Samarkand Hijack by David Monnery

Author:David Monnery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008155346
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-10-20T09:35:03.383000+00:00

9

In Leeds a slight rain had just begun to fall, and Detective Sergeant Dave Medwin was able to savour the cooling drops on his face as he walked across the police station car park. This sense of relaxation was short-lived – he had barely poked his head through the front doors of the building when the duty officer barked out that London had been calling him every five minutes for the last half an hour.

‘Bloody Londoners think they’re the only people with a rush hour,’ Medwin snarled back, and walked slowly upstairs. He had only downed three and a half pints on the previous evening, so it could hardly be the alcohol to blame for another semi-sleepless night. Maybe he was allergic to something. Celibacy, perhaps.

The phone was ringing as he entered his office. It was London, telling him to mount a full-scale investigation of Nasruddin Salih. They wanted personal history, psychological profile, estimates of intelligence. They wanted any evidence of who his contacts might be in Central Asia. They wanted anything he could find. The local CID had been instructed to issue him with any search warrants he required, but had not been told anything. Nor would they be. Complete discretion was still required, right up to the point where it might hamper the investigation. If that point was reached, then Medwin should call London for fresh instructions.

He sat there for a few moments trying to focus his mind, before reminding himself that such a difficult process required coffee. He walked down the hall, inserted his coins, and kept his thumb jammed on the extra sugar button as the machine coughed up its usual ‘fresh-brewed’ monstrosity. Back in the office he started with the obvious, calling British Telecom to check on Nasruddin’s long-distance phone calls over the last few years, both from home and the office. There were none from the former, and all the latter were apparently to hotels. He took the numbers down anyway.

He then called Records and asked them to send up copies of both Nasruddin’s personal file and the incident report on the arson attack. While he waited for these to arrive he called the local probation service, and found out that Nasruddin’s officer had recently retired to Ilkley. He took down the address and decided against the hassle of demanding a copy of their file. He could do that song and dance later, if and when it proved necessary.

The copies arrived from the basement. He read through the arson incident report, and found nothing much more than Rose had told him the previous evening. The father and two elder children had been watching a Leeds game at Elland Road, and young Martin had gone to answer a knock on the front door. A youth in a crash helmet had thrown the Molotov cocktail over his head, and it had smashed on the living-room door jamb, setting both the hall carpet and wall hangings ablaze. His mother had apparently been trapped in the downstairs back room, on the other side of the flames from Martin.

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