‘It’s possible,’ Riley replied. ‘Although as far as we know Harrison and Hajizadeh are still at the factory in Hackney Wick. Went there last night.’
‘And they’ve not moved out since?’
‘According to the team on the ground, Ülker left at about three and drove back to his Bishops Avenue place,’ Riley said. ‘There was no one else with him as far as they could tell. He’s still there.’
‘So Ali Reza and Harrison remain at the factory?’
‘Apparently.’
‘No movement from Wesley Simpson?’
‘No. He’s at home, although there is a performance car outside his place which isn’t his, but . . . You know Wes. In addition, we have no real idea where Nourazar or any of his acolytes might be either. Possibly at the factories. Ülker’s Dalston flat is quiet, the Leswin Road place is quiet – all quiet on the western front, it would seem.’
Fratelli scanned the street below once again and said, ‘Yes. As you say. All quiet.’
Ahmet Ülker left Cengiz, the man who had found İkmen listening at the office, and the burly Mustafa in charge when he left. İkmen himself was not in a good state either physically or mentally. He had never employed torture himself, not only because he objected to it on humanitarian grounds but because in his opinion it didn’t work. And he had just proved that point.
It had all started out very conventionally with a good old-fashioned beating. A couple of the ayatollah’s men had obliged but luckily for İkmen they were not the brightest buttons in the box – they kicked his ribs and back mainly, so he had managed to protect his head quite effectively. But when that stopped and Nourazar began on him with a razor blade, things deteriorated rapidly. There was something about the slow and deliberate cutting of flesh that was utterly terrifying. The term ‘mad with fear’ took on new meaning. The actual cutting didn’t hurt, but afterwards the pain was excruciating and any movement caused the wounds to widen and ensured they kept on bleeding. Cuts to the face and the scrotum were the most difficult to deal with, both physically and psychologically. Part of him wanted to cry out and declare who and what he was when Nourazar cut him just underneath his eye. But fear of a double bluff on the part of his tormentors kept him silent. If Ülker and his friends found out that he could speak English, they would know he was a plant and they would kill him, police officer or not. And so he maintained his Çetin Ertegrul persona and not one word of English escaped his lips.
Before they did anything they had stripped him naked and crushed both his mobile phones on the floor, and now that they had finished with him he was cold, in pain, bleeding and barely conscious. After some argument, they had chained him to one of the benches at the back of the factory and then gagged him with sticky tape. İkmen had never been naked in public before, not that any of the poor slaves working away at their sewing machines seemed to notice. But he was vaguely aware of Nourazar’s eyes on him from time to time, of the occasional cuff around the head from one of the Iranian’s men. Not that any of this was really exercising İkmen’s mind at the present moment. The only clear thought in his head now was how he was going to get the message out that Mark Lane was not these people’s intended target. Ali Reza, with the help of Harrison, was planning to blow up a tube station.
Ahmet Ülker had finally left the factory at what İkmen estimated was two or three o’clock in the morning. First he had unloaded boxes from his car, some sort of people-carrier, then loaded more stuff into it. He did this in full view outside. Ülker and his people appeared to either know or suspect that they were being watched. But before the car left the factory, both Harrison and Ali Reza Hajizadeh had got into it and lain down in it out of sight.
At one point, as he lay naked and chained, İkmen saw his fellow guest house resident, Süleyman Elgiz, but he didn’t seem to want to register İkmen’s presence at all. Only the black man with the wounded eyes who had seen İkmen listening at the office so much as glanced at him. It was just the odd stolen look but it told İkmen that he had the man’s sympathy. Maybe he’d been through something like this himself.
The constant noise from the machines as well as the sickening smell of himself and of others made İkmen want to vomit. Had he eaten anything much the previous evening, he probably would have done so. But perhaps fortunately his stomach was fairly empty. One thing he did really want, however, apart from his freedom, was a cigarette. But that wasn’t possible.
He was still thinking of the cigarettes in his jacket pocket when he blacked out. When he came to some time later, to his amazement his jacket was right in front of his eyes. It was being worn, along with the rest of his clothes, by Ayatollah Nourazar. When the Iranian saw İkmen open his eyes, he smiled, took the policeman’s cigarettes out of his pocket and put them just where he couldn’t reach them.
