Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

‘What are your motivations for bringing proceedings, Mrs Bayoumi?’

To many Americans, accustomed to a culture where legal representation can seem not just a right but a duty, the question might have sounded odd. But Beradino figured Sameera had enough first-generation immigrant still in her to make recourse to the law a last rather than a first option.

The consideration she gave the question before answering showed him to be right.

‘Abdul and I, we had our own, how you say, parts in the marriage,’ she said eventually. ‘He go to work, I make the home, look after Mustafa. When Mustafa grow up, we keep the parts the same. Abdul still work, I make home, Mustafa live here still. We all happy that way. Maybe not modern, American, but it work for us.

‘And now Abdul gone, where will I find job? I am not educated, not college. Companies, they see my resumé, they say no, no interview, even. So how do I live? That’s why I call lawyer.

‘I want – all I want – is money Abdul earn between now and he retiring. Not a dollar more. I know it not millions, but it enough. That why lawyer, nothing more.

‘I know we can do nothing to make Abdul come back. If you talk of revenge, no, I don’t believe in that. And if the hospital say sorry…’ She made a sound to suggest she thought it unlikely.

‘And Mustafa. What does he think?’

‘Mustafa his own man now. You must ask him.’

‘I understand he’s a student at Pitt, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s he studying?’

‘Chemistry.’

‘So that’s where we’d find him now? In the chemistry department?’

‘Not today. Today, he on outreach. At mosque, in Homewood.’

‘We’ll go talk to him there,’ Beradino said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bayoumi.’

‘May I ask favor?’

‘Sure.’

‘How you say in slang? Go easy on him. For Arab boy, father is most important man in world. To lose that is very hard for him. So for me too. Mustafa is my world now. He my only son. Allah blessed us with him, no more. I lose one man, I no lose another. I do anything for that boy, you understand? Anything .’

Homewood, Patrese thought; always Homewood. It seemed less a geographical area than a vortex, forever dragging him back in.

On the sidewalk, a handful of youths waved at them, their gestures heavy with sarcasm. Patrese waved back, deadpan, his mind miles away.

After a few seconds, he glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw exactly what he expected; a couple of them flipping the detectives the bird, another pair dropping their pants and mooning.

Patrese laughed. Beradino, swiveling round to follow his gaze, was angry.

‘Stop the car, Franco. Let’s go bust their asses.’

‘Ah, they’re just screwin’ around.’

‘To a marked cop car? You let that go, you let anythin’ go. Zero tolerance.’

‘You don’t like black people?’

‘I got nothin’ against black people. I’m a good Christian man, Franco. Jesus says that we should accept all men equally. I just don’t like these black people. If they were white people actin’ this way, I wouldn’t like ’em any better. Shoot, I’d probably like ’em worse .’ He pointed forward. ‘There, that’s the mosque.’

There was a plaque on the building’s front wall. In 1932 , it read, Pittsburgh became home to the first chartered Muslim mosque in the United States.

‘What a claim to fame,’ said Beradino, deadpan. ‘Personally, I’d still take the four SuperBowls, you know?’

They stepped inside the main door of the mosque.

It didn’t seem like Osama’s nerve center, that was for sure. No firebrand preachers hollering death to the Great Satan or burning the Stars and Stripes; no rows of prostrate worshippers facing Mecca. Only the rows of shoes lined up inside on gray plastic shelves gave a hint as to the religion of those within.

It seemed more like a social club than a place of worship. People walked in groups or stood around chatting. Patrese and Beradino, watching this, noticed something pretty much simultaneously; most of the mosque-goers were black rather than ostensibly Arab. They could have been in pretty much any major city.

‘Help you?’ a man asked.

‘We’re looking for Mustafa Bayoumi,’ Beradino said.

‘You’ll find him in the outreach center.’ The man extended an arm to his left. ‘Through the double doors, then first right.’

They followed his directions and, after a couple of further inquiries, found Mustafa alone in an office, entering some data on a computer terminal.

Mustafa was skinny, with cheekbones you could cut your wrists on, hair blacker than Reagan’s when he’d been hard at the Grecian 2000, and a neatly trimmed beard. Like his mother, he looked substantially more black than Arab.

Still tapping the keyboard, he looked up. ‘Help you?’ he said.

They sure were polite round here, Patrese thought. That was two more offers of help than he’d usually get in a year in Homewood.

‘We’re with the Pittsburgh police department,’ said Beradino quietly, ‘but we’re not going to flash our badges, because we don’t want to embarrass you or cause a scene. We just want to ask you a few questions.’ He nodded towards a couple of chairs. ‘May we?’

He sat down without waiting for Mustafa’s assent. Patrese followed suit.

Beradino gestured around the room.

‘What is it you guys do here? Outreach – what’s that?’

‘It’s, er, reaching out.’

Beradino laughed, pretending to be offended. ‘Hey, educational standards at the PD ain’t that bad just yet. I worked that one out for myself.’

Mustafa smiled too. Patrese said nothing, but he admired Beradino’s approach; relax them, put them at ease, find common ground.

‘Sorry. Outreach is helping people, mainly. We have a day-care facility, programs for entrepreneurs and released inmates, and a health clinic.’

‘Pretty impressive.’ Beradino sounded as though he meant it. ‘Who funds it all?’

‘We receive an annual grant from a non-profit organization called the Abrahamic Interfaith Foundation. In addition, Islam obligates all those who can feed their family to give two and a half per cent of their net worth in alms. Many of us give considerably more, both in time and money. Then there are book sales, telephone fundraisers, auctions, banquets; you name it, people have pitched in and helped out.’

‘Very good. We could use some of that community spirit round my way. But listen, Mustafa – you don’t mind if I call you Mustafa, do you? – we’re not here to admire your work, you know that. We’d like to ask you some questions about Dr Michael Redwine.’

Mustafa’s face darkened. Patrese supposed that was only natural.

‘The man who killed my father, you mean?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill your father.’

‘If you shoot someone, detective, and you mean only to wound them, but instead they die, you’ve still killed them, haven’t you?’

Patrese hoped that neither of them saw him wince.

Beradino chose not to answer the question, and parried it with one of his own. ‘You know Dr Redwine was killed yesterday evening?’

‘I saw it on the news.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘Does it matter, how it makes me feel?’

‘It does if I’m asking you.’

Mustafa took a deep breath. ‘All right. I hope he suffered more than any of us could possibly imagine. That enough for you?’

‘Suffered, as in burning in hell?’

‘I don’t care how. It’s not a fraction of what he’s caused my mother and me.’

‘OK. Let me ask: where were you yesterday evening?’