‘Taking your time is only a good strategy if you sense some interest.’
‘I found out that Alyshia had started going to Juhu Beach at the weekends, so I started going there myself whenever I could.’
‘Until you met her.’
‘By chance. It was the perfect accident.’
‘And that was when the affair started?’
‘Oh, no; you see, I knew she wasn’t interested in men by then and it was making Frank nervous. He’d put the most beautiful cricketer that had ever graced the field in front of her and she’d just walk straight past. So when I met her on Juhu Beach, I said hello, exchanged a few words and left her there. No man in his right mind would have been able to do that.’
‘So how did you make it happen?’
‘I felt her watching me. Then she started putting herself in my way. From that moment, it was just a question of taking her to the limit of her patience before striking.’
Mistry’s forearm had come up with his hand cupped and swaying like a cobra in threat display before darting forward and striking at the dashboard.
‘That sounds a little cold-blooded to me, Deepak.’
‘I had to protect myself,’ said Mistry, opening his hands. ‘You know what happens to spies in the end. If I’d fallen for her, how long do you think I could have betrayed her? If she’d ever found out what I was doing to her father, do you think there would be any chance of forgiveness or reconciliation? No, I knew from the beginning. This was a game that had to be played.’
‘And?’ said Boxer, nearly amused.
‘I failed,’ said Mistry. ‘I fell for her completely.’
Boxer glanced across the dimly lit cockpit of the car, the streetlights revealing Mistry in yellow flashes, his face set, the flat black of his pupils seeing nothing but holding the concentrated desperation of a man who’d lost everything.
‘Alyshia and I reconnected after I gave a talk to the sales and marketing teams. This time it was different. There was no reticence. She suddenly seemed to want something from me. I didn’t have to keep my distance, and so it started. She trusted me instantly – and I her. We started telling each other things that we would never have told anyone else.’
‘Did she tell you what had happened in Mumbai?’ asked Boxer. ‘Something happened that she wouldn’t even talk to Isabel about.’
‘Oh, yes. That was why she’d become so vulnerable suddenly,’ said Mistry. ‘She’d gone to the beach house one night when it was in lock-down. The gateman was especially reluctant to let her stay, but eventually he gave in. There was a very important client of Frank’s staying that night.’
‘Was it Amir Jat?’
‘She was intrigued,’ said Mistry, nodding. ‘She’d already met him on one of her business trips to Pakistan with Frank and knew his power. At midnight, a car turned up at the beach house, which Alyshia recognised. It was Sharmila’s. It pulled up in front of the house and stayed there until the gates closed. Only then did Sharmila get out of the driver’s side, which was surprising in itself because she never drove anywhere. She was always driven.
‘She went to the back door of the car and let two children out. Girls. Alyshia said it was difficult to tell their ages, but their heads were around Sharmila’s waist. Maybe six or seven. She took them by the hand and led them up the stairs to the front door, which opened before she got to it. Sharmila fed the children into the crack of the door, turned and left. In fact, Alyshia said, she turned and fled.
‘The car’s courtesy light was still on as she passed Alyshia and it was the look on Sharmila’s face that Alyshia knew would stay with her for the rest of her life. Sharmila’s eyes were wide open, lips parted as if to scream but, as in a dream, unable to produce any sound. It was as if – and Alyshia thought about this a lot afterwards – it was as if, rather than driving away from the scene of her total corruption, Sharmila was eternally driving towards it.
‘And that was when Alyshia realised the sort of man her father was,’ said Mistry. ‘Not just someone who finds weaknesses and exploits them, but who’s also prepared to use corruption to bind those close to him even closer.’
Mercy finished the first interview with Skin and slept for a few hours in a police cell. She woke with a jolt, sat up, back to the wall, feeling desolate. This is my life, she thought: destined for loneliness, her job the only thing that had meaning. No man. No daughter. And no sooner had she thought it than her mind shifted onto the case to find the terrier in her brain worrying at every detail. She called George Papadopoulos, who was not happy to be disturbed; nor was his girlfriend, who rolled over, taking the duvet with her.
