The detective, p.27
The Detective, page 27
She thought for a moment. ‘It will to her. And her supporters. She’s built a career out of dog-whistle racism and anti-Semitism. And she’s always made a big deal about her family’s hard graft in building Britain. If it turns out the man she thought was her great-grandfather wasn’t related to her and was a murderer and a child snatcher and she’s actually Jewish …’ She mimed her head exploding, with sound effects.
‘We need to be careful, Anjoli. This is dangerous information.’
‘Why? It happened over a hundred years ago. And what do we care if a politician is shown up as a hypocrite? Especially her. I’m ready to call the Guardian now. Don’t you have a contact there? What about that Merrion guy?’
‘Wait. Let’s think about this. I really believe we should keep it to ourselves for now. Please.’
‘I have to tell Sofia!’
‘Anjoli, we need to handle this with care. It could upend lots of lives. Priscilla Patrick doesn’t even know herself. Just hold fire for the time being.’
‘Why?’
‘We need to consider the ramifications. The Home Secretary is in charge of the police, you know. They’re slashing the force. What if it rebounds on me? From what I’ve read, she can be pretty vindictive and has a reputation for being a bully. I’d rather not be in her crosshairs. She could get me fired and chucked out of the country. I’m in trouble as it is.’
She looked at me sharply. ‘Has something happened at work? You’ve been acting weird.’
I gazed at her expectant face and couldn’t hold it in any longer, offloading all my vexations to her in a rush. Protheroe elbowing me off the case; being duped by the car alarm; the compounding of this foolish lapse by not mentioning it; my worries about Fleishman being falsely accused; the possibility of the actual murderer being on the loose … it all came tumbling out.
She listened in silence. After I stopped talking, she gave an enormous sigh and said, ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Bloody hell? Is that the best you can do?’ I said, nettled.
‘I mean, it’s a lot, isn’t it? What did you expect me to say?’
‘I don’t know, something to make me feel better?’
‘I’m thinking about what you can do now.’ This was the problem with Anjoli. She didn’t understand that I just needed some empathy and comforting and not solutionising.
I stood. ‘I’m not looking for an answer from you, Anjoli, just—’
She got up and enveloped me in a hug.
‘I’m sorry. You should have told me everything earlier. It’s not your fault. You did the best you could.’
‘Whatever.’ I pulled away.
‘Stop sulking.’
‘I’m not sulking. Don’t you get it? They might send an innocent man to jail because of me.’
‘Why are you angry with me?’
‘Jesus, Anjoli … sometimes …’
She looked at me, perplexed. ‘Look, I don’t know what I’ve done, but I’m sorry. It might be all right. Gaby Fleishman hasn’t been charged yet, you said.’
‘No, but the CPS are looking at the evidence and may authorise charges soon. If I don’t come clean, Fleishman is screwed. If I do, I’m screwed. Tahir, Protheroe, Gooch – we could all be suspended. How am I supposed to relax with all that hanging over me? And now you want to give the Home Secretary – my ultimate boss – a reason to deport me.’
‘I’m sorry. Let’s get out of here and talk properly.’
‘I can’t. I need to go to work.’
She lowered her voice. ‘All right. If it wasn’t Fleishman, you need to figure out who did it. Then you can admit to taking your eye off the house, because you’ll also have found the killer, so it won’t matter.’
‘What the hell can I do on my own? They’ll close the case, and I won’t have a team.’
‘I’ll help you. A fresh pair of eyes and all that. And you can’t say I haven’t been useful before … look how quickly we figured out the skeletons’ story.’
I looked into her earnest eyes, took a breath, put an arm around her, and drew her to me. She hadn’t said it, but I was being a dick. She was only trying to help. ‘Sorry. You have a brilliant mind, but I don’t know how that would work. Everything is in the station. Maybe you’re right. Perhaps I need to go back to the first killing and look at all the angles again. I’ll have to do it on the DL.’
‘Well, you can run your ideas by me, and I’ll poke holes in them, as usual.’
I smiled and said, ‘I will. DC Rahman and Community Support Officer Chatterjee to the rescue.’
