Three loud bangs on the door jolted Mitchell out of a dreamless sleep. He groaned and rolled over. ‘Colin, stand by the wall, please.’ It was Kamil. Mitchell put a hand against it to steady himself as he got up. He had slept in some uncomfortable places but nothing compared with lying on a concrete floor with just a threadbare blanket.
He stood with his back to the wall, arms outstretched. A key rattled in the lock and the door opened. Mitchell caught a glimpse of a man holding a Kalashnikov, then Kamil was there with a paper plate and a plastic bottle of water. Kamil smiled. ‘I have food,’ he said, ‘and water.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mitchell.
Kamil gave him the plate. It was covered with a round slice of pitta bread on which lay a chicken leg, a chunk of feta cheese and a handful of green grapes. ‘Looks like you’ve got all four food groups covered,’ said Mitchell, ‘but a beer would be nice.’
‘To be honest, I’d happily give you one, but my colleagues out there are stricter than I am and they would not be happy if there was alcohol in the house.’
‘That’s okay. I was joking,’ said Mitchell. He sat down with his back to the wall and started to gnaw at the chicken leg. Kamil unscrewed the bottle top and handed the water to him. During the day it was stiflingly hot in the basement and Mitchell needed at least three litres of water to replace the fluid he lost through sweat. But at night it was so cold that even wearing his clothes and wrapped in the blanket he still shivered.
‘Have you been using the chess set?’ asked Kamil, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
For a moment Mitchell thought that the other man knew what he had been doing with the pieces, then realised he was only asking if he’d been practising. He nodded and popped three grapes into his mouth.
‘Do you want to play?’
‘Sure,’ said Mitchell. ‘How about we play for money?’
Kamil chuckled. ‘Muslims do not gamble, Colin. We can’t bet money in any form.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Kamil. ‘Where is the chess set?’
Mitchell pointed to The Da Vinci Code. ‘Under the book.’
Kamil crawled over to the paperback and moved it to the side. He picked up the magnetic chess set and opened it.
Mitchell chewed and tried to appear unconcerned. He had kept changing the pieces as he had worked on the screws in the socket so that they would all show the same wear and tear, but there was a chance that Kamil would notice the damage if he looked carefully.
‘Can I ask you a few questions about Islam?’ asked Mitchell.
Kamil seemed surprised. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know much about your religion,’ said Mitchell. ‘I’ve worked in Iraq for six months and I’ve seen the mosques and the men praying but I’ve never understood what the religion was about. What you were saying about there being just one God, it sounded like what I was told at church years ago.’
‘There are many similarities between our religions,’ said Kamil. He put the chess set on top of the book, ‘but we don’t believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God.’
Mitchell smiled. ‘I’ve always had trouble with that myself,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how a God could have a flesh-and-blood son.’
‘We believe that Jesus was a good man, but he wasn’t the son of God,’ said Kamil. ‘We believe that Muhammad was the only true messenger of God.’
‘So you don’t believe in the Bible?’
‘We don’t believe that the Bible is the word of God,’ said Kamil. ‘We have the Koran, which was written on golden tablets in Paradise. It has to be read as if God Himself was speaking.’
‘Would you be able to get me a copy?’ asked Mitchell.
‘But you cannot read Arabic,’ said Kamil.
‘There are translations, aren’t there?’
‘The Koran must be read in Arabic,’ said Kamil. ‘If it is not in the original Arabic, it is not the true word of God.’
‘So how does a non-Muslim learn about Islam?’
‘If you are serious, I could read from my copy, then explain to you what it means.’
‘Would you do that?’
Kamil smiled. ‘I would be more than happy to, Colin. We could start now.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Mitchell. ‘I’d like that a lot.’ He popped another grape into his mouth.
Shepherd parked the BMW in the driveway and let himself into the house. It was just before three o’clock so Katra had probably gone to pick up Liam. He stripped off his clothes, showered and had just slipped on his bathrobe when the phone rang. He picked up the extension in the bedroom. It was Linda Howe, the solicitor who was handling the sale of his house: ‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Has your estate agent been in touch?’
‘No,’ said Shepherd. ‘What’s up?’
‘The buyer’s having trouble meeting his commitments and has asked if you’d be prepared to drop your asking price.’
Shepherd cursed under his breath and sat down on the bed. ‘So I’ve been gazumped?’ he said.
‘Well, strictly speaking, it’s gazumping when the vendor increases his price at the last minute,’ said the solicitor.
‘So I’ve been reverse gazumped,’ said Shepherd. ‘Either way he’s taking a liberty, Linda. We agreed a price.’
‘Absolutely we did,’ she said, ‘but until the contracts are exchanged and they’ve paid their ten per cent deposit, either party is free to renegotiate or even to pull out altogether.’
Shepherd had thought the couple who had offered for the house pleasant enough. He was a financial adviser in his late twenties, working in the City, and she was a couple of years younger, a personal assistant at a public- relations company near Oxford Circus. They had said they were planning to start a family and wanted a house they could grow into. They owned a small flat in Bayswater and had already accepted an offer on it; the husband had arranged a mortgage through his company. They had seemed the perfect buyers. ‘What exactly did they say?’ asked Shepherd.
‘That their buyer has dropped his offer by fifteen thousand pounds. They can’t proceed unless you agree to the same.’
‘So I have to suffer because their buyer’s playing hardball?’ asked Shepherd.
‘We can tell them we’re not prepared to accept a lower offer. The ball’s in your court, Dan.’
‘And if I agree to take the hit, everything goes through?’
‘We amend the contract accordingly and as all the searches have been done we’ll probably be able to exchange the day after tomorrow, with another two weeks to completion. I could probably do it quicker if the other side co-operates.’
‘Their timing’s impeccable, isn’t it?’ mused Shepherd.
‘What do you mean?’ asked the solicitor.
‘From their point of view, it’s perfect timing. They presumably know that I’ve made the offer on the place in Hereford, and I told them about Liam, that he was moving schools. I even told them about Liam’s grandparents. They know I want to move as quickly as possible. And then, right at the last minute, they throw a spanner into the works. No doubt they think I’ll knock off the fifteen grand for the sake of a quiet life.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried that,’ admitted the solicitor. ‘But what do you want to do about it?’
‘I’m on a tight budget with this,’ said Shepherd. ‘If he leaves me fifteen grand short, that’s fifteen grand I don’t have. I’m not sure that the bank will increase my mortgage.’
‘It’s a difficult situation, I know,’ said the solicitor.
Shepherd tried to clear his thoughts. If he’d been Graham May he’d have gone round with a gun and threatened to put a bullet into the man’s leg, maybe threaten to rape his wife as well. But he wasn’t Graham May, he was Dan Shepherd, SAS trooper turned undercover cop, and as angry as he was at what the couple had done, they had still acted completely within the law.
‘What do you want to do?’ asked the solicitor.
