Luck was with her. Daniel was on the phone. He raised an eyebrow in a slightly puzzled greeting but finished the call. He was on the scent of some cranberry glass for Mrs Campbell-Wheeler.
âWhere's Jonathan?' he asked when he put the phone down.
âHe's fine,' said Brodie airily. âHe's with his father. Daniel, I have a question for you. I want you to answer it
honestly, not tell me what you think I want to hear. The question is, do you like doing this job?'
She'd succeeded in surprising him. Again. He had to think quite quickly to remember what he'd said when he asked her to trust him with her business. Because he almost never lied, it didn't come naturally. He'd said he needed a job, and she needed someone to cover her maternity leave, and could they kill two birds with one stone? He hadn't said that he'd already been offered the job he really wanted at Dimmock High School. That was the bit he had to avoid letting slip.
âEr â¦sure. I mean, it's not what I trained for, it maybe wouldn't have been my first choice, but it's interesting and I like working with you. Why?' he asked then, his face clouding. âAm I making a mess of it?'
Brodie smiled. âOf course you aren't. You've done what no one else could have done for me â kept it safe and ticking over while I couldn't be in two places at once. I'd have lost it without you, Daniel. I'd have had to shut the door and see everything I'd built fall down. I know it isn't what you want to do with your life. I'll always be grateful that you were willing to put your own hopes on hold till I was able to come back to work.'
He wasn't sure what she was telling him. âYou mean, now?'
She nodded. âIf we can sort out the details. I've imposed on you once: I'm not going to steamroller you now. If you're thoroughly enjoying the work I'll think again. But if you're not â if you're really only doing it because I needed you to â¦
Like a mirage before a man dying in the desert, Daniel saw the image of a classroom, the scrawl of maths symbols on a board, floating in front of him, almost within reach. But if he snatched, would it disappear? And anyway, was it practical?
âBrodie â nothing's changed. You've still got a baby who needs looking after. What are you proposing to do â bring him to work with you? Cart him round the salerooms? Park him in a corner of the Public Records Office?'
Brodie beamed. âOf course not. Jonathan will still need looking after. But maybe he doesn't need me looking after him all the time now. Now he's had his op and hopefully he's on the mend, maybe he'd be just as happy with someone else.'
âLike who? Jack's not going to be on leave forever. They'll find out who killed Loomis, or at least eliminate Jack from the inquiry, and then he'll be back. And Jonathan's not just any baby. He needs special consideration. People whose voices he knows. Would he get that at a nursery, or with a childminder? Would you be happy with that?'
âNo,' she admitted.
âThen who's going to look after him if you come back to work?'
You could have started forest fires with the sparkle in her eyes. âI hope you are.'
âDon't be absurd!' exclaimed Daniel.
âWhat's absurd about it?' demanded Brodie. âYou like him, he likes you. You
don't
particularly like this job. I, on the other hand, love this job and â without wishing to sound ungrateful â I'm better at it than you. It makes sense for us to swap.'
âI'm not a childminder!'
âNeither's Marta, but she's had Paddy often enough. Come to that, so have you. You don't need qualifications to look after a child in its own home.'
âBut â¦I don't
know
anything about babies. I teach secondary level maths. What am I supposed to do with a six-month-old baby?'
âVery basic maths?' hazarded Brodie. âOne rusk plus one rusk equals two rusks? Daniel, you don't have to do anything with him. Feed him. Change him. Talk to him. Stick him in his buggy and take him for walks. You've been doing all those things since he was born. All I'm suggesting now is that we make it official.'
âAnd what's Jack going to say?'
âWell â Jack's going to be a bit surprised,' conceded Brodie. âLook, Jack's the problem. He's driving me insane.
He's got nothing to do all day so he thinks he'll spend time with me. But all he talks about is work. I know every D in the
Oxford English Dictionary
by heart! Daniel, if you don't help me I'm going to end up committing murder!'
Daniel shook his yellow head in bemusement. âI don't know what to say. Of course I don't mind looking after Jonathan. And yes, I know you run Looking For Something? better than I do. I was only ever filling in until you were able to come back. Only â¦will it work?'
