Death by Design (32 page)

‘Yes. Well, he is poor and so Derek gave him money. Once the door had blown off, no one would know how we got in. We told him that.’

‘Well, you either lied to him or you and your people really are as amateurish as you’d have us believe,’ Williams said. ‘Blown door or not, our forensics people would know whether whoever had got in had activated the code or not.’

‘But—’

‘And then there are all the contradictions,’ Williams said. ‘If you only meant to set a small explosion at Mark Lane, why did you send Hajizadeh and Harrison down there with so much explosive?’

‘I didn’t,’ Ülker said. ‘Nourazar prepared the explosive and Ali Reza killed himself. Threw himself under the train. That was not meant to happen and was not my doing.’

‘But if that is the case, Ahmet, and you really did mean only to set a small explosion, how on earth was that going to blow out the door leading to the underpass?’

For a moment Ülker looked confused.

‘It wasn’t, was it?’ Williams said. ‘The explosion was going to be big. Hajizadeh was always going to die, he wanted to. I don’t know about Harrison. It seems to me your Ali Reza might have fought and killed him. Who knows why, unless of course Harrison was pissed off at Hajizadeh for sleeping with your wife.’

A dead, frozen silence ensued. The lawyer looked at his client slightly askance.

‘Is that why you killed her?’ Williams asked.

Now the lawyer looked stunned. Ülker remained apparently impassive.

‘We found blood in your swimming pool, Mr Ülker,’ Williams said. ‘Same group as Maxine’s. Further tests should confirm that it is hers. Now, are you going to tell me who your pool guy was or what?’

Still Ülker said nothing.

‘I think the story you’ve just told me is largely fiction,’ Williams continued. ‘You wanted to kill the mayor. To “frighten” him, as you put it, would be a waste of time. He could still basically do what he wanted once he’d got away from you. Anyway, if you’d wanted to frighten him why not threaten his family or blackmail the man? Everyone has a skeleton in their closet somewhere. No, you wanted to kill Mr Üner. And you know what, Ahmet, that isn’t going to be at all hard for me to prove.’

Mrs Fatima Khan, widow of the late Hamdi Khan, had expressed a desire to see Çetin İkmen and, if possible, Mayor Haluk Üner. Mrs Khan believed that between them they had saved her life and that of her baby. Although still weak after the operation to remove the bullet in her arm, Mrs Khan was determined to see her saviours.

‘They’re going to keep me in for a bit just to make sure I’m OK,’ she said to Çetin İkmen as he sat beside her bed. ‘But the baby’s fine. If only Hamdi were here . . .’

When she spoke of her husband it was with dry eyes. But then, however much she had loved him, by doing what he had done, he had in a sense betrayed her. As with İkmen and his son, Bekir, she would cry later and she would regret deeply all and any cross words she had ever said to her husband.

‘Mrs Khan?’ Haluk Üner joined them.

Strangely for him, the mayor of London looked tired and a little dishevelled and of course he’d lost his upper front teeth.

‘Oh, Mr Üner . . .’ She went to raise herself up on her pillows but he motioned for her to stop.

‘Please, you don’t have to sit up on my account,’ Haluk Üner said with a smile. And then he looked across at İkmen and said, ‘Inspector.’

‘Sir.’ Up close the mayor seemed smaller than he did on the TV and in fact smaller than he had appeared to be in the Khans’ flat. Maybe his anger had made him big. Mr Üner had, after all, been very angry indeed.

They both sat with Mrs Khan for about twenty minutes. The press pack was outside the hospital waiting for Üner to emerge but he was in no hurry to go out and meet them. He also had things he wanted to say to Çetin İkmen.

‘You know,’ he said as he motioned for İkmen to sit down next to him out in the corridor, ‘it is down to you, Çetin, that I am still alive. My acting commissioner told me what you did.’

‘I was in the right place at the right time, Mr Üner,’ İkmen said.

Haluk Üner smiled. ‘You are still my hero, Çetin. My parents, too, are immensely grateful.’

İkmen, who was never easy with praise, looked away.

‘That’ll teach me to smoke!’ Üner said, making a joke of it. ‘It really is bad for me, isn’t it?’

‘Sir, with respect, your security—’

‘You think the answer is to increase my security? Security is a barrier. Sometimes it is necessary but most of the time it is not. I expect this will make you cringe as a policeman, but I am in no way going to increase my security. In no way am I going to stop going out for the odd cigarette. I’m the mayor of London, I need to be out and about amongst Londoners. I have to know what they’re thinking. Gives the police a headache but . . .’