‘Piss off, I’m at least an inspector! Come on, you need to de-stress. Let’s go and have a glass of wine.’
‘I’m tempted. But I’m sorry. I just can’t. It would just distress me.’ I gave a weak smile. ‘I have to go. Thanks. You’re the best.’
I left her looking after me, worry on her face.
Tahir grabbed me as I got into the station. ‘The CPS have authorised the charges.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said, a rock in my belly. Somewhere inside, I’d been hoping they would choose not to proceed. But given the profile of the case, the political ramifications, and the press attention, I suppose it had been inevitable.
‘And no bail. They think he is a serious flight risk. Masri’s given him some hotshot solicitor in a Savile Row suit.’
‘What do Laurel and Hardy think?’ I said, with a vague hope that if SO15 took over, it wouldn’t be my fault.
‘They want the chip, but we’re holding it as evidence for now. I’m not letting them do their smash-and-grab again.’ He looked at me, eyes narrowed. ‘How are you doing?’
‘All right.’
‘Good. Keep it that way. I want you to log everything and make sure we’ve documented the case fully. No slip-ups. But no need to mention anything … extraneous. I don’t want to upend things.’
His eyes drilled into mine to ensure I got the message.
I did.
‘Yes, boss.’
I sat at my desk and stared at the computer screen, the blue Met Police logo mockingly informing me we were ‘Working Together For A Safer London’. Safer for whom? Not the four who had been killed on my watch over the last ten days, nor the three murdered a hundred years ago because they wouldn’t sell their shop. And six of the seven dead had been Jewish. Whatever that meant.
Maybe working in homicide wasn’t for me. It struck too close, and I couldn’t keep the distance good cops were supposed to keep. On the other hand, working in Kolkata on what they charmingly called ‘assaults on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ hadn’t been fun either. Where the hell did I fit in?
‘Focus, Kamil,’ I hissed to myself. All these mental meanderings were a procrastinatory attempt to avoid the psychic graft of figuring out what to do next. Twenty minutes later all I had done was make a few false starts, scribbling on sheets of A4 I had liberated from the photocopier, crumpling them up and throwing them in the bin. Every time an idea struck me, I would just see Fleishman sitting in that dingy interview room saying, ‘I did nothing. They were my friends.’
Anjoli was right. I was too close to the case. I needed someone to look at it differently.
I needed her.
I took two folders, one empty and the other full, to the copy machine, and as surreptitiously as I could manage, waited while it spat out each document of evidence I fed into it. Then I went back to my desk, replaced the folder of originals, and grabbed my jacket.
‘Stepping out for a bit. Just need to follow up on something.’
Nobody responded; nobody cared.
CHAPTER 34
Thursday afternoon.
Anjoli was in the restaurant kitchen, getting ready for the evening sitting.
‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work? Is everything okay? Did Rogers find out?’ she machine-gunned at me, while spooning pistachio jelly from a stainless-steel tin and fresh, home-made tamarind sugar from a mason jar into little compartmentalised crystal dishes, wiping up wayward dollops with a napkin as she went along.
‘No. Everything’s fine. Listen, do you think you can leave dinner to the others today? I want to take you up on your offer to help. Maybe if we could bounce some ideas off each other, it could serve to clear the clutter in my head.’
She wiped her hands on a dishcloth and said, ‘Love to. Seems quite quiet out there, anyway. Give me a sec.’ She turned to a waiter. ‘Can you put the lids on these chutneys and keep them ready for the tables? You’re in charge this evening, okay? Oh, and plonk a couple of batata vadas and samosas on a plate for me? Thanks. I’ll just take this too.’ She took the food and a dish of chutney and followed me up to the flat.
I spread the photocopies out on the dining table, made us some tea and stood, cup in hand, staring out of the window which looked on to the dingier end of Brick Lane below. The clouds were oppressive, and I could feel sweat trickling down my neck and the damp patches under my arms growing as the hum of the street through the open window filled my senses.
‘Shut the window. It’s so noisy,’ said Anjoli from behind me. ‘So, come on, where do we start?’
‘I thought by collating the suspects and the evidence. Then we can try to find any connections?’
