İkmen went to his room, sat on his bed and called his handler, Terry.
‘Well, with any luck Ülker will give the nod for you to carry on,’ the policeman said. ‘Have you told Ayşe yet?’
İkmen said that he had sent her a text to that effect. He then went on to tell Terry about his co-worker Mustafa.
‘You don’t have a surname?’
‘No,’ İkmen said. ‘But he looks to me as if he might be a professional thug. I don’t think he’s a UK national though. From what I heard, his English is adequate only.’
‘OK.’
‘If I get the job I will apparently be working seven nights a week,’ İkmen said. ‘I think Ülker maybe finds it difficult to fill these security positions.’
‘They’re out in the open,’ Terry said. ‘He can’t put a Somali or someone from Cambodia on it, they’d stick out too much. Brits would be ideal, but he can’t get them, and so Turks, preferably who can speak English, are the next best thing. But if, like Çetin Ertegrul, they can’t – well, he just has to make do, doesn’t he?’
‘There is one Englishman working for Ülker,’ İkmen said. ‘Derek Harrison. I asked Ayşe, by text, to check him out.’
Terry cleared his throat. ‘Oh, I can tell you about Derek. Got a record stretching back to the late seventies. Robbery, robbery with violence, aggravated burglary.’
‘I first saw Mr Harrison with the owner of this pansiyon, Mr Yigit,’ İkmen said. ‘It seemed from what Yigit said that Ahmet Ülker had done Harrison a favour in giving him a job.’
‘Because he’s an ex-con,’ Terry said. ‘People don’t readily employ them here, just as they don’t in Turkey, I imagine. Also Harrison is disabled. He’s only got one foot. Lost it in an accident on the tube. There’s all sorts of other health problems he’s supposed to have too.’
‘Supposed to have? You don’t believe him?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Terry said. ‘But he’s supposed to have a dodgy heart and yet I can’t see too much evidence of that myself. Let’s put it this way, it doesn’t stop him robbing or beating people up.’
‘He’s a very angry man too,’ İkmen said. ‘But Ülker trusts him. Something he said suggests he knows Ülker’s business partners.’
‘No names, I suppose.’
‘No,’ said İkmen. ‘Just something about “our partners”. Ülker got quite angry.’
‘OK. Listen, I’m going to be in Hackney from now on and I’ll try and sneak a look at this Mustafa tonight,’ Terry said.
‘Provided I still have a job.’
‘Provided, as you say, you—’
‘Mr Ertegrul! Mr Ertegrul!’
İkmen dropped his voice and said, ‘That’s Yigit. I have to go.’
He ended the call and walked to the door, wondering how long Yigit might have been listening to his side of a conversation performed in a language he wasn’t supposed to be able to speak. But if Yigit had been listening, he covered it well. In his customary excitable fashion he threw his arms in the air as İkmen opened the door and said, ‘Excellent news, Mr Ertegrul! Mr Ülker has given you the security guard’s job on a permanent basis! I will take my two hundred and fifty pounds in instalments. One hundred the first month, one hundred the second and on the third only fifty pounds!’
The first of the two ex-foremen of the Tarlabaşı factory that Süleyman and İzzet Melik spoke to was adamant that he knew nothing about either who owned the place or any radicalisation happening on the premises. Cemal Dinç was just a man who had done a job that was illegal because he was poor. That was the story he was sticking to and he was fully prepared to serve any prison time coming to him. Süleyman noted that he came from Ahmet Ülker’s home city of Diyarbakır. The other foreman, one Can Arat, originally from Adana, was rather more amenable. Prison had clearly had a profound effect upon him and as he entered the room the governor had allocated the police for this interview he was visibly shaking. Not that Süleyman or Melik alluded to this when they began questioning him. What they did make plain was his position as someone who would not be leaving prison any time soon.
‘We know that the Tarlabaşı factory was run by a man called Ahmet Ülker,’ Süleyman said. ‘We know quite a bit about him now. We know he comes originally from Diyarbakır, that he has illegal businesses in İstanbul and Europe and that he has business interests in the Far East. We also know that he is ruthless, cruel and that he doesn’t give a damn whether those who work for him live or die or indeed rot away in prison.’
