Tony looked thoughtful. ‘No,’ he said. But his mind was racing.
‘Aziz’s mobile.’ We got the call records this morning and I’ve been shut in a cupboard checking out all the numbers.’
‘Anything interesting?’
Kevin shook his head. ‘Mostly business and family. A few mates, but we already had their names. There’s only one thing that looks a bit dodgy.’ He pointed out a number to Tony. ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go phone bought with a false name and address. Those fucking phone shops would sell a phone to Osama bin Laden if he walked in with the cash. They’re supposed to ask for ID, but do they buggery. Anyway, as you can see, there’s a lot of calls and SMS traffic between the two phones. Unfortunately, Aziz erased all the texts. I tried ringing it, but nobody’s home.’
‘When did these calls start?’ Tony asked.
‘Dunno. Aziz only got this phone six months ago. The calls are there more or less from the beginning.’
Again, the magic six months. Before Tony could say more, the door swung open and Carol walked in, speaking over her shoulder to someone in the corridor. When she turned and spotted him, she shook her head in obvious despair.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Did they discharge you already?’
‘Not as such,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk to you, and I wanted to avoid my mother. You know?’
‘Will you excuse us, Kevin? Unless you have something that won’t wait?’ Kevin backed off and headed for his own desk. Carol pushed his chair further away from Stacey and pulled up another next to him.
‘Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘They keep you in hospital for a reason, you know.’
‘You sound like the nurses.’
‘Well, maybe they’re right, did you consider that?’
He rubbed his jaw. ‘I need to be working, Carol. It’s all I know. I don’t do smelling the flowers.’ He saw the spark of understanding in her eyes. She’d once spent three months trying not to do her job. It hadn’t healed her. It had nearly finished her. Nobody knew that better than him. He pointed to his computer bag on Stacey’s desk. ‘I have something I want you to look at. I think I’m seeing something, but I’m not sure if it’s just that I want to see it.’
Carol fetched the laptop and waited while Tony opened the file he’d made of Yousef Aziz’s blog posts. ‘Where did you get this?’ Carol asked.
‘Sanjar Aziz showed it to me, he said, distracted by the screen.
‘When did you talk to Sanjar Aziz?’
This morning. There, have a look at that.’
Carol put a hand on his arm. ‘You know the CTC have brought him in for questioning?’
He stared at the keyboard, head bowed. ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’ He squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s no more a terrorist than his brother was.’
‘Yes, well, there’s a lot of people round here who wouldn’t agree with your assessment,’ Carol said. ‘His brother did blow up a football stadium, Tony. It’s not unreasonable of them to bring him in.’
‘Why didn’t they do it yesterday?’
They were trying not to inflame the Muslim community. His brother was dead, his parents and his younger brother were in distress, he wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘So why now? They’ve got a funeral to arrange. When’s that going to be? Tomorrow? Are they going to let him out in time to bury his brother?’ His voice was rising and Carol put her hand on his arm again.
‘Did Aziz tell you anything useful?’
Tony told her what had passed between them and what he thought he had seen in Aziz’s blog posts. ‘I think I can see a shift in his position. He starts off talking about how we should all learn to live together in respect. His tone is more despairing than angry. It’s like, I can see this, why can’t our leaders, why can’t everybody else? But gradually, it changes. By the end, he sounds much more angry. Like he’s taking it personally that there are these cultural and religious conflicts that mess up people’s lives. Look, I’ll show you what I mean.’ He started moving back and forth between posts, pointing out examples of what he meant. After they’d gone through a dozen or more, he looked anxiously at Carol’s face. His confidence, he realized, was nearly as messed up as his leg. ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I see what you’re getting at, I’m just not sure if it’s significant. I’m not even sure where we’re going with this. Because if Yousef Aziz wasn’t a terrorist, then there’s not a terrorist cell and we’re all wasting our time.’
‘CTC are, but not necessarily you,’ Tony said. ‘There could be something else going on. Maybe he was hired to deliver the bomb but something went wrong. Maybe he was blackmailed into it, his family threatened. It may not have been terrorism, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other people out there involved in this. We should be looking at victims, Carol. That’s where we always start. Who died? Who were they? Who gained from their death? I need victim information, Carol. That’s what I need right now.’ He was so fired up he didn’t register the new arrivals.
‘And who’s this, Carol?’ the shaven-headed man in the black leather jacket said.
Tony frowned, cocking his head back to take in the newcomer’s full height and breadth. ‘I’m Tony Hill,’ he said. ‘Dr Tony Hill. And you are?’
‘That’s none of your business, really,’ he said. Then, to Carol, ‘What is he doing here? There’s nothing for your tame profiler to do on this one.’