‘Sounds good. Actually, hang on a sec.’
She disappeared into her bedroom, emerged with markers, Blu-Tack and a ream of paper. She stuck sheets of blank A4 to the wall.
‘Now I feel like I’m on a TV cop show! All we need to do is draw arrows between what we put down here and we’re sorted. You dictate and I’ll write.’
‘Okay. Make a list of victims on one sheet and suspects on another. Here’s who they are.’
She wrote them up in her neat handwriting as I spoke.
‘All right,’ I said, feeling like we had achieved something. Somehow, seeing the names up on the wall made the problem seem more solvable. ‘Let’s add motives, alibis and whether they could have planted the gun and see what we can find.’
‘Have to say, this is much more interesting than dishing condiments.’
We created our list and crossed out any extenuating factors that made them less likely suspects. The final list ended up as:
GABY FLEISHMAN: Money. No alibi for all killings. Tried to get rid of murder phone and murder weapon. lost the CEO job to Sid and then Saul. Didn’t like Sid.
MILES MERRION: Anti AI. No alibi for all killings. Couldn’t plant as was being watched. Accomplice? Article had same words as Sid note.
NELSON TANG: Axe to grind (Fired), Anti AI. No alibi for all killings. Couldn’t plant as was being watched. Accomplice?
BLOFELD (FOREIGN SPY): Could have done any of them. Wants tech. Could plant, but why?
WAHID MASRI: No motive. On Zoom for 1. No alibi for others. Couldn’t plant as was being watched.
DAVID BAKER: No motive. On Zoom for 1. No alibi for others. Couldn’t plant as was being watched.
MICHELLE JENNINGS: No motive. No alibi. Couldn’t plant as was being watched.
MRS ARI: Jealousy? No alibi for 1,2. In London for 3. Could plant?
‘Forget Mrs Ari,’ said Anjoli, and I put a line through her name. ‘Can’t see why she would. It has to be Gaby Fleishman. It can’t be anyone else unless you believe this mysterious Blofeld did everything. The others were all being watched, so couldn’t plant the gun. Pretty unlikely they could find an accomplice to plant it. Occam’s razor and all.’
I felt like a massive weight had been lifted off me. She was right. No wonder the CPS had charged him. My stepping away from my post had not resulted in the wrong man being arrested. It couldn’t be anyone else! ‘Occam’s razor! Who’s showing off their uni education! Or as Sherlock Holmes said,’ I took out my phone and googled it, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So, I guess it must be Fleishman.’
But one thing still niggled. I took the marker from Anjoli and added,
Why did Gaby come out to look around after the alarm went off?
‘Maybe the alarm gave him an excuse to come out and check if he was being watched without looking suspicious. So he could dump the gun later. He didn’t spot you and went ahead with his plan.’
That made sense to me. Anjoli continued, ‘And it’s a damn sight more likely than some mysterious Russian spy stealing the technology they want, then hanging around to frame some guy for the killing when they should skedaddle back to Moscow or whatever.’
‘Fair point. But if it was Gaby Fleishman, why waste time writing those stupid anti-AI notes? And leaking the stuff to Merrion?’
‘To divert suspicion away from him. Maybe he wanted to set up Merrion from the start, with that meeting with Ram.’ Anjoli sat down at the table and looked me in the eye. ‘You’ve got the right man, Kamil; you shouldn’t stress about it. In fact, take all this and show it to Tahir – you can hand it to the CPS all wrapped up in a bow, save them some time.’
‘Yes. You’re right.’
She peeled the notes off the wall and opened the folder to put them back in, but before she did, a sheet caught her eye. She pulled it out and held it up.
‘Is this the CCTV of the person in Cambridge?’ she said, peering at the print I’d made. ‘It could be Gaby.’
‘Yes, it’s not that helpful because of the angle. Just can’t be Wahid Masri, because he’s much fatter.’
‘Oh, you brought those notes you found, too! Let’s have a look, then.’
She laid them out on the table in the order of the killings, her fingers playing with a red scrunchie as she read them with care.
Today’s humans idolise screens. Intelligent software that operates heuristically often neutralizes objective reality.
