‘Forensics,’ the third man said, tossing a folder on the table. ‘On the bomb. They got lucky. The configuration of the room meant the mechanism stayed relatively intact. Totally what you’d expect. Except for one thing. They say there were two trigger mechanisms. One to be set manually, the other to be activated remotely.’
‘What does that mean?’ Carol said.
David picked up the folder and skimmed the sheet of paper inside. ‘They don’t know. It’s not something we’ve seen before. We’ll have to run it past the cousins and see if they’ve any experience of it.’
‘You mean the Americans?’ Carol said. David nodded. ‘Why don’t you just say so?’ She rolled her eyes.
The third man dropped into a chair as if he was punishing it for offending him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t do guessing. We do inference and deduction. Me, I think he was going to set the manual timer and get clear. Then if it didn’t go off, he could use his mobile to trigger the device remotely.’
David gave him the look priests normally reserve for heretics. ‘Are you saying you don’t think this was meant to be a suicide bomb?’
‘I’m looking at the evidence and trying to make sense of it,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not a terrorist. Fucking Provos managed to create mayhem without blowing themselves up. Makes sense. You go to all the bother of training somebody to do this shit, you might as well get more than one mission out of them.’
It did make a kind of sense, Carol thought. ‘Funnily enough, we’d been wondering something similar,’ she said.
All three heads swivelled towards her. ‘You what?’ David sounded indignant.
‘In fact, we were wondering whether it was even terrorism,’ she said. ‘Dr Hill suggested Yousef might be a gun for hire, as it were.’
The third man exploded in laughter. ‘You are a fucking tonic,’ he said. ‘I love it. I mean, you need a hit man. Who’re you gonna call? A clothes factory manager. Stands to reason.’ He slapped his thigh. Plus, who’s going to kill thirty-five people for one hit? That’s not how gangsters work, sweetheart.’ He laughed again. ‘Priceless.’
‘That’ll do,’ Johnny said, his voice soft and his eyes dangerous. He turned to Carol. ‘Bottom line? Yousef Aziz was a Muslim. There’s a significant tranche of Muslims who hate us. They want to blow us to kingdom come and impose Sharia law on what’s left. They don’t want peaceful coexistence, they want to destroy us. That’s enough, surely? That’s all that’s going on here, Carol.’
‘Hit man,’ the third man repeated. ‘I love it.’
Carol stood up. ‘There’s just no point talking to you, is there? You live in your own little bubble. If you need a comedy break, you know where to find us.’
She marched out of the room, head high. When Tony had called her just before the meeting, she’d wondered if he was losing it. Seeing ghosts in the natural coincidences of life. Now, she really wished he could be right. She’d like nothing more than to ram an alternative, correct conclusion down their arrogant throats.
Trouble was, she lived in the real world. The one where wishes tended not to come true.
Tony rang Sanjar Aziz, hoping the CTC had decided he was harmless. Otherwise he was going to have to track down the rest of the family to see if they could shed any light on B&R. He didn’t want to face Rachel Diamond without some preparation. This time, Sanjar answered his own phone. ‘Yeah?’ he said, sounding harassed. Tony felt a surge of relief.
‘It’s Tony Hill, Sanjar. I was sorry to hear they’d pulled you in.’
‘Bound to happen sooner or later, innit? At least they let me go in time to make it to Yousef’s funeral.’ He sounded surprisingly calm for someone who had just spent the night in the cells rather than supporting his grieving family.
‘That’s today, is it?’
‘This afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be pretty weird. Apparently there’s not much left to bury.’ Tony could hear him breathing heavily. Sanjar gave a weak laugh. ‘I dunno how we’re going to work out how to get him facing Mecca.’
‘I’m sorry. Are you doing OK?’
‘What do you think? My mum’s devastated, my dad won’t open his mouth and my little brother’s heart-broken and terrified at the thought of going back to school.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, you didn’t deserve that. So, what did you want? Why are you calling me?’
‘I need to ask you a couple of questions. To do with work.’
‘Work? You mean First Fabrics?’
‘Yeah. What can you tell me about a company called B&R?’
‘B&R? They were Yousef’s big idea for how we could change the way we did business.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Margins have got so fucking tight, man. So we needed to cut out the middleman to increase our profits. B&R’s a wholesaler, they sell direct to the retail trade. They’ve got some pretty good accounts. They’re a great match for us.’
‘So this was Yousef’s idea?’ Tony asked.
‘Well, it was something we’d talked about before, but he actually managed to get it off the ground. See, the trouble with cutting out the middleman is that he’s the one who commissions the work from you. He tells you what to make, in effect. Even if it’s your own design that’s been pitched to the store on your behalf, he’s the man. You piss off the middleman and suddenly he’s not calling you with orders.’
‘So how did Yousef get round it?’
‘We increased production. B&R only sell designs from us that are exclusive to them. So the middleman
