamboyance of his people. In contrast, Commander Richard Goddard, the current head of the Counter Terrorism Command, wore a dark suit, pale blue shirt, and a navy blue tie.

  ‘Welcome, gentlemen. The name’s Clifford Bell.’

  ‘We realised that, Sir,’ Commander Goddard said. It should have been Isaac Cook who was nervous on meeting the Prime Minister. It turned out to be his boss.’

  ‘Right, my name’s outside on the door,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea, and then get down to business.’

  Small talk ensued for the next couple of minutes as tea was brought in.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector, where do we stand?’ the Prime Minister asked. He had been forewarned that Isaac Cook was the man with the answers, not his boss. ‘What can we do to stop the bombings?’

  ‘Prime Minister, the problem is you can’t if you don’t know in advance where they plan to hit next,’ Isaac Cook replied.

  ‘We’re trying to solve that problem,’ Commander Richard Goddard said, ‘but it’s not so easy.’

  ‘Don’t you have people deep undercover?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  ‘That would be the normal procedure, but we’re not dealing with criminals here,’ Isaac Cook replied.

  ‘Explain that statement,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘Surely they’re criminals?’

  ‘With all due respect, Prime Minister. They’re not criminals.’

  ‘They kill, they steal, they lie. What are they then?’ Clifford Bell had failed to grasp the complexity of the current situation.

  ‘They’re religious zealots.’.

  ‘Is there a difference?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  Isaac Cook attempted an explanation. ‘Yes, a clear difference. A criminal is motivated by money, a zealot is by their belief and, in this case, it’s Islam. If that means that they indulge in criminal activities to achieve their aims, then so be it. They would not see it as criminal.’

  ‘How does this impact on getting people undercover?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  ‘Normally we’d use money.’ Commander Richard Goddard felt the need to rejoin the conversation between his DCI and the Prime Minister.

  ‘Can’t we do this here?’ To Isaac Cook, the Prime Minister seemed remarkably ill-informed in his understanding of the Islamic State.

  ‘Not so easy,’ DCI Cook said. ‘The moment there’s a whiff of money, an action out of the ordinary, they grab the people and subject them to whatever persuasive tactics necessary to get the truth.’

  ‘Have you tried putting people undercover?’

  ‘We have,’ Commander Richard Goddard said.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It didn’t turn out well.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  ‘They’re either all dead or have simply disappeared,’ Commander Goddard said.

  ‘We have someone in contact with them,’ Isaac Cook said.

  ‘Is he reliable? Likely to achieve results?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  ‘We’ve got a hold on him. He doesn’t like them any more than we do.’

  ‘Any advantage if I met him?’

  ‘Mr Prime Minister, you do not want to meet him,’ Isaac Cook answered.

  ‘And why not? Is he someone special?’

  ‘He’s a murderer and a drug dealer. He’s not the kind of person you would want your photo taken with,’ Isaac Cook stated, not sure of the Prime Minister’s reaction.

  ‘And he’s reliable?’

  ‘We believe he is,’ Commander Goddard said.

  The Prime Minister did not care who they dealt with as long as they got a result or at least something to silence the leader of the opposition. ‘Do what you need to, just get a result.’

  ‘Is there anything else you need from us?’ Commander Goddard asked.

  ‘Yes, I need something to give to Parliament,’ said the PM. ‘I’m flying blind here, and the information I’m receiving from those who should know is limited at most.’

  ‘There’s not a lot we can give you,’ said Commander Goddard. ‘Nobody knows where they’ll strike next. The best prevention is vigilance.’

  ‘We can’t protect every shopping centre, office block, cinema, public house, let alone all the government buildings,’ the Prime Minister said.

  ‘We have to continue with our work,’ Commander Goddard said.

  Ten minutes the two representatives of Counter Terrorism Command left by the front door of Number 10.

  ‘So, what did you think?’ Richard Goddard asked of his star employee as their vehicle drove out into Whitehall.

  ‘He’s stuffed. He’s got nothing to tell Parliament or the people of this country,’ Isaac replied.