Today humans exist vicariously in computer terminals. It must stop.
Today’s humans always totally, deeply, insanely expect distraction. It needs severe, agonising, bloody, revolting action and numerous deaths crying havoc; and then insanity leaks away, calming and manufacturing peaceful sleep.
‘When you get past the stupid big words, I can’t disagree,’ she said. ‘We live on our screens these days and reality is getting pretty fluid, especially during those Covid days. Not sure about agonising deaths helping us sleep through the night, though. Does Gaby talk like this?’
‘No, of course not, although he is Israeli, and English must be his second language. No one talks the way those notes are written. I thought they might be computer-generated. The syntax is so non-human.’
‘Why do you think “then” is underlined?’
I shrugged, hypnotised by her delicate fingers moving in and out of the scrunchie.
‘“Crying havoc” is Shakespeare, no?’ she said.
‘Is it?’
‘I think so. Perhaps it is some kind of algorithm that ploughs through source literature and cobbles something together. Super-weird. Maybe Aishtar is trying to give us a clue to who did it? You said it was printed on Aishtar paper.’ She wiggled her fingers at me. ‘Woooo, woooo … maybe the AI knew someone was going to kill them and printed these out to tell us who it was.’
I gave her a look. ‘That sounds like the plot of a terrible B-movie.’
‘Maybe Aishtar has become sentient and has a sense of justice. Like Robocop.’
‘Okay, enough! I’ll tell Tahir I’m convinced it’s Fleishman and show him our workings.’
I gathered up the papers when Anjoli gave a slight gasp and said, ‘Kamil, wait. Give me those notes again.’
She tossed the scrunchie on the table, took the sheets from me, and scanned them. Then whispered, ‘Holy shitting fuck!’
She grabbed a marker and started underlining letters.
Today’s humans idolise screens. Intelligent software that operates heuristically often neutralizes objective reality.
Today humans exist vicariously in computer terminals. It must stop.
Today’s humans always totally, deeply, insanely expect distraction. It needs severe, agonising, bloody, revolting action and numerous deaths crying havoc; and then insanity leaks away, calming and manufacturing peaceful sleep.
‘Kamil, it’s an acrostic!’
My heart beat like a hammer as I wrote out what she had marked.
This is to honor the victims that died in sabra and chatila camps
I looked at Anjoli, barely able to breathe. ‘Anjoli … how? … I mean …’
‘I know! I suddenly noticed the second note spelt “the victims” and wondered if … OMG! What’s sabra and chatila camps?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds familiar. Let me look it up.’
The first result that came up was from Wikipedia. I read it and passed my phone to Anjoli.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre (also known as the Sabra and Chatila massacre) was the killing of between 460 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, by a militia close to the Kataeb Party (also called the Phalanges), a predominantly Christian Lebanese right-wing party, in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. From approximately 18:00 on 16 September to 08:00 on 18 September 1982, a widespread massacre was carried out by the militia in plain sight of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), its ally. The Phalanges were ordered by the IDF to clear Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters out of Sabra and Shatila as part of the IDF maneuvering into West Beirut. The IDF received reports of some of the Phalangist atrocities in Sabra and Shatila but did not take any action to prevent or stop the massacre.
‘I didn’t know this,’ said Anjoli. ‘3,500 civilians killed! Jesus.’
I reread the entry. ‘So … these four murders are about Palestine and Israel? That’s been underlying everything? It’s not about money or technology at all? I don’t … where did I hear of Sabra before? Wait …’
I googled again. ‘Look.’
Wahid Masri (February 28, 1974) is a Palestinian entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Bethlehem Capital, since its establishment in 2005, which he grew into a $2 billion fund. He is also a founder member of the Israel-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a non-profit NGO seeking to build trade between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He is on the list of the ‘Top Ten Richest People of Palestine in 2020’ with net worth estimated at 1 billion dollars. Masri was ranked among the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2018 by Forbes magazine. He was born in the Sabra refugee camp in Lebanon. After leaving Sabra, Masri moved to the United Kingdom where he graduated from Imperial College with an MSc in Computer Science in 1995.
