Dave Armstrong poked his head round Liz’s office door minutes after she had read the message from Martin. ‘Just the man I want to see,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard from the French. They’ve been to see Amir Khan again.’
‘Any luck?’
‘No breakthrough yet, though there may be a chink of hope. But there was something that’s got me thinking. He was needled into saying that one of his group in the mosque has a bit of a thing for his sister, Tahira.’
‘Not very pious, that.’
‘Hmm. She’s a beautiful girl. And it’s somehow comforting to know that even an extremist has human feelings.’
‘Do you know which one it is?’
‘Yes. It’s Malik, that guy who attacked me.’
Dave took this in for a moment. ‘Is that all they got out of Khan?’
‘Yes, for the moment. But it could help us a lot. Depending on Tahira, of course.’
He nodded. ‘Yes. I know what you mean.’ He thought for a minute. ‘A4 have a good sense of her routine now, so I’m sure I could set up another meeting with her pretty easily.’
‘Okay,’ Liz said without enthusiasm.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘You said she’d offered to help – and that was before this landed in our lap. If Malik is going to Pakistan, maybe she can chat him up and find out when… maybe find out more about this mysterious Westerner in London. This is just the kind of break we need.’
‘I suppose it is.’ But Liz’s voice still lacked enthusiasm. ‘It’s just that asking Tahira to sidle up to Malik is like asking Daniel to enter the lions’ den.’
‘That turned out Okay.’
Liz smiled. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Of course I do. But we’ve got to take the risk.’
‘Even if it means putting Tahira in harm’s way? Look what happened to Boatman.’
‘Yes, I know. But from what I’ve seen of Tahira, I think she’s a whole lot brighter than Boatman.’ Dave was emphatic. ‘There will be many more people in danger than Tahira if we don’t do this.’
‘Yes. But we’re asking a lot of someone who’s got no experience in our line of things. It’s not as if Tahira’s an extremist we’ve managed to turn. She’s just a nice Muslim girl who works in her father’s shop, for goodness’ sake.’
Dave sat down on the other side of Liz’s desk. She looked at him and sighed. She said, ‘I know what you’re going to say. But it used to be a lot easier: there were people on one side trying to blow things up, and there was us on the other side, trying to prevent them. We didn’t use anyone to help us who wasn’t part of the fight – and who didn’t really understand the danger of helping us. In fact, we made jolly certain that they did understand.
‘It’s not that simple any more. We have to get help from anyone who offers it – we haven’t the luxury of saying, “Leave it to us, you’re not a professional so you can’t get involved.”’
‘But Tahira volunteered to help; wants to help. I’m sorry, Liz, you have no choice. You can’t say no.’
‘I know,’ she said. And later Dave’s words stayed with her, only partly allaying the anxiety she felt about asking Tahira to put herself in harm’s way.
Two days later Liz was sitting in the A4 transit van in the car park of a small industrial estate on the outskirts of Birmingham. She had driven up from London through very heavy rain and her eyes felt strained from peering through the spray thrown up by the lorries she’d overtaken on the motorway. Eventually the rain had given way to a sullen drizzle. She’d parked her car two miles away at another small group of factory outlets, and had managed to step in an enormous puddle as she’d run through the downpour to the waiting transfer vehicle that had driven her here. Now she sat with her shoes off, her sodden feet under a folding table. In another corner of the van an A4 officer called Felix sat crouched on a stool, reading the Daily Mail.
So far so good – Dave had left another note for Tahira in her father’s shop the night before, just at closing time. They knew that this was the day each week when she came here, driven by her cousin Nazir, to buy bulk quantities of supplies from Costco for her father’s shop. While she walked the aisles putting her order together, Nazir – not the sharpest knife in the drawer apparently – would cross to the other side of the overpass and visit an amusement arcade, playing pinball for an hour. They were relying on Tahira to have thought up some excuse to delay him there this morning for an extra half hour, while she met Liz in the van.
Liz leaned down and felt her toes; they were still cold, but just dry enough for her to slip her shoes back on. There was a tap on the van’s back door and Felix sprang up and opened it. Liz caught a glimpse of Dave Armstrong, then another figure emerged from behind him and with his help climbed up into the van. Felix hopped out and closed the door behind him. He and Dave would watch outside from a waiting car; there were two other A4 cars parked at the front perimeter of the industrial estate, occupants ready to spring into action if needed.
‘Sit down, Tahira,’ said Liz, pointing to the chair on the other side of the table. ‘I hope you didn’t get soaked out there.’
‘No, it’s almost stopped raining.’
‘Good. We haven’t got much time, so let me tell you why I wanted to see you.’ She explained that her French colleagues had talked to Amir in prison and that he was well. It was possible he might be returned to Britain, where he would be remanded in prison while it was decided if he should face charges.
At this, Tahira’s face lit up. ‘My father wouldn’t let me go to France to see Amir,’ she said. ‘But if he comes back home, I want to visit him. Will I be allowed?’
‘Yes, but possibly not for a while. Remember, he’s been involved in an attempt to hijack a ship. That’s a very serious thing.’
‘I know,’ Tahira said, and her face grew sombre. ‘But it’s not just the ship you’re worried about, is it?’
‘No, as I told you, we’re concerned because we think he was sent to Somalia to take part in terrorist activities, after being trained in Pakistan. But what worries us most is that we’re pretty sure he was recruited here.’
‘At the mosque,’ said Tahira bitterly.
‘It seems so. And if he was recruited at the mosque, then others might have been recruited there too.’
Tahira said, ‘I promised to try and find out more about Abdi Bakri. But I’m afraid I haven’t been very successful.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘I will keep trying.’
‘No, please don’t.’ Liz saw the puzzled look on Tahira’s face. She took a deep breath. ‘Actually, there’s something else I’d rather you did instead.’