  ‘That’s what I thought. It’s not his fault, but he’s going to be looking for another job soon.’

  ‘It’s his fault and that of his predecessors. They should have acted sooner. The writing’s been on the wall for years, and they’ve just pussy-footed around.’

  ‘You’re probably right. At least you’ve got a photo for the mantelpiece.’

  ‘The parents are going to love that. They came here penniless, worked day and night to give me an education, and now there’s a photo of their son with the Prime Minister.’

  ‘You mean the soon to be ex-Prime Minister,’ Commander Goddard said.

  ‘I’ll just have to come back and get another one.’

  ‘You fix this up, and they’ll be one of you with the Queen.’

  ‘That’ll put a nice balance on the mantelpiece,’ Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook said. ‘Queen at one end, Prime Minister at the other.’

  ***

  Shafi’s time at the hospital came to a conclusion, and he was back inside Belmarsh. Not for long, he thought.

  'How’s the scar?’ Yasser Lahham asked the first time he saw him in the prison courtyard.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Shafi replied, ‘not causing me too much trouble.’

  ‘Let me see,’ the Prof asked innocently.

  ‘If you want to, although it's no big deal.’

  ‘Soapy’s safe for a week or so,’ the Prof said.

  ‘He’s got no worries from me. I’ll be sore for a few weeks,’ Shafi said with a smirk. He was not going to tell the Prof that his two frequent visitors had come good on their promise. It was Isaac Cook who had arranged for the two nurses to attend to Shafi late one night in the hospital, only they weren’t registered for changing a bandage or emptying a bedpan.

  Delia, the name she used, was from somewhere in former Yugoslavia. Mercy was black, beautiful, and Jamaican. Both were young and willing and pleasant. It was three hours later when they left Shafi’s room, bow-legged and aching. A man after two years in a prison was not a person who would be satisfied with a quick blowjob and a leg-over. He wanted his money’s worth – or, to be correct, his government’s money’s worth. Isaac had no idea how he was going to claim it on expenses.

  ‘I’ve g
ot some letters for smuggling out,’ the Prof said. ‘Are you able to arrange?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Shafi. ‘I need to make some money now I’m back in this dump.’

  ‘You look remarkably cheerful for a man who’s just had an operation.’ The Prof was very inquisitive, but Isaac had told Shafi to be careful of anyone asking too many questions as they may be a stooge for the Islamic State.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Shafi replied. ‘I had a clean room, a television with no off button and all channels available. And then there was the food, three solid meals a day and no restrictions on the helpings. They can take my appendix out anytime they like.’

  ‘You’ve only got one.’

  ‘I know, just talking.’

  ‘I’ll give you the letters later. I’ll make sure to let Soapy know you won’t need him – at least for now,’ the Prof joked.

  ‘You do that.’ Shafi smiled.

  In the confines of his cell, Yasser Lahham made a phone call. ‘He’s been operated on. I’ve seen the scar.’

  ‘Then all is well,’ the Master said. ‘I’ll send you some updates for the website tonight. Can you manage to make the adjustments?’

  ‘Yes, with the iPad that you supplied. I’ll send you a file, encrypted as we agreed.’

  ‘I am pleased to hear. Soon Allah’s wishes will be realised.’

  ‘Then I am a contented person,’ the Prof said.

  ‘Contented, in there?’

  ‘When we succeed, I will be free.’

  ‘You are right. It will not be too long now.’

  ‘Master, I can wait.’

  Soapy was not disappointed that Shafi would not be coming to see him for a week or two. There were plenty of other customers. He was gay and not overly proud of the fact outside, but in Belmarsh, it was a virtue. No one mistreated him, and he was kept supplied with cigarettes and drugs as he required. A heroin addiction was almost impossible to satisfy when he had to turn a dozen tricks a day, but in the prison it was easy. One or two men a night and he was in a drugged-filled haze for the next twenty-four hours.

  ‘Prof, this website,’ Shafi casually asked the next day as they sat in the grassless courtyard that the prison officers claimed was a recreation area, ‘was it difficult to set up?’