‘He was going to give you more silver jewellery?’
‘Aye, yeah, Ah think so. He’s hid it, at the bridge.’
‘At the bridge where I met you?’
‘Aye, Ah think so. Or maybe the one next tae it. Ah dunno.’
‘Did Niall have a briefcase with him when he met you?’
‘Aye,’ said Rena, ‘an’ it was really heavy. Ah think there was more in there.’
‘More silver?’
‘Aye.’
Rena’s beer arrived and she gulped half of it down with relish. Strike wondered how well lager mixed with clonazepam, the drug she’d told him she was on.
‘So Niall told you he was off to get Ben, when he met you?’
‘Aye,’ she said, with a sudden resurgence of anger, ‘’cause no other fucker’s gonnae get him, are they?’
‘Did you and Ben grow up together, after your parents died?’
‘Naw. Ah hadtae go an’ live with mah gran an’ he wen’ with our uncle. Our uncle isnae married, an’ Ben was older. He didnae wanna little girl.’
Strike was reminded immediately of his mother, and her forcible separation from Ted at the age of two. Would Leda’s life have been better had she been able to remain with her brother? Would Rena’s?
‘Ah think he’s mah brother,’ said Rena restlessly. ‘Ah think he is.’
‘Where were you living, when Niall got in touch with you last year?’ asked Strike. ‘Still with your grandmother?’
He judged her to be in her mid to late twenties, although it was hard to be sure. She might be younger than her lined and hollow face suggested.
‘Naw,’ said Rena, ‘she’s long gone. Ah wiz in a Place.’
The inflection on the word suggested Rena might have been in a psychiatric facility, or perhaps a drug dependency unit.
‘Did Niall tell you how he knew where you were?’
‘Ah think Ben mighta told him,’ said Rena vaguely.
‘So you and Ben kept in touch?’
‘Sometimes. He told me,’ she said, with sudden animation, ‘aboot a battle on mah birthday, nineteenth July, an’ they wouldnae give this big guy who got killed, who was, like, really fuckin’ brave, an’ he wasnae from Britain, he wiz from Fuji or somewhere, Ah dunnaw where, an’ they never give him a proper medal ’cause nobody was s’posed tae know they were there, so that’s the kind of fuckin’ shit they get up tae in the army.’
‘Talaiasi Labalaba,’ said Strike. ‘Battle of Mirbat.’
‘How d’ye know that?’ asked Rena, half-excited, half-unnerved.
‘There’s a statue of him at the SAS base in Hereford,’ said Strike.
He’d just remembered why the username ‘Austin H’ had put the word ‘Fuzz’ into his mind, back in the Goring Bar with Robin. He’d seen it on Truth About Freemasons:
Pretty sure Austin ‘Fuzz’ Hussey (also SAS, Battle of Mirbat) was a mason.
116
‘And many and long must the trials be
Thou shalt victoriously endure,
If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
Like a jewel-finder’s fierce assay
Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb—
Let once the vindicating ray
Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
And steel and fire have done their part
And the prize falls on its finder’s heart…’
Robin was at home, alone. Night had fallen, her curtains were closed, her door double-locked, her alarm on, and the dining room chair was still propped beneath the handle of the front door. The television news was muted and she’d turned on subtitles to find out more about the Westminster Bridge attack. The dead terrorist hadn’t been named, but his physical description suggested he might be a Muslim. She knew it wasn’t doing her anxiety much good, staring at pictures of the carnage, but she didn’t seem able to look away.
Her phone rang, making her jump.
‘Hi,’ said Midge, who sounded triumphant. ‘Got what you wanted off Hussein Mohamed. Poor bastard came home from work early. “It’s a bad day to be a Muslim driving a car in London.” I’m going to send you the audio file now, so you can hear it for yourself.’
‘The weights?’ said Robin, with a surge of anticipation. ‘Did he mention—?’
‘Just listen to it,’ said Midge, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘You won’t be disappointed. Start seven minutes in.’
So Robin hung up and did as she was told, opening the audio file and turning the volume on her phone up to maximum.
‘… don’t recognise any of these photos?’
‘The hall was so dark, you see,’ said a male voice with a Syrian accent. ‘We never saw him very clearly, and with the beard and the glasses…’
‘But you spoke to him?’
‘Me personally, only a couple of times. The first time, he’d offered to help us with Hafsa’s wheelchair. It was difficult, living on the top floor. We said we’d manage – anything to get out of the detention centre. We invited him inside for coffee, but he said he had things to do… he definitely wasn’t the thief?’
‘No,’ said Midge. ‘Why?’
‘Because it seemed to make sense of some things, if he was a thief. He didn’t ever want us to see inside his room. He would wait till we’d gone past, to open the door, even.’
‘He told you his girlfriend was expecting a baby, didn’t he?’
‘Not me, he told my wife one day, when I was out and he was helping her with Hafsa again. He said he hoped for a little girl. She said to him, “most men want a son”. He told her men cause most of the trouble in the world, and he didn’t want to add another one… My wife asked why his girlfriend wasn’t with him, if she was expecting his baby, and he said she’d be arriving soon. He said her family disapproved of him, so it was difficult. We thought, after he was killed, maybe the girlfriend’s family had something to do with it – but maybe that was all a lie, what he told her.’
‘Did you ever speak to him again?’
‘One time only.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Lions,’ said Mohamed.
‘Lions?’
‘Yes. My wife and I and Hafsa had been out all day. We were expecting a parcel. The man on the bottom floor said he’d seen William taking boxes up to his flat. I wondered whether he was keeping ours for us, so I knocked on his door. He took a while to answer the door. He’d drawn the curtains and there was only a lamp on, so it was dark and he’d done something strange. He’d thrown a sheet over his weights but it slid off while I was standing there. He went and threw it back over them. I could tell he didn’t want me to see them – at the time, I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand it. But if he’d stolen them, that made sense. Maybe they came from a house he’d burgled?’
‘Can you remember anything about the weights?’ asked Midge, while Robin’s heart rate accelerated almost painfully.
‘Yes, they were yellow, with the face of a black lion on them, or maybe a lioness, drawn like a cartoon. I only saw them for a second. He looked at me strangely when he’d covered them again. Guilty, you know? But he knew I’d seen, so I said – to show I didn’t care, to be friendly – “ah, the lion is my lucky animal. Hafsa’s name means lioness cub”. I told him that. And he smiled and said “but don’t they call al-Assad the lion of Syria?” which is true, and not something everyone knows, so I said, “but that’s not the fault of lions” and he laughed. He gave me my package, and that was all – no,’ said Mohammed, ‘not all. There was a suit and he was ironing it. He told me he was starting a new job on the Monday. He seemed pleased about it.’