by Jo Bannister
‘Hazel, before this is over you’re going to find yourself under attack. People who can’t possibly know what happened, who have no conceivable stake in the outcome except that they know Ford’s face from the television, are going to take sides. And some of them will back the little guy and more will support Ford, but both lots will have it in for you. You’ll be accused of exploiting Ford’s friendship, and of using Saturday to get your revenge when Ford tired of your demands and sent you away.’
‘Sent me …?’ squawked Hazel in astonishment.
‘These are not rational people,’ said Ash apologetically. ‘They’ll hear only what they want to hear; they’ll twist the facts until they scream for mercy in order to tell a story they want to believe. Ford is a celebrity. That warps the way people think. They start feeling that, because they know someone’s face, he’s a kind of friend. It’s absurd, but our emotions predate the invention of television. A primitive part of their brains thinks that someone they see in their own living rooms must be a friend, and that you owe it to your friends to support them. And if Ford’s the good guy, Saturday – and you – must be the bad guys. Don’t be too shocked to find yourself in the fall-out zone.’
‘People do get silly about celebrities. And I should know,’ said Hazel grimly. ‘I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself like that over a grocer, or a landscape gardener. I was flattered by his attentions, and not just because I liked him but because of who he is. I can’t deny it – it’s the only thing that explains how I behaved. As if different rules apply when you’re dealing with someone famous.
‘It’s not healthy. No one should be given the idea they’re that special. It’s … corrosive. Time and again, last year’s poster-boy turns into this year’s mug-shot because they start believing the everyday rules and conventions we all live by don’t apply to them.’
‘They start believing in their own myth,’ agreed Ash. ‘They start to believe they can do anything they want. Have anything they want.’
Hazel nodded slowly. ‘Oliver seemed to think that the limits and frustrations that restrict other people shouldn’t apply to him.’
‘Like others before him,’ said Ash, ‘he believed that his popularity rendered him invulnerable. That he could take what he wanted and no one could stop him. He wanted you, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And that’s his fault, of course it is. But everyone who subscribes to the culture of the celebrity – following what they do and say with religious zeal, as if being avid self-publicists was enough to make their activities important – bears some responsibility too. They create monsters: they can’t pretend it’s nothing to do with them when those monsters run amok.’
Hazel gave a weary sigh. ‘And now they’re going to find, once again, that one of their idols has feet of clay right up to his armpits. I still don’t see why they’d blame me.’
‘If we can prove that Ford was the author of his own misfortune, they’ll turn against him. But while there’s still a chance that he was an innocent victim, they’ll blame you for introducing Ford to the juvenile delinquent who beat his head in. They’ll be vocal, and vitriolic, and some of them will be threatening.
‘The media, too, will be deeply interested in what’s passed between you,’ he added. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t had them at the front door yet. Gorman must be sitting on some of the details, but he won’t be able to do that for much longer. You need to think now, before it all kicks off, how you’re going to handle it.’
Hazel felt the burden of Ash’s concerns settle on her. She had blamed herself for what happened at Railway Street, but she hadn’t really expected anyone else to blame her. She saw now that was naive. Of course it was going to get unpleasant. It would get even more unpleasant when she stood up for her lover’s assailant, and made dreadful allegations about the injured man.
‘It doesn’t have to matter,’ she rallied fiercely. ‘Saturday’s whole future is at stake. He needs me to say what I know, and what I think, and anyone who doesn’t like it can do the other thing. What else am I going to do – skulk behind the sofa while Oliver’s fan club bays for Saturday’s blood? They think Oliver Ford is worthy of their adulation, do they? Let’s see if they still think that when I’ve had my say!’
Ash’s heart was so full that for a moment he hardly trusted himself to speak. He managed only by concentrating on practicalities. ‘One thing’s for sure – you can’t go back to Railway Street until all this is settled.’