‘What the inspector is saying,’ İzzet Melik said, ‘is that you, Can, don’t need to shop Mr Ülker because we already know about him.’
Can Arat looked terrified and said absolutely nothing.
‘What we don’t know, however,’ Süleyman continued, ‘is who radicalised the young man who blew himself up. We know that he was introduced to this violent and wholly erroneous version of Islam at the factory, but we don’t know who did this or why. The workers, or slaves as I call them, know nothing about this. There were some Pakistani men among them but they claim that radicalisation was not something they had experienced. Tariq, however, we know was radicalised at your factory. How do you think that might have happened?’
Can Arat looked around the room wildly and then, seeing that İzzet Melik was smoking, he asked for a cigarette.
‘Oh no, I don’t think we can give you a cigarette,’ Süleyman said with a smile. ‘You only get a cigarette, and possibly a chance to reduce your sentence, if you help us.’
‘Help you?’ His voice was husky and dry. ‘How?’
‘Tell us who radicalised Tariq,’ Süleyman said. ‘We know the boy was an Afghan. He hated in equal measure the foreigners who had come to supposedly liberate his country and the Taliban. He had lived under Taliban rule and he didn’t like it. It would have taken a lot to radicalise him.’
The man shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it Ahmet Ülker himself?’ İzzet Melik asked. He put his cigarette out and then immediately lit up another. ‘Not that I see a businessman like him as some sort of religious fanatic but . . .’
There was a silence. The two policemen looked at the man sitting opposite them who was sweating heavily.
‘We know, Can,’ Süleyman said, ‘that Ülker is out of the country at the moment. As far as we are aware the Tarlabaşı factory was his only Turkish business interest. He isn’t here. This is a private conversation which he is not privy to.’
‘Maybe not but he has people,’ Can Arat said. ‘Everywhere!’
‘People? What people?’
‘People he’s involved with, people who work for him!’
Süleyman shrugged. ‘If you tell us their names . . .’
‘Tell you their names? Tell you . . .’ Can Arat leaned across the table and said, ‘He doesn’t just have men who duck and dive, or even simply gangsters on his payroll. Some are, some are . . .’ He stopped, put his head down and then breathed in deeply.
‘Some are what?’ İzzet Melik asked. ‘Foreign gang bosses? Hitmen? Terrorists?’
Can Arat looked up.
‘Who radicalised Tariq, Can?’
Can shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know or won’t say?’ İzzet Melik said.
‘Can, it’s up to you,’ Süleyman continued. ‘You can serve whatever sentence is eventually handed down to you and wait, maybe quite some time, for Mr Ülker to thank you for doing that.’
‘Some of those slave workers were near to death,’ Melik put in. ‘That, I can guarantee, will be taken into account when it comes to your eventual punishment.’
‘Or you can help us,’ Süleyman said, ‘and have that taken into account when your case comes to court.’ He leant across the table. ‘I can see you’re not having a very easy time of it here, Can. I am told by those who know about such things that prison doesn’t get any easier with the passage of time.’
Bad food,’ İzzet Melik said, ‘smokes hard to come by if you’ve
got no money, the noise . . .’
‘Hot in the summer,’ Süleyman said, ‘cold in the winter. Few blankets, you see.’
İzzet Melik looked over at his boss and smiled. ‘And then, sir, there are the men serving life who want to make every new boy their girlfriend.’
‘Indeed.’
Can Arat was nearly crying now but he said, ‘Look, you can say as much of that stuff as you like, I can’t tell you anything! I can’t tell you anything about them!’
‘About who?’
‘If you are withholding information about an individual terrorist or terrorist organisation and we find out, which we will,’ Süleyman said, ‘then the sentence you will get for that will make what you are facing now look like a holiday. At home or abroad, it makes no difference, if you know about a terrorist plot and you do not tell us and people die—’
‘Oh, Allah!’ Can Arat pulled his filthy fingers through his filthy hair and said, ‘There was an Iranian. An old man. With a beard. Like your grandfather, you know?’
‘What was his name?’