‘Your prime minister doesn’t do that,’ İkmen said.

‘Nobody’s prime minister does,’ Üner replied. ‘And that is what is wrong with this world, if you ask me. Nobody talks to the people any more, nobody cares about what they think. I tried to stop them getting ripped off by slave masters. I nearly lost my life because of it, but I see that as something to be proud of.’ He got up and went over to the window. Down below a loud throng of shouting press and jostling photographers were only just being held back by the police officers stationed at the hospital entrance. Haluk Üner looked at them with blank eyes. ‘This city has gone mad.’

‘That happens when people are threatened,’ İkmen said. ‘You’ve seen this before.’

‘Of course. They want to make me a celebrity,’ he said bitterly. ‘Even the broadsheets are calling me a hero.’

‘When you stood up to Nourazar in Mrs Khan’s apartment, you were a hero,’ İkmen said.

The mayor turned away from the window, looked at İkmen and smiled. ‘Was I?’ he said. ‘You know that when those men abducted me, I took the least line of resistance? I went with them, I cringed in fear beside them and even when Nourazar was on his own with me I didn’t have the guts to tackle him. Only at the end did I truly react. On and on he went about how I was a poof and a sodomite and not once did I have the guts to say, “You know what? Yes, I am gay but I’m also a good man, a man of faith!” How can I ever look gay Londoners in the face again?’

İkmen did not respond. He didn’t know.

‘If that lot had their way,’ Üner said and flicked a thumb in the direction of the window, ‘I’d be on some ghastly reality show by the end of the week. I can see it now,
Celebrity Big Brother
with some has-been footballer, a vacuous WAG, a disgraced government minister and me!’

‘It doesn’t have to be like that, I am sure,’ İkmen said, although he knew that celebrity culture was now a universal phenomenon that Üner would have to work very hard to counteract.

The mayor sighed. ‘Whatever.’ He put a hand on İkmen’s shoulder. ‘I’m so glad we’ve been able to meet so that I can thank you, Çetin. I owe you my life and, believe me, everyone knows it.’

Embarrassed, İkmen looked away again. He’d already seen a couple of photographs of himself on the front of several national newspapers. İkmen alongside Mr Üner, two Turks who, according to some, had almost single-handedly saved the city. Ridiculous! Already the stories were starting about good Muslims, İkmen and the mayor, and bad Muslims, Nourazar, Hajizadeh and Ahmet Ülker. When it all finally came out about how Nourazar had actually only been interested in money, how Hajizadeh was deluded, how Ülker was just a slave master with no concept of religion, would people see the Mark Lane bombing for what it was? A distraction that could allow a murder to take place, a way for Ülker to frighten those opposed to his trade into submission. Probably not. But at least his own part in London’s latest drama was almost at an end. In due course he would have to return to the city to give evidence at the trial of Ülker and Nourazar, but for the moment he could just look forward to going home.

The two men took leave of each other at a back door of the hospital, Mr Üner to be whisked away in an unmarked Mercedes and İkmen by his son Sınan in a taxi. Before they parted, Haluk Üner put his arms round İkmen in true Turkish fashion and then kissed the older man’s hand.

‘Çetin Bey,’ he said in Turkish, ‘know that you are always welcome in London. My city is your city just as my home is always yours.’ And then he left.

İkmen, moved to tears, allowed his son to take him by the arm and guide him to the taxi without word. What the mayor had said had affected him profoundly. But he had also only just that morning learned of the death of Ayşe Kudu and was still very raw about that. He had tried to save her, and he was sure that the doctors who had treated her in hospital had done their best, but that didn’t bring her back. A young woman, a good officer and someone’s beloved daughter had died. What was more, there were no pictures of her in any of the newspapers he had seen.

John Richards of Barking had been a silly if rather sly old sod. Yes, he’d given his old mate Derek Harrison the code to get into Mark Lane station, but he hadn’t asked him why he wanted it. Money had changed hands, considerable money; John had jumped at the chance to have enough cash to move off the estate. As for any connection to terrorism, John claimed that he’d not known about any such thing. As Ahmet Ülker had told Williams, John Richards was very much against that sort of thing.