‘Unpleasant habit,’ he said in English. He smiled again and walked away. İkmen, suddenly infuriated beyond belief, had to use every ounce of his self-control not to swear at him very colourfully in English.
Ayşe had been expecting İkmen to get to the nail bar at about nine thirty. That was what had been agreed. Officers observing the site at Hackney Wick reckoned that İkmen had left the factory over an hour before. He’d walked out with Süleyman Elgiz and two other men who were known to come and go from the property. They had all, as was usual, made their way to the bus stop up on Homerton Road, and they had all boarded a bus bound for Stoke Newington. But it was well after ten now and still İkmen had not appeared.
‘Are you married?’ asked the small, thin girl whose tiny fingers Ayşe was holding.
‘Eh?’
‘Married,’ the girl repeated as she took one hand away and adjusted her headscarf. ‘Are you married?’
‘No.’ Ayşe forced a smile. The girl had said she was getting married the next day and wanted her nails to be painted dark green.
‘I’m very lucky,’ the girl continued. ‘My parents have chosen a very pious man for me and so I know that my marriage will be everything it should be. Such things give one confidence.’
‘Yes.’ Ayşe looked at her watch again and frowned. Even if he’d gone to buy fags, İkmen should have been here by now.
The girl, seeing that Ayşe was clearly distracted, said, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ayşe said. ‘I’m just a little bit worried about my uncle. He’s new in town and . . . I’m just a bit concerned.’
The girl looked suddenly concerned too. ‘Would you like to take a minute to call him?’
‘Oh, yes, if you don’t mind!’ Ayşe said, ‘I . . .’ She stood up and took her mobile phone out of her handbag. ‘Thank you!’
To the astonishment of the other two girls who worked in the bar, Ayşe ran through the shop and out to the back next to the dustbins. There she called İkmen’s mobile number. It rang but no one answered. Maybe İkmen hadn’t heard it for some reason. Or maybe he couldn’t answer his phone because of where he was or who he was with. But then perhaps the reason he wasn’t answering was a little bit more serious than that. He had said that he would do his best to get closer to what was going on and being said in the Hackney Wick factory. The operation in Mark Lane was already under way, but she hadn’t heard from İkmen at all since he went to work the previous night. It did not augur well. Quickly Ayşe called Riley who told her to hold her position for the time being. Nothing had happened as yet at his end and with Ülker at home and Harrison and Hajizadeh at Hackney Wick, all appeared quiet.
‘But sir, I’m uneasy,’ Ayşe said. ‘He’s usually on time and anyway I would have thought he would have called in by now if only to tell us he had learned no more.’
Riley was quiet for a moment, thinking, then he said, ‘When do you usually take your morning break?’
‘Ten thirty if I squeeze one in,’ Ayşe said.
‘If our friend hasn’t materialised by ten thirty then get yourself over to Hackney Wick,’ Riley said. ‘Let the team there know you’re coming. But go in alone. You’re looking for your uncle. It’s really quite reasonable. The team are at your back if anything should go wrong.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ayşe took a deep breath and walked back into the shop. As she entered, her client said, ‘Any luck?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Ayşe said. Then she turned to her colleagues and said, ‘If he’s not here by my break is it OK if I go and look for him? You know what these old people are like. If I lose him, my dad will kill me!’
Hatice, who owned and ran the nail bar, looked at Ayşe with sympathy and said, ‘Yeah, babe, that’s OK. I dunno, old Turkish blokes, what are you gonna do, eh?’
Staring into the darkness of the tunnel made Derek remember. Travelling by tube had not often been an option for him, not since Moorgate. But here in this place the feelings he had were not as panicky and fearful as they usually were. Maybe it was because it was hidden away from the usual bustle and crowds of the tube, or maybe it was simply because of what he, or rather that bloody Iranian, was going to do.
‘You know I know you shagged the boss’s wife,’ he said to Hajizadeh as he looked into his shadowed, impassive face.