‘Mercy, it’s . . . it’s four o’clock in the morning,’ said Papadopoulos, pulling on his girlfriend’s dressing gown, padding into the sitting room.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she said. ‘I want to go and have a look at this unit in Hackney where they were keeping Alyshia.’
An hour later, they were being let into the taped-up unit by a uniformed policeman, who told them that it was owned by the Rosemary Works Early Years Centre and was rented out to a local man, Michael Keane, who used it as an art studio. Mercy called the local drug squad, asked if they knew MK. They did.
‘We’re looking for him,’ she said. ‘Does he have any known associates locally?’
‘Associates is a nice way of putting it. He runs the Colville Estate with a Jamaican, Delroy Dread, and he pushes pills through a kid called Xan – Alexander Palmer.’
‘Any addresses?’
They gave her the addresses and told her to be careful with Delroy Dread, who was a yardie and known for his brutality.
‘Could you bring Xan in for some light questioning?’ asked Mercy. ‘Find out when he last saw MK?’
‘It’ll be a pleasure.’
Mercy and Papadopoulos headed into the tower blocks of the Colville Estate, found Delroy Dread’s address and the stairs blocked by a posse of young black youths, who didn’t seem to have an emotion between them, but recognised cops when they saw them. Mercy asked to speak to Delroy Dread.
‘He sleepin’.’
‘We’re not the drug squad,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘We just want to talk to him about MK.’
‘Come back the afternoon. Den he be awake.’
‘It can’t wait that long,’ said Mercy.
‘It goin’ ’ave to.’
Mercy moved forward and the posse tightened, blocked her way.
‘You don’t want the whole drug squad down here, falling on Delroy, because you wouldn’t let us in to ask a few questions, would you?’ asked Papadopoulos.
‘Disrupt your business just for the sake of a couple of questions?’ said Mercy.
Silence. Not a flicker between them. A boy at the back of the group loped up the stairs. Silence and dead-eyed stares until he returned. The posse loosened. Mercy and Papadopoulos squeezed past. Two youths went ahead, two followed behind. They escorted them to an open blue door. One of them put a hand to Papadopoulos’ chest, showed him where he could wait outside.
‘He not likin’ white people.’
Delroy Dread was sitting on a large cream leather sofa wearing a black and white Ska T-shirt and a pair of black jeans in his overheated living room. The smell of weed was strong. Reggae was playing at low volume, the walls aching with it. The room was lit by red glowing lamps. Delroy Dread was close to six foot five and weighed in at sixteen stone, and none of it was fat. His huge, handsome head looked as if it represented a tenth of his bodyweight. He ran a flat hand over his close cropped hair and a huge, veined bicep jumped under his skin. He lit a cigarette. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth as if the other side had been stitched up, which it had, after a knife attack in his hometown of Kingston when he was a boy.
‘Sorry to wake you so early,’ said Mercy.
‘Haven’t been to bed yet,’ he said, giving her a lop-sided smile, as if there was a new possibility.
‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ said Mercy.
‘You a very nicely spoken lady,’ said Delroy Dread. ‘Where you from?’
‘I’m Ghanaian. My name is Mercy Danquah.’
‘Black Star,’ said Delroy, and held out his huge hand, gave her a finger-clicking Ghanaian handshake, nearly broke her finger off. ‘How can I help you, Mercy?’
‘I’m looking for MK.’
‘In that particular case, I can’t help you,’ he said, looking genuinely disappointed.
‘He disappeared last night.’
‘Still can’t help you.’
‘You know there was some trouble here, just off the estate?’
‘I heard.’
‘In a unit on Branch Place.’
‘I said I heard.’
‘It was MK’s workshop.’
‘So?’
‘Some people were keeping a girl in there as a hostage.’
Delroy Dread lifted his huge head up as if something had occurred to him. He reached across the sofa, picked up a discarded paper, twitched it in his fingers.
‘These two on the police flyers been floatin’ around, litterin’ up the place?’
‘That’s right,’ said Mercy, nodding, thinking he knew something.
