Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (5 page)

According to his driving licence, Khan was twenty-two, but this man looked to be younger, just a boy. His face and arms and wrists were thin. A scraggly black beard barely covered his chin and the hair on his upper lip was sparse. His eyes, as he watched them come into the room, looked wary. Liz had been assured that he was being well treated, but she wondered what had happened to him before he got here.

Cassale stepped up to the table and, speaking rapidly in French, explained to the prisoner that he had a visitor who would be asking him some questions. It was obvious from the blank expression on the young man’s face that he understood nothing of what was said.

Cassale turned to Liz and said in French, ‘I will be next-door if you need me. Just tell the guard.’ She nodded. As Cassale left, she pulled out a chair from under the table and sat down opposite the prisoner. The armed policeman remained standing by the door.

Liz looked calmly at Khan and said, ‘I don’t know about you, but my French stopped at GCSE.’

His eyes widened at the sound of her English voice, then he sat stiffly upright and gave her a defiant look.

Liz shrugged. ‘Amir, I haven’t come all this way to give you a hard time. But let’s not pretend: you speak English just as well as I do. Probably with a Birmingham accent.’

Khan stared at her for a moment, as if making up his mind. The key now was to get him to say
something
– anything would do for a start. Liz had been taught this during initial training at MI5: a complete refusal to speak – even to say yes or no – was disastrous; there was no way forward from there. It reminded her of being taught to fish by her father. When she took too long setting up her rod, he would always say, ‘If your fly’s not on the water, you can’t catch a fish.’

Fortunately Khan decided to speak, saying slowly, ‘Are you from the Embassy?’

‘Not exactly. But I am here to help.’

‘Then get me a lawyer.’

‘Well, perhaps we should first establish who you are. I take it that you are indeed the Amir Khan, of 57 Farndon Street, Birmingham, whose driving licence you were carrying when you were arrested by the French Navy?’

‘I said, I want a lawyer.’

‘Ah, if only it were that easy. We’re in France, Amir, not England. They do things differently here. You’ve heard the phrase “
Habeas corpus”
?’ She didn’t wait for him to nod. ‘Well, over here, they haven’t. You can be held on a magistrate’s word for as long as he likes. It could be months. Or longer, if you won’t co-operate.’

Khan was gnawing his thumbnail. A good sign, thought Liz, who wanted him on edge. He said sharply, ‘So why should I talk to you?’

‘Because I may be able to help.’

He scoffed, ‘How, if the French can hold me as long as they want?’

‘If we can get a few things sorted out, we might be able to arrange your transfer to the UK.’ She looked around at the room. ‘I think you’d agree things would be better for you there. But that would depend on your co-operating, of course.’

‘With what?’

She put the battered driving licence on the table. ‘Is this yours? Are you Amir Khan?’

He nodded. ‘You know I am.’

‘You were arrested with a group of pirates from Somalia, trying to hijack a ship in the Indian Ocean. Let’s talk about how you got there from Birmingham. And why you were helping to hijack a Greek cargo ship.’

‘I wasn’t,’ he said flatly. Seeing surprise in Liz’s eyes, he said, ‘They forced me to go along.’

‘Who did?’

‘The pirates. I don’t know their names . . . I couldn’t understand a word they said. It was some African dialect.’

‘They weren’t African.’

He ignored her. ‘They told me to get in their boat, and I didn’t argue. I was sure they were going to kill me.’

‘Why did they take you along?’

‘You’d have to ask them.’ His tone was surly.

‘Why don’t we take a step back? Tell me how you ended up in Somalia in the first place.’

‘I thought we were heading for Kenya.’

‘Who’s “we”?’ She knew it was important to cut off these tangents right away, or they’d sprout like suckers at the base of a tree. Soon there’d be so many of them she wouldn’t be able to see the tree, much less the forest.

‘A friend. I met him in London.’

‘What’s your friend’s name?’

‘We called him Sammy, but I think his name was Samir.’

‘Samir what?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘When did you meet him in London?’ Seeing as you’re from Birmingham, she thought.

‘Last year, or maybe two years ago. I have a cousin who moved down there and I used to visit him. He has a newsagent’s in Clerkenwell and—’

Liz interjected quietly, ‘We know you went to Pakistan.’

For a moment Khan looked uneasy. But then he simply shifted gear, moving back into the narrative that Liz could tell he had pre-prepared. ‘Of course I did. I’ve got relatives there. Another cousin, in fact – you can check it out. He has a shop in Islamabad – not a newsagent’s, but a butcher’s shop. He’s done well. In fact, he’s thinking of opening another shop–’

This time Liz cut in less gently. ‘How did you get from Pakistan to Somalia?’

Khan looked at her as if outraged that she should interrupt him. Liz pressed, ‘I said, how did you get there?’

He sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Let’s hear it. We’ve got all day if necessary.’

And for the next hour or so it looked as if all day was what Liz would need. For Khan launched into a lengthy, voluminously detailed, yet utterly preposterous account of his whereabouts since leaving Pakistan – involving a flight to Turkey, a boat trip to the Greek islands, another to Tunisia (where he claimed to have picked grapes for a month), three weeks of hitchhiking that included a harrowing jeep ride in the middle of the night . . . on and on he went with his story, an account so obviously fabricated that Liz could only smile.

Each time she tried to pin him down – what airline had he taken to Turkey? What Greek island had he visited? – Khan’s memory would suddenly falter. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he’d say. Or, ‘Maybe I’ve got that wrong.’ And for every reluctant step towards Somalia his story took, he did his best to take two backwards.

