in Victoria Street who look into Internet crimes. We’ve been through this before, mate, so let’s not beat the horse while it’s lying in the dust. You’ve wiped all the records to make Doughty clean, and now you’re going to do something similar for Azhar. It’ll be trickier, but I reckon you’re the bloke to do it. We’ve got air tickets to Pakistan that need to be altered in the records at the Met. No worries that there’s terrorism involved. There isn’t. Just a detail on the tickets that needs changing in a file on someone who’s been investigated and vetted and is in the clear. That’s Azhar, by the way. He look like a terrorist to you?”
“Who bloody knows what a terrorist looks like these days?” Bryan said. “They’re jumping out of rubbish bins. And it’s impossible to do what you ask. Hacking into that system . . . ? D’you know how long that would take? D’you have any idea how many backups exist? I’m not talking about backups just at the Met, either. I’m talking about backups at the airline, on their main databases, on their alternative databases. I’m talking about backups on tape that you can alter only if you have the tape itself. Plus, there’re computer applications that’ve been written by hundreds of people over dozens of years and—”
“If we needed all that,” she cut in, “I c’n see it’d be something of a headache for you. But as it happens, we want the airline ticket altered, like I said, and it only needs to be altered in the Met’s system. The date of purchase needs to be changed, and it needs to be roundtrip instead of one-way. That’s it. There’s one in Azhar’s name and one in the name of Hadiyyah Upman.”
“And if I can’t get into the Met’s system . . . Which department are we talking about? Who’s got the records?”
“SO12.”
“Completely impossible. Laughable even to suggest it.”
“Not for you, and you and I know it. But to give you a little practice in advance—a bit of a way to exercise your typing skills, let’s say—we also need you to take care of a few bank records. Not a big deal for a bloke with your talents, and it’s an alteration again, not an erasure. Azhar here needs to have paid Doughty less: just enough to cover his services up to the point where the trail Angelina Upman left—such as it was—went dead as a corpse. That’s it, Bryan. Airline tickets and payments to Doughty and we’re out of your life, more or less.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I want you to hand over your fail-safe position. Just for an hour or two and you’ll have it back, but I’m going to need to take it with me. Today.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Barbara hooted. She said to Azhar, “You’re not to mind that he thinks we’re idiots. Computer nerds and their attitude problems? Hand in glove, if you know what I mean.” And then to Smythe, “Bryan, the one thing you’re not is stupid. You’ve backed up all of the information you removed from Doughty’s records. Wherever you have it—and I expect it’s right here in the house in a very nice safe with a very secure combination on it—I want it. Like I said, I need it for an hour or two and then you’ll have it back. And stop denying that you have it because you’re the sort of bloke who knows how to put the full stops where they belong.”
He said nothing at first. His expression was hard, his eyes flinty. He looked from Barbara to Azhar to Barbara and he said to her, “How many more of you are there?”
Azhar stirred next to her, but Barbara put her hand on his arm. She said, “Bryan, we’re not here to discuss—”
“No. I want to know. How many more dirty cops’re going to crawl out of the woodwork if I cooperate with you? And don’t please tell me you’re the only one. Your sort doesn’t exist alone.”
Barbara felt Azhar glance in her direction. For her part, she was surprised at how Smythe’s words stung. It wasn’t the first time he’d accused her of being dirty, but the fact was that this time, he was speaking the truth. That she was dirtying herself in the cause of a larger good, however, was not something she wished to debate with the man. So she said to him, “This is a one-time operation. It’s about Azhar, it’s about his daughter, and after that, it’s about us being gone from your life.”
“I’m expected to believe that?”
“I don’t see that you have a choice.” She waited as he thought things over. Birds were chirping pleasantly from the ornamental cherry trees in the garden, and within the pool a goldfish surfaced in the hope of feeding time’s approach. She said, “My grip’s better than yours is, mate. Face up to it and we’re out of here and you c’n go back to your breakfast and those ladies’ arses.”
“Grip,” he repeated.
“On the whatsies. We’re all hanging on to each other’s, let’s face it. But just now I’ve got the better hold. You know it. I know it. Let’s have your fail-safe data so Azhar and I c’n get on with things.”
“You’re heading for Doughty next,” he said.
“Bob’s definitely your uncle, mate.”
BOW
LONDON
“This is too much, Barbara” were Azhar’s first words. He’d said nothing at all during their encounter with Bryan Smythe, but once they were in Barbara’s car and heading over to Doughty’s office, he pressed fingers to his forehead as if trying to contain the pain in his head. “I am so sorry,” he said. “And now this. I cannot—”
“Hang on.” She lit a fag and handed him the packet. “We’re in it now, so it’s not the time to lose your nerve.”
“This is not a matter of nerve.” He took a cigarette and lit it, but after one drag on it, he threw it out of the window in disgust. “This is a matter of what you are doing because of me. Because of my decisions. And I . . . Silent like a miserable statue in that man’s garden. I despise myself.”
“Let’s stick with the facts as we know them. Angelina took Hadiyyah. You wanted her back. The wrong involved here started with her.”
“Do you think that matters? Do you think that
“Details won’t come to light. Everyone’s at risk. That’s our guarantee.”
“I should not have . . . I cannot . . . I must stand like a man and tell the truth and—”
“And what? Go to gaol? Spend some time in a prison learning how to say ‘Touch me there and I’ll cut off your hand’ in Italian?”
“They would have to extradite me first and then—”
“Oh, too right, mate. And while you’re waiting to be extradited, Angelina is going to be doing what? Sending Hadiyyah for pleasant, extended visits with the man who arranged her kidnapping and—oh, by the way—also bought one-way tickets to Pakistan for himself and her?”
He was silent, and she glanced at him. His face was anguished. “All of this is down to me,” he said. “No matter how Angelina has behaved in the past, the first sin was mine. I wanted her.”
At first, Barbara thought he was talking about the daughter he and Angelina had created. But when he went on, she saw that was not what he meant at all.
“How wrong could it be, I asked myself, to want a lovely young woman in my bed? Just once. Or twice. Three times, perhaps. Because, after all, Nafeeza is heavy with child and wishes to be left in peace until she delivers and as a man, I have my needs and there she is, so lovely, so fragile, so . . . so English.”
“You’re human,” Barbara said, although the words did not come easily to her.
“I saw her at that table at University College, and I thought, What a particularly lovely English girl she is. But I also thought what Middle Eastern men—men like me—are schooled to think of particularly lovely English girls, of all English girls: They are not like our women, their clothing alone illustrates how easy they are with their chastity, and these things that rob them of their virtue mean very little to them. So I sat with her. I asked her if I could join her at her table, and as I did so, I knew exactly what I wanted from her. What I did not think was that the wanting would increase, the ‘must have’ would dominate, and I would bring ruin upon my world. And now I am set upon the same course, but the world to be ruined is going to be yours. How, then, do I live with that?”
“You live with that by knowing that this is