His sharpness flickered in his black eyes. He slumped further into the corner of the sofa, sizing her up, measuring her for some kind of deal. He clasped his hands over his head; the T-shirt strained against the slabs of his pectorals. Mercy was astonished to find that she’d unconsciously leaned back and crossed her legs. She told him what they thought had happened last night. He smoked his way through it without comment.
‘Somebody else up here last night lookin’ for these two,’ said Delroy, turning the paper towards himself, inspecting Skin and Dan.
‘Who would that be?’
‘What’s it worth?’
‘I’m not drug squad,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m not sure how I can help you.’
He thought about it for a while.
‘You go to church?’ Dread asked.
‘When I can. It’s not always easy in my job.’
‘I like church,’ said Delroy Dread. ‘I like the singin’. My father was a preacher.’
‘Do you still go?’
‘Not as much as I should, given my capacity for sinnin’,’ he said, smiling.
‘Sin a little less, go to church a little more.’
‘Maybe you right,’ said Delroy, laughing wheezily to himself. ‘The people lookin’ for these two, they from a Muslim gang in Bethnal supplyin’ heroin. It run by a little boxer fella, Hakim Tarar.’
30
6.00 A.M., WEDNESDAY 14TH MARCH 2012
Boxer’s car, London
‘When I told Chhota Tambe that Alyshia had seen Amir Jat at the house, I could see immediately that he considered it a very significant piece of intelligence,’ said Deepak Mistry. ‘That was when he told me to put a recording device in the Juhu Beach house.’
‘How did you get it in there?’ asked Boxer.
‘I had access to the compound through Alyshia and I could always go off and chat with the houseboys, get myself a little space,’ said Mistry. ‘My big problem came when Frank wanted to change his home cinema set-up. The electrician went into the ceiling cavity to do the rewiring and found the recording device.’
‘How long did it last?’
‘A couple of weeks or so.’
‘Did you get anything for Chhota Tambe?’
‘As far as I could tell, there were quite a few parties and some business discussions with foreigners, but nothing involving Amir Jat.’
‘And why did Frank suspect you of being the spy?’
‘The house boys. They had to tell him. They all know what Anwar Masood is capable of.’
‘So why does Chhota Tambe hate Frank so much? It sounds like it’s something more than just envy.’
‘It’s an obsession borne out of tragedy,’ said Mistry. ‘His elder brother and mentor, Bada Tambe, was killed in the 1993 Mumbai bombings. Bada Tambe was unlucky, as far as I can tell. He just happened to be walking past the Stock Exchange on the day of the explosions.’
‘And what did Frank have to do with that?’
‘They were all part of the same gang at that stage: D-Company, run by a Muslim gangster called Dawood Ibrahim, based in Dubai. He was the brains and money behind that bombing campaign and it caused a religious rift in his gang.’
‘And Frank sided with the Muslims?’
‘Being Catholic, he could play both sides, but Chhota Tambe, who led the Hindus, thought he was with the Muslims. All Frank’s big breaks came from his Muslim connections.’
‘So Chhota Tambe had grounds for suspicion?’
‘Frank was still working for D-Company, but they weren’t gold smuggling anymore; that business dried up when the government opened up the Indian economy, and by 1992, gold could be freely imported,’ said Mistry. ‘Frank was employed in Dawood Ibrahim’s new business, which was smuggling heroin.’
‘Now that is not something Frank would like to be in the public domain,’ said Boxer. ‘That would certainly ruin him. Nobody in the West would go anywhere near him. Does Chhota Tambe have any proof?’
‘It’s not like there’s a bill of lading with Frank’s name on it,’ said Mistry. ‘When I told Chhota Tambe about Amir Jat, he was really excited because he knew Jat had close ties to the Afghan Taliban and that he’d been the main conduit of heroin out of Afghanistan back in the 1980s and 1990s. Amir Jat had rewarded D-Company with the heroin business when gold smuggling was no longer viable. Chhota Tambe also knew, as everybody else does now, since a CIA report was published in the Times of India, that in late 2007 the ISI merged D-Company into Lashkar-e-Taiba, who were the terrorists responsible for both Mumbai attacks, in March 1993 and November 2008.’