‘That could be months! I’m not giving up my house on the off-chance that some Ford apologist might shout rude words through my letterbox. It’s very kind of you, Gabriel, and maybe I’ll impose on you for a few more days. But then I’m going home, and if there’s trouble I’ll deal with it. I just about managed to escape one gilded cage. I’m sure as hell not locking myself up where the world can’t get at me!’
Her determination filled him with quiet terror. ‘A few more days?’
‘At the most.’
Ash drew a deep breath. ‘Then you’d better collect your car. And I’d better …’ He let the sentence fade, his eyes slipping out of focus.
Eventually Hazel prompted him. ‘You’d better what?’
‘This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to take Oliver Ford’s head off. Once could be a misunderstanding: twice is starting to look like a pattern. I need to talk to Rachid Iqbal again. I need to find out exactly why he wanted Ford dead.’
THIRTY-ONE
He began with DI Gorman. But he didn’t expect to learn much at Meadowvale, and so it proved. ‘CTC collected him from the hospital when the doctors said he could travel,’ said Gorman. ‘That’s a week ago. I don’t know where he is now. I’m not sure who you’d need to ask.’
Ash didn’t know anyone at Counter Terrorism Command, but he knew someone who would.
He took the train, and he didn’t phone ahead. It might be a wasted journey, but he thought it would be harder for Philip Welbeck to refuse him a favour – another one – face to face than on the phone.
He had, of course, no right to ask. There had been a time, years ago, when Gabriel Ash had been a valuable member of Welbeck’s team in the offices with no name-plate round the back of Whitehall. His title had been Security Analyst, and his job had consisted largely of reading reports, from all manner of official and unofficial sources, collating the information they contained, and making assessments on which government policy could be based. It wasn’t a glamorous or exciting job, but he was good at it for five years. So good that it cost him his family and perhaps his sanity.
He’d been well taken care of, both financially and medically. The therapist Laura Fry who had helped him beat back the madness and was still a sheet anchor in stormy weather was employed by Welbeck. And only this summer Welbeck had pulled enough strings to furnish a good-sized orchestra to help Ash get his family back. He probably thought – was entitled to think – he’d repaid everything Ash was owed.
But Ash couldn’t afford to keep count. He needed another favour, he needed it now, so he got on the London train and spent the journey rehearsing his arguments.
Welbeck was in his office. With no time to arrange a prior engagement, he greeted Ash affably. ‘Gabriel, what a nice surprise! You’re looking well. How are the boys?’
Ash murmured that they were fine, and so was he.
‘I don’t suppose … No, you’d have said if you had.’
‘What?’
‘Heard anything from your wife.’ Welbeck waited.
Gabriel Ash had never lied to his superior, neither during his time in these offices nor since. Welbeck knew what Cathy Ash had done, and why she’d done it. He knew that she was implicated in men’s deaths.
But he also knew Ash, and suspected that if the woman he’d loved had turned up again in the last three months, out of money, out of friends and out of places to hide, Ash would have helped her.
But Ash met his gaze without flinching. ‘Nothing. I don’t know where she is.’
Welbeck was satisfied. ‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?’
‘I need to talk to Rachid Iqbal.’
‘Who?’
This was disingenuous. Philip Welbeck never forgot a name. He never forgot a face. He never forgot a fact.
Ash didn’t dignify the ploy with a response. He knew it was a delaying tactic, that in the few seconds it had earned him, Welbeck had pulled up a mental file on the museum incident and all its participants and was now listing in order of likelihood the reasons for Ash’s request.
‘I want to know why he tried to kill Oliver Ford.’
‘We asked him,’ said Welbeck smoothly. ‘I say we – I mean, of course, CTC. He wouldn’t tell us.’
‘He might tell me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he came close to telling me before. He knew my friend was in danger. He didn’t want any harm to come to her.’
‘And did it?’
‘No. At least, not much. But it was a close-run thing. Now Ford is in hospital, and another friend is accused of trying to kill him.’ In a few sentences Ash sketched in as much of the background as was necessary for Welbeck to understand the situation.