‘Did you tell him?’ Hajizadeh said without emotion.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
A distant rumble in the tunnels heralded the rapid passage of another train past their half-lit position and for just under a minute they were silent until it had passed.
‘When I first found out I thought you’d give yourselves away, you were that obvious about it. Or she was,’ Harrison said. ‘But then when I knew that you were going to be doing this job I didn’t want Ahmet to kill you before you’d done it.’
‘You care about my martyrdom?’ the Iranian said with a smile.
‘No. But I want this done and if you’re prepared to do it then that’s all right by me.’
Another train was approaching from the opposite direction. It was just gone ten, getting to the end of the rush hour. But traffic was still heavy.
When the train had passed, Ali Reza Hajizadeh said, ‘When this is over, will you tell Ahmet about Maxine and me?’
Derek shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Ahmet is my mate. He’s been good to me. If his wife’s a slapper then he should know about it. He should have the choice as to whether to keep her or chuck her.’
‘You see women as things.’
‘Don’t you?’
Ali Reza looked away.
‘Not that I blame you,’ Derek said. ‘Her being a tart means that Maxine is good at it, I have no doubt.’
‘Ahmet might hurt her.’
‘Well, if he does, that’s his business.’
There was a pause before Ali Reza said, ‘What will you say about the fact that you knew for so long but said nothing?’
Derek smiled. ‘Oh, I’ll lie about that,’ he said. ‘No one to hurt if I say I only just found out.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No.’
Another train passed, its lights illuminating the jaundiced faces of the people inside. Derek recalled his first childish investigations into the tube, of tracing its progress through the city on maps, of walking right up to the edge of the tunnel whenever he was on the platform of a deep line station. His mother would scream and holler for him to get back and behave himself. His sister’s face would always be white with fear. But not Derek’s. Not then.
Once the train had passed, Ali Reza, looking tense now, said that he needed to relieve himself.
Chapter 21
There was no one outside the first factory Ayşe came to on Ahmet Ülker’s property. Both sheds were covered with moss and patched with corrugated iron and lumps of wood that were probably old railway sleepers. In fact, if there hadn’t been any noise coming from the buildings, she could have been forgiven for thinking that they were deserted.
There was a bell beside the large, tattered double doors that led into the building. Ayşe rang it. As she did so she looked around, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to see any of her fellow officers who now ringed the operation, but doing it anyway as an act of reassurance. Just before she’d entered the site she had called DI Roman who was in charge of the team observing the factories and told him what she was about to do. He’d been concerned, for her and for the integrity of the whole operation, but he’d also agreed that İkmen’s position had somehow to be established. His apparent disappearance could mean nothing or it could signal that Ülker had worked out who and what he was, which could put everything that had been done so far in jeopardy.
‘Yeah?’ One of the doors slid to one side and Ayşe recognised the face of the other security guard, Mustafa Kermani.
‘My uncle hasn’t come home,’ Ayşe said. ‘Çetin Ertegrul?’
Mustafa shrugged. ‘So?’
‘We’d arranged to meet this morning,’ Ayşe said. ‘I thought he might still be at work.’
Behind Mustafa she could just see into the factory. A row of people seated behind sewing machines.
‘Well, he isn’t,’ Mustafa said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ One of the men at the machines, an African by the look of him, turned away from what he was doing and looked over. ‘Maybe he’s gone to the coffee house. Maybe he’s gone back to his lodgings.’
‘I called the Rize. He isn’t there.’
The African was looking hard at Ayşe now and she saw him move his eyes, twice in rapid succession, to his left. It was as if he was trying to signal to her.
‘What are you looking at?’ Mustafa had noticed and was not happy.
‘Oh, nothing, I—’
‘Your uncle isn’t here,’ Mustafa said.
‘Yes but—’
‘As far as I know he left at the end of his shift here at eight,’ Mustafa said. ‘I’ve stayed on because we’re short-handed.’ He raised his arms and shrugged. ‘Now I have to get back to my work.’
He pulled the door rudely across in front of her face and she heard him lock it. Ayşe walked back towards Homerton Road, taking her phone out of her bag as she did so.