‘That Turk old Derek worked for wasn’t a bad sort,’ John told Williams when he interviewed him. ‘I mean, I knew that poor old Del never really got over that Moorgate business, but I never thought he’d blow up a station! I never knew that Turk was involved with terrorists. I mean, I know he’s in bed with the Gentlemen of Honour and you’d think they’d have done any business he needed doing . . .’

But Williams didn’t hear anything more. Without a word, his blood cold with fear, he left John Richards with a constable and went immediately to get Ahmet Ülker back from the cells for another interview. As soon as Ülker was in the room, Williams said, ‘Since when were you hooked up with the Gentlemen of Honour?’

Ülker went white and then green in the face.

‘Ring a bell with you, Ahmet?’ Williams said. He knew his voice was trembling and he sat down just before Ülker. His legs didn’t feel too strong. ‘No? Well, let me fill you in,’ he continued. ‘The Gentlemen of Honour are probably this city’s biggest criminal gang. They do it all: drugs, counterfeit goods, dodgy passports, prostitution, identity theft, contract killing. They’re run by two charming characters, one Bermondsey bastard called Dane Chitty, some sort of self-styled Cockney anti-hero, and an Albanian called Enver Shkrelli.’

‘I don’t know anything about—’

‘Oh, come on, Ahmet!’ Williams said. ‘You and the Gentlemen are in the same business! How does it work, eh? Do they get the dodgy passports for you to distribute to your workforce or is it you with the contact up at Peterborough?’

Ahmet Ülker did not respond.

‘What’s the deal?’ Williams said harshly. ‘Was it passports? Or was it maybe something to do with Maxine’s disappearance? I’m sure that the Gentlemen can arrange a very efficient pool-cleaning service. Did you and the Gents cook this whole thing up between you? A blame-it-on-the-terrorist kind of arrangement? Bloody hell, Ahmet, I thought for a bit there that old Nourazar was pulling your plonker, but it turns out you—’

‘I want my lawyer,’ Ahmet Ülker cut in sharply. ‘Now.’

‘Oh.’ Williams sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘Rattled, are we?’

‘Get me my—’

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. But you know that if you were killing the mayor for the Gentlemen, you’re on your own now, don’t you? An alliance with the Gentlemen? How could you be so stupid?’

Williams got up and left, leaving a grey-faced Ahmet Ülker with a constable. If Ülker was indeed in bed with the capital’s biggest and most feared gang, then that could be very interesting as well as a great coup for the police. Not that Ülker would talk about the Gentlemen of Honour. No one ever did. Not even those faced with a life sentence. The Gentlemen had a very particular way of dealing with those who grassed on them. It wasn’t pretty.

Ahmet Ülker’s heart raced. Derek Harrison must have told that silly old man John Richards about the Gentlemen. Probably trying to impress him. He knew Williams had been interrogating Richards. Stupid Derek! It must have come from him because only he had known. Dane Chitty himself had advised Ahmet to ‘off’ Derek as soon as the Mark Lane event was over. He knew he was gobby. But then Derek’s death hadn’t been a big deal for Ahmet, not once he realised he’d known about Maxine and Ali Reza Hajizadeh and not mentioned it to him. As soon as the English police had told him about how the Turkish police had found the UK passports in İstanbul, he knew he was on shaky ground. He’d taken all the risks! Glamoured by the trips the Gentlemen had arranged to their factories in China and Cambodia, Ahmet had happily allied himself with them. Right up until Williams had talked about the passports, everything had been all right. The Gentlemen had disposed of Maxine’s body, he’d helped the police catch Nourazar and rescue the mayor. He would do time because his plan had failed and of course his business was now in ruins. But if he so much as whispered about the Gentlemen, it could be much, much worse.

Like most gangs, the Gentlemen of Honour had their own mythologies. One of the stories that went around about them concerned how they dealt with traitors. Chitty and Shkrelli, it was said, held the miscreant’s head in a fire until he expired. It wasn’t a myth. Ahmet Ülker had seen them do it with his own eyes. Just the thought of it made him sweat. Even in prison he wouldn’t be safe if he talked. But Ahmet was not about to do that. He wasn’t about to tell anyone how he had ingratiated himself with the Gentlemen when they tried to take him over by offering them the mayor. He’d been a bit desperate. Even he had considered his own plan ill thought out. Nourazar had been far too greedy and volatile, Ali Reza stupid and theatrical. If only the Afghan boy had set the bomb. A kid like that would just have blown himself up without taking some random fucking train with him!