‘Very well.’
‘Thank you. And to you, sir . . .’ he gave a little bow to Brock, then to Bren, ‘. . . and you, I offer my humble apologies for any discomfort my actions may have caused you.’
Bren nodded and offered his hand, but Brock, less forgiving and suspecting Manzoor’s motives, did not. Someone told him to stay and have a drink, but he shook his head. ‘That is not possible. I have done what I came for,’ and he turned and left.
‘Blimey!’ Qasim marched forward and put his tray down on the next table. His face was red, whether from the excitement or the strain of holding the drinks Kathy wasn’t sure. ‘Never thought I’d ever see Manzoor inside a pub.’ He passed drinks to Brock and Kathy and raised his glass in a toast. ‘To old enemies.’ He hesitated a moment with the glass almost at his lips as he saw the door open again and another Asian face appear, then he relaxed and smiled, recognising Leon Desai. He had been attending another crime scene, and he looked uncharacteristically tired and grimy as he came over.
‘Get anyone a drink?’
Kathy said, ‘We’ve just been refilled. I’ll get you one. Sit down, you look beat.’
‘Yeah. I’ll have a wash first.’
They crossed the bar together, and when they were out of earshot of the others he said, ‘I won’t stay long. Can I give you a lift home?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘I chipped in for the mini-bus. I’d better go with the others, Leon.’
He gave a resigned little smile and turned away.
The following day Kathy kept her promise to Sanjeev Manzoor and called on Nargis at Chandler’s Yard. Alone in her room she wasn’t wearing a headscarf, and Kathy saw again her beautiful, long, gleaming black hair.
‘It’s a shame you have to cover that up,’ she said.
‘I’ve thought about giving up the hijab often, but I never did. Not for the same reasons as Fran. While Abu was alive I did it for his sake, and now, with the baby, I feel I need my faith to hang on to. Qasim told me about Dad turning up at the pub last night, but he didn’t say what he wanted.’
‘He asked me to give you a message. Apparently he thought it would come better from me, since I’m what he described as his enemy.’
‘That sounds like the way he thinks, yeah.’ She listened expressionless as Kathy told her what her father had said. At the end she gave a quick shake of her head. ‘That’s easy for him to say, isn’t it? He wasn’t raped, was he? He didn’t have his friend stabbed to death in the street . . .’
For the first time Kathy saw the turmoil beneath Nargis’ extraordinary composure. Her mouth curled with the pain of grief and she covered her face with both hands and began to sob. Kathy put an arm round her and held her till the wave of despair passed.
‘You know everything now, don’t you?’ Nargis whispered. ‘Briony told you?’
‘Yes, almost everything. If it’s any comfort, I believe they will let you keep the money Abu gave you.’
‘It’s for the baby, you see. I don’t need dad.’
‘We’d still like to know where the gun came from. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’
‘Qasim tried to find out. He thought he could prove Abu innocent if he tracked it down, but nothing came of it.’
On the way out, Kathy stopped at the counter of the Horria to speak to Qasim. For once the jukebox was silent. There were no customers and he was buttering bread slices, eyes narrowed against the smoke of the cigarette in his mouth.
‘How is she?’
‘It’s going to take time, Qasim.’
‘Sure, sure. Anyway, she’ll always have a place here if she wants it.’
‘You’re a good friend. She tells me you tried to trace the gun Abu used, to help his case.’
She wondered exactly how he’d gone about it.
‘Right. I just couldn’t believe that Abu could shoot somebody in cold blood like that. Well, I was both wrong and right, wasn’t I?’
‘We all were. So you had no more luck than us then, with the gun.’
He squinted at her through the smoke. ‘I didn’t say that. Only it didn’t help him, so I said nothing.’
‘You found out where it came from?’
‘Maybe. But I couldn’t tell you if I did. My sources wouldn’t appreciate it.’