A sly little half-smile gathering the corners of his eyes suggested that very little of this was news to Welbeck. Whatever information he had must have come from his own sources: thirty-six hours after the event, the media still hadn’t learned the details of Ford’s incapacity.
‘You knew?’ said Ash.
The smile broadened. ‘Gabriel, dear boy, it’s my job to know. Everything. Had you forgotten? And it’s my abiding delight to know everything that touches you.’ Welbeck had the habit of addressing Ash as an older man addresses a younger, although they were contemporaries. It also amused him to speak like a character from Dickens.
‘Can you arrange it?’
Welbeck considered for a moment longer. For a man who had been off the staff for four years, Gabriel Ash was consuming a lot of resources. On the other hand … Philip Welbeck had made a career out of keeping his options open. ‘I imagine I could.’
‘Will you?’
‘Will you share with me whatever he tells you?’
There was no reason to refuse. Iqbal would assume as much: he wouldn’t tell Ash anything he didn’t want CTC to learn. ‘Yes.’
‘Let me make a phone-call.’
By now Iqbal had been in the hands of CTC for a week. Ash expected him to look worse than when last they met, when Iqbal was still recovering in Norbold General Infirmary. But in fact the young man had put on a little weight. The dark rings under his eyes were no longer so prominent, and the burns on his face had subsided much as Hazel’s had done. The clothes he was wearing were better than the ones he had been arrested in.
He recognised Ash immediately, and a smile flickered through his eyes before he suppressed it. He had spent a month giving nothing away: he wasn’t going to break the habit without good reason. ‘Mr Ash.’
‘Mr Iqbal.’
The smile ventured closer to the surface. Ash imagined that, although he might be getting three square meals a day, a good night’s sleep and continuing medical attention, Rachid Iqbal was seldom addressed so politely.
But then a shadow fell across the young man’s eyes. ‘Mr Ash – your friend. The police lady. Is she …?’
‘She’s well. Thank you.’
‘You know this? You have spoken to her?’
‘She’s staying at my house for a few days. There was … an incident.’
‘Ah.’ The long breath expressed, better than words would have done, Iqbal’s profound lack of surprise. ‘He hurt her? Mr Oliver Ford?’
‘No,’ said Ash. ‘At least, not seriously. But I think he might have done if I hadn’t got her away from him when I did. He was holding her against her will.’ That wasn’t quite right either, but it was as close as he could get without writing an essay on the subject. ‘I think, if she’d stayed with him much longer, he would have hurt her.
‘And I think, Mr Iqbal, he did something similar once before. To a young woman who mattered to you – a friend, or perhaps a sister or a cousin. Someone you’d have given your right arm to protect.’
It was out before he could stop it. It was just a figure of speech, part of the common lexicon of expressions that we all use as shorthand for feelings that would otherwise need spelling out. But on the table between them was the empty cuff of Rachid Iqbal’s new shirt, and Ash was mortified to the depths of his soul by what he’d said. The colour rose dark in his skin, an apology stammered on his tongue, and he didn’t know where to look.
His misery was interrupted by possibly the last sound he would have expected to hear here, in this windowless room, sitting at a Formica table bolted to the floor, observed by a security camera in the cornice – the soft, infinitely human sound of a chuckle. Ash didn’t believe it, thought perhaps the young man was sobbing. But when he finally dared to look, Rachid Iqbal was indeed laughing gently at him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ mumbled Ash.
‘It is all right,’ Iqbal assured him. ‘Really. You are precisely right. I would have given my right arm to protect her. And when I failed, I came to England and gave my right arm to avenge her.’
For a moment Ash said nothing more. Then, because it seemed that Iqbal might finally be ready to talk, he said, ‘What happened?’
Her name was Safora, and Rachid Iqbal had loved her all his life. She was his sister. She was more than that. They had lost their parents during one of Syria’s periodic upheavals – literally, they had gone out one evening, leaving the children with their grandmother, and never returned. Rachid assumed they’d fallen foul of militias or insurgents, or perhaps a band of robbers, but anyway he never saw or heard from them again. The grandmother died soon afterwards, leaving Safora at the age of fourteen to raise her ten-year-old brother.