âIt'll work if we make it work,' insisted Brodie. âYou will do it, won't you? You'll enjoy it. You can take him to the Science Museum. You can set up your telescope and describe sunspots to him. He'll be much more interested than anyone else. Also, a pram is a real babe magnet.'
Daniel looked at her. She looked at Daniel. Finally he said, deadpan, âAnd that's what you reckon I need, is it? A babe?'
Brodie shrugged. âCouldn't hurt. Come on â what do you say?'
âYou want me to be your nanny.'
She gave up the unequal struggle with a smile. âI suppose that's exactly what I want. We could come up with another job description, if that's what's bothering you. Home Management Executive. Infant Care Operative. Please, Daniel? Can we at least try it? For a week, say? Or until Jack goes back to work, whichever comes soonest.'
When it came right down to it, he could never refuse her anything, and both of them knew it. Brodie was aware that she exploited his love shamelessly, and always had it in mind to stop. But there was always one thing
more he could do for her first.
Nor was Daniel blind to the way she used him. It wasn't cynical, it was just how she was â if there was something she needed she asked for it. He could always say no. But his relationship with Brodie had become the most important thing in his life. It was even when they both still thought of it as a friendship, and it still was now that â at least on his side â it had grown into something more. He didn't want to say no to her.
âI am
not
,' he said firmly, âpositively not, wearing a starched pinny.'
Â
Detective Sergeant Voss was slumped in front of the screen when DI Salmon checked in on him. Before his eyes flickered a succession of staccato images of such unsurpassed ordinariness they could have been used to cure insomnia.
Salmon came bearing coffee. âThought you might need a break.'
Voss accepted the polystyrene cup gratefully. Though it was impossible to make a positive ID, the liquid inside was brown and hot and if he told himself it was coffee it would taste something like coffee. Anyway, he appreciated the gesture. He leant back in his chair and stretched like an old stiff horse.
âAny luck?' asked Salmon.
âYes,' said Voss, sipping cautiously, âand no. I've got Loomis going into The Rose, I've got him coming out of The Rose. Four separate times on the day he died. Well, that's no surprise, it's where he worked. Except in the eyes
of the licensing authority, which thinks it's owned by a respectable elderly aunt of his, The Rose was Joe Loomis's pub. As well as Joe, and what you might laughingly call his normal clientele, I've got other people coming and going. Some I recognise, some I don't. One of them may know what happened to him, but none of them's going to knock on our door and tell us about it.'
âAnyone beginning with D?'
Voss shook his ginger head. âNot among those I recognise. We could send the others to the PNC, see if anybody knows them. Though the images aren't great. The camera's at the bottom end of Rye Lane.'
âWhy? When one of the local godfathers is doing business out of the pub in the middle?'
âBecause when it was positioned closer to The Rose it kept getting broken,' said Voss, deadpan. âLocal kids found out that a well-aimed bottle was worth twenty quid a time.'
âAnd now Loomis is dead and we may have a picture of his killer but the camera wasn't close enough to ID him,' said Dave Salmon with some satisfaction. âWho says there is no God?' He pulled over a spare chair. âWant to run some of the mystery men for me?'
Voss's fingers skipped over the keyboard. âThese are just that day. If you want to go back further, you'll need a more comfortable chair.'
In a perfect world, he thought, watching the little figures hurry Chaplinesque across his screen, DI Salmon would immediately stiffen, point and say, âBut that's Mac
The Knife
McManus, I arrested him last year for stabbing a
rival East End gangster, he only got off on a technicality!' Unfortunately, real life is seldom that elegant. Most unidentified bystanders who might know something about a crime remain unidentified and you just have to hope they didn't know much.
Only a few minutes into their joint vigil, though, Salmon did indeed stiffen and lean closer to the screen. âCan you run that again?' Voss obliged; and again when Salmon had watched the five-second clip intently and wanted to see it again. Then he had it frozen.
âWell now,' he said softly, âwhat are you doing here?'
Voss looked at him in astonishment. âYou know him?'