‘Really?’ Kathy was filled with curiosity, and she thought she detected something teasing in Qasim’s manner. ‘Not even to the enemy of Sanjeev Manzoor?’
He gave a grin. ‘Well, I might drop a hint to a friend, Kathy, but I couldn’t go on the record, see?’
‘I understand.’ She leaned across the counter, all ears.
‘Young PC Talbot told me what you’d found out about the gun from the slugs—7.62 mill, probably Russian or the like, and used once before in a punch-up in North London, when a drug dealer got shot. Now it happens I may have an acquaintance who knows someone who knows someone who was mixed up in that. And through these contacts, I may have heard that someone else, a customer of one of these characters, had made inquiries about purchasing a certain item of hardware from them, and had in fact done so, round about last Christmas.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, that’s it.’
‘No it’s not. How did you know that this wouldn’t help Abu?’
Qasim scowled with fake reluctance. ‘Because . . .’ his voice dropping to a whisper, ‘. . . the party in question was at the same university as Abu, so it just made matters look worse.’
Kathy stared at him. ‘The party? Male or female?’
Qasim spread his fat fingers. ‘I’ve said enough.’
‘Come on, Qasim! Male or female?’
‘Male.’
‘You said he was a customer. The man who bought the gun was a customer of this drug-dealer friend of yours.’
‘Not a friend of mine, Kathy, no way!’ Qasim protested, a look of determined innocence on his face. Kathy was wondering what sideline Qasim had developed to take the place of his grandfather’s business in qat. But something else was itching in her mind.
‘What was he buying?’
Qasim puffed his cigarette and looked vacantly at the motionless ceiling fan.
‘Let me guess. It was coke.’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Good guess.’
‘One of the teachers at the university acquired a taste for it when he had a spell at a university in California. He was caught trying to bring some home with him. His first name is Desmond. Am I getting warm?’
Qasim beamed. ‘I think I’d better turn the bleedin’ fans on, Kathy. You’re practically on fire.’
As she walked across the cobbles of Chandler’s Yard, Kathy recalled the little Welshman, Desmond Pettifer, Reader in Classics, mischief-maker and last remaining friend of Max Springer. She remembered his innocent inquiries about the calibre of the murder weapon, and wondered what story Springer had told him, and what had possessed him to help Springer buy a pistol. Did he imagine that Max was going to storm into Haygill’s office and gun him down? Or the University President, perhaps, Roderick Young? Or had Max explained that it wasn’t their lives that he wanted but their reputations, their place in history. And in a way he had succeeded, for he was now more widely discussed and read than he ever had been while he was alive, while they would probably remain tainted by what had happened.
It would depend on the coroner, she imagined, and what he would make of Brock’s theory of elaborate suicide. For although both Brock and Briony had come by their separate ways to believe it, it still wasn’t proved. The events could still be seen as consistent with Abu having acted alone, or with some other, unknown party.
She stepped out of the lane into the stream of shoppers on Shadwell Road. Someone was causing an obstruction ahead, and she recognised the youth Ahmed Sharif, thrusting green pamphlets into the hands of reluctant passers-by with a burning intensity in his eyes. She took one and read it.
‘In effect you deny the Judgement. But there are guardians over you, honou
red recorders, who know all that you do.’
Sura 82 : 10
It was a reassuring thought. Leave it to the guardians. She moved on to the window of a travel agent, and looked for a moment at the notices of cut-price fares. Some things at least had become clear; the pensioners from Pontefract would not figure in her life. She was doing what she was best at, what she most wanted to do. Music was coming from the doorway of the shop, a bouncy number from Bollywood Flashback, and she thought of Wayne O’Brien and wondered where he was now. He had helped her at a critical moment, in a way that perhaps no one else could have, not Brock, nor Suzanne, nor Leon. They had been too much tangled in what had happened to her, and now that she was free again she could return to them on her own terms.
She turned on her heel and strode off. There was a letter in a drawer of Brock’s desk that she wanted to retrieve.
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Babel Page 32