Despite her youth, she was a girl of firm opinions – rather firmer, if truth be told, than was considered modest in a country which, when it wasn’t blowing itself inside out, was essentially conservative. One opinion she formulated early on was that Syria was no country for a pair of orphans, and she set about finding a better one.
Rachid celebrated his twelfth birthday in a refugee camp on the Turkish border. It wasn’t a lot safer than the streets of Damascus, but Safora had a plan. She made herself useful to a French medical team working in the camps. Rachid had heard of girls who made themselves useful to foreigners, but Safora was not like them. She worked long hours tirelessly and with good humour, fetching and carrying and cooking and washing clothes and boiling bandages. After a while the nurses let her help with their work, and taught her to speak French, and said they didn’t know how they would manage without her; and when the team moved to a camp in Turkey, they arranged to take Safora with them. Safora arranged to take Rachid. He celebrated his fourteenth birthday in a UN compound outside Ankara, and his fifteenth in Istanbul where Safora was making herself useful to a team of European historians working in the great basilica that shared her name.
They had come eight hundred miles from where they started, and now they were on the edge of Europe where Safora was certain they could make a good life for themselves. In addition to French, she had now acquired a working familiarity with German and English, and was well liked as the girl who fetched and carried and washed clothes and was a safe pair of hands to clean an intricate carving or wrap a pot.
She found them two rooms in the basement of a Cypriot family’s house. She enrolled Rachid at a school, and in the evenings she would tell him of the future she had planned for them. How they would go to Paris, and he would go to university, and she would get a job as a translator with the UN, and never have to fetch and carry and wash clothes – except her own and Rachid’s – ever again.
Oliver Ford was one of the scholars working in the Hagia Sophia museum, on texts relating to the Crusades of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. The texts were very old and very fragile, and an assistant with
small, delicate hands was a great help to the team studying them. Safora was willing and careful, and could by now take instruction in all the main European languages, and Oliver Ford said he didn’t know how he’d have managed without her.
In retrospect, Iqbal thought he had been slow to realise that his sister’s relationship to the man she worked for was changing. Perhaps he saw a little less of her, but he was pleased that she was well thought of and her services were in demand. Perhaps they enjoyed a rather better standard of living than previously – but that was why Safora worked such long hours, so that she could look after her brother and put money aside for Paris.
He finally understood the extent to which things had changed when she came home one day in clothes she hadn’t been wearing when she left for work. Fine western clothes, and leather shoes with heels, and a single strand of pearls so simple they had to be precious.
Rachid was too young to be a man of the world, but he’d seen a fair bit of it, good and bad, in the last few years, and he knew that even Safora could not have worked that hard, and the sudden acquisition of wealth by an unmarried woman was always a danger sign. He demanded an explanation.
But instead of blushing guiltily, she had turned on him a face aglow with happiness. ‘Rachid, my brother – I am to be married!’
There was no doubt that it was the answer to the Iqbals’ situation. Marriage to an English academic would change a girl of no family, no status, no home to speak of and only such wealth as she had been able to earn by her own labours, into a woman of substance. It would enable her to help the only other person in the world she cared about.
But Rachid looked at her, and listened to what she had to say, and did not believe that mere practicality was her motive. He believed that Safora was in love. No sense of foreboding cast its shadow over her joy.
And he? He was happy for her. She had found someone who wanted her, and whom she wanted in return; a man capable of giving her the kind of life that people like the Iqbals could usually only dream about. Perhaps she would take her brother to Europe after all. Even if that proved impossible, a good marriage would relieve him of the responsibilities an Arab man owes to the unmarried women of his family. He would not have seen her enter a duty marriage in order to make his life easier, but certainly his options would be wider if he entered manhood unencumbered by an unmarried sister.