âYes,' said Salmon. If he remained in any doubt it didn't show. âHe's an Arab called Daoud. I first came across him when I was working with Drugs Squad.'
âDaoud with a D?' Voss gave a whistle. âSo it was about the drugs after all. Except â¦' He scrolled back and forward a few times. âThat isn't a drugs delivery. He doesn't take anything in and he doesn't bring anything out. Joe Loomis wouldn't be interested in the sort of quantities you can carry in your pockets.' He checked the time. âThat's a couple of hours before Joe got stabbed. If there was a problem with the deal, maybe they arranged to meet later on neutral ground. But then Joe would have taken back-up â¦
âI don't think it's anything to do with drugs,' said Dave Salmon.
Voss was surprised. âWhat else? We know Loomis was distributing the stuff, and we know he was doing it from The Rose. And you know the mule. But he hadn't got the
goods with him. He'd stashed them somewhere while he tried to renegotiate the price. Joe wouldn't play ball, and they ended up in a knife fight in which Joe came second.'
âWell â maybe,' said Salmon. âIf we're very, very lucky, maybe that's all it is.'
Voss felt his skin prickle and his blood slowly freeze. Dimmock was no metropolis: it wasn't often the war on drugs produced a salient here. If Battle Alley made a breakthrough and apprehended a murderous drug-runner, that was going to be a big news day. He was afraid to ask what Salmon suspected that was even bigger.
But he had to. âAnd if we aren't that lucky?'
Salmon looked at him like a doctor breaking bad news. âIt's five or six years since I was with Drugs Squad. I moved on, so did Daoud. Last time I saw him he was up north, recruiting suicide bombers for al-Qaeda.'
Jack Deacon had been accused of many things in his time, but terrorism wasn't one of them. The new information cast the Loomis case in an entirely new light. He hadn't died because he'd made threatening noises about anyone's family. He'd died because somehow he'd got involved in the war on terror.
A couple of Saturday morning phone calls was all it took to bring Deacon's gardening leave to an abrupt end. Division recognised, however grudgingly, that if Dimmock was facing real danger there was no one better equipped or more ready to defend the dowdy old broad than Jack Deacon.
The first thing he did was pull Dave Salmon and Charlie Voss into his office and shut the door. âWho knows what?'
âIn this nick? You're looking at them,' said Salmon. âAs soon as I realised what we'd got I went straight up the line. You'll want to go public at some point, but when is your call.'
Deacon nodded his approval. âGood. I don't want this descending into a general panic. I don't want Mrs Aziz's 8-Till-Late on the corner of Edgehill Road burnt to the ground because, although she speaks with a Birmingham
accent, her father came from Pakistan. I don't want brown kids having to fight their way home from school and white kids scared to use the buses for fear of what's been left under a seat.'
âThe problem is,' murmured Voss, âif someone's intending to plant a bomb here, people need to know. General vigilance is our best chance of finding the terrorists before they're just an interesting pattern on the side of a broken building. Also, they have a right to know.'
Deacon scowled. Not because he disagreed with anything Voss had said, but because he didn't like hearing the words
people
and
rights
in the same sentence. To Deacon, the general public was an animal very much like a sheep. It needed looking after. It needed protecting. It needed saving from its own stupidity, and very often the task fell to him. But it only confused matters if you started thinking of it as an intelligent creature with rights and obligations. Deacon saw no reason to invest it with the former until it proved better at shouldering the latter.
âThey'll panic. They'll all decide to visit their Auntie Vera in Wigan, and jam the road so none of them can go anywhere. And we won't be able to get about either.'
Salmon nodded. âThere's no such thing as an orderly evacuation. Once this is common knowledge, life won't go on as before except that people will be a bit more alert. There will be panic and there will be accidents. People will probably die. We want to be sure there's a credible threat before we go that route.'
âIs it our call?' asked Voss. âWon't Division decide when to make the announcement?'
âDivision are doing what we're doing right now,' rumbled Deacon: âtrying to work out if the threat justifies the cost of going public. Only, being Division, they'll talk a lot more, and break off for lunch, and they won't reach a consensus much before tonight. And hell, it's the weekend â they might not actually get round to doing anything before Monday morning. That's our time. Until they call the play, we can do our job without interference. Blowing yourself up in a built-up area is a crime, and we're detectives. Let's get out there and find ourselves a criminal.'
