Amazingly, virtually no one in the crowd had paid any attention to what was going on at the side of the park. The armed officers quickly put away their weapons, as uniformed police arrived to shield the body from view, and gently but firmly move the crowd away from the ropes, telling them that someone had had an accident. People were happy to comply since they were far more interested in the music being played on stage than in someone who’d been taken ill.
Whatever explosives there were beneath Malik’s jacket, the man was not alive to detonate them. But within minutes the bomb squad arrived, coming in discreetly from the back of the ground while the police finished erecting a tent over the body and placing a cordon round the area. The concert was nearly over now, and people were beginning to drift away from the back of the crowd. Soon the rest of the audience would be on the move, shepherded out by the police; then the park would be closed while the forensic team moved in.
Liz walked with Tahira to the back entrance where they sat in Fontana’s car watching as various police units came and went. Tahira had said nothing since Malik was shot. She was shaking and was obviously in deep shock. Suddenly she started to cry – big shuddering sobs. Liz put an arm round her. ‘You were very brave,’ she said, meaning every word.
Tahira was trying to speak through her sobs, ‘He was heading straight for me. He wanted to kill me. He wanted to kill all of us.’
Liz had no doubt that Malik had decided to take them with him once he saw he couldn’t get near the stage. Ten more seconds and he would have succeeded. But that wouldn’t help Tahira. So she said gently, ‘You know death didn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to you and me.’
Tahira looked up, wiping her streaming eyes with the back of her hand. ‘What do you mean?’
‘For Malik this was only a temporary world, a brief stop on the way to Paradise. That’s why he wanted to kill himself. Death is welcomed by someone who thinks they’re going to another, better life.’
‘But we would all have died! And he said he cared about me. He told me I should always remember that. He said I was special…’
‘I know. And he meant it. But he also believed you would meet again – in this other, better world of his.’
Tahira nodded. ‘That’s what he said – that I might not see him again here, but that he was certain we would meet in future.’
‘Yes. I am sure that’s what he thought,’ said Liz, and Tahira seemed satisfied by this explanation.
But Liz wasn’t. From where she sat in the car, she could see down the side of the stage to the park. It was a sad sight on that late-summer afternoon: the litter-strewn field, the stage being dismantled, and two white-coated orderlies lifting a stretcher into the back of an ambulance.
Her mind was full of questions. If Malik really had cared for Tahira, would he have wanted to murder her? It certainly looked as if he’d intended to. But did he actually believe he would see her again in Paradise? As far as Liz understood, the celestial rewards were reserved for martyrs – and though Malik might have considered himself a martyr, it was hard to see how his killing Tahira would have made her one as well.
No, he must just have seen her, like the Chick Peas and everyone else at the concert – men, women and children – as a sacrifice, to be killed in pursuit of his objective. And what was that objective anyway? Was it his personal desire to become a martyr, or did he really think of himself as a warrior in a justified war, defending his religion?
Yet he’d had more than half a chance to do what he’d set out to do. He could have exploded his suicide belt at any minute – he’d had plenty of time, even after he’d spotted the armed police coming towards him. The Chick Peas would have escaped – he hadn’t got close enough to the stage – but he could have killed dozens of ‘Infidels’, mainly silly teenage girls, having fun at a harmless entertainment that he disliked.
So why hadn’t he? Why didn’t he pull the cord as soon as he thought he would be captured or shot? If he was the loyal jihadi that he seemed to have been, why hadn’t he gone ahead and achieved his aim?
It didn’t make sense. All these contradictions – to kill but not to kill; to kill a friend but not to kill strangers. There’d never be an answer now. Not with Malik lying dead on a stretcher.
There was only one thing left to do – look after the living. Liz put her arm round Tahira’s shoulders again as Fontana arrived back at the car. This girl still had a life ahead of her.