‘He knew Mr Ülker. They embraced as friends. Sometimes he came with some young men, like a bodyguard. They carried guns.’
‘Do you know who this man was, Can?’ Süleyman asked. ‘Can you recall his name?’
Can shook his head. ‘No. But Mr Ülker let him come to the factory often and he seemed to take to Tariq.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘They used to talk about religion. The old man always carried a copy of the Koran. He was from some organisation I’d never heard of, the Brothers of the Light. Iranian, I suppose.’
‘How did you know he was Iranian?’ İzzet Melik asked as he wrote down what Can had just told him.
‘Because he spoke with an accent I didn’t recognise and so I asked Mr Ülker where he was from and he said Iran. He said he was in Turkey to spread his religious message and that he’d come to the factory to gather souls for Islam.’
‘And did he succeed in your factory, Can?’ İzzet Melik asked.
‘He did speak to some people,’ Can said. ‘But a lot of our people were Christians and Hindus. He spoke to some of the Pakistanis but they weren’t interested. Tariq listened. I think he did it out of politeness at first. But then the old man just kept on coming back. Mr Ülker let Tariq off his work so he could talk to him.’
‘So Ülker allowed this Iranian holy man to come into his factory and talk to people about religion.’
‘Well, Tariq.’
‘Did you ever hear what the old man said to Tariq, Can?’
‘No. Stuff about Shi’a Islam, I suppose. They’re all Shi’as over in Iran, aren’t they?’
‘Generally, yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘Which makes me wonder why this old holy man, a Shi’a, was welcome in a factory belonging to a Sunni Muslim, Mr Ülker. Further, is it not strange that another Sunni, Tariq, should find his words so interesting?’
Can shrugged again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m an Alawi, what do I know?’
Süleyman leaned over the table again and said, ‘Can, we think that Tariq, via this old man and with the help of Mr Ülker, was planning a suicide attack on London, England.’
Can Arat’s face went white. ‘I don’t know anything about that!’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about any terrorism!’
‘And yet it was the threat of being prosecuted for terrorist offences that got you to talk to us about this Iranian, his brothers of light and his interest in Tariq,’ Süleyman said. ‘You knew this Iranian was suspect, you knew that he was radicalising or attempting to radicalise . . .’
‘I didn’t know that he and Tariq were about to bomb London!’ Can said. ‘I was as shocked as anyone that Tariq had a grenade!’
‘Now listen to me, Can,’ Süleyman said. ‘You must tell us everything you know about this old man and about Mr Ülker. We know he is abroad. When did he leave the factory?’
‘Er, about, er, two weeks ago, I think,’ Can said. ‘About that.’
‘And do you know if the old Iranian went with him?’ İzzet Melik asked.
‘No. No, he kept coming after Mr Ülker had gone away on business,’ Can said. ‘He had been in, to see Tariq, the night you lot raided us. He came with his bodyguard. Very serious all of them, bowing to Tariq and patting him on the back.’
Preparing him maybe for his ‘holy’ mission in England, Süleyman thought. Tariq’s diary was currently with a translator who specialised in the Dari language. Maybe soon they would know where in London EC3 the attack was supposed to be taking place – in just five days’ time.
When Süleyman and İzzet Melik finally left the prison, the inspector said to his sergeant, ‘OK, İzzet, it seems we are now looking for an elderly somewhat avuncular Iranian.’
Chapter 14
* * *
İkmen hadn’t been sleeping when Ayşe called him at 2 p.m. to meet her for a late lunch. Lying on top of his bed, fully clothed, he’d been thinking of home, his family, and feeling acutely how much he missed them all. In a way, being in a place like Stoke Newington, where every second business was Turkish-owned, didn’t help. Because of the food everyone ate, the language everyone spoke, the fact that the woman he was working with was called Ayşe, he felt at times that he could almost be back in İstanbul. But he wasn’t, everything was just that little bit wrong, like the television that was of course in English and the cars which drove on the left as opposed to the right-hand side of the road.