As Khan went on – by now he was trying to reach Egypt overland from Lebanon – she interrupted less, and gradually stopped asking any questions at all. He continued talking, apparently thinking that his avalanche of words somehow made his story credible. Finally he seemed to realise that he was not convincing her, and came to a sudden halt. There was silence in the room.

‘So,’ said Liz eventually, ‘where is your passport?’

‘I lost it.’

‘Then how did you get across all these borders?’

He said nothing, obviously trying to think of an answer that would not incriminate him.

It was time to up the pace. ‘Come on, Amir. Why were you in Somalia?’

‘I just wanted to see it.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘A couple of guys I met.’

‘Where did you meet them?’

‘In Egypt. We met in Cairo.’

‘What were their names?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘How did you get to Somalia?’

‘By car. Jeep, actually.’

‘Whose car?’

‘It was rented.’

‘What, there’s a Hertz agency in Mogadishu?’

Khan said nothing.

Liz went on. ‘Were you in Yemen before then?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever been to Yemen?’

‘No,’ he said crossly.

‘Who in Pakistan gave you your orders?’

And before he had time to think, he snapped back, ‘It wasn’t in Pakis—’ Then stopped, aware of his slip. He looked down at the table, mortified.

Liz smiled. ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth now? You must be tired of inventing.’

Khan hesitated, and for a second Liz thought his moment of carelessness might have broken down his guard. He seemed on the very edge of caving in. She waited but he said no more. Lifting his head, he looked straight at her.

‘Do you have any message for your parents?’ she asked.

His eyes widened with shock. ‘What have they got to do with this? They don’t know anything about it.’ But as he looked at Liz tears started to well up. He bent his head to wipe them away with the shirt sleeve on his manacled arm.

Liz waited but something, whether determination, fear or training, reasserted itself. Having regained control of himself, Khan’s features hardened and he squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you,’ he declared.

Liz waited a moment but his gaze was steely again, determined. ‘I want to go back to my cell,’ he announced, and there was not even a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

Liz stood up reluctantly. ‘If you change your mind, let them know and I’ll come back.’ She walked over to the door, and the guard opened it to let her through. Khan could have asked to go to his cell an hour ago and spared us both, she thought. But at least she’d learned one useful thing.

Chapter 6

Liz and Cassale retraced their steps to the grim reception room on the Rue Messier side of the prison. ‘Let’s get out of this place and have some coffee,’ he suggested, to Liz’s relief.

Outside the prison she breathed deeply, taking in lungsful of warm air and blinking in the bright midday sun. Cassale took her elbow. ‘This way,’ he said, steering her along the pavement towards the Boulevard Arago, where the new leaves were unfurling on the plane trees.

They stopped at a pavement café. As the coffee arrived, Cassale lit a Gitane and asked, ‘Any luck?’

‘Not much,’ she admitted.

‘Did he talk at all?’

She waited while a young man walked past their table. He was dark – from Algeria perhaps, or equally plausibly from the Middle East. For a moment it looked as though he might sit down nearby, but he went inside the café.

Liz said with a snort, ‘He certainly talked! He would have made a great storyteller in another life. He was trying to convince me that he’s been swanning round Europe, apparently without a passport or any money, and ended up in Somalia by mistake. I’ll send you my notes of what he said; if you believe any of it I’ll be amazed.’

Cassale looked sympathetic. ‘Frustrating. Still, it’s good that he talked at all. Well done.’

‘He did more or less acknowledge that he was acting under someone else’s orders – and that he wasn’t given the orders in Pakistan.’

‘Really? Where did he receive them then – in England?’

‘I don’t know, and he wasn’t saying. If you can find out anything about that it would be a big help.’

Cassale nodded. ‘Do you know if you will want him back in England?’

‘We’ve got a bit of work to do first. At least he admitted that he was Amir Khan. We’ve located his parents in Birmingham, and we’ll see what they say, though I gather they’re very respectable people and will probably be as surprised as I was to hear about their son. When I mentioned them, Khan got very upset – he just managed to stop himself from crying. You might want to try that on him again.’ Liz looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be going if I’m to catch my train.’

‘Of course.’ Cassale put some coins on the table and pushed back his chair. ‘Before you do, is there is anything in particular we should try and get out of him? Assuming he will now talk to us as well.’

A big assumption, thought Liz, remembering the tight-mouthed expression on Khan’s face as she’d left. ‘Two things for a start: where he really was after he left Pakistan, and of course who was directing him.’

‘We will do our best.’ Cassale offered her his hand. ‘He is a mystery man, this Khan. I think somehow you and I will be seeing each other again.’

Liz walked back along the prison wall, retracing her steps to the Metro station. The high wall cast a deep shadow over the pavement now, a welcome relief from the bright sun for Liz in her black suit. She’d forgotten her sunglasses too and the glare was irritating her eyes.

She thought again of Maigret in the story. The prisoner he’d visited was about the same age as Khan, not much more than a boy, but he’d been condemned to death. The old prison must have witnessed any number of gruesome events – she wondered if they’d executed people in the courtyard where the prisoners had been exercising today. When she heard the sound of someone’s footsteps echoing on the pavement behind her, her back crawled and she turned round in alarm. It was only an old man a long way down the street – he must have been wearing particularly noisy shoes. But she was glad to reach the Metro station.

At Gare du Nord she had half an hour to wait before going through to the Eurostar departure area, so she stopped to buy a baguette sandwich and a bottle of water. The station was crowded and as she queued she smiled, chiding herself for letting the prison get under her skin. She’d never been quite so shaken by a visit before. Perhaps it was the contrast between the Santé’s ancient history and the very modern-day events that had brought Amir Khan there.