‘So Chhota Tambe puts two and two together and assumes that if Frank knows Amir Jat then he must be involved with Islamic terrorism in some way?’
‘Not necessarily now, but certainly then, in 1993. The explosive used in those bombings was a military type called RDX – Research Department Explosive – and the quantity required, which was three tons, meant that it could only have come from Pakistan and the person who probably supplied it would have been Amir Jat.’
‘And how does Frank fit in?’
‘Chhota Tambe is convinced he smuggled it in by boat.’
‘Any evidence?’
‘None,’ said Mistry. ‘Doubt is a very powerful thing and obsession a very dangerous condition. It clouds your judgement. And that’s what both Chhota Tambe and Frank D’Cruz are suffering from. Chhota Tambe is obsessed by who Frank is and what he’s done to get there; and Frank is obsessed with what I know about him and Konkan Hills.’
‘Well, that’s enough motivation for Chhota Tambe to have had Alyshia kidnapped,’ said Boxer. ‘Did you hear about a plan of that sort in any of your dealings with him?’
‘No. The kidnap was a complete surprise to me,’ said Mistry. ‘The first I heard about it was from someone masquerading as a representative of Alyshia’s mother’s lawyer. He was very clever. He came through the High Commission. But I’m sure he’d been sent by Frank because he brought Anwar Masood’s men to my door. There was a shootout. I think he was killed. At first I thought the news of the kidnap might be another trap set by Frank to bring me out into the open. Then, after talking to Yash, we realised it was Chhota Tambe.’
‘So Chhota Tambe ordered the kidnap to draw Frank out of his schedule, tried to kill him on his first night in London and, when that failed, he continued with the kidnap in order to punish him?’ said Boxer.
‘No, it was Yash who organised the hit on Frank,’ said Mistry. ‘He didn’t ask permission from Chhota Tambe. He did it just to protect me. I’d been in hiding for months. When Yash found out Frank was going to London, he contacted a gang in Southall.’
‘The only demand we ever got from Chhota Tambe was for “a demonstration of sincerity” from Frank.’
‘I can’t believe he was expec
ting an admission of guilt from him. I mean, not after all this time, but you never know; maybe his obsession had driven him that crazy. I’m sure he had no proof of Frank’s involvement in the 1993 bombings or the heroin smuggling, so he might have had some vague hope of a confession,’ said Mistry. ‘But no, I think it’s more likely he was just torturing Frank. Holding his daughter with no interest in a ransom, giving him a riddle that he couldn’t hope to solve while escalating the brutality. All that must have driven Frank mad.’
At 6.00 a.m., Mercy got a call from the drug squad saying they’d picked up Xan Palmer.
‘He says he and his girlfriend saw MK last night. They left when a couple of Asian guys turned up to talk to MK. He hasn’t heard from him since. Tried to call MK’s mobile, got no answer.’
‘Ask him if one of those Asian men was called Hakim Tarar.’
She heard the officer ask the question, didn’t catch the reply.
‘Says he doesn’t know his name but he’d recognise both of them. One was a small, hard-looking guy and the other was a big, scary fucker, with eyes that turned you to stone.’
‘Would you mind bringing them down to the station? Bethnal Green’s the nearest. I’m going after Hakim Tarar now.’
Mercy asked for some local police back-up before she called on Hakim Tarar, who lived on the fourth floor of a big block of flats on Nelson Gardens. She wanted all possible exits of the building covered before she knocked on his door. Six officers came with her, two with a door breach in case Tarar was feeling shy.
A neighbour came out of his flat on his way to work, just as the law turned up.
‘You know if he’s in?’ asked one of the officers.
‘I heard somebody in there earlier this morning,’ he said, eyeing the door breach before he shot downstairs.
Papadopoulos did what he was good at: hammered on the door.
Mercy nodded at the two officers with the door breach. They swung it and the door flew open.
Papadopoulos went in first, checking each room as he went. The bedroom was dark. He turned the light on.