Death Comes for the Fat Man (11 page)

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 77

“Jesus!” exclaimed Pascoe. “Was he beheaded too?”

“No. Shot. They want me back over there now. Mazraani was on my worksheet.”

“This sounds like big trouble,” said Pascoe.

“More than you can imagine,” she said grimly.

“Well, thanks for bringing me up to date . . . ” he began.

“That’s not why I sent for you,” she interrupted. “It will be in the papers anyway. Al Jazeera have said they’re going to broadcast today.

No, what I wanted to say, Peter, was I’ve asked Dan Trimble if I can take you with us. He says fine, if you feel up to it.”

Pascoe was gobsmacked and made no attempt to hide it.

“But why . . . ?” he managed.

“Peter, I can’t be certain but I’ve got a feeling there might be some link with what happened here. Being as involved as you are usually means that judgments get blurred, corners cut. But from what I’ve seen, I get the impression it’s just tightened your focus, heightened your responses. If there are any connections, could be you’re the one most likely to sniff them out. So what do you say? Couple of days can’t hurt, and you’ll only be an hour or so’s drive away.”

Pascoe hesitated, finding this hard to take in. He was given breathing space by the appearance of Freeman, who gave Glenister a fi le and Pascoe a flicker of those cold eyes before disappearing.

“You say you’ve cleared this with the Chief ?” he said. “What about your bosses?”

“They’re fine with it.”

He found himself reluctant to accept the unanimity of this vote of confi dence.

“And Freeman? I bet he jumped for joy.”

“Not the jumping kind,” she said with a smile. “Though in fact it was Dave who put the idea in my head. You’ve made a big impression there.”

This got zanier.

He said, “I’ll need to talk to . . . people . . . ”

“Your wife? She struck me as a sensible woman. I’ll have a word if you like, assure her I’ll take good care of you.”

Pascoe smiled.

78 r e g i n a l d h i l l

“No, I’ll take care of that,” he said.

“That’s a yes then. Good. Go and get packed.”

As Pascoe moved away he wondered what Glenister would have said if he’d told her that what really worried him was the prospect of admitting to Wield that he’d got it absolutely wrong.

The sergeant didn’t gloat. That wasn’t his thing, but he surprised Pascoe by saying, “Pete, watch your back out there.”

“Watch my back? It’s Manchester I’m going to, Wieldy, not Marrakesh.”

“So? There’s funny buggers in Manchester too,” said Wield. “You take care.”

QPART THREE

Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr’d By thwarting signs, and braves

The freshening wind and blackening waves.

And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning bursts is seen

Only a driving wreck,

And the pale master on his spar-strew-deck With anguish’d face and fl ying hair

Grasping the rudder hard,

Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore.

— M AT T H E W A R N O L D ,

“ A S U M M E R N I G H T ”

1

L U B Y A N K A

Manchester is monumental in a way that no other northern town quite manages. You can feel it flexing its muscles and saying, I’m a big city, better step aside. The building which housed CAT had all the family traits. It was solid granite, its tall façade as unyielding as a hanging judge’s face. Carved into a massive block alongside a main entrance that wouldn’t have disgraced a crusader’s castle were the words THE SEMPITERNAL BUILDING.

“Tempting fate a bit, aren’t you?” said Pascoe as he and Glenister approached.

She laughed and said, “Not us. It was a Victorian insurance company. Went bust during the great crash, so they paid for their hubris.

It’s been used for lots of things since then. We took it over three years ago. Most of your new colleagues refer to it as the Lubyanka, the Lube for short. Whether that’s tempting fate or not we’ve yet to see.”

They went into a wide foyer that looked conventional enough until you noticed that further progress could only be made through security gates with metal detectors, X-ray screening, and large men in attendance. There were almost certainly cameras in operation too, thought Pascoe, though he couldn’t spot them. Perhaps they were hidden among the summer blooms that filled what looked like an old horse trough standing incongruously at the foyer’s center.

At the reception desk, Pascoe was issued a security tag with a complex fastening device.