He raised a questioning eyebrow at DI Salmon. Though Deacon was the senior officer, Salmon was the expert in the field â if he'd argued for a different approach Deacon would listen. But Salmon only nodded.
Voss said, âHow many bodies do we need? Who are we going to tell?'
Deacon looked at him as if he was mad. âNobody. You know what it's like trying to keep a secret in a police station. We tell Uniform â hell, we tell the rest of CID â and yes, they'll be a big help getting out and door-stepping people. But most of them will tell their nearest and dearest first. They'll tell them not to pass it on, but they will. They'll tell their mothers and their sisters, and that nice old lady across the road who's going to need a taxi, and half an hour after I stand up in the canteen it's going to be public knowledge.
âWe'll do that â we'll have to â if we think there's going to be a terror attack in the next forty-eight hours. But it's not a cost-free option. People will be terrified, and frightened people do stupid things. We'll have road accidents as they
try to leave town, we'll have fights over tinned food in the supermarkets, we'll have normally responsible citizens attacking one another because of the colour of their skin. If we have to do it, I want us to be ready. We'll have to manage the announcement â tell people not just about the threat, but what we're doing to counter it. Until we have a plan in place, we keep this between ourselves. You, me, him.' He stabbed his thumb at each in turn. âYes?'
He didn't expect an argument and he didn't get one. But he'd been in this job a long time, he'd seen good people make bad mistakes. âCharlie, what will you tell Helen?'
âJust â¦' He caught the treacherous sentence in a word, but even one word could have been too much if it had been his fiancée he'd been talking to. He coloured to the roots of his ginger hair. âNothing, boss.'
âRight. If this goes pear-shaped she'll be as safe in the hospital as anywhere else. And even if she wasn't, we both know she'd stay there. Helen hears when Uniform hears, and the rest of Dimmock hears soon afterwards.' He turned to Salmon. âI don't know what your chief'll want you to do. But I'd like you to stay. This isn't something I've any experience of, thank God. Anything you can tell me, any advice you can give, I'll be glad of.'
Salmon nodded. âYou've got it. But there's something I should put on record first. The reason I recognised Daoud is that I was five months in deep cover with Counter Terrorism Command. He's the reason I had to come out â four years earlier I arrested him for drug-running. I don't think he remembered me, but I'd taken enough risks for one lifetime. It's always a bit hairy under cover â staying
down when one of my marks could have a Damascus moment at any time would have been plain crazy.
âThat's not what I was going to say,' he said with a hint of impatience. âThe reason I was in deep with these guys â the reason I got away with it for five months â is, it wasn't all an act. My family are Sunni Moslems from Iran. My father's name was Suleiman â he changed it when he came to this country, to make things easier for his children.' He looked at his forearm, between the white of his cuff and the strap of his watch, then up again. In his dark eyes was a kind of humorous challenge. âThat didn't come from a sunbed.'
There were people who had known Deacon longer than Charlie Voss but not many knew him better. But even Voss couldn't tell what he was thinking. His expression had shut down entirely. It was like looking at the Sphinx.
Finally he said, âIs it going to be a problem for you?'
Salmon shook his head. âNo.'
âAre these people gunning for you?'
âNo,' he said again. âAs far as I know they never made me. Even if they did, I'm no more at risk from them now than you are. If there's a terror cell in Dimmock, we're all in danger. It isn't personal, it's a numbers game â they just want to kill as many people as they can.'
Deacon nodded slowly. âOK. Well, it sounds like I need you more than ever.' He sniffed. âForty-eight hours may be a generous assessment. What are our priorities?'
Salmon was in no doubt. âRight now Loomis's death is of no consequence. The only thing that matters is finding out what Daoud was doing here. Who he saw, where he
stayed, and where he went after he left a knife in Loomis's lung.'
