‘Why? Are you ready for another run?’
Salik laughed. ‘It’s always work with you, isn’t it? No, it’s my wife’s birthday on Saturday and there’s going to be a big party. It’s supposed to be a surprise but I’m pretty sure she knows what’s happening. It’ll be in the afternoon and there’ll be lots of children. Bring your boy.’
Shepherd pretended to consider the offer. Then he nodded. ‘I’m not sure if my ex-wife will let me have him for the weekend but, yeah, I’ll be there.’
‘Excellent,’ said Salik. He gave Shepherd a printed invitation. ‘Don’t bother with a present or anything, just come.’
Shepherd thanked him and put the card into his coat pocket. He stood up, suddenly feeling guilty at what he was doing. He shook hands with Salik. ‘See you,’ he said.
‘On Saturday,’ said Salik.
‘On Saturday,’ repeated Shepherd, although he knew he would not be at the party.
Matiur stepped forward and hugged Shepherd, patting his back.
Shepherd stiffened, but relaxed when he remembered he wasn’t wearing a wire. Button had only wanted him to collect the passport. They already had everything they needed to put the Uddin brothers away.
He went downstairs. Part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to see them again, but another part was sorry he wouldn’t be going to the party. He liked Salik, and under other circumstances he could imagine them being friends. But Salik liked Tony Corke, and Tony Corke was only a role Shepherd had been playing. After today he would cease to exist. In a few weeks, or months, Salik’s world would collapse around him, and it would all be Shepherd’s fault. He didn’t want to dwell on his betrayal of Salik Uddin.
As he walked out of the stairwell and into the street a man in a beige raincoat stepped aside to let him go by.
‘Thanks,’ muttered Shepherd.
The man grunted. He had his head down but Shepherd caught a glimpse of his face. Light brown hair, a long face with a dimpled chin, brown eyes. It was a face Shepherd had seen before. He looked over his shoulder but all he saw was the man’s back disappearing up the stairs.
Shepherd walked down the road and stopped outside a mobile-phone shop. He stared into the window, unseeing, as he flicked mentally through his memory files, searching for that face. It wasn’t someone he’d met, or spoken to, he was sure. And it wasn’t a computer file he’d seen. It was a photograph – but where? And when? Then the correct neurones fired and Shepherd remembered. He took out his mobile and phoned Sharpe. ‘Razor, are you in the car?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Where are you?’
‘Still parked up. Did everything go okay?’
‘I’ve got the passport, but something’s cropped up. I’ve just seen a face I recognise.’
‘Who?’
‘That’s the problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I recognise the face but I don’t know the name. It’s a terrorist that Button’s on the lookout for. She had his photograph up on some sort of hit list.’
‘What sort of terrorist?’
‘Al-Qaeda.’
‘Shit.’
‘Exactly. Look, you hang fire there. I’m staying put until I’ve spoken to Button.’
Shepherd cut the connection and phoned Button.
Yokely and Button gazed through the glass window at the man sitting in the room next door. He was an Arab in his early thirties, good-looking with jet-black hair and piercing black eyes. He was wearing a well-cut suit and a crisp white shirt, buttoned with no tie. He sat with his legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest.
‘He can’t see us, but he probably knows he’s being watched,’ said Yokely. The American nodded at a manilla file on the table behind him. ‘I’ve printed out some of the information we have. See what you think.’
Button sat down and opened the file. There were a dozen or so surveillance photographs of the Saudi, taken with a long lens.
‘Can I get you some coffee?’
‘Tea would be nice,’ said Button, setting the photographs to one side and picking up a computer printout. ‘Low fat milk, if you have it.’
Yokely went out of the room and reappeared a couple of minutes later. ‘On its way,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing in the file that says you arrested him,’ said Button.
‘He’s not under arrest,’ said Yokely.
‘Just helping you with your enquiries, I suppose,’ said Button.
Yokely flashed her a cold smile. ‘This isn’t a police investigation,’ he said. ‘We’re not bound by the usual rules of interrogation. He stays here as long as need be. And if he refuses to co-operate, he sits in a cell in Cuba for as long as we deem necessary.’
‘But what evidence do you have?’
Yokely sat down at the table and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. ‘Your Forensics boys found a DNA sample on a glass in a safe-house used by one of the suicide-bombers who hit the Tube last year. They drew a blank but we gave it to our guys.’
‘And they had him on file?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Yokely. ‘We knew it wasn’t the bomber because the bomber’s DNA was all over the place. It matched the DNA of the guy your man Shepherd shot in the Tube station. But we couldn’t get a match on the other DNA on any of our databases, and there were no prints other than the bomber’s. All we had was the DNA from saliva on the glass and no match. That’s when we got creative.’ He grinned. ‘We ran a check through all the available databases looking for a close match. Not a perfect match, but enough of one to suggest a family relationship. And we got a hit, from Baltimore of all places. There was a guy there, a Saudi, who’d been accused of rape back in the nineties. He was a Ph. D. student at Johns Hopkins. The alleged victim was a secretary. She claimed the guy had doped her with Rohypnol, then raped her. She vaguely remembered the rape and a video camera, but there was no physical evidence.’
‘He used a condom?’
‘He did indeed. But he left his fingerprints all over the place, so off the back of that the police took DNA and blood samples to cross-check with other unsolved rapes. Nothing came up, and the case never went to trial. The Saudi left the country and the secretary was driving around in a brand-new Porsche.’
‘He paid her off?’
‘That’s what it looks like, and we couldn’t get her to press charges. But the guy’s DNA stayed on file, and it was a close match to the saliva sample we found in the bomber’s flat. Not close enough to be a sibling, but definitely a first cousin or a nephew. We had enough information to start tracking down all the members of his family. Two hundred or so names, as it turned out. Then we started cross-checking them with visas issued for the UK in the six months running up to the London bombings. That gave us a handful of hits, but by then we’d realised that quite a few of them had British passports.’ Yokely smiled. ‘You do make it easy for them, don’t you?’ he said. ‘The way you hand out citizenship to almost anyone who asks for it.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Button. ‘You need to take it up with our home secretary.’
‘Your capital city is now so foreigner-friendly they call it Londonistan, you know?’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Button patiently. ‘It’s part of being a multicultural society.’
‘Anyway, the ones with British citizenship wouldn’t be recorded entering or leaving the country, so we started to look further afield,’ said Yokely.
There was a discreet knock at the door, which was opened by a young blonde woman carrying a tray with a mug of coffee, a pot of tea, a jug of milk and a bowl of packets of sugar and sweetener. Yokely smiled at the woman and took it from her. He put it on the table, waited until she had closed the door behind her, then resumed. ‘We looked for countries where there had been terrorist incidents and started cross-checking the coming and going of the family members. As you can imagine, it took time. Milk and sugar?’
‘Just milk,’ said Button.