“Don’t take it off till you’re leaving,” said Glenister. “They’re self-alarmed the minute you pass through the gate. Removal anywhere but the desk sets bells ringing.”

“Why would I want to take it off ?”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 81

“Why indeed? It’s to stop anyone taking it off you.”

She said it without her customary smile. Necessary precaution or just self-inflating paranoia? wondered Pascoe.

They went straight into a room with twenty chairs set in four rows of five before a large TV screen. Pascoe and Glenister took seats in the second row. He glanced round to see Freeman in the row behind. Was this indicative of a pecking order? And if so, did they peck from the front as in a theater or from the rear as in a cinema?

As if in answer, the man sitting directly in front turned round and smiled at him. Pascoe recognized him instantly. His name was Bernie Bloomfield, his rank was Commander, and the last time Pascoe saw him, he’d been giving a lecture on criminal demography at an Interpol conference. If he hadn’t pursued a police career, he might well have fi lled the gap left by that most sadly missed of British actors, Alastair Sim.

“Peter, good to see you again,” said Bloomfi eld.

For a moment Pascoe was flattered, then he remembered his security label.

“You too, sir,” he said. “Didn’t realize you were in charge here.”

“In charge?” Bloomfield smiled. “Well, well, in this work we like to keep in the shadows. How’s my dear old friend Andy Dalziel doing?”

“Holding on, sir.”

“Good. I’d expect no less. A shame, a great shame. Andy and I go way, way back. We can ill spare such good men. But it’s a pity it was one of your less indispensable officers who was first on the scene.

Constable . . . what was his name?”

“Hector, sir,” said Glenister.

“That’s it. Hector. From what I’ve read, we’re likely to get more feedback from the speaking clock.
Sort of funny and not a darkie,
isn’t that the gist of his contribution?”

There was a ripple of laughter, and Pascoe realized that their conversation had moved from private chat to public performance. He felt a surge of irritation. Only here two minutes and already he was having to defend Hector in front of a bunch of sycophants who clearly felt very superior to your common or garden provincial bobby.

Time to lay down the same markers he’d already put in place with Glenister.

82 r e g i n a l d h i l l

He said with emphatic courtesy, “With respect, sir, as I’ve told the superintendent, I think it would be silly to underestimate Constable Hector’s evidence. While it’s true that in his case the picture may take a bit longer to come together, what he does notice usually sticks and emerges in a useful form eventually. What he’s given us so far has proved right, hasn’t it? In fact, with respect, isn’t most of what we know about what happened in Mill Street that day down to Hector rather than CAT?”

This defensive eulogium which in the Black Bull would have had colleagues corpsing reduced the audience here to silence. Or perhaps they were simply waiting to see how Bloomfield would deal with this uppity newcomer who’d just called him silly and his unit ineffi cient.

The Commander gave Pascoe that Alastair Sim smile that indicates he knows a lot more than you’re saying.

“That’s very reassuring, Peter,” he said. “Or are you just being loyal?”

Pascoe said firmly, “Loyalty’s nothing to do with it, sir. You fi nd us a live suspect and I’m sure you’ll be able to rely on Hector for identifi cation.”
Never back down,
was the Fat Man’s advice.
Especially when
you’re not sure you’re right!

“I’m glad to hear it. Now I think it’s time to get our show on the road.”

He rose to his feet and let his gaze drift down the rows.

“Good day to you all,” he said. “What you are about to see is a tape played on Al Jazeera television earlier today. It isn’t pretty, but no point closing your eyes. Some of you will need to see it many times.”

He sat down and the lights dimmed.

The tape lasted about sixty seconds, but even to sensibilities tough-ened by a grueling job as well as by the general exposure to the graphic images shown most nights on news programs, not to mention the computer-generated horrors of the modern cinema, the unforgiving minute seemed to stretch forever.

There was no sound track. Someone said, “Jesus!” into the silence.

After a long moment, another man stood up in the front row. Fiftyish, balding, wearing a leather-patched jacket, square-ended woolen tie, and d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 83

Hush Puppies, he spoke with the clipped rapidity of a nervous schoolmaster saying grace before he is interrupted by the clatter of forks against plates. His label said he was Lukasz Komorowski.