âYes,' agreed Deacon. âCharlie, you're going to have to stick with the CCTV. I want all the info you can get on Daoud. All of it â follow him round town from when he arrives until he leaves.' He turned to Salmon. âMeanwhile, you and me go back to being woodentops for a day and knock on some doors. Let's see who'll open up to us and what they have to say.'
âIf we're approaching the Asian community, let me do the talking,' suggested Salmon.
Deacon favoured him with a mirthless grin. âWhy do you think I kept you?'
Â
âMr Tarar will see you now,' said the girl with the long blonde hair; and while Deacon was thinking grumpily,
Damn right he will
, Salmon was already thinking Pervez Tarar was not just a successful businessman, he was a clever one. Most immigrants who get a foot on the ladder make a point of employing other immigrants â family if they have enough, countrymen if they haven't. Mr Tarar of the Green & Pleasant Leisure Company had been cunning enough to find a receptionist who, if you'd sawed her leg off, would have had
English Rose
written right through it.
Knowing he'd be at a certain disadvantage, the name he'd given his company and the face he'd given its front desk were deliberate ploys to raise no questions in customers' minds until they met the chief executive. Most people, even the surprised ones, were too polite immediately to make their excuses and leave; and those who stayed
quickly realised they were dealing with a highly effective entrepreneur and the colour of his skin mattered less than the colour of his balance sheet.
And his balance sheet was very healthy, thank you. The office the policemen were shown to demonstrated the fact in the best possible way, i.e. subtly. Less subtle but equally good at conveying the message was the executive helicopter parked on the lawn outside.
Tarar saw them seated before pulling up his own chair. âIf you have time I'll order tea.'
âThis is pretty urgent,' said Salmon. âWe need your help. This town needs your help.'
Tarar's eyebrows arched. He wasn't a big man, although success and time â he was in his mid-fifties â had added a comfort zone around his midriff. âThat sounds serious, Inspector.'
âHard to overemphasise just how serious it could be,' said Salmon. âWhich is why we're going to tell you things we haven't told our own colleagues yet. We're relying on your discretion. We have no choice.'
âTell me how I can help.'
As he'd promised, Deacon left the talking to Dave Salmon. They'd discussed on the way here â Green & Pleasant had as their base a small Georgian manor house on the edge of Peyton Parvo â how much they should tell Tarar, decided they'd have to tell him most of it to ensure he'd help if he was able to.
So Salmon told him that an Arab known to have associated with terror suspects in Britain had been spotted in Dimmock. âIt's vitally important that we trace his
movements. Find out who he met in Dimmock and where he stayed. One man he went to see is already dead. We need to find Daoud before anyone else dies.'
Dark eyes are not always warm. Those of Pervez Tarar were as chill as the wind coming off the Hindu Kush. âGentlemen â you think I'm the kind of man who knows terrorists?'
Salmon shook his head. âNothing we've been told about you suggests any such thing. But you're in a unique situation in this area. You've created a successful business by beating the locals at their own game; at the same time you've remained in close touch with the Asian community around Dimmock. You don't so much straddle the fence as own it. You're respected by both your own countrymen and the English. You don't need me or anyone to tell you the right thing to do.
âCorrect me if I'm wrong, but I think you know the face of every regular at the mosque in â¦'
He glanced to Deacon, and Deacon didn't let him down. âRomney Road,' he said woodenly.
âThe mosque in Romney Road,' nodded Salmon, âand therefore every stranger who turns up there. If this man Daoud was at Friday prayers, you probably saw him. I expect others did too, but most people living in a country they don't entirely think of as their own try to avoid trouble. It's always easier to keep your head down and say you saw nothing, and who can prove otherwise?
âYou could do that too, sir,' said Detective Inspector Salmon. âBut I don't think you will. This isn't an us and them situation â or rather, the
us
is normal decent law-abiding
people of whatever racial background, and the
them
is a bunch of moral bankrupts with no philosophy beyond an explosive belt. And I think you're
us.
Tell me I'm wrong.'
There was a long pause. Pervez Tarar scrutinised Dave Salmon closely enough to know where he bought his shirts and how much he paid for them. Then he said, âYou're not wrong, Inspector.'