He met Ayşe in a restaurant on Church Street called the Turkish Chimney, which was clearly aimed at the native British market. It was staffed by Turks but the clientele were to a man and woman middle-class Brits. Ayşe treated her uncle to a late lunch meze which included his favourite, Albanian liver.
‘Your colleagues in İstanbul have been very busy,’ Ayşe said. ‘It seems that the boy Tariq had been groomed to blow himself up in a suicide attack on the third of May. If that is the case, your role in this operation may be shorter than we envisaged. You will have to be extremely vigilant from now on.’
‘I see.’ İkmen was trying not to look surprised or animated so as not to draw attention. ‘Do we know where this was to take place?’
‘Intelligence suggests EC3,’ Ayşe said. ‘That’s the City of London, the part down by the Tower, Leadenhall Street, that area.’
‘Was the Tower the target?’ İkmen asked.
‘We don’t know. But my bosses and yours are concerned that this could still be going ahead. Your colleagues in İstanbul reckon that Ülker allowed radicalisation to take place at his factory over there. An Iranian cleric came in apparently.’
‘An Iranian cleric?’ İkmen frowned. ‘They’re usually Shi’a, aren’t they? Ülker is a Sunni. Also, Ayşe, he doesn’t strike me as a person with any sort of religious leanings.’ He put a piece of liver into his mouth and for a second savoured the flavour. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Just like home.’ And then his face momentarily dropped.
‘For whatever reason, it would seem that Ülker has entered into some sort of pact with this Iranian cleric and his organisation, which is called the Brothers of the Light apparently.’
İkmen shrugged.
‘No, we’ve not heard of them either. But they were recruiting in Ülker’s İstanbul factory apparently with his blessing.’
‘But Ülker is a businessman,’ İkmen said. ‘I can’t imagine why he would want to ally himself with fundamentalist fanatics. What good would that do him? I mean, I know your mayor here in London believes that money from the production of counterfeit goods finds its way to terrorist groups, but I don’t see the connection in Ülker’s case.’
‘Basically the terrorists get their cut from gangster organisations in exchange for providing extra muscle to the criminals,’ Ayşe said. ‘They often provide security at the illegal factories in places like Cambodia and Vietnam.’
‘But not here.’
‘Not as far as we know and clearly not in Ülker’s case,’ Ayşe replied.
‘But then his factories are rather more visible than places in the jungles of South-east Asia. The Brothers of the Light can’t be a big organisation or we’d know about them. But if they are or were planning a suicide attack on London then they are clearly ambitious.’
İkmen frowned. ‘But Ülker has muscle of his own,’ he said. ‘Why ally yourself with a bunch of fanatics you don’t need? Surely that is just inviting trouble?’
Ayşe’s mobile phone began to ring and she turned aside in order to answer it. İkmen took a swig from his tea glass and then scooped a load of fava bean paste into his mouth with the rather odd flat bread they had in the UK; he imagined it was supposed to be lavaş. It was called pitta and was rather floury and dry, in his opinion. But it sufficed. As he chewed, İkmen considered Ahmet Ülker. The man wasn’t obviously religious – he was married to a lap dancer and he dressed like a western gangster. But then there were unsubstantiated rumours of Ülker’s business interests in the Far East – that was one of the reasons why the Met were treading so carefully, in order to locate all of his empire – and so maybe the ‘Brothers’ helped him out over there. That was possible even though it didn’t seem to really sit right. Why recruit Tariq from İstanbul? Why would the Iranians want to be in bed specifically with Ülker?
‘Your people in İstanbul think that the intended target was or is Mark Lane,’ Ayşe said as she closed her mobile and put it back into her handbag.
‘Mark Lane?’
‘Mark Lane, EC3,’ she elaborated. ‘It runs from Fenchurch Street down to Byward Street which is almost opposite the Tower of London.’
‘Is there anything of particular interest on this street?’ İkmen asked. ‘I mean, apart from its proximity to the Tower of London?’
Ayşe shrugged. ‘It’s one of those City streets dedicated to commerce,’ she said. ‘There are lots of companies down there: insurance companies, brokers, accountants.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe one of those firms is the target for some reason. My colleagues will be looking at those companies and seeing where their business interests lie.’
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