Stella Rimington: Rip Tide

Emerging from the Metro at Saint-Jacques, Liz saw a missed call message on the screen of her mobile phone. It was from Peggy in London, and she hit the button to call her back.

‘Hi, Liz, or should I say bonjour?’

‘What’s up? I’m just on my way to the prison.’

‘Border Agency have come back – their system’s up and running again. They say our Mr Khan left the UK eight months ago for Pakistan. He hasn’t returned to Britain, at least not through official channels.’

‘Mmm.’ It was strange, but not unheard of. Each year thousands of British citizens made trips to Pakistan for all kinds of reasons – to see relatives, to visit friends, to get married, to show their children where their roots lay. But for the most part they came back. In recent years a few young men had travelled to Pakistan for less innocent reasons and, if they had come back, had seemed different from before they’d left. A few hadn’t returned at all, going off to fight in Afghanistan or to train in the tribal areas of Pakistan or to hang out in Peshawar. But Somalia? That was new to Liz. The interview with Khan promised to be interesting – if she could persuade him to talk.

‘Anything else?’ she asked Peggy.

‘Yes, but not from Borders. I spoke to Special Branch in Birmingham… Detective Inspector Fontana. He said the Khan family are well known – and well off: they own a small chain of grocery stores that serve the Asian community. Highly respectable people – he was surprised when I told him where their son’s driving licence had been found. He’s offered to go and talk to the parents. Shall I tell him to go ahead?’

Liz pondered this briefly. ‘Not yet. Wait till I’ve seen the prisoner and then we can decide what to do next. If it really is their son, I’d like to talk to them myself. But I don’t want to alert them until we know a bit more.’

‘Okay. Anything else I should be doing on this?’

‘Don’t think so. I’ll be back tonight. I’ll ring if he says anything useful, but I’m not very hopeful that he’ll talk at all. He’s said nothing to the French.’

All Liz knew about the Santé prison came from the novels of Georges Simenon. The Bar on the Seine began with his famous detective, Inspector Maigret, going to visit a young condemned prisoner in La Santé one sunny Paris day – a day a bit like this one, in fact. Maigret’s footsteps had echoed on the pavement just as hers did while she followed the high stone wall which screened the old prison buildings from the street. Strange that such a place was right in the middle of the city, just a few minutes from the Luxembourg Gardens. It was as if Wormwood Scrubs had been erected on the edge of Green Park, next-door to Buckingham Palace.

Following the instructions she’d been given Liz walked on until she arrived at a small side street, Rue Messier, where, as promised, she found a low booth set into the massive wall. Peering through a long window of bullet-proof glass, she gave her name to the dimly visible guard on the other side. He nodded curtly, then buzzed her through an unmarked steel door into a small windowless reception room.

This was all very different from Maigret’s sleepy guard gazing at a little white cat playing in the sunshine. But nowadays the Santé was a high-security prison which housed some of France’s most lethal prisoners, including Carlos the Jackal. And Mr Amir Khan, was he lethal? Liz wondered.

A door on the other side of the room opened.

‘ Bonjour. I am Henri Cassale of the DCRI, a colleague of Isabelle Florian.’ He was not much taller than Liz. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, wearing a light suit and a bright yellow paisley tie, he looked out of place in this grim reception room. ‘We have Monsieur Amir Khan ready to answer your questions. Or not…’ He smiled with a flash of white teeth.

‘Does he know I’m coming?’

‘ Non. And I wish you better luck with him than we have had.’

‘He’s still not talking?’

Isabelle’s colleague shook his head. ‘Have you and your colleagues discovered anything more about him?’

‘We’ve learned that the owner of the driving licence, Amir Khan, went to Pakistan eight months ago. He hasn’t returned to the UK since then.’

‘Pakistan?’ Cassale shook his head. ‘I can’t say I am surprised. We have sent a file of information – fingerprints, DNA, photographs – over to you this morning. That should enable you to establish the identity of the prisoner beyond doubt. Meanwhile, let’s see what he says to you. Come with me, s’il vous plaît. ’

Liz followed him through the door into a corridor, arched on one side like the cloisters of a cathedral. But unlike a cloister, these arches were secured with metal grilles, and the courtyard visible beyond was not a place for quiet contemplation – it was filled with men, standing singly or in groups, most of them smoking. At the far end a desultory game of basketball was being played.

Cassale turned a corner and they came face to face with a guard, standing in front of a heavy wooden door. He nodded to Cassale and opened the door with a jangling of keys. The smell of new paint was strong as they went through – the walls had been freshly decorated, in a drab grey which seemed designed to depress. A line of closed steel doors, equally spaced, stretched along both sides of a long corridor. Liz had been in prisons before and noted the familiar small grilled window slits of the cells.

‘We are in the high-security wing now. This part is where violent criminals are interned. The terror suspects are kept downstairs.’ At the end of the corridor Cassale rang a bell on the wall beside a metal door. It was opened from the inside by another guard and Cassale preceded Liz down a flight of metal stairs, their shoes clanging on the steel treads.

At the bottom, he paused. They were in another wide corridor, but this one had older peeling paint on the walls. A line of fluorescent tube lights, suspended from the ceiling, gave off a dazzling, blue-ish glare that made Liz screw up her eyes.

‘This is our special unit. Monsieur Khan is resident here. Your interview will take place in one of the interrogation rooms. I warn you, it is not exactly modern.’

A picture of a mediaeval dungeon flashed into Liz’s mind: rings on the wall, chains, bones in the corner and rats. She was relieved when Cassale opened a door and she found herself in a high-ceilinged, white-painted room. It seemed very airy after the corridor outside. A long barred window was set high in one wall; through it a shaft of sunlight glanced, striking the polished floor. Just inside the door a policeman waited on the alert, holding an unholstered Glock sidearm. As he stood aside, Liz saw the prisoner, sitting behind a metal-topped table, his hands manacled to a length of chain which was itself secured to a cast-iron stanchion on the floor.

According to his driving licence, Khan was twenty-two, but this man looked to be younger, just a boy. His face and arms and wrists were thin. A scraggly black beard barely covered his chin and the hair on his upper lip was sparse. His eyes, as he watched them come into the room, looked wary. Liz had been assured that he was being well treated, but she wondered what had happened to him before he got here.

Cassale stepped up to the table and, speaking rapidly in French, explained to the prisoner that he had a visitor who would be asking him some questions. It was obvious from the blank expression on the young man’s face that he understood nothing of what was said.

Cassale turned to Liz and said in French, ‘I will be next-door if you need me. Just tell the guard.’ She nodded. As Cassale left, she pulled out a chair from under the table and sat down opposite the prisoner. The armed policeman remained standing by the door.