At Paddington, Shepherd glanced across as the doors opened but the man was still seated, arms folded. The doors opened and passengers poured off, then more piled on, mainly businessmen with briefcases. Shepherd tensed in case the man made a last-minute dash as the doors closed, but they slammed shut and the train moved off.
An overweight woman in a dark raincoat was standing in the other carriage with her back to the connecting door, obscuring his view. It was a nuisance but not a major problem: while the train was moving, there was nowhere for the man to go.
The next stop was Warwick Avenue. The man stayed where he was, arms still folded, chin on his chest, almost as if he was asleep.
Maida Vale. The woman in the dark raincoat got off so Shepherd had a clearer view of his quarry.
Kilburn Park. The train slowed. The doors rattled open. Shepherd looked at his watch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. The man had stood up and was peering at the signs on the wall of the station as if confused as to where he was. Shepherd stood up, and as he did so the man hurried off the train. Shepherd followed – narrowly missing being caught in the closing doors.
He followed the man up the escalator to the surface, keeping close enough to him to see which way he went on leaving the station. The man passed through the ticket barrier, Shepherd behind him.
The Saudi folded his arms and stared at the woman. She stared back with unblinking brown eyes. She looked like a secretary in her dark blue two-piece suit. A woman trying to be a man, he thought contemptuously. ‘You have no right to keep me here,’ he said quietly. He had no need to raise his voice: he had the law on his side, and he knew his rights to the letter.
‘You’re absolutely correct,’ she said brightly.
The Saudi said nothing. He turned his head slowly and stared at his reflection in the large mirror to his right. There would be a man on the other side, he knew. The woman’s boss. Watching to see how he reacted to being questioned by a female. They were assuming that because he was an Arab he would be uncomfortable facing a woman in a position of authority, but they were wrong. She had a Bluetooth headset on her right ear and the Saudi was certain that her boss was relaying instructions to her. She was a robot, nothing more, a machine carrying out her master’s instructions.
The only furniture in the room was the metal table and the two chairs they were sitting on. The floor was tiled and the walls were concrete, painted pale green. To his left there were four plasma screens, all blank. Above them a large white-faced clock ticked off the seconds. Two small speakers were set into the ceiling.
‘I don’t have to say anything,’ he said.
The woman wore no wedding ring but she had the look of one who had been married. Her hands were together on the table, nails glistening with colourless varnish. Her lipstick seemed to have been freshly applied and her hair brushed. A typical woman, thought the Saudi. She needed to look her best, even for an interrogation.
‘I want a lawyer,’ he said, more firmly this time.
‘I’m sure you do,’ she said. She glanced at the clock and checked the time against her wristwatch. A Rolex, the Saudi noted, but a cheap one. Steel. The Saudi had half a dozen Rolexes, all gold, and four were studded with diamonds, but he rarely wore them. ‘I’m so glad it’s got a second hand,’ she said.
‘What?’ he said, frowning.
The woman nodded at the clock. ‘I always feel that unless a timepiece has a second hand, it’s not really performing its function. I do hate those digital models, don’t you? You have no real sense of time passing.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ hissed the Saudi. ‘Have you brought me here to talk about clocks?’ A brief smile flickered across her face and the Saudi realised that she regarded his flash of temper as a victory. ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘At least I have the right to know the identity of my interrogator.’
‘Actually, Mr Ahmed, you have no rights at all. Not in here.’
‘I am a British citizen. I travel on a British passport. I am entitled to all the rights and privileges of a British citizen, and I am covered by the European Convention on Human Rights.’
‘Let me tell you what we know,’ said the woman. ‘And then I will tell you what we want to know.’
‘
Anta majnuun
,’ said the Saudi contemptuously.
‘No, I am not crazy, Mr Ahmed.’
‘I demand to see your superior,’ said the Saudi.
‘I am in charge of this investigation.’
‘But you won’t even tell me your name.’
‘You do not need to know my name.’
The Saudi scowled. ‘Man ta’taqid annaka tukhaatib?’
‘I know exactly who I am talking to, Mr Ahmed. Now, if you would just remain quiet while I run through what we already know, I’d be most grateful. Your name is Abdal Jabbaar bin Othman al-Ahmed although the name on your UK passport is just Abdal Ahmed.’
Her accent, when she said his name, was perfect, the Saudi noticed. She was refusing to speak to him in Arabic but he had no doubt that she was fluent.
‘Abdal Jabbaar – Servant of the Compeller. A religious name,’ she said. ‘You father is Othman bin Mahmuud al-Ahmed. For many years he was a facilitator for the Saudi Royal Family, and became very rich as a result. Now he is semi-retired, although he still acts as a consultant when required.’
‘My father is a well-respected businessman,’ said the Saudi, but the woman held up a hand to silence him.
‘Please let me finish, Mr Ahmed. We need to get this out of the way as quickly as possible. Your father was granted British citizenship thirteen years ago, as were you, your mother and your siblings. You were educated at Eton, and the London School of Economics. A first-class degree. Well done.’
‘I suppose you got a first, too,’ said the Saudi.
‘A double first, actually,’ said the woman. ‘Cambridge. I was a bit of a bookworm at university. Since then you have been in effective control of your father’s business but, as we both know, it is his partners who do the work. You remain a figurehead. And you travel a lot.’
The Saudi shrugged. She was wasting her time, and his. There was no proof that he had ever done anything wrong. Over the last five years he hadn’t acquired so much as a parking ticket. He was careful and covered his tracks well. They had nothing on him, so all he had to do was wait for his lawyer.
‘You hit all the hotspots, don’t you? The South of France, the Bahamas, Aspen. Spending your father’s money.’
‘I do a lot of entertaining,’ said the Saudi.
‘Oh, we know all about the entertaining, Mr Ahmed. The girls. The boys. The drugs.’
The Saudi leaned forward. ‘Hayyaa natakallam bil-’arabiyya,’ he said.
‘No, Mr Ahmed, we shall stick to English. I have no desire to question you in your own language.’
The Saudi shrugged, but said nothing.
‘It’s not the entertaining that concerns us,’ said the woman. ‘In December 2002 you visited Bali and stayed in a suite at the Oberoi Hotel. While in Bali you met with two members of the Jemaah Islamiah network. You checked out on the seventh of December. Two days later a bomb went off killing two hundred and two people. One of the men you met was involved in the attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in September 2004.’
The woman waited for a reaction. The Saudi stared at her stonily. They had nothing. Anything they did have was circumstantial, and in Britain that wasn’t enough. They would have to let him go eventually.
‘In August 2003 you arrived in Madrid. You stayed at the Melia Castilla Hotel. You were there for two weeks, but returned again in February, this time staying at the Ritz.’ She smiled. ‘I’m a big fan of the Ritz myself.’ The smile vanished. ‘You left Spain on the eighth of March 2004. On the eleventh ten bombs went off on commuter trains killing a hundred and ninety-one and injuring fifteen hundred. Do you sense a pattern, Mr Ahmed? Because we do.’
The Saudi said nothing. He tried to swallow but his mouth had dried.
‘Later that year you were sighted in Sumatra. You weren’t observed in contact with anyone from Jemaah Islamiah, but they have been pretty low-key since the Bali bombing. But we do believe that the network’s main bombmaker, Azahari Husin, was in the area. And Indonesian police, who raided a house in West Java, discovered a list of possible targets, including Western-owned hotels, along with the names of twelve operatives who were willing to become martyrs.’
The Saudi felt sweat trickle down his back. He shivered. He knew there was no evidence against him. They might have suspicions, but suspicions could not be used against him. All he had to do was refuse to answer their questions, and eventually they would have to call his lawyer. ‘Laa uriid an atakallam ma’aka,’ he said, and folded his arms.
‘Whether or not you want to talk to me is immaterial, Mr Ahmed,’ said the woman. ‘We will be here until you tell us what we want to know. Just over a year ago you were in London when four suicide-bombers mounted an attack on the Underground. Two succeeded, one above ground, one below. Forty-seven people died and more than a hundred men, women and children were injured.’
The Saudi stared sullenly at her but said nothing.