“This is without doubt Said Mazraani. His body was found in his flat this morning with the head severed, preliminary examination suggests by three blows as illustrated in the video clip. The chair, carpet, and background in the tape sequence correspond precisely with what was found at the flat. There was a second body in the fl at. This belonged to a man called Fikri Rostom who, as you will hear, Mazraani introduced as his cousin. Rostom, a student at Lancaster University, was shot in the head.”

He paused for breath.

Glenister said, “What’s the writing say?”

“It says
Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
”

He paused again, this time like a schoolmaster waiting for exegesis.

Pascoe knew it was biblical, probably Old Testament, but could go no further. Andy Dalziel would have given them chapter and verse. He claimed his disconcerting familiarity with Holy Writ had been acquired via a now largely neglected pedagogic technique which involved his RK

teacher, a diminutive Welshman full of
hwyl
and
hiraeth
, boxing his ears with a leather-bound Bible each time he forgot his lesson.

Pascoe found himself blinking back tears at the same time as Glenister said, “Exodus Twenty-One.”

Commander Bloomfield twisted in his chair to look at her.

“I’m glad to see we’re not yet a completely godless nation,” he murmured. “Do go on, Lukasz.”

Komorowski resumed at a slightly slower pace.

“Verses twenty-three to twenty-five; the language is Arabic and the source is a tenth-century translation of the Bible by Rabbi Sa’adiah ben Yosef who was the Goan, or Chief Sage, of the Torah academy at Sura.

The Torah is an Hebraic word meaning ‘the revealed will of God,’ in particular Mosaic law as expounded in the Pentateuch, which is the fi rst five books of the Old Testament, of which Exodus is the second.”

He paused again.

“Tell us something we don’t know,” murmured Glenister.

84 r e g i n a l d h i l l

Clearly they educated kids differently in Scotland, thought Pascoe.

Komorowski resumed, “Below it we find the words
In memory of
Stanley Coker.
Coker, you will recall, was the English businessman taken hostage and subsequently beheaded by the Sword of the Prophet Group. The flat and the bodies are currently being examined. Full reports will be issued as soon as they are available. Preliminary post mortem fi ndings confirm the timetable indicated by our tapes. The bullet recovered from Fikri Rostom was a nine-millimeter round almost certainly fired from a Beretta ninety-two series semiautomatic pistol.”

Pascoe turned to look at Glenister, who continued to stare straight ahead.

“I have the tape here, which gives us the timings,” continued Komorowski. “Mazraani, even if he had not discovered the exact location of our listening device, always assumed he was being overheard.

Indeed, as you will hear, he refers to our tape. So he always took the precaution of playing masking music. Here is what we have.”

He raised his index finger and a recording started.

First sound was of a door being opened.

“Tape activated by arrival we guess of the alleged cousin,” said Komorowski.

Music began to play, then a female voice began to sing.

“Elissa, the Lebanese singer,” said Komorowski. “Fikri seems to have been a fan. We can run on here I think.”

The tape gabbled forward then slowed again to normal speed.

“Fifteen minutes on, the door opens again, Mazraani arrives, beneath the music we can hear greetings being exchanged,” said Komorowski. “Then the music is turned up louder, suggesting that what they say next they do not wish to be overheard. AV are not hopeful of extracting anything useful from this portion of the tape but will continue to try. A minute later . . . here it comes . . . ”

The singing suddenly sank to a low background and a click was heard.

“The intercom. Our killers have rung the doorbell downstairs,”

interposed Komorowski rapidly.

Now a voice spoke, educated, urbane.

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 85

“Gentlemen, how can I help you?”

“Mazraani,” said Komorowski.

“Just like a quick word, sir.”

This voice, even though distant and tinny through the intercom, had the unmistakable flat force of authority.

“By all means. Won’t you come up?”

The sound of a door being opened then a pause, presumably to wait for the newcomers to make their ascent.

“Evening, Mr. Mazraani. And this is . . . ?”