Marks smiled at him. “Did this girl call you names too? Call you a stupid Arab? A useless man?”
“I am not stupid.”
Marks shook his head. “Enough of this, Samir. Come on. This crap ends now. We know what happened. This girl here...” He indicated the photograph of Alice. “Is not a jihadi. She is not a Muslim. And you, Samir? Well, either you tried to kiss her or you like boys. Which is it?” He felt Gilmore nudge his leg beneath the table as if he stepped over some interview protocol, but Marks ignored it and never took his eyes off Hassan. “Did they laugh at you? They did, didn't they? They laughed at you, and you couldn't take it. The girl rejected your advances and insulted you. And it took you a year and a load of drugs to work up the courage to take revenge.”
Hassan stared back, but the earlier defiance looked to have eased, and Marks pressed on. “Why are you implicating this woman? What’s her name, Samir? Zain Aboudan or Abeedah Zainab? Which is it? Huh? Well?”
Hassan said nothing. Marks pulled out more photographs and laid them on the table. These were images of the broken bodies from the attack and Hassan blinked at them. “Go on, Samir,” Marks said. “Have a good look. These were ordinary people. What they ever do to you?”
Hassan dropped his eyes and took a deep breath though his nose that made a whistling sound.
Marks pushed a gruesome image closer. “What did this girl do to deserve this? You want to know her name?”
Hassan shook his head.
“Look at her, Samir. Look.” Marks’ voice rose. “Leslie Keys. She was 22 years old.”
“No.”
“No what, Samir? You afraid to look?”
His eyes swivelled to the photograph but didn’t linger. His shoulders slumped and he looked down. “I want Imam.”
“Okay. But first, tell me about Leslie. What did she do to you?”
“Imam.”
Marks wanted to grin, but his years of experience held strong, and he maintained his most intimidating stare. “How does this serve Allah?”
Hassan shook his head. “I want Imam.”
“If I get you the Imam, will you help us? Tell us everything?”
Hassan nodded. “Yes. Yes. Get Imam.”
*
It took Marks almost two hours to locate a suitable Iman. Then the guy spent over an hour with Hassan. “This better work,” Marks said to Gilmore. “For all I know they could be plotting another attack in there.”
“He’s ready to crack, Inspector. He wants to talk. Perhaps the cleric will bring him over the last hurdle.”
“Yeah.”
Ten minutes later, the Imam put his head out the interview room door and beckoned.
Gilmore set up the recording and resumed the interview with the Imam looking sombre in the chair beside Hassan.
“Are you ready to talk to us Samir?” Marks asked.
Hassan nodded. “Yes.”
“First thing, did Alice Madsen help you?”
“No.”
“Is Alice Madsen a terrorist?”
“No.”
*
Marks ran his eye over the sheets of paper Gilmore had laid out on the meeting room table. As Marks read, he took a sip from the coffee he’d collected on the way. A bitter after taste lingered in his mouth, and he regarded the plastic cup with a baleful stare.
Gilmore laughed. “Shit, isn’t it?”
Marks grunted and set the coffee aside. “Right. Let’s get this damn Madsen thing sorted. I want you to call Dee Stansfield and confirm Madsen’s story. Ask her if Hassan was drinking alcohol and whether he made advances on Madsen. And if so, how did Madsen and Hassan react.”
“Will do. Do you want to get a brief for Madsen? You spoke to him on the phone at her house, right?”
Marks twirled a pen between his fingers. “Yeah. In a while. We’re not letting Madsen go until we get confirmation from Stansfield, but I’ll allow Madsen a phone call. She can get her own damn brief.”
“What about the boyfriend, Ian Morgan?”
“Pfft. He’s a nobody. Forget about him.”
“You know Inspector, Hassan may not be a real Islamic terrorist. He’s just an evil nut job looking to pin his murderous nature on a twisted ideology. Supposing his motivation was revenge on the people who he thought humiliated him? The festival gave him something to target. Something specific.”
“What difference does it make? His choice of location may have been influenced by the festival, but he killed five people, seriously injured a lot more, all while shouting Islamic slogans.” He stopped and wagged a finger at Gilmore. “Samir Hassan is an Islamic terrorist. He insisted on an Imam rather than a lawyer. His inconsistent bullshit is just that. Bullshit.”
“Fair enough. I’ll go chase up Stansfield.”
Marks picked up the coffee and sniffed at it. “Christ. I can't drink this stuff. I’m going out to get a real one.”
27
Around lunch time on Sunday, Alice sat with her right hand cuffed to the ring in the table. It was as tight as before, a deliberate reminder of her prisoner status and how little control she had over the situation. She stared at the walls to keep her mind from focusing on negatives. She imagined herself in her shower at home, washing away the stains of her incarceration and emerging from her bathroom purified and cleansed. The thoughts of washing made her more conscious of her grimy tee shirt, and she squirmed in the chair as she thought of clean underwear.
The sound of the door opening made her look up, and a man entered. At first, she’d didn't recognise him, but there was a familiarity about him. He plonked a briefcase on the table and smiled at her.
“I’m Malcolm Rix. I’m your lawyer, Ian called me. We met at dinner last year. I’m a friend of Olivia Kelly.”