‘A few months later you were in Thailand, staying at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. You left just before the tsunami hit in the south. A quarter of a million people dead.’ The woman smiled. ‘Not that we think you were responsible for the tidal wave but we do wonder what you were doing in Thailand. Phuket, of course, has been a possible target ever since the Bali bombing. Lots of wealthy tourists. Sun, sea, sand, sex and all that. A few bright boys of mine think you were putting together an operation that was disrupted by the tsunami. One of life’s awful coincidences.’ She smiled and took a sip from a glass of water. She left a smear of lipstick. He remembered the American girl he’d been with the previous night and how she’d left lipstick on her champagne glass. When the men with guns had burst into his suite he’d thought at first that he was being arrested for using a prostitute. But it had soon become obvious that they weren’t policemen and that they had bigger things on their minds.
‘We have no evidence of what you were planning in Phuket, of course – the tsunami washed everything away. But we do know that three men and one woman were staying at one of the beachfront hotels and travelling on Bosnian passports. Do you know much about the former Yugoslavia, by any chance?’ She placed her hands on the table, palms down.
‘I want my lawyer,’ said the Saudi, quietly. ‘Now.’
She ignored him. The Saudi had a sudden urge to stand up and slap her face. He hated her superiority, her arrogance. She was treating him with contempt, and he was not used to that from a woman. He forced himself to stay calm. He was sure that they had used a woman to unsettle him, and it was important not to show that the ruse was working. He tried to smile but his lips dragged across his teeth.
‘In May you were in Sydney, Australia. You stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel. You had a suite on the tenth floor. Not long after you left for London, a hundred and seven people died when three bombs went off at Circular Quay. You see why we’re more than a little concerned, Mr Ahmed. Terrible things seem to happen after you have paid a visit. People die. A lot of people. Including women and children. I’ve never understood the way al-Qaeda so happily kills women and children. Doesn’t the Koran say something about not murdering innocents? Or does the end always justify the means?’
The Saudi said nothing.
‘The right to silence is overrated,’ said the woman. ‘You will tell us why you’re in London, Mr Ahmed. You will tell us and you will tell us quickly.’
‘I want my lawyer.’
The woman smiled. ‘At this point I am prepared to offer you a million pounds sterling for the information we require, and for your future co-operation. We will not require you to give evidence in court, and once we have everything we need from you we will provide a new identity for you in a country of your choice.’
‘I do not need your money,’ said the Saudi, ‘and I do not want it. I want you to release me now. I demand it. I am a British citizen. I have rights.’
The woman stood up and walked to the whiteboard by the door. She picked up a blue marker pen and wrote ‘£1,000,000’ at the top. ‘I’ll put it there to remind you that my offer is still on the table,’ she said. ‘At any stage you will be able to bring a halt to these proceedings by accepting the offer and co-operating.’
‘What proceedings?’ snapped the Saudi. ‘What are you talking about, you stupid woman?’
The door opened and two men walked in. They were in their early thirties, with close-cropped hair and hard faces. They had the look of soldiers but they were wearing casual clothing – dark sweatshirts, jeans and heavy workboots. They had Bluetooth headsets that matched the one the woman was wearing, earpieces in their right ears and stubby microphones that reached the corner of the mouth. They stood at either side of the woman and stared at him. The one on the woman’s left had a broken nose, the one on the right a scar above his lip. The Saudi had seen such men before, and he had made use of them. They were men who would kill without conscience – he could see that in their eyes.
‘I am asking you again, Mr Ahmed. Would you please tell me what you have been planning while you have been in this country?’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ said the Saudi. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Well, then,’ she said, as cheerfully as a Girl Guide leader. ‘Let’s get started. Please remove your clothing.’
The man walked up to a three-storey house that seemed to have been converted into small flats or bedsits. There were twenty-odd bells by the front door, but he had a key. Shepherd watched from the pavement as he let himself into the house. He had walked from Kilburn Park station to Kilburn High Road, then headed north, turned off on to Willesden Lane, then right into a residential street. As Shepherd had followed him, he’d checked that the phone had sent the text message to Sharpe. It had. And as the man went inside the house, Shepherd dialled Sharpe’s number.