beard. Finally, she shook her head. ‘He said he seemed to know what he was about. That’s all. Is that when it happened?’
‘We don’t know yet. Before he met Jake-was there anyone else Tom was seeing?’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘He didn’t have time. His taxi came at half past twelve. Just right to get to the far side of Temple Fields.’
Carol couldn’t argue with that. ‘Had he had any threats? Did he ever speak of having enemies?’
‘Not specifically.’ She stroked her non-existent beard again. ‘Like I said, the people who had it in for Tom wouldn’t do anything subtle. He knew there were places he shouldn’t go in Bradfield. Places where he’d put too many of the locals away. But he didn’t live in fear of his life, DCI Jordan.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘He lived his life to the full. His boat, his golf, his garden…’ She had to stop for a moment, hand on her bosom, eyes shut. When she gathered herself together again, she leaned forward, close enough for Carol to see every line on her face. ‘You catch whoever did this. You catch them and you put them away.’
It felt strange being back inside his house. No wonder people spoke of becoming institutionalized. A week away and Tony felt as if his capabilities had been compromised. He led Sanjar into the living room and collapsed into his armchair with a surge of relief. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘As you can see, I’m not in a position to be very hospitable. This is the first time I’ve been home in a week. There won’t be any milk, but if you want some black tea or coffee, you’re very welcome to help yourself. There might even be some fizzy mineral water in the fridge.’
‘What happened to you?’ It was the first thing Sanjar had said to him since they’d left Vale Avenue. He hadn’t spoken in the cab, which Tony had been grateful for. He hadn’t anticipated how much energy the physical activity would take. But the twenty-minute cab ride had allowed him to recoup some of his resources.
‘I think the technical term is a mad axeman,’ Tony said. ‘One of our patients at Bradfield Moor had an episode. He managed to get out of his room and get his hands on a fire axe.’
Sanjar pointed at him. ‘You’re the bloke who saved them nurses. You were on the news.’
‘I was?’
‘Just on the local news. And they didn’t have no pictures of you. Just pictures of the mental case that went for you guys. You did good.’
Tony fiddled with the arm of his chair, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t do good enough. Somebody died.’
‘Yeah, well. I know what that feels like.’
‘There’s not really been any space for you to grieve, has there?’
Sanjar stared at the fireplace and sighed. ‘My parents are really fucked up,’ he said. ‘They can’t take it in. Their son. Not just that he’s dead, but that he took all those people with him. How can that be? I mean, I’m his brother. Same genes. Same upbringing. And I can’t get my head round it. How can they? Their lives are destroyed, and they’ve lost a son.’ He swallowed hard.
‘I’m sorry.’
Sanjar looked suspiciously at him. ‘What are you sorry for? My brother was a killer, right? We deserve all the shit we get. We deserve to spend the night in police cells. We deserve to have our home ripped to bits.’
The pain and anger were obvious. Tony had carved a career out of his capacity for empathy and imagination. He would have done almost anything to avoid being in the terrible place where Sanjar was. ‘No, you don’t. I’m sorry that you’re hurting. I’m sorry that your parents are suffering,’ he said.
Sanjar looked away. ‘Thanks. OK, I’m here. What did you want to know about my brother?’
‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘What he was really like. Nobody wants to hear what my brother Yousef was really like. And the first thing you need to know is that I loved him. Now me, I couldn’t love a terrorist. I hate those people and so did Yousef. He wasn’t a fundamentalist. He was barely a Muslim. My dad, he’s really devout. And he gets so pissed off with me and Yousef because we’re, like, not. Both of us, we’d find excuses not to go to the mosque. When we were kids, as soon as we were old enough, we quit going to the madrassa. But here’s the thing,’ he carried on, taking over the question Tony was trying to ask. ‘Even if we had been devout, even if we had been down the mosque every day, we wouldn’t have heard no radical shit. The Imam in the Kenton Mosque? He’s totally not into that shit. He’s the kind that talks about how we’re all sons of Abraham and we have to learn to live together. There’s no secret gangs meeting behind closed doors plotting how to blow people up.’ He ran out of steam as suddenly as he’d found it.
‘I believe you,’ Tony said, almost relishing the expression of bemused surprise on Sanjar’s face.
‘You do?’
‘Like I said earlier, I don’t think your brother was a terrorist. Which raises a question that interests me very much. Why would Yousef take a bomb into Victoria Park and blow a hole in the Vestey Stand?’ Tony deliberately didn’t mention the dead. Not that either of them was going to be forgetting the dead any time soon. But there was no need to drag them into the foreground. The last thing Tony wanted was to put Sanjar even more on the defensive.
Sanjar’s mouth twitched then set in a straight line. Time stretched out before he eventually said, TI don’t know. It makes no sense to me.’
‘I know this is going to sound kind of crazy,’ Tony said. ‘But is there any way he might have been paid to do it?’
Sanjar jumped to his feet and took a step towards Tony, hands bunched into fists. ‘What the fuck? You saying my brother was a hit man or something? Fuck. You’re as fucked in the head as those bastards saying he was some kind of fanatic.’
‘Sanjar, you don’t have to act like you’re defending the honour of the family. There’s only you and me here. I have to ask because there’s some evidence that suggests that maybe Yousef thought he was going to survive yesterday afternoon. That he was going to be able to leave the country afterwards. Now, that’s not the mindset of a suicide bomber. So I have to try and think of another explanation. OK? That’s all I’m doing.’
Sanjar paced, agitated. ‘You’ve got it wrong, man. Yousef, he was a gentle guy. He was the last man on the planet to be a hit man.’ He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘He’d never been to no training camp. He’d
