LITMIR.BIZ

       1 Lubyanka

      Manchester is monumental in a way that no other northern town quite manages. You can feel it flexing its muscles and saying, I’m a big city, better step aside. The building which housed CAT had all the family traits. It was solid granite, its tall façade as unyielding as a hanging judge’s face. Carved into a massive block alongside a main entrance that wouldn’t have disgraced a crusader’s castle were the words THE SEMPITERNAL BUILDING.

      ‘Tempting fate a bit, aren’t you?’ said Pascoe as he and Glenister approached.

      She laughed and said, ‘Not us. It was a Victorian insurance company. Went bust during the great crash so they paid for their hubris. It’s been used for lots of things since then. We took it over three years ago. Most of your new colleagues refer to it as the Lubyanka, the Lube for short. Whether that’s tempting fate or not, we’ve yet to see.’

      They went into a wide foyer which looked conventional enough until you noticed that further progress could only be made through security gates with metal detectors, X-ray screening, and large men in attendance. There were almost certainly cameras in operation too, thought Pascoe, though he couldn’t spot them. Perhaps they were hidden among the summer blooms which filled what looked like an old horse trough standing incongruously at the foyer’s centre.

      At the reception desk, Pascoe was issued with a security tag with a complex fastening device.

      ‘Don’t take it off till you’re leaving,’ said Glenister. ‘They’re self-alarmed the minute you pass through the gate. Removal anywhere but the desk sets bells ringing.’

      ‘Why would I want to take it off?’

      ‘Why indeed? It’s to stop anyone taking it off you.’

      She said it without her customary smile. Necessary precaution or just self-inflating paranoia? wondered Pascoe.

      They went straight into a room with twenty chairs set in four rows of five before a large TV screen. Pascoe and Glenister took seats in the second row. He glanced round to see Freeman in the row behind. Was this indicative of a pecking order? And if so did they peck from the front as in a theatre or from the rear as in a cinema?

      As if in answer, the man sitting directly in front of him turned round and smiled at him. Pascoe recognized him instantly. His name was Bernie Bloomfield, his rank was commander and the last time Pascoe saw him, he’d been giving a lecture on criminal demography at an Interpol conference. If he hadn’t pursued a police career, he might well have filled the gap left by that most sadly missed of British actors, Alastair Sim.

      ‘Peter, good to see you again,’ said Bloomfield.

      For a moment Pascoe was flattered, then he remembered his security label.

      ‘You too, sir,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realize you were in charge here.’

      ‘In charge?’ Bloomfield smiled. ‘Well, in this work we like to keep in the shadows. How’s my dear old friend Andy Dalziel doing?’

      ‘Holding on, sir.’

      ‘Good. I’d expect no less. A shame, a great shame. Andy and I go way, way back. We can ill spare such good men. But it’s a pity it was one of your less indispensable officers who was first on the scene. Constable…what was his name?’

      ‘Hector, sir,’ said Glenister.

      ‘That’s it. Hector. From what I read, we’re likely to get more feedback from the speaking clock. “Sort of funny and not a darkie”, isn’t that the gist of his contribution?’

      There was a ripple of laughter, and Pascoe realized that their conversation had moved from private chat to public performance. He felt a surge of irritation. Only here two minutes and already he was having to defend Hector in front of a bunch of sycophants who clearly felt very superior to your common-or-garden provincial bobby.

      Time to lay down the same markers he’d already put in place with Glenister.

      He said with emphatic courtesy, ‘With respect, sir, as I’ve told the superintendent, I think it would be silly to underestimate Constable Hector’s evidence. While it’s true that in his case the picture may take a bit longer to come together, what he does notice usually sticks and emerges in a useful form eventually. What he’s given us so far has proved right, hasn’t it? In fact, with respect, isn’t most of what we know about what happened in Mill Street that day down to Hector rather than CAT?’

      This defensive eulogium, which in the Black Bull would have had colleagues corpsing, reduced the audience here to silence. Or perhaps they were simply waiting to see how Bloomfield would deal with this uppity newcomer who’d just called him silly and his unit inefficient.

      The commander gave Pascoe that Alastair Sim smile which indicates he knows a lot more than you’re saying.

      ‘That’s very reassuring, Peter,’ he said. ‘Or are you just being loyal?’

      ‘Never back down,’ was the Fat Man’s advice. ‘Especially when you’re not sure you’re right!’

      Pascoe said firmly, ‘Loyalty’s nothing to do with it, sir. You find us a live suspect and I’m sure you’ll be able to rely on Hector for identification.’

      ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now I think it’s time to get our show on the road.’

      He rose to his feet and let his gaze drift down the rows.

      ‘Good day to you all,’ he said. ‘What you are about to see is a tape played on Al Jazeera television earlier today. It isn’t pretty, but no point closing your eyes. Some of you will need to see it many times.’

      He sat down and the lights dimmed.

      The tape lasted about sixty seconds, but even to sensibilities toughened by a gruelling job as well as by general exposure to the graphic images shown most nights on news programmes, not to mention the computer-generated horrors of the modern cinema, the unforgiving minute seemed to stretch for ever.

      There was no soundtrack. Someone said ‘Jesus!’ into the silence.

      After a long moment, another man stood up in the front row. Fiftyish, balding, wearing a leather patched jacket, square-ended woollen tie and Hush Puppies, he spoke with the clipped rapidity of a nervous schoolmaster saying grace before he is interrupted by the clatter of forks against plates. His label said he was Lukasz Komorowski.

      ‘This is without doubt Said Mazraani. His body was found in his flat this morning with the head severed, preliminary examination suggests by three blows as illustrated in the video clip. The chair, carpet and background in the tape sequence correspond precisely with what was found at the flat. There was a second body in the flat. This belonged to a man called Fikri Rostom who, as you will hear, Mazraani introduced as his cousin. Rostom, a student at Lancaster University, was shot in the head.’

      He paused for breath.

      Glenister said, ‘What’s the writing say?’

      ‘It says Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’

      He paused again, this time like a schoolmaster waiting for exegesis. Pascoe knew it was biblical, probably Old Testament, but could go no further. Andy Dalziel would have given them chapter and verse. He claimed his disconcerting familiarity with Holy Writ had been acquired via a now largely neglected pedagogic technique which involved his RK teacher, a